Blond Cargo

by John Lansing

“Tell him I’ve got a bottle of Eighteen with his name on it.”

  “I can’t promise.”

  “Later, pard.” And Jack clicked off, knowing Nick would deliver if possible.

  Jack didn’t have a plan B. It wasn’t his preferred way to operate, but it had never stopped him before.

  It was time to face the lion.

  * * *

  Kayla stood in the kitchen, a keen eye trained on the pool house. She had witnessed Hassan cutting across the lawn from the guesthouse with a suitcase and entering Malic’s private office.

  She wanted to investigate, but she was wary. She strolled by the pool, pulling her hijab tight around her face. She clipped a few yellow long-stemmed roses, trying to look normal, and made a mental note to remind the gardener to dust for mildew. When she glanced into the pool house window, the office appeared to be empty. Her heart started racing. She was so overwhelmed, she didn’t remember walking back into the house.

  By the kitchen sink she clipped every thorn off the roses so that her sweet daughter would not prick her perfect fingers. As she snipped, her mind drifted to the missing girl’s father and what he must have been feeling.

  While she was arranging the elegant flowers in a jade-green cloisonné vase, Hassan exited the office, locked up, and walked rapidly across the lawn, lost in thought.

  And empty-handed.

  Kayla heard the limo’s engine turn over in the front of the house, ran into the living room, and peered through the gossamer curtains. Hassan waved to an unseen man as he drove past the guard shack onto Seaside Lane and back toward the main road.

  Kayla dialed Malic’s number at the office and was told by Halle he was up to his neck in meetings until five and, oh, that she really looked forward to seeing her at the gala.

  It was now or never.

  She checked on Saarah, who was taking an afternoon nap while her nanny read a magazine. Kayla grabbed the spare keys that were hidden in the laundry room, stepped through the French doors, and walked rapidly across the lawn past the garden and pool. Inserting the key, she quickly closed the heavy door behind her. She looked out the window and checked that all was clear.

  It was quiet in the office, but she didn’t feel safe. She knew she should have her head examined, snooping around like this. But the man she had met that morning, Jack Bertolino, had seemed sincere. He’d made her think on the drive home. Thoughts she had never entertained before came to life. Nor could she deny what she had seen. On Malic’s own television. In this very room. And the woman’s blood test was for what, her well-being?

  Kayla had to have answers one way or the other. She started her search in the bathroom and came up empty. The walls were solid and she found she had a hard time staring at her own image in the mirror. Was she ashamed, or afraid of what she might find? Afraid of the truth?

  She wasn’t raised to be afraid. It wasn’t the example she wanted to set for her daughter. Her mother and grandmother were strong, independent women. Under the thumb of no man.

  But she’d fallen into a very comfortable life with her daughter. Safe from the bombs and political and religious strife at home, living in luxury under the protection of the U.S. government. Did she really want to keep digging? Was she crazy? All she had to do was put the keys back where she’d found them and everything would return to normal.

  No, that was no longer assured. What did that man say today? Help him or she would go down with the evil. Kayla knew what she had seen. She couldn’t erase the young girl’s image. But could she live with the truth?

  Kayla walked back into the office. Her hands rifled through the leather-bound books. They flew over every surface of the mahogany bookshelves in the rear corner of the room.

  She found it on the second pass, on the second row from the top. Kayla had to stand on tiptoes to reach it. A smooth button on the side of the wooden panel.

  She depressed the button and that section of bookshelf hinged open a crack. A faint light emanated from the other side.

  Kayla sucked in a breath, pulled the secret door open wider, and stepped through.

  * * *

  Angelica Cardona stood stone still as she heard a key turn. The sound came from the steel door on the right side of the exterior hallway. It had never been opened once in the thirty-seven days of her imprisonment, and now, it had clicked twice in a half hour. She felt nothing but dread.

  Kayla took one step past the door into the hallway, turned to face the Plexiglas wall, and stared straight into the eyes of Angelica Cardona.

  Neither woman spoke.

  Kayla’s striped hijab hung loose, and Angelica could see she also had blond hair, and a remarkably similar face.

  Angelica wore a short skirt, sleeveless blouse, bare legs and feet, looking younger than her years. A half-filled suitcase lay open on the bed behind her.

  They stood frozen. Time seemed frozen.

  “My name is Angelica Cardona, and I need help,” she finally said, breaking the silence. “Please help me,” she added slowly, not knowing if the woman who stood on the other side of her clear prison wall spoke the language.

  Kayla wanted to run, wanted to scream, but she stood silent. It was all true. Worst-case scenario. The father of her child was a flesh peddler. She had to force herself to breathe. Her ears were ringing and her breath erupted in short silent gasps. She reached out to steady herself, to keep from passing out, and pressed her hand against the Plexiglas wall. She knew the room for what it was. A prison cell.

  Angelica instinctively put her hand on the other side of the Plexiglas and mirrored Kayla’s hand.

  “My name is Angelica,” she repeated, her voice steady and measured.

  Kayla pulled her hand away as if she’d been burned.

  “I’ve been kidnapped, and I don’t know where I am or where I’m going. I don’t want to die. I’m being held against my will. Do you understand? Please, for the love of God, please open the door and let me out.”

  Kayla’s cell phone rang. The electronic tone echoed in the hallway and startled them both. She grabbed the phone out of her pocket, looked at the incoming call, and her frantic eyes lasered back at the girl.

  Angelica could read her indecision. “Please.”

  Kayla sucked in a ragged breath, her eyes taking in the hallway, the locked door to the cell, and the steel door at the far end of the hallway. Then she backpedaled out of view.

  “Don’t go!” Angelica shouted, her voice thick with desperation. “Please help me! I don’t want to die, please . . .”

  Help me was the last thing Kayla heard as she slammed the steel-plated door shut and locked it with the ornate key.

  The phone call was from Malic, and she ran. Her eyes filled with tears, and she stumbled and fell down hard, cutting her knee and the palm of her hand as her phone skittered forward on the tiled floor of the tunnel.

  “Shit! Shit!” she cried as she rose to her feet and picked up her cell phone. Her eyes were awash with tears that turned the gold statues displayed along the wall of the tunnel into surreal ugly forms. She ran to the mouth of the tunnel, stepped into Malic’s office, and pushed the secret door closed behind her.

  42

  “Don’t be such a stranger, Mr. Bertolino,” Arsinio, the consummate waiter at Hal’s Bar and Grill, said as he placed the bill on the table.

  “Sometimes life gets in the way of good living,” Jack said as he pulled out some cash and added a healthy tip.

  “With my two boys, don’t I know that to be the truth? Always something.”

  Jack, Mateo, and Cruz were sitting at Jack’s favorite booth in the rear of the restaurant. It had a straight-on view of the entire room. They’d just finished dinner and were strategizing. In the NYPD it had been called a TAC meeting. The night before deployment, Jack liked to go over tactics and tactical, make sure all the questions had been answered, all the duties
assigned, and the safety of his team enhanced.

  Jack was sipping a Benziger cab, Mateo was nursing a Stoli on the rocks, and Cruz banged back the dregs of a Dos Equis and politely waved off Arsinio, who offered a refill before moving on.

  The place was raucous, patrons stood three deep at the bar, and every table was filled.

  Jack had his cell phone on the table with a close-up photo of the camouflaged metal door at Malic’s compound.

  “I ran it by my father,” Cruz said deferentially. His father was a walking encyclopedia when it came to locks and keys and safes, and he had tutored his son well. “Semtex would work, C-4, or a half hour with a heavy-duty diamond-tipped drill.”

  “So if I blow the lock, I could kill anyone standing behind the door,” Jack pointed out sourly.

  “Could happen. And that would obviously defeat the purpose.”

  “Next.”

  “The lock was Turkish-made, used in detention centers and jails. Durable, not impenetrable. But with the drill and your skill set, security would know you were there before you gained entry. Why don’t you let me do it?”

  “Not a chance,” Jack said. “Case closed. After you knock out the lights, I’ll go up and over the wall. I want you back at the main road keeping an eye out. We don’t need any surprises. We’ll all be communicating on Bluetooth. Check your batteries. Mateo, you only enter the fray if things get hinky.”

  “You’re the boss. Whatever you need, jefe, I have your back.”

  Jack knew that to be true and was grateful. The three men gathered themselves up and walked out of Hal’s.

  “Mateo, you up for another drink?”

  “Yeah, what do you feel like?”

  “I want you to go to the Chop House on Canon Drive near Wilshire. Let me know if the usual suspects are there. As you walk into the place, a six-panel wooden door leads down to their coolers, where Cardona ages his beef and his guys butcher the steaks.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Just keep an eye out. See who comes and goes. I’ll be on my cell.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “The beach.”

  “Don’t forget your sunscreen.” And he hung a right on Abbot Kinney.

  “I’ll call you when I’m set up in the a.m.” And Cruz hung a left. Jack wanted him to catch some shut-eye and get down to Orange County first thing in the morning.

  As Jack headed across the street to the liquor store he fielded a call from his son, Chris, and answered on the fly.

  “Chris.”

  “I’m packing it in Dad. Quitting school and hitting the road.”

  That made Jack pull up short outside the store. He flashed on the cardinal who had painted Jack with a quitter’s brush.

  “Relax, Dad, jeez, just a little hyperbole. I picked that up in English lit. Hyperbole. Didn’t think I’d get to use it in a sentence so quick.”

  “You got me,” Jack said, smiling. “You are gonna pay for that, young man.” Jack was relieved, but more importantly, his son sounded normal.

  “It’s your ex-wife, Dad. She’s killing me.”

  “That’s your mother you’re talking about.” Mock scolding.

  “I’ve already got two doctors who actually went to medical school.”

  “Point well taken. Look, why don’t you tell her I’m driving up with a date. That’ll scare her off.”

  “You bringing up Leslie?”

  “I don’t think that’s in the cards, Chris.”

  “Oh. Sorry,” he said, not wanting to pry. “But are you really gonna come?” he asked gently.

  It sounded like an open door to Jack. “I have some business to clean up down here, and then, try and stop me.”

  “Okay, Dad. I’ll tell her you’re coming up with a hot blond bimbo. That should do the trick. Except then Jeremy will want to stay and check her out.”

  That elicited an honest laugh from Jack, who was protective of his ex-wife in front of his son, but her boyfriend, Jeremy, was fair game.

  “Let me know how that works out, Son. And I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  * * *

  Maggie Sheffield was reclining in a wicker chaise lounge. Her ever-present Marlboro dangled from her red-painted lips, accenting her wild mane of red hair, which was haloed by her porch light. Her manicured fingernails were long in the extreme and . . . red. She didn’t seem surprised to see Jack, and she said hello on a smoky exhale.

  Jack stepped up on the porch wearing a tight black leather jacket, black jeans, and black boots, doing his best Don Johnson impersonation. With his long dark hair hanging over his collar, he looked more like Sylvester Stallone in The Lords of Flatbush, but he’d driven this far. It was worth a shot.

  “Maggie,” he said by way of hello, handing her a fifth of Bombay Sapphire gin.

  “How did you know?”

  Jack pointed at Maggie’s kitchen window, where the distinctive blue metal cap that topped a bottle of Bombay could be seen.

  “You’re good,” she said. “Can I pour you one?”

  “I’m good.”

  “So I said. Let me pour you a drink?” But she didn’t get up. She was just flirting. “What brings you to my little piece of paradise?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  Jack wanted to get home. “Just looking for anything you can tell me about the disappearance of your favorite shark.”

  “Nothing to tell. I already came up with nada for the police.”

  She pulled another cigarette out of the hard pack and lit the new one off the stub of the old.

  “But those guys, they’re not like the two of us,” Jack said, watching a wave roll in, the moon reflecting silver on the curl.

  “How so?” Maggie asked.

  “We’re stargazers. Night owls. They weren’t aware you were the only witness to the death of that poor girl. About the same time of night. No, even a little bit later, I think. The bar was shut down for the night.”

  Maggie nodded in agreement, not wanting to relive the tragedy of that night.

  “And then there’s the two of us being creatures of habit.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” she said, enjoying the sound of Jack’s voice and his scrutiny.

  “My guess is, no one saw you sitting up here on your chaise, having a ciggy and a nightcap the night Raul disappeared.”

  Maggie took a deep drink of gin, the ice sliding up the metal goblet.

  “You sure you’re not Sicilian?” Jack asked.

  That one threw her for a loop, and she demurely wiped her lips and hid her smile. “Why do you ask?”

  “The way you hold a grudge. The way you sleep with a Colt special next to your pillow.”

  “You’re good. You should become a PI.”

  Maggie took a long drag of her cigarette and exhaled, tracking the smoke as it curled up into the clear night sky. The echo of the waves crashing onto the black rocks provided the soundtrack of her life.

  “Anything you want to share?” Jack asked. “Anything?”

  “Nothing really.” But Maggie knew the game was over. Jack was going to leave sooner than later, and she’d be alone again.

  “I didn’t see two sumo wrestler types, had to weigh in at three fifty, brown-bag him and toss the piece of shit into a beat-up white van with no windows in the back and no writing on the side.”

  Sounded like Cardona and Frankie the Man to Jack.

  “Just dirty white. And a skinny dude with pointy sideburns drove them out of here like they had someplace important to be.”

  And Peter Maniacci makes three, he thought.

  “Sorry I wasted your time,” Jack said. “It’s too bad you didn’t see anything. Might have saved our friend some pain.”

  Jack was letting her know he would keep her confidence. He stood up and stretched, taking in th
e scenery for the last time before hitting the road.

  “Sure you’re not Sicilian?” he deadpanned, nailing her with his smoky eyes.

  Maggie laughed despite herself as Jack stepped off the porch. He could feel her eyes stripping him naked as he walked down the path toward the Lexus.

  A small price to pay, he thought. He got what he came for. The last thing Jack needed was to barge in on Vincent Cardona if Raul Vargas had really been set up by one of his pissed-off, incarcerated gang members.

  You have to be in the know, Jack told himself, if you plan on breaking down the door of your client. Especially if your client is a mobbed-up gangster with a button man for a cousin who weighs in at three hundred and fifty pounds.

  43

  Mateo was sitting at the first-floor bar, nursing a Stoli on the rocks with seven other patrons who were feeling no pain. A sixty-year-old dowager was giving him a heavy-lidded come-on. He had just gotten off the phone with Jack and filled him in on the lay of the land.

  He had seen no activity at the six-paneled door until ten minutes ago, when Frankie stepped out, wiping sweat off his brow, and walked heavily up the stairs to the main floor of the restaurant above. Vincent Cardona was still up on the second floor glad-handing his VIP clients. The piano player continued to take requests and tips, and the din of happy patrons rose and fell with his Broadway musical selections. Last call was moments away.

  Mateo advised Jack to make his move now.

  The alleyway behind the Chop House accommodated parking for fifteen, and in the far corner, sharing space with Mercedes and Porsches, was parked a nondescript white van with no back windows. It fit the description of the vehicle Maggie had seen, and if Jack had cared, he probably could have found traces of Raul’s blood on the sheet-metal floor inside.

  The delivery door to the basement was locked, and Jack pulled out the tools Cruz had provided. After fiddling with his wire probes, he was relieved to hear the click of the lock disengaging. He eased the door open, stopped to listen, and then stepped down onto the metal stairs. Reaching up overhead, he closed the door behind him, making sure the lock stayed disengaged in case a quick exit was in play.