by John Lansing
A green 1970s Chevy Caprice with black-tinted windows—gangbanger written all over it—was parked directly across the street from his building, in front of the Fine Wine Storage facility with a balls-on view of his loft.
Firming his lips, Jack strapped on his leather shoulder rig, checked the load on his Glock nine-millimeter, and shrugged into a loose-fitting black linen jacket to conceal the weapon. No use giving his neighbors a heart attack. Jack was already on their shit list for attracting the wrong kind of publicity for their west-side loft community. If they couldn’t take a joke, fuck ’em, Jack thought.
He took the back elevator, exited through the rear of the building, and jumped the fence onto the FedEx parking lot. He sprinted past the trucks and then across the street, ending up ten feet behind the Chevy Caprice.
He pulled out his Glock and moved rapidly forward in the driver’s blind spot.
Jack tapped the gun barrel on the driver’s-side window.
The blacked-out window powered down, and two empty hands shot out and rotated front to back to prove their innocence.
“Friend, not foe, Mr. B,” Peter said in his nasal Brooklyn twang. “Just keeping an eye on things. You know, I got you covered, so to speak.”
Jack holstered his weapon, relieved it wasn’t La Eme.
“Where were you yesterday?” he said, giving the busted gangster a hard time.
“Lookin’ for a fuckin’ parking space. I saw the action in my rearview. I almost lost my lunch. Parkin’ sucks around here. By the time I turned the fuckin’ car around, you had everything under control, thank God. I didn’t think there was any need to get involved once the cops showed. You know. Why push it?”
“It’s the thought that counts,” Jack said, tongue in cheek.
“Mr. Cardona was reasonably upset. I mean, you can’t very well find his daughter if you’re taking a dirt nap. Or he generally used words to that effect. I mean, he’s offering you protection and whatnot. You know, demanding it. In the form of me.”
“He does have a point,” Jack deadpanned.
“You think?” Peter asked, surprised.
“Do you want me to just give you my itinerary for the rest of the week?”
“That would be great, Mr. B,” the beleaguered man said.
“Get the fuck outta here.”
“What?” Peter said, eyebrows raised, checking to see if Jack was putting him on.
“Get the fuck outta here.”
He wasn’t.
“Oh . . . Uh . . . Okay, then. Huh. Let’s just keep this little conversation between the two of us. . . .”
Peter was speaking to Jack’s back as he watched him dodge traffic and disappear into the lobby of his building.
Two minutes later, Jack’s rental, a new BMW 335i, pulled out onto Glencoe and roared past.
Peter gave it a five count and burned rubber as he executed a smoking one-eighty and gave chase.
19
Angelica sat stone straight in the dinette chair. Both of her arms and legs had been plastic-cuffed to the arms and legs of the chair. She had a dreamy faraway look in her eyes as Hassan laid a bathroom towel on the small dining table, opened a zippered pouch, and pulled out an empty vial and a sterilized syringe. Angelica watched him working dispassionately.
Hassan pulled the cap off of the syringe and stepped over to Angelica like a lab technician. He inserted the needle into the flesh of her left arm, looking for a flinch that didn’t come. Neither did the blood he was sent to extract for testing.
“Stick it in a vein, you stupid idiot.”
Frustrated, Hassan wanted to stick the needle in her heart. Instead he was the good soldier. He rubbed her arm with an alcohol pad and tried again.
This time Angelica let out a grunt but no cry. He prodded and pushed and tried to force the needle into her vein, but it rolled under the diaphanous skin on her arm and the syringe came up empty again.
“Give it to me!” Angelica ordered.
Hassan stubbornly tried again, this time in Angelica’s right arm, and cursed in Arabic as he was denied a vein.
“If you can’t do it, give it to me! I have very fine veins and they’re hard to find. Save us both the aggravation. Please.”
Hassan gave that some thought. He walked into the kitchen, opened a bottle of water, and took a long, thirsty gulp. Then he pulled his Leatherman off his waist and snipped the plastic tie off Angelica’s right wrist. Trying to remain menacing and careful to stay out of her arm’s full range, he handed her the syringe.
Angelica balled her fist; ran her forefinger down the vein in the crux of her arm, like she’d seen her doctor’s nurse do; and guided the sharp point home.
Hassan stepped in quickly, taking control of the syringe, and pulled the stopper back, filling the reservoir with hot Italian blood.
Angelica relaxed her fist, her eyes dripping with pure Beverly Hills disdain. And then a realization dawned on her. The people who abducted her wanted to know if she was healthy. If she was free of disease. If she was clean. Oh, my God. Her thoughts screamed, and the ringing in her ears reverberated as loud as a church bell. Her face flushed, and she reeled, light-headed, fighting to control her breathing so that she wouldn’t pass out.
Angelica knew at that frightening moment that she wasn’t being held for ransom. They didn’t want a ransom. It wasn’t retribution from one of her father’s enemies. Her abductors were going to sell her. She was being kept alive in order to be sold, and from the looks of her jailer, probably to someone in the Middle East.
Hassan felt the change in temperature in the room but ignored it and went about his business. He poked the full syringe into the rubber stopper of the sterile bottle and filled it with her blood. Satisfied with his work, he placed the medical supplies in the waterproof satchel.
“Untie me!” she ordered.
Hassan, who wasn’t at all pleased with how this exercise had gone, pulled out the Leatherman again and snipped the plastic cuffs off her legs first and then her left wrist.
Being careful not to turn his back on his captor, he unpacked the day’s provisions, zipped up the blood sample, and stepped out of the glass room.
“Do you have a daughter?” Angelica almost whispered.
Hassan heard it loud and clear as he locked the door securely behind him.
Angelica stood on unsteady legs, grabbed one of the alcohol pads he had left behind. As the metal door creaked open and then slammed shut, she started to rub her puncture wounds, slowly at first and then manically. Until her arms were hot, red, and threatening to bleed.
20
Vincent Cardona moved with surprising speed for a man his size. He charged at Jack, who grabbed his forearm before his meaty fist found its mark and used Cardona’s forward momentum to slam the big man against the wall. Two Italianate paintings in the foyer were jarred from the impact, and their gilded frames crashed onto the black and white tiled floor. Jack grabbed two handfuls of silk shirt, muscling Cardona off balance as the mobster tried to land a punch.
Jack heard the thuds of chairs being toppled in the back of the house. Leather shoes pounded out of the kitchen. A bullet was ratcheted into the chamber of a pistol and Peter’s nasal voice, deadly serious, gave an order:
“Let him go, Mr. B.”
“If you shoot him you’re gonna shoot me, you stupid fuck,” Cardona shouted through labored breaths. “Put the guns down, goddamn it, Frankie. You wanna shoot me?”
Jack glanced down the hallway and saw a man who looked a lot like Cardona, only twenty pounds heavier, holding a cannon pointed at his head. The big man reluctantly lowered his weapon toward the floor. Two angry goons standing behind him also dropped their weapons to their sides.
Vincent Cardona had not taken kindly to the notion of bringing the police into his personal business. Skeletons are a bitch, Jack thought.
He eased off on the pressure and Vincent pushed away from the wall. He pulled down his shirt, which had exposed a thick mat of hair underneath his striped silk Armani.
Jack took one step back, spun, and punched Peter squarely in the face. Peter looked confused as he lost control of his .38, which clattered to the floor, and his equilibrium, which dropped him to one knee.
“Never pull a gun on me unless you plan on using it,” Jack said evenly. The implied threat wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.
Frankie and the two goons headed back to the kitchen.
Jack turned and laid into Cardona: “If your daughter is still alive, and that’s a big if, we need all the help we can get. Time is not our friend, Vincent. Now, you hired me to do a job. Back the fuck off.”
Vincent Cardona was not generally at a loss for words. He did the talking and people did his bidding. His face turned a dangerous shade of purple, and he stood mute, breathing hard, contemplating the unimaginable for a father. Finally, he said, “Let’s get some espresso before the bulls arrive.” He stepped over the broken artwork and started toward the kitchen. He turned back when he realized Jack hadn’t moved.
“There’s no time. Give the detectives full access. They’re not interested in your business, only your daughter. Tompkins is the more reasonable of the pair. They’re sending a crew over to Angelica’s apartment to dust for prints today. Make sure they can get in. Now, I need to see Angelica’s bedroom,” Jack said as he moved past Peter, who was dusting off his pant leg and picking up his weapon. “And I need names and addresses to match these faces,” Jack said, handing Cardona the photographs he had found in Angelica’s apartment.
“Upstairs, on the right.”
* * *
Jack held an oval silver-framed picture in his hand. Angelica Cardona at twelve or thirteen, he guessed. Open, fresh, clear eyed, beautiful, and full of life. Jack felt her father’s pain. He thought about his own son and the crisis he was going through.
The bedroom was pink. Larger than Angelica’s entire apartment. Filled with every electronic toy and device money could buy. Boy band posters, riding trophies, oversized stuffed animals. A young girl’s dream.
The difference between the bedroom she grew up in and her new apartment was startling. Angelica was a young woman looking to redefine her life. Independence. A clean break from her past.
Jack could understand that. It was what motivated him to move out west. Leave his old life behind. It hadn’t worked out that way so far, and he hoped Angelica would have better luck. If she was still alive.
Her drawers were empty, and her closets were as neat as in her apartment. She had taken a few keepsakes with her when she moved but left the excess behind. Jack felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness in the room. Strange.
He looked out the second-floor window to the manicured grounds below. An Olympic-sized swimming pool, spa, and English gardens. A life most people would kill for. A lifestyle paid for with other people’s blood. Nothing more to be learned here.
As Jack walked down the steps, he was met by Cardona, who handed him an envelope with the photographs.
“All good kids,” he said. “They were on the list I gave you on your boat. I marked the pictures with their information on the back.”
“I’ll find her, Vincent. And then we’re done.” Jack moved past Peter, who was incongruously working a broom and dustpan, cleaning up the debris from the fallen art. Jack could see a wicked knot developing under his right eye. “And keep him out of my hair,” Jack said as he walked out the front door.
Vincent Cardona threw a look to Peter, who propped the broom against the wall; loped down the hallway like a coyote in the wild, checking the load on his .38; and vanished out the back door.
* * *
The door to apartment 3B stood open. Jack was careful not to brush against any of the black residue that remained on the door handle where it had been dusted for prints.
Gallina and Tompkins glanced over as Jack walked into the living room, wearing disposable booties and gloves. Gallina scowled and turned away.
“The woman lived clean, I’ll give her that,” Tompkins said by way of hello.
“Lived?” Jack asked pointedly.
Tompkins ignored the question. “My Amy could take a lesson.”
Jack didn’t know if Amy was the detective’s wife or his daughter. It was the first time he had mentioned family.
“No prints on the front door. So, unless she was wearing gloves, someone wiped them clean,” Gallina said without turning around.
Black powder marred the windows, the sills, and the locking mechanism. Jack knew the apartment had been photographed and vacuumed for trace, everything. In the kitchen black powder had been brushed onto the handles and surfaces of the kitchen appliances and wineglasses. The tech crew had been thorough.
The lead technician walked in from the bedroom with his heavy black bag in tow. “I bagged that one wineglass with the trace of lipstick on it, and we’ll test the contents of the wine at the lab. You want me to lock up?”
Gallina answered brusquely. “I’ll handle it.”
“Where was the wineglass?” Jack asked.
“Kitchen cabinet.”
Jack had missed the glass on his first search, and the omission didn’t sit well with him. He hoped he wasn’t losing his touch.
“Thanks,” he said to the technician.
The man nodded, bored, and exited the apartment.
“The captain put the kibosh on pulling in pretty boy unless his prints show up,” Gallina said as if the news pained him. “He said we didn’t have enough to suffer the political blowback. I couldn’t fight him on it.”
“No surprise there,” Jack said.
“So you’re on your own. Let us know how that goes,” Gallina said, giving Jack tacit approval to lean on Raul Vargas.
“Did you check the headshot?” Jack asked, referring to the eight-by-ten photograph of Angelica.
“Yeah, she’s a looker,” Gallina said.
“For prints, Sherlock.”
“Fuck you, Bertolino. One set of prints, and they’re probably yours.”
“Anything on the cigarette boat?” Jack asked, directing the question to Tompkins, ignoring the lieutenant.
Tompkins pulled a well-worn pad from his hip pocket and read. “Hundred seventy-five or so on the list you gave us. And that’s in L.A. and Orange County. The number’s loose because a lot of the boats are towed and then dropped in the water when the owners want to get laid. The boats are too long to dock at most marinas. Without a hard description, we’re just spinning wheels. We ran a DMV list against your list and didn’t get any hard hits—”
“So, it’s a dead end,” Jack said, finishing his train of thought. “The other boat, the boat that crashed, is called a panga. It’s a type of Mexican fishing boat the Sinaloa cartel’s using to smuggle drugs and illegals across the border. Any idea why she’d choose a fishing boat used by the cartels?”
“Not everyone has your good taste, Bertolino,” Gallina said.
“We find the connection, we might find Angelica.”
Gallina rolled his eyes. “We’re aware of that, Jack. That’s why they call us detectives. We detect. Some of us still do it for a living. We already spoke to the Coast Guard. And I’ve got a call in to the DEA. Anyway, we sent the pictures of our vics to Interpol and struck out there, too.”
“Vics?” Jack asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Gallina said. “One could argue that the suicide was a victim, you know, societally.”
Gallina ticked down a half point on Jack’s asshole meter. Investigating the murder and disappearance of young women had a way of affecting the most seasoned cops.
“The front door isn’t self-locking,” Jack said. “So if she closed up behind herself, her prints would’ve still been there.”
Tompkins went down his list. “Doesn’t look like she packed any clothes or toiletries, she took her cell phone but hasn’t made any calls, and there’s been no credit card or bank card activity. Just feels wrong.”
“Thirty days in—it stinks to high hell,” Jack said.
The three men stared at the glossy photo of Angelica, her face bruised by a brushstroke of black fingerprint powder.
21
“Is it any wonder that I’m the finest male specimen seated at this table?” Mateo asked as he pulled out an avocado, lettuce, tomato, sprouts, and cheese on whole wheat that he had picked up at Whole Foods on his way to the meeting.
Jack’s mouth was too busy with a fully loaded Pink’s chili dog to respond. He waved his hand in a give-me-a-minute kind of way. Pink’s hot dog stand was happily located between both of his men’s locations, which was the reason Jack had chosen it for their sit-down. That, and he loved the food.
Cruz carefully placed his bacon-cheese dog back on his paper plate and then made a pile of ketchup-drenched chili fries disappear with manic speed. He washed them down with a gulp of orange Crush soda, let out an almost acceptable burp, and gave Mateo an appraising look.
“You’re holding up pretty well for an old guy.”
“Old guy?” Mateo said. “Jefe”—Mateo directed the comment to Jack—“do you mind if I smack this kid-with-a-mouth around a little and teach him to respect his elders?” He dug into his sandwich without waiting for an answer.
“You could do some damage,” Cruz conceded. “But then I’d be forced to infiltrate your cyber world. I’ve got the power to turn your every transaction into a living hell.”
Jack brought his associates up to speed on his conversation with Gallina and Tompkins, the panga boat, the Sinaloa cartel, the smuggling routes, and the possible connection. Also, there were still no positive ID on either body.
“Somebody has to know who these women are,” he said, barely able to contain his frustration.