The Squandered

by Putnam, David;

  I stopped in front of him. “I’m not gonna start off our relationship by apologizing to you all the time. So here’s all you’re gonna get. I’m sorry I missed out on your life. And I’m sorry that your two young children have been taken and kept from you. That’s it, that’s all you’re gonna get from me until this thing’s over. Now, tell me why you didn’t tell us about this book.” I held up my copy.

  He stared at me for a long moment, turned, got into the back seat of the car, and slammed the door.

  I got in on the driver’s side, Marie on the front passenger side. I turned in the seat. “I’m waiting for an answer.”

  He shook his head, “What? Have you been livin’ in a cave or something?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  WE DROPPED BRUNO at my old house on Nord and then headed back to our hotel to read Noble’s book, get something to eat, and make a plan. I told Bruno I’d call him with the time and location where we’d meet Mack, a meeting Bruno insisted on joining. Mack didn’t get off shift at the jail until three.

  I drove us through Taco Quicky at the corner of Century Boulevard and Atlantic, an old haunt from my patrol days. Marie didn’t speak, she just kept her nose buried in the book. I ordered taquitos with guacamole, her favorite, and ate them for her after I finished my burrito. She wouldn’t answer whether she wanted them or not. I took her silence as a tacit agreement and knew, when I put the last morsel in my mouth, that I would pay dearly for the error in judgement.

  She looked up from the book as we traveled north on Atlantic headed downtown. “This is an amazing story. No wonder it hit the bestseller list.”

  “Let me just say that a good portion of it could be a fairy tale.”

  “Don’t be a hater, it doesn’t become you.”

  I stopped at a red signal and looked over at her. She smiled and twitched her cute little nose as she sniffed. She glanced down and saw for the first time the wadded-up papers and empty cardboard carrier box from Taco Quicky. “Hey, hey! Where’s my lunch?”

  “I asked you if you wanted it and you didn’t answer. It was getting co—”

  She slid over close and took hold of my ear.

  I pulled away with nowhere to go. “Not the ear, not the ear. I’m driving, for crying out loud.”

  She gave it a twist and a yank anyway. Not as hard as she gave the guy in the hallway back at the jail. After all, I was her husband now, but it was still a yank that hurt like hell and turned my ear red hot.

  The light changed. I put my hand on her breasts and gently moved her back to her seat. “Take it easy, Tonto, I’ll get you something from room service when we get to the hotel.”

  “Tonto? Now, I’m your Indian sidekick?” She moved her hand up to her mouth and again spoke into the mock digital recorder. “Subject now appears to suffer from some form of testosterone poisoning. He touched my breasts and immediately hallucinated seeing me as an American Indian by the name of Tonto.”

  “Hey, Professor, why don’t you read to me from the book?”

  She leaned over and gave my ear a lingering kiss, cool and soothing. “Okay. You want me to start at the beginning or someplace else?”

  “Check the table of contents, see if there’s a chapter title that sounds like the dope deal with Papa Dee.”

  “Nope, but here’s an interesting one: “A Spook in the Wood Pile.” And right below that, “The Double Cross.”

  I wanted to hear about the double cross. In all likelihood that one would explain how some historically dormant revenge had been awakened and now reached its long arm into the future to ruin lives. But the setup for the double cross could prove just as important. “Read ‘A Spook in the Wood Pile.’”

  “Got it.” She thumbed through the pages. “Chapter Twenty-Seven. In 1988 Ronald Reagan—”

  I interrupted her. “Are you serious, my brother’s really going to try and pull the President of the United States into all his mess?”

  Marie said nothing. I looked from the street to her. She gave me that expression that telegraphed that, if I wanted to keep my ear attached to the side of my head, I needed to be quiet. “Okay,” I said, “I gotcha.” I put index finger and thumb up to my lips and mimicked zipping them closed.

  She gave me the laser beam a second longer, then looked back at the book. “In 1988 Ronald Reagan tried, without much success at first, to put out the fire The San Jose Mercury News had uncovered with the story about guns for the Contras. The CIA had assisted Nicaraguan nationals in smuggling tons of cocaine into the U.S., the profits of which went to buy weapons to fight communism in Central America.”

  “Are you shittin’ me?” I jerked the wheel, pulled over to the side of the road, and grabbed up my copy of the book. “What page are you on?”

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes moved down the page as she rapidly devoured the words. “Son of a bitch, Bruno, you’re not going to believe this.”

  I checked the table of contents, found the page, and flipped over to it.

  … smuggling tons of cocaine into the U.S., the profits of which went to buy weapons to fight communism in Central America. Upwards of a billion dollars and maybe more. There are no hard numbers available for how many tons were smuggled in with the help of the CIA. The CIA, with purpose and deceit, introduced the concentrated form of cocaine, “base,” or “rock cocaine,” the most addictive narcotic on the street today, with only one purpose in mind. They wanted to hook the blacks in the lower socioeconomic areas in Los Angeles, make them slaves again, slaves to the glass pipe, the most unforgiving master of masters. Harsh and cruel and in most cases, even deadly from the side effects: theft, prostitution, robbery, and violence. Violence against each other, violence against society.

  The CIA seeded their little cancer and it grew nationwide. Billions of dollars. I can’t imagine they understood the full ramifications of their actions, but maybe they did. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost to this treacherously evil narcotic. They might as well have unleashed a fatal germ with no possible cure. America lost a generation of its people, a group or class squandered for the ‘better good’ to protect democracy.

  I can’t hope to make you believe I knew about what was happening. I didn’t, not all of it, anyway. Not at first. I initially got involved for reasons of my own. I did it for a woman. A woman I loved more than life itself, my precious Sasha (God rest her soul).

  I went to work for Papa Dee selling the rock. Not for greed or avarice; I did it to work my way up in his organization. I did it with one purpose in mind: to bring Papa Dee down for what he’d done to my precious Sasha.

  Once in the upper echelon of his organization, I inadvertently stumbled upon the link to the CIA and the horrible program they had instituted, corrupting and squandering the people I grew up with. So when Papa Dee came to me and asked me to run security on his biggest cocaine deal yet, four hundred and fifty kilos, I said hell yes. From that moment on I started planning to rip off Papa Dee, to save the people from all that cocaine, those four hundred and fifty kilos slated to be sold to them. And more importantly, to expose the federal government that continued to lie and deny to the American people their involvement in their ongoing criminal conspiracy.”

  I stopped reading, put my hand on Marie’s leg.

  She looked up at me. “Bruno, this isn’t a big complicated dope conspiracy; it’s a love story.”

  I nodded. “Beyond that, I think my brother’s grabbed a tiger by the tail, and he’s just handed it over to us.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  MACK TURNED PARANOID after I told him about Don Brodie, the guy who ran all the coke in LA. He called the meeting at four in the afternoon, in a public park in Downey with no chance for anyone to listen in or to walk up on us. I called my nephew, who said he’d meet us there. Marie and I read nonstop as we lay on the king-sized bed. I was submerged in my brother’s version of 1988 until someone knocked at the hotel room door. “Hey?” I said.

  Marie looked up. “What?”

  “The
door?” I said. “Didn’t you hear that? Someone’s at the door.”

  “It’s room service, bonehead. Get the door and don’t be stingy with the tip.”

  I hadn’t heard her make the call. I had gone back to the beginning of the book and had made it through the first hundred pages, growing more angry by the page that Noble had not told us about A Noble Sacrifice when we visited him in the jail. Not a small omission, but one I’m sure he committed because he didn’t want to scare us off. Well, stabbed or not, when I saw him next, I intended to make sure he understood just how scared he should be.

  I got up, went to the door, and checked the peephole. A young man dressed in the gold-with-black piping the hotel service people wore stood behind a cart loaded with plates covered by chrome domes.

  Before I opened the door, I said, “Jesus, Marie, did you order enough for an army?” I flipped over the inside-door security latch and put my hand on the knob.

  “I know that you’re a predatory eater,” she said, “and that if I wanted to eat enough to last me to our next meal, I’d need some extra food to distract you. Bruno, you’re really not going to believe this. I’m almost done and the dope rip-off that Noble—”

  I opened the door.

  Two rhinos, men built like football players, rushed in.

  Marie screamed and threw her book at them. She jumped on the pile as the men took me to the floor. She kicked and scratched and socked to no avail.

  A third man entered and pulled Marie off, lifted her around the waist, and tossed her on the bed. She bounced once, got her legs under her, and came at him again. The man punched my wife square in the face. Marie flew back, her body limp.

  I roared and came up off the floor with both of the men. I head butted the closest one and reached down and grabbed onto the second man’s crotch and tried my best to rip it from its roots. He screamed.

  I extricated myself from under the pile and, with murderous intent, went for the man who’d harmed my Marie.

  This same man, dressed in a blue suit, stood by the bed with a gun to the prostrate and unmoving Marie. The gun’s ominous black silencer pressing into her forehead made me freeze.

  “Good man, don’t move.”

  The two thugs recovered and rose up in front of me. One grabbed me from behind and held my arms; the other, bent at the waist slightly, went to work. His fist hit my face. He stepped into it, put his shoulder and hip into it. The first blow to my right cheekbone shook my world, turned the air in the room into transparent Jell-O, thick, hard-to-breathe air, and just as difficult to see through. That first blow did me a favor: it dulled all the other nerve responses in my entire body, dulled the other blows that rained down as I wilted to the floor. The world tweaked out. Blacks deep enough to blot out the darkest coffin rolled over and engulfed me.

  * * *

  I came around, my head in Marie’s lap, as she gently stroked my hair and cooed. Her tears dripped onto my face.

  “Where did they go?” I asked.

  “They left.”

  “What did they want?”

  “Hush, I think I need to get you checked out at the hospital.”

  “I’ll be fine.” My face throbbed in time with a pulsating pain in my ribs. I tried to get up and she held me down. “Did they hurt you?” I asked.

  She shook her head, sniffled, and swiped at her nose. Her left eye had started to swell. When I saw her injury I sat up; she couldn’t hold me down.

  “Bruno, please.”

  “I’m all right.” I eased her down onto the bed. To the right, the food cart kept the hotel door from closing all the way, the plates jumbled and spilt. I got up, hurried over, and pulled the cart in. I closed the door and flipped on the security latch. I’d been playing this game half-assed, but not anymore. I needed a gun. Maybe two.

  I got a towel from the bathroom, poured a glass of ice water on it, and sat on the bed next to Marie. I gently put the cold, wet towel to her eye.

  “What did they say? What did they want?”

  She tried to take the towel away. “You need this more than I do.”

  I put it back on her face. “Tell me.”

  “They said that they would be in touch. They said that they just wanted us to understand what was at stake and that they’d be watching us. Watching us all the time.”

  “Why? Did they say why?”

  “They said—the guy in the suit said—that once we got Noble out of jail, we were to give him over to them. If we didn’t, next time we saw them it would be our last. Something hokey like that. Said it like he’d kill us both and not quickly, but slow and torturous. Ah, Bruno, your face is swelling. I don’t even recognize you. Come on, let’s get you to the hospital.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Did they say who they were?”

  “No.”

  She said it, but her tone trailed off.

  “Marie, honey, tell me.”

  “They didn’t tell me who they were.”

  “You saw something, or you figured something out. Please tell me.”

  She hesitated for a long moment, her eyes looking into mine. “The guy in the suit, he’s a son of a bitch, a real son of a bitch, Bruno.” She paused.

  I waited for her to tell it.

  “He came over to the bed—” Her voice caught a little.

  A lump rose in my throat. “What’d he do?”

  “The other bastard, the one with the blond hair, held my legs and the one in the suit took hold of my breast with one hand and put his other hand on my throat.”

  She put her hand to her throat and gently caressed it. “He had his mouth right up close to my cheek. He squeezed with both hands at the same time. He wanted to make his point. He wanted me to believe he’d do what he said he would do if we didn’t follow his orders. He squeezed hard and twisted. It hurt. He hurt me, Bruno. And I believe him. I believe he’ll do what he says he’ll do if we don’t go along.”

  Now she rubbed her neck and her breast at the same time. I pulled her into a hug. Her body shook as she sobbed. No doubt remained, I’d get that gun and if that guy came anywhere close to within range, I’d gut-shoot him.

  “Bruno?”

  “Yeah, babe.”

  “When he reached down to twist my breast, his jacket fell open. I saw his shoulder holster. He had a badge clipped to his shoulder holster. He’s a cop, Bruno, a sadistic deputy sheriff.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I CALLED DOWNSTAIRS and asked the concierge to call for a cab.

  Marie came out of the bathroom with a wet towel filled with ice and applied it to my face. “Why do we need a cab?”

  “Those three weren’t regular deputies, they weren’t street deputies or detectives assigned to a bureau, either. They work on a special team, Major Narcotics, or Crime Impact, something like that. They really know what they’re doing, the way they came through that door as a team.”

  “So you’re saying you think our rental car’s been bugged and that they probably installed a GPS transmitter? Something like that?”

  “It’s what I would’ve done.”

  She nodded. “Bruno”—She took up my hand—“I don’t want you to get sidetracked with these guys. We need to stay focused, get Bruno’s kids returned safe, and then get back to our family where we belong. Those men, what they did, they mean nothing, you understand. They’re not worth our time.”

  She read me like Noble’s book. I wouldn’t leave it alone, no way. I didn’t intend to go back to Costa Rica until I had a chance to get up close and personal, whisper in their ears, tell them what a huge mistake they’d made, make them wish they never crossed our paths.

  Before we left the room, I took a pair of socks from the dresser drawer and stuck them in my back pocket. Those three came at me again, I’d be ready for all three of ’em.

  The cab picked us up out front and drove us to LAX. We entered and walked down the inside, parallel to Terminal Way, watching for a tail. When we reached the end of the terminal, we walked b
ack outside and took the shuttle to the offsite rental car office and picked up a sleek black Cadillac STS.

  I continued to fume as I drove us to Downey for the meet. Marie sat quiet and subdued as she read more of A Noble Sacrifice. Maybe I’d read into her mood. I didn’t think so. I knew her better than anyone in the world. Blue Suit had scared the hell out of her. The look in his eye, the way he’d socked her in the face, a burst of violence she wasn’t used to, at least not a violence perpetrated upon her person.

  Back in elementary school, in the sand by the monkey bars, Wilfred Simpkins, from the Nasty Simpkins down on 133rd and Wilmington, socked me in the face and gave me my first taste of violence. The person-to-person violence didn’t hurt as much as the idea another human could perpetrate it with such cold and callous efficiency, without guilt or remorse. I remember it like it was yesterday.

  Add in the way Blue Suit looked Marie in the eye, tweaked her breast, and threatened her life and … oh, I looked forward to meeting that bastard again.

  I cruised Wilderness Park once, early by forty-five minutes, made sure no one stood out of place, clocked who stood where and their activity, and then drove to a convenience store. I left Marie in the car, her nose still in the book. I bought a couple packs of Sno Balls, some chocolate milks, and Marie’s favorite, a Chick-O-Stick. The kid rang up the sale as I continued to watch the window, watch the rental with my precious cargo. I turned back. “Hey, let me have some of those D-Cell batteries.”

  The kid turned and reached back. “How many?”

  “Six or eight. Go ahead and make it eight.”

  He tossed the batteries in the bag.

  I drove us back to Wilderness Park and backed into the most strategic spot possible, where I had an advance view of anyone coming into the park and, at the same time, could keep an eye on the folks already there. No one looked out of place. I wouldn’t be caught unaware again.