by David Chill
JET SWEEP
Book # 12 in the Burnside Mystery Series
by David Chill
© 2021 by David Chill
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons living or deceased, is purely coincidental. The author assumes no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein.
For Larry Mazin
The Burnside Mystery Series:
Post Pattern
Fade Route
Bubble Screen
Safety Valve
Corner Blitz
Nickel Package
Double Pass
Tampa Two
Flea Flicker
Swim Move
Hard Count
Jet Sweep
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Post Pattern Preview
Chapter 1
Money can make people do crazy things, although it’s possible some of these people were crazy to begin with.
I was sipping French roast coffee in my office on a warm Monday morning in late June. My thoughts centered around the barbecue that Gail and I were planning for the Fourth of July next Sunday evening. What we should grill, who we should grill it for, and how much food I should buy. I thought of the lines at Costco and I also thought of those narrow windows of time when the crowds thinned out. An hour before closing struck me as a good idea, but a bit impractical. And then my thoughts were interrupted by an unseemly visitor, an unkempt train wreck of a man, who looked like he had slept in his clothes and would easily fit in at a biker bar. But even then, he might have registered low on the totem pole.
“Hey, man, you Burnside?” he asked in an elongated voice that struck me as part surfer, and part something else. I just couldn’t quite figure out the something else.
“That depends,” I answered, looking him over carefully, and liking him even less. “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy who wants to hire you for a job,” he said, sitting down in the chair facing me. He had long dirty blond hair, combed back, and loaded with something slick. He wore a frayed black leather jacket, which would have been fine, except for the fact that at 9:30 a.m. it was already 70 degrees outside. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week, and his well-worn black Metallica t-shirt had seen better days. I tried to determine if there was a bulge underneath his jacket but couldn’t see one. Nevertheless, I opened a desk drawer that had a spare .357 next to some boxes of paper clips and a pack of stamps.
“You’d like to hire me,” I said warily. “And I’d like to play safety for the Chargers. Doesn’t mean I get to do it.”
The man mulled this over. “They said you were tough to work with.”
“Sounds like whoever they are knows me well. Who’s they?”
The man ignored the question. I didn’t ask it again right away, but I made a note to try again in a minute, using a different pathway. “I have a problem,” he finally managed, looking past me.
“Why am I not surprised?” I responded, taking another sip of coffee. It was good coffee, but it had tasted better a minute ago.
“I’m doing this job man, and I need a guy. Tomorrow night.”
“What’s the job?”
“Being a lookout. Easy peasy.”
“Does this job involve doing anything illegal?” I asked, suspecting I knew the answer. I also thought that if I did take this gig on, I might need to rearrange my schedule for tomorrow evening, something Gail would not look kindly upon. “Not that I’m trying to be difficult, mind you.”
“Hey, listen, it pays a lot of money,” he sniffed, not answering the question. “Five large.”
“That certainly gets my attention,” I said. Clients paying big sums had been in short supply the past few months. “Go on.”
He wiped his face with his hand, looked at his palm, and then back up at me. He seemed like he was in his late thirties, but it’s difficult to tell with men like this. They often lived hard lives, the kind of lives that aged people quickly. He had lines on his long face, with bits of gray stubble spiking here and there, mostly around his chin.
“My name’s Stoner, in case you were wondering. Ted Stoner.”
“That’s nice.”
“And your role here is legit. Perfectly legal. It’s like, super easy. Just be a lookout.”
I nodded and began to wonder why he was selling me on this. The answer was likely complicated. Anyone willing to pay five large for a super-easy assignment was up to something that had to be not so easy, and not so super. It also meant he was aiming to make far more than five thousand dollars himself. I tried to avoid sighing. This wasn’t the first time a shady character wanted to hire me to do something they said would be simple, but ended up being treacherous, as well as criminal. The grisly history of private investigators in Los Angeles was a dour one. It didn’t take much for an ambitious schemer to present himself as a private investigator and hang out a shingle. It did, however, take some effort to get licensed. But even licensed PIs were not always the straightest of arrows, and some of the unlicensed ones were on their way toward becoming prison inmates.
“Five grand is quite a haul for being a lookout. Is this an all-day job?” I asked.
“No way, man. And I’ll probably only need you there for about forty-five minutes. An hour, tops. It’s a cool gig.”
The hairs on the back of my neck began to stand up. I took another sip of coffee. In addition to not tasting as good, it was now starting to cool. But I didn’t want to get up and reheat it in the microwave. I didn’t, in fact, want to take my eyes off Mr. Ted Stoner for one single, solitary moment.
“Why don’t you go over to a Home Depot parking lot and hire someone there? You could get them for a lot less than five grand.”
“I need someone reliable. You come recommended.”
“I’m sure I do. But I don’t advertise on Craig’s List. Who gave you my name?”
He looked at his fingernails. They could use some trimming. “I do these sorts of odd jobs for people. And the person who hired me said you’d be a good second. Something about your having a football background. And I can’t tell you who my client is, so you shouldn’t ask.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you can at least say how you know this, er, client.”
“Friend of a friend,” he shrugged.
I sighed. This was about as insightful as saying he knew a guy who knew a guy. “I’ll need a little more than that,” I said. “I like knowing what I’m getting into. And who I’m getting into it with.”
“Most of my clients are referrals,” he said in a slow, deliberate way. “I grew up over in Westchester, near LAX, but I’ve been gone for a while. I spent a couple of years in the Marines. Bounced around. You know how it goes. But I provide a service. I fix people’s problems.”
The part about the Marines was interesting. If true, and that was a big if, it would make me feel slightly better about him. Slightly. It would mean he was able to handle some discipline and learn a few skills, although the future employment of those military skills was typically geared to a career in law enforcement. I also reminded myself that Lee Harvey Oswald was a former Marine too, and his post-service career, no matter what it encompassed, did not end well.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “You still live in Westchester?”
“Not far. Culver City. Just up
the road. Might as well be L.A. You barely know when you cross city lines.”
“True. Tell me something. How’d you get involved in this line of work?”
He shrugged. “Spent some time in the Midwest after I got out of the service. One of my friends asked me to help him out on a job. The pay was good. Figured I could move back home and do the same thing here. Got my first job sitting in a bar, minding my own business. Worked out. Ain’t that something, though? You never know where life’s going to take you, huh?”
I had a pretty good idea where this guy’s life was headed, but I kept it to myself. And while I wasn’t entirely sure what service he was providing, it was almost assuredly not good. The unwillingness to be forthcoming was telling. Part of me wanted to toss him out of my office, but the other part wanted to know more. If I turned him down, he would undoubtedly go find someone else to help perpetuate whatever scheme he had in mind. For five large, I was willing to at least string this along further. He had been successful at one thing, which was tapping into my curiosity.
“What you’re describing here is interesting,” I mused.
“It’s a great gig, man. Good payday, and risk-free. You’ll be doing nothing wrong.”
I didn’t bother to argue with him, there was no point. That I wouldn’t be helping to commit a crime here was almost certain to be untrue, especially given the sketchy details. That I might be put into real jeopardy was also a factor. I thought back to my days as a football coach at USC and was never more grateful I had earned a hefty income, much of which I banked. I was also grateful I had a wife with a job that paid more than mine. It allowed me to walk away from certain gigs I didn’t want. But this one felt a little different. I had been chosen for some reason, by someone who knew me. It was like moving toward a mirage, knowing it wouldn’t be what it appeared to be, but you move toward it anyway, because it’s too alluring not to.
“You’ve done this sort of thing before?” I asked.
“Yup, did a bunch of ’em in Chicago,” he said.
“Chicago, huh?” I said, thinking back to when Gail and I flew back to interview for a coaching job with Johnny Cleary and the Bears. I had been meaning to call him. Johnny was back in town for a little while, spending some time at his second home in Manhattan Beach. Maybe it was his third home by now.
“Yup. Good people back there. Loved the pizza, too. Chicago’s a fun town, but I just couldn’t take the winters. The wind whipping off the lake, man. They don’t call it the Windy City for nothing. So, what do you say?”
I rolled this around for a minute before responding. The real reason they call Chicago the Windy City is because of their long-winded politicians. I wondered just how much time Ted Stoner had spent in Chicago. “Again. How do I know I’m not getting involved in something that’s illegal? Or dangerous?”
“Like I said, all you have to do is serve as a lookout. Stand there and keep your eyes peeled. Then you walk away. Nothing illegal about that.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” I said, my curiosity finally getting the better of me. “Tell me something, though. How did my football background come up?”
Stoner shrugged. “Just mentioned in passing. You know, you ask an awful lot of questions. I got to tell you, sometimes you should just take the gift of an easy payday and leave it at that. You know what I mean?”
“Sure,” I said, getting the feeling we were at a juncture. Either I agreed to the job now, or Ted Stoner would move on. I came up with my own plan and decided to move forward with it.
“So, you in?” he asked.
“Okay,” I agreed. “I’m in. What’s the shot for tomorrow night. Where and when?”
“You need to be there at 9:00 p.m. sharp. It’s on Beethoven Street down in Playa Vista.” He grabbed a green Post-it note from my desk, jotted down the address, and handed it to me. I looked at it and put it down.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” he said, rising and turning to leave.
“Hey,” I called to him as he approached the door. “How do I reach you if I need to get in touch?”
He shook his head. “You can’t. Just be there tomorrow at nine. You’ll get half your money up front, and the other half when everything is finished.”
And with that, he walked out the door. I waited ten minutes for him to go down the elevator and exit the premises, and then I went downstairs to the building manager, Ron Medalie. I asked him if the video cameras captured someone just leaving the office sporting a black leather jacket, greasy hair, and a face that hadn’t seen a razor in a week.
“Probably,” he said. “That describes half the unemployed actors in this town. There’s a casting agency up on fourteen.”
“Mind taking a look?” I asked. “He came in about a half-hour ago. Left within maybe fifteen minutes.”
Medalie knew I was former LAPD, so he was willing to oblige. We went through the footage, and it only took a few minutes to find Stoner. We froze the frame, and Ron downloaded two copies to the printer.
“Anything else?” he asked, handing me the copies.
“Nope,” I said, taking the photos and handing him a twenty in return. “Your double cheeseburger’s on me today.”
Medalie laughed and gave me a small salute. “Maybe I’ll get extra bacon.”
Once back in my office, I sat down and studied the picture. Nothing jumped out at me. I put in a call to Roberto De Santo at the LAPD’s West LA Division. I told him about my curious meeting with Mr. Stoner, the possibility of an impending crime, and that I had a decent image of the man. After a long pause, Roberto told me to send the photo over. I took a picture of it with my iPhone and texted it to him. He said he’d look into it, and then hung up.
I glanced down at the green Post-it note that Stoner had scrawled the Playa Vista address on, and opened my computer. I looked up the name Ted Stoner, but while there was one person who went by that name in California, he lived in San Diego, and he was in his eighties. There were only four people in the whole country who could have matched his age, the closest one having an address in Katy, Texas.
I began looking into the neighborhood in Playa Vista. The address Stoner had written down on Beethoven Street was in a commercial section and was the corporate headquarters of a business called WAVE. This was a startup that rented electric scooters by the hour. Or maybe by the minute. I delved further into the company, and my jaw dropped. The president turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old named Cody Groh. His name was very familiar to me. He used to play football for USC, and more recently, the Chicago Bears.
*
Manhattan Beach is unlike most parts of Los Angeles. In fact, the South Bay beach cities are like pristine islands unto themselves. Going there feels as if you’re disconnecting yourself from the rest of the region, like hopping on a flight to Maui. The look, the feel, and the people seem manifestly different. It always struck me that the beach cities had a lot of residents who were either unemployed, playing hooky from work, or just independently wealthy. But there was a laid-back vibe to Manhattan Beach, a calm oasis within a Los Angeles that was no longer all that laid-back. The urban jungle could be on fire, and there could be riots raging and the fury of hell coming down only a few miles away, but in this sunny enclave, you’d hardly know anything was amiss.
I arrived at Pancho’s at 12:30 p.m. and waited at the bar, taking in some Jimmy Buffet music that was playing in the background. It was a nice bar, with soft cushioned barstools. They served a great margarita, but I normally don’t drink during the workday and am loathe to ever drink before noon. Mid-day drinking was hardly a problem for some, though, and several middle-aged locals sat at the bar, hoisting salt-rimmed margarita glasses. They were dressed in golf shirts and khakis, and laughed raucously. I waited and watched, sipping iced tea and occasionally dipping a tortilla chip into a mild red salsa. Johnny Cleary finally walked in about fifteen minutes later. He wore a baseball cap, blue t-shirt, cargo shorts, and flip-flops, and looked like just another beach resi
dent who was not going in to work today. The only difference was Johnny was an NFL head coach, effectively running a billion-dollar enterprise, and for people like Johnny, there was no such thing as a day off.
“Burnsy,” Johnny said, shaking my hand. “I’m glad you called. I’ve been wanting to get together for a while. Something always comes up.”
“Guess I caught you on a slow day,” I smiled.
“I won’t have many more. Training camp starts in a couple of weeks, and I need to get back to Chicago soon. Start getting things organized.”
“At least the summers there are a little better than the winters,” I said, getting up and motioning to the pretty, young hostess in a Mexican blouse that we were ready for our table. She led us down a flight of stairs to the dining room, nicely laid out, and serenely lit by a skylight. Potted plants lined the red tile floor, and a Mexican flag hung from a wall. We sat down on surprisingly comfortable straight-back rattan chairs, and scanned the menus. Johnny ordered a crab tostada and a Tecate; I opted for an oven-baked burrito and another iced tea.
“Sorry you have to cut short your vacation,” I started. “Nothing like July by the beach.”
“Yeah, I’m glad we bought a place here. One block from the strand.”
“Location, location, location.”
“I do miss this place,” he sighed. “Chicago has a lot of character, the people there are a stand-up bunch. But, yeah. You know I grew up over in Redondo. Living here as a kid spoils you for adulthood. Nothing seems quite as good.”
“Your parents messed up. At least according to Mark Twain. He said the worst thing parents can do for their kids is to give them a happy childhood.”
Johnny shrugged. “I guess that means I’ve screwed up my children. But they’ll survive. My eldest graduates next May from Northwestern.”
“Tight end, right?”
“Yeah. Third-string, but he did get some playing time last season.”
“What does he want to do when he grows up?” I smiled.