Private: #1 Suspect (22 page)

CHAPTER
103

CRUZ YANKED THE wires apart, cutting the engine. He snapped off the headlights too. He sat there, gripping the steering wheel, staring through the tinted windshield, thinking,
Sure, there was a generator.
Red Cat had a generator in case the power went out while they were making the flowerpots.

Cruz turned to Del Rio, same instant as Del Rio grabbed his arm and ordered, “Get down.”

Cruz did what Del Rio said, thinking,
Now what?
There was roofing on the floor of the kiln room, rainwater was maybe dripping down. If that was discovered…They were walled in, couldn’t even attempt a break for it.

Whatever getting caught red-handed meant, this was it. Literally. He had a dead mobster’s blood on his palms. He knew what to say when they got dragged out of the van and shoved facedown on the concrete floor.

You got us. We give up.

Scotty said quietly, “Hear that?”

Cruz heard men talking over the roar of the generator. Their voices were getting louder as they came through the office door and into the warehouse proper.

Cruz hoped that they weren’t going to check the ovens, that they wouldn’t look at the van. But the voices were getting closer.

“You see it? Because I sure don’t,” said one of the men. “Where’s the goddamned van?”

“It’s here. Stop worrying, Victor. It’s hidden in the back here. Right there. Behind the frickin’ racks.”

It was about the van after all. Whoever was leasing the space, storing the van, he was looking to make sure his millions were still safe. These weren’t cops. They were hoods.

Cruz got his piece out of his waistband. Del Rio was doing the same.

The first voice was saying, “Okay, okay. Just be glad, Sammy. I want to move this thing in the morning.”

“You say so.”

“I say so. Sammy, you and Mark…”

The men’s voices faded as they turned and headed back toward the office.

Cruz thought about that one guy saying Sammy. It clicked. Sammy, with the goatee and the piercings—a guy he’d known for years as an almost-dead druggy—was moving up. This was the same Sammy who had taken twenty bucks in exchange for sending a text message and said it was common knowledge that the drug van was inside a warehouse.

Common knowledge?

It was
inside
knowledge. He had fucking
known
.

Sammy’s brains were like scrambled eggs. He would say and do anything for a fix.

And the guy Sammy called Victor?

Cruz thought he knew that guy too.

Cruz peered over the dash, saw the backs of the guys’ heads going into the office. The office door closed, then the lights in the warehouse went out. His heart was still hammering, his palms and underarms wet.

Scotty was muttering, “Man, oh, man.”

Cruz said to Del Rio, “One of those guys is Sammy. Remember him, Rick?”

“Turquoise cowboy boots? Metal in his nose?”

“Yeah. Sell himself out for twenty bucks. And the one looking for his van? I think that’s Victor Spano. He’s with the Chicago Mob, am I right?”

Del Rio said, “Yeah. Spano. That could have been him. We gotta wait now. Just sit tight.”

Time dragged, Cruz counting off too many minutes in the dark, smelling his own sweat, thinking of the time he’d been in a knife fight and the other guy had a gun. The time he’d been in bed with a woman and her husband came into the room.

He was thinking about his last professional fight, with Michael Alvarez, the punch that had ended his career, when Del Rio said, “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Del Rio flipped on the dome light.

Cruz twisted the wires, got a spark. The engine turned over. He gunned it.

Cruz turned on the headlights, sending two high beams into the pottery, and put the van in gear. He let off the brake, and the van rolled, nudging the racks until they tipped over in slow motion, pots crashing to the floor.

Cruz backed up, twisted the wheel, and maneuvered in quarter turns until the tires were clear of the racks.

There were two sets of roll-up doors at the Artemus side of the pottery. One set opened onto a ramp that went down to the street. The other doors opened onto a loading dock where there was no ramp. There was an eight-foot drop.

Cruz said to Del Rio, “It’s on the left, right?”

Del Rio said, “What?”

“The doors to the street are on the left, right?”

Del Rio said, “Make
sense,
Emilio.”

Cruz was almost sure the doors that went to the street were on the left. He stepped hard on the gas and ran the van into the thin metal of the roll-up doors, the doorframes flying right off the walls.

Scotty was saying, “Man, oh, man” over and over again like a mantra. Cruz went through the doors, praying he was right.

CHAPTER
104

I WAS STILL at my desk when my cell phone buzzed. It was Del Rio.

“How’d it go?” I asked him.

“Mission accomplished,” he said. “Which means our troubles are just starting.”

“Where’s the van now?”

“We’re in it. On the road.”

“Did you put the tracker inside?”

“It’s under the seat. Way under.”

I said, “Good,” told Rick to stay on the line, and called Noccia from my desk phone. I had a ringing phone in one ear, traffic sounds and Del Rio and Cruz talking together in the other.

Noccia picked up.

I said to the Mob boss, “We’ve got your delivery. It’s intact.”

We agreed on a place just north of Fry’s Electronics Paradise in Burbank.

I said, “Del Rio has some names for you, Carmine. The guys who jacked your van.”

“That’s more than I expected,” Noccia said to me. Then he hung up.

I wanted Del Rio and his crew out of that vehicle. It couldn’t happen fast enough for me. I hung in with Rick for a half hour of pure screaming adrenaline overload as Noccia got a couple of his goons out of bed and we waited for his guys and mine to meet up on the shoulder of a highway.

Rick said to me, “My date is here,” and a few minutes later he said, “They’re gone. Headed north on Five.”

I told Rick to call Aldo for a ride, and had just hung up when the phone rang again, a 702 area code. Vegas.

“Carmine. Is everything under control?”

“Very under control. I’m going to sleep like a kitten tonight. I wired your fee into your account. Six million even.”

“Thanks.”

Noccia said, “No problem. Good job,” and hung up.

My throat was dry. My hands were shaking. I drank down a Red Bull in one long swig and I dialed out. I got Chief Mickey Fescoe on the third ring.

I told Fescoe that a van with a fortune in illegal pharmaceuticals was headed north on 5, that it belonged to Carmine Noccia. I pictured Fescoe, my sometimes friend, shaking off sleep, jumping out of bed, dying for me to fill in the blanks.

“What did you say?”

I repeated myself and then gave him the details. Fescoe punctuated every fifth word with
“Holy shit”
and “You’re
kidding
” as I connected the dots for him. I drew a straight line between the three members of the Noccia crew who had been found shot dead on a highway in Utah to the Ford transport van holding a street value of thirty million in OxyContin.

I said, “There’s a GPS transmitter in the van. The receiver is in Fry’s Electronics parking lot. Yeah. Inside a trash can under the flying-saucer marquee if you want to send a car for it.”

“I’ll send someone now. I might get it myself.”

“If I were chief of police, I’d tip off the DEA. And take them down with a traffic stop, Mickey. Keep me completely out of it.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Fescoe. “Hey, Jack, how
did
you come into all this information?”

“I can’t say.”

“Right. It’s private. Sorry I asked. I don’t need to know,” said Fescoe.

I said, “Not that I’m keeping track, Mick, but don’t forget that I helped you with this.”

Another way of saying
You owe me a big one
.

“I’ll help you if I can,” said Fescoe.

Another way of saying
I’ll help you if I can, but don’t count on me if you killed Colleen Molloy
.

CHAPTER
105

IT WAS A hell of a send-off for Cody.

The Bazaar was a five-star restaurant on La Cienega, a “movable feast” that called up Spanish fiestas of the kind you only saw in movies.

We had booked the tasting room, called Saam, for our party of thirty. The furnishings were leather and Murano glass, and the food was bizarre and terrific: tapas and cheesy confections and foie gras lollipops wrapped in cotton candy.

People were lit on magic mojitos infused with end-of-the-workday relief. There were silly toasts and drunken laughter, and a couple of girls were crying and laughing at the same time.

As I said, it was a hell of a party.

But some people were missing: Del Rio, Scotty, and Cruz were out working the hotel murder case. Justine had given Cody a cashmere sweater and begged off the festivities.

I wanted to be anyplace but here. But I owed it to Cody to give him a bash worthy of how much we all loved him. He’d stepped into his job after Colleen left six months ago, filling her place without a hitch. Like he was made for it. I’d always be thankful to him for that.

I clinked my glass with a fork, and the whooping only escalated.

“Cody,” I said. “Cody, we’re going to miss you.”

There was whistling and guys yelling Cody’s name. Mo-bot was beaming. Even Sci stood up and gave Cody some applause.

“We’re going to miss your clothing commentary,” I said to my former assistant, “and your impersonations of all of us, especially me.”

I did an impersonation of Cody doing an impersonation of me, running his hand through his hair, giving himself a serious look in the mirror, straightening his tie.

People roared.

I said that I had put a contract out on Ridley Scott for taking Cody away from us, but that I was grateful to Cody for finding Val.

Cody broke in to say, “Val, stand up, girlfriend.”

And she did, laughing too, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the magic mojitos. She was just having fun.

I said, “Cody, you’ve kept us on track and you’ve brought us a lot of happiness too. And if the acting thing disappoints you, I’m going on the record: You’ll always have a home at Private.”

I gave him the gift-wrapped camera and card from everyone at Private, and after the applause had abated, Cody wiped his eyes with a red napkin and used his foie gras lollipop as a microphone. “Jack, I want to thank you,” he said. “Seriously, this has been the best job of my life. You taught me more than this,” he said, grinning as he ran his hand through his hair. “You showed me honorable leadership in action. That’s what I’m going to remember most.”

I didn’t know thirty people could make so much noise with their hands.

CHAPTER
106

DEL RIO EYED the King Eddy Saloon, a bar within an old bootlegging hotel by the same name on Skid Row, East Fifth and Los Angeles Streets. This was a bad section of town, but King Eddy’s attracted all types, from homeless drunks to young people with dreams who owned condos around the corner.

The building was gray with black trim, bars on the three windows around the door, a security gate attached to that, attesting to what could and often did happen in this neighborhood.

Del Rio went through the door, Cruz right behind him, like Samuel Jackson and John Travolta going into that diner in
Pulp Fiction.

“Cold Cold Ground” was playing on the jukebox, and some people were singing along. The circular bar was jam-packed with local characters. A cheap wooden platform held the TVs, which were tuned to a basketball game. At that instant, the Lakers lost by a point.

Customers groaned.

Alongside the wall opposite the bar was a line of tables under decorative neon beer signs. At one of the tables a pair of trannies was getting crazy. From the pitch and volume of the screaming, Del Rio thought it was just a matter of moments before it got physical.

With luck, they’d be out of there before the trannies blew.

Del Rio had seen a picture of the guy they were looking for. It was a couple years old and the guy had been holding a number under his chin, but Del Rio was pretty sure he could recognize him inside his favorite hangout.

He searched the backs of heads and profiles, and then he saw the African American guy with a short beard sitting at the bar. He was eating a free doughnut and talking to the old barfly sitting next to him.

Del Rio got Cruz’s attention, tilted his chin toward the guy with the beard. Cruz squinted, then nodded, and Del Rio pulled his nine.

Del Rio walked over to the guy having his beer and doughnut, put the gun to his spine, and felt the guy stiffen. The guy stared into the mirror over the bar for a second, looked into the faces of the two men who weren’t joking, raised his hands, and held them up.

Del Rio said, “Mr. Keyes, walk with me.”

Keyes said, “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Then don’t do anything stupid.”

This was Tyson Keyes, the badass limo driver who was Karen Ricci’s first husband. According to her second husband, Paul Ricci, Keyes was the man who had tipped Carmelita Gomez that her john had been killed by a limo driver. Maybe he’d done more than that. Maybe Tyson Keyes had killed five businessmen who’d hired party girls for a couple of hours in their hotel rooms.

Keyes swiveled around, then got off the stool very carefully. “I’m not the guy you’re looking for, man.”

The barfly said to Keyes, “You through with your beer?”

“He’s through,” said Del Rio. “Let’s go.”

A couple of people looked up, then looked away real fast. They would say that they hadn’t seen anything.

With his hands still in the air, a former limousine driver named Tyson Keyes walked slowly through the crowd, escorted out the door by a former US Marine and the former California light-middleweight champion of 2005.

Tom Waits sang his signature song on the jukebox right behind them.