the Prostitutes' Ball (2010) (31 page)

So far, not a single shot had been fired.

"I think there's a large contingent of shooters in the backyard," one of the SWAT sergeants said over the radio TAC frequency.

"That's where they'll make their stand," Hitch told me earnestly.

"Right," I replied. We were both gripping our 9 mm machine guns with sweaty palms.

SWAT took the backyard in less than ten seconds.

Every single person back there threw their hands up and submitted immediately to arrest without incident.

We followed SWAT into the courtyard, where ten or so celadores were being arrested, cuffed, and pushed down on their haunches next to a garden wall. There was only one person left.

An elderly gray-haired gentleman was seated in a high-backed wicker chair beside a large Spanish fountain. He had a blanket over his knees and was holding a calico cat on his lap.

"Diego San Diego?" Lieutenant Sherman demanded.

"Yes," the old man replied in a weak, shaking voice. He was no longer the powerful, fit man I'd seen in the picture from four years ago. He looked sick. He had lost weight. His hair had thinned.

"You are being issued an arrest warrant as a material witness and potential suspect in the hijacking of a Brinks armored truck and the murder of two guards," Sherman said as he put the paper in the old mans hands. "Get up, we need to cuff you."

"I'm sorry, I can't stand," the almost ninety-year-old man said. "My doctor forbids all movement. I've got severe phlebitis in my legs."

"In that case, stay where you are and remain absolutely still," Sherman said.

"We're clear upstairs," one of the SWAT teams called out.

"Clear in the main house," another called.

"Courtyard is clear," someone behind us shouted.

Lieutenant Rick Sherman turned and looked at Jeb.

"We're secure here, Captain."

The cat on Diego San Diego's lap stood, arched its back, and yawned.

Then Hitch leaned in toward me and whispered, "This ending is gonna need a big fuckin' rewrite."

Chapter
53.

When I first came on the job I had a training partner who used to say that runny shit always floats. A gross but often accurate work metaphor in law enforcement.

The first thing that floated was the Kalashnikov Series 100 assault rifle that had fired on us up in Trancas Canyon.

It was still in the red and white helicopter tucked behind the back passenger seat. When we ran the AK-100, it came back registered to Diego San Diego. The stock had been wiped clean of prints, but Ballistics was able to match the slugs to the ones we dug out of Sumner s Porsche.

That afternoon, Stender Sheedy Sr. was called in to the district attorneys office. Chase Beal was strangely unavailable for this interview, so Dahlia Wilkes did the questioning for the county.

With his attorney at his side, Stender first denied knowing Diego San Diego at all.

My statement about having followed him up to Rancho San Diego was read to him. It quickly turned into a case of my word and Hitch's against the word of one of L
. A
.'s most powerful power brokers and prominent legal minds.

Sheedy insisted we were mistaken. That it was a preposterous claim. For the time being, it was a standoff. Next he was questioned extensively about his relationship with Thayer Dunbar. Dahlia wanted to know how Stender was connected to the suspected money launderer Diego San Diego.

"Preposterous," Sheedy said. "Outrageous."

Dahlia had found some billing records that revealed Sheedy once did some real estate work for the Colombian. Stender Sheedy Sr. finally admitted to knowing Diego San Diego, but tried to claim attorney-client privilege, saying he knew nothing about the Vulcuna triple murder.

That's when Jack McKnight drove in from Marina del Rey and identified Sheedy s picture out of a photo six-pack. He nailed him as the man who had stood silently in the Chief of D's office in 1981 to make sure McKnight and Norris closed the Vulcuna case.

Sheedy had no explanation as to why he would involve himself in that particular murder-suicide, but he was starting to panic. He could feel the case slithering out of a deep black hole in his past and, like a giant anaconda, it was starting to wrap itself around him.

Sheedy had been the legal counsel for Thayer Dunbar and his wife, Dorothy, since the seventies. As their attorney, he did have privilege, but it was pretty obvious to all of us that he was also the conduit funneling cash between Thayer and his criminal brother-in-law. Diego's money had paid for all those Houston oil-lease deals.

Thayer Dunbar was at the very least complicit in the Brinks truck hijacking because it now seemed he had allowed that armored car with its two dead drivers to be parked on his property at Skyline Drive over a quarter century ago.

Another good piece that floated was a weathered, nut-brown guy named Daniel Morales. He was in the group of people we'd pulled in during the raid on Rancho San Diego. When we ran his fingerprints, they matched up to an old Brinks Company's employee ten-card for Sergio Maroni.

So our missing armored truck guard had, at last, been found. He had changed his name and gotten a cushy job from his patron, breeding thoroughbreds. He was now fifty-seven. A day later he was charged with double murder in the deaths of his two fellow guards and the hijacking of the armored truck. Maroni lawyered up and immediately started trying to cop a plea.

The twenty-five-year-old criminal Gordian knot that had been so baffling was finally coming unraveled.

None of this was good news for Stender Sheedy. He could see his chance to turn state's evidence slipping away and instructed his lawyer to start negotiating for a lesser charge with the DA.

Hitch and I stepped out of the way when this deal-making frenzy began, but the red leather journal was never far from my partner's hand.

The DA doesn't like to cut deals with actual murderers, so it was Stender Sheedy, not Sergio Maroni, who won the chance to turn state's evidence. Sheedy pled to five counts of conspiracy to commit murder, felony obstruction of justice, and a pile of lesser charges. He agreed to a twenty-year sentence, reducible to eight for good time served. Then he started giving up everybody. When the facts of his statement were evaluated, it ended up pretty much the way Hitch and I had figured.

Diego San Diego had invested millions of cartel drug money into
Eagle's Nest Studios in the eighties. The cartel had intended to cash out big when the shows went into syndication. But because Thomas Vulcuna wanted to make high-quality television more than he wanted to make money, he'd spent more than he had received from the networks in licensing fees. In the process, he had run his studio deep into debt with his primary lender, City Bank.

And that was when things got critical.

Diego San Diego couldn't let the bank seize a studio where he'd placed millions of dollars belonging to his violent Colombian drug bosses. He confronted Vulcuna and told him to stop losing money on production costs or the Colombians would come after him.

When Vulcuna found out his money partner had invested drug cash in Eagle's Nest shows, he first told his wife and daughter, then threatened to go to the DA.

Vulcuna and his family were killed on Christmas Eve to keep them all quiet.

More than a year later, San Diego hijacked his own insured shipment of gold to pay back the cartels. He parked the Brinks truck in the well house at Skyline Drive, which he controlled through his sister-in-law's foundation.

During the days that followed Sheedy's statement, Dahlia Wilkes was filing so many charges her designer suits began to wrinkle and she looked like she'd been sleeping in her office, which, it turned out, she was.

A couple of weeks later Alexa and I were invited up to Hitch's house for dinner. He and Crystal prepared a Country French meal of liver pate with onions as a starter. The main course was rabbit in plum sauce with vegetables al dente. Crystal made a chocolate mousse pastry for dessert. They didn't serve me another dish of bullshit prepared in the French style for which I was grateful.

After dinner Hitch supplied bathing suits and we relaxed in his bubbling Jacuzzi. The lights of Bel Air and Hollywood twinkled like jewels across the canyon below while progressive jazz played softly from the hundred-thousand-dollar sound system.

I tried not to notice any of this seductive luxury and kept telling myself I was more than happy in Venice.

After a while the girls got out of the bubbling brew and went inside the house. My new partner and I sat opposite each other, warm water frothing up under our chins, and grinned happily.

"More wine?" Hitch suggested, reaching for a bottle of cabernet.

"Thanks. Better stay sober, I'm driving."

"You guys can bunk in the guest room and go home in the morning," he offered.

"That room is bad for my emotional sobriety."

Hitch chuckled and said, "By the way, I've got a breakfast meeting with my agents at the Polo Lounge at nine in the morning. The auction on Prostitutes Ball is kicking ass. Jamie Foxx just got in. He's our new high bidder."

"He is?"

"My guys are still working out the fine points. We're down to negotiating a definition of rolling break even on the back end."

"Whatever that means."

"It's the way you figure when the picture is in profits. There are releasing costs that roll forward, changing the break point. We have to agree on what those costs are. It's important because after we hit break even, that's when our back-end points kick in. Since you're a thirty-percent partner, I want you to come to the meeting, Shane. The Porsche got shot up, so I could also use a lift."

"You know, Hitch, this has turned into a big midlife crisis for me. I'm not dealing with it too well. I'm sort of thinking that you should take my two back-end points and keep the story money. Leave me out of it. I don't think it's good for my psyche to be around too much money. I'm starting to think like an asshole."

"Because the auction went so well, we're probably talking around two million up front with another million for every ten over fifty million in domestic gross. When it's all over, factoring in DVD and network TV sales, your end could come to seven or eight mil."

"In that case, how 'bout I pick you up here at eight sharp?" I said.

After our feast in the clouds, Alexa and I drove down from Mount Olympus and headed home to a more earthly existence.

"When you get him out of the office, Hitch is much different than I thought he'd be," Alexa commented as we passed through the ornate gates separating the gods on Mount Olympus from the rest of us.

"He takes some getting used to, but he's a damn good guy and he's sure a smart cop," I said.

When we got home, Alexa and I went out to the backyard off the canal and after a few minutes of fidgeting, I finally came clean and told her that I had agreed to meet Hitch's agents from UTA tomorrow morning.

I confessed sadly that I had let my principles get flushed to the almighty dollar. I finished by telling her that I was such a shallow asshole that I had actually been worried for the last hour about what to wear to the Polo Lounge tomorrow.

Alexa sat looking at the reflection of the moon that was wavering in the waters of the canal. She didn't say anything. I was afraid she might be making a dangerous revaluation about the man she had chosen to marry.

"I feel sort of like I'm selling out," I said, trying to reclaim some high ground. "I mean, I've been really struggling with it. I sort of don't know who I'm supposed to be anymore. I know all about joe Wambaugh and his books and movies. I know about Popeye Doyle in
New York, who sold The French Connection for millions, and about joe Pistone and Donnie Brasco. I know there are more than twenty members of the LAPD who belong to the Hollywood Writers Guild. I know all of this, but still "

I stopped and looked over at her. She was just sitting there, a strange contemplative look on her face.

"So, what do you think? You got an opinion about any of this?"

"Yes."

"What is it? I'd really like to know."

She set down her beer and kissed me on the lips.

"Stop being such a self-righteous asshole and let s go to bed," she said.

EPILOGUE:

Chapter
54.

Hitch explained to me that the epilogue is the final few beats in the story. So here goes:

Karel Sladky was eventually convicted of the triple murder he'd committed up on Skyline Drive. Dahlia Wilkes put on a blistering case that earned him the death penalty.

She never smiled at us once during the trial. An Ice Goddess from gravel to gavel.

The London Good Delivery Bars turned out to be fake, just like Alexa had suspected. According to Val Rosinski, the original forgers of the bars had ground down some tungsten ore and mixed it with an epoxylike clay so they could mold it into the right shape and weight. Then they plated a sixteenth of an inch of pure gold on top, which was enough depth to keep Jose Del Cristo s standard fluorescent X-ray scan from reaching down and reading the viscosity of the tungsten.