The Devil's Necktie (19 page)

“They're layin' out Ricky on Sunday. Should I make an appearance, you think?” Hector asked Mando, deferentially.

“No, man, didn't you ever see
The Godfather, ese
? Marlon Brando at the wedding, man? There were feds crawling up their asses taking pictures of all the gangsters' cars. Nobody knows you exist. That's some scary shit we've got goin' on. Understand?”

“Yeah, I do,” Hector said and liked the concept.

Welding sparks fountained like a supernova in the distance as the men reached the service bay and stared with admiration.

The bus that had been used to transport the hip-hop group Gold Nickel, and the drugs from Miami, was elevated onto one of the lifts near the front of the shop. Large metal panels on either side of the exhaust system had been removed, and men were strapping the rucksacks of cash already weighed and installing them like insulation. One side of the bus was fully packed.

All eyes in the shop turned to Arturo Delgado, who gave a slight nod of approval.

The team of men wearing protective headgear stepped back under the bus, sparks flying as they seamlessly welded the metal panel back into place.

Whatever else was happening, Johnny thought, business was expanding. He'd have a big payday. And then his gaze drifted to the dead eyes of his partner and he decided then and there that he was not going to follow Hector into hell.

35

Jack felt like he had squeezed two days into one as he merged from the I-10 onto the San Diego Freeway. The rain had stopped, and he was only fifteen minutes from home. He was still wet to the core and looking forward to a hot shower and bed. He thought about giving Leslie Sager a call, but if he remembered correctly, they had agreed to talk on Friday for a Saturday-night date. He could sorely use the company of a woman, though, just to change his mental state if for nothing else.

Being married had its advantages. When his marriage was good, it was very good, and Jeannine had a way of bringing Jack out of his immersion in a case. She helped him compartmentalize so he could enjoy some semblance of a home life.

Sometimes just the scent of a woman could do the trick. Oh yeah, Jack Bertolino was definitely ready for a date.

Jack pulled his Mustang into the driveway of his building, hit the remote, and drove through as the gate swung open. He parked, reached over to close his laptop, and stopped. He decided, on second thought, that he should check out Cruz's handiwork.

Jack clicked the loft icon on his desktop, and when the picture pixelized and became clear, Jack felt a pounding erupt in his temples and the pit of his stomach drop. Someone in a dark hoodie was in his loft, walking past the first hidden surveillance camera toward the bedroom area.

Jack jumped out of the car, pulled his Glock out of his shoulder holster, and ran for the door. He banged into the building, keyed the stairwell door, and started running up the flights of stairs.

When he got to the fourth floor, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He loaded his nine millimeter and silently slipped out of the stairwell, being careful not to let the heavy door slam shut behind him.

Jack crept along the open walkway and saw that the blinds were still drawn in his unit. He was mindful of shadows as he crouched down and moved past his front window.

Jack did a silent three count to still his breathing. His hand depressed the door handle, and he pushed the metal door open.

He followed his gun in and found the front of his loft empty. He eased the door closed behind him and took a few silent steps deeper inside. He stopped, froze in place, and tried to listen for movement over the pounding in his ears.

His eyes scanned the loft, and he caught a reflection in the glass windows in the rear of the loft.

The intruder was exiting the bathroom.

Jack took three rapid steps forward. Gun raised. Finger on the hairpin trigger.

“Down on the floor!” he roared. As he cleared the edge of the wall, his gun was trained on the intruder's heart.

“What the hell!”

Chris screamed and dropped to his knees. The color drained from his face.

“Chris!” Jack shouted as he lowered his weapon. He slid it back into his shoulder holster, wanting to hide it. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Dad, are you out of your effing mind?”

Jack hurried to his son and wrapped his arms around him. Chris was clearly in shock and Jack all but lifted him onto the edge of his bed.

“I am so sorry, so sorry. This is really, really not a good time.”

“Why couldn't you just tell me that, like a normal person? Words would have worked a hell of a lot better than a gun.”

“All I could see on the surveillance video was a man in a hoodie.” Jack sighed. “I had the camera installed after the break-in. I should have given you a heads-up.”

His son was becoming outraged. “You shoulda given me something . . . instead of a heart attack!”

“What the hell are you doing walking around in a hoodie?” Jack yelled back.

“What are you, the fashion police? Christ, Dad, you scared the shit out of me!” Chris shouted.

The emotional intensity behind his words slowed them both down a click.

“Back at you, Son,” Jack said, almost panting now, trying to keep his eyes from tearing up.

“Don't ‘Son' me,” Chris said, still angry at being frightened. “I'm trading you in for a better effing model.”

“I wouldn't blame you, I really wouldn't blame you.”

They sat still, side by side on the bed, the only sound the muted traffic passing on Glencoe.

“You want a beer?”

Jack didn't wait for an answer. He needed one. Rising from the bed and moving to the kitchen, he slid the leather holster off his shoulder and firmly stowed the entire rig in a drawer.

He pulled two Pacificos that Tommy had left behind out of the fridge. He had to fight to stop his hands from shaking as he popped the tops and handed one to his son.

Jack would have eaten the barrel of his own gun if he had shot his son. His life would not have been worth living.

He sat back down on the edge of his bed and draped an arm around Chris's shoulder and pulled him close. They sat there in silence until their world stopped spinning.

—

Hector turned the key and stepped into the dark house. He closed the door behind him, walked through the kitchen, and silently pushed open his mother's bedroom door.

The fragile woman was propped up in bed, eyes wide open, unwavering, with a shotgun across her lap, pointed directly at Hector's face. A grouping of glass-enclosed holy candles provided the only illumination. The room was a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

“What did you say, Mom? To the man who stopped by,” Hector asked in a whisper.

“Hector no lives here.”

Hector had his answer. He nodded his head, satisfied, and put a large roll of twenties onto his mother's scarred wooden bureau, next to one of the many porcelain religious objects.

He looked back at his mother, his face carved of stone, and closed the door behind him.

“Hector no lives here,” she said to herself. Or to the Virgin Mary.

—

At two thirty
A.M
., Felix, the owner of the Black Stallion Inn, exited his establishment followed by Angelina, who tended bar, and Izel, who worked as the waitress-barback. Felix, who owned the entire strip mall, was an original 18th Street Angel.

With the help of David Reyes he had turned the bar, the Laundromat, the
panaderia,
and the wedding store—which had displayed the same wedding dresses since the late '80s—into a successful money-laundering operation. He took 7 percent off the top of any transaction, and he was getting fat without too much stress.

While Izel lit a cigarette, Felix used three different keys in three different locks and checked twice to make sure the red wooden door was securely fastened. It paid to be careful, and that was good for the gang.

As soon as he was satisfied, a black Town Car appeared as if on cue and drove Felix off into the night.

Angelina exchanged a few last words with Izel, who painted a new layer of red onto her lips before she headed to her Toyota Corolla. She spotted Johnny and threw him a wave and a you-fucked-up-good look before getting into her car and driving off.

Angelina pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a Bic lighter. Then she walked slowly toward Johnny's 2011 silver Toyota Prius parked at the far end of the lot.

Johnny was also careful. He knew that driving the boring car would escape the eye of local law enforcement.

He leaned across the console and opened the passenger-side door. “Get in, Angelina,” he said with a mixture of bravado and tenderness.

She stood in place as if still trying to make up her mind. Johnny didn't push. They were both bad actors who had played this scene before, too many times to count.

She handed the lit cigarette to Johnny, who took a long drag, and she slid into the seat and closed the door.

Gato Barbieri was playing on Johnny's iPod because it always made Angelina pliant and wet.

Johnny pulled out of the lot and headed up into the hills instead of home. It was where the fiery couple would usually go to talk, make up, and make out. She pulled out a Baggie of high-grade marijuana and rolled a perfect joint. Angelina was good with her hands. Just the thought of her touch could get Johnny hard.

He threw out the cigarette, and she moved in with the joint. She put the lit end into her mouth and blew out a stream of smoke that filled Johnny's lungs and gave him an instant high.

They drove in silence, anticipating the sexual release to come.

—

It was too late to be up and still too early for Jack to sleep. He would suffer in the morning, but adrenaline was the only clock his body was listening to. He'd set Chris up on the pullout couch in the office and moved his laptop computer over to the kitchen island.

The first thing he did was download the recent phone calls made on Raymond Higueras's phone. Then he downloaded all received calls and the address book. The last download was all of the pictures.

One phone number had gotten the most play in the previous week, and when Jack looked it up on the national phone database, it was assigned to Royce Motors—more specifically, to the general manager, Roman Ortiz. A call was placed before and directly after the gang tried to run Jack and Tommy off the road.

As he scrolled through the pictures, he stopped on a series of eight pictures of Jack walking up the block for coffee the day after Mia was killed.

The photos brought the pain flooding back. And anger to the surface.

Pictures of him pulling out of the driveway in the Mustang and pictures of him returning home.

That was enough. Jack pulled out a yellow pad, and in longhand he laid out the case and everything he knew up to this point. All the pieces were still rough, but certain elements were coming together.

Delgado, Alvarez, the Mexican Mafia, the 18th Street Angels, Royce Motors, Dominican coke, the way the drugs came into the country, how they were distributed, and how the investigation should move forward.

The ringleader, the puppet master, was Arturo Delgado. Jack felt it in his gut. The operation had his stink all over it.

Delgado provided the drugs and Alvarez was the conduit. Colombia was supplying Alvarez because he hadn't named names. He was paying protection money to the Mexican Mafia, and with their connections to the 18th Street Angels, that was how the deal was struck.

With all of the turmoil between Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel at the U.S.-Mexican border—and with the stepped-up law enforcement—it was a perfect time for Delgado to infiltrate the southwest territory from the East Coast, rebuild his reputation, and build up the Angels' power base.

Alvarez had a reason to kill Mia and twenty-five years' worth of reasons to go after Jack Bertolino.

Mia had either been followed into Los Angeles from Canada, or gotten caught in the web because Jack was under Delgado's microscope. A crime of opportunity.

Royce Motors seemed to be the nexus of the action, with Roman acting as facilitator.

Jack wanted to find out when the next Outlaws Inc. group was traveling to Miami. He'd bet the house that the bus would return to L.A. with another load of cocaine.

With Roman's connection to the transportation and one of the security men the brother of an 18th Street Angel, the musical groups using the buses might be totally unaware of the scam, unaware that they were being used. But ripe for the fall if anything went wrong.

Jack googled the Mansion, the club in Miami where Gold Nickel had its booking, and checked their upcoming schedule of performers.

Then he pulled up the Outlaws Inc. Web site, clicked on their talent page, and compared lists.

Ricci Jay and Wisteria, a progressive hip-hop, jazz-fusion group, and one of the Outlaws' up-and-comers, was scheduled to play the following weekend. The concert was already sold out.

He still wanted someone to look at the books of Travel Associates. It had the feel of a money-laundering operation, and he wouldn't be surprised if it was a dummy corporation tied to the Angels. And with Roman the general manager at Royce Motors, it was a good fit. It would be easy to pad salaries, fake work orders that were requisitioned but never completed, and also pad the bottom line for new buses sold.

Jack was dead sure of one thing. He would have to get Chris to hit the road until things calmed down. This was the wrong time for his son to be visiting.

He copied Kenny Ortega and Nick Aprea on all of the data and turned off his computer. But he couldn't turn off his brain. He had kept the new information about Hector to himself.

Any way you cut it, with three bodies and a similar MO, he was dealing with a serial killer. Jack wasn't kidding himself. If it was Hector, he wanted the first shot at the man.

—

The windows of the Prius were just starting to defog. The view was framed in the remaining condensation. The sky was star filled, the streetlights on the valley floor sparkled, and the dark blue sky was edged in a faint salmon pink.

Johnny and Angelina were sitting in the back of the Prius with the front seats moved all the way forward. Johnny's tattooed chest glistened with sweat, and Angelina's pierced nipples were rock hard from the cold mountain air.

No one in the car was feeling any pain.

“I don't like it, you know, when we fight,” Johnny said.

“You don't fight,” she said breathily. “You gore. You're my bull, Johnny.”

Better than being called a
maricón,
Johnny thought, but remained silent.

“How's Felix?” he asked instead.

She threw him a look. “Getting rich while my arches drop. That guy won't let me wear flats cause he likes to see my ass in high heals.”

“Can hardly blame him. As long as all the old man does is look.”

Angelina didn't like that response.

“That's all he does, right? Look?” Johnny asked with attitude.

She just smiled and leaned over and bit Johnny's nipple a little too hard. He resisted the urge to slap her and pretended it didn't hurt. Angelina knew better.

“I'm a one-man girl. Don't trouble yourself.”

Angelina put her tongue in his mouth and gently worked the bulge in his pants. Then she put her mouth up to his ear.