Nicky was sitting in the swivel chair, breathing hard and looking pale. "I resent that, Shane. You hurt me deeply." "Really? Shall we take it downtown, then?"
Nicky looked out the window, close to tears.
"The only thing that's keeping you out of the felony lockup is your tenuous connection to Dennis Valentine, who I think killed Carol White. If I can turn that into something, then maybe… just maybe… you won't do another stretch for this horseshit."
"I don't want to run a hustle on Valentine," Nicky said. "The guy is a killer. He's a made guy, Shane. I won't work him. If he finds out I'm setting him up, he'll feed me to the fish."
"Nicky, I don't like hearing words like don't and won't. These are bad words, okay? These are words that put you straight back on the main tier at Soledad. The kind of words I wanna hear are can do and will do and What's next, Shane? These words keep you breathing my air. The first time you disappoint me, Nicky, I'm gonna put the bracelets on and roll you up like a Turkish rug."
"You're gonna get us both killed."
"Be brave. It hasn't happened yet."
"I've gotta tell the investors we're not gonna cast today," Nicky said, pouting.
"Done," Shane said. "They left an hour ago. See what an efficient partner I can be?"
"Why are you doing this to me?"
Shane moved around the desk, sat on the corner, and looked down at Nicky, who seemed terrified of him, or Valentine, or maybe just of life in general. "Nicky, you used me to find Carol. I found her, and I don't know how it happened, but she got to me. Some part of me, Nicky, has been sitting around lately wondering why I'm here, why I'm a cop, why I even bother anymore. But when I saw her hanging from that rafter, I promised myself somebody was gonna finally give a shit what happened to Carolyn White. If Dennis Valentine killed her, he's going down for it. And if I have to waste you to make that happen, that works, too."
Half an hour later they were in Nicky's office with the door closed. Nicky was pacing. "Michael Fallon?!" he said.
"You gotta be kidding! This guy gets megabucks to star in films."
"So?" Shane answered.
"I hate to introduce you to the economic realities of film production, bubee, but making big-budget movies requires big bucks. We don't have big bucks. How the hell can we afford Michael Fallon, whose last quote was near twenty million, if I recall what I read in the trades? How do we get a macher like him to work for us?"
"Okay, all these big stars have pet projects, right?" "Huh?"
"John Wayne had The Alamo, remember? Worked for next to nothing to get it made."
"Old news, bunkie. You may not have heard, but the Duke's dead. Man hit the slab more than twenty years ago." "Okay, John Travolta, then. Battleship Earth."
"Better," Nicky conceded.
"These stars are all in the script market, so all we gotta do is find out what script Michael Fallon is passionate about and wants to make, then we option it."
"You don't want to make the script that Michael wants to make," Nicky said.
"So there is one…"
"Yeah, it's like a cocktail party joke in this town. It's radioactive. Nobody should touch it without wearing a lead vest."
"It can't be that bad," Shane said, warming to the fact that his plan might actually have some merit. "On the bright side, if nobody wants it, the price will probably be in a range we can afford."
"Oh, ye of little understanding." Nicky put his ferretlike face in his hands.
"Tell me, Nicky."
"It's called The Neural Surfer. Forget that it makes no sense and starts with the ending and ends with the beginning. Forget its simian logic and clunky dialogue. There's a bigger problem. It was written by a holy man, and I use the term generously. He's really more of a cultist and a con man. The author of this New Age turd is a guy named Rajindi Singh, the grand mucky ducky of the Singh Church of Meditation and Herbal Healing."
"I can live with that."
"Live with this: He's also a certifiable nut case who thinks that his screenplay, The Neural Surfer, is biblical. I haven't read it, but from the coverage, the story all takes place in Singh's mind. It's about his schizophrenic battle with his changing concept of life, and the new concepts materialize as monsters called neural dragons and they fight with him. There are nightmare sequences called neural storms and corny life lessons that are two-page soliloquies that sound like old Jimmy Swaggart sermons. It's drivel. Singh has a price tag of two hundred thousand for a six-month option. Beyond that, he's insisting on no changes. It's impossible to even rewrite this turkey. And Shane, we are talking turkey here. This script is a Thanksgiving feast, a feather-covered gobbler."
"Then why does Michael Fallon want to make it?"
"Fallon's also some kinda Grand Pooh-bah in the Singh Church of Meditation and Herbal Healing. He's a minister and a true believer. He worships Rajindi Singh. They go on retreats together. He's as nuts as the writer. Are you getting the picture, bubee? This is lose-lose. The script is uglier than a hemorrhoid cluster."
"Cine-Roma is going to option it."
Nicky groaned.
"If Michael Fallon wants to make The Neural Surfer, he'll work for us on the cheap. Dennis Valentine worships Michael Fallon, ergo, if we control the material, we get Michael Fallon, and Michael Fallon gets us Dennis Valentine. It's perfect. Valentine will come to us. He'll solicit us, not the other way around."
"Why does that matter?"
"If we solicit him, he'll be suspicious. He's gonna have his guard up. However, if it's his idea to go into business with us, we gotta new ball game. He's ours."
"How are we gonna get the two hundred K to option this thing?"
"We're gonna sell your Bentley." Shane smiled.
'Puck you, it's rented," Nicky snarled. "Everything I have is rented, right down to this." He went to the shelves and took down a gold statuette, turned it over, and read the tag aloud. "Property of The Hand Prop Room, Hollywood, California." He glared at Shane. "See, no money."
"I'll get the money," Shane said, and got to his feet. "I want you to set up an appointment with Rajindi Singh's agent and then I want to meet Dennis Valentine, but it's gotta be casual. It can't look planned. That party you mentioned you're throwing for him sounds perfect."
"Shane, this is off my scale. I hate to admit this, but I'm something of a coward."
"Nicky, you'd better not wobble on me, guy. I'm looking for backup."
"Shane, I'll…"
"Do it for Carol."
Then Nicky surprised him again. He lowered his eyes and spoke softly. "You know, when we were kids, when everybody picked on me, Carol always made 'em stop." He smiled at the memory. "She was such great-looking quiff, the guys at my school all wanted to please her. 'Don't tease Nicky the Pooh,' she would say. Nicky is my friend.' " Then he looked up and again Shane saw tears in the little grifter's eyes. "God, I'm so sad she ended up a junkie and a prostitute. I should have known. If I had, maybe I could have stopped it. I'm so sad she died that way."
Nicky Marcella was a complicated guy.
Chapter 16
TOP COP
Shane was fifteen minutes late for his two o'clock meeting with Chief Filosiani because he had stopped by the LAPD computer center in the Valley to collect more research. Alexa was waiting for him on the sixth floor of Parker Center as he came off the elevator, lugging his newly filled briefcase. His wife had an armload of gang folders crammed with yellow sheets; she seemed irritated and tired. Shane couldn't ever remember her looking so stressed.
"Jesus, where've you been?" she asked.
"Alexa, I need to talk to you before I talk to the chief."
"Not now. We're already a quarter of an hour late. The chief is scheduled on half-hour intervals. He's asked me to attend the meeting."
"Okay, good. Then you can back me up."
They hurried down the hall and stopped before the large double doors that led to Filosiani's office. Alexa walked him in and Shane found himself in the chief of police
's outer office.
Filosiani's secretary was a hawk-faced woman named Bea; she looked like Whistler's mother in a blue pantsuit but had a heart the size of Texas. She knew they were late and showed them right in.
Filosiani's office was huge. The Day-Glo Dago had taken the antique furniture and expensive wall art that had filled the office of ex-chief Burl Brewer and sold them at auction, using the money to buy state-of-the-art Ultima flack vests for the SWAT teams. He was a no-frills guy from Brooklyn who, in the wake of Brewer's corruption, had proven to be just what the LAPD needed. The office was now furnished like a Xerox room. A long metal table sat next to one wall under a bulletin board with pushpins holding up each division's crime stat sheets. In counterpoint to all this was a breathtaking view of the Financial District through the huge plate-glass windows. Chief Tony Filosiani was standing in the center of the room grinning as Shane and Alexa came through the door.
"How'sa guy?" he caroled. He was a shade under fivefoot-five and his fat, round pie-pan of a face framed piercing blue eyes that sparkled under a pate of shiny pink skin. Chief Filosiani would have been perfectly typecast to play the butcher at your corner market, but he hardly looked like he should be running one of the largest and most complex law enforcement agencies in the world.
"We're finally getting you back on the job." Filosiani beamed. "Alexa told me you want Special Crimes, so if dat's what you want, dat's where we're gonna put ya." All of this in his trademark Brooklynese.
"It's what I want, Chief, but I have something I need to tell you and Alexa about first."
"Okay." Filosiani glanced at his watch.
"Last coupla days, I think I may have inadvertently stumbled into something, and if it's what I think it is, it could be big, and it needs to be worked immediately."
This was all news to Alexa. A frown appeared on her sculpted face. Of course, for the last two days she'd been practically living at Parker Center, so she and Shane hadn't had much chance to talk.
"Let's hear," Filosiani said.
So Shane launched into the story, first telling the chief about finding Nicky Marcella at Farrell's party. He went on to recount Nicky's criminal past, and his request that Shane find a missing actress named Carol White so Nicky could cast her in a movie he was producing. He told them how he had found Carol and that she had become a hooker, that he'd left his card with her. Then Shane told them about the call from Sergeant DePass, and the meeting with Ruta at the house on 11th Street, leaving out his distressing evaluation of Ruta's demeanor and police skills. He went on to explain that he'd gone to Nicky's apartment later that night, and how he'd forced the little grifter to admit that he'd been trying to find Carol for a New Jersey mobster named Dennis Valente who had changed his name to Valentine.
Here Shane opened his briefcase and pulled out the research he'd been doing on Valentine and the DeCesare family. He handed it to Tony Filosiani, who scanned it quickly.
"This guy's a made DeCesare soldier. I know him," Filosiani said. "Some of these Jersey mob guys did business on my old beat back East. I know the whole family. A buncha mouth-breathers."
"Then you know that if Don Carlo is trying to locate a branch of his crime family in L. A., we don't want to ignore him."
Filosiani nodded and handed the pages back.
Shane explained about Valentine's plan to organize the below-the-line show business unions.
By this time, the chief's next meeting was waiting in his outer office, but Filosiani was hooked. He buzzed Bea and asked her to reschedule it, then turned back to Shane.
"Is that possible? To get entertainment unions t'kick back money?"
"I don't know," Shane admitted. "I'm just telling you what Nicky told me. It sounded plausible, but I guess all that really counts is that Valentine believes it."
Filosiani nodded and Shane continued. He explained Valentine's fascination with Michael Fallon and how Shane wanted to option a script called The Neural Surfer so Fallon would, hopefully, agree to star in it.
"Who's gonna pay for the script?"
"You are. At least that's what I was hoping. I thought we could run it off the Organized Crime Bureau's budget." "How much?"
"Two hundred thousand," Shane said, and heard Alexa gasp from someplace behind him.
Now Filosiani was frowning, too.
"Okay, look, I know this is kinda unconventional, but let's look past the fact that it's a script I'm buying, and focus on what we're trying to do." Shane was now pitching like an Amway salesman. "In the past, when we've heard mob guys were heading into town, we spent heavy bread to convince 'em to go home. We had people meet 'em at the airport, followed them around in white vans, bugged 'em and ran surveillance on 'em, the whole Blue Plate Special."
"So?" Filosiani said.
"So, how much did all that cost?"
"Plenty."
Shane opened his briefcase again, took out some papers and started shuffling through them. "I dropped by the budget office this afternoon, and here's what I found. In 'ninety-six, we worked a crew of Gambino guys. They were planning on setting up a sports-betting franchise in L. A. Cost us three hundred grand for wiretaps and round-the-clock surveillance. It went on for two months before they got tired of us and went home. In 'ninety-nine, we worked a crew of Arcado guys from Chicago. Same drill, little less-cost one-fifty."
"Okay, okay… I admit we spent some OCB money to keep these guys at bay," Filosiani said, "but we weren't buying movie scripts."
"All I'm doing is spending money to lock this guy up. This script will bring us Fallon. Fallon will bring us Valentine. I wanna work Valentine from the inside, be right next to him. I wanna set up a RICO case for union fixing and I want to see if the SOB killed Carol White."
There was a heavy silence. Shane heard a clock ticking somewhere but couldn't spot it.
"How you gonna work from the inside?" Alexa finally asked. "Everybody knows you're a cop. He's not gonna let you get very close."
"I'm not gonna hide it. In fact, I'm gonna talk about it. We put on a show. Instead of putting me back on the job, the chief knocks me down in grade because of stuff he discovered in this year-long review I've been under. I get pissed off and quit. We get Press Relations to plant a big story about it tomorrow in the L. A. Times. Call it trouble in the ranks or something. That's where you come in, Alexa."
"Me?"
"Themob has never had a foothold in L. A. because L. A. cops have never been for sale. You're gonna change that. I want to set you up for Dennis Valentine so he'll try and buy you."
"The head of DSG?" She sighed.
"Yeah, he'll go for it 'cause in that newspaper story, after I get trashed, it's going to mention how angry you are that your husband got screwed. Maybe a few guarded quotes about the LAPD's lack of support, given the fact I just won the Medal of Valor. Then the chief's comments follow. He says I'm off the page and untrustworthy. Maybe kicks some mud on your reputation, expresses some doubt about the open gang war that's breaking out and the way the Kevin Cordell investigation is being handled."
Alexa was tired, her nerves were frayed, and she sort of lost her temper at that. "Can't I just do my job without all this? Besides, we just got that case. It's not even fifty hours old."
"Don't lose your temper, honey," Shane said.
Alexa stiffened slightly. This was a police meeting. She was Shane's boss as well as the head of DSG. He instantly knew he shouldn't have called her "honey."
He pushed on. "I'll tell you why. Once I get close to him, I'm gonna set you up to be his inside person, his Judas on the department. You're the acting head of DSG, so you're the perfect choice. You could control any investigation we started up against him."
"He's not gonna believe that."
"Yes he is, because he wants to believe it. If we do it right, he'll jump at it. We're also gonna be living way over our heads. We're gonna look like we have big money problems."
"We live in Venice, Shane. You can't live any more economically than we do."
"Yeah."
"It's an asset seizure, we own it. Furniture's still in there. All we gotta do is cut the lawn and we're ready for business."
"You got this all worked out, don't you?" Filosiani said, trying not to smile.
"Yep. All I need is a measly two hundred large."
Now the chief paced in his nearly empty office. He stopped in front of the huge plate-glass window and stared out, looking small and round-shouldered against that huge expanse of glass. "I can't give you two hundred thousand for a screenplay, Shane. I'll get laughed out of my budget review."
"Gimme half, then. Gimme a hundred."
"Can you do it for a hundred?"
"I don't know. I can try."
Finally, Filosiani turned, and now his round face was beaming. "Okay, you got it-plus the house on North Chalon. But Shane, you should sweep it daily. Go to the Electronic Surveillance Division and check out one a them new twenty-three-hundred Frequency Finders we got from the feds last June. Little unit will pick up anything, even low-voltage VHF stuff." He grabbed his phone and instructed Bea to call ESD and make one available. When he hung up, he said, "I know these mob smart-heads, they're all paranoid. Even though Valentine's gonna be coming to you, he's still gonna wanna know what you're saying when he's not around. If he puts a bug in that house and we can find it, we can use it against him."
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