by Neil Russell
“Benny Joe Wills,” she snarled.
“When you run him, the computer’s going to say he’s crazier than a shithouse rat. He probably is, but before you make a mistake that puts you even further out of the loop, call over to the NRO, and get somebody important on the line.”
“The National Reconnaissance Office? What for?”
“Because Mr. Willis is one of theirs, and they’re going to tell you all you need to know. When Benny Joe confirms you’re at his place—alone—we’ll take the next step.”
“You can’t expect me to go anywhere without backup.”
“Why? There’s not a felon in sight, and the only one who’s shown any violent tendencies is you.”
She waited so long to answer I wondered if I’d lost her.
“When?”
“Tomorrow. And don’t underestimate this guy. He’ll know in ten seconds if you’re jerking him off. Or his dogs will.”
“I hate dogs, and they hate me.”
I thought about Benny Joe’s four slobbering Dobermans and their low regard for human life. “Then this is going to be even better than I anticipated. And Francesca, my love, if you even think about trying to screw over my friend, and he doesn’t get you, you can bet your cold, dead, D.C. heart I will.” I clicked off before she answered. I wanted to hate myself, but the lingering pain in my right kidney talked me out of it.
I dialed Benny Joe. “I’m sending you an FBI agent.”
“I’m flattered, but my fuckin’ freezer’s full.” With Benny Joe, that might or might not have been a joke. In addition to being a magician with all things photographic, he’s at war with the government, which is interesting, because even though they retired him with extreme prejudice, they can’t stop rehiring him. No one teases images out of a frame of film like Benny Joe. Throw in consulting fess from the news networks and patent royalties, and he easily knocks down half a million a year. All it does is make him more paranoid. Did I mention he can’t open his mouth without saying fuck?
“She won’t be there long. Just make sure she’s alone. All the way alone.”
“A fuckin she?”
“Special Agent in Charge Francesca Huston. Very pretty. In a flesh-eating sort of way.”
“In other words, like my fuckin’ ex-wife. Maybe the freezer’s not as full as I thought.” As Benny Joe started into a riff about the former Mrs. Willis, I handed the phone to a homeless guy on the corner. When I looked back, he appeared to be telling Benny Joe a story.
* * * *
30
Takeoffs and Bullies
Eddie, Fat Cat and Coggan Buffalo were waiting in the lobby of the Huntington, but not together. Fat Cat and Coggan were on a sofa, talking. Eddie was across the room, glaring. I thought I saw him rub his armpit.
Eddie jumped up when he saw me. “Jesus Christ, boss. What the hell happened at the tour place? We were across the street, and all of a sudden it sounded like Patton taking Palermo. Then this kid comes running toward us with a gun. Fuckin’ clip musta been this long.” He held his hands eighteen inches apart.
I took my clip out of my pocket. “Like this?”
“Shit, yeah. Where’d you get that?”
“Did you see where the kid went?”
“See? Hell, yes, I saw. Some guy stepped out of a doorway and shot the motherfucker right in the face. I was this close.”
“Asian?”
Eddie nodded emphatically. “Black suit, black hat, the whole rip.”
Fat Cat and Coggan joined us. Coggan, even more muscular than I remembered, was wearing an acre of Hugo Boss jogging suit and an untied pair of Nikes. Together, they were an impressive assemblage of sinew and bone that could have hired out as a windbreak. I shook hands with Coggan. “Good to see you again.”
“You too.” He looked at Fat Cat. “I’d like to hire this guy. Can you imagine him and Wal-Mart moving in on a pack of drunks? Especially in that red, white and blue outfit.”
“I was just telling him about the kid who got shot,” interjected Eddie, not looking at either man.
“Cops show up, I assume?” I asked Fat Cat.
“They were on the usual ACLU delay, but yeah, eventually. Two black and whites. One for the agency, the other for the kid. Then half a dozen detectives, but no Chinese-speakers, which is par for the course. That, and a lotta yawnin’.”
“What happened to the shooter?”
“He just walked back in the building. After that, who knows?”
“I thought all you cops couldn’t resist a chase.”
“Couple of guys with Glocks closed ranks behind him, and silk looks like shit with holes in it. I jawboned with a pair of homicide guys until the meat wagon got there. A big Irishman and a dude named Ramos. They didn’t know shit, and wanted to know less. Asian guy in a black suit ... in Chinatown? What the fuck?’ I got the message.”
“And, of course, none of the locals saw anything.”
“Whole block was suddenly struck blind.”
I turned to Eddie. “You find a right-seater?”
“Jody’s waiting at the airport.”
I motioned to the concierge, and he hurried over. I handed him two C-notes and told him we were leaving.
“Want me to send everything to Mr. Praxis as usual, Mr. Black?”
“Please. And anybody asks, we weren’t here. Think you can square that with the rest of the staff and wake up the limo driver to take me to Oakland?” I peeled off another couple of bills.
“No problem, sir.”
* * * *
I sent Fat Cat and Coggan back to Chinatown. I wanted Coggan to see Sleeping Tiger, and the detective would be able to get them past any cops. Meong hadn’t died over a shuffleboard dispute on Lido Deck. If Suzanne was into something, and it wasn’t the baby trade, I wanted to know what. Meanwhile, Eddie and I took the hotel’s stretch to Oakland.
At the general aviation terminal, I handed the MAC clip to Eddie with instructions to find a mechanic who could cut off its base. Then I showed the lone security guard my ID and walked out to my plane.
Jody had the BBJ gassed and ready, and in the cabin, I found a stack of CPK pizzas and a case of Sam Adams on ice. I made a mental note to give Jody a bonus—a large one. I was starving, but I needed a shower more, and when I saw my torn clothes and dirty face in the mirror, I wasn’t surprised Walt the Cabbie hadn’t treated me like royalty.
Clean, and with a couple of small cuts bandaged, I grabbed a Sicilian pizza and a beer, plopped myself down in a soft leather seat and ate like a condemned man. Eddie had apparently been there while I was changing and left the two pieces of clip next to my chair. I assumed he was up front running through the preflight checks with Jody.
Between bites, I picked up the clip’s butt end, which was about the size of my fingertip, held it so I could catch a ray of light from the window and squinted inside. As expected, there was a tiny, gold Chinese character at the bottom. I didn’t feel any satisfaction at having been right. At some point, I fell asleep and only awakened when Fat Cat and Coggan came aboard.
I looked at my watch. It had been over two hours. “Trouble?” I asked.
“On the contrary,” answered Coggan.
Fat Cat was already ramming pizza in his mouth, but he talked around it. “A couple of the agency girls were still there. One of them was that chick who took you upstairs.”
“Linda,” I said.
“Right, and her friend, JinJing. My man, Coggan here, is hell with the ladies.”
“You own a bar, you learn to talk to everybody,” Coggan said.
“Bullshit. I can talk with the best. These chicks wanted to bookend you.”
I was surprised civilians had been allowed back inside. “I figured they would have sent everybody home.”
“They tried,” said Fat Cat, “but the girls said they had cruises at sea and had to be able to monitor them. If the cops wanted them out, they were goin’ to have to use cuffs.”
“And that worked?”
&
nbsp; “You’ve been forced to take a hundred fuckin’ hours of sensitivity training, and the only thing you know about Chinatown is you like the food. What do you think?”
“What did they say about Meong?”
“Called her a cunt. Not because she was boffin’ the boss but because she wouldn’t make sales calls and could barely operate a computer. The other girls had to cover for her. Hey, is boffin’ the right word when it’s broads?”
“So she was put there by somebody to watch Suzanne.”
“That’s how I’d write it,” said Fat Cat.
“Any idea who?”
“It’s like Kujovic said. The cops don’t know shit from Shinola about Chinatown. Long as what they do doesn’t spill onto the regular folks, have at it, motherfuckers. But just to stay current, they use business types like Suzanne Chang. The Triads know it and use the same channels in reverse. Maybe call in a little blue retribution for an upstart or help the cops fix a small problem before it gets out of hand. Small stuff. Neither side wants too much information in play.”
“Very clubby.”
“This ain’t like no other city in America. Miss Chang seem like a pain in the ass to you?”
“Hot, cold and emotional.”
“Which means weak and probably slated for a dirt nap sometime soon. So when her minder reported in that she was talkin’ to us, they just sped up what they were goin’ to do anyway.”
“Now that there’s a spotlight on her, she’ll get slapped around a little and assigned a new handler. Probably one that doesn’t eat pussy. She’s smart, she’ll move to Hawaii.”
“Let’s get this crate in the air, and we can compare notes.”
I pressed a hidden button, and almost immediately, I heard the auxiliary power unit disengage. As we rolled into takeoff position, I noticed Coggan was sweating heavily and gripping the armrests so hard he was leaving dents. Sort of like me in a chopper. I gave him credit for getting through it.
The fog had dissipated, and the late-afternoon sun was bright and beautiful over the bay. Eddie pulled the nose of the 737 into a steeper climb than usual, and I noticed the engine RPMs were up—way up. The moment the landing gear retracted, he cut power completely, and the world went silent. After we’d dropped a couple of hundred feet, he restarted everything, jammed the throttles forward and jerked us skyward again. It was like bottoming out on a roller coaster. My insides, like those of my guests, went weightless for twenty seconds, which seems a lot longer when its happening.
Fat Cat was oblivious, but Coggan was straining against his lap belt and doing all he could to choke back a scream. I didn’t say anything, and a few minutes later, we were at sixteen thousand feet and making a wide, slow turn to the south. The seat-belt sign went off, and Fat Cat immediately got up and went for another Sam Adams. He offered one to Coggan, who first shook his head no, then changed his mind. The hand he took it with wasn’t very steady.
When I had my BBJ’s cabin blueprinted, I told Preston Gage he could do what he liked everywhere else, but I wanted my office right behind the cockpit. Preston, owner of F&G Yacht Design in San Diego, is another Delta guy. He lost a leg in Sierra Leone and got hooked on design from killing endless hours in doctor’s offices reading Architectural Digest. He’d never tried a plane, but he’d done such a magnificent job keeping the Kelly Wearstler interior of my boat current that he was the only guy I called.
He tried talking me into positioning the office in the rear, ahead of the bedroom, to dampen any cabin noise while I slept. But I’d been aboard Air Force One and believed the prez had it right. You want to be as close as possible to the people who have your life in their hands. Besides, when someone was going to be sharing my bed, I left the crowd at home.
I went up to the office now and called Eddie on the phone. A minute later, he joined me. “What’s up, boss?”
“You’re fired.”
His jaw dropped so far I couldn’t see his shirt collar. Until he met me, Eddie was chronically on suspension, on probation or on food stamps. The FAA had tried to cashier him, the pilots’ union had blacklisted him and most employers fell somewhere between contempt and wanting him dead. He was as good a pilot as there was, but he couldn’t take an order or stay out of things that weren’t his business. He also wasn’t above going deaf when an air traffic controller gave him instructions counter to what he wanted to hear, which for me, sometimes comes in handy.
But Eddie and I had an understanding. He didn’t fuck around with my plane or my passengers, or he was out. No warnings, no questions.
“But...”
I didn’t let him go any further. “You know how much I hate bullies, Eddie, and that takeoff was your way of fucking with your brother, who, not incidentally, is my guest. It was also dangerous, and in case you’ve forgotten, our asses are currently being held aloft by my $60 million worth of Boeing.”
He started to say something, then dropped his head. “I’m really sorry, boss.”
“Fuck you, Eddie.”
I walked past him and into the cockpit. Jody Miller has been my on-again, off-again first officer for a while. He’s considerably younger than Eddie, and a terrific stunt pilot with his own Stearman. But when he’s at my controls, he’s as smooth and steady as a Buckingham Palace chauffeur—and as reliable.
Like every other flight school grad, Jody wanted to work for the airlines. Unfortunately, the only jobs available would have forced him to move east, and he likes to spend time with his blackjack-addicted mother in Lake Tahoe. My schedule’s loose enough and my salary high enough to afford him a good living and plenty of time in his Stearman. I also like him, which is getting harder to do as young people become less educated and more imbued with entitlement.
“You up to running this thing full-time, Jody?”
He turned and looked at me, then at Eddie behind me. “You serious, Mr. Black.”
“Dead serious.”
“What about Eddie?”
“He’s unemployed. But it’s your cockpit now, so you make the call who rides shotgun.”
There was a long moment’s hesitation before he said to Eddie, “It won’t be a problem for me if it isn’t for you. One thing, though. No more smoking up here.”
Eddie stood there long enough for the shock to wear off, then said to Jody, “You want to move over to the left seat?”
“We’ll make the switch next run.”
I left as Eddie was buckling himself in. You can tell in the sandbox which boys are going to be the bullies. Just ask them to tap each other as softly as possible. As sure as night turns into day, one is going to say, “Fuck this,” and hit some kid hard enough to make his eyes cross. He’ll do it all his life.
* * * *
31
Satellites and Market-Makers
When I got back to the main cabin, Fat Cat said, “You gotta listen to this guy. He’s wired different.”
“The floor is yours.”
“Let’s put the jade tiger aside for a moment. I know where it came from, but it’s just a symbol. Right now, I need your mind in an expansive state.”
He leaned forward. “Pretend you’re a spy satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Your job is to monitor your little piece of the planet 24/7/365. Let’s say, Beijing. If there’s a festival, you enjoy the fireworks. It rains, you can see through it. Need a close-up, no problem. But if a president gets assassinated in Dallas, you don’t care. Unless ...”
“Unless something that shouldn’t be on my screen suddenly is,” Fat Cat said.
“Correct,” said Coggan. “Or something that should be isn’t.”
“I think I’m with you”
“Look at it this way. Books and movies have taught us to find the clues, decipher them, and the mystery’s solved. But that’s not the way strategic intelligence works. If you go looking for individual items, you miss the big picture. Your value as a satellite is overview. And absence is often as telling as presence. No response to a major fire until everything is burned. A scho
ol playground empty at recess.”
“Shit like that’s important?” asked Fat Cat.
“Everything’s important when you’re looking for broken patterns and nonevident relationships. So you watch your target, and computers model and analyze the data. In the old days, you could run maybe a million permutations a month, but with billions of possibilities, statistically, you were still wandering in the dark. Faster systems and software based on chaos theory now let you sift through nearly everything.”