Down Solo (14 page)

“Mickey Peterson is a compulsive gambler, an alcoholic, and a very desperate man. When he found out that there was a report signed by our geologist stating that the project in Mexico was worthless, he panicked. He wanted to suppress it until he could pull his cash out, but first he had to find it.”

“And Tanya beat him to it.”

“Exactly. She stole it from me.”

“Let me guess—while you were sleeping, with a little assistance from Rohypnol.”

“Last thing I remember was her whispering, ‘Lights out, baby.’ Tanya’s very resourceful. She wanted the money because it was undeclared cash and she was going to leave the country with it. So she tried to leverage the report against Jason Hamel because he had collected the funds for the corporation. When Mickey found out that she was trying to negotiate with Jason, he sent Jason Junior out to kill the transaction and anyone facilitating it.”

“Why would the kid do that for him?”

“Because good old Uncle Mick had always been the nice guy, the enabler, the guy who said, ‘Oh, he’s just a kid, lighten up.’ He taught the kid how to drink and how to roll a joint when he was twelve. And he taught him how to shoot a gun.”

“But the kid showed up at the restaurant to pick up the briefcase for his father.”

“That’s what the father thought too, but the kid was playing him. That’s why Hamel stopped the transaction; I figured out what was happening and told him just in time. Of course, Jason wanted to suppress the report for his own reasons.”

“He told me he was convinced it was a mistake, and that the mine had huge potential. He smelled a rat somewhere.”

“You talked to him?”

“Yes, we had a conversation while I watched him die.”

“Then you probably know he was a zealot who believed that God was going to deliver him a jackpot so he could fund his own ministry.”

“He said something along those lines. Could you point the gun away from me now? It’s distracting me from the conversation.”

Hunter smiles down at the gun and turns it slightly so it won’t blow a hole in me if his finger twitches.

“When Jason Junior failed to retrieve the papers, Mickey went crazy and ordered the kidnapping. Burning your house was the kid’s idea, in case the report was somewhere in it.”

“So you have no idea where my daughter is.”

“I believe my godson may have taken her to Mexico, to the mine.”

“Is that part of Mickey’s plan?”

“No, that’s part of Junior’s plan. He got high and developed a psychotic infatuation with your daughter. He thinks they’re eloping. I tried to talk him into bringing her here but he yelled at me and hung up.”

“What good would the report do Mickey now that Jason’s dead and the money’s gone?” The pieces fit weirdly and the black hole at the end of the gun seems to have drifted back in my direction.

“There’s a doctored report that Jason Hamel manufactured. He forged a document saying that the mine hosts a huge deposit. Mickey still wants to take the company public through the Vancouver Exchange; then he can run up the share price with the forged report and sell his director’s shares and recoup some money.”

“So if I just give him the damned reports he’ll back off?” They’re in my back pocket, but they’re barely readable now.

Hunter glances at the gun. “You have them with you?”

“I have access to them.” I glance at the black hole.

“I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that.”

“Really. How’s that?”

“He thinks you killed Hamel and stole the money. He says if you don’t give it to him by tonight, he’s going to kill your ex-wife.”

I burst out laughing. “Boy, he’s pretty clueless then. You mean he’d do it for free?”

“It may amuse you, but I doubt if it would amuse your daughter.” He looks at his watch and says, “It’s half past three. You’ll probably find him at the Normandie Casino. Here . . .” He hands me the check and then slides the gun toward me. “You might need this.”

Allison is family. She’s Mindy’s mother and I’m tired of being a pinball in someone’s arcade game. I remember the voice speaking through the static: “Retribution is allowed.” And I’m ready to deliver. Part of me dispassionately watches my rage as it consumes me.

¤ ¤ ¤

The Normandie is the only original Southern California card club still in existence. When the state made gambling illegal back in the 1880s, it exempted poker because the legislators loved the game. In 1936, The Normandie Casino was opened in Gardena. At one point it generated most of the operating funds for the city. Now there are gambling joints all over, but the Normandie has its own clientele and continues to take money from people while they think they’re having fun.

If you’ve been to one casino, you’ve been to them all. Even the most upscale ones have a seedy edge, like a Playboy club with yesterday’s bunnies. The Normandie is popular with the Asian crowd and has games like PaiGow and Pan 9. The chatter at the tables has a musical quality you won’t find at the Hustler or Hawaiian Gardens. I walk past the baccarat tables, blackjack, three-card poker, and Omaha high-low split, until I get to the main event: Texas hold ’em.

Mickey Peterson is as hard to miss as Madonna at an AME Church service. He’s as Irish as Old Bushmills, red face, red hair, and built like a bulldog. Right now he’s sweating like a fat man in a sauna, a small pile of chips and a drink on the table in front of him. I watch him down the drink and push out another chip. A Vietnamese man with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lower lip takes the pot and Peterson wipes his forehead with the sleeve of his coat.

I wave for a waitress and order a double of whatever he’s drinking with a tall water back, delivered to Mickey. For twenty bucks, it better be Armagnac, but I’m not complaining. I back up a few tables and watch him deplete his pile of chips, buy more, and drink the double.

It takes about fifteen minutes before he’s done and dismounts ponderously from his seat. I follow him across the room toward the restaurant. He lurches past daytime diners and broke liquid-lunchers nursing cups of coffee and navigates past a pay phone into the men’s room. I follow him in and watch him unzip at the urinal.

I pull the gun out of a recyclable market bag I borrowed from Alan Hunter’s receptionist that says “Keep it Green.” When I pull it back, the hammer makes a distinctive click that startles Mickey Peterson out of his stupor. He turns and looks at me and backs up. Urine sprays on the floor at my feet in a diminishing arc and finally splashes his shoes.

Most alcoholics manage to achieve a permanent condition of half-in-the-bag, but Mickey’s all the way in it; the old boy is boiled as an owl, snockered, three sheets to the wind, and long gone. He looks down at his prick and gives it a quick tug before tucking it into his pants. He leaves his fly open and tries to focus on me. His mouth hangs open and his nose is wrinkled in concentration.

“Who the fuck are you?” It’s a garbled snarl, and the wire in my brain sings a higher, shriller note. I push him backward into the handicapped stall and lock the door behind me. He stumbles back and lands with his ass wedged between the toilet and the wall, his feet up on the seat and his arm propped up by the toilet paper dispenser. I move in, my hand steady, the wire thrumming. I have nothing to say that a bullet won’t say better.

Peterson’s eyes focus. He blinks his eyes and blurts, “You fucked my wife, didn’t you, you miserable prick.” He struggles to get up. I move toward him, the muzzle touches his forehead; he glares at me with a rage of his own. I squeeze the trigger; it has a mile-long pull, every millimeter takes a lifetime and the destination is eternity delivered from a black hole. The roaring in my head starts; the voice bleeds through and I remember its warning, killing of innocents, and I realize that I can’t shoot this pathetic fool, that I’ve been set up, and that the snake-eyed predator in his Century City penthouse office is still a step ahead of me.

I helped Mickey Peterson up into a sitting position on the toilet and left him sobbing in the stall. A Chinese in a Hawaiian shirt washed his hands and looked at me suspiciously in the mirror as I left.

I’m heading north out of Gardena in the Mustang. Dave calls: “You ready to get together?”

“Soon.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m running around town like a rat in a maze. Cheese everywhere, and it all stinks.”

“Let me help you.”

“I’ll call soon. Count on it.” I thumb the phone off. It rings again.

“Dad?”

“Mindy, hey, are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just cleaning the place up. The kitchen was really gross.”

“I know. Has anyone called my phone?”

“Mom called, and someone named Tanya. I didn’t answer, so maybe they left messages. Are you coming back soon?”

I don’t know what I’m doing. There is no indicated next step. I’d like to go back to Century City and show Alan Hunter a close-up of a bullet, but rats don’t chase cats without a plan.

“Yeah, soon. Still got some errands to do.” Like what, grocery shopping? I’ve got no ID, so the check is useless. I’m out of cash, low on gas, and bankrupt in the idea department.

“Dad?”

“What, sweetheart?”

“I just remembered something Jason told Luke while we were driving in Mexico.”

“What’s that?”

“He said his father told him that if anything bad happened to him—to his dad—that he should remember the rose garden.”

This time different memories assemble themselves as if I’m picking up a perfect hand of poker, one card at a time.

Jason Hamel, bleeding to death in front of me. I ask him where the money is and he says, “It’s all in the ground . . .”

Tanya telling me that’s geo-speak for gold that hasn’t been dug up yet.

My dream about a church floor strewn with gold and a vase with a rose in it.

Jason Hamel’s website, telling the world that “the dollar bears the Mark of The Beast.”

Hamel’s jungle of a yard, and the one patch of carefully tended roses.

I know where the money is. And I know what it will look like.

“Dad, are you still there?”

“Sorry, I’m driving and hit a spot of traffic. I’ll see you soon.”

¤ ¤ ¤

It’s half past six in the evening on a Sunday, and traffic is pretty light. The tunnel at the end of the Santa Monica Freeway spits me out onto the Pacific Coast Highway. The sun is heading toward the horizon and the ocean looks smooth as glass.

The Mustang crunches over the gravel in Jason Hamel’s driveway. I’m banking on the place being deserted. There’s still crime-scene tape at the door, but I’m not going inside.

I walk around the side of the house to the back and find the shovel I knew would be there. There’s a path curving down through the bushes to a small gate and the street. A pair of gloves sits on a spool of wound-up garden hose. I put them on.

The roses were looking better the last time I was here. Two days in the summer heat and nobody to water them has left the petals drooping and curling at the edges. The shovel bites into the dirt, which is surprisingly soft, and slips under the root system. I move around the first plant and dig carefully. There are three plants in a row over about five feet of garden plot. I uproot each of them and set them against the house. A small mound of dirt piles up as I dig deeper. It’s hot and I’m sweating as the sky darkens.

At about three feet down I hit something solid. I remove the dirt and find a rectangular piece of plywood. Underneath is a plastic tarp. I lift it up and see two rows of three SentrySafe H2300 fire-safe, waterproof chests. I lift one out and find another set of chests underneath, twelve in all.

On a hunch, I pull out Ratboy’s keys. There’s one small key that wouldn’t fit a standard door lock. The chest opens and shows a fitted plastic foam inner lid. I pull it off and strike gold.

I don’t know much about the stuff, but I know it’s been on a roll for the last few years. There’s a conspiracy theory that says that the United States has sold all its gold and replaced the bars at Fort Knox with fake ones filled with tungsten. When the world finds out the US has nothing but counterfeit gold, faith in the dollar will finally crumble and gold will become the new world currency.

What I do know is that, at fourteen hundred bucks an ounce, a four-hundred-ounce brick is worth over half a million dollars, and I’m staring at two of them nestled into cavities carved into the lower foam casing in the chest. I pry one out and examine it. There’s an assay stamp, a date, and a serial number. It’s only about seven inches long and weighs almost thirty pounds.

I set the bar back in the foam cavity and close the lid on the chest. Three more chests and I’ve got Mickey Peterson’s investment sitting on the ground. Replacing the plastic tarp and the plywood, I shovel the dirt back into the hole, carefully replanting the rose bushes. I leave the shovel by the side of the house where I found it and carry the chests back to the Mustang.

I call Mindy and tell her I’m on my way, and then dial Dave’s number.

“What?”

“Meet me at Chez Jay in forty-five minutes.”

“Fine. This better be good.”

Good enough for me.

I hand her some takeout I stopped for on the way. She thanks me and digs in; with her mouth full of pad thai noodles she says, “Your friend Jimmy called. I answered, is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s good. What did he say?”

“He told me to tell you he’s okay and he should be out tomorrow.”

“Out of the hospital, or out of jail?”

“I don’t know. Both, I guess. He said to call him at his mom’s, and he left a number.”

I tell Mindy to hold on a minute. There’s a desk in Ratboy’s room. I pull a sheet of paper from his printer and compose a note:

Jimmy,

Glad you’re okay.

If you’re reading this note, I’m gone.

Check the Mustang’s trunk.

One for you. One for Cynthia Caffey
—
she’s listed in West Hollywood under James Caffey. Two for Mindy
—
wash it, pay tax, put it in trust, and give her mom $100,000 to keep her copacetic.

Find BH stockbroker named Mickey Peterson and give him the enclosed papers.

Good luck,

CM

There’s an envelope in the drawer; I put in the letter and the reports and write Jimmy’s name on it.

Mindy has wolfed down the entire dinner. She’s in a good mood.

“Can we go to a movie or do something normal like that?

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got two more errands.” Her expression changes. “Then this should be over. Promise.”

“I really want to get out of here. Just for a little while, please?”

“Look, one last thing. I’ve got to do it. If it all goes well, we can go anywhere. How about Mexico in style, like a cruise?”

She shakes her head.

“Hawaii, then. A week in Maui to clear our heads. We’ll learn to surf together.”

Now she brightens again and says, “Okay, Dad, but be careful.”

“Right. Which brings me to one last thing.” I hand her the envelope. “If anything happens to me, I want you to call Jimmy and give him this.”

Mindy’s chin goes up and her eyes are shiny. She accepts the envelope without a word, along with the keys to the Mustang. We hug for a full minute—I can’t let go—a love as big as grief consumes me.

I walk out the door.

¤ ¤ ¤

I drive the Saturn up Lincoln to Ocean Park Boulevard and turn right on Nielson Way. Chez Jay stands alone between a motel parking lot and a fenced-in lot, half a block south of the Santa Monica Pier. It looks like a dive but serves some of the best food in Los Angeles. It has a history of movie stars and dope dealers, Old Hollywood and hangers-on, and an owner with a legendary secret weapon.

People are waiting but Dave has a booth in the back.

“Nice tee shirt.”

My shirt is smeared with dirt from Jason Hamel’s rose garden. I shrug and sit opposite him.

“I ordered for you. If your story’s as good as you say, steak’s on me. If it’s garbage, you’ve got bigger problems than a dinner bill.” He takes a pull from a big glass of iced amber liquid, Johnnie Walker Black if I remember correctly.

“You drinking on the job?”

“I’m not on the job.”

I start from the beginning with Tanya showing up at my house, and he interrupts me already.

“Mickey Peterson’s wife? Jesus, I’ve seen her picture. She’s hot. What’s in the briefcase?”

“Two reports about a gold investment. They contradict each other.”

“Which one’s real?”

“The one that says the investment is a bust.” I go on to explain the stock scam and why everyone was scrambling for the geologist’s reports.

“So the broad wants to blackmail this Hamel character for her husband’s money so she can disappear with it.”

“Right. And her husband wants the report so he can get his money out before the other investors tie everything up in court.”

“So where’s the money?”

“I’m going to take you to it.”

Our meals arrive. We chew steak for a while. The place is buzzing around us, but we’re in a bubble of our own: the smell of our food, the clink of ice in Dave’s glass, the occasional glance as he looks up at me, the muted colors in the low light. What did Alan Hunter say—I’m bumbling through a minefield without a map of the terrain?

Dave puts down his knife and fork and says, “All right. Three homicides. Jason Hamel’s one of them, right?”

“Three homicides and two more attempted. Yeah, Hamel’s one.”

“Walk me through it.”

“Let me start with the first attempted. That would be on me, the night I tried to deliver the papers.” I tell him about the interrupted handoff at the Cheesecake Factory and how I got shot at while riding my bike home. I leave out the part about getting high at Jimmy’s and, of course, the matter of the bullet in my brain.

“So this guy you met at the restaurant waits for you and shoots at you. What happened?”

I hate lying, but so often it just seems necessary. I tell him, “I fell off my bike. A guy got out of the car and grabbed the briefcase. A neighbor opened his door and yelled and the Mustang took off.”

Dave stares at me, inviting more, but I keep my mouth shut. A hint of a grin starts and stops on his face and he shakes his head and starts eating again. With a fork full of potato and sour cream at his mouth he says, “Hamel.”

“Not yet. I Googled the name of the geologist on the report. It turns out he and his brother both died in the last six weeks. I interviewed his widow and she thought Hamel did it. I did too, at the time. Then I went back to my friend’s house and found him with a bullet in his chest.”

“That would be Jimmy Ortiz.”

“Yeah.”

“He was your drug connection.”

I was hoping to keep Jimmy on the sidelines, but it looks like Dave’s ahead of me here.

“He’s a friend of mine.”

“Okay, but why did you go there and why would somebody shoot him?” Dave looks at me with that cop look, the one that says people have been bullshitting me all my cop life, and now you’re spoon-feeding me some more.

“After the restaurant, I went to Jimmy’s and stashed the papers in his bathroom. I think he got shot and they tossed his place looking for them.”

“So that’s when you got picked up and went to County.”

“Yeah. Gotta love it there.”

“Are we getting close to Hamel?”

“Coming right up. I get out of jail . . .”

Dave interrupts: “A free pass, no bail, charges dropped.”

“Alan Hunter. He’s part of this story.”

Dave whistles. Cops don’t like Alan Hunter; he’s destroyed too many cases for them on technicalities.

“Tanya picks me up. I take her car and go to my house, but it’s not there anymore. And Mindy’s gone. My neighbor said you had stopped by.”

“Semper Fi.”

“That’s him.”

“So I follow the money and go to Jason Hamel’s house. I’m there five minutes when the kid that took the briefcase shows up. I draw on him and ask where Mindy is. That’s when the window shatters and a bullet hits Hamel.”

“Who shot the bullet?”

“The kid’s got a sidekick. Big dumb brute named Luke. I wing the kid in the shoulder and he bails. Now I get a story from Hamel while he bleeds out.”

“You didn’t call 911?”

“It wasn’t happening, and he didn’t want me to.”

“So what’s his story?”

“The kid is his adopted son, a pain-in-the-ass speed-freak who was directed to kidnap my daughter but decided to take her to Mexico because he was a psycho and thought he was going to marry her.”

“Directed by whom?” I seem to have his interest now.

“I’m getting there. Hamel knows the kid killed the geologists, but he’s only now coming around to admitting it. Anyway, he thinks the negative report on the mine investment is all wrong. He’s convinced there’s a huge deposit there, so he tries to quash the report so he can buy some time.”

“Is that it?”

I shrug. “He died. The kid had a twenty-minute jump on me, but I knew where he was going. I followed him to the mine in Mexico and got Mindy back.” There’s not much point in telling him about Herbie and Melinda and their smuggling plan, or the Mexican gangbangers and their red devil tattoos, but Dave’s going to make me squirm over Ratboy and Luke.

“You don’t want to tell me how that went, do you?”

“Maybe another time?” The waiter is clearing our plates. Dave orders another drink and turns his attention back to me.

“Your story’s an interesting one, but it isn’t worth shit if it doesn’t deliver me a perp. You promised I could close cases. So far, you owe me a dinner.”

I don’t have enough to pay for dinner, but I still have some story left. I tell him about Alan Hunter aiming me at the third party in this investment circus, Tanya’s husband.

“Alan Hunter is the prime mover behind every piece of the puzzle, except for the kid being a wild card. I’m betting that by the end of the evening you’ll be able to put the homicides and the kidnapping on Hunter. Fraud, too, if you can put it all together.”

Dave looks at me suspiciously. His drink arrives and he treats it like a fat lady treats dessert. He signals the waiter for another and says to me, “What do you mean, by the end of this evening?”

“I still have to go somewhere, but I’ll call you in the next hour or two and give you an address to meet me at. Do you have a pocket recorder?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“Bring it.”

“I’m never gonna find the kid and his partner, am I?”

“You might if you find a certain cave in the mountains near Ensenada.”

Dave shakes his head and pulls out his wallet. The waiter brings his third drink and the bill. Dave slaps a credit card on the table and says to me, “So that’s it?”

I say, “That’s it for now.” I don’t like the look on his face.

He produces a manila envelope from the seat bench next to him and passes it to me. I undo the clasp and remove a glossy black-and-white photo. It’s disturbing to look at, but fascinating, the blood caked in my hair, my eyes open, my teeth slightly showing.

Dave says, “That’s a picture of a John Doe at the morgue. He disappeared in the middle of the night last Tuesday. Wednesday morning, actually.”

I study the hole in my temple, touch the picture with my finger; I remember when my vision was black and white, and finally dull shades of gray.

“Charlie?”

I look up at Dave. His expression is almost sympathetic, but then it could be the Black Label. I’m at a loss for words.

“Maybe you had a twin brother you never told me about?”

I say, “Nope,” and slide the picture back in the envelope. “Weird, huh?”