L.A. Wars

by Randy Wayne White

“Johnny Barberino.”

  “Of course.” Flaherty pulled his jacket open and holstered the .45 as he sat on the fountain’s rock ledge. “I actually owe you a great debt, James. I’d been trying to break this ring for the last five months. Of course, I knew most of the particulars, but, as you well know, getting court-worthy evidence is sometimes a difficult matter. You shook things up. You created in them the proper atmosphere of chaos—and chaos begets mistakes. Barberino assigned the poor lad with the red beard, Conor Phelan, to kill you. That was a mistake. McGraw there, rest his evil soul, began liquidating some of his properties—properties with value all out of proportion to his legal income. That was another mistake. And then I got a call from a rather plump blond secretary at World Film Studios—”

  “But you’d already been there.”

  Flaherty held up one finger in characteristic exclamation. “Yes, but I went to see Johnny Barberino’s file—not Julie Kahl’s. I was as surprised as you may have been to discover that last summer while she was on vacation, she worked as an extra on one of Barberino’s films.” Flaherty meshed his hands together. “It all fit. The street gangs. Julie Kahl’s murder. Sully McGraw. And Barberino.” Flaherty chuckled. “And do you know why the secretary called me? She had failed to get your name. You were just a bit too charming, James. The young lady wanted to see you again.”

  “Great,” said Hawker ruefully. He stood. “So now you read me my rights and take me in?”

  Flaherty ignored him and held out his hand, palm up. “Ah, it’s a fine, soft night, isn’t it? Maybe just a touch of rain in the air.” He looked at Hawker. “I’m out for my evening stroll, you see. It’s not my night to work.” He considered the sky again. “Yes, indeed, a lovely evening.”

  “A cop is always on duty. You’re an agent of the court, even when you’re off duty.”

  Flaherty snapped his fingers. “I’ve erred again, blast it! What you say is true, of course. Just like the search warrant business. I really must sit down with all the rules and regulations one afternoon and give them a thorough read. These mistakes will be the end of a struggling career, if I’m not careful.”

  His prism eyes lasered into Hawker’s. “But as it stands now, Detective Hawker, you are a free man. I’ve yet to see you kill anyone, and if you’ve been as careful here as you’ve been in the past, you’ve left no prints, no registered weapons that can be traced to you … nothing at all but circumstantial evidence. And frankly, you’ve probably saved a fair number of innocent lives—not to mention suffering and taxpayers’ money—in killing those you did. They will not be missed. Indeed, we are better off without them.”

  Hawker studied the little man before him for a time in silence. Finally he nodded. “I’ve met a lot of cops and a lot of detectives in my career, Walter. And if they were all after me at once, you’re the only one I would really be worried about.”

  “Ha! Well, that is flattering. And if it’s true, then I suggest you take the morning plane for Chicago. Because tomorrow afternoon I will come after you, Detective Hawker. And, as much as I’d hate it, I’m afraid I’d be forced to take you to prison.”

  Flaherty stood and took Hawker’s outstretched hand.

  Humming a strange little tune then, he strolled off into the shadows of Hyde Park. Hawker watched until he was gone, then began to collect his gear.

  seventeen

  At one A.M. Hawker telephoned John Cranshaw.

  Hawker’s single bag was packed, and he had readied the two crates of weaponry—and another crate with his computer—for pickup by an express freight carrier and shipment back to Chicago.

  There was a seven A.M. flight to O’Hare, and Hawker planned to be on it.

  Cranshaw answered on the second ring.

  “James! You should have been there! Where the hell were you? It was great—”

  “Calm down, John.” Hawker laughed. Cranshaw’s enthusiasm already told Hawker what he wanted to know—but he listened anyway.

  “James, it was perfect!” Cranshaw chuckled. “We met just like you told us, and we put on those T-shirts you ordered. There were about twenty of us, and everybody was bitching and moaning about having to wear these stupid shirts—but we were all really just trying to cover up how damn scared we were.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Hawker put in.

  “So we marched right down Hillsboro Boulevard. We could see those bastards waiting for us—both street gangs, the Panthers and the Satanás. Hell, there must have been forty of them.

  “But the men were great, James. Stuck right to formation, just like you trained us. We got closer, and closer, and damned if we couldn’t see their expressions change. The bastards were scared, James! Half of the youngest members just turned tail and ran. Some little Hispanic kid led them away, yelling something about hawks. I mean, it was like those black T-shirts with the big white bird head on the front just scared the crap out of them. Can you imagine? Why in the hell would that scare them, James?”

  “It’s a mystery to me,” said Hawker. “I just thought it would be nice if you had a sort of uniform.”

  “Well, those T-shirts are our uniforms now, you can bet on that. There were about twenty gang members left, and we went right through them with that wedge formation. Then we broke into our five-man teams and went to work. Hell, those hoods were so confused and scared it didn’t last more than five minutes. They ran like scared rabbits. I’ll tell you, James, you’ve never seen so many proud middle-aged men in your life. We’ve got our neighborhood back, James. And for the first time in a long while, we’ve got our pride.…”

  The two men talked for a while longer as Cranshaw discussed specifics, described small problems that would be fixed in the future, and lingered over funny anecdotes. He finally let Hawker hang up—but only after he had promised to return someday to Los Angeles.

  Hawker wondered if he really would.

  From the refrigerator he took a fine and bitter Guinness and popped it open. He found stationery and composed a note. It was his final goodbye—a farewell to Melanie St. John.

  The desk was littered with crumpled paper by the time he had a paragraph that was satisfactory. That done, he took a long hot shower, opened another beer, then walked barefooted through the sand and the shadows toward the beach-side mansion built high in the trees.

  A balmy wind blew off the Pacific. Far out on the horizon Hawker could see the faint lights of a freighter. They twinkled in the rolling darkness like stars.

  Hawker walked up the asphalt drive. There were lights on in the house, and as he got closer he could see that someone was sitting on a deck chair on the broad, open porch.

  It was Melanie.

  Hawker’s plan had been to tack the note to the door, return to his cottage, and get a few hours of much-needed sleep before catching his plane.

  But it was too late for that. Her voice called out softly, “James? James, is that you?”

  “Just wanted to leave you a note. I’m leaving in the morning, and I just wanted to say—”

  “Wait. Don’t go yet. I’ll be right down.”

  She wore a white satinlike jogging suit. The jacket was half open in front, and he could see she wore no clothes beneath it. She came out the front door and hugged him warmly. In the dim light he could see that she had been crying.

  “What’s the matter, Mel?”

  She shook her head, trying to gain control of herself. “I got a call about an hour ago. It was Johnny.”

  “Barberino?”

  “Yes. He … he was arrested tonight. One of his weird friends was with him—some guy who called himself Matador. He tried to put up a fight when the police came, and they shot him. He’s dead. Johnny said it was awful. He said he’d never seen anything like that, and it made him realize what a … what a fool he’d been. He was arrested for drug trafficking, James.”

  Hawker stopped himself in time from saying, “I know.”

  Melanie locked her arms across her chest and leaned her head on his shoulder. �
�He said he needs me, James. He wants me to come down tonight. To the jail.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve spent the last hour wondering what in the hell I should do. I loved him once … in a way. Maybe even more than I wanted to admit.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes glistening. “Do you? Oh, I would feel so much better knowing that. Because … because I’m going to go, James. It sounds like he wants to change, James. And if that’s true …”

  Hawker took her shoulders gently and held her away from him. “You’ll never know for sure unless you give him a chance, Mel.”

  She sighed and sagged against him. She took his face in her hands and kissed him tenderly, stroking the back of his neck. “If it doesn’t work out, James—”

  “If it doesn’t work out, give me a call.” Hawker grinned. “Maybe you could even visit me in Chicago.”

  She wiped her eyes, smiling for the first time. “Why do you have to be so damn nice? This would be a hell of a lot easier if you yelled and screamed and told me what a stupid bitch I’m being.”

  Hawker turned her and slapped her on the fanny. “Go see your man, lady. You’ll both feel better.”

  “And I am going to visit you in Chicago!”

  “Call first. I’ll want to clean the bathtub.”

  Hawker watched her disappear into the house—and out of his life—before walking back toward his cottage. He stopped on the beach for a few minutes and threw rocks toward Hawaii, wondering why pretty, intelligent women so often dedicated themselves to spoiled men-children.

  Johnny Barberino was a lucky man. Hawker wondered if he would ever know it.

  Tired of feeling sorry for himself, Hawker jogged over the dunes and back to his bungalow. The lights were off. He stopped, trying to remember if he had left them on.

  He was almost sure that he hadn’t.

  Carefully and quietly he nudged the front door open. He carried no weapon, so he kept his right hand squeezed tight in a fist as he made his way through the darkness.

  “Yoo, hoo, is that you, Doug?” called out a high, squeaky voice.

  Hawker flicked on the living-room light. Through the open bedroom door he could see the unmistakable shape of Trixie McCall beneath the white sheet of his double bed.

  She grinned and waved at him. “I have been looking and looking for you, Doug. That day I saw you at the studio I broke a heel running after your car. Turned my ankle and couldn’t even walk for an hour. People thought I was nuts.”

  Hawker switched on the desk light in the bedroom. “Look, Trixie, I’m flattered and all, but I really don’t think—”

  She swung the sheet away, revealing what Hawker suspected—she wore nothing but an ankle bracelet. “Oh, Doug, please don’t be mean to me tonight,” she purred. “I’m being as open as I can with you.”

  “I can see that.”

  She slid off the bed and came to him. Her nipples were large and erect on her firm breasts, and the hair on her thigh confirmed that she was, indeed, a natural blonde. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his ear. “You’re so masculine, Doug, like a real, live man—”

  “Trixie, don’t.”

  “And you’ve got such broad shoulders, and I like that funny, humpy nose—”

  Her fingers had found his belt. “Trixie, I’ve got a plane to catch in the morning. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  There was the sound of a zipper, and Hawker discovered that his traitor hands were exploring the glories of her body. “Ummm …” she whispered as his pants slid away. “No one sleeps in Los Angeles, silly.”

  “I’m beginning to believe that,” said James Hawker as he lifted the naked woman into his arms and carried her toward the bed.…

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Hawker series

  one

  Just minutes before the assassin fired, James Thornton Hawker realized that, instead of arriving late for an exclusive penthouse party, he had arrived early for a flesh orgy.

  It was a party hosted by Chicago’s very rich for Chicago’s very beautiful.

  Hawker knew he didn’t fall into either category. He wondered why in the hell he had been asked to attend.

  He had been invited by Saul Beckerman. The multimillionaire Saul Beckerman. The Saul Beckerman who was the ruling fist behind a chain of jewelry stores that crisscrossed the nation. The short, portly Saul Beckerman with the expensive toupee, the gaudy clothes, the gaudy cars, the gout-red face, and the backslapper’s guffaw.

  Beckerman was an acquaintance. Not a friend.

  Even so, Hawker had always found him open and likable. Beckerman had grown up poor on Chicago’s tough South Side. A quick little Jewish kid who had learned the hard way to survive in a neighborhood ruled by poor Irish thugs.

  Beckerman was no fool. Instead of trying to fight the bullies, he used his wits to prove himself invaluable to them. He was inarticulate, uneducated; but he was smart enough to know that hustle and hard work can make up for almost any shortcomings.

  Beckerman had one goal as a kid: to work his way out of the ghetto. Money became his ticket, tough business deals his vehicle. He climbed over backs and stepped on faces.

  Business ethics were a luxury of the rich.

  Beckerman kept right on ramrodding until he had made it to the top.

  Hawker had met Saul Beckerman about ten years earlier at the annual awards banquet where Hawker was presented the Lambert Tree Award for Valor, Chicago’s highest honor for a cop.

  Beckerman was considered wealthy even then. Even so, his ghetto background was easy to read. In his speech. His dress. His raw jokes. His loud laugh. Hawker remembered thinking that he tried way, way too hard to fit in with his more refined business associates.

  There was something both comical and pathetic about him. He was like a kid in a candy store: nervous but happy.

  Everything seemed to impress him out of proportion. He had a terminal case of a ghetto kid’s sense of inferiority. The award impressed him. Hawker impressed him. And the ceremony had almost reduced him to tears.

  “Anytime you need anything, anything at all, you just come see Saul Beckerman,” he had told Hawker solemnly after the ceremony. “Anything I got is yours. We both come from the same shithole, eh? We both worked our asses off to get out. We both know the score, right? These other bozos, they know how to hold their teacups and that sort of shit, but guys like you and me know something more important. We know how to fuckin’ survive.”

  Then Beckerman did something that had both touched and surprised Hawker. He had slipped his watch off his wrist, jammed it in Hawker’s hand, then pivoted away, teary-eyed.

  It was a slim gold Rolex. Even then it was worth a couple of grand. It was so beautifully made that Hawker rarely wore it.

  Hawker had seen Beckerman off and on over the years. Never socially, though. So Hawker was a little surprised when he returned from a trip to the west coast to find the embossed invitation waiting at his little apartment in Bridgeport.

  Along with the formal “You are cordially invited …” was a scrawled note from Beckerman:

  Hawk—I got some important business to talk about. May need your help. Saul

  So on a Saturday night in September, Hawker climbed into his midnight-blue Stingray, the vintage classic he had rescued from police auction, and cruised down Archer through the old Irish section. He picked up the Stevenson Expressway, east into the city. On Lake Shore Drive he turned north, wheeling easily through the lights and noise of downtown Chicago.

  There was an autumn balm in the wind off the lake. The wind mixed the musk of fallen leaves and Canadian streams with the industrial stink of asphalt and foundry stacks.

  Souped-up cars loaded with teenagers weaved in and out of the suburbanite traffic. Late-night window-shoppers and club-hoppers roamed the sidewalks.

  The party was at Beckerman’s penthouse apartment. The apartment was a plush cell built into one of the marble and mirror-windowed skysc
rapers that loomed over the city and Lake Michigan.

  Hawker left his car with the parking attendant, then rode a sterile elevator to the twentieth floor. When he rang the bell, a black butler dressed in a white tuxedo swung open the double doors. The suite was done in marble and metal. Ultramodern. It was done so tastefully that Hawker knew Beckerman had either hired an interior decorator or left the furnishing up to his young and lovely wife, Felicia.

  The room was crowded with a strange mixture of middle-aged men and young women. The women looked like they had driven straight over from Hefner’s Playboy mansion.

  There were blonds and brunettes, and one particularly sultry-looking negress. The punk look was in, and most of them wore their hair ratted or butch, styled in careful disarray. It was a night for formal attire, and their dresses were built to display, not cover. The girls seemed to be competing, to see who could show their breasts most spectacularly.

  The men were big-business types. Expensive suits. Loud laughter through a plume of cigar smoke. Big glasses of bourbon being sipped through glazed smiles.

  An army of Boise speakers pounded out gaudy jazz, and people yelled to converse above the din. Even so, Hawker could sense an awkwardness in the room, the uneasiness of strangers thrown together with unfamiliar plans.

  The uneasiness didn’t last long.

  Hawker found the bar and took an iced Tuborg as far away from the speakers as he could get. There was still no sign of Saul or his wife, so Hawker sipped his beer and watched.

  When the men at the party weren’t belting down drinks, they were fetching drinks for the girls. Things were loosening up. There was the sound of wild laughter as the black girl climbed onto the shoulders of a chunky, balding man with a bright tie.

  He paraded her around the room as she gulped a martini. When the drink was finished she tossed the glass away, then stripped her blouse up over her head and hurled it into the admiring crowd. Her breasts were heavy onyx, glistening with sweat.

  The men clapped and cheered—and worked harder at their drinks as the other women began to step out of their dresses.