House Justice (27 page)

He watched Franco leave work that evening. Two black Honda SUVs with tinted windows pulled up in front of the pawnshop and double-parked
on the street. Then three of the five young men he had seen earlier left the pawnshop, but not Franco. The men stood outside on the street, hands beneath their shirttails or inside the deep pockets of their shorts or baggy jeans, and observed the surrounding area for a couple of minutes. Satisfied it was safe, one of the men nodded toward the pawnshop door and Franco exited the shop and quickly but calmly entered the lead SUV. Franco’s departure from his place of business reminded the florist of video footage he had seen of the Secret Service escorting the president into a limousine, except none of the Secret Service agents had spiderwebs tattooed on their necks.

Franco’s two-car motorcade drove to a high-rise five miles away and entered an underground parking garage. The florist figured that Franco had selected the apartment building for his living quarters because it would be easier to defend than a house. He probably lived on one of the upper flowers—a place immune to drive-by shootings— and he imagined that some of his bodyguards lived in nearby units and continuously watched the lobby, garage, and elevators.

This was not going to be easy.

On his fourth day in LA, the florist got the opportunity he’d been looking for. Franco left his pawnshop at seven p.m. and the florist noticed he was dressed more formally than the first time he had seen him—he was wearing a black suit with a dark blue shirt, but no tie. Once again he left the shop in a two-car convoy with his five bodyguards, but instead of heading to his own apartment, they drove to a small apartment complex in West Hollywood. While two of his guards went into the building with Franco, the other three remained in the parking lot, standing outside their vehicles and surveying the surrounding buildings as if they were looking for snipers. Franco reappeared ten minutes later and with him was a beautiful young Latina who was at least thirty years his junior.

Franco’s next stop was a restaurant, and judging by the type of cars the valets were parking and the attire of the people entering the
restaurant—the florist thought one of those people might have been Tom Hanks—the florist concluded that the place was expensive and exclusive and probably required a reservation made weeks in advance. It wasn’t the sort of place the florist was going to be able to walk into and pose as a diner, not dressed as he was in black jeans and a black T-shirt. He was dressed for kidnapping people, not for a night out on the town. The good news was that this was not an establishment that would permit Franco’s bodyguards—young men that looked like gangbangers—to loiter at the bar.

As soon as Franco and his date entered the restaurant, the car containing three of his bodyguards drove off, and the florist wondered if they were headed to some less exclusive place where they could eat while their boss was dining. The other two bodyguards remained in their car, smoking and watching people enter the restaurant. They never saw the florist, who was parked fifty yards behind them.

The florist decided that this might be the only chance he was going to get. He drove into the alley that provided access to the rear of the restaurant. Dumpsters and garbage cans ran along the back wall of the restaurant, but fortunately it was a fairly wide alley and if he parked close to the wall of the building opposite the restaurant other cars could still get past him. This was good; he didn’t know how long it would take to do what he planned and he didn’t want his car towed.

What he needed was for a busboy, cook, or waiter to come outside for a smoke. And he needed the person to be approximately his size. Fifteen minutes later, a man came out, a busboy judging by his clothes. He was wearing a white jacket, a white shirt, and a clip-on black bow tie. His pants were black—similar to the florist’s. He wasn’t as tall as the florist, but he was overweight and his jacket and shirt would probably fit.

The busboy stepped a few feet away from the restaurant’s back door, lit a cigarette, then pulled a cell phone from a pocket and began to talk. As he spoke, he walked up the alley in the florist’s direction, gesturing wildly with his free hand. The florist got out of his car, verified that there was no one else in the alley, and walked toward
the busboy. As he passed the busboy, he nodded to him in a friendly way—and as soon as he was past him, he spun around and hit him with the butt of Benny Mark’s .32. The busboy collapsed to the ground, his cell phone still in his hand, and the florist could hear the voice of a woman talking angrily in Spanish until he closed the phone.

He dragged the busboy to his car, dumped him into the trunk, and then drove to another alley and quickly removed the unconscious man’s clothes. After he was dressed in the busboy’s shirt, jacket, and bow tie, he gagged him, bound his hands and feet with duct tape, and placed him back into the trunk of the car.

The florist entered the kitchen of the restaurant and it was bedlam: cooks yelling at cooks, cooks yelling at waiters, waiters yelling at busboys, everybody yelling in Spanish. He grabbed a tray to partially hide his face and walked rapidly through the kitchen, into the dining room, and directly toward the sign for the restrooms. He spotted Franco and his companion as he walked; they were drinking wine but not eating. The florist guessed that they had ordered but that their meals hadn’t arrived.

Fortunately, the restroom didn’t have a distinguished-looking old man passing out hand towels. The florist entered one of the stalls, leaving the door cracked open so he could see who entered the room. Now it was up to fate—and Jimmy Franco’s bladder. All he could do was hope that Franco would use the restroom before he left the restaurant and, when he did, that there wouldn’t be too many other customers in it.

It was forty-five minutes before Franco entered the restroom, and the florist watched as he used the urinal. He stepped out of the stall as Franco was washing his hands. No one else was in the room. He pressed the .32 against Franco’s back.

“What the fu—”

“Shut up,” the florist said. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead right now. All I want to do is talk. But if you do anything to attract
attention, if you resist in any way, then I will kill you. I’ll have no choice. Now walk ahead of me. We’re going out through the kitchen.”

The florist placed the barrel of his gun against the small of Franco’s back and pushed him toward the restroom door. He used a hand towel from the restroom to obscure his weapon. When they entered the dining area, the florist maneuvered Franco quickly through the tables, prodding him continually with the gun. They were halfway to the kitchen when Franco tried to get away. He spun toward the woman he’d been dining with and screamed, “Dolores! I’m being kidnapped! Get Cholo. Get Cholo!”

Customers stopped eating and everybody was now looking at Franco. Then a woman yelled, “He’s got a gun!”

Now the florist
wanted
chaos. He fired his weapon twice at the ceiling, and the customers started screaming and he could hear chairs being knocked over and people running. He grabbed Franco by the neck— he had large hands and they were strong—and he shoved him toward the kitchen. He slammed Franco into the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the dining area and continued to propel him forward, and as he did he aimed his gun at the cooks so they’d get out of his way. Finally, he reached the back door of the restaurant.

With his hand still on Franco’s neck, he pushed Franco toward his car. When they were a couple feet away, he hit Franco in the head with the .32, then hit him again when he saw that the first blow hadn’t rendered him unconscious. With the adrenaline flooding through his system the way it was, he hit Franco harder than he had intended and he prayed that he hadn’t put the man into a coma.

He was just shoving Franco onto the backseat of his car when he heard a gunshot and felt something burn across his upper left arm. Then two more shots were fired, one ricocheting off a nearby wall. He pulled the .32 from his waistband and spun toward whoever was shooting at him. It was Franco’s lovely date, Dolores. The damn woman, instead of getting Franco’s bodyguards as she’d been told and as he had expected, had followed him outside the restaurant and was
now shooting at him with the small-caliber gun that she must have had in her handbag. Only in LA.

The florist didn’t want to kill the woman. He fired a shot at her and it zinged loudly off a garbage can near her, and she dove back inside the restaurant. He fired two more times to encourage her to stay in the restaurant, then got into his car and began to drive.

Now all he had to worry about was being stopped by the LAPD or Franco’s men, and Franco’s men were the bigger concern. Although people had seen him in the restaurant, they had seen him only briefly and they had probably been too frightened to make good witnesses. And if the police could find a witness who could actually describe him, the witness would most likely tell the police that he was Hispanic, and the cops would turn their attention toward any Hispanic enemies Franco had. Dolores, Franco’s girlfriend, had seen his car but he was pretty sure she’d been too busy dodging bullets to get a license-plate number.

At least he hoped so; he didn’t want to have to kill a cop.

He drove into a parking garage and removed the busboy from the trunk. He noticed when he did so that one of Dolores’s bullets had punctured the trunk and he was relieved to find the busboy unhurt. The man was conscious by then, his eyes huge with fear. The florist lifted him out of the trunk, which wasn’t easy considering the man’s weight, and placed him on the ground. He then duct-taped Jimmy Franco’s hands and feet, gagged him, and placed him in the trunk. Before driving away, he told the busboy, “I’m sorry I had to do this to you but if you talk to the police I’ll have to kill you. Remember, I know where you work.”

The florist cruised the streets of LA looking for a place where he would be able to question Franco without being disturbed, finally selecting an industrial complex where warehouses the size of airplane hangars surrounded an empty parking lot. He circled the parking lot
twice, looking for cameras and security guards, and when he didn’t see any he stopped the car.

He opened the trunk. Franco was still unconscious. He pulled Franco from the trunk and propped him up against the side of the car, then took off the busboy’s shirt and examined the wound to his shoulder. The bullet had just grazed his left bicep; the wound stung, and it was bleeding, but not badly. He was, as he’d always been, a lucky man. He tore a strip of cloth from the busboy’s shirt and bandaged the wound, then changed back into his own clothes.

Franco was still unconscious and this wasn’t good. He had hit him too hard. He ripped the duct tape off Franco’s mouth but the man didn’t stir. He slapped his face lightly and Franco groaned. Thank God. He slapped him again, a little harder, and Franco slowly opened his eyes.

“Wha …” Franco said, confused, trying to remember what had happened, focusing finally on the florist’s face.

The florist pressed the barrel of his gun against Franco’s forehead. “Listen to me,” he said. “You hired a man named Benny Mark to kill a man in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, named Acosta. I know you were the middle man. I want to know who hired you and I will do whatever I have to to make you talk. I will cause you great pain. I will torture you. Do you understand?”

“Who are you?” Franco asked. His voice was raspy but the florist could see that Franco’s mind was functioning once again—and he could see that he wasn’t appropriately afraid.

“Did you hear what I said?” the florist demanded, but Franco’s only response was to glare at him. “Tell me who paid you to hire Benny Mark.”

“If you don’t let me go, right now, you’ll never get out of LA alive,” Franco said.

The florist didn’t want to hit Franco in the face, afraid the man might already have a concussion and that hitting him in the head would just slow things down. He placed duct tape once again over Franco’s mouth, ripped open Franco’s shirt to expose his chest, and then reached into the car and pressed down on the cigarette lighter.

When the lighter popped, he showed the glowing tip to Franco and saw the man’s eyes widen. Franco probably expected that he would remove the tape over his mouth and question him some more, but the florist didn’t. He didn’t have time for that.

He pressed the cigarette lighter against Jimmy Franco’s chest.

As he looked at the six blistered, circular, red burn marks on Franco’s gray-haired chest, he recalled once in Iran when he had done something similar to an Iranian businessman who traded with the West. The businessman had flouted one of the ayatollah’s many rules, but even worse, he was an arrogant man who thought his wealth would protect him. It had been the florist’s job to make the man see the error of his ways, and he had used a soldering iron on his feet. He remembered that the stench of burning flesh had almost made him vomit.

He had burned Franco three times with the lighter
before
he removed the tape on his mouth, convinced that Franco would tell him nothing until he saw exactly what the florist was willing to do and how far he was willing to go. After he removed the tape, Franco gave him a name: Xavier Quinn.

The problem he now had was that he couldn’t be sure that Franco was telling the truth. With Benny Mark, he had had no doubt. Benny was not a man who was willing to suffer for the sake of honor, or for any other reason. Franco was different; he’d lie to protect a client but he’d also lie to protect his own reputation. He wasn’t surprised Franco gave him a name—anyone would have—but how could he be sure the man was telling the truth? That was the problem with this sort of hasty, brutal interrogation: it often produced false results. If he had had the time and the facilities, he would have imprisoned Franco and researched Xavier Quinn to see if Franco’s answer was logical, and then he would have tortured Franco some more. Since he couldn’t do that, he told Franco that he knew he was lying and burned him three more times. Franco stuck to his story.