Runaway Heart (43 page)

     
Valdez told the commando what he wanted: "We'll need to give
Wirta a few tabs of Special K. Use the new designer stuff, the Ketamine-twelve,
and round up a few unimpeachable witnesses. Get this done quickly. I need it
set up in less than an hour."

     
"Yes sir."

     
Valdez hung up the phone. Anger swirled inside of him, filling him
with poison. Valdez, a man who exhibited no emotion, was now seething. He knew
that uncontrolled anger was dangerous . . . angry people made mistakes.

 
    
But no matter how hard he tried he was
furious. For the first time in his life Vincent Valdez was dangerously out of
control.

S
hane Scully made five calls and got five
volunteers, all cops who had worked with Jack Wirta. They started streaming
into the Hollywood station an hour later. Most were carrying ordnance-laden gym
bags that tented suspiciously. Even Jack's old boss, Lieutenant Matthews,
showed up. Shane's wife, Alexa, had arranged for them to use the department's
large Bell Jet Air Unit.

     
At a little past ten, the gray and black six-passenger chopper
landed on the roof of the station house, settling down on the helipad like a
giant, nesting insect. The squad of volunteers who were waiting with Shane
climbed aboard, leaving Herm and Susan standing on the roof.

     
"I'll call once I get my hands on him," Shane yelled
from the helicopter over the rotor noise. "Alexa's on her way over to give
you a lift."

     
"Thank you," Susan shouted back.

     
Shane nodded and waved, then the helicopter engine roared as the
blades picked up rpms. The big chopper lifted off and flew into the night sky.

     
Alexa Scully arrived ten minutes later. She pulled up to where
Herman and Susan were now waiting by the back station entrance, reached over
and unlocked the rear door of her black-and-white D-car, then shoved it open.

     
"I'm Alexa. You guys look like you need a ride," the
surprisingly beautiful black haired woman announced.

     
Herman and Susan introduced themselves, then got in the back seat
of the car. They ducked down out of sight as Shane's wife pulled out of the
Hollywood station parking
lot and drove past the unmarked government sedan.

     
"Four guys in a gray Lexus," Alexa reported as she left
the DARPA vehicle behind. "They're doing lot of hand-wringing. Got some
confusion going on there."

     
After they were a mile away Susan and Herman sat up.

     
"You and Shane have been unbelievable," Susan said.
"Without you, I don't know what we would have done."

     
"Jack's our friend. Of course we'd help."

     
Alexa drove them to the Van Nuys Airport and dropped them at the
Peterson Executive Jet Terminal. After saying good-bye she waved and drove off.

Susan sat in the Jet Terminal thinking
about Jack, who had somehow managed to slip by her emotional defenses and had
been silently rearranging the furniture in the private, ruminative part of her
head. Worse still, he was nothing like what she had been looking for. His list
of superficial negatives seemed mind-boggling. He was a broken warrior who
ignored, or seemed to laugh at, most of her important beliefs. He didn't belong
in her temple of dreams, yet there he was dripping sarcasm and disrespect all
over her carefully constructed value system. To her amazement, he seemed a perfect
fit. Now he had been kidnapped, possibly was in mortal danger, and she couldn't
get her mind to stop spinning or her heart to stop pounding. Her father had
once told her that when you worry, you define your weakness, and when you dream
you define your goals. She wondered how these feelings defined her.

     
Susan had a strange sense of impending disaster. She had been
pushed into an unfamiliar role, not knowing if she would be able to hold up her
end. She felt tiny and overwhelmed.

     
At a little past 10:30 a private jet landed; a green-and-white,
forty-million-dollar Global Explorer. The main door hissed down and Donald
Trump was standing in the threshold dressed in a perfect New York ensemble—a
black three-piece suit, yellow silk tie and matching pocket square. His blonde
comb-over flapped slightly in the light L.A.
breeze. He came down the steps and across the tarmac toward
them, smiling as he approached.

     
"Herman! You've gained weight since you stopped suing me. You
need better adversaries." Trump was referring to a suit Herman filed
against his casino division a year earlier, when they had tried to build a
hotel in Tahoe, cutting down trees and adversely impacting the environmental
resources of that small community. In the end Herman and Donald had compromised
and found to their amazement that they liked one another.

     
Herman smiled. "Thanks for coming, Donald. I'm kind of in a
crack here. You're the only person I know who can dig me out."

     
"Hey, this could be great for me. Are these guys ready to
meet?"

     
Herman said, "They're gathered and waiting."

     
"Then let's go," The Donald said, smiling while his blue
eyes danced with excitement.

When Susan and Herman escorted Donald
Trump into Chief Ibanazi's den, the room was at standing-room-only. Thirty
members of the tribe were present. It may have been billed as a tribal lodge
meeting, but Chief Ibanazi was looking very record-industry chic in Gucci and
Rive Gauche. He couldn't believe that Donald Trump was standing in his temple
of creativity—the very room where he laid down his grooves and slammed on the
Yamaha Sound Machine.

     
"My God, it's you," he started off, shaking Trump's
hand. "It's really you."

     
"Yep. Me," Donald said.

     
"I mean, you're Donald Trump."

    
 
"Yep, sure
am. No doubt in my mind," he chuckled.

     
"I mean, "The Donald' is in my house. Amazing. . . I
can't believe you're really here."

     
"Yep . . . in the flesh. It's me."

     
It went on like that for two or three more rounds, until Herman stepped
in and broke it up.

     
"I'm Herman Strockmire," he said to Russell Ibanazi and
the rest of the
people in the room. "I'm the one who called you six hours ago. I think you
know my daughter Susan."

     
"You mean, Lois," Russell corrected, smiling at her.
"How's Clark? Did Mimi like the background stuff we did?"

     
"Uh. . ." She shot a look at Herman, whose eyebrows had
climbed up somewhere in the middle of his forehead.

     
Susan stammered: "Uh, Izzy, I'm afraid that wasn't exactly
all true, what we told you about
213 Magazine .
 
.
."

     
"What part of it wasn't true?" His handsome face
wrinkled in distress.

     
"Well, more or less . . . all of it."

     
"Clark doesn't want to do the 'L.A. Sound' cover story?"

     
"Well, he would if he could, but since there
is
no
Clark Lane, and no 'L.A. Sound' cover, and since we're not with the magazine at
all. . . I don't think you should count on it."

     
"Not with the magazine?" Distress morphed into
depression.

     
"No. We were just trying to find out more about the
reservation and what was going on out there. It's why Mr. Trump is here
now."

     
Russell Ibanazi looked at Donald, then at Herman.

     
"Okay," he said. "Then what's going on?"

     
Donald stepped forward, dropping his cashmere overcoat over the
back of a large club chair. He looked at the faces of the rest of the Ten-Eyck
tribe that included men and women of all ages, as well as half a dozen
teenagers and a few children. They were handsome, black-eyed people, all
dressed in the best Rodeo Drive had to offer.

     
"As you undoubtedly know," Donald began, "I'm
involved in some big casino developments in Atlantic City and elsewhere . .
."

     
"Yes, of course we've heard," Russell Ibanazi said,
leaning forward respectfully.

    
 
"I
understand from Herman that you've voted in a government administrator to run
your reservation and that he
now has total control," Tramp went on. "Is that pretty
much the gist?"

     
"Yes, sir, that's exactly the situation. Correct."
Russell was measured and precise—no more show-biz buzzwords. He was back to
being tribal chief.

     
"I also understand that the government pays you around forty
million a year for the use of your seventeen-hundred-acre reservation east of
Indio."

     
Russell Ibanazi looked at Susan, then nodded. "It nets out at
a little over two thousand dollars an acre a month."

     
"I hate to be blunt," Donald said. "But you're
being screwed. Who negotiated that deal?"

     
"We . . . well, I set it up, and the entire tribe approved it
at council." Concern shadowed his features.

     
"Since California passed the Native American Casino Gaming
Bill, I'm sure you're aware that your reservation can now host a full-service
gambling casino. That reservation is a tremendously valuable asset. Seventeen
hundred acres could be worth a fortune if developed correctly. However, it
can't be done if the government is fouling the land, dumping toxic waste into
illegal ground fills." Trump had them all listening intently.

     
"There can't be much waste yet, Donald, it's only been
eighteen months," Herman said quickly.

     
"Look, I can most likely deal with the toxic waste issues. I
can probably force the government to clean it up at their expense or face a
shit-storm of negative publicity. What I can't deal with is this non-Indian
administrator hired by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,"
Donald said. "He will block any attempt of mine to redefine land
usage."

     
"Don't worry about him. We can vote him out anytime we
want," Izzy said. "We could even have an election tonight and
reinstate me as administrator. It's in the Tribal Charter."

     
The rest of the men and women in the room nodded and mumbled their
assent.

     
"But the res is way the hell and gone, out in the desert
twenty miles
east of Indio, almost at the Mexican border. The choice reservation properties
for casinos are the ones in and around Palm Springs. Why would you want to
build a casino way out there?" Izzy said, trying not to look stupid for
recommending the DARPA deal in the first place.

     
Trump didn't seem worried. "I'm not concerned about its
remote location. That's one of the reasons I'm gonna get it for a good price,
but I'll offer you a great percentage of my back-end profits in return. Even at
my up-front lease rate, you're going to do three times better than the
government is paying now."

     
The room murmured with excitement.

     
"The second reason it doesn't matter," Donald continued,
"is that we will make this casino absolutely magnificent. There will be
pools and fountains, solariums and traveling walkways, trams and amusement
parks. Seventeen hundred acres of holiday fun with an airport to service it. It
doesn't matter if it's twenty miles east of Indio on the Mexican border or
twenty miles east of Egypt." Then he smiled, his white teeth and blue eyes
glistened. "Because, in the words of my favorite actor, Kevin Costner: 'If
we build it, they will come.' "

N
ow this is more
like it.
Jack was grinning. He felt
better than a troop of traveling clowns, more lit up than a
Macy's Christmas window.

     
Okay, so maybe this little room is colder than a pimp's heart, but
does that make it a bad place?