One of the Wicked: A Mick Callahan Novel (19 page)

"Take your time. Anything will help."

"Out of curiosity, do I want to know why you're here, Mr. Mick?"

"No, you probably don't."

"I get that." She shrugged, still grinning. "That's why I'm not asking. And I never saw those pictures, you never asked me shit except for my home phone number, are we going to be square on that?"

"I promise."

"In a couple of minutes we'll have the part where I'm supposed to get up and walk away to try and get some more money out of you. You don't want to go for that, just looked pissed."

"This is what we get for fifty bucks? It should be easy to look pissed. But I have one more question to ask you, Tiffany."

She eased her chair back, held up her breasts with both hands. I felt like a physician looking for cysts. "Shoot."

"Somebody scratched out three letters of the club's name and left just ET. Would those initials mean anything to you?"

People try to hide things from each other all the time. Most aren't very good at it, once you know what to look for. The initials decked her. Her pupils contracted and all the color left her face. "Not really, no."

"That's the first time you've lied to me tonight, Tiffany."

"So sue me."

"Who is it? What is it? Hell, just tell me if this ET thing means a place or a somebody."

She licked her lips, dropped her breasts. The lack of bounce told me they were as fake as her smile. "Look, it's a somebody, and he's trouble."

The smile vanished. Tiffany got to her feet. "And you didn't hear that from me. Now I got to go, and don't follow."

"Christ!" I looked pissed and raised my voice. "That's all I get for fifty bucks? What a rip off."

Tiffany walked away, swinging her hips, and slowly flipped me the bird. I made a show of downing the rest of the watery cola and got to my feet. I scowled like a man about to make a scene and took two steps forward. The huge Hispanic stoner arrived at my right elbow at exactly the same time.

"What up? You have a good time here tonight, right,
ese?
"

Close in, I was looking down at him, but the bouncer was so damned wide my height wasn't much of an advantage. Besides, I had to stay out of trouble. "Fifty bucks for some skin and a bad drink?"

He smiled. One tooth was gold. "It's only twenty-five a titty, bro. That's fair enough, you think about it. The girl's got to make a living."

My elbow felt like it was in a steel vise. I looked down at where he gripped me. It hurt. My blood rose. My nerves were blown. I resented being handled and wanted to blow off steam. The anger felt good. My vision turned black and then tinged with red. The guy came into incredible focus.

The bouncer sensed something and shifted his weight. Seeing that, another large guy detached from the crowd at the bar and headed our way. I reminded myself that if I made a scene and lost the fight, someone might get their hands on the photos in my back pocket. I was beyond caring about myself, but knew that Tiffany could end up in serious trouble. I let myself go loose again.

"Peace," I said. "I'm out of here, okay?"

That gold tooth. "That's right, you are out of here. And next time don't get so jacked up before you come in. Take it easy. It's only money."

"Yeah, my money."

"You got to learn to kick it. This ain't the real world, bro. It's playtime."

About then, the second bouncer arrived. He was a real gym rat, juiced and oiled up, and probably a hundred percent bluff. I let him believe that he'd intimidated me, walked up the steps and left the club without a fuss. I even tipped the kid when he brought my car. ET was a man. And at least now I had some idea of what to do next.

"That's not much to go on." Jerry was being a bit melodramatic, probably to impress Dave Lopez. We all knew he'd come through with something about ET. He rubbed his burn scar with two fingers. The baseball cap had reappeared and was sitting sideways on his buzz-cut head.

"Jerry, we have the utmost confidence in you," Hal said, without a hint of condescension. He leaned closer to the camera. "Mick, speaking for myself, I am eager to hear more about this Mary Kate person. Will you promise to call me in the morning with more information?"

"There's not much more to tell, Hal," I said. "At least not yet. I'm hoping we can become friends."

I'd mentioned my sister to Hal, but hadn't said a word to anyone else. I don't know why exactly. Guess I was reluctant to talk about it until I'd processed it further. Anyway, Jerry and Lopez were both still in the dark. They exchanged puzzled glances. Hal picked up the slack, returned to business.

"Mr. Lopez, can we go back to the disappearance of Ms. DeLillo for just a moment?"

Dave Lopez shifted his weight in the chair, yawned and rubbed reddening eyes. "Sure, I guess."

"When did you notify the police?"

"I called SMPD maybe ten minutes after it happened, almost as soon as I was out of the area."

"And what exactly did you say?"

"I changed my voice a bit and made an anonymous report about a young woman being abducted from the parking garage by two or more men. I gave them what I could remember of the make and model of the car and the license number and got off the line. The whole thing took maybe twenty seconds."

"Smart move," I said. "That allows us to play it both ways. The cops are working on it, too, but without knowing we're involved."

"I'm running a program designed to locate a car by a partial license number," Jerry said, "but I don't think we got enough to make an exact match. The cops probably won't be able to do that, either. We'll narrow it down as far as possible and then make the rounds, I guess."

Hal said, "Detective Lopez, have you ever been hypnotized?"

"Tried once," Lopez replied. "They said I was too neurotic, or something. I wouldn't go under properly."

"Pity. We might have gotten you to remember something you missed."

"I doubt that," Lopez said. He seemed uncomfortable, off balance. "There wasn't much to miss."

"That's what's bothering me," I said. "Everything sounds so well organized, so smooth. Not that I'm an expert on this stuff, but from what I've heard you wouldn't figure mob guys for that kind of snatch in broad daylight."

"I'll bite," Jerry said. "Who
would
you figure, then?"

I shook my head. "Beats the hell out of me."

The doorbell rang. We all knew who it would be, but that didn't stop my heart from fluttering. I resisted an urge to scurry around the living room to straighten things up. Again. Jerry beat me to the door, opened it, and there she was. Darlene wore torn shorts and a tee shirt and still managed to look wonderful.

"Sorry I'm late," she said. "Did I miss anything?"

"I was just asking Mick who he figured took the girl, if it wasn't the mob."

Darlene kissed my cheek. "And?"

I didn't answer, took her hands. "Thank you for coming."

"In for a penny, in for a pound. I can't let you clowns go off by yourselves. You'd go down in flames without me."

"Good evening, Miss Hernandez," Hal said. "It's nice to see you again. Well, in a manner of speaking."

I moved away from the computer so everyone could see Hal's face, and the camera could catch us all. Lopez, Jerry, and Darlene sat and leaned forward.

"Let's get started." I parked on the edge of the desk and crossed my arms. "First, I want to go over everything we know, start from the very top, and I do mean everything."

"Good," Jerry said. "This one is getting pretty confusing."

"Okay, first Bud Stone contacts me about looking after his old mistress. He's borrowed money from Pesci to finance a drug deal for two guys named Faber and Toole. As of now, it looks like they probably scammed him, because they've vanished with both the money and the drugs. Jerry?"

"Not a sign of them, Mick. Well, except for that one Range Rover rental from Enterprise. No other credit card runs, parking tickets, personal sightings, E-mails, large cash purchases; nothing. Either they're damned smart or they're out of the country entirely and using different names. Otherwise I'd have turned up something new for us to go on."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, Mr. Solomon," Jerry continued, "they have a lot of cash, of course, but you'd be surprised how tough it is to move around without leaving a trail of any kind. Now, that black Range Rover was returned in Vegas, then rented for a second time and brought back here to LA. It's got to be somewhere. That's the angle I've got my computer working on, anyway."

"Good. Stay on it." I paced a bit. "All right, so next, I get bonked on the head by two men. These are guys Bone and I had a run-in with. They turn out to be working for Pesci and some thug named Nikolaou Argetoianu, also known as Little Nicky. He's from Eastern Europe and appears connected to the sleazy side of international banking."

"My contacts say he's representing a consortium of new money from oligarches and eastern European crime syndicates," Hal said. "He may just be high-class muscle, but he's certainly no fool."

I leaned back on the computer desk. "These guys want me to help them out. They say Bud has stumbled into something bigger than he realizes. If he does locate Faber, Toole, and those stolen goods, Bone may also find himself in possession of a mysterious computer disc. Pesci and Nicky make it clear that what's on that disc could get us all killed. I say 'us,' because they've researched me well enough to know who my friends are, and motivate me by threatening your collective welfare."

"Delightful." Hal smiled thinly. "Oh, did I remember to thank you for dragging me into this one?"

"Me, I'm just sitting here steaming," Darlene said. "It frosts my brown ass to hear that and not be able to do anything about it."

"We are going to do something about it," I said. "I'm just not sure what, yet. Anyway, Bud Stone goes looking for another source of cash. Darlene, since you're up anyway?"

"Okay." Darlene crossed her long legs in those tight shorts and severely impaired my breathing. "It seems Stone rips off a serious badass drug dealer named Gordo, leaves him alive, but apparently gets set up for a murder charge. Turns out the place is littered with prints belonging to Faber and Toole. Now APBs go out. LAPD also finds the prints of one other 'as of yet unidentified' male."

I said, "So anyone want to guess who that will turn out to be? I'm betting the setup will end up going one step further."

"Well, we can't know that for certain yet." Hal shuffled some papers. "Damn it, I had something here about this Nicky fellow, but now I can't find it, due to an influx of senior moments."

"Believe me, it'll probably be Bud Stone's prints," I said, "even though he most likely wore gloves. Someone wants to place him at the scene."

Hal frowned. "Can you really be so sure he didn't kill this Gordo fellow?"

"Maybe, but I agree with Mick," Darlene said. "This Bud
hombre
seems to be one of the good guys. Whoever is pulling the strings here is very organized and efficient. I say we go on the assumption that the computer will eventually spit out a match for Mr. Stone's military prints."

"Trust me, Hal," I said. "They're going to set him up."

"To pressure him," Lopez offered.

"Hell, this is to tighten the screws on everyone," Darlene said. "Looks like they want that property back. Anyone smart enough to do all of this could easily lift some items Mr. Stone had handled and leave them behind for CSI."

"The question is, why drag a celebrity like Mick into this?" Hal asked. "Wouldn't that complicate things? Why don't they just go after the disc on their own?"

Jerry said, "They probably started improvising after the fight with Mick. They saw him with Mr. Stone and decided to use him to pressure the guy. As Darlene said, it seems to me everything that's going on is designed to turn up the heat."

I shook my head. "I still don't get why they don't just do it themselves. It seems way too complicated to drag so many people into the situation. We must be missing something."

Hal sighed. "Sometimes the simple answer is the right one."

Jerry played with the bill of his baseball cap. "If Bud goes down or gets killed, there's nothing to trace this situation back to them. Maybe they don't want a trail. So they use Bud to go after the disc, and use Mick to pressure Bud. Meanwhile, they have some distance from it all, and some plausible deniability."

"We need to figure out what they're so afraid of," I said. "Then we'll be able to understand the rest of the picture."

"I'll tell you one thing," Lopez said. "This disc must be worth a fortune to somebody."

Hal cleared his throat. "If the disc even exists."

Darlene blinked. "Explain."

"Well, it is also possible to look at this as a setup in another way. Mick, you told us that this cowboy character and his partner ambushed Mr. Stone and yourself at the strip bar. That means they were already looking for him. Perhaps Mr. Stone is just a pawn, dragged into it by the very people who are now demanding that he solve their little problem. The question is why."

Jerry was scratching his scar. "Yeah, why would they go to so much trouble? Wind him up, set him up, and then turn him loose?"

"Hal's saying it's a possibility that Bud has been worked by them from the very start," I said. "Perhaps they're setting him up to take the fall for something far bigger than a little drug deal gone bad, or even the murder. As you said before, this way nothing traces back to them."

Jerry seemed dazed. "What's bigger than murder?"

Hal sighed. "Perhaps the corruption that goes on between governments."

"Or look at it this way, Jerry," I said. "What if they already have the damned disc, and have had it in their possession all along?"