The Devil's Necktie (14 page)

28

“C'mere, Johnny, take off your sunglasses,” Angelina said from the bed, squeezing her breasts until her nipples were as swollen and pouty as her lips.

Johnny hadn't slept in forty-eight hours, and he was being fueled by cocaine, fear, and adrenaline. He sucked down half of a monster line of pure Colombian cocaine with a rolled twenty, and hit Send on his computer. He then erased the execution, unplugged the phone, and pulled out the microSD card. He'd trash it, along with the BlackBerry, later in the day. His entire body was vibrating, and he feared he was having a heart attack.

Angelina slid out of bed, her naked tattooed body glistening in the reflected light from the nightstand. She had draped silk scarves over the sixty-watt bedside lamps earlier in the evening to create ambience in the shithole of an apartment Johnny called home. Angelina vamped over to Johnny with moves that she had seen runway strippers use. When he still didn't respond, she pulled one of the scarves off a lamp, and, like a sad version of Isadora Duncan, whipped it around her head like a lariat. She threw it over his shoulder from behind and then pulled it seductively toward her.

“C'mon, Johnny,” she cooed. “Lemme see them pretty green eyes.”

“Get the fuck away, I'm not gonna tell you again,” he said with a staccato ferocity that startled them both.

“Fuckin'
maricon
!”

The words spilled out of her mouth before she could take them back. Her hand snaked out and she ripped the aviator glasses off his face, cutting the side of his nose with her painted fingernails.

“Fuckin' bitch!” Johnny swung from his heels with a closed backhanded fist. Angelina's head snapped to the side. Her eyes filled with tears, and she attacked, matching Johnny slap for violent slap.

Johnny was swinging because he had lost all control of his life, and he was spiraling to hell faster than he had ever imagined.

Angelina was striking back because fury came easily to her.

Both combatants stopped, sucking in air, crying, heaving, staring each other down. Angelina braced herself for the final assault that never came.

Johnny retreated, his eyes blazing with an intensity that Angelina had never seen before. He grabbed up his sunglasses that had gotten kicked under the bed and jammed them on. Blood was streaming down his cheek from under the mirrored lens. He pulled a baggy white T-shirt over his head, blood staining his collar. He snatched his stash bag out of his sock drawer, his computer, his phone, his wallet, and his keys, and tossed them all into a Nike sports bag.

Angelina tugged on his arm, whimpering, begging, and trying to stop the inevitable. Johnny yanked his arm away, snapping off one of her bloodred fingernails. He didn't look back as he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

Angelina stood on the stained carpet, crying until her tears turned dark and cold. Finally, feeling miserable, she ripped off a matchbook cover and scraped together enough coke to form a perfect line. She rerolled the twenty-dollar bill Johnny had left behind into a tight straw and sucked up the crystal white powder in one heaving snort.

Angelina stood up, tall, naked, dangerous, and checked out her surroundings. She needed some ice for her face. There were no cuts, but there would be some swelling. She pulled a bottle of beer out of the minifridge and rolled it over her bruised cheek. Then she took a long pull of the cold brew.

Johnny would eventually come back. He always did after a fight. Her eyes searched the floor, trying to locate the fire engine red, six-inch fuck-me pumps she had tossed earlier in the night.

She spotted a rainbow reflection off a small object under the table. Maybe knocked off during the fight?

The microSD card. Angelina didn't know much about technology, but she picked it up and hid it in the change pocket of her purse along with the twenty. You never know, she thought. It might be insurance.

29

Jack had gotten his first full night's sleep in days. When he settled in, he thought about Mia some, and then his mind shifted to Leslie, and he wondered about love, and how it drifted in and out of his life, and what it all meant. He came up with nothing and passed out.

Sitting surveillance, on the other hand, was something that came easily to Jack. He'd sit for as many days as necessary to take down a cartel's money-laundering cell. Stay patient, keep his powder dry, and slowly unravel the cell until he had all the clients and cartel members under arrest.

The glory hounds would barge in as soon as they knew a location was active, take the money, and brag about the bust, put another notch on their belts. From Jack's point of view that was shortsighted law enforcement. The “office” in Colombia would simply shift some players from Chicago or Texas—or one of the other hubs in the drug trade—set up another money-laundering cell at another address, and be back in business in forty-eight hours. The money would then be used to enrich the cartels, assassinate politicians, and overthrow governments. Not to mention the devastation the drugs created in American society, the families destroyed, the innocent lives lost.

Jack was methodical. He made a database of all the licenses of the cars that frequented the suspect's house, stayed on top of the wiretaps, and traced the phone calls back to the source. Labor-intensive work. But when it was time to drop the hammer, he was able to cast a wide net.

When Colombia got word of Jack's arrests from their high-priced American lawyers who were kept on retainer, they knew the “sickness” was so great they were forced to rerack, rethink their strategy, and start again from scratch. That was how Jack liked to play the game. Let the kingpins know that someone had outsmarted them and their Harvard-educated lawyers and MBAs.

Today the surveillance would be different.

J.D. from Bruffy's Tow had been a man of his word and had made available the parked car Jack was now sitting in, sipping coffee he had purchased at a 7-Eleven before dawn.

The 1970 dark green Plymouth Sport Fury had patches of Bondo around the wheel wells and passenger door, but a gleaming 426 hemi engine under the hood. The windows were so dark, Jack had to take off his sunglasses in order to keep the car on the road. The black vinyl roof had rotted under the California sun, and all that was left was a smattering of old glue, flakes of vinyl, primer, and rust. The car, which looked like it should be up on cinder blocks in somebody's front yard, wasn't much to look at, but that was the point. It blended. And ate up the I-10 from L.A. to Ontario like a road rocket. The steering was a little loose, but that was to be expected in a car over forty years old.

Jack wished his body felt as loose as the car's steering, but the seats weren't built for comfort and his back was older than the car itself. Suck it up, he told himself.

Tommy Aronsohn had offered to stay in town, but Jack thought his friend looked relieved when he dropped him off at LAX. Couldn't blame him. Tommy promised to head back on a minute's notice, but what needed to be accomplished now was Jack's purview. He made a mental note to check the local hospitals for anyone who had checked in with broken bones or whiplash the night he and Tommy were attacked on the road.

He had exited his building at 5:00
A.M.
through an opening in the garage, and he hurried down the concrete path that ran the length of the back of the property. Dressed totally in black, he'd done a quick run across Glencoe and entered Bruffy's Tow through a shadowed side gate. The precaution was too cloak-and-dagger for Jack's comfort level, but he still didn't know if someone was watching his building. Someone could have set up surveillance in plenty of structures in the surrounding neighborhood. He wouldn't have that answer until he was able to question the man in the photo.

Nick Aprea had done a DMV search on the car and gotten a name to match the face of the driver, David Reyes. Twenty-four, two arrests. One for methamphetamine, one for marijuana. The record he had accumulated as a minor was sealed. One of the local cops had shared a few leads as to the guy's potential whereabouts. And so here Jack sat.

He had done a drive-by of the apartment building listed on David's license, but when Jack got up close and personal, the unit was clearly empty.

He was now parked on a side street with a clear view of the Reyes family's home.

The neighborhood was lower middle class sliding toward poverty. Small, cookie-cutter California bungalows, faded pastel stucco, white gravel roofs, and dry patches of grass that couldn't be mistaken for lawn. So many electrical wires crisscrossed the dirt alleys running between the rows of houses, they took on the ominous appearance of spiderwebs. Despite how few possessions these Americans enjoyed, they were forced to live with metal bars on their windows.

It didn't seem right.

Jack pulled two Excedrin out of his pocket and swallowed them with a gulp of cold coffee. He thought about taking a Vicodin but was concerned about falling asleep. He booted up his laptop and checked out his loft in real time. Cruz Feinberg had installed two wireless microcameras, one lodged in an African mask that would capture anyone breaking and entering, the second secreted in a smoke alarm that covered the master bedroom and kitchen area. Cruz had the kind of genius and talent Jack would have drafted when he was running a team of narco-rangers in the NYPD. Independently thinking Cruz would have been a good fit.

From the computer screen Jack could see that all was quiet on the home front. When he looked out of the dark-tinted windshield, it was still quiet on the street.

He watched the occasional neighbor exit a house and walk up the road toward public transportation, or open one of their parked cars on the street. After a rough ignition, the vehicle would turn over, belch white smoke, and head off to some forgettable job. Jack did notice something conspicuously missing from this picture besides his suspect.

No paperboy. No rubber-banded papers being tossed from bicycles. Something that had been so important to Jack as a boy growing up on Staten Island was disappearing from modern life.

Jack's paper route had as many wise guys, for customers, as good guys. His neighborhood was full of Mafia soldiers, button men, you name it. He went to school with their kids. Just an everyday part of Jack's early education. When he joined the police force, he cut off all contact with childhood friends who went in the other direction, who chose to work for the Gambino crew. But his parents still lived on the same street, in the same neighborhood, and the “made men” kept a watchful eye. Dangerous men who protected their own.

Jack had failed to locate Reyes's car when he did his reconnaissance around the neighborhood before settling in between a group of other parked cars with a clear view of the house. He knew David's car might be garaged, or just used for the job, or he might just be wasting his time.

He had to take a leak but didn't want to jeopardize his cover. He'd force it out of his mind. Jack was never thrilled about having to piss in a bottle, although he'd done so many times in past stakeouts.

He decided that if he saw no movement in or out of the house by noon, he'd go get something to eat and try again in the late afternoon. He wanted to run by John Burroughs High and talk to the guidance counselor Nick had suggested. Aprea had promised to call her first thing this morning and grease the wheels.

Bertolino felt the approaching car before he saw it in his rearview mirror and slid down low in his seat. The thudding bass rattled all the way through the Plymouth's chassis to Jack's stomach as a primer gray car ripped by, honked, and came to a chattering stop in front of the Reyes house.

The front door opened and Jack watched as his suspect appeared and took the front steps in one leap. He loped over to the waiting car with the grace of a wolf running in the wild. A good-looking middle-class kid. Dark hair, open face, full-blown macho attitude. Also a face full of cuts, as if he had run through a briar patch or had his front windshield explode in his face. Jack put his money on the latter.

He was wearing a navy blue industrial work shirt, and Jack could read
ROYCE MOTORS
embroidered in yellow thread on the back. The car peeled out and Jack let it move up the road as he jotted down the car's license number. When it made a left, he turned the key on the Plymouth and followed.

He one-hand dialed information. When the operator answered, Jack asked for the number and address of Royce Motors and scribbled that information onto his yellow pad as he made the top of the rise. He wasn't particularly worried about losing his man now because he would enter the address into his laptop at the next light and be at the location waiting when Reyes showed up for work.

But his blood pressure started spiking. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest. He was now sure that the primer gray car was one of the chase cars that had tried to force him and Tommy off the road. It was time to even the score.

The first stop was Royce Motor Coach Sales and Repairs. Jack drove around the joint to get a feel for the layout. It was an upscale organization. The massive building had the polished look of a Mercedes dealership.

He was securely positioned across from the entrance when, fifteen minutes after he had arrived, the primer gray car pulled into the lot and parked. There were now three men in the car.

David Reyes jumped out of the passenger side and pushed the front seat forward. He thrust his hand into the back, pulled out a pair of crutches, and then muscled out his buddy, who was dressed in the same work shirt.

The man's bruised forehead was almost as deep a blue as the shirt on his back. The plaster cast that encased his foot and extended up to his knee was covered with colorful graffiti and signatures. He grabbed the crutches and moved forward, swinging with the ease of a circus performer, his body battered but not his ego.

Jack snapped a few pictures and then stopped as a luxury bus pulled into the driveway and motored up to the entrance of the service bay.

An older man appeared from inside, wearing a navy blue sports jacket, and waved the vehicle in. Jack snapped a few close-ups of the man and then of the license plate on the bus.

Too much joy on the gangbangers' faces for a simple service call, Jack thought.

Maybe Beyoncé was onboard.

Jack downloaded the pictures onto his laptop and e-mailed them to Nick. Then he put in a call to the service department to find out the latest he could drop off a vehicle for repairs. Six o'clock, straight up. That's when Royce's service bay shut down for the night.

That gave him at least five hours. He called the high school and spoke with Joan Sternhagen. The guidance counselor
had
spoken with Nick Aprea, and agreed to meet with Jack after lunch. He'd hit the head, grab some food, go to the school, and be back in plenty of time to find out where the other two players in the primer gray car lived.

Not a bad morning, all in all. Jack was back in the hunt.