House Justice (35 page)

“Mr. Taylor, may we speak with you?” Angela asked.

Taylor turned his head and looked up. He was a good-looking guy, DeMarco thought, but right now he didn’t seem like the super-rich, girl-chasing playboy he was supposed to be. He looked like a sad, lost little kid—but maybe that was because of the stupid swim trunks.

“Uh, I guess,” Taylor said. “Who are you?”

Angela pulled a badge case from her purse and flipped it open. “Pamela Walker, Department of Justice.”

“Aw, Christ,” Taylor muttered.

DeMarco noticed that Taylor didn’t even look at Angela’s badge when she flashed it, which was good since the woman in the ID picture had blonde hair and Angela wasn’t wearing her wig.

“What’s this about?” Taylor asked. “More questions about Conrad Diller? I’ve already told you people he wasn’t working for me when he went to Iran. I didn’t have any idea he was going there.”

“We know that, Mr. Taylor,” Angela said. “When Diller went to Iran he was working for Yuri Markelov.”

Taylor didn’t say anything but judging by the expression on his face, the fact that they had linked Yuri to him was a body blow.

“Because of Diller,” Angela continued, “we’re now investigating you and your company. We don’t have proof yet, but we believe that we’ll eventually be able to show that Markelov has been using your company to launder money, move stolen goods, and do other illegal things. We also suspect, whether he coerced you or not, that you’ll be implicated in his activities, including Diller’s trip to Iran. To put it another way, you’re going to be convicted as an accomplice to crimes that Yuri Markelov has committed.”

“So what do you want? You didn’t come here to tell me I’m being investigated.”

“We want you to agree to testify against Markelov.”

Taylor didn’t say anything.

“But the first thing we want to do,” Angela said, “is put you in protective custody. The Bureau is moving fast, and it won’t be long
before Markelov knows that we’re going after him, and when he does he’ll kill you. He knows you can put him in prison if you testify against him.”

“I’m not admitting anything, but what do I get if I testify?”

“Maybe immunity. As a minimum, a reduced sentence, depending on what you’ve done.”

Taylor looked out at the ocean and DeMarco saw what he was looking at. There was a girl standing knee high in the surf. She was wearing a black bikini, was tanned and lithe, and maybe sixteen years old. She was gorgeous but not in a sexy way, more in a pure beauty-of-youth way. And unlike Marty Taylor, she had her whole life ahead of her.

Taylor turned back to face Angela.

“Immunity isn’t good enough. I’ll give you Yuri; I’ll even testify that I saw him murder a man. But what I want in return is all my assets not connected to my company.”

“I don’t understand,” Angela said.

“I’m saying the government can give me a big fine but no jail time, and to pay the fine, you can have my share of the company. But my houses, my cars, my boats, all that stuff, I want the government to sell them and give me the cash. And I want to be put into the witness protection program and relocated to someplace where I can surf. And I want everyone in my family protected from Yuri.”

DeMarco could tell that Angela was just as shocked as he was that Taylor was capitulating so easily. She pretended to think about what Taylor had said for a couple of minutes, a frown on her face as if she found his demands unreasonable, then said, “Okay, you got a deal.”

Now Taylor looked surprised. “You have the authority to make that deal, right here on the spot?” he asked.

“Yes,” Angela said.

What a liar, DeMarco was thinking.

“I want it in writing.”

“We’ll give it to you in writing. But right now you need to come with us,” Angela said. “We need to put you someplace where you’re safe from Markelov.”

Taylor started to say something but then he looked past Angela, down the beach. “I swear to God, I’m cursed,” he said.

DeMarco turned to see what he was looking at and saw three guys coming toward them. The one in the lead was a huge son of a bitch with a goatee.

Angela saw the men at the same moment and muttered, “Shit.”

“Have you guys got guns?” Taylor asked.

“No,” Angela said, and DeMarco wondered why she was lying. She had her gun in her purse.

“Well, those are Yuri’s guys, and they do. And I’m guessing they’re here to take me to him. So unless you want to get killed, I’d suggest you boogie on out of here.”

“Can you remember a phone number?” Angela asked.

The men were now about fifty yards away.

“Sure,” Taylor said. He smiled sadly and added, “I’m a genius.”

Angela gave him her cell phone number and Taylor repeated it. Yuri’s men were now twenty yards away and DeMarco noticed that Angela was facing away from them.

Taylor pointed up the beach and said loudly, “You walk that way, maybe half a mile, and you’ll see it. They make a great breakfast. The scones are to die for.”

“Thanks,” Angela said, and immediately started walking in the direction that Taylor had pointed, with DeMarco trailing slightly behind her.

DeMarco caught up with Angela.

“Why didn’t you just show those guys your badge? They would have backed off. They weren’t going to start a gun fight with a federal agent on a beach full of people.”

“That one guy, the moose with the goatee? He saw me at Yuri’s place yesterday. He might have recognized me even without the wig and I couldn’t let that happen. That could screw up what we want Yuri to do.”

DeMarco looked back over his shoulder. Taylor and Yuri’s three guys were walking back to the parking lot. The big guy had his arm around Taylor’s shoulders and Taylor looked small next to him.

“Well, this might be the last time we’ll see Marty Taylor alive,” DeMarco said.

“Will you just shut up,” Angela said.

“Where was he?” Yuri asked Ivan.

“Surfing.”

“Marty, haven’t I told you before that I always want to be able to reach you?”

“Hey, what can I say? I forgot to charge the battery in my phone. What’s the big fuckin’ deal here?”

Yuri looked at Ivan—and Ivan kidney punched Marty and he collapsed to the floor.

“If this ever happens again,” Yuri said, “I’ll put a chain around your neck and connect it to a stake in my backyard. Just the way I chain up my dog when he misbehaves. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Marty said, barely able to speak through the pain. He was going to be pissing blood for days.

“Good. You’re going to stay here in my house for the next couple of days. I want you where I can keep an eye on you. And there’s something I need you to do.”

Marty couldn’t help himself. He just had to say it. “It’s not your house; it’s
my
house.”

Yuri looked at Ivan again, and Ivan kicked Marty in the tailbone.

“What do we do now?” DeMarco asked.

“We wait. We wait to see if Taylor can get away from Yuri. We wait to see if Yuri goes after Rulon Tully. We wait to see if Tully takes care of Rudman.”

DeMarco shook his head, thinking that this was classic CIA behavior. They put all these complicated, devious plans in motion without having any idea what the outcome might be or any real control over it. This was how they got in trouble in places like Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua—and those were just a few of their more well-known fiascos. The only good news was that the CIA operation currently under way in Southern California didn’t involve entities with full-fledged armies or nuclear weapons.

“Do you still have people watching Taylor and Yuri?”

“Not anymore,” Angela said. “Our job isn’t to protect these people. And we don’t want to be witnesses to whatever happens.”

“So you’re going to just let the chips fall where they fall, and in the meantime we sit around doing nothing?”

Angela didn’t answer; her lips just thinned into that stubborn line he was becoming used to.

But then, DeMarco thought, maybe sitting around doing nothing wasn’t a bad thing.

“Are we going to stay here in San Diego?” he said.

“Yeah. Yuri’s here and so is Taylor. Tully’s at his home near Ventura and we can get there in three hours if we drive, faster than that if I commandeer a chopper.”

“So you wanna see the sights while we’re waiting?”

“We’re not on vacation, DeMarco.”

“No, but there’s no reason to spend our time sitting in a hotel room, staring at the walls.”

She thought about that a moment. “What do you wanna do?” she asked.

“How ’bout we go to Sea World?”

“Sea World! What are you? Twelve years old?”

“Well, then, how ’bout …”

“Actually, Sea World might be kinda fun,” she said.

And it was.

The florist had been watching Rulon Tully’s estate for three days. He was tired, dirty from lying on the ground, and the sun beating down on his head was giving him a headache. None of these things would have particularly bothered him—he had endured far worse physical discomfort in the past—but what did bother him was that he was wasting his time.

From his research at the library he had learned that Tully had homes and businesses all over the world and could be just about anywhere on the planet. His primary residence, however, was his ocean-side mansion north of Ventura and, since his divorce, he rarely left the place.

The first day, the florist had parked on Highway 101. According to Google Earth, MapQuest, and a detailed contour map he had purchased at a sporting goods store, Rulon Tully’s home was one point four miles from the highway, behind a series of low hills. He could have driven directly to Tully’s front door—the maps showed an access road off the 101 that would get him there—but he’d decided that wouldn’t be prudent.

He had walked quickly but cautiously through the thigh-high brush covering the hills—the type of brush that fueled California’s famous, destructive wildfires. After thirty-five minutes he came to the top of a small hill and had his first glimpse of Tully’s estate. He dropped onto his belly and raised binoculars to his eyes.

The house was enormous and sat on at least ten acres, maybe twenty. There were two guest cottages, a six-car garage, an immense swimming pool, a tennis court, cascading fish ponds, and countless exotic, blooming plants. The florist couldn’t help but admire the flora and the skill of Tully’s gardeners.

That first day he had watched until dark and then left to get the supplies he would need to observe the place for several days: night-vision binoculars, water, food he could eat without cooking, a sleeping bag. He needed to confirm that Tully was in the house and, if he was, develop a plan to take him.

The second day of his surveillance he arrived before dawn with the items he had purchased and, while it was still dark, he had dug a small trench with his hands behind two tall bushes. He cut down a couple of other bushes and placed them on the ground to further camouflage his hiding place and lined the trench with his new sleeping bag. Then he had lain there and watched Tully’s house all that day, late into the night, and all the next day.

He did confirm that Tully was in the house. The man came outside once to stand on a balcony while he talked on a cell phone—he appeared to be shouting at whoever was at the other end of the line— and one other time to smoke a cigar. As he smoked his cigar, the florist had studied Tully’s face through his binoculars and was struck by what an odd-looking little man he was. And judging by the expression on his face he was getting no enjoyment from the cigar, his beautiful gardens, and his magnificent ocean view. He just stood there puffing and scowling, a man who had everything and was pleased by nothing. But other than learning that Tully was in residence, he learned nothing else that would allow him to take the man.

After three days of watching, he decided it was going to be impossible to penetrate Tully’s security. His house was a fortress, perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It was surrounded by a ten-foot adobe fence and there were cameras everywhere: on the fence, on the eaves of the house, on various trees. It didn’t look like there was any place not covered by a camera. On the fence he could see devices, probably
motion detectors, that would alert Tully’s security force if anyone tried to scale the wall. The cliff on the west side of the house was sheer; a skilled climber could ascend it—but he wasn’t a skilled climber, and even an expert would have difficulty ascending the cliff at night. He also imagined that Tully had some type of electronic security that monitored the cliff in case anyone tried to breach the estate from the sea.

There were a total of six security guards, three on each twelve-hour shift. One guard sat in a small, stone hut by the main gate, and the florist assumed that within the hut was the monitoring equipment for the cameras and motion detectors. The other two guards roamed the estate continuously, in a random pattern. The gates looked strong enough to stop anything smaller than a tank from crashing through them, and he imagined if any attempt was made to invade the house, alarms would sound and a signal would be sent to the nearest police department. And considering Tully’s wealth, the police would respond immediately and in force. To stop the police from being alerted not only would it be necessary to cut the landlines going to the house, but he would also have to destroy any cell phone transmission towers that provided cell phone service for the area. But even that might not be enough if Tully used radios or a satellite phone for a backup communication system.

It was time to develop a Plan B. It would take a team of heavily armed men to breach Tully’s security and the team would need technical expertise, not just muscle and firepower. If all he had wanted to do was kill Tully, it would have been simple. He was an expert marks-man and he could have killed Tully with a long-range rifle shot the next time the little man ventured outside. He didn’t have a rifle but getting one wouldn’t be a problem. The problem was that he had to talk to Tully before he killed him.