The same three architects must have been making a killing in the Cochella Valley. Everywhere he looked, Shane saw Spanish arches and terra-cotta tile. In La Quinta, every palm tree was bathed in its own 2,000-watt xenon "up-light." All of this costly, brightly lit architecture was draped in colorful purple and red hibiscus and bougainvillea.
La Quinta was upscale housing that stretched along several world-class golf courses.
Jody had driven the last leg of the journey and now turned the big, dusty motor home into a new "behind the gates" development project called La Quinta Esperanza. He pulled up to the guard shack and tapped the horn. An octogenarian in a crisp brown uniform decorated with shiny yellow shoulder patches came out of his flower-draped shack with a clipboard and limped over to the driver-side window.
"Howdy," Jody said, grinning. "I'm Lewis Foster. I think I'm expected. I'm a guest of Jose Mondragon's."
The man scowled at his clipboard as if it contained the results of his last prostate exam. "Can't see with these glasses," he muttered. "Gotta get me a new prescription."
"Lemme help," Jody said, reaching for the clipboard. He found his alias and pointed to it: "Lew Foster. Right there," he said, handing over his phony driver's license obtained by the ATF Undercover Documents Section.
The old man grabbed the clipboard back and nodded. "Yep… Yep, sure 'miff, there she is," he muttered. "I'll get the keys." He returned Jody's license, then limped painfully back into the shack.
"They musta got this plastic badge from Geezers 'R' Us," Jody growled. "If this dinosaur is our security, we're gonna have t'post our own watch. Inky Dink, you got the first duty."
There was a groan from Tremaine Lane in the back of the motor home, then the old man came back and handed Jody a set of keys. "It's the big Spanish one… Very end of Desert Flower Drive."
The house was at least five thousand square feet and sat at the end of a cul-de-sac. Jody pulled into the circular drive and parked the Vogue coach in front of a four-car garage. Fairways from the adjoining golf course bordered the hacienda-style home.
The Spanish structure was two stories and, from the landscaping, looked as though it had just been completed. Topiary trees cut into veterinary shapes were lit by pale moonlight and haunted the perimeter of the house, rustling in the desert wind like restless spirits.
They climbed out of the motor home, then passed through the side gate into the courtyard, where a wing of guest suites horseshoed around an Olympic-size pool. A few shanked golf balls were submerged in the deep end.
One by one, Jody opened up the guest suites with his keys, and members of the Vikings picked their accommodations. All of the rooms were big, with kitchenettes, living rooms, and remarkable views of either the fairway or the mountains beyond.
Shane's room had a phone jack but no phone. Not that he would attempt to contact Chief Filosiani under these circumstances. He was supposed to get loose and call in, but so far he'd had no opportunity. Also, he didn't know what to say to the Day-Glo Dago, how to explain the "cop killer" bullet Jody had put in the breech of his gun that resulted in Alexa's death.
He undressed in his bathroom, then put his clothes in the suite's apartment-style vertical washing machine and dryer. He set the wash cycle; then wearing only a terry-cloth robe he found in the closet, Shane went outside to swim a few laps. He hoped some exercise would help get his head clear. He shrugged off the borrowed robe and dove naked into the water. His new, raw tattoo shot pain up his ankle all the way to his knee, but he ignored it and kicked hard to the bottom. Just for the hell of it, he retrieved a Titleist 4 golf ball with a huge smile cut in the side, then he frog-kicked the length of the pool under water. When he came up on the far end, he dropped the ball on the deck, and it rolled slowly to a stop between two patent-leather high-heeled pumps. He glanced up, looking into the jade-green eyes of a blond woman in a black-striped business jacket and matching skirt. A world-class beauty, she was standing at the edge of the pool, holding an ostrich briefcase, smiling down at him with open delight.
"Jose said this place was well stocked," she mused, studying his nude body, "but this is almost too good to believe."
"Jesus, lady… Where the hell did you come from?" Shane blurted.
"Panama City," she replied, deadpan. "And you would be who? The famous but mysterious La Quinta Water Nymph?"
"Funny. You wanna turn around so I can get my robe?"
"Not on your life."
A man's voice called out: "Lisa, let's go! We're late! You can meet these people later." Shane looked over the pool deck. Standing in the doorway of the lit living room, about twenty yards away, was a short but powerfully built dark-skinned Hispanic man dressed in a black suit. Despite the Palm Springs heat, he had an overcoat draped on his right arm.
"Coming, Jose," she called to him, then turned back to Shane, kissed her fingertips, and wiggled them seductively at him. "I guess, as the man says, we're going to have to meet later," she said, smiling. Then she turned and walked away, making a show of it, her calves flexing, her short, tailored skirt flipping playfully against sculpted thighs.
Chapter 24
LAUNDRY
COME ON, WE need to talk," Jody said, startling Shane. He had just dressed and spun toward the open door, but Jody had already left.
He grabbed his wallet off the bed, stuffed it into his pants, and followed.
Shane found Jody standing behind the house by the golf course, on the edge of the sixth fairway, staring out at the moonlit grounds. As Shane approached, Jody handed something to him in the dark. "Here."
Shane couldn't see what it was, but when he took it, he was surprised to find his Beretta still in its Yaqui Slide ankle holster.
"Figured after what happened in Mexico, maybe you shouldn't wander around without that. I reloaded it for ya. Full loads."
The gun that killed Alexa.
Darkness hovered, but Shane pushed it away. He sat on the grass and strapped the holster to his right ankle, which thankfully was not the one with the throbbing tattoo.
Jody squatted down beside him on his haunches, Indian-style. "Okay, Hot Sauce. You won't be much help to me if you don't know what's going on, so here's the deal. I already told you about these Mexican bankers, the ones we lost to the Justice Department…"
"Yeah…" Shane waited, and finally Jody continued.
"Well, hiding out at the edge of that bust was this little guy we couldn't identify. Name was Leon J. Fine. Turns out he was an L. A. bail bondsman. He was trying to write some paper on one or two of these Mexican bankers. I got a friendly judge to shut that down fast. All of those guys were big-time flight risks-white-collar crooks with no priors. These Mexican bankers were all sitting in jail having anal-penetration nightmares. The judge agreed that if they ever bonded out, everybody woulda been back in Mexico before the first siesta. Anyway, so here's this little shitball bondsman, L. J. Fine, hanging around the edge of my bank case. Maybe he pissed me off, or something about him didn't add up. Either way, I got interested. After Justice took over our case, I had some time on my hands, so I put one or two days in on the guy just to see what his story was… And guess what this schmuck was doing?"
"Beats me."
"He was going out to airports, getting on private jets that belonged to Fortune 500 companies, and flying all over the place like he was Prince Abu Dabi or somethin'. So I'm saying to myself, What does my little low-rent L. A. bondsman have on these big corporations, and why are they flying him around in their twenty-million-dollar corporate jets?" Jody smiled at him. "Wanna guess?"
"Why don't you just tell me."
"You ever hear of something called the parallel market?" Jody asked.
"No, I haven't."
"Don't feel bad, neither had I. It's a little confusing till you get the hang of it, but basically, a lot of big Fortune 500 corporations are using their product to launder Colombian drug money. And it's bigger by a bunch than the Mexican bank bust, 'cause hundreds of these U. S. companies are d
oin' it… And have been for over twenty years. Any company with a product that's worth a lot, but doesn't weigh much-like cigarettes or booze or electronics- is prime for the hustle."
"You're shittin' me," Shane said, thinking he must have heard wrong.
"That's what I thought at first, but it's true. The deal we're working right now is with Ail-American Tobacco. I guess it's not enough these guys are killing us with their cancer sticks, now they're also laundering Cali cartel drug money."
Shane asked, "How do cigarettes or liquor products wash drug cash?"
"It took me a couple a'months to figure it out, but here's the headline on how it works. Let's say my little schmendrik-my bail bondsman, Leon Fine-wants some money to buy a new house, or a speedboat, or some other damn thing. He calls around to drug dealers he knows-guys he's written paper on, and he asks, 'Hey, Pedro, how much money have you got stored up?' Let's say, for easy math, Pedro has ten million in an L. A. collection house, and it's Cali cartel money, and he needs to get it laundered for his patron in Colombia. So he says to Leon: T got ten cartwheels, but I gotta do the deal with a black marketeer in Colombia, 'cause my jefe wants the cash to end up in Colombia. Then Pedro, the drug dealer, puts Leon in touch with some Colombian black marketeers. Actually there are six families in Medellin who specialize in parallel-market goods. After Leon sets up his deal with Pedro and the black marketeers he calls the Blackstone Corporation-"
"Who?"
"Blackstone. It's a big Swiss free-market trading corporation. There are a bunch of foreign trade companies who do this shit. Blackstone is one of'em. They're the guys who run the duty-free shops in airports-they also run duty-free zones all over the place. And, Shane, you won't believe this, but these foreign duty-free corporations are running the biggest drug laundries in the world, and have been for two decades."
"How could that be? I been a cop for twenty years and I never even heard a'them."
"Me neither," Jody said. "Anyway, my bondsman, Leon, says to his contact at Blackstone: 'I got ten million in drug cash from Pedro in L. A. to buy cigarettes, and I have a deal set with Colombian black marketeers, so I need the smokes delivered to Aruba.' Aruba is inside the Caribbean duty-free zone and it's legal for All-American Tobacco to ship as much product there as they want." He paused. "Got it so far?"
Shane nodded.
"Okay, good… The Aruba duty-free zone stretches from Aruba across to South America, specifically to Caracas, Venezuela, which is, lo and behold… Right on the Colombian border. Leon's black marketeer has his smuggling business in a little border town out in the desert, called Maicao." Shane remembered that Maicao was one of the towns circled on the map he found in the noise abatement house on East Lannark Drive. Now everything's set up and ready to go." Jody continued, "Blackstone calls All-American Tobacco and says: 'Ship ten million dollars' worth of Virginia Fives to Aruba for the parallel market.'"
"Virginia Fives?"
"Yeah… Top-quality Virginia tobacco. See, a lot of the product sold in South America is shit: Turkish leaves or stuff grown in the South American jungle. The top quality V-Five is what everybody wants. So now the guy at All-American says, 'Okay, we'll take a meeting.' Then Blackstone puts a sales distribution executive from All-American in touch with my L. A. bail bondsman, Leon, and they cut a deal. Still with me?"
"Yeah. The bondsman is making a deal with a major drug dealer in L. A. for cash. Then he makes a deal with All-American Tobacco to buy the cigarettes with the drug money, using this Swiss duty-free company, Blackstone, as the middle man."
"Exactly. You got a real knack for this. Hot Sauce. Okay, next, Papa Joe Mondragon, who is Blackstone's head of Latin American Ops, gets in touch with the Cali cartel leader in Colombia. Let's say it's the Bacca family. Papa Joe confirms the deal. The cash is then handed over to Leon, who picks it up in L. A. using a step van, because that much cash is bulky as hell. Leon takes it to a compliant bank, where he deposits it and wires it to one or two other U. S. banks, to wipe out the paper trail. Then he wires it to a numbered account in a bank in Aruba, where it's held and earmarked to go to All-American Tobacco to pay for the cigarettes when they finally arrive in Aruba. That gets both the cigarettes and the drug money to pay for them out of the U. S. and safely into the Aruba duty-free zone. You with me still?"
"Yeah… Two bank transfers to throw off any suspicious bank examiner, and now the drug cash is in Aruba along with the smokes."
"Exactly. What makes this deal really sweet for the tobacco company is, normally AAT sells a case of cigarettes, which contains fifty cartons, for a base price of a hundred dollars in the legitimate market. But remember, they have to pay U. S. federal cigarette taxes, so that pushes their sales price per case up to three hundred dollars."
"The federal duty on a case of cigarettes is two hundred dollars?" Shane asked, surprised by the amount.
"Cigarette taxes are a bitch. Except on this deal, these cigarettes are gonna be smuggled out of the duty-free zone, into Colombia, and All-American is never going to have to pay the taxes. But AAT sells them to Leon for three hundred dollars a case anyway, just as if the taxes were attached. So instead of making a hundred dollars a case on these smokes, they're actually making three hundred. A much, much better deal for All-American."
"So the parallel market in Colombia is way more profitable for them than the legitimate market."
Jody nodded. "Then the cigarettes are shipped by All-American to Aruba and smuggled into Colombia, where they're sold. Then my little schmendrik, Leon, collects the drug cash, which is in the Aruba bank, and wires All-American Tobacco their money. He also pays Blackstone, which takes a three percent cut. Leon gets his percentage. Then the cigarettes are sold in the Bacca cartel black-market malls in Colombia. That completes the circle, because once Bacca sells them, he gets his L. A. street cash back. The Cali cartel loses about forty percent from the original ten million for this laundry service, but he can now say he's a legitimate cigarette broker and claim his income without fear of prosecution. Everybody goes away rich and happy."
"You're shittin' me."
"That's what this little bald geek, Leon, was doing. And get this: Leon's end of the deal is thirty percent of the gross amount. Off that original ten million bucks, he would be making
three million. This little piece a'shit was doing better than the president of All-American."
"So what happened?"
"We picked him up, beat the snot outta him, and got him to introduce us to all his contacts… Especially Jose Mondragon, who is head of Latin American Product Placement at Blackstone-the godfather, as far as all this is concerned. Papa Joe has to bless every deal, or AAT and the Colombian drug lords won't play."
"Why are you running the laundry? Why not just rip the drug dealers and take all the money?"
"That was my first plan, too, but if you rip these greaseballs, they'll never stop lookin' for you, and there's enough in this deal so our thirty percent is plenty."
He paused to let that sink in, then went on. "After we got Leon to duke us in with Papa Joe, we also got a list of Leon's contacts at all the other Fortune 500 companies he'd been dealing with. Once he told us all that, Leon didn't seem like such a critical element anymore, so we just took the business away from him and set him up with a six-foot hole and a bag of lye on Dead Man's Beach in Oxnard." Jody smiled. "If the tide changes, that beach is gonna spit up more bones than a Halloween horror flick. In the meantime, we're cutting our deal on those cigarettes tonight with Jose Mondragon and All-American Tobacco."
"Who's Lisa?"
"Lisa St. Marie. She's AAT's account exec on this deal. Bitch is a tough negotiator. She'll try and cut our percentage to improve All-American's take."
"But you can handle her, right?"
"Yep. Good-lookin' piece of trim, but she's cold as a polar bear's nuts. She's also something of a sport fucker and I'm told by those who've tried her out that she's a world-class lay. Just do me a favor: if you decide to haul her ashes, don't
tell Victory. He's got a crush on her, and so far she won't give him any play."
Shane nodded his head. It was hard to believe that Fortune 500 companies would be engaged in this kind of criminal behavior, but he believed what Jody was telling him was true.
"So that's what we're doin', Hot Sauce. Only the deal we're cutting tonight's not for ten million dollars… It's for fifty."
"What's the split?" Shane asked.
"Thirty-three point five of the fifty million buys the cigarettes and goes to AAT, the other sixteen point five mil is commission. Three percent, or one point five mil, goes to Blackstone; thirty percent to us. Our end of this fifty million dollar deal comes to a cool fifteen mil. No taxes, no record of the deal… It's cash in a bag. After this is done, each of us is gonna get a little less than three million dollars apiece. David VanKirk gets a half a mil to fly the chopper."
Shane let out a low, long whistle.
"Now you can see why we crossed over; why Medwick, Shephard, and Hamilton had to disappear."
Shane said nothing.
"If I hadn't watched my little bail-writing shitball do this, I wouldn't've believed it myself. But it's for real, the payday of a lifetime, and as of now, you get Rod's share." Jody let out a long breath and smiled. "Welcome to the Vikings, Hot Sauce. And don't ever say I never gave ya nothin'."
Chapter 25
PAP JOE
EVERYBODY CALLED JOSE Mondragon "Papa Joe." Aside from the house at La Quinta, he also kept a villa at the Ritz-Carlton in Rancho Mirage, where he transacted his business. Tremaine Lane had security duty, but the rest of the Vikings left for the eight o'clock meeting at a little past six. They stopped on the way to pick up some food and new clothes, parking the motor home in a pay lot in Palm Desert. Then Jody doled out some money that Papa Joe had given him to buy the scruffy unit a more terrain-friendly wardrobe.
The Viking Funeral ss-2 Page 13