Dying For LA

by Ian Jones

‘It’s just an expression. They spent all their time in Vegas, her stripping and him at the tables then they go on holiday there.’

  ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t have been sold on that,’ Judy told them. ‘I went to Mauritius.’

  ‘Hawaii for me,’ Warner said.

  ‘Alright, alright, Jesus! Let’s stop with the who had the best wedding bullshit and try and box this thing off. What do we do next?’ Keane blustered.

  ‘I think we got to go to Vegas,’ Warner replied.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sammy was woken by her mobile phone ringing. She had left soon after the conference, and gone home for some much-needed sleep. The daytime shows were running and she would have to look her best for the evening news.

  She struggled awake and picked up the phone from next to her bed. It was just after four, so she had actually been asleep over three hours, which was enough.

  She didn’t recognise the number but sat up and answered anyway.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hey hot stuff. It’s your guy.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Fuck’s sakes. It’s Jimmy.’

  ‘Oh. Er … hi Jimmy.’

  Shit. She had wanted him to call and she really didn’t at the same time.

  ‘Listen babe, I got some info for you. We better meet,’ Frost drawled down the phone.

  Suddenly Sammy was awake.

  ‘Right, yes, of course!’

  ‘OK. I’m at the bar, or I will be real soon. Wear the short dress again ok?’

  ‘Er … look, I …’

  ‘See you soon.’

  The line went dead.

  Sammy shuddered and put the phone down, then went into the bathroom. She was wearing just a Colts t-shirt that had belonged to her ex-husband. She had a bunch of them that were great for sleeping in. Sammy barely made it to five-foot-two, her husband had been a big six-three, so the t-shirts were comfortable and loose, and dropped almost to her knees.

  She smiled pensively at her reflection then pulled off the t-shirt and got in the shower.

  Cleaned up and dressed, she sat in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. She really didn’t want to go back to that bar, but she had to know what Frost had found out. She called Simon and asked his advice, which was clear and simple.

  Don’t do it.

  He offered to back her up and reluctantly she accepted.

  She thought hard then picked up the mobile and called Frost back.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Jimmy it’s Sammy. Look, everything is crazy here right now, we’re just waiting for the next thing you know? I can’t get over to MacArthur Park, can you get up here? I mean, you’re not on the clock, right? Listen there’s a bar down the street called Mullen’s, we can meet there.’

  ‘No way. I ain’t drinking down fucking town.’

  ‘Listen Jimmy, if you really got something there’s another couple of hundred for you, OK?’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Maybe we can go for dinner soon Jimmy.’

  Like hell.

  ‘Shit. Fine, I’ll be there in an hour. Don’t be fucking late.’

  Sammy called Simon back, who thought it sounded better but he would still be there. Sammy told him she would be sitting outside, she knew the place and there was a terrace.

  She got ready to go, excited but nervous, and really hoping she wouldn’t need to keep fighting Frost off, but she ought to be safer out in the open where it was busy.

  Mullen’s was a recently opened bar, part of a new development. The terrace was just a simple square off the front full of uniform chairs and tables, edged by low screens and looking out over a plaza with a fountain in the centre. The whole thing was actually inside, under a high glass roof, and surrounded by shops and restaurants so the immediate area was full of shoppers moving everywhere, kids running about in the fountains, people sitting around.

  Sammy was waiting close to the edge with a glass of white wine, Simon was sitting a few tables across with an orange juice. They were working hard to avoid looking at each other. From the plaza Frost appeared, staring around unhappily.

  Flanagan’s had been dark and gloomy, and now, in the daylight, he looked even worse. In fact, he looked a lot worse. Now it was possible to see all the individual stains on his grubby clothes and the dirt under his fingernails. He sat down miserably opposite Sammy, who pushed a cold bottle of Budweiser across the table to him.

  ‘Fuck,’ he moaned, gripping the bottle.

  ‘What?’ Sammy asked him and laid her hand on the table. Folded between two fingers was a hundred-dollar bill. Frost saw it and grunted.

  ‘I used to be the man you know. Everybody wanted a piece of me. Everybody. London were after me for the fucking Times you know,’ he rasped without looking at her.

  ‘Yeah, Jimmy, I remember. I do.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  He turned to face her, she was wearing a dress, but it was done right up. She wasn’t giving him anything.

  ‘Fuck,’ he complained again bitterly and took a long drink.

  ‘So … what you got for me Jimmy?’

  Frost sighed theatrically.

  ‘Right, well you owe me. And a lot more than a hundred fucking dollars you hear me?’

  ‘Two hundred Jimmy. If you got anything, that is.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Ok, so, this English guy. You were right, he was there, on the platform.’

  Frost looked serious now, and Sammy could see the light in his eyes, the actual Jimmy Frost that was in there somewhere below all this other rubbish.

  ‘He got taken in, you know for questioning. Now this is the real shit you are getting now. Cops are saying nothing, well in public. You know what he fucking did? The guy turned the gun back on the fuckers who opened fire down there! Way I hear it, he is a hero. Grabbed the gun up and killed three of them. Stone fucking dead.’

  Sammy stared at Jimmy Frost. This was massive. She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Word is, he’s been whisked away some place, and the CIA and the Feds are with him, right now.’

  ‘Jesus. Do you know what his name is?’

  ‘Smith, I got told. John Smith. And don’t write any of this down, I’m serious. Not one fucking word.’

  ‘Yeah ok Jimmy, I get it. Any ideas where he is?’

  ‘No, nobody knows, and there’s a lot of people at that precinct want to buy him a beer. But they say he is still in LA, and he is working with the others to track these fuckers down. My man tells me the word is he was some James Bond government guy or some shit back in England. That’s what I heard, anyways.’

  ‘I knew there was something,’ Sammy said quietly, and she meant it. She had watched the footage countless times and remembered when he had spoken to her. Blood all over him, he had just been on a train platform surrounded by armed maniacs but he had been calm, really calm, and assured. But angry, that was clear. It chilled her watching it, because she could see that he would do it. He would look for them, and he would probably kill them.

  ‘So, old Jimmy did good yeah?’ Frost asked, now smiling, showing the dirty brown teeth again.

  ‘You did Jimmy, yeah you did.’

  ‘I still got it baby. I got the goods.’

  Sammy handed him the bank note, and pushed across a second then took a drink of wine, thinking all the time. They couldn’t use this information, not yet anyway. But they could do a report ‘acting on information’ which outlined the basics, no names, no real details. The fact that one of the people who had been innocently waiting on the platform killed three terrorists was very big news on its own.

  Jimmy Frost pocketed the bank notes, eyeing Sammy all the time.

  ‘So where are we going for dinner babe? If I got to hang round here we need to find a decent bar.’

  Sammy smiled sweetly.

  ‘I can’t tonight Jimmy, I’m sorry, I got to work, you know how it is.’

  Frost tried one more tack.

  ‘We could get a hotel …’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m sorry Jimmy. Maybe next time.’

  Sammy finished her wine and stood up.

  ‘And Jimmy, please keep digging, I would love to speak to this guy ok?’

  She smiled as sweetly as she could bear then turned and walked away quickly, Simon following.

  ***

  Rico was tired, and sat at yet another set of red traffic lights yawning. It had been a long day after very little sleep, but this was the last trip.

  As Voorhees had said, it hadn’t taken long to pack up. But carrying the three heavy metal chests down the stairs from the apartment had nearly killed Rico and Sal, Voorhees had of course been no help at all. They had made the initial trip in the last remaining panel van, with Sal driving, Voorhees in the passenger seat and Rico in the back with all their gear, which in truth, wasn’t very much at all.

  The new base wasn’t too far from the apartment, it was up in Hobart, but Voorhees had to go down to Long Beach first to meet someone. He had disappeared inside a rundown old house in Carroll Park for nearly two hours, Rico had banged on the inside until Sal let him out and they had sat in the back with the doors wide open and waited.

  Eventually, Voorhees appeared, waddling heavily over to the van.

  He held up some keys.

  ‘OK, we got what we need. And we got new instructions, there’s work to do.’

  He lumbered around and climbed into the van, which they took as a signal the conversation was over and Sal shut Rico in the back again and they set off.

  Their new home was an old train goods yard, vacated about five years previously. It was surrounded by a high steel mesh fence, complete with razor wire across the top. There were massive double gates to get in, and Sal pulled up outside wondering what they were doing there.

  Voorhees passed him the keys.

  ‘Get Rico out the back, we need him to let us in and lock up again.

  So Sal let Rico out and then drove through once he had opened the gates, then waited on the other side for him to lock up again. They drove forward to be stopped by another, smaller set.

  ‘Fuck, it’s like a prison,’ Sal said.

  Rico appeared, unlocked the new gates, and Sal drove forward, then stopped again on the other side.

  The yard was massive. There were two huge part disassembled gantry cranes that spanned the whole area, with large warehouses on the left and smaller buildings on the right. On the far side it opened out to another big open space and they could see there were still many rusting shipping containers and the remains of trailers still dotted around in there.

  Rico appeared at Sal’s window and looked in.

  ‘So?’ he asked.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ Voorhees answered, pointing into the yard.

  Rico opened the door and stood on the step as Sal drove forward, both men wondering where the hell they were going. Everywhere was dry and dusty, glowing orange in the late afternoon sun. A wide span of multiple railway tracks ran across behind the warehouses, with a long loading area set toward the rear.

  ‘There,’ Voorhees said, pointing to a building on the right.

  Incredibly, for a derelict site all the glass was still present, it was clear that kids hadn’t been running around this place any time recently. There was a door set in the front, an old name plate removed from over the frame. It was a tall narrow building, four storeys, and as they looked up they could see it led onto a high, narrow bridge which completely crossed the whole yard, connecting to a round crow’s nest on a pillar with glass all around in the centre to end at a warehouse on the far side.

  Sal drove over and pulled up near the door.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Rico jumped off the step and walked over to the door, finding the right key and walked in.

  Inside was a small lobby with stairs to the left and a single door at the back. He looked behind him to see Sal walking in then crossed over and pushed it open to look inside. It was a locker room, lines of them all open and empty. At the back were shower stalls and toilets.

  He walked back out, and with Sal following went up the stairs. First floor was just an open plan space, a few battered desks and chairs scattered around and a glass partitioned office at the rear. Next floor was pretty much the same, but had a small kitchen set into the side. They climbed the last set to the top floor, which had half a dozen mattresses leaning against the wall, plus a sofa and arm chairs, and a TV on a small table. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. There was a door which led up some steel steps onto a small balcony, and then the bridge. Rico opened it and walked out, and leaned on the railings looking down.

  The place was huge, from here he could see back to the gates and to the far side of the end yard. In front of him were the warehouses and beyond them many lines of railway tracks. He wondered why they decided to close it down.

  Sal appeared next to him, taking in the view.

  ‘Man, Yann is never gonna deal with those fucking stairs.’

  Rico smirked.

  ‘Now that is true.’

  There was shout, and they headed back downstairs. Voorhees had made it up the first flight, and was breathing hard looking around him. They told him what was upstairs, and he nodded.

  ‘OK, so I will set up in this office. Drag down a mattress, and all the good chairs and shit to here, we’ll use this space as common ground. You guys can sleep where you like. We got electric, gas, even hot water. And this is only temporary. Get the TV down here first.’

  Rico and Sal looked at each other, they had heard this before. But at least there was space, if anything it was an improvement on the tiny apartment. The busied themselves doing what they were told, moving everything around, and unloading the van. They dragged the chests into a corner of the first floor, and then looked expectantly at Yann who was sitting on the sofa watching them work.

  ‘Right. We need the vehicles, how many we got?’

  ‘The van, and three cars,’ Sal replied.

  ‘Right, they need to go in one of the warehouses over there, we got keys for everywhere. Nobody gonna wonder what we’re doing for now, we just need them out of sight. I got four new guys coming tomorrow, so make sure everything is ready. We won’t be here long.’

  Sal nodded and he and Rico set off back to Mount Pleasant in the van, and between them they spent the rest of the day bringing the cars over to the goods yard.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By six, they had made rough plans and were sitting in the diner waiting for Keane, who had disappeared straight after lunch. Reed had changed out of his uniform, now wearing tan colour jeans and a green t-shirt washed so many times it was practically white.

  ‘You know what? You look exactly like a soldier out of uniform,’ John told him smiling.

  Warner laughed heartily, Reed grinned back.

  ‘Well, that’s what I am. Anyways, I had to speak to General Morgan, I’ve been getting messages to call but avoiding actually doing it. He wants to know what the hell I’m doing about Major Hayter. I gave him the sanitised version of events,’ he told them.

  ‘Good plan,’ Warner replied. ‘What was he asking?’

  ‘Actually, not that much. He was more interested in what we were doing and what we found out. He was being all aggressive about it, weird I guess, but that’s how it seemed to me anyways.’

  Keane finally arrived, looking dishevelled.

  ‘Well, I got some news,’ he said. ‘I heard from Vegas PD. Deanna Hayter’s apartment got turned over, they wrecked it so I’m told.’

  They looked at each other, none of them were surprised.

  ‘I spoke to an officer Kirsty Casiano. She says they already looked over it, found nothing other than some coke, a small amount of cash and some sex toys and dvds, presumably their tools of the trade. Casiano works out of the Paradise precinct, and knew Madeline pretty good but not Deanna so much. But she says that they got a file on both of them.’

  Judy sat up straight.

  ‘Really? We got noth
ing.’

  ‘No, that’s what I said, and there’s a few things we should know. Like Madeline has a daughter.’

  Judy frowned, and began riffling through her notes.

  ‘I don’t have anything about that either.’

  ‘She’s fourteen, lives with her foster parents in Summerlin, which is a real nice area. Apparently, she’s a smart girl, who recently wanted to meet her real mom so the state set it up a year ago. Everything went good, and they got onto unsupervised visits. But because of Madeline’s history, child services and the PD were asked to keep an eye on it. Turns out two weeks ago there was a scene, some guy turned up threatening and the daughter called the police. State said she couldn’t visit no more, and that’s why the PD tossed the apartment.’

  ‘Did they get anything on the guy?’ Reed asked.

  ‘Both Deanna and Madeline said it was some drunk they didn’t know. They said they never seen him before. But the daughter said he was looking for someone for sure, he was white, foreign. Big. The PD asked around and got a witness, and one of the neighbours backed it up. But no, they got no ID.’

  ‘What, maybe Madeline was the target after all? Deanna and the major were some sort of fallout?’ Warner asked.

  Keane shrugged.

  ‘Could be I guess. I don’t know.’

  ‘Can it be about the kid? Who’s the father?’ Judy asked.

  ‘Well, that’s also a can of worms. At the time Madeline was giving out freebies to cops to let her alone. The girl’s dad is apparently a cop called MacMillan, who’s actually in the slammer now, some big corruption scandal in Vegas a couple of years ago. But he never had no contact. None. He was married, refused to admit to anything, wouldn’t do nothing, word is he’s a real piece of shit.’

  ‘What was the scandal?’ Warner asked.

  John coughed.

  ‘Er … I know about that actually. I got kind of caught up in it. It was a guy who owned a hotel, well his dad did anyway. The son was a proper scumbag into all sorts, and paying off cops on top of everything else. I met MacMillan, he interviewed me actually. FBI stepped in, Patrick sorted it,’ he looked at Judy.

  ‘Man, you get stuck in,’ Reed said, impressed.