Dying For LA

by Ian Jones

  ‘Perfect,’ she said with a wide smile.

  The previous night’s events were big news. Huge. Exactly what the channel needed. Sammy King had only been working for LA Plus for four months, she had been approached by the CEO following her very public second divorce. She had been living in Indianapolis and been the anchor there for twelve years, so it was a fresh start for her at a time when she needed it. Sammy King was a petite and attractive forty-three-year-old woman, although her bio had her age at thirty-four. She had been a broadcaster since her late teens and married twice, first to a movie producer which lasted for six years, and then a second time to an ex-NFL running back, this time it ended after seven. But she wasn’t unhappy, and so far was enjoying living and working in LA.

  The problem was the viewing figures, which were dropping alarmingly. LA Plus was a box standard cable channel with news, current affairs, documentaries and in the evening the usual mix of comedy shows and a movie. Nothing ground-breaking. But the internet was killing cable, to be fair the problems had been there a long time before Sammy was on board, but recently had got a lot worse. There was a lot of finger pointing internally. Moran, who was head of news, was blaming her, she had not been his choice. Angelina Ball, the previous anchor had been doing a good job as far as he was concerned. Of course, the fact that Moran had been sleeping with Angelina was not lost on Sammy, hey if he had been nicer she would have even considered doing the same. He was not a bad looking guy. Angelina had been arrested for a DUI, and had a bag of coke in the glovebox in her car. No going back from that, however hard Moran fought her corner.

  Simon set everything up and they carried on working, she drafted an audio and then recorded it. The clip would be part of her mid-morning show, the attack at the Metro station would be the prime focus of course. She would be interviewing Chief Brady, plus some other ‘experts’ the channel had lined up. They had wanted to speak to some of the survivors that had actually been there but been warned off by the police, they needed time to process all the statements, inform next of kin and so on. This was routine but frustrating.

  The work done, they played it through one more time and she gave Simon a kiss on the cheek as a thank you, which produced a deep blush. He was nearly twenty years younger but she always noticed him checking her out, something she was well used to men doing. Today she was wearing a shorter dress than normal and he was clearly very pleased about it. He was good at his job and always helpful and just maybe he might get lucky. She could do a lot worse, she decided. Mr Right may as well live on the moon as far as she was concerned.

  The recording ended with a scary British man staring at the camera, blood all over his face and shirt and calmly delivering the threat. He was serious, it was obvious, his eyes were like ice. Sammy tapped the screen with a long bright red fingernail.

  ‘I won’t forget him, he is interesting. I’d like to sit down with this guy,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Moran was standing behind her scowling into the room. ‘You should find him, before someone else snaps him up and we lose out. It’s called journalism, in case you hadn’t realised that’s what we do here.’

  She turned and smiled at him.

  Asshole, she thought.

  ‘OK, well, I’ll ask Chief Brady when he comes in.’

  Moran looked at her and stalked off.

  Sammy turned back and stared at the screen.

  ‘Now who the hell are you?’ she asked quietly, and decided to talk to some of the others who had been working at the channel for years, she was sure that at least one would have an idea how to find him, just in case Chief Brady wasn’t interested in being helpful.

  Chapter Four

  In the conference room Keane was holding forth. He was writing conscientiously in his notebook and painstakingly going through the chain of events the previous night. They had been joined by a woman called Judy Blake from the FBI.

  She had ferociously burst into the room and introduced herself, and then wanted an immediate update, asking many questions as everything unfolded.

  ‘So, you’re the famous John Smith? Or should that be infamous?’ she asked looking at him with a mischievous smile.

  ‘Preferably neither,’ John replied.

  ‘You’ll need to convince me. And Patrick says hi.’

  Patrick Skelton, John’s good friend in the FBI.

  ‘That’s good to hear. Tell him hi back.’

  ‘We had a conference this morning, early. Patrick rang to give us the low down on you. He wasn’t surprised you were caught up in this. At all.’

  John shrugged.

  ‘Yeah, he has witnessed this kind of stuff happening to me.’

  ‘He said that. But he vouched for you, and from him, that means a hell of a lot.’

  ‘We do have a history, I was with him in Texas just last year.’

  ‘Yeah he told me about that. He told me to apologise again for dragging you into it. So, sorry!’

  She reached into her bag and took out a file, and slid it across to Warner.

  ‘It’s all about him,’ she said, with a sideways nod at John.

  Warner opened the file, and Keane moved over to look over his shoulder.

  ‘Let’s go get a coffee,’ Judy suggested, and she and John left the room.

  There was a small kitchen just down a corridor, and John and Judy sat down with a coffee each.

  Judy Blake was a homely looking woman in her forties. She was wearing a grey trouser suit and a red blouse and looked as if she had been rushing about all morning. He dark hair had tinges of grey she didn’t bother to cover up. She was carrying a handbag with Paw Patrol stickers all over it and there were different colour stars on her mobile phone. She was a busy mum. John liked her.

  ‘So you from Washington?’ John asked.

  Judy shook her head.

  ‘No, but I do actually know Patrick. I worked with him some time ago now, he is a sharp guy alright. Now, I head up a unit out of Atlanta.’

  ‘You do realise this isn’t a terrorist attack, right?’

  ‘I do yes. That’s not the unit I run. I got alerted when the whole 1-Too thing got mentioned. They are on our radar, same as the CIA.’

  ‘Right. I don’t know much about them, but if I can use a phone I can get all the information we got.’

  ‘Cool, let’s go.’

  Judy was clearly not someone who could stay still for long. She moved back into the big office and commandeered a phone. John thanked her and called Neil Wallace, his old boss back when he was in the department.

  Neil was surprised, but pleased to hear from him, and was happy to give John all the information, offering to email across the relevant documentation. Judy gave the thumbs up and passed John her email address, and Neil promised to send it. With a loose arrangement to meet for a beer soon John hung up.

  Keane walked across to them.

  ‘Let’s go sit down again,’ he suggested.

  They moved to a smaller meeting room. Brady and Truman were not there. Warner was already sitting at the table and passed the file back to Judy.

  ‘That’s interesting reading,’ he said with a half-smile at John.

  John desperately wanted to know what was in the file but knew better than to ask.

  ‘Right,’ Keane began, and then stopped. ‘You want to do this Kyle?’

  The big black man, who always appeared to be cheerful shook his head.

  ‘No Ron, this is your city. You take the lead buddy.’

  Keane cleared his throat.

  ‘Right, well we have made a decision. Now Judy’s here, I think we are all set. First thing, we are cutting the PD out.’

  ‘I thought you were a policeman?’ John asked.

  ‘Sure I am, but not the running round busting heads kind. I don’t do that no more. I’m more behind the scenes.’

  ‘Ron here is our liaison,’ Judy said, and Warner nodded in agreement.

  ‘Now, we got to discuss this 1-Too thing,’ Keane continued. ‘Wh
at can you tell us John?’

  ‘Well I just spoke to Neil, he was my old section head at the department. Like I said, I was never assigned to it but they were a big deal at the time. Basically, two city boys got murdered. Both shot in their own homes on the same night. They were oil and gas traders, both young, rich guys. The Met, as in the Metropolitan Police, found a fax to one of them warning that 1-Too were asking questions. It meant nothing to the Met, the guy’s wife had never heard the name, and none of his colleagues had either. The fax was sent from a computer somewhere, untraceable. Both men worked for different companies and as far as we could work out had no connection other than they both did the same job. Eventually they realised that 1-Too had a connection to criminal organisations right round the world and in the end, it was passed to us, but this was several months afterward. We found out who and what they are, but it took some time. They ‘re not actually a terror group, they are a kind of revenge outfit, anyone can hire them. The two men that were murdered were part of a money laundering scheme which was financing a Lebanese syndicate. We found links to several governments all around the globe. We also discovered that they stayed around in London for a long time after the murders. But we couldn’t get anyone to talk.’

  Warner nodded his huge head.

  ‘Yeah, well we are pretty much the same. We got involved after some witnesses under protection got murdered around the New York area. Four people in total, all under assumed names and hidden. It was a big case. But they were all killed in the space of maybe two months. Feds were working on it with the local PD and they find an email on various computers belonging to three of the victims. No text, just an attachment which was a photograph of an outline of a body like you see after a murder scene, you know on the ground. In the shape was the words 1-Too. We talk to the Feds, they start digging, and get a connection to a guy who flew in from Beirut. So, we get busy, and find out the same as you Brits did, it was a part of an operation but nothing else. Dead end.’

  Judy picked up the story.

  ‘I have been working on this ever since. In total we can put eleven deaths in the US down to 1-Too, make that sixteen with the five yesterday. Essentially, they were all assassinations. But I never could pin down any personnel, they are like smoke. We get a lead, and prepare, move in, but they are already gone. Every time.’

  ‘And that is why, we have decided no PD,’ Keane said.

  John nodded in agreement.

  ‘Basically, we had the same problem. Neil says we made too much noise in the investigation, we had the Met and MI-5 involved. The bad guys had connections, and were warned, so they always vanished.’

  ‘It was exactly the same from our side,’ Judy agreed.

  John sat back, looking at the other three and wondering why they were telling him this.

  ‘So … what we are thinking is that we run this as a small team. Just us. Kyle has spoken to his people, and Judy to hers, and well, this is why I’m here,’ Keane said, almost apologetically.

  They all looked at John expectantly, and he realised what they were saying.

  ‘Hold on, hold on, look I don’t work for the government anymore. I’m nobody. I’m self-employed, I just tidy things up for people.

  Keane shrugged.

  ‘Listen John, take a look. What do you see? None of us are, what you would call operational. Kyle, well he’s a big man, but kinda outta shape if we’re being honest. Sorry Kyle.’

  Warner held up his hand.

  ‘No sweat.’

  ‘And Judy has been out for a long time. She’s got other people beating down doors. And me, well I’m a year past sixty. And what you did last night, you know you just picked that gun up and started shooting. You dropped three just like that. Ballistics say you fired three rounds, three for three. That is good shooting.’

  ‘I can’t get involved in this. Seriously, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t have any right to be a part of anything,’ John maintained.

  ‘Yes, you do.’ Judy told him.

  ‘Oh yeah, you do.’ Warner agreed.

  ‘You’re exactly what we need. Nobody knows who the hell you are. Anyone on the inside at the PD, or the FBI or the CIA won’t be able to make a connection. You are exactly what we need right now. Your file is incredible reading, you are used to this shit. We need you John. We really do,’ Keane told him earnestly.

  John looked back at him, unsure. He lived a quiet life these days. Mostly. Apart from the confrontations, the frequent broken bones he inflicted and the overall threat of violence most of his work involved.

  But this time all he had been doing was travelling back to his hotel. He hadn’t been working, he was literally minding his own business.

  Why not? The fuckers had fired a gun at him. Maybe unintentionally, but it had been very close. He had the wound to prove it.

  The others in the room were all gazing at him.

  He raised a hand.

  ‘OK.’

  This would be interesting. It could be a good morning after all.

  Chapter Five

  General Morgan was not having a great morning. He had a new driver, who picked him up late and then took a crazy route to the Pentagon, moaning about the traffic all the time and the general walked in more than fifteen minutes later than he normally did. The general didn’t like that.

  Normally, due to his rank and high level clearance he breezed through the complex and diligent security without any issues, but that morning there had been an alert increase which meant he had to queue like everyone else, so by the time he got up to his office after all the delays it was well over an hour later than normal, and he didn’t like that either.

  And then when he finally sat at his desk his secretary didn’t come straight in with his coffee, and didn’t answer the intercom when he wanted to know exactly the damned reason why not. So, he had to get up, and go out into the pool only to discover she had been moved to another position, hadn’t been replaced yet and nobody had bothered to mention anything to him. So, he had to go and get his own coffee, and he really didn’t like that.

  He realised finally what everyone else around him already knew, that six months into his position and placement at the Pentagon he really didn’t have the respect he believed he deserved and that was another thing he wasn’t happy about.

  Then to cap it all, he got a message on his personal mobile phone, which he absolutely did not need at all.

  He looked at the calendar on his wall. The third of March circled in red. A little more than three weeks away.

  Grand Marshal Yin looked out the window of his office high up in the Ministry of National Defence building.

  A chilly Beijing spread out before him, a billion lights twinkling in the darkness.

  He considered the message he had just received, and looked at the calendar next to the window. The third of March was not long now, and he would have to travel two days before.

  He wondered if there was time. He hoped so.

  He knew his options were limited now.

  There was a light tap on his office door and one of his assistants walked in, bowing as he did so. He passed a sheet of paper over to Yin and then left again, bowing and closing the door quietly.

  Yin read it and sighed.

  As if he didn’t have enough to do, he decided.

  He picked up the phone.

  ***

  In Moscow Colonel General Rostov sat in the back of his car watching the cold and wet streets glide by. Snow piled in high heaps everywhere. He had been to lunch at the Kremlin, which had eventually ended four hours later. Lots of the old men at the ministry eating way too much, getting drunk and morose and talking about the good old days. Rostov was young for his rank, just fifty-five. A tall, good-looking man with neat grey hair. He had been glad to make polite excuses and get away, and had been collected swiftly.

  The building of the Ministry of Defence loomed into view. He leaned forward and tapped his driver on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s l
ate, I won’t go to the office now,’ he said.

  The driver nodded and turned at the next junction, heading north. It would be an hour and a half before Rostov got home. He settled back and dug out his mobile phone, checking his upcoming appointments.

  March 3rd jumped out at him.

  He had a call to make, things were not going as planned and Rostov was used to everything always going his way.

  ***

  Sammy eventually found somewhere to park and walked back toward the bar. This wasn’t an area of Los Angeles she had ever been in before, and it was a marked contrast to Downtown, where she spent most of her time when she wasn’t at work or home.

  MacArthur Park was beaten; tatty and tired, lines of discount shops, lots of people standing around, street corners all busy. All in all, it wasn’t the most comfortable place she had ever been in.

  ‘You’re a long way from Indianapolis,’ she told herself.

  She pulled herself upright and marched forward, staring straight ahead, not meeting anyone’s eye. It might be the middle of the afternoon but she knew all too well the crime statistics in some areas of the city.

  The bar was an ugly, rundown rectangle on the corner of a block, plain grey painted walls and black window frames, the Flanagan’s name on the sign above the door now read ‘Flana ans’.

  She walked in, inside it was gloomy and shabby. There were several drinkers sitting at the long bar, all male, and no doubt there for the duration. She had been told exactly where to go once she was there so she walked across and headed out through a door at the end of a short passage which had grim looking toilets on either side. Now she was in a foul-smelling covered outside area, which had a small bar in the back corner. Jimmy Frost was sitting at the end, exactly where she had been told he would be.

  She moved a stool and sat down next to him and smiled.

  Frost looked at her, taking in the short red dress, slender, shapely legs and the buttons undone at her chest. Sammy had taken advice and made sure her cleavage was on display beforehand. Let him see the goods, she had been told. Nothing she wasn’t used to.