City of War (29 page)

“And you drew the job of telling me.”

“Think whatever you like.”

“Well, you can tell your associates that’s why I filed in federal court, not L.A. Superior, where you guys get treated like Vatican cardinals. And my lawyer told me this morning we drew Judge Cavalcante.”

“Cavalcante? That cocksucker. He never met a cop case he couldn’t fuck up.”

“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, but this time, I see it the other way. I’m anxious to watch you go through that jigsaw puzzle routine of yours with him. See if he sees Paris.”

The simmer was turning into a burn. “I didn’t figure I was gonna have to draw you a picture.”

“And I didn’t figure you for a room-temperature IQ.”

Manarca didn’t like being talked back to. He pulled out his service weapon and laid it in his lap. “Is that enough IQ for you, prick?” he said.

I pointed to a small dot on the dashboard. “While you were studying up on safes and humidors, you must have missed the page about in-dash cameras. Comes in handy in case of a carjacking. Or a cop making threats with a gun in his lap.”

If a guy can turn redder than Manarca did, I’ve never seen it. And his voice had a tremor in it that made me glad he didn’t have his finger on the trigger.

“Now,” I said, “would you like to put Mr. Smith & Wesson away and start over, or should I use the handy Rolls-Royce voice-dial to get Jake Praxis on the line?”

Very deliberately, Manarca put the gun back in his shoulder holster, and we rode in silence for a few minutes. Finally, he spit out, “Okay, cocksucker, who you gonna serve your lawsuit on? Last time I looked, Los Tigres doesn’t publish a list of officers or have an address.”

“That’s what I thought, but Jake found out that a couple of years ago the Feds slammed them with a RICO action.”

“So what?”

“That makes them a criminal enterprise. Meaning as far as the law is concerned, Los Tigres is an entity with standing in the system, making them legally liable for all kinds of things. We served them the same way the IRS did. Through some scumbag attorney in a fancy office downtown.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

“It also means that if I win a judgment, I can seize assets, which includes their relatives’ homes if a member has slept there just once.”

“I figured they’d kill you before the week was out, but I’m revising my estimate. You might not make it to the next stoplight.”

“I doubt it. They’ve got bigger problems than me. And tomorrow they’re going to get sued again. By Marta Videz.”

“She related to the shooter?”

“His mother. But you and I know her son didn’t shoot anybody.”

Manarca chewed on that.

I said, “And sometime next week, there’ll be a suit filed on behalf of Walter Kempthorn.”

There was genuine puzzlement on Manarca’s face. “Who the fuck is Walter Kempthorn?”

“The third victim. But then, you find it more comfortable not to know a lot, don’t you, Sergeant?”

23

Power Plays and Security Oaths

It took the district attorney and the cops exactly thirty hours to get their act together. They sent three DDAs to the meeting at Jake’s. Manarca was there too, along with his boss, Commander Roy Rogers, an unfortunate name, I thought, but after considering the size of the guy, I doubt anyone made fun of it. The other person was Captain Juliette Luna, head of the LAPD’s gang detail. Pantiagua was nowhere in sight.

After everybody was seated in the conference room, and the deputy district attorneys had taken in the floor-to-ceiling views of the L.A. Country Club and begun wondering why they weren’t in private practice, Jake said, “I appreciate your coming.”

Captain Luna wasn’t so polite. “So what exactly is it you fucking want, Praxis?”

Jake decided to handle the attitude first. Speaking to a bald DDA named Fontaine, he said, “The first thing we’re going to do is drop the I’m-a-cop-and-you’re-not bullshit. When I’m satisfied we’re all here to cooperate, we’ll start. Until then, I’ll send somebody in to get your coffee order. If that doesn’t suit you, the receptionist will validate your
parking on the way out. Come on, Rail.” And we got up to leave.

Fontaine looked at Luna, who glared at Jake, then at me. Just as we hit the door, Commander Rogers said, “Let’s not waste any more time than we have to on this. We’ve all got other things to do.”

We sat back down, and Jake started again. “First, Captain Luna is going to meet with Mrs. Videz and tell her that her son didn’t murder anyone. That the police made a horrible mistake, and she’s there to personally apologize. Then the department will issue a press release to the same effect. No tricky language, no ambiguity. The release will also say that you’re reopening the investigation into the kid’s death and Dr. York’s. And I’m being charitable when I say ‘reopening,’ since there wasn’t an investigation to begin with.”

I thought Captain Luna’s head was going to explode, but she held her tongue. I knew she was picturing herself being grilled by a herd of reporters smelling blood.

“Next, Sergeant Manarca will go out to LAX, hunt up Mitchell Adams and interview him about his nephew. Then he’ll make a deal with the Manhattan Beach cops to get that case transferred to LAPD.”

I saw Manarca look at me, surprised. He’d been expecting to be slapped. Instead, we were throwing him a bone. He nodded his appreciation, and I nodded back. It wasn’t because I suddenly liked him, but he was probably a good detective who, for whatever reason, laziness or politics, didn’t do his job. Now he was getting a second chance, and if he did it right, no one would remember the first go-round.

But Jake wasn’t going to let him off scot-free, which probably had more to do with the Pantiagua incident at the hospital than it did with Manarca. “And then, Detective, if you haven’t figured it out for yourself by now, you’re going to interview Marta Videz. And while you’re at it, I suggest you take along a police artist, because she actually saw one of the guys who murdered her son—something she could have told you if you’d bothered to ask.”

Manarca got a little darkness in his eyes, but it evaporated quickly. He was already figuring out how he was going to get personal mileage out of this.

I slid over the photograph I’d taken of the killer’s tattoo. “One of the other guys, Tino, will have this on his left arm—only it’ll have more legs.”

Manarca looked at the picture. “You couldn’t get a face to go with this?”

“He moved when I clicked,” I said.

“So it’s the Tacitus shooter, and he’s dead,” Manarca snorted. “I hope you didn’t do this. Where’s the body?”

“You’re the only one talking about bodies. Last time I saw the guy, he was in handcuffs.”

“Handcuffs? Where?”

“If you two don’t mind,” said Jake, cutting in. “Finally, I want a copy of every scrap of paper and every piece of information you’ve got on the shootings at Tacitus. And, when they start coming in, on the deaths of Kiki Videz and Walter Kempthorn. All the interviews, all the forensics and all the computer runs—everything. And I want it to keep coming as long as the cases are open.”

It was Rogers’s turn to show the flag. “Not a fuckin’ chance. We’ve got sources and techniques to protect.”

Jake looked at Rogers like a schoolchild. “Commander, I expect you to redact informants’ names. If I want one, I’ll ask, and you can put it through channels. As for techniques, I haven’t seen any yet. So let me know when I do, and I’ll reconsider.”

Without even looking at Rogers, Fontaine said to Jake, “You’ve got it.”

This scene had probably been rehearsed beforehand to give the commander cover, but he was still furious and not hiding it. He snorted and crossed his big arms.

Fontaine looked at Jake. “Just tell me one thing. How did you manage to get this case in front of that ACLU shill, Cavalcante?”

Jake didn’t bat an eye. “I’m surprised at you, Counselor.
You know nobody can influence judicial assignments—at least not at the federal level.” He paused for effect. “But if I had to guess, I’d say that
60 Minutes
piece last year had something to do with it. How did that LAPD captain put it? You remember—the guy they filmed behind a curtain to protect his identity. ‘Ask anybody, there’s just some people, like that asshole Cavalcante, that if they call a cop, we’re gonna sit back down and play another hand of poker. Maybe even order lunch.’”

Fontaine nodded. “That’s what I told the chief—and that you’d probably subpoena him first, just to twist his tit. Was I right?”

“Faster than he can get to a photo op.”

“So what can we expect in return?” asked Fontaine.

“I’ll hold the other two lawsuits, and I’ll ask Judge Cavalcante to extend the deadline for starting depositions on Mr. Black’s action. Then I’ll take the Los Tigres depos first. That should buy you a couple of months.”

“Since you’re getting everything you want from us, why can’t you just drop the whole goddamn thing?”

“As Chuck Colson used to remind Nixon, ‘When you’ve got ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds aren’t far behind.’ My best to the chief.”

On the way back to the hotel, my cell phone rang. It was Carl Noon. He skipped the hello. “What the fuck are you into?”

“The name Truman York jog somebody’s memory?”

“Classy fuckin’ guy.”

“How classy?”

“Let’s do the professional shit first,” Carl said. “Your boy’s last posting was Incirlik.”

“Turkey.”

“Correctomundo. Found himself a nice sideline using his plane to hump heroin around the Med for some Mafioso named Gaetano Bruzzi. Then, like they all do, he decided to get into the business. Siphoned off half a million bucks of jet fuel and traded it for some Grade-A Afghan smack.
The
carabinieri
arrested him in Rome, in a suite at the Hassler, no less, sucking on some prostitute’s toes with ten kilos under the bed.”

“Wonder how they knew where to look,” I said sarcastically. “That stuff was probably resold before he got finger-printed.”

Carl laughed. “Hey, the guy was a pilot. Ever met one who didn’t think he was a fuckin’ genius? But get this. There was no court-martial, not even a hearing. He even kept his oak leaves and full retirement. The air force just wanted him the fuck gone.”

I thought about it. The military gets real attitude when you sell their stuff and don’t invite them to the toe-sucking. But they get a major hard-on over drug trafficking. The theft was worth maybe eighteen months and a dishonorable. That much horse was twenty to life.

“Who’d he know?” I asked.

“That’s what I thought too. It took a little digging to find out what really happened.”

“And…”

“He was already in trouble for knocking up the daughter of some Turk mayor.”

“And let me guess, she was underage.”

“I think even in Sandland, you can’t consent at twelve.”

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. “The local code probably calls for a hot blade and an audience. So why didn’t they just turn him over? Walk away.”

“Because the mayor demanded the base general too. Said in his tribe a daughter’s honor demanded the perp
and
his father, but he’d settle for the CO. The JAG had no choice but to get them both out of Dodge. There was no career move in prosecuting him and maybe having the media get hold of it, so they just cut him loose.”

“That it, or is there more?”

“Oh, I’m just getting warmed up. This guy was a peach.”

“Skip to the end, okay?”

“Well, no sooner did Major York rejoin the real world and
get his special courier certificate than he got hired by the G again. Only this time it was the army.”

“They didn’t know?”

“Hard to tell, but before Turkey, York had flown a refueler for the SR-71.”

I rolled my eyes. “So he had clearances up the ying-yang, and, of course, the only thing the Pentagon cared about was that he’d never violated his security oath.”

“You oughta go on
Jeopardy
.”

“What did they entrust him with?”

“No one’s talking, but that last flight, Egypt Air, wasn’t a vacation. My guess is something very big went down with everything else.”

“Anybody think it was related to the crash?”

“No, the cause was that crazy motherfucker upfront—high on God or politics or thinking he was Wile E. Coyote.”

If there was anyone on the planet who’d deserved that last ride, it was Truman York. I’d have paid to see the look on his face. I shifted gears. “You ask about the City of War?”

“I did. And if Truman York got their attention, that lit them up like a pit bull at a petting zoo.”

“So what the hell is it?”

“Don’t know. But some people at the Pentagon want to talk to you. You’re supposed to catch a plane.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

“Who do I see?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that. The way they sounded, they’ll be meeting everything that flies.”

It’s always nice to know you’re important. “Carl, I’m going to need something else.”

“Jesus H. Christ, now what?”

“I want to talk to someone who was close to Flight 990.”

“That ought to be some trick, since they’re all fuckin’ dead.”

“You know what I mean. And not an investigator. I want somebody who was there that night.”

“Let me think about it. But if I come up with something, it’s going to cost you.”

“Name it.”

“I’ve got a big birthday coming up. One that ends in a zero, and I want to throw a party on that goddamn yacht of yours. Nothing fancy. Ten, twelve good friends. A little three-day cruise to nowhere.”

“Done.”

“Not so fast. And I want that stiff limey who works for you to do the planning. What’s his name again?”

“Mallory.”

“Yeah, Mallory. Personality like a black fuckin’ hole, but I’ll never forget that housewarming he threw when you moved into San Simeon up there in the Hills of Beverly. Unbelievable.”

“I’ll guarantee the boat, but you’ll have to talk to Mallory yourself. He’s the most independent man on the planet.”

“Deal. I’ll get him laid. What’s his preference?”

“Not my arena, but I’d pay plenty to hear the conversation.”