by Neil Russell
None of Eddie’s idiosyncrasies bothered me. In the first place, I rarely fly with anyone else onboard, and I told Eddie that if he wanted to tell them where to sit during takeoff and landing, no problem. But after that, he was out of the loop. And if he ever tried to tell a guest to get off my plane—for any reason—I’d knock him on his ass, then fire him. And since I was paying him twice the going rate, I figured I had that right. He agreed, and we’ve never had a problem.
Jimmy’s a different story. He’s Eddie’s brother, and he keeps bouncing between New Orleans and L.A. When he first showed up, Eddie wanted me to put a word in for him with some of my Hollywood friends, so I had Jake do a background check. When it came back, Jake had rolled his eyes but said that Jimmy wasn’t wanted by the law. So as far as I was concerned, if he’d had some scrapes on the Big Easy docks, they weren’t relevant.
Jimmy freelances around town doing security on movie productions and once in a while shows up on-screen as an extra. I use him for the occasional odd job and have never found him to be anything but loyal and competent. Plus Eddie knows it’s his ass if his brother screws up.
So once again, no problems.
19
Bad Asses and a RIFALO
Pelican Bay State Prison’s warden, John Z. Kelly, looked me up and down. He reminded me of Vince Lombardi without the warmth. His landmark isn’t on any tourist board list of California’s wonders. Tucked into the state’s northwest corner, far from anything or anybody, it’s a powder keg filled with the worst of the worst, and it explodes every now and then without the outside world ever hearing about it.
You want to hire somebody tough, forget the bullshit ads in Soldier of Fortune. Recruit a Pelican Bay guard. They’re called corrections officers, but in a Supermax, there isn’t any correcting going on. It’s warehousing only, and it’s a high-tension and deadly business.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Jake Praxis calls it piss and punishment, and in my opinion, the punishment part’s stronger. Warden Kelly made it clear he didn’t like guys like me showing up to talk to guys like Reynaldo “Twenty-Two” Cruz, leader of Los Tigres. Even though I’d cleared the background checks, he was convinced Cruz was going to use me to ferry a message to his underlings on the outside. And there was nothing I could say that was going to change his mind, so I didn’t try.
“You’ve got half an hour,” he said. “And there’ll be someone listening to every word. Step out of line, and they’ll slap a pair of cuffs on you, and you can leave here in a squad car. Understand?”
I stood up and turned to leave.
“Where you going?” he growled.
I turned back to him. “That wasn’t the arrangement. So I’ll come back with my attorney and Cruz’s.”
He looked at me with cold contempt.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“Just a citizen with a visitation agreement. I’ve got no agenda with you, Warden, but I do have to see Cruz. The half hour is fine, but in private. I’m not trying to change anything; you are.”
He snorted and called out to his secretary. “Have the captain come up.”
Sometimes stereotypes don’t do an individual justice. In this case, they were dead-on. “Twenty-Two” Cruz wasn’t big, maybe 5-7 and 160 pounds, but he exuded danger. He was dressed in a pair of orange prison pants and a white T-shirt, but I could see enough tattoos running down his arms and up his neck to picture what the rest of him looked like.
It was a noisy entrance. Cruz was being escorted by four guards dressed in riot gear, and they’d already been into it. I saw spit on the Plexiglas face masks of two of them. Reynaldo was in leg and arm restraints, and one of the guards walked behind him with a huge paw gripping his neck.
Cruz was motherfucking them all the way and hurling out a string of Spanish invective that at least one of the guards must have understood because he suddenly jabbed his baton into Cruz’s ribs hard enough to get a gasp.
The visiting attorney’s room wasn’t like the movies. It was a fifteen-foot-square wooden box with one-way glass on all four sides sitting in the middle of a steel-barred cage. The roof-mounted air conditioner alternately hummed and groaned.
The metal table and four chairs were welded to struts poured into the concrete floor. Jake said that they used to use bolts to hold things down, but some choirboy had managed to get a chair loose somehow and beat his attorney into critical condition before the guards got to them.
There was a two-inch steel eye formed into the tabletop and two more protruding from the floor on either side of his chair. The guards locked the gang leader’s leg shackles into the eyes on the floor, during which Cruz made it as difficult as possible for them, and got a rap in the head for his trouble.
When they were finished, the leader of the guard team, breathing heavily, looked at me. It wasn’t easy to see through his spit-covered and scratched face shield, but I got the feeling he wasn’t excited about having to wrestle this guy around, and he wanted me to know it.
He pointed to the steel eye on the tabletop. “You gonna want him to look at any papers? If so, I’ll put his hands up there. Otherwise, he stays in the shackles.”
I shook my head, and the four guards left.
Cruz and I stared at each other. Now that the guards were gone, his expression was one of casual indifference. I sensed no anger or tension. He didn’t have to show the flag with me.
In Mexican-accented Spanish, he made a couple of remarks about the incompetence of his lawyer, which I answered by telling him I’d never met the man. He smiled, and I realized he had been testing my linguistic ability. I also saw why he was a leader. He had that same combination of charisma and command you find in the best generals and the most effective presidents. And he knew it.
“So do we do this in English or Spanish?” I asked.
“What the fuck do you want?” he answered in English. “All that cocksucker lawyer of mine, who can’t get me the fuck out of isolation, said was that it was in my fuckin’ interest to see you. But I don’t fuckin’ see how.”
There wasn’t even a trace of an accent, so there was a lot more going on inside Mr. Cruz than he wanted the outside world to know.
“I’m here because I think I can do something for your son.”
I saw his eyes change. “My son? Arcadio?”
I nodded. “Yes, Arcadio.”
Suddenly, his voice dropped. “He is named for my grandfather. A simple farmer from Chiapas. One day, the government gave his land to another man. A very rich man who was a friend of the vice president. And when my grandfather complained, the police came and took him away. Nobody ever saw him again. Fuck the fuckin’ police. All of them.” Cruz paused. “Okay,” he said. “For Arcadio, I will listen.”
I laid out what I wanted. It didn’t take long. When I finished, Cruz didn’t say anything for a moment.
Then, “This kid…Kiki Videz…he was just an associate…and a pussy. He would never have made full member. And Los Tigres don’t cut off arms. We fuck you up when you’re alive, but once you’re dead, that’s it. Who the fuck do these cops think they are, makin’ this shit up?”
I waited to see if he had any more in his system. He didn’t.
His voice was calm now. Businesslike. “So let me get this straight. My lawyer says you’re gonna do somethin’ to Los Tigres, but you don’t want me to do nothin’ back.”
“No, you have to actively not do something. There’s a difference. Some of your people aren’t going to understand and might want to try to impress you.”
“So I’ve gotta make sure somebody stupid doesn’t do somethin’ stupid.”
“Correct. And you’re not going to be able to tell them why. They either won’t understand, or they’ll talk or both.”
“What makes you think I can control people from this place? I don’t even have a fuckin’ window.”
I just looked at him.
Finally, he said, “And for all this doin’ nothing, what happens
?”
I gestured at the walls. “Do you want this for Arcadio?”
He bristled. “I am a man of respect.”
“True. That’s why I’m here. But is this the life you dream for a four-year-old whose favorite things are teddy bears and cherry Jell-O?”
Cruz looked away. My words had hit him harder than I’d expected. Now he was remembering. Maybe he was holding Arcadio. Maybe walking with his grandfather. You could cut the irony with a knife. This man who had deprived countless others of their sons and brothers and fathers was thinking about his own blood. I disliked even breathing the same air, but it wasn’t about me.
Bearing down with a pair of cold, deadly eyes, he said, “And you will give me your word, that this plan of yours is just a fuckin’ act? That as soon as you get what you want from the cops you’ll stop?”
“I’ve got to find someone, and I need the police to do it. But I’ve got to have leverage. Other than that, I have zero interest in Los Tigres.”
I watched as his face softened. Suddenly, he was no longer Twenty-Two Cruz, murderer. He was Reynaldo Cruz, father.
“What can you do for Arcadio?”
I told him about Sister Vonetta and the St. Regis School. When I was finished, he said, “And you will promise to put him there…to watch over him?”
“Yes, but that’s not enough. For him to have a chance—a real chance—he and his mother have to move away from the influence of the neighborhood…and Los Tigres. And Arcadio has to hear his father tell him it’s the right thing to do. I can handle the first part, but only you can make it happen where it counts—in his heart.”
He looked into my eyes. “How soon?” he asked.
“As soon as you tell me.”
He didn’t even blink. “Now,” he answered.
As Eddie and his first officer, Jody Miller, put the black-and-red plane down at LAX and began the long taxi to the General Aviation Terminal, I checked the cabin clock. It was going on 6:00.
When we stopped, Jody came back, opened the door and lowered the steps. “Eddie said to ask if you’re going to be needing me any more this week, Mr. Black. I’d like to take a run up to Tahoe and spend a few days with my mom.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Well, if she doesn’t stop winning at blackjack, the Cal Neva’s gonna put her name in the book with the card counters.”
I laughed. “Don’t discourage her. Someday you might want to upgrade that old Stearman you’re flying. Maybe get something with a roof.”
“Never,” said Jody.
I stepped onto the tarmac and told Eddie I’d meet him at the heliport in an hour. “Figure forty minutes back to Catalina and to pick up your boat, then a half-hour run to Last Tycoon. That should still give us time to grab a shower and make a nine thirty dinner.”
“Where we eating?”
“Titanium.”
Eddie rolled his eyes.
“I know, I know,” I said, “but I promised Archer a first-class dinner, so get on the horn with that pain-in-the ass Bernard, and let him know we’re coming. And when he goes into his song and dance about closing the kitchen at ten—which he will—tell him I’ll pick up the chef’s overtime, but I don’t want to be rushed.”
Eddie shook his head. “You’d figure a guy in a service business would want to accommodate his customers. But not that asshole. He spends more time telling people why they can’t come to his joint than he does taking reservations. You know, he put me and Liz on the bar once for an hour, and the fuckin’ place was empty? I almost punched him in his snotty little face.”
“Yeah, but then you started thinking about his tuna tartar.”
Eddie chuckled without mirth. “I just hate it that I love the shit he serves. But all kidding aside, telling him you’ll pay extra to keep the kitchen open is like handing that cock- sucker a license to pad the bill for a week’s worth of overhead. And the chef won’t see a fucking dime.”
“You’re right. Tell him anyway, and when we get there, I’ll make my own deal with the kitchen.”
“Much wiser, amigo.”
The late afternoon glare across the bar at Encounter was particularly unpleasant. I dislike the place anyway. I could never understand why anyone would think that suspending a flying saucer under a giant pair of white arches was aesthetically pleasing or a worthy landmark for a world-class airport like LAX. The most nonsensical building in the city, it also wins hands down for preposterous interior décor. Liberace minus subtlety. And if it’s possible to be even more unappealing, try the expensive, watery drinks or food an airline wouldn’t serve.
The only good news is that the place is such a pain in the ass to get to that if somebody’s following you, you’d have to be blind to miss him. So it’s a favorite meeting spot for clandestine operators. That’s why Carl Noon said he’d chosen it, but since Carl was four years out of the business on a medical, I think it had more to do with his having once met a surfer there who’d gone home with him for a month.
Carl and his partner, Al Exie, were one of the CIA’s “husband-wife” teams—at least they were until Carl had had a heart attack, and they took early retirement. Now they live at Lake Arrowhead and only come to the city to party.
Bill Colby was the DCI who finally figured out that being homosexual didn’t obviate one’s ability to conduct espionage. In fact, it might be the best way into some targets. But until then, if a clandestine officer was gay and wanted to play in the big leagues, he needed a very deep closet.
There’s a story that the Soviets once filmed Carl in a Vienna hotel having a romantic liaison with a Bolshoi dancer, then invited Carl on a Danube cruise to screen his performance and try to “double” him. Carl, who’d been tipped, arrived in ballerina drag accompanied by a camera crew and a dozen male prostitutes. He managed to get some terrific footage of ten KGB guys pulling their coats over their faces and running like hell. One poor fool panicked and threw himself over the side, where he was run over by a water taxi. All these years later, no Langley Christmas party is complete until they pipe Carl’s film through the in-house system. So much for the gravity of spook work.
I like Carl, but not Al. Al’s the guy who screwed up the Lisbon operation where some friends of mine died. Part of his problem is that he’s never been wrong. Just ask him. The other part is that he’s got a photographic memory, so he thinks he’s a genius. The joke about Al is that if he had lunch with a brain surgeon, he’d be ready to scrub up by 2:30.
He’s also big on cloak-and-dagger crap, which makes my ass tired because I know he beat feet in Lisbon like a fuckin’ schoolgirl, and probably some other places too. He’s what we call a RIFALO—a guy who reads Ian Fleming with all the lights on.
Carl knows how I feel about Al, so I thought maybe he wouldn’t bring him. But there he was. I walked to their table against the wall of windows.
Al stood and put out his hand. “Hey, how’s my favorite member of the lucky sperm club?”
I stepped almost against him and grabbed his testicles in my right hand, squeezed medium-hard and held. I heard the wind go out of him and watched the color drain from his plastic-surgery-sculpted cheeks. He went almost limp.
“What the fuck…,” he gasped.
“I didn’t come here to talk to you, Al, so just sit down and keep your mouth shut, or I might decide to even the score for those who can’t be here to speak for themselves.”
I released his crotch, and he sank into a chair, looking smaller than he had a minute earlier.
“Do I need to stand, or can we just shake hands?” deadpanned Carl.
I smiled. “Nice to see you, Carl.”
“Same,” he said.
Too much waitress packed into too little dress came by with a strange look on her face that said she’d seen what happened. I ordered a beer, and she almost ran to get it.
Carl looked at me. “Since we’re obviously not here to socialize, what do you need, Rail?”
I looked out the window. A Singapore Ai
rlines 747 was on final approach. I nodded toward it. “You worked the airlines, didn’t you?”
Carl looked at the 747, then back at me. “Best gig we ever had. People forget how it was before 9/11. Hell, you could still smoke on most overseas carriers. And the food was terrific—at least in first class.” He winked. “But don’t mention that to the inspector general.”
“And every airline had its own personality,” I offered.
Carl looked wistful. “Swissair ran just like you’d expect. Compulsive precision. If you needed to be somewhere on time and with no bullshit, they were it. Remember the old line about why Hitler didn’t take Switzerland? He didn’t want to be that efficient.”
The waitress brought my Heineken, and Carl waited until she was gone. “And then there was Alitalia. Best food in the air served on the dirtiest planes, creaking and groaning all the way to Rome. But, boy, was it a party. I remember one pilot who came out, poured himself a glass of Chianti and strolled the aisles singing opera.
“And El Al? Jesus, you couldn’t smuggle a hatpin aboard, and the stews all had their smiles surgically removed.”
I added, “That’s because they were Mossad or army. ‘Would you like dinner, sir, or should I just shove it up your ass?’”
After we laughed together for minute, I said, “So what about Egypt Air?”
“Then or now?”
“Let’s start with now.”
“Wouldn’t go near them. The only thing the terrorists hate more than us is the guy in Ras el-Tin Palace.”
“And before 9/11?”
“I was a regular. We all were. Good maintenance, professional pilots, and as long as you weren’t carrying drugs, they didn’t much care. One of the best bridge and drop airlines.”
“Meaning?”