Hollywood Tough

Chapter 16

Shane was fifteen minutes late for his two o'clock meeting with Chief Filosiani because he had stopped by the LAPD computer center in the Valley to collect more research. Alexa was waiting for him on the sixth floor of Parker Center as he came off the elevator, lugging his newly filled briefcase. His wife had an armload of gang folders crammed with yellow sheets; she seemed irritated and tired. Shane couldn't ever remember her looking so stressed.

"Jesus, where've you been?" she asked.

"Alexa, I need to talk to you before I talk to the chief."

"Not now. We're already a quarter of an hour late. The chief is scheduled on half-hour intervals. He's asked me to attend the meeting."

"Okay, good. Then you can back me up."

They hurried down the hall and stopped before the large double doors that led to Filosiani's office. Alexa walked him in and Shane found himself in the chief of police's outer office.

Filosiani's secretary was a hawk-faced woman named Bea; she looked like Whistler's mother in a blue pantsuit but had a heart the size of Texas. She knew they were late and showed them right in.

Filosiani's office was huge. The Day-Glo Dago had taken the antique furniture and expensive wall art that had filled the office of ex-chief Burl Brewer and sold them at auction, using the money to buy state-of-the-art Ultima flack vests for the SWAT teams. He was a no-frills guy from Brooklyn who, in the wake of Brewer's corruption, had proven to be just what the LAPD needed. The office was now furnished like a Xerox room. A long metal table sat next to one wall under a bulletin board with pushpins holding up each division's crime stat sheets. In counterpoint to all this was a breathtaking view of the Financial District through the huge plate-glass windows. Chief Tony Filosiani was standing in the center of the room grinning as Shane and Alexa came through the door.

"How'sa guy?" he caroled. He was a shade under fivefoot-five and his fat, round pie-pan of a face framed piercing blue eyes that sparkled under a pate of shiny pink skin. Chief Filosiani would have been perfectly typecast to play the butcher at your corner market, but he hardly looked like he should be running one of the largest and most complex law enforcement agencies in the world.

"We're finally getting you back on the job." Filosiani beamed. "Alexa told me you want Special Crimes, so if dat's what you want, dat's where we're gonna put ya." All of this in his trademark Brooklynese.

"It's what I want, Chief, but I have something I need to tell you and Alexa about first."

"Okay." Filosiani glanced at his watch.

"Last coupla days, I think I may have inadvertently stumbled into something, and if it's what I think it is, it could be big, and it needs to be worked immediately."

This was all news to Alexa. A frown appeared on her sculpted face. Of course, for the last two days she'd been practically living at Parker Center, so she and Shane hadn't had much chance to talk.

"Let's hear," Filosiani said.

So Shane launched into the story, first telling the chief about finding Nicky Marcella at Farrell's party. He went on to recount Nicky's criminal past, and his request that Shane find a missing actress named Carol White so Nicky could cast her in a movie he was producing. He told them how he had found Carol and that she had become a hooker, that he'd left his card with her. Then Shane told them about the call from Sergeant DePass, and the meeting with Ruta at the house on 11th Street, leaving out his distressing evaluation of Ruta's demeanor and police skills. He went on to explain that he'd gone to Nicky's apartment later that night, and how he'd forced the little grifter to admit that he'd been trying to find Carol for a New Jersey mobster named Dennis Valente who had changed his name to Valentine.

Here Shane opened his briefcase and pulled out the research he'd been doing on Valentine and the DeCesare family. He handed it to Tony Filosiani, who scanned it quickly.

"This guy's a made DeCesare soldier. I know him," Filosiani said. "Some of these Jersey mob guys did business on my old beat back East. I know the whole family. A buncha mouth-breathers."

"Then you know that if Don Carlo is trying to locate a branch of his crime family in L. A., we don't want to ignore him."

Filosiani nodded and handed the pages back.

Shane explained about Valentine's plan to organize the below-the-line show business unions.

By this time, the chief's next meeting was waiting in his outer office, but Filosiani was hooked. He buzzed Bea and asked her to reschedule it, then turned back to Shane.

"Is that possible? To get entertainment unions t'kick back money?"

"I don't know," Shane admitted. "I'm just telling you what Nicky told me. It sounded plausible, but I guess all that really counts is that Valentine believes it."

Filosiani nodded and Shane continued. He explained Valentine's fascination with Michael Fallon and how Shane wanted to option a script called The Neural Surfer so Fallon would, hopefully, agree to star in it.

"Who's gonna pay for the script?"

"You are. At least that's what I was hoping. I thought we could run it off the Organized Crime Bureau's budget." "How much?"

"Two hundred thousand," Shane said, and heard Alexa gasp from someplace behind him.

Now Filosiani was frowning, too.

"Okay, look, I know this is kinda unconventional, but let's look past the fact that it's a script I'm buying, and focus on what we're trying to do." Shane was now pitching like an Amway salesman. "In the past, when we've heard mob guys were heading into town, we spent heavy bread to convince 'em to go home. We had people meet 'em at the airport, followed them around in white vans, bugged 'em and ran surveillance on 'em, the whole Blue Plate Special."

"So?" Filosiani said.

"So, how much did all that cost?"

"Plenty."

Shane opened his briefcase again, took out some papers and started shuffling through them. "I dropped by the budget office this afternoon, and here's what I found. In 'ninety-six, we worked a crew of Gambino guys. They were planning on setting up a sports-betting franchise in L. A. Cost us three hundred grand for wiretaps and round-the-clock surveillance. It went on for two months before they got tired of us and went home. In 'ninety-nine, we worked a crew of Arcado guys from Chicago. Same drill, little less-cost one-fifty."

"Okay, okay… I admit we spent some OCB money to keep these guys at bay," Filosiani said, "but we weren't buying movie scripts."

"All I'm doing is spending money to lock this guy up. This script will bring us Fallon. Fallon will bring us Valentine. I wanna work Valentine from the inside, be right next to him. I wanna set up a RICO case for union fixing and I want to see if the SOB killed Carol White."

There was a heavy silence. Shane heard a clock ticking somewhere but couldn't spot it.

"How you gonna work from the inside?" Alexa finally asked. "Everybody knows you're a cop. He's not gonna let you get very close."

"I'm not gonna hide it. In fact, I'm gonna talk about it. We put on a show. Instead of putting me back on the job, the chief knocks me down in grade because of stuff he discovered in this year-long review I've been under. I get pissed off and quit. We get Press Relations to plant a big story about it tomorrow in the L. A. Times. Call it trouble in the ranks or something. That's where you come in, Alexa."

"Me?"

"Themob has never had a foothold in L. A. because L. A. cops have never been for sale. You're gonna change that. I want to set you up for Dennis Valentine so he'll try and buy you."

"The head of DSG?" She sighed.

"Yeah, he'll go for it 'cause in that newspaper story, after I get trashed, it's going to mention how angry you are that your husband got screwed. Maybe a few guarded quotes about the LAPD's lack of support, given the fact I just won the Medal of Valor. Then the chief's comments follow. He says I'm off the page and untrustworthy. Maybe kicks some mud on your reputation, expresses some doubt about the open gang war that's breaking out and the way the Kevin Cordell investigation is being handled."

Alexa was tired, her nerves were frayed, and she sort of lost her temper at that. "Can't I just do my job without all this? Besides, we just got that case. It's not even fifty hours old."

"Don't lose your temper, honey," Shane said.

Alexa stiffened slightly. This was a police meeting. She was Shane's boss as well as the head of DSG. He instantly knew he shouldn't have called her "honey."

He pushed on. "I'll tell you why. Once I get close to him, I'm gonna set you up to be his inside person, his Judas on the department. You're the acting head of DSG, so you're the perfect choice. You could control any investigation we started up against him."

"He's not gonna believe that."

"Yes he is, because he wants to believe it. If we do it right, he'll jump at it. We're also gonna be living way over our heads. We're gonna look like we have big money problems."

"We live in Venice, Shane. You can't live any more economically than we do."

"I wanna move out of there for this case. I've got the perfect place staked out and it won't cost the department a thing. Tony, you remember that house on North Chalon Road in Beverly Hills? The one our drug team took down six months ago, belonged to some Guatemalan heroin dealers?"

"Yeah."

"It's an asset seizure, we own it. Furniture's still in there. All we gotta do is cut the lawn and we're ready for business."

"You got this all worked out, don't you?" Filosiani said, trying not to smile.

"Yep. All I need is a measly two hundred large."

Now the chief paced in his nearly empty office. He stopped in front of the huge plate-glass window and stared out, looking small and round-shouldered against that huge expanse of glass. "I can't give you two hundred thousand for a screenplay, Shane. I'll get laughed out of my budget review."

"Gimme half, then. Gimme a hundred."

"Can you do it for a hundred?"

"I don't know. I can try."

Finally, Filosiani turned, and now his round face was beaming. "Okay, you got it-plus the house on North Chalon. But Shane, you should sweep it daily. Go to the Electronic Surveillance Division and check out one a them new twenty-three-hundred Frequency Finders we got from the feds last June. Little unit will pick up anything, even low-voltage VHF stuff." He grabbed his phone and instructed Bea to call ESD and make one available. When he hung up, he said, "I know these mob smart-heads, they're all paranoid. Even though Valentine's gonna be coming to you, he's still gonna wanna know what you're saying when he's not around. If he puts a bug in that house and we can find it, we can use it against him."

"Good thinking," Shane agreed.

"Okay, get the hell outta here. You're officially back on duty. You're gonna be working U. C. but you don't report to Organized Crime. You report directly to Lieutenant `Honey' here." He grinned and Alexa sighed.

"That's gonna make it easy, 'cause she's gonna be living with me in that house on North Chalon Road."

"Nice of you to ask," Alexa quipped.

Filosiani tore off a slip of paper and handed it to Alexa. "Give this to the budget office down the hall. They'll set up a blind account for Sergeant Scully so he can write checks on the hundred grand. Then get together with Press Relations and draft the story. I want to see it by five tonight. Tell Captain Cook I want it in tomorrow's paper." Filosiani grinned. "Welcome back, Shane. I miss this kinda stuff. You come up with great ideas."

Shane and Alexa left the chief's office and headed down the hail. She was strangely quiet.

"Let's get something to eat," she finally said. "I've been inside this damn building since seven this morning, I need to get outta here for a minute."

The Peking Duck was a cop restaurant one block from Parker Center. It was almost three in the afternoon. The late-lunch crowd had already left so the place was unusually quiet. Shane and Alexa ordered two beers at the bar, then carried them to a booth by the wall. When the Chinese waiter arrived they ordered dim sum and egg rolls.

"You're kinda quiet, whatta ya think?" Shane said.

"I think you're out of your mind," Alexa answered. "You and Tony… it was like the Bowery Boys in there. `You're my favorite guy. I miss dis kinda stuff. You always come up widda best ideas.' " She was doing a reasonably good Day-Glo Dago impression, but at least when she was through, she was more or less smiling. She reached out and took his hand.

"You think you fool everybody, Shane, but I read you like the morning paper."

"That badly written?"

"That transparent. I watched you when you told him about that dead prostitute, Carol White. He didn't see what I saw. He didn't see the sadness and the guilt." She was squeezing his hand across the table.

The waiter returned and put their food down, then handed them chopsticks and left.

"You don't owe her anything, honey," she said. "Yeah…?"

"You don't. I mean, it's fine you want to run Valentine off. I agree with you there. If he gets a foothold in L. A. we'll end up spending millions trying to police him. So tie him up on a RICO prosecution, but leave Carol White's murder to Homicide."

"Yeah, good thinking." For some reason this was making him angry.

"If Valentine had her killed, it was a professional hit," she continued. "The guys who did the work are already back in Jersey."

He didn't answer, so she went on. "I'm just saying, let Homicide do the Carol White investigation. I've got good people on that."

"You got a drunk, overweight dirtbag on it. Lou Ruta is the primary. He's gonna work it for the minimum forty-eight hours required on an active homicide, then it's gonna go in the cold case file because he thinks she was just a junkie whore and he doesn't want to waste his precious time on her."

"I'll make a reassignment. I'll give it to Sergeant Peterson. You know Swede; you like him. He's a hard worker." "He's in Hollywood, not Rampart."

"You're quibbling. I'll talk to both division commanders and set it up."

"Okay," he said, and took a swig of beer. It tasted flat.

"You know, I do love you for caring."

"Yeah."

"No, really."

"Look, Alexa, I know you mean well here and I know you're trying to make me feel better. But do me a favor: Let's save this for later, okay?"

"Done," she agreed. "So how 'bout them Dodgers, huh?" She was bone-tired but suddenly smiling, trying to help him get past it.

His wife was beautiful. She could take his breath away. She was funny, tough, smart, loyal, and she was his. So why couldn't he forget about Carol White? Why am I acting like such a rookie over this?

"Wait'll you see our new house on North Chalon. You're gonna love it," he said.

"It was down to just me and Brooke…" Carol whispered in his memory.

"Another beer?" the Chinese waiter asked.