Justice by Fire at-7

by Dick Stivers

  “We are ready to go to San Francisco.” Rivera gestured at the furnishings of the room and laughed. “We can pack in two minutes.”

  “Not tonight,” Blancanales said. “Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”

  “But Michael Holt, Mr. Holt’s son, said he would send Mr. Robert Prescott to take us to San Francisco. He said perhaps tonight. Certainly tomorrow.”

  Blancanales shook his head, no. Then he explained what must be done.

  28

  Only minutes after his arrival at Los Angeles International Airport, Robert Prescott parked in the garage of the Sheraton Hotel. As he locked the rented car, his eyes searched the shadows and unnatural fluorescent glare of the stark cavern of structural concrete and gleaming automobiles. He saw no one watching from the other vehicles. No one loitered near the elevators. He did see a panel van — like the vans favored by surveillance teams — but a concrete pillar blocked the view from its front windows. The back windows faced away from him.

  As he headed for the elevators, the roar of a late-night flight drowned out the sound of his feet on the pavement. He tried to keep his eyes straight ahead, to watch around him for surveillance only with his peripheral vision, but his fear forced him to keep turning his head for surreptitious glances.

  The operation had gone public. West Coast and national newscasts carried the stories and video images of the death squad Prescott had hired to kill “a leading black reporter and his heavily armed goon guards.” Though the commentators lacked the imagination or paranoia to link the killings of Salvadorans and ex-con assassins in San Francisco with the freeway battle, the late-breaking and fragmentary reports of the ambush slayings of the “illegal Mexicans” in the mountains outside of San Jose would hit the headlines tomorrow.

  Finally the commentators would connect the several incidents. The weapons used to kill the ex-cons and black nationalists would link the cases.

  Though he had been careful, though he had handled the negotiations, the assignments and the payments without meetings, Prescott feared the relentless probing of an investigation of any sort. If the news media interviewed a hundred ex-cons, militants and extremists, one of them might remember the bright young lawyer who always offered legal advice and loaned money.

  Years before, as an idealistic law student volunteering legal services to prisoners and paroled felons, he had gained entry to an underground society of dope dealers and murderers.

  Later, after joining the congressman’s circle of advisors, he learned the role of more sophisticated criminals in politics. The chic radicals of the jet set — San Francisco socialists, Manhattan Marxists, the corrupt elite of the capital — depended on heroin and cocaine and Quaaludes for euphoria and erotic novelty. Organized crime supplied the radical Left with the drugs. Soon, gang leaders appeared at fund-raisers, at first for the amusement of watching cocaine-dazed politicians attempt to explain international policy, later to sink their teeth into the elite who drafted the laws and appointed the prosecutors.

  The gangsters had always contributed money to both conservatives and liberals, but they saw their future in the liberals. The people of the United States resisted the severe limitations of responsible fiscal policy. The liberals promised everything to everyone. Organized crime knew who would win the next election. Gang leaders became the Left’s strongest supporters.

  Prescott exploited his encounters with the gangsters. He offered them assassins unknown to the criminal hierarchies or federal investigators. Need a Mafia lawyer silenced before he testified to a grand jury in New York? Fly in a black ex-con to stage a parking-lot mugging and killing. Then fly the murderer on to Libya to live a life of luxury with the security of monthly payments from a numbered Swiss account. The felon did not know whom he killed. Unless he returned to the United States and searched library news files, the murderer would never know. But if he returned, he lost his payments and his luxuries. And his life.

  As the administration increased the flow of North American wealth to the Salvadoran war, Prescott made contact with the Fascists sheltered in Miami. He offered them a twofold service: assassins and information. If necessary, North American felons and psychopaths would murder Salvadoran refugees. If necessary, they would murder others, people more conspicuous, people who were in the public eye and were hated by the public: the assassins would murder incurably recidivist child molesters, activist personalities, radical and criminal celebrities, anyone whose death would earn the killers the public’s silent thanks, and thus help cover up the true origins of the crimes against the refugees.

  As a leftist lawyer assisting a liberal congressman, Prescott received a warm welcome to the homes and offices of expatriate Salvadorans. He reported their words and thoughts to the Salvadoran fascists.

  But he regretted the day he took their Krugerrands. Dead Salvadorans meant nothing to him. The murder of North Americans, however, was a different matter. The cover of vigilantism could barely protect him from the repulsion that would strike when each kill was broadcast.

  Now, as he pressed the elevator button for the upper floors of the Sheraton, his body quivered with fear. When the elevator stopped at the lobby, Prescott expected Federal Bureau of Investigation officers to step in and seize him. Instead, four drunken tourists in party hats stumbled inside, continued their disco dancing.

  As the elevator doors slid open on the sixth floor, Prescott shoved past the tourists. His imagination put federal agents behind every door. They waited for him at every corner in the corridor.

  Striding toward the room where Captain Madrano waited, Prescott saw a Hispanic bellboy pushing a cart of dirty dishes and beer bottles. A federal agent? Prescott turned his back to the young man. Fumbling in his pocket, Prescott pretended to be searching for his room key. When the bellboy wheeled the cart around a corner, Prescott broke into a run. He beat on Captain Madrano’s door.

  “Quien esta alla?”

  Prescott’s fear would not allow him to say his name out loud. But he would speak the Salvadoran’s name for the hidden microphones. “Madrano?”

  A man spoke Spanish, then the laughter of several men exploded inside. The door opened. Captain Madrano received Prescott with a sneering smile. Dapper in tailored slacks, a Ralph Lauren tapered shirt and a black leather shoulder holster carrying a Beretta, the ORDEN officer sipped at a tumbler of bourbon.

  Ten other Salvadorans watched the North American traitor enter. In front of them, open suitcases exposed Uzi submachine guns. The Salvadorans looked at the nervous, sweating lawyer, then returned to their bourbon and magazine loading. A wooden case of PMC 9mm cartridges lay on a coffee table. Most of the men loaded Uzi mags. One man inventoried the contents of another suitcase.

  Glancing into the cluttered suitcase, Prescott could not identify the objects.

  “So. You are ready?” Captain Madrano demanded of the North American.

  “Isn’t it dangerous to meet here?” Prescott asked, hearing his voice quaver. “Someone could see us. A policeman. A bellboy. A clerk. Anyone.”

  Captain Madrano turned to his men. “El puto norteamericano piensa que un hotel Sheraton es peligroso.” The other men laughed at what the captain had said. He turned back to Prescott. “Of all places, it is secure here.”

  “Where do I take them?” Prescott asked.

  A man brought him a map of Los Angeles. Red ink marked a location in Lennox. Prescott recognized the area where the State of California Department of Transportation had planned the Century Freeway, condemning and purchasing thousands of homes, then canceling the project due to the onslaught of environmentalists and OPEC gasoline prices. The strip of abandoned neighborhoods had become a wasteland of vandalized and burned homes, a no-man’s-land where street gangs fought wars, and sexual psychopaths took kidnapped young girls for orgies of sadistic sex. Prescott realized the Salvadorans employed other Californians. No tourist book or city map touted that slash of desolation.

  “From Main Street,” Captain Madrano instructed, “you will
go south on the Harbor Freeway, to Century Boulevard. They will not suspect. Even if they have a map, they will see the jet planes in the sky. If they question you, say you are not familiar with Los Angeles. Here, you will make a wrong turn. You will say you made a wrong turn, then you make more wrong turns. We will wait.”

  “What if I actually do get lost?”

  “We have thought of that. Here.” The captain gave Prescott a small walkie-talkie. “Put it in your coat. If you have a problem, you can switch on the radio, like this. Then talk of the problem. Say, ‘This street, that street.’ Stop and examine your map. We will come and take them. But I tell you, there will be no problem. You will be done with this very quickly. But they will not…”

  As the young Salvadoran officer ended his instructions with a laugh, the man searching through the cluttered suitcase also laughed. The man took something out of the interior.

  “Three girls and a mother?” the man asked.

  “Si.” The captain nodded.

  Prescott saw what the man held. Four waterproof highway flares. The man smiled, then sang as he set the flares aside: “Your love is burning, burning, a fire deep inside me, burning, burning…”

  The image of what the Salvadorans intended struck Prescott. He staggered back, fell against the door, his mind spinning, vomit acid in his throat. Captain Madrano and the other ORDEN soldiers laughed. Madrano dismissed Prescott with a sneer.

  “Go. We expect you within an hour. If you fail us, we take you. Understand, gringo?”

  Nodding, Prescott fumbled for the knob. He fell out the door. He put one hand against the corridor wall, breathed deeply for a moment. He sought comfort in the sterile decor and computer-determined colors of the Sheraton corridor. When his panic and nausea faded, he stumbled to the elevators.

  Arrest by federal agents no longer panicked him. The thought of prison no longer made his body shiver. Now he thought of prison as a sanctuary.

  As the elevator dropped silently to the garages, Prescott closed his eyes. He focused on the nothingness behind his eyelids, hoping the darkness would bring peace.

  But he only saw an image from one of the shocking films smuggled out of El Salvador: the shattered skull of a young woman, the machete-carved flesh of her face curling back from the long wounds, her eyes swarming with flies.

  Even when his eyes snapped open, even when he stared at the chrome floor-indicator flashing with the back-lit plastic numbers, he could not help but zoom in on that girl’s shattered skull, the blood-clotted matted hair tangled around a vast bullet exit wound. Like the camera, his mind zoomed in to focus on the secret of El Salvador: a human brain feeding a squirming mass of translucent worms.

  Now Prescott truly understood the men who paid him Krugerrand gold.

  29

  In the room, Captain Madrano spoke into a walkie-talkie. “He has left. Can you hear him?”

  FBI Agent Gallucci watched Prescott stagger from the elevator. The San Francisco lawyer fell to his hands and knees on the garage floor and vomited. The minitransmitter built into the walkie-talkie that Prescott carried sent every breath and gasp to the receiver in Gallucci’s ear.

  “I can hear him, I can see him. What did you give him to drink?”

  “I would not drink with him.”

  “He’s puking.”

  “Con miedo.” Captain Madrano laughed.

  “What’s he got to be afraid of?”

  “Us, if he fails.”

  Gallucci laughed also. “He’s going to his car. It’s a blue Dodge. A rented one. In case he does screw up, you got some men who can find their way around Los Angeles?”

  “Of course. One of my lieutenants went to UCLA.”

  “It won’t be good, but those illegals have got to go. Tell your men to do it fast and get out. Main Street has a one-minute response time, once the police switchboard gets a call. If anyone bothers to call. There he goes. On my way.”

  “I see you later.”

  “You bet on it. One of the girls is a teenager, right?”

  “Thirteen years or fourteen. A Communist beauty.”

  “I won’t miss the party. Over and out, amigo.”

  Starting his unmarked agency car, Gallucci eased out of his parking place. He accelerated into traffic, following the taillights of Prescott’s rented car. Gallucci realized the car looked much like his own, a solid gray Dodge four-door. Only the colors differed.

  Now I know where the bureau gets these dogs, they buy them used from rental companies. But I won’t have to drive these used-up wrecks next year. Take an early retirement, pack up my bag of Salvadoran gold, move someplace where the living is easy. And the peasants obedient. And the little girls hot for dollars. If Quesada and his boys deal with the revolution, El Salvador would be great. If not, I’ll go where they go…

  Gallucci had no problem following the blue Dodge. Prescott followed the San Diego Freeway north to the Santa Monica Freeway, then went east to the civic center. The late-night traffic screened Gallucci from Prescott’s rearview mirror.

  The sounds Gallucci was monitoring indicated that Prescott had taken the threat from Captain Madrano really seriously. The minitransmitter sent the sounds of the lawyer mumbling to himself, of dry heaves and of choked sobs.

  Yep, they definitely put the fear of God into that jerk.

  When Prescott left the Santa Monica Freeway and went north through the deserted manufacturing and retail areas, Gallucci veered off to a parallel street.

  He sped to Main Street and parked a block and a half north of the hotel. The square cargo van compartment of a produce truck concealed most of his bureau Dodge.

  Looking diagonally across the four empty lanes of Main Street, Gallucci watched as Prescott parked his rented Dodge. The minimike in the lawyer’s coat pocket transmitted every sound to Gallucci’s receiver. The stark glare of a mercury-arc street lamp lit the entry to the hotel like a spotlight.

  Gallucci watched and listened as Prescott slammed his car door. But then the audio went silent.

  Damn that jerk! Gallucci cursed as Prescott crossed the sidewalk. The frightened lawyer, for whatever reason, had left the walkie-talkie and its concealed minitransmitter in the Dodge.

  But Gallucci had an excellent view of the hotel. Prescott could not leave unobserved.

  The moonlighting FBI agent waited, watched.

  30

  Throwing Prescott down, Blancanales put his knee in the screaming man’s back. He forced Prescott’s face into the filthy carpet to silence him. Senor Rivera grabbed their prisoner’s hands. Jefferson checked the hallway for Blancos, then pulled the door closed and locked it.

  “None out there,” Jefferson told them.

  Senora Rivera huddled on the mattress with her daughters. She held the girls’ heads against her bosom so they would not see what the men did. The eight-year-old turned to peek at the scene of brutality and terror. Lidia pulled the blanket over her daughter’s face.

  “Where is the death squad waiting?” Blancanales asked Prescott.

  “What? What do you mean?” gasped Prescott at the carpet. “What are you doing to me? Are you a law officer? Do you know that you are violating every police procedure and every civil right…”

  Blancanales shoved Prescott’s face into the carpet again. Keying his hand-radio, he reported to his partners, “I have him. What do you see out there?”

  “Nada,” Gadgets answered. “Unless you mean boozer losers.”

  “No one else got out of the car,” Lyons reported. “Looks like he’s alone.”

  “Any other cars?”

  “Not on this block,” Lyons answered.

  “No goon squads,” Gadgets reported.

  “Wizard,” Lyons spoke again. “Watch the front. I’m going to the back. Pol, is he talking?”

  “Not yet.”

  “If he won’t, let me know.”

  “Will do.” Blancanales returned his hand-radio to his coat pocket. He knotted his fingers in the styled hair of the lawyer and pu
lled his head back.

  “Where are the Blancos!”

  “This is assault, false arrest, false imprisonment…”

  Bearing down his knee, Blancanales pulled Prescott’s head back until he felt the vertebra creak. The lawyer gasped and choked. His voice low and smooth, Blancanales asked again: “Where are the Blancos!”

  Prescott struggled against their hold on him, kicking his legs, straining to twist his head free. Blancanales and Senor Rivera held firm until Prescott broke into sobs. Blancanales took plastic handcuffs out of his pocket, handed one to Rivera, two to Jefferson.

  “His hands and his ankles.”

  Heaving and thrashing, Prescott fought once more against Blancanales on top of him, his throat making a high, whining sound. Blancanales slammed Prescott’s head into the rotted carpet again and again until Prescott stopped struggling. He lay still, his face in the ancient filth of the carpet, gagging.

  Rivera studied the plastic loop. He determined how it worked, then cinched it tight around the prisoner’s wrists. Jefferson, too, linked one strand to the next to secure Prescott’s ankles.

  “Here,” Blancanales motioned to Jefferson. “One foot on his neck while I search him. Don’t break it.”

  As Blancanales went through the lawyer’s pockets, Jefferson put a jogging shoe on the lawyer’s neck. He bore down and joked. “Well, imagine this, Bobby. You had me all set up. Sold me out, sold out the Riveras, sold out your country. Must’ve been a real laugh in Buckley’s office, listening to me talk, watching me shake while I looked outside at the goons. And all the time I was talking to a goon.” He pressed his foot down slightly.

  Prescott gasped.

  Blancanales found the folded map. He looked at the red-ink directions. He passed the map to Jefferson.

  “You know Los Angeles? What sort of neighborhood is that?”

  Reading the names of the freeways and boulevards, glancing at the position of the Los Angeles International Airport to double-check, Jefferson shook his head.