The Viking Funeral

Chapter 31

IT WAS ALMOST eight P. M.

Jody told them they wouldn't be needing the blue-and-white motor home, so they spent twenty minutes wiping their prints off every surface, then left it in a pay lot off Ventura Boulevard and walked four blocks to the Sherman Oaks Inn, on Valley Vista. As they climbed the stairs to the second-floor room, Shane could see the orange-and-black Charger in the adjoining lot, parked next to an unmarked blue step van.

The room Jody led them into was several notches up from the one in Sunland. The two-room studio apartment was colorless, decorated in beige and brown. The furniture was new and nobody had left cigarette burns on the wood or vomit stains on the carpet.

They had said very little since the incident in the motor home. Victory Smith had remained silent, his eyes furtive and brooding. But the one time that Shane had locked stares with him, he saw hatred so intense that it froze him momentarily. Jody must have sensed trouble, because he'd kept Victory's Uzi locked in the motor home.

Lester Wood, whom Shane had learned was born in southern Texas and was fluent in Spanish, moved to the phone, took out a slip of paper with a telephone number scribbled on it, and dialed. He spoke quietly in Spanish, then a few moments later hung up. "That was one a'her Spic bodyguards. Juanita's on the way."

"Wait'll you see this bitch, Hot Sauce. Real guapitay but hard as asphalt. The spill on her is, she's already dropped six guys. She's Raphael Bacca's niece."

Jody turned to the other Vikings. "Because Rodriquez is gone, we gotta change the lineup. Inky Dink, you're driving backup. Stay at least two blocks back; use the GPS. Hot Sauce, you're with Tremaine. Victory, you're in the gray van with Sawdust."

"I don't wanna stay with the fucking monitors," Smith growled.

"I don't give a shit what you want, that's the way it's going down."

"What monitors?" Shane asked.

"The white step van parked in the lot down there is the one we're using to pick up the cash. It has three pin-cams mounted on it. Tiny little bastards're about the size of a shirt button. One is on the back of the rearview mirror, shooting out the front window. Gives us a wide shot. One's in the grille, pointing down; one is mounted under the bumper, looking back."

"Why?"

"I wanna know where they keep the cash. Since I'm gonna be a hostage and blindfolded, the cameras will tape the whole deal. Send the pictures to the monitors we got in the gray van."

"Once they give the money to us, what's it matter where they keep it?" Shane asked.

"A guy I know in SIS is gonna get the videotape mailed anonymously. We'll be long gone, but Juanita and her band a scumball ladrones are gonna face an SIS hard takedown. Most greaseballs don't survive those." He smiled at Shane. "I don't want any cholos left behind to point a finger at us, pick us outta some picture lineup."

Tremaine Lane suddenly walked out of the room, and Shane wondered where he was going.

They waited.

The Colombians arrived at a little past eight-thirty. There was a knock on the door, and Victory got up to open it.

"Hola," one of the men outside said softly.

"Yeah, right," Smith growled. "How's yer asshole?" He stepped aside, letting them into the room.

There were two men and a woman, and as Jody had promised, Juanita Bacca was quite a package: shoulder-length, shiny black hair framed a dusky complexion and deep almond eyes. She was wearing a long black skirt wrapped tightly around her slender waist, slit in the middle almost to her crotch.

Jody nodded to her. "Juanita. Como esta?"

She didn't acknowledge him; instead, she rattled some Spanish at the two men standing behind her, who immediately separated and flanked her protectively.

It was then that Shane got his first good look at both bodyguards. The one on the right was going to be big trouble. He was six-foot-two, unusually tall for a Colombian, and had flat, uninteresting features. The tattoos on his neck ran down into his open shirt collar. His name was Octavio Juarez, and Shane had busted him three or four times when he'd been working with the Valley Vice team. As soon as Octavio spotted Shane, he nudged Juanita.

"Ay, cabrdnf Es cuico, " he whispered.

In a second, everyone had a gun out, including Juanita Bacca, who squatted slightly and grabbed between her legs through the folds of her split skirt. A spring-release holster chimed loudly, a chrome-plated.45 caliber Hardballer suddenly appeared in her hand.

They all held position, glaring over gun sights. No one seemed jittery, either… Just another day at the office. Then Tremaine Lane appeared from the corridor behind them and tromboned the slide on his auto-mag. The sound brought the first flicker of fear into the faces of the two black-eyed bodyguards, but they didn't turn or flinch. Only Juanita's and Jody's eyes hadn't changed; both were prepared to go down.

Victory Smith, unarmed, was standing in a crouch, his huge mitts helplessly out in front of him.

Juanita rattled something in Spanish to Octavio.

"Si," he replied. "Esta cerote me puse en el bote.››

"Hey, in English!" Jody demanded.

Shane spoke enough street Spanish to know Octavio had said, "This piece of shit put me in jail." And it was true. Octavio was a good bodyguard but a less-than-gifted street dealer who kept selling drugs to Valley Vice cops throughout the mid-nineties. Shane had roughed him up three times in one eleven-month period. A Valley Division record.

"Tu companero es policia, " Juanita said suspiciously to Jody.

"He says what? A cop? You're nuts!" Jody was stalling.

"Jody, go buy this bitch a newspaper 'cause I'm all over the front page," Shane said.

"That's right," Jody brightened. "Tremaine, we got these greaseballs covered. Go down to the lobby, get the L. A. Times." He motioned at Shane. "He's wanted by the cops for the murder of a police officer. Tell her, Sawdust." Lester Wood rattled the translation at Juanita.

"No… Miguely vete!" Juanita said, motioning to a bodyguard who was holding a Tech 9 on Shane and Jody. She barked something else in Spanish, then Miguel backed out of the room past Tremaine.

"Inky Dink. Go with him!" Tremaine followed. They were all left standing in the room, gripping their iron, hoping nobody would get nervous and squeeze off a round by mistake.

A minute or two later, Miguel reentered the room with a copy of the Los Angeles Times and handed it to Juanita. Tremaine appeared in the threshold behind him.

On the front page, above the fold, was a picture of Shane, along with the story of the murder of Alexa Hamilton. Juanita scanned the paper quickly, looked at the picture, glanced up at Shane, then over at Jody, her beautiful face composed in a silent question.

"He's not a cop anymore," Jody explained. "Jamas policia. He's wanted for murder… He's with us now." He looked at Sawdust helplessly. "Is she getting any of this?"

Lester Wood rattled off a long sentence. Then all of them seemed to be talking at once. Finally Juanita lowered her Hardballer, and the others followed suit.

"Tienes los numeros? Te los did mi tio?" she asked.

Shane knew about "los numeros" from other drug stings he'd worked. She was asking Jody for a secret number given by the cartel boss to both parties involved in a street transaction. Bacca was the cartel boss, and this was his money. The ID number was proof of his consent that the cash could be turned over to the Vikings. Since there were no contracts protecting the transfer, it was Jody's knowledge of this code that enabled Juanita to hand over millions of narco-dollars with no questions.

"The number? Yeah… It's 457, from Raphael," Jody said.

"Cuatro cinco siete por Raphael," Lester said.

"Okay. Vamos. Usted solamente/' Juanita ordered, pointing at Jody.

"Absolutely." Jody smiled. "Me only." The tension in the room had eased slightly.

"Vamos en su coche," she said to Jody. Adding in horrible English: "We load. For is done. You go back. Es suficiente?"

"Works for me." Jody smiled at her again. "You guys wait here."

"Dame los llaves." She turned to Miguel. "Como se dice?"

"She wants the keys to our car," Shane said.

"Si, " Juanita answered. "Keys."

"It's the blue step van in the lot downstairs," Jody said to Miguel as he handed him the keys. The bodyguard immediately left the room.

Through all of this, the still-suspicious Octavio Juarez never took his eyes off Shane, not for a moment believing that a cop who had hooked him up three times in one year was now a fugitive.

"Let's do it," Jody said.

Juanita and Octavio flanked Jody, and with no further discussion, they walked out of the room and closed the door, leaving the rest of the Vikings behind.

"Why're we waiting? Let's get outta here," Shane said after they were gone. He moved to the door, but Lester and Tremaine were still at the windows, watching as the step van, followed by a new black Cadillac, pulled out of the lot.

"Be cool," Tremaine said to Shane. "With this satellite rig, we can tail them from miles back… It shoots a tracking signal back to us from outer space."

They waited for almost three minutes before Tremaine nodded and Shane opened the door. They walked out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the parking lot. Shane and Tremaine climbed into the black GMC truck with the pool-cleaning logo on the side. Victory Smith and Lester Wood got into the windowless gray van with the monitors. Tremaine had already switched on the dash-mounted GPS: a map of the entire West Valley downloaded onto the LCD screen. Then they saw a small blip moving near the center of the readout, indicating the route the step van was taking. It was heading east, down the Ventura Freeway toward Studio City.

"Let's go. That's them," Tremaine said. Then he pulled out. The gray van, with Victory driving, followed right behind them.

"Where'd you get all this high-tech stuff?" Shane asked.

"Rod stole it from SWAT. They got the best shit," Tremaine answered, his deep voice resonating in the sound-deadened cab.

They were on the freeway now, following the flashing dot on the GPS, heading east. The white step van was at least a mile ahead of them.

Shane looked over at Tremaine, his shaved head glistening, reflecting the passing freeway lights.

Of all the Vikings, Shane thought Tremaine was the most puzzling. The ex-SWAT sergeant had a cool intelligence and natural leadership that he masked with profound silences, mixed with spurts of ghetto-speak. But every time he spoke, Victory, Lester, and sometimes even Jody stopped talking and were suddenly alert, like street punks listening to a distant siren.

Tremaine glanced over and caught Shane looking at him. "Whattcha think you starin' at?" he demanded angrily.

"Nothin'." Shane shifted his gaze to the LCD screen. They rode in silence for a minute.

"Why don't you get it the fuck off your mind," Tremaine suddenly said.

"You know this is coming unglued," Shane said. "Two guys already dead and buried. Victory's a mess. Sawdust doesn't give a shit, and Jody's on autopilot. You saw him back there, ready to swap lead with a buncha street dealers."

Tremaine continued driving, and a slight smile passed across his face, then disappeared, barely visible, like a shadow on a dark wall. He shook his head slowly. "You got it all worked out, huh?"

"So when it all comes apart, then what?"

"You best slow yer roll, Chuck. You don't know me… You 'bout t'make a bad mistake here."

"I'll tell you something else I'm wondering."

They drove in silence, the target vehicle flashing on the LCD screen between them, heading down the curving freeway map, being measured from deep space by a satellite while Tremaine drove and said nothing.

"All these other guys've got Sawdust's shitty pictures drawn all over 'em" Shane said. "You… You've got no ink… No nothin'. Not even the little Viking helmet. I'm thinking. Why is that? It raises questions."

Tremaine didn't look over at Shane, but he had lost the slight smile. His knuckles gripped the wheel hard as he drove.

"Tell you something else," Shane continued. "You hate being called Tnky Dink.' Every time Jody calls you that, it's like you got kicked in the ass. So I'm wondering how come you put up with it; why you lettin' Jody Tom' you like that."

Tremaine looked over. His eyes had become cold black warnings.

"Here's my guess…" Shane continued recklessly. "You ain't completely down with the program, and if the rest of these guys weren't so zooted, they'd spot it."

The speedometer was ticking up in the seventies while the truck radials hummed.

"I ain't no Sega radio," Tremaine finally said. "Go play those tunes somewhere else, white boy."

Then, the beeping light on the LCD screen turned off the freeway. A few minutes later Tremaine made the same turn. The windowless van containing Victory and Sawdust followed like a gray shadow, sharking along behind them.

Ten minutes later they watched the map screen as the step van turned left on Shadow Drive, then right onto a street called Glen Haven. It stopped at the last house, at the end of a cul-de-sac.

A few minutes later Tremaine drove into the same high-income neighborhood with his headlights off and parked up the block out of sight of the house. The gray van parked behind them.

Tremaine switched off the GPS and got out of the truck.

They went over to the van. Tremaine knocked on the side door, then as soon as it opened, they jumped inside.

Victory Smith was already tuning in the three TV monitors, revealing that the white step van was parked in a hedge-lined driveway.

"Always the same deal," Sawdust said. "Expensive house at the end of the cul-de-sac with a view of the whole street. The Beaners living inside are just window dressing sent up here from Colombia. It's all on page one of the playbook."

They watched on the wide-angle lens coming from the camera stuck behind the rearview mirror as Jody, wearing a blindfold, was led into the house.

Once he was inside, Miguel opened the garage and Octavio pulled the step van inside. They could see the garage door come down behind it from the rearview camera. The grille-mounted camera now showed an expensive Spanish tile floor in the large, empty, four-car garage.

Octavio took off his jacket, grabbed a pickax out of the storage cabinet, then walked to a spot in front of the van and swung the ax high over his head, bringing it down hard, smashing the decorative tiles.

"Must have their money room under all that expensive tile," Sawdust drawled.

They watched on the monitors as Octavio, then Miguel, took turns breaking up the three square feet of flooring. Next they shoveled out four inches of subsoil, revealing a trap door. Octavio pulled the door up and turned on a light, exposing an underground room. Then, one at a time, the Colombians went down a short flight of stairs, disappearing off the monitor for a moment, only to reappear, carrying large rectangular canvas bags that looked to Shane to be about three feet long by two feet high and wide.

"Show me the money, boys," Tremaine rumbled softly in his rich baritone as the two drug dealers put the canvas bags into the back of the step van, then returned for more.

The whole treasure hunt took less than an hour. The step van was almost completely filled with bags of cash. Then Jody was led blindfolded out of the house and helped back into the front seat of the step van.

They watched on the rearview-mirror cam as the truck backed away from the house. In the process, the front-end cameras neatly panned the mailbox and the house number on the curb. Then the step van took off, up the street, again followed by the black Cadillac, its front license clearly photographed by the rear-bumper camera.

The two vehicles swept past the van, rocking it with slipstreaming air. "We'll let 'em get a block or two ahead," Tremaine instructed, then after a minute, added, "Okay, now."

Shane and Tremaine got out of the gray van and returned to the truck. They switched on the GPS and again followed the step van from several miles back, watching on the LCD screen until it stopped moving.

Both tail vehicles pulled over and waited. The beeping light on the GPS continued blinking but remained stationary. Five minutes later the cell phone in the truck rang and Tremaine pushed the speaker button. Jody's voice filled the truck cab.

"Okay, they're gone. I'll drive the van and meet you back at the Sherman Oaks apartment. We'll see what we got here."

What they got were thirty large canvas bags containing fifty million dollars in banded bricks of used cash.