Cold Hit

Chapter 51

I'd been away from home way too long, and tomorrow was going to be a busy, dangerous day, so I decided to sleep in my own bed tonight and make love to my wife. I also wanted to sit down and have a long talk with Chooch.

I exited the freeway on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, then glanced in my rearview mirror. Coming down the off-ramp several cars back, was a familiar vehicle. A white Econoline van.

Zack?

I doubled back, made two quick rights, and came around behind it. But the van took off, accelerating up the street. It shot through a light just as it was changing, and I got totally blocked. I never got close enough to read the plate. All I could do was watch in frustration as the taillights headed back onto the freeway and disappeared.

Almost immediately, my mind started to deconstruct the incident. I hadn't actually seen the driver or plate number, so how did I really know it was Zack? How many white Econoline vans were there in Los Angeles anyway? And here's a big one. How could Zack know I'd be on that freeway at that exact time? Wasn't it more probable that it was just some random white van that sped up to beat the light?

I was trying to smooth it over, to make it go away so I wouldn't have to deal with it. But somewhere deep down, I already knew the answer.

It was Zack and he was coming after me.

I approached my house from the Grand Canal sidewalk, pausing to look around before opening the white picket gate and heading across my backyard. If Zack or the feds were following me, coming home could be a major mistake, but I needed to be near the people I loved and who loved me. I moved to the sliding glass porch door and found it locked. Just as I getting ready to go around to the front and use my key, Delfina appeared in the living room holding Franco in her arms. She spotted me through the glass, ran across the carpet, and opened the slider.

"Shane," she said, leaning forward and kissing my cheek. "I'm so glad you're out of the hospital! But Alexa said you wouldn't be coming home."

"Changed my mind."

Franco was stretching out a welcoming paw, so Delfina handed the marmalade cat over. As soon as I took him, he started purring and nuzzling my chest. It's nice to be wanted.

"Guess what?" Delfina said. "This afternoon we got a call from Pete Carroll. He wants Chooch to come to the school next week and meet all the coaches. It's an official visit. Chooch thinks it means they're going to offer him a full scholarship. If he wants to go there, he needs to sign a letter of intent by February fourth.

"That's great!" I said, happy that it was finally working out.

"He's in his room calling the world," she laughed.

I walked into the makeshift garage bedroom. Chooch hung up the phone and turned as I entered.

"Dad, it's so cool you came home tonight," he beamed. "Mom said you were undercover for a few days. You gotta hear what just happened!" One sentence fell on top of the next.

"Del just told me."

"Is this sweet?" A grin spread, lighting his handsome face.

"You bet it is."

I put Franco down and sat on the foot of Chooch's bed as he spun his chair around to face me.

"Y'know, Dad, I've been going over what you said, and you getting hurt and going in the hospital sorta put a lot of this in perspective. I think you were right about most of what you said."

"I was?"

"Yeah, about using football so people would think I was special. But that's only part of it."

He paused and furrowed his brow. I knew he was coming to an important realization so I sat back and waited.

"When I was a kid growing up with Sandy, it wasn't like she was even my mother," he finally said. "She was always off doing whatever, and she had me stashed at one boarding school or another, always safely out of the way, so I wouldn't judge her. But I was so young I didn't understand it was about her. I thought it was about me. I thought I wasn't important enough to her."

I understood what he was saying. When I first met Sandy Sandoval in the late eighties, she was a high-priced L. A. call girl who I had eventually recruited as a civilian undercover to work high-profile criminals. She was Hispanic, and so beautiful that people often turned to stare whenever she entered a room. Because of her looks, she had no trouble getting my criminal targets to confide in her once she had them in bed. In return for any information that led to a bust, she would collect an amount from LAPD equal to half of the money we had spent trying to catch that particular criminal in the proceeding year. It often came to several hundred thousand dollars. She was making ten times more as a UC than she ever had as a call girl. Sandy and I only made love one time, but without my knowing it, that union had produced Chooch. For the first fifteen years of his life, before I knew he was mine, Sandy had more or less ditched him, putting him in expensive boarding schools so he wouldn't be exposed to her line of work. The day she died three years ago, she told me that I was his father. Chooch grew up feeling angry and rejected, much as I had. This history had produced insecurities in him, and that's what he was talking about.

"So I guess in some ways you're right," he continued. "Having everybody saying I'm good at football, well it just felt real good to me, y'know?"

"Son, I know. I've been there."

"But I've been acting like a total jerk. And you're absolutely right about my Montebello game. It was lousy. Who do I think I'm kidding, saying Terrell Bell has rotten footwork and a bad arm? The guy is great, and I'm scared he'll beat me out if he goes to USC. With two Heisman-winning quarterbacks in five years, they're really loaded at that position. Terrell's not my problem. I'm my problem. If I want to succeed, all I have to do is make myself better. I've got a lot to learn from these other guys, and if I get the scholarship, I'm gonna go in with the right attitude. I'm gonna be a team player, 'cause I really love this game, Dad, and it does come from the inside."

"That's the right way to look at it, son." I was incredibly proud of him.

"You and Alexa are invited on Sunday of my weekend visit. They're gonna take us around the athletic department to meet the staff and show us the facilities."

"I'll be there." I only hoped I'd be alive to keep the promise.

Alexa came home at eight o'clock and was surprised to find me sitting in the backyard. She walked outside shaking her head slightly.

"Is this smart?"

"I don't know. Probably not."

"Honey, I think you need to leave," she said. "Not exactly the response I was hoping for." I stood up and kissed her. Her arms went around me, and for a moment we clung to each other.

"Since I don't trust the phones, I figured I'd tell you this in person," I said.

She held my hand and waited.

"I need you to get a search team up to New Melones Lake in Central California and drag the bottom for Calvin Lerner's body. I think he may be down there, wired to an anchor. If he is, and if he was shot in the head like Davide Andrazack, then maybe we can tie the bullet to Sammy's five-point-four-five automatic."

"Drag the whole lake. That's gonna cost a fortune. There's over a hundred miles of waterfront."

"The Petrovitches have a house up there. Get somebody to check with the real estate tax board and find out where it is. Then start somewhere near the house. These guys are so arrogant, I wouldn't be surprised if they just threw Lerner's body off the end of their dock."

She nodded, then said, "I'm trying to get you the warrant, but I'm afraid it's not going to be what you want. It'll be pretty narrow. The judge wrote it for tax records only, and limited it to Patriot Petroleum, which is one of their companies like you thought."

"Sammy won't have an old KGB assassination pistol hidden in his office. If it's anywhere, it's in his house."

"I know, but I set this up using your gas tax idea. The judge wouldn't write a warrant on their houses. This isn't like a FISA court where we can get whatever we want. I had to twist Judge Bennett's arm to even get it at all. I hardly had any PC." Alexa pulled her hand away. "So far the only address we have for the damn company is a post office box in Reseda. Maybe the fucking gun is locked up there." She was getting frustrated.

"Okay, okay. Don't get hot. I'll get an address for the warrant."

"I'm not hot, I'm worried because I think I know what you're up to."

"No, you don't."

"You don't really give a shit about these tax records. It's a nothing financial crime, and at worst the Petrovitches will only get a lousy eighteen months. You're not going through all this just to drop a pound and a half on them. Since finding the gun is now pretty much of a long shot, I think you're gonna try and piss this goon off."

"How can you say that?" I said, trying to look innocent.

"You're gonna roll over there, insult this lunatic, then lure him into an ambush and try to take him down for assault on a police officer. Once he's in custody, you're hoping to roll him on his brother. That's the dumb-ass plan, right?"

I decided if I wanted to get laid tonight, I better change the subject. So I brought up Zack.

"I don't want to talk about him right now," Alexa said.

"I think he's been following me."

"Great. It's not enough you're flipping off a leaking stick of nitro like Sammy P, but now your number one suspect for a multiple homicide is also after you. By the way, what are you doing for laughs?" She was frustrated with me, but I wasn't finished.

"Look, Alexa, to be safe, I think we need to move everybody out of here. Take a hotel room down by the beach."

"We can't afford to do that."

"We can't afford not to." I took her hand again and held it.

"Sometimes I get so weary of this." Her voice was softer now, almost pleading. "When I'm not battling with Tony and my crime stats, I'm worrying about you. I know you're doing what you feel you have to, but I wish you'd just take a job on the sixth floor so I could stop looking at my watch and wondering why you haven't called. I can't change how I feel."

I sang Billy Joel's song to her, warbling the tune comically off-key: "I want you just the way you are."

"Great." She smiled. "I wish you weren't such an impossible hard head." Then she put her head on my shoulder.

So I led her into the house.

We closed the bedroom door and slowly started to undress. Looking at Alexa, I couldn't help but think how my wife seemed more beautiful and incredible to me with each passing day. If Zack or someone else took advantage of my family, would I be able to go on? Would I have the courage to keep fighting if either she or Chooch were in serious jeopardy? I suddenly understood the wisdom of the Russian mafia rule to never many or have children. My wife and son gave me strength and emotional stability, but they also made me extremely vulnerable.

I needed to get my family relocated tonight.

Alexa and I lay on the bed and caressed each other for a long time. I felt her breath on my neck, her hands on my back.

She turned her face up to mine and kissed me. "Darling," she said. "I'm so afraid. Sometimes I think if I lost you, I couldn't go on." Voicing my exact fears.

I knew how vulnerable we both were to misadventure and my heart suddenly raced. I vowed to protect us, even at the expense of my own life.

We began to make love, slowly taking each other higher and further than we had ever been before. As we coupled, the intense pleasure of desire, primal and pure, washed over us. I wanted to be closer than our bodies would allow. It was almost as if I needed to be her, to wear her skin as my own. In this act of love, the longing and closeness we shared made me crave even more.

Afterwards, we lay on the bed listening to the innocent sounds of our home. The kids were laughing about something in the living room. The TV was blaring. The normalcy of all this was a bitter contrast to my lingering fears.

"I think you're right. We need to get out of this house," Alexa said, sitting up and looking at me. "I don't trust it here right now."

We dressed and went out to tell the kids to pack; that we were spending the night somewhere else.

The phone rang. I caught it on the fifth one. It was Roger Broadway. He told me that the Financial Crimes Division had just called him back with troubling news on their reactivated investigation into Americypher. Ten months ago, Calvin Lerner's widow had sold controlling interest in the company to an offshore Bahamian corporation called Washington Industries. I wondered what that meant, but told Roger I'd call him back once I was resettled.

As I was locking the house five minutes later, Alexa slid into her department slick-back with Franco purring on the seat beside her. Chooch and Del piled into his Jeep. They pulled both vehicles out, headed for The Shutters Hotel on the beach in Santa. Monica.

I followed half a block behind them in my Acura, on the lookout for gray sedans with government plates, while also scanning the road for any glimpse of a white Econoline van.