Cold Hit

Chapter 36

At seven that evening I was at my desk in the den working on the Arden Rolaine homicide book.

As I went through the old case notes, trying to put them in chronological order, I noticed a margin note that read, "Re-interview VR about Jan. 3rd time line."

I wondered if VR was shorthand for Victim's Relative like in Cindy Blackman's notes, or if it stood for Vaughn Rolaine, the victim's brother. Since Zack said he was never able to locate Arden's brother, I started looking around through all this disorganization for interviews he'd done with other family members.

As I was doing this, the doorbell rang. I got up from the desk, walked to the front door and peered through the peephole. The distorted images of Emdee Perry and Roger Broadway were stretched comically in the fisheye lens. I opened the door and saw they were both decked out in snazzy Lakers gear-purple and gold jackets and hats. Roger handed me a ticket.

"What's this?"

"Lakers game," Broadway said. "Staples Center. Ninth row. We scored the seats from the Mexican Embassy. For some Third World reason, the se hablas are Clippers' fans. Never use their Lakers' seats."

I looked at the ticket. It was for the Spurs game, eight o'clock tonight.

"I'm in the middle of something."

Emdee drawled, "We like you okay, Scully, but we sure as shit wouldn't waste great Lakers tickets on you 'less we had to. Tip-off's in fifty minutes. Giddy-up, Joe Bob."

"Something's going down?"

They looked at each other in disbelief.

I told Alexa what was up, grabbed a jacket, and headed out. Roger and Emdee were waiting in a motor pool Navigator with smoked windows. I climbed in the backseat and Roger steered the black SUV up Ocean Avenue to the 10 freeway. Once we were heading east, Perry turned and handed me the transmitter Roger and I had taken off the Fairlane.

"ESD found out who made that little pastry," he said. "Designed by a private firm here in L. A. name of Americypher Technologies."

"Never heard of them."

"It was founded in 'ninety-three by a Jewish cat named Calvin Lerner," Roger said. "Man's got an interesting history. In 'ninety-five Lerner gave up his Israeli passport and became a naturalized U. S. citizen. This was very good news because Americypher specializes in state-of-the-art listening devices and transmitters. It turns out Uncle Sam is one of their biggest customers."

"We don't make our own surveillance equipment?" I was a little surprised that we would subcontract out work like that.

"It all comes down to horseshit and gun smoke in field operations," Emdee drawled.

Roger picked up the story again. "About two years ago Calvin Lerner, who still owned controlling interest in Americypher, went missing on the Stanislaus River in Central California during a trout fishing trip. Wandered off up the river alone, and did a Beam me up, Scottie. Never found any trace of him. No tracks, no blood, no body. His widow took over running the company. Americypher is still going strong."

"Americypher sounds like it should be a good American outfit," I said.

Emdee smiled. "One a the things ya learn working this beat is the more American a company sounds, the less Americans are probably involved with it.

"The bugs Americypher makes are years ahead of the curve. That's one of them," Broadway said, pointing to the tiny transmitter in Emdee's hand. "They're designed to use miniature low-volt batteries with twenty-year lives, but apparently because of the low voltage they're a bitch to install. The way we hear it, the engineers from Americypher go out on black-bag installations to help their customers plant these things."

Now I saw where this was going. "And you think since Americypher knows where the bugs are located, they could sell that information."

Broadway said, "Counter-intelligence plays a big part in world politics."

"But would Americypher double-cross big federal clients like Homeland Security and the FBI?"

"The old team put together by Calvin Lerner probably wouldn't," Roger said. "But nobody knows much about his widow. She's still an Israeli. Never took the pledge of allegiance. We just cranked up a new investigation on Americypher. The dicks in Financial Crimes are gonna hit that pinata and see if it spits out any candy."

We pulled into VIP parking at the Staples Center and ten minutes later I was sitting in the best seat I'd ever had at that arena. Nine rows up, center court. The tip-off was at eight o'clock sharp.

While I watched the game, Broadway and Perry took turns getting up and going to the bathroom, or out to buy beers. Something was definitely up, but when I asked them what, they waved it off. I decided to just wait them out. Whatever we were doing here, it had nothing to do with the Lakers.

At the half the home team was only up by three points. Fans were stretching and going out to the concession stands. Broadway said he wanted another hotdog and headed toward the exit.

Ten minutes later, Perry grabbed my arm. "We're leaving," he announced.

"We need to wait for Roger," I said. "He's getting food."

"Roger's in the car. Come on."

We hurried up the steps through the midlevel tunnel. As we joined the crowd milling toward the food courts I caught a glimpse of the same bald-headed man in the blue blazer who had come to my phony funeral. He was now wearing a Lakers jacket and was about twenty people ahead of us, moving toward the exit.

"Isn't that Eddie Ringerman?" I asked.

"Small fucking world," Emdee said as he pulled me along.

"Why don't you spit it out? What's going on?"

He hesitated, then said, "We got direct orders from the chief not to confide in the competition, but he didn't say we couldn't follow 'em. Ringerman's a rabid Lakers fan, but if our boy gets up to leave with the game in doubt, something's goin' down. So we follow Ringerman, see if we can catch him in politicus flagrante. Then we'll jerk a knot in his tail and make the boy give up something."

Ringerman headed out the main entrance onto the street, then crossed with the light to the east parking lot and got into a gray Lincoln.

Perry still had my arm, pulling me along. "Hustle up," he said. "Game's on."