Cold Hit

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “What the fuck is that all about?” Detective Cooper said, looking a little alarmed.

  “This isn’t going to be exactly like running an audit on Enron,” I told them. “These guys are a little looser than I thought. I’m going to radio for some Blues to come in here to watch your back. Stay frosty till they arrive, then make as much trouble as you can.”

  More Russian shouting leaked out into the lobby.

  “I’m outta here,” I said, and stepped into the elevator and pushed the button. As the doors closed I heard more shouting and doors slamming.

  The Acura was parked in a red zone in front of the building with my handcuffs draped over the steering wheel so I wouldn’t get towed. It’s the universal signal to traffic cops identifying a detective’s car. Once I was inside with the engine running, I called dispatch and ordered immediate backup for Cooper and Dark. Then I waited to see if Sammy was as nuts as Emdee said.

  He was.

  Three minutes later a black Cadillac exploded out of the underground parking garage and turned in my direction. There were four burly guys, including Sammy, packed cheek to jowl inside. All were wearing strained, blank expressions. They spotted me as they sailed past. Brake lights flashed. The Cadillac skidded to a stop and began a Y-turn, coming back after me.

  55

  The black Caddy was only four cars back, tracking me on the 405. It was the worst tail since Hef designed the bunny costume. At any given moment, I could see them in two of my three rearview mirrors.

  Somewhere near San Pedro I caught sight of a white, windowless Econoline van.

  Please don’t let that be Zack, I thought. I’ve got enough trouble right now without adding him to the mix.

  I lost sight of the van when I exited the freeway and turned left onto the Coast Highway heading toward the recently de-commissioned and razed Long Beach NavalYard.

  The massive property slid by outside my left window—hundreds of acres of freshly paved parking lots loaded with multicolored marine shipping containers.

  I looked back. The black Cadillac was now caught at a light; so, without making it look too obvious, I slowed down and timed it so I missed the next signal. Then I spotted the Cad coming up on me again. Sammy must have somehow reined in all that homicidal rage because they were being more careful now, staying further back.

  Up ahead loomed the two-story-high, curvaceous blonde cutout in her black miniskirt. I pulled into the abandoned dress company parking lot and stopped next to the entrance of the main office. Then I stepped out of my car and headed toward the building.

  I took the stairs two at a time, quickly reaching the second floor. When I got to the sewing room, Emdee was waiting.

  “They follow you?” he said, looking out the window.

  “Yeah. You were sure right about Sammy. He almost unpacked me right there in his own office. If his brother hadn’t walked in, I wouldn’t have made it out of there.”

  “If they followed you, then we’re in business, Joe Bob.”

  So we waited.

  I walked over to one of the camera positions and spoke into the pinhole to Roger who was in the ESD van out back with four CTB surveillance guys he’d recruited. I brought Roger up to date, told him the Russians were about to make their move.

  But nothing happened.

  Emdee and I sat around until well after sunset. Then we walked downstairs and checked the parking lot and the road out front.

  No sign of the black Caddy anywhere.

  Finally we climbed down to the ESD van hidden in the culvert. I knocked on the back door. Roger opened up. The four CTB surveillance team members inside were all wearing black Kevlar with heavy ordnance strapped to their sides.

  “He didn’t take the bait,” I said.

  “What the fuck is wrong with that boy?” Roger said.

  We turned the surveillance team loose and watched them drive out of the parking lot in their black Suburban.

  “So what do we do now?” Emdee asked after they were gone.

  “We regroup,” I said, softly.

  56

  I headed back to the Shutters Hotel in Santa Monica. All the way there I kept my eyes on the rearview mirror. No white vans. No black Cadillacs.

  Before transitioning onto the Santa Monica Freeway I pulled a lane change maneuver that an old motorcycle officer in the traffic division taught me. He swore it would shake any tail. You stay in the fast lane going about sixty and look for a pattern in traffic that allows you to abruptly cross all four lanes in one move, and shoot down an off-ramp. No car following will be able to find a similar hole and will overshoot the exit.

  I executed the maneuver twice and then drove on surface streets to Shutters, which sits right on Santa Monica Beach and, in my opinion, is one of the most delightful little hotels in Southern California.

  I handed over my car to the valet and went upstairs to our ocean-view suite on the second floor. Delfina and Chooch were both inside doing their homework.

  “Hi. Where’s Mom?” I asked, as I came through the door.

  “Gonna be late,” Chooch said. “She called and said she wants us to get dinner without her.”

  Franco was out on the balcony leering at seagulls swooping in over his head, turning back and forth, watching them with hungry eyes. I got a beer from the minibar and joined him. The beautiful white sand beach stretched out beyond the bike path where the surf thundered in, making turquoise and white foam. Off to the right was the Santa Monica Pier where we had our disastrous noontime meeting.

  I sat on the balcony taking in the view as the afternoon sun set; thinking about the events of the afternoon.

  A wasted day.

  Worse still, we’d exposed ourselves without any result and put the Russian mob on alert, giving them the opportunity to destroy key evidence.

  So far, nobody at Parker Center had been told how badly we’d screwed up, but I knew I was going to have to fill Alexa in when she arrived.

  The phone rang, so I walked inside to answer.

  “Good, you’re there,” Alexa said. “How’d it go?”

  “Terrific,” I lied, chickening out, telling myself I’d rather give her the bad news in person. “I left Cooper and Dark down there to scan the computers and dig out anything they can find on the forged gas tax records.”

  “Yeah. I know. I got a call from the Petrovitches’ attorney. Some Eastern Euro shyster named Sebastian Sebura. He’s been all over us with temporary restraining orders and show cause writs. Guy’s a real meat grinder. I called Detective Cooper. He says, so far, it looks like a grunion hunt. If they’re running a gas tax fraud, they have it pretty well papered over. I told Tony I wouldn’t pull them out without your okay, but everybody down here thinks it’s a wasted play.”

  “Take ’em out,” I sighed. “I’m gonna work on coming up with something else.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” she said, then hesitated, adding, “Listen, we found out who planted all those bugs in the Glass House. A tech in ESD named Ivan Roson—short for Rosonovitch. He hanged himself two hours before he was scheduled to take his polygraph. It’s a circus down here. We’re working on a statement for the press. Take the kids down to the Pier and get them something to eat. That fancy restaurant downstairs is nice, but it’s a little pricey for our budget.”

  I told her I loved her, and we hung up.

  At a little past eight, the kids and I left the hotel and walked along the beachfront bike path to the pier. It was a warm night and now there were hundreds of people milling around on the rebuilt wooden structure. I bought Delfina and Chooch hotdogs and ice cream, and we sat on a bench, not a hundred yards from where I’d sat that morning. Funny how savvy our plan seemed, just eight hours ago. Now it felt like total nonsense.

  “Hey, Dad, wanta go on the Ferris wheel with us?” Chooch asked, after finishing his food.

  “Yes, Shane. Come with us,” Delfina pleaded.

  “You guys go. I’ve had a bad day. Got a lot on my mind.”


  “You’ve been really quiet,” Del said. “Maybe if you tell us, we can help.”

  “You guys help by just being here. Go ride the wheel. I’ll buy a camera and get some pictures.”

  I handed them twenty dollars and they went off to get in line. I walked down the pier to a vendor’s stand and bought a Kodak throwaway. As I headed back toward the big, colorful wheel, someone suddenly pressed hard against me on the right. Then a big body leaned in on the left.

  “Hey,” I said. “Watch where you’re—”

  I heard a loud Zap. Intense pain shot into the small of my back. When the department gave us Taser training at the academy, we were forced to take a jolt to see what it felt like. Once you’ve taken a Taser shot, you don’t forget it. I tried to lurch away as my muscles twitched and jumped with electrical overload. I staggered forward and fell.

  “My friend is having a heart attack!” somebody with an Eastern European accent shouted out in dismay.

  Then three or four faces belonging to overfed men in their mid-thirties, were peering down at me.

  “This way! He needs a hospital!” one with a Euro accent shouted.

  They grabbed me. My muscles were still convulsing with the charge.

  “No!” I tried to say as they lifted me. But my voice wouldn’t work. I was helpless.

  “My car’s this way,” another shouted. Then I was being hustled off the Pier.

  They ran with me down the steps into the parking lot. We stopped in a dark area of the lot. Somebody stood me upright and held me. My muscles were chattering and my hands jerked uncontrollably. One of the men took a syringe out of his pocket, removed the plastic tip, and shoved it into my thigh, depressing the plunger, and emptying the cylinder.

  In seconds my vision started to dim.

  I vaguely heard a trunk open and I was dropped onto a hard, rough surface. The lid slammed shut. Everything went black.

  57

  I opened my eyes.

  I was sitting in a wooden chair.

  “This is un-fucking-acceptable!” someone was yelling in American English. It was coming from another room.

  I recognized that voice. Agent Kersey Nix. The mild-mannered FBI agent from the Tishman Building.

  My body ached and my head buzzed like a broken radio. I tried to move, but discovered that all four of my appendages were securely taped to the chair with black electrical tape. The chair seemed to be bolted to the floor because it wouldn’t budge. I looked down and saw what appeared to be dried blood on the concrete underneath me. Then I took a careful inventory of the room. I was in a garage. A single, exposed lightbulb hung from a cord in the center of the space and a black Cadillac Brougham was parked under it. Somewhere I heard the distant sound of thundering surf.

  “…He come…he say, ‘Suck my dick, yakoff.’” It was Sammy Petrovitch complaining. “Fucking asshole—fucking piece-of-shit asshole.”

  “You shut up!” Nix shouted. “Talk to him, Igor. This isn’t working anymore. He’s gonna put our whole thing in the shredder.”

  “Sammy has…he has problems. He will get this worked out,” Igor said.

  “He didn’t used to be like this,” Nix responded.

  “He say, ‘suck my dick, yakoff!’ I no listen to this shit—motherfucker!”

  I’d really stirred up some trouble with my trip to Century City. I realized dully that I’d actually accomplished what I set out to do this morning. I’d frightened the Petrovitches enough to get them to grab me. But I’d underestimated them. They were smart enough to do it on their timetable, not mine. I wondered how they found me. While we were inside the dress company, did one of them sneak over the fence and plant another bug on my car? However it happened, they’d waited until I was separated from my backup and made their move. Now I was alone and in big trouble.

  The side door into the house suddenly opened and Kersey Nix stood backlit, in the threshold. Behind him I could see a modern kitchen. He moved toward me followed by Iggy Petrovitch. Sammy loomed in the doorway, watching.

  I kept thinking, What the hell is Kersey Nix doing here?

  “You were told by Mr. Virtue to go away,” he said. “Apparently, you don’t hear so good.”

  “I’m kind of tone deaf. But I’m getting over it. I get the message now.”

  “Too late.”

  “Too bad.” I took a deep breath. “Where are we?”

  “A long way from L.A.,” he said.

  “What the hell do you and R. A. Virtue have to do with these Odessa thugs?”

  “This is not a deal where you get to ask questions, asshole. You tell me what you know, then I decide what to do about it.”

  “I don’t know anything. I’m a fuck-up. I never score.”

  Nix’s cell phone rang. He answered. “Nix.” A pause. “Yeah, they got him, sir. Zapped him on the Santa Monica Pier. Lately these guys are fuckin’ outta control. I have two agents down there now, laying down some counterintelligence. Finding witnesses who saw it and telling them the guy just had an epileptic seizure. So far so good. But we’ve got a problem with the big guy. You or Iggy are gonna have to deal with this now. Sammy needs to go home. We need to put him on a plane tomorrow.” Nix paused, then added, “Okay…fine…” Then he disconnected.

  “How’s Mr. Virtue?” I said, trying to sound self-assured and in control while a little puddle of flop sweat was forming under my ass.

  “Okay, Scully. Here’s the deal. I want to know what you know, what Broadway knows, what Perry knows, what your wife and Lieutenant Cubio know. You’re gonna debrief me completely.”

  “None of us knows anything. We’re just local cops. We’re slow and stupid.”

  “Right now, even though you’re sitting up and breathing, you’re just a corpse that hasn’t been buried yet. The question here, as far as you’re concerned, is how you die, not if you die.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “I think you’re going to change your mind and come up with something. You can buy your way out of a very painful ending with a little useful information. Stonewall, and I’m gonna let Sammy fuck with your psyche.”

  I looked over and saw the silhouette of Samoyla Petrovitch standing in the doorway, leering with that horrible face.

  “Igor, get the box,” Nix said.

  A moment later, Iggy Petrovitch returned carrying a black metal suitcase. He set it down and opened it. There was a strange-looking device inside that had all kinds of wires and clips attached.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked in panic.

  “It’s a polygraph,” Nix said. “We’re going to debrief you on the box. That way we know everything you say is righteous.”

  “Doesn’t look like any polygraph I ever saw.” There was no graph, or stylus, but it had an LD screen on the back.

  “State of the art,” he said softly. “You don’t need to give yes or no answers on this. It reads the truth in sentences.” He looked at Igor. “Hook him up.”

  Iggy Petrovitch grabbed my shirt and ripped it open. Buttons flew off and danced across the concrete floor. He spoke to me softly as he hooked up the skin sensors and finger clips. “You make big mistake coming to our office. There is nothing there. So you will find nothing. You say you make a project of us, now we make a project of you.”

  “You can’t just kill a cop,” I said.

  “Yes we can,” Iggy said softly. “We do it all the time.”

  Once the box was connected, he stepped back.

  Nix took his place in front of me. “We’re going to start with your partners, Broadway and Perry. How much of this do they know?”

  I sat strapped to the chair feeling like a death row inmate.

  I’d once taken a weeklong capture and survival course at Fort Bragg where we spent a day working on anti-interrogation techniques and polygraph deception. I knew if I was going to get through this, I had to lock my mind on something other than my imminent demise because fear of death would cause me to produce excessive amounts of adrenaline.
Polygraph machines operate on body chemistry. A lie produces a physical response that speeds the heart and sends an impulse down your nervous system causing sweat and increased skin electricity.

  If I could get my mind and emotions to quiet down, I had a better chance of focusing on a deceptive thought that would allow my responses to register as inconclusive on the machine. But everything in me wanted out of here, wanted to survive this, so I wasn’t having much luck. I tried a slow breathing technique to bring my heart rate down.

  “You are going to be debriefed,” Nix said. “You should also be advised, I’m not beyond using extreme techniques.”

  With Sammy standing in the doorway, I didn’t even want to speculate as to what “extreme techniques” might include.

  “Answer me. How much information do Detectives Broadway and Perry have?”

  If I talked, I would be signing Roger and Emdee’s death sentences. If I didn’t talk, I was going to go through a very bad session here. Not a great choice, but since I was probably a lost cause anyway, I knew I’d feel a lot better about going down if I didn’t give these guys anything. I set my jaw and said nothing.

  “Sammy,” Nix said. The big man moved out of the doorway and over to the black Cadillac. He opened the trunk. A moment later he slammed it shut and walked toward me carrying a short-handled tree-limb cutter.

  “What the hell is that for?” I asked.

  Nix stepped aside and, without warning, Petrovitch placed the limb cutter over the index finger of my taped-down left hand at the first joint near the fingertip.

  “You can’t be serious,” I managed to say as the horror of what they were about to do dawned on me.

  There was no further discussion.

  Sammy simply bore down with the gardening tool and cut off my fingertip. It flew off the end of my hand liked a discarded cigarette butt and hit the floor. A second later, the pain hit.

  I howled. My mouth was open and somebody stuffed a rag into it, choking off my screams. I watched in horror as my mutilated finger spurted blood. As my blood mixed with the dried blood under the chair, I wondered how many people before me had sat here and gone through this.