Private L.A. (12 page)

Standing close to where Chief Fescoe would drop the money at the far end of the pier, Del Rio felt like he was in his prey’s bedroom somehow, but he couldn’t understand exactly why it had intentionally cornered itself, or at least exposed itself so blatantly to capture.

At the same time, there was no doubt in Del Rio’s mind that the killer or killers felt comfortable, confident, even, that a pickup of two million dollars could be made as well as a daring escape. But were they actually going to have Fescoe make the drop at the end of the pier, or did they plan to take him on some kind of long runaround like in those old Dirty Harry movies he loved so much?

Since Jack had left for his brother’s arraignment, Del Rio had walked all around the drop zone from above, studied it from the beach, both north and south aspects, imagining a boat, a Jet Ski, a scuba man. He realized that in a few hours the underside of the pier would be black and shadowed. No Prisoners might approach underwater, but someone smart enough would spot the bubble lines, right? But what about a rebreathing apparatus? And what about the issue of a watcher, someone looking for signs of police presence?

Del Rio picked up his cell and hit a number he’d called almost an hour ago. “Mentone,” came the reply.

“Anything, Kid?”

“No one I can peg yet,” said the Kid.

Del Rio then called Bud Rankin, a former LAPD cop Jack had hired the year before. Rankin was sixty-two, a virtual chameleon and an expert at surveillance. He was working the pier.

“Maybe they’re not on site yet,” said Rankin, who’d also come up with nothing.

“No way,” Del Rio said. “If it was me extorting that kind of money, I’d definitely have someone making damn sure the cops weren’t all over the place.”

“I’d best keep looking, then,” Rankin said, and hung up.

Del Rio’s attention returned over the rail, down to the water and the pickup spot. The ocean was turning grayer and white-capped. It could be dangerous to be down there, so close to the pier’s pylons, if the wind really got roaring. But Del Rio couldn’t see any other way to handle it. This time he called Jack.

I FELT MY
cell phone vibrate in my pocket but ignored it, every bit of me focused on Carmine Noccia the way a mongoose might focus on a particularly mesmerizing cobra. In too many ways, Carmine was the epitome of the New Age mobster. He came from a long line of organized criminals, stretching back generations through Vegas to Chicago to New York to Palermo.

But he personally exhibited none of the old Mob’s more stereotypical traits, the “deze and doze” accent, the cultured attire of a die-hard strip club fan, the spontaneous and ruthless acts of violence against all debtors and perceived traitors. Carmine had gone to Dartmouth, had done a stint in the marines as a commissioned officer, mustered out as a captain, and had even attended Harvard Business School for a semester. He’d studied the ways of the elite and wore their fashions, manners, dialect, and affectations as an almost flawless persona.

“It’s been a long time, Jack,” Carmine said, his dark agate eyes betraying nothing, the muscles in his exfoliated cheeks betraying nothing. His hand reached for mine. “Always a genuine pleasure.”

“Why would you post bail for Tommy, Carmine?” I asked, shaking his hand with zero enthusiasm.

His grip firmed as he smiled. “Tommy and I go way back, remember?”

“I remember you wanting his legs and arms broken for welshing on bets.”

“You always buy into such dramatic nonsense, Jack,” Carmine replied, releasing his grip and making a dismissive gesture. “Be that as it may, regarding Tommy, stuff happens, and allegiances change when circumstances warrant it. That’s the mark of a pragmatic leader. And I very much consider myself a pragmatic leader, able to deal with changing circumstances.”

I made every effort to show no reaction, but I got the subtext of his reply as if he’d tattooed it on my skin. Earlier that year, Carmine had used leverage that I resented to force me and Private to track down a hijacked truck full of contraband prescription painkillers with a street value of thirty million dollars. We found the oxycodone shipment but used a remote third party to report its whereabouts to the local DEA office. They’d seized the stash before Carmine’s men could get to it. I knew Carmine suspected me of a double cross, but I also knew he had no proof of it. Or at least, that was what I believed.

I’d regrettably come to know the mobster when Tommy was mainlining his gambling addiction and into Carmine for six large. I’d gone to Vegas and paid my brother’s debt, doing it for the benefit of my long-suffering sister-in-law and nephew, not Tommy. I hadn’t been free of Carmine since.

And now he had coughed up Tommy’s bail. Why? The mobster was all about leverage, so that was what this was at some level. But designed to lift what? Or move whom? And for what reason? Revenge? Against me?

“You honestly think you’re getting that bail money back?” I asked.

Carmine adjusted the French cuff of his custom shirt. “The difference between you and me, Jack, is that
I
rarely bet unless I know what horse is going to win. Emotion plays no part in it. Anyway, I have to be going, give Tommy a ride home. Great seeing you. Let’s catch up real soon, shall we?”

Before I could reply, my cell phone vibrated again in my pocket and Carmine moved by me as if I were now some stranger on the street. I checked caller ID, hit
ANSWER
, and watched Carmine disappear toward the elevators.

“What do you know?” I asked.

Del Rio said, “Come to the pier. I want to run my plan by you.”

“I’m on my way.”

“You might want to pick up a five-millimeter neoprene wet suit with hood and booties on your way.”

“I suppose a swim is unavoidable in this case.”

“I’m hoping less of a swim and more of a skim, Jack.”

INSIDE THE GARAGE
in the City of Commerce, Cobb listened intently to Hernandez, who had been keeping track of one of the two men Chief Fescoe had met with, the one who had remained behind, the one who had been all over the pier, studying it from every angle.

“He’s not a cop,” said Hernandez. “At least he doesn’t act like one.”

“What’s he acting like, then?” Cobb demanded.

“Like a scout,” Hernandez replied. “He’s making it damn tough for me to stay clean. And I think he’s brought in a second guy, older, maybe sixty. He’s been scanning the beaches and restaurants with views of the pier.”

“And you’re sure you haven’t been made?”

“One hundred percent,” Hernandez said.

“The squid?”

“Still in place.”

“Police presence?”

“Nothing beyond the ordinary patrols. Beach is quiet. Too quiet. It would be easier to stay hidden if it was hot and wall-to-wall bodies.”

“Fall back, then, Mr. Hernandez. Thousand meters if you can.”

“Straightaway, Mr. Cobb,” Hernandez said, clicked off.

Scouts
, thought Cobb. But before he could ponder that, Watson got up from his desk with an iPad in one hand. “I’ve got positive ID on the two men on the pier with Fescoe. The big guy with the surfer’s build was Jack Morgan, owner of Private Investigations Worldwide, fastest-growing security firm in the world. Cutting edge, and known to cut corners to achieve his objectives. The other one’s Rick Del Rio, also works for Morgan. Both of them are Afghan vets. Marines.” Watson handed Cobb the iPad. “It’s all there.”

Cobb scanned the documents pulled up on the screen, military records, evaluations, various articles about Morgan and the company he’d inherited and reimagined after his father was convicted and sent behind bars.

“Chopper pilots,” Cobb grunted, then gave a dismissive flick of his sinewy hand. “Stellar safety records until they got shot down. Both have courage, tried to get back in the bird to save the other men, but neither man has any special-forces training that I can see.”

“Unless the training was obtained privately,” Watson offered.

“That kind’s no good. It’s never tested in the crucible,” Cobb said, handing the iPad back. “We are tested in the crucible, Mr. Watson. Hard tested. They have no chance. We’re twenty moves ahead of them in this game.”

AT A QUARTER
to nine that evening, the wind was coming hard out of the northwest, gusting to twenty knots, churning the Pacific off the Huntington Beach Pier into a roiling charcoal-colored beast that kept trying to rise up and snatch Del Rio and me.

We hung from linemen’s belts on opposing pylons, twelve feet above the crashing sea and two pylon rows back from the western edge of the pier. Below us, two Sea-Doo water sleds strained and pitched at ropes that moored them to the pylons. The Sea-Doos were the fastest, nimblest sea vessels money could buy. Del Rio had found them at a dealer a few miles from the pier. We’d launched them right at dusk and had been up on the pylons in the deep shadows ever since, wiping the spray from our goggles, peering out toward the electric halos of light shining down from the pier. No fishing lines dropped to the sea. The weather was just too rough.

We counted down the minutes listening to the minimal chatter on the channel used by the law enforcement lurking at the perimeters of the operation. Two sheriff’s helicopters were bucking the wind, moving in arcs two miles offshore, running with no lights, ready to respond. Two police helicopters were cruising at high altitude two miles inland.

Three high-speed boats, two from the sheriff’s detail at Marina Del Rey and one from the county’s Baywatch lifeguard unit, lurched in the swells about a mile out, ready to intercept any vessel trying to head to sea or run the coast.

“Chief’s on his way,” the Kid said in my earpiece. He was posted on the roof of a building across Highway 1 from the pier entrance.

“Nothing within five hundred yards,” said Bud Rankin, who was up on top of Ruby’s Diner, using an infrared scope to scan the surroundings.

My right leg was starting to cramp when I heard the chief say, “Almost to the diner.”

In my mind I could see Fescoe, head down into the wind, walking toward Rankin and Ruby’s Diner carrying two black dry bags, one on each shoulder.

COBB WORE A
convincing fake beard, dark this time, to hide his scars. With the hood of his green rain jacket up, he left a pizza joint a mile north of the Huntington Beach Pier. For a moment he was back in those desert mountains hearing the children and women cry, hearing their husbands begging for mercy when pity was long dead and gone. What had they wanted from him? What had they expected?

They expected
us
to die
, Cobb thought coldly.
They all expected us to die and crumble to dust
.

That thought turned to blazing anger.
They abandoned us. They tried to bury us. Well, guess what, we’re not dead, and we’re taking what we’re due
.

In a blind rage now, he punched in a number on a throwaway cell phone, said, “You ready, Mr. Stern?”

“We’re going to rip this,” Stern promised.

“We’re counting on it,” Cobb said. “And tell Mr. Allen, go big or go home. We’ll find someone else.”

Stern’s voice cooled. “You just make sure you hit the record button.”

“Oh, we will,” Cobb assured him. “Twenty-five seconds.”

“Synced, ready to launch.”

Cobb hung up, checked the time. It was eight fifty-eight.

He punched in a second number, poised his thumb above
SEND
.

We go big here
, he thought.
Or we all go home the hardest way possible
.

“CHIEF’S BY ME
, moving along the rail north side of Ruby’s,” said Bud Rankin in the earbud tucked beneath the hood of my wet suit. “It is eight fifty-nine and forty seconds. He’s preparing to drop.”

I said nothing, just swept my attention out and along the perimeter of that electric halo of light, looking for an intruder.

“Bags are gone,” Rankin said.

I saw the bags fall. I saw them hit the churning water forty yards in front of me. The dry bags slapped and spun on the writhing ocean surface. My attention darted away, back along that perimeter of light.

“Anything, Chief?” I asked. Fescoe was supposed to remain on the rail, advise us of any effort to retrieve the dry bags from below the surface.

That was going to be difficult in the extreme in any case. Inside the bags, Sci had placed two small pressurized CO2 tanks hitched to a switch activated by a pressure gauge. Deeper than six feet and the tanks would expel their charges, inflate the bags, and drag anyone holding them to the surface. If the pressure-gauge trigger failed, Sci could activate the tanks by radio.

Fescoe cleared his throat, said, “Not a goddamned—”

The explosion came without warning, a brilliant flash, crack, and roar that threw a ballooning plume of flame that witnesses later described as flat blue with a central core that burned as bright as mercury.

Del Rio was on the pylon almost directly below the explosion.

For a split instant I saw my friend backlit, jerked, and bent backward against the waistband of his lineman’s belt before the force of the blast struck and body-slammed me. The hit tore my feet from the pylon, caused my rope to lose purchase. I was aware of falling.

IN RETROSPECT
, I was lucky to have dropped off the pylon and plunged into the Pacific. The cold water stung my face while currents and eddies swung me at the length of the lineman’s rope. I fought to free myself, unclipped the carabiner that held the rope to the belt, kicked toward the surface.

The pier lights were still on. Dark smoke boiled thick in the air to the south, billowing out toward the darkness. Police sirens were gathering from multiple directions. There was enough light for me to see Del Rio hanging from his belt twelve feet up the scorched pylon.

“Rick!” I shouted.

Del Rio rolled his head toward me. “Burned, Jack,” he grunted through the earbud. “Back’s broken, I think. Can’t move my—”

“Don’t move anything!” I screamed. “Don’t move at all!”