Point Doom (23 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
here wasn’t enough room in the Porsche for the three of us so Rudolpho cuffed me behind my back and then punched me a few more times until he felt I was peaceful enough to travel.

When we were all in the dusty Jeep and Rudolpho had me covered with my Beretta from the passenger seat, Sydnye put her key in the ignition.

The car’s battery was dead. There wasn’t even a clicking noise from the solenoid.

“Okay,” Rudolpho offered, “Plan B, Miss Swan. We’ll have to improvise. I’ll call and get more instructions.”

Sydnye rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Rudy. Wake up! Get Fiorella’s keys. We’ll use his car.”

He turned toward me. “Where’s your vehicle, Fiorella? Your mother’s Escalade? Where is it parked?”

“It’s down the block. You’re not very good at this, are you, Rudy?”

COMING UP THE
steep ramp toward the electric garage gate, Rudolpho grabbed me with both hands from behind, by the cuffs, then cranked them hard in a circular motion.

“I’m taking these off now,” he hissed. “If you move quickly or say anything, I’ll kill you. Do we understand each other?”

I was smiling. “Okay, numbnuts,” I whispered. “But you’re improvising again. Tell me, does Swan hold your pee-pee for you when you take a squirt too?”

Rudolpho wasn’t amused. I got a nasty toe kick to the upper thigh that sent me to the concrete, on my knees.

After he pulled me to my feet, he handed Sydnye the gun, then unlocked my cuffs. Then he slid the keys back into his shirt pocket.

WHEN THE THREE
of us had made our way to Mom’s Escalade, Swan’s man tossed my front pockets only and came up with the keys to her car. “In the back, Fiorella,” he ordered. “Miss Swan, I need you to drive again. I’ll keep an eye on him. I’m following your father’s orders.”

Sydnye made a face at the kid, then snatched the keys from his hand. “You’re a putz, Rudy.”

Rudolpho remained stonefaced. He spun me around, then clamped the cuffs back on my wrists with my arms behind me, then shoved me into the rear passenger compartment behind the driver’s seat.

ON OUR WAY
up the Coast Highway toward Point Dume, the traffic was light. As we neared Gladstone’s at Sunset Boulevard, I’d finally managed to work the can of wasp spray out of my back pants pocket. I’d been lucky with Rudy. The hothead had been so distracted, carried away with getting his payback in the garage, that he’d forgotten to look past the Beretta in my hand and into the rear pockets of my slacks.

My gun was still in his right hand as he sat in the front passenger seat across from Sydnye. He used his left hand to pull his cell phone from his jacket pocket, preparing to make a call.

I was directly behind Sydnye as she drove. I knew it was now or never. I had just enough leeway with my cuffed hands behind me to contort my body and aim the nozzle of the wasp spray at the side of Rudolpho’s head. I took a deep breath.

The stream from the can caught part of his face and his left eye. My gun and his cell phone tumbled to the floor of the car as he grabbed at his face.

It took three or four seconds before Sydnye could fully react to what was happening and felt the first collateral sting of the pest spray.

Holding my breath I moved to the center space between the front seats and aimed blindly from behind my back. I began blasting away with the can, in her direction.

The spray missed her head but the ricochet off the inside windshield and the sun visor did immediate damage to her face and eyes.

Sydnye swerved the Escalade toward the shoulder, waving her right hand, trying to block the continuing blast.

When the car finally bumped to a stop against the embankment, I forced my right leg between the console and the driver’s seat.

Now facing Sydnye, then bracing my back against the side of the passenger seat and Rudolpho’s convulsing body, I began kicking at her: four, five, six times.

She was pinned by the driver’s door and had no option but to absorb the punishment I was dealing. Two of my heel thrusts caught her on the side of the head. She slumped against the steering wheel, unconscious.

My eyes and face were burning like crazy from the secondhand contact of the spray. Having to breathe in the evil shit wasn’t helping either.

Climbing across Rudolpho, my hands still shackled behind me, I fumbled to get to the door handle, pulled it, then tumbled to the street.

I immediately began gasping in as much fresh air I as could.

This was L.A. Here was a car in an accident with its front bumper against an embankment—what to any respectable citizen anywhere else in America would clearly be seen as an emergency situation—yet the cars on PCH continued rolling by and ignored our vehicle.

Once on my feet again, I saw that the kid, his eyes still clamped shut, had pulled himself together enough to start groping on the floor mat for my gun.

I leaned back inside the car, near his swollen face, and began using my head as a battering ram against his.

By the time I stopped, blood was streaming down his face and my forehead. The kid’s nose was crushed and his two upper front teeth were dangling from his bleeding mouth.

Bending him sideways toward me in the seat, then turning around, I tore the cuff keys from his shirt pocket with my shackled hands.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER,
with all the windows in the car open and the A/C blasting, I was at Cross Creek Road, the location where, only weeks before, my life had irrevocably taken a dump at Guido’s Restaurant. The two of them were cramped into the front passenger area, Sydnye on the floor.

I wheeled the Escalade around to the back of the shopping center, then parked out of sight in back of Guido’s.

I dumped both Sydnye and Rudy into the backseat. He was bleeding a lot, holding his head, and barely conscious. She was out cold. The large bulging contusion on the right side of her face and drooping jaw made it clear that bones were broken—probably in more than one place.

Looking around for spectators, making sure I wasn’t being watched, I used my belt and Rudy’s belt to bind Sydnye. Then I used the handcuffs on him.

It took me a few minutes to bring her around. I accomplished this by jabbing her in the thigh with my knife blade until her swollen eyes began to blink.

She couldn’t move her mouth but she was able to garble a few words. “Ooo-re deeeead, Fi-ella,” was her best effort.

I had to smile. “Easy for you to say, dollface. Now look, in a little while you and me and Rudy are going to pay a visit to your father’s place. But before that, we’re going to call Papa. I’ll do most of the talking but I want to make sure that Karl knows that you two are still among the living. You’ll have to speak to him.”

“Ukkk huuuuuu.”

“Right. Not bad. Keep working on it.”

Drool and foam were forming at the corners of her mouth. “So here’s the deal,” I said. ”If you don’t talk to Karl and help me out, I’m going to hurt you again. Badly. Pretty simple. Understand?”

“Ukkk huuuuuu.”

USING RUDOLPHO’S PHONE,
I scrolled down to the last outbound number, then pressed send.

The call was answered on the first ring. “Karl Swan speaking.”

“Okay Karl, Sydnye’s here with me. Rudy too, only he’s sort of out of it. I’m the one holding the gun now. I’ve asked Sydnye to say a few words to let you know that I haven’t killed her yet. It’s time for you and me to have a little come-to-Jesus reunion, Karl.”

There was a long pause on the other end. “I have some disappointing news for you as well,” he said in his studied whisper. “The situation here has altered somewhat—albeit to my benefit. I have your mother, Mr. Fiorella. She’s here in front of me, unconscious. Your ruse and the evasions at the Raddison hotel have failed. People were shot, but that was to be expected under the circumstances. So please listen carefully: My primary imperative is for you to bring my daughter and Rudolpho here to my estate, alive.”

Swan’s news hit me hard. The fucker had outsmarted me. “I’ll kill Sydnye,” I said. “I won’t even blink.”

“I believe you. And that would be exceedingly sad for me. I care deeply for my daughter. But, in truth, she has been lost to me for a long time. Young Rudolpho would actually be a far greater loss. He has great potential. So here is my proposal: Deliver Sydnye and Rudolpho to me with yourself in exchange. That’s my proposition. Take it or leave it. You should also know that I’ve made plans for your mum. Unlike her, I am not an astrologer but my personal prediction is that she will succumb slowly after an invasive surgical procedure. My greatest skill, if I may boast a bit, is in keeping my subjects alert until I have accomplished what I set out to do. Naturally, there will be a great deal of pain. The delivery of high levels of discomfort is what enhances my pleasure. It is my finest talent.”

“Instant death is my skill, motherfucker! I’ll shoot Rudy through the head and not even blink! Want to try me now?”

“Quite simply, your mother will live unharmed in the trade for my daughter and Rudolpho. You, of course, will remain here with me. Mrs. Fiorella and her unconscious lady friend will go free. Do we have a deal?”

“Yeah, asshole, we have a deal.”

“Now, I must assume that Rudolpho is injured. Is that the case?”

“He’s a little lumpy but your young protégé is still alive. He’ll need some dental work and other stuff.”

“Mrs. Fiorella has no knowledge of being here. She and her companion were sedated in Santa Barbara before their drive down the coast. I can deliver the two ladies unharmed, if you and I can come to a suitable accommodation. Wait! How fortuitous, Mom is apparently beginning to come to! Excellent timing. Please, now I would like to speak to my daughter.”

“Okay, asshole. Here’s Sydnye. Then put Mom on the phone.”

I stuck the cell to Sydnye’s ear. “Talk now, bitch, or I’ll punch your face,” I whispered.

“Fah-ver,” she groaned into the phone, “ish meee. Ahm ah-live.”

I snatched the phone away. “Okay, Karl,” I said, “now my mother.”

There was another long pause on the line. Then: “Please hold on. This will take a few moments.”

Half a minute later, through the receiver, I heard Nancy Fiorella’s faint eighty-one-year-old voice. She sounded confused, not fully conscious. “Coco,” she said haltingly, “ . . . where are my glasses? What time is it?”

Then Swan was back on the phone. “I will expect you at my home within the half-hour.”

With no options left, I said, “Okay, Swan, I’m on my way. But no watchdogs! And no cars at the gate at the Coast Highway, no armed assholes on the walls outside—none of it. Or one or both of them die. Rudy first. Got that?”

“Agreed.”

I clicked the phone off.

I FOUND A
bottle of spring water in the SUV’s console, tore Sydnye’s blouse off, then soaked it before cleaning the gashes on my forehead and over my eye with the thing.

I decided that if I was on Swan’s death menu, I would make damn sure that Sydnye would permanently pay for her crime against my friend Woody. As Swan might say, it was my primary imperative. Rudy, as far as I knew, was a gofer, Swan’s tool and a boy-toy, but not a murderer. He would have a nice long recovery ahead of him.

I opened the rear door and climbed into the backseat with my two captives. Rudy was still defenseless but trying to get it together, so I gave him a hard knee to the stomach. Then I flattened Sydnye’s body against the seat cushion on her back, stuffed a scrap of a ripped shirtsleeve into her mouth, and extended her legs out of the rear passenger door. I slammed the door against her shins three or four times to make sure there were multiple fractures.

She was now only semiconscious. I loaded her back inside the rear seat compartment and put my knee on her chest and stomach, then grabbed my wasp spray can. Remembering the can’s warning label—“May cause permanent blindness if not immediately treated”—I held Sydnye’s eyelids open with my thumb and forefinger, then sprayed a four-second stream of the poison into each eye socket.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER,
as we were approaching Grey Fox, I pulled over. I picked up my Beretta and made sure the safety was off.

The mansion’s lights, which normally illuminated the wall and the perimeter of the grounds, were out. Pulling up to the gate, I got out of the Escalade, my gun in my hand behind me, then reached back inside to the steering wheel and honked the horn.

A few seconds later the shiny automatic brass gates began to swing open.

A man was standing there wearing the green work uniform I had seen before. He was short and stocky and looked immediately familiar. Then I nailed who the little shit was. It was Tomas Valenzuela, the husband of the couple who had committed identity fraud when they’d purchased the used SUV from me at Sherman Toyota. I felt like putting one in his kneecap to renew our acquaintance but decided against it. Sydnye was a malevolent, scheming little bitch.

Tomas held up both hands. “No choot,” he said, looking at the arm I was holding behind my back.

“Don’t worry, Tomas, I’m not here for you. Just take me to Swan.”

He motioned for me to pull the car in, so I returned to the Escalade and got back behind the wheel.

“No litz,” Tomas ordered. “No litz enside.”

I turned the beams off.

After the brass gates closed behind Mom’s car, Tomas, shining a flashlight on the cobblestoned roadway in front of him, began walking toward a long, flat building I could just make out a hundred yards away. It looked like a bunkhouse or stable.

When we arrived at the building another man wearing the same green outfit stepped away from the long metal door. He nodded to Tomas, who clicked off his flashlight, then turned and walked away.

At the side of the building, in the shadows, were two other guys with what looked like automatic pistols in their hands.

THE SHORT FAT
guy at the stable door was in his late fifties and had long gray sideburns beneath his cap. “My name is Raoul,” he said in perfect English. “Mr. Swan is expecting you. You are Mr. Fiorella, correct?”

I kept my gun next to me on the front seat and looked the little guy in the eye. “I come bearing gifts, asshole. Call me Santa Claus. Go get your boss out here!”