5

Friday, 5:10 P.M.

GLEN HOWELL

Glen Howell closed his cell phone after fifteen rings. He didn’t like that. He was expected, and he knew that this person always answered his phone, and was irritated that now, him running late like this, the sonofabitch would pick now not to answer. In Glen Howell’s world, lateness was not tolerated and excuses were less than useless. Punishment could be severe.

Howell didn’t know why the streets leading into York Estates were blocked, but the traffic was at a standstill. He figured it had to be a broken gas line or something like that for them to close the entire neighborhood, backing up traffic and wasting everyone’s time. Rich people didn’t like to be inconvenienced.

The window on his big S-class Mercedes slid down without a sound. Glen craned out his head, trying to see the reason for the delay. A lone cop was working the intersection, waving some cars away. He let a television news van through. Glen raised the window again, the heavy tint cutting the glare. He took the .40-caliber Smith amp; Wesson from his pocket and put it in the glove box. He had a valid California Concealed Weapon Permit, but thought it best not to draw attention to himself if he had to get out of the car.

Glen checked his watch again for the fourth time in five minutes. He was already ten minutes late. At this rate, he would be still later. Three of the cars ahead of him turned away, one car was let through, and then it was his turn. The cop was a young guy, tall and rectangular with a protruding Adam’s apple.

Glen lowered the window. The heat ballooned in, making him wish he was back in Palm Springs, instead of being an errand boy. He tried to look professional and superior, working the class distinctions, rich successful business dude, lowly uneducated public servant.

“What’s going on, Officer? Why the roadblock?”

“Do you live here in the neighborhood, sir?”

Glen knew that if he lied, the cop might ask to see his driver’s license for the address. Glen didn’t want to get caught in a lie.

“I have a business appointment. My associate is expecting me.”

“We’ve got a problem in the neighborhood, so we’ve had to close the area. We’re only admitting residents.”

“What kind of problem?”

The cop looked uncertain.

“Do you have family in the development, sir?”

“Just my friends, like I said. You’re making me worried about them, Officer.”

The cop frowned, and glanced back along the row of cars behind Glen.

“Well, what it is, we’ve got robbery suspects in one of the houses. We’ve had to evacuate several of the homes, and close off the development until we can secure the area. It could take a while.”

Glen nodded, trying to look reasonable. Ten seconds, he already knew that he couldn’t flash a hundred at this guy to buy his way in. He would never go for it.

“Listen, my client is expecting me, Officer. It won’t take long. Really. I just need a few minutes, then I’m gone.”

“Can’t let you in, sir, I’m sorry. Maybe you could phone your party and have them come meet you, if they’re still inside. We’ve had people going door to door, telling people to stay indoors or offering to escort them out. I can’t let you in.”

Glen worked on staying calm. He smiled, and stared past the patrol car like he was thinking. His first impulse in any confrontation was to use his gun, put two hot ones square in the other guy’s forehead, but he had a handle on that. Years of therapy had taught him that, even though he had an anger-based personality, he could control it. He controlled it now.

“Okay. That might work. Can I park over here to call?”

“Sure.”

Glen pulled his car to the side, then called the number again. This time, he let it ring fifteen times, but still didn’t get an answer. Glen didn’t like this. With all the cops around, his guy might have developed a case of the quivering shits and was laying low, or maybe he’d been forced from his home. He might even have a bunch of cops in his home, using it as a command post or something. Glen laughed out loud at that one; no fucking way. Glen figured the guy must’ve been evacuated, in which case he would probably call Palm Springs to arrange another meet location, and Palm Springs would phone Glen. The cop would probably know which families had been evacuated, or could find out, but Glen didn’t want to draw attention to his man by asking.

Glen wheeled around in a slow U and headed back up the street, still thinking about it when he saw that another television news van had joined the line. Glen decided to take a flyer, and lowered his window when he reached the van. The driver was a balding guy with a rim of hair behind his ears and loose skin. A trim Asian woman with pouty lips perched in the passenger seat. Glen guessed her for the on-air talent, and wondered if the puffy lips were natural or man-made. Women who injected shit into their lips creeped him out. He decided that she was probably a spitter.

Glen said, “Excuse me. They wouldn’t tell me what’s going on, just that some people in the neighborhood are being evacuated. Do you guys know anything about this?”

The woman twisted in her seat and leaned forward to see past the driver.

“We don’t have anything confirmed, but it looks like three men were fleeing the scene of a robbery and took a family hostage.”

“No shit. That’s terrible.”

Glen couldn’t give less of a shit except that it was ruining his day. He wondered if he could talk the reporter into letting him come along.

“Do you live in the neighborhood?”

Glen knew that she was angling for something, and began to relax. If she thought he had something that she wanted, she might be willing to get him inside.

“I don’t live here, but I have friends in there. Why?”

The line of cars had moved forward, but the news van stayed where it was. The reporter flipped through a yellow pad.

“We’ve got unconfirmed reports that there are children involved, but we can’t get anyone to tell us anything about the family. It’s a family named Smith.”

The big Mercedes sensed the heat. The air conditioner blew harder. Glen didn’t feel it.

“What was the name again?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Walter Smith. We’ve heard they have two children, a boy and a girl.”

“They’re being held hostage? These three guys have the Smiths?”

“That’s right. Do you know them? We’re trying to find out about the kids.”

“I don’t know them. Sorry.”

Glen rolled up the window and pulled away. He drove slowly so as not to attract attention. He had the strange sensation of being removed from his body, as if the world had receded and he was no longer a part of it. The a.c. was roaring. Walter Smith. Three assholes had crashed into Walter Smith’s home, and now the place was surrounded by cops and cameras, and their whole fucking neighborhood was sealed.

Three blocks later, Glen pulled into a parking lot. He took his gun from the glove box and put it back in his pocket. He felt safer that way. He opened his phone again, and dialed another number. This time, his call was answered on the first ring.

Glen spoke four words.

“We have a problem.”


Palm Springs, California

5:26 P.M.

SONNY BENZA

Oxygen was the key. Sonny took a deep breath, trying to feed his heart. He was forty-seven years old, had high blood pressure, and lived in fear of the stroke which had claimed his father at fifty-five.

Benza stood in the game room of his mansion perched on a ridge above Palm Springs. Outside, his two kids, Chris and Gina, home from school, were splashing in the pool. Inside, Phil Tuzee and Charles “Sally” Salvetti, sweating like pigs, pulled an extra television next to the big screen, 36 inches, a Sony. They were rushed and frantic, anxious to get the set on. Between the big-screen projection TV with the picture-in-picture function and the Sony, they could watch all three major Los Angeles television stations. Two showed aerial views of Walter Smith’s house, the third some pretty-boy talking head outside a gas station.

Sonny Benza still refused to believe it.

“What do we know? Not this TV bullshit. What do we know for sure? Maybe it’s a different Walter Smith.”

Salvetti wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking pale under the Palm Springs tan.

“Glen Howell called it in. He’s at the house, Sonny. It’s our Walter Smith.”

Tuzee made a patting motion with his hands, trying to play the cooler.

“Let’s everybody take it easy. Let’s relax and walk through this a step at a time. The Feds aren’t knocking on the door.”

“Not yet.”

Phil Tuzee was close to pissing himself. Sonny put his arm across Tuzee’s shoulders, giving the squeeze, being the one in control.

“We got, what, ten or fifteen minutes before that happens, right, Phil?”

Tuzee laughed. Just like that, they were calmer. Still worried, still knowing they had a major cluster fuck of a problem, but the first bubble of panic had burst. Now, they would deal with it.

Benza said, “Okay. What exactly are we dealing with here? What does Smith have in the house?”

“It’s tax time, Sonny. We have to file the corporate quarterlies. He has our records.”

The bristly hairs on the back of Benza’s head stood up.

“You’re sure? Glen hadn’t made the pickup?”

“He was on his way to do that when this shit went down. He gets there and finds the neighborhood blocked off. He says Smith doesn’t answer his phone, which you know he would do if he could, and then he gets the story from some reporters. Three assholes broke into Smith’s house to hide from the cops, and now they’re holding Smith and his family hostage. It’s our Walter Smith.”

“And all our tax stuff is still in that house.”

“Everything.”

Benza stared at the televisions. Stared at the house on the screens. Stared at the police officers crouched behind bushes and cars, surrounding that house.

Sonny Benza’s legitimate business holdings included sixteen bars, eight restaurants, a studio catering company, and thirty-two thousand acres of vineyards in central California. These businesses were profitable in their own right, but they were also used to launder the ninety million dollars generated every year by drug trafficking, hijackings, and shipping stolen automobiles and construction equipment out of the country. Walter Smith’s job was to create false but reasonable profit records for Sonny’s legitimate holdings which Benza would present to his “real” accountants. Those accountants would then file the appropriate tax returns, never knowing that the records from which they were working had been falsified. Benza would pay the appropriate taxes (taking every deduction legally allowable), then be able to openly bank, spend, or invest the after-tax cash. To do this, Walter Smith held the income records of all Benza businesses, both legal and illegal.

These records were in his computer.

In his house.

Surrounded by cops.

Sonny went over to the big glass wall that gave him a breathtaking view of Palm Springs on the desert floor below. It was a beautiful view.

Phil Tuzee followed him, trying to be upbeat.

“Hey, look, it’s just three kids, Sonny. They’re gonna get tired and come out. Smith knows what to do. He’ll hide the stuff. These kids will walk out and the cops will arrest them, and that’s that. There won’t be any reason for the cops to search the house.”

Sonny wasn’t listening. He was thinking about his father. Frank Sinatra used to live down the street. It was the house that Sinatra had remodeled to entertain JFK, spent a couple of hundred thousand to buff out the place so he and The Man could enjoy a little poolside poon as they discussed world affairs, sunk all that money into his nest only to have, after the checks were signed and the work was done, JFK blow him off and refuse to visit. Story goes that Sinatra went fucking nuts, shooting through the walls, throwing furniture into the pool, screaming that he was gonna take out a hit on the motherfucking President of the United States. Like what did he expect, Kennedy to be butt-buddies with a mobbed-up guinea singer? Sonny Benza’s home was higher up the ridge than Frank’s old place, and larger, but his father had been impressed as hell with Sinatra’s place. First time his father had come out to visit, he’d walked down to Sinatra’s place and stood in the street, staring at Sinatra’s house like it held the ghost of the Roman Empire. His father had said, “Best move I ever made, Sonny, turning over the wheel to you. Look how good you’ve done, living in the same neighborhood as Francis Albert.” The Persians who lived there now had gotten so freaked out by Sonny’s dad, they had called the police.

“Sonny?”

Benza looked at his friend. Tuzee had always been the closest to him. They’d been the tightest when they were kids.

“The records don’t just show our business, Phil. They show where we get the money, how we launder it, and our split with the families back east. If the cops get those records, we won’t be the only ones who fall. The East Coast will take a hit, too.”

The breath flowed out of Phil Tuzee as if he were collapsing.

Sonny turned back to the others. They were watching him. Waiting for orders.

“Okay. Three kids like this, the cops will give’m time to chill, they’ll see they’re caught and that the only way out is to give up. Two hours tops, they’ll walk out, hands up, then everybody goes to the station to make their statements.

That’s it.”

Hearing it like that made sense.

“But that’s a best-case scenario. Worst case, it’s a bloodbath. When it’s over, the detectives go in for forensic evidence and come out with Smith’s computer. If that happens, we go to jail for the rest of our lives.”

He looked at each man.

“If we live long enough to stand trial.”

Salvetti and Tuzee traded a look, but neither of them added anything because they knew it was true. The East Coast families would kill them.

Tuzee said, “Maybe we should warn them. Call old man Castellano back there to let’m know. That might take off some of the edge.”

Salvetti raised his hands.

“Jesus, no fuckin’ way. They’ll go apeshit and be all over us out here.”

Sonny agreed.

“Sally’s right. This problem with Smith, we’ve got to get a handle on it fast, solve the problem before those bastards back in Manhattan find out.”

Sonny looked back at the televisions and thought it through. Control and containment.

“Who’s the controlling authority? LAPD?”

Salvetti grunted. Salvetti, like Phil Tuzee, was a graduate of USC Law who’d worked his way through school stealing cars and selling cocaine. He knew criminal law.

“Bristo is an incorporated township up by Canyon Country. They have their own police force, something like ten, fifteen guys. We’re talking a pimple on LA’s ass.”

Tuzee shook his head.

“That doesn’t help us. If the locals can’t handle this, they’ll call in the Sheriffs or maybe even the Feds. That’s all we need, the Feebs rolling in. Either way, there’ll be more than a few hick cops to deal with.”

“That’s true, Phil, but it will all be processed back through the Bristo PD office because it’s their jurisdiction. They’ve got a chief of police up there. It’s his crime scene even if he turns over control.”

Sonny turned back to the televisions. A street-level camera was showing the front of the house. Sonny thought he saw someone move past a window, but couldn’t be sure.

“This chief, what’s his name?”

Salvetti glanced at his notes.

“Talley. I saw him being interviewed.”

The television shifted its shot to show three cops hunkered behind a patrol car. One of them was pointing to the side of the house like he was giving orders. Sonny wondered if that was Talley.

“Put our people on the scene. When the Feds and Sheriffs come in, I want to know who’s running their act, and whether they’ve ever worked OC.”

If they had experience working organized crime, he would have to be careful who he deployed to the area.

“It’s already happening, Sonny. I’ve got people on the way, clean guys, not anyone they would recognize.”

Benza nodded.

“I want to know everything that comes out of that house. I want to know about the three turds who started this mess. That bastard Smith might start talking just to cut a break for himself or his family. He might let them in on everything.”

“He knows better than that.”

“I want to know it, Phil.”

“I’m on it. We’ll know.”

Sonny Benza watched the three cops hunkered behind the patrol car, the one he believed to be the chief of police talking on a cell phone. He had never murdered a police officer because killing cops was bad for business, but he would not hesitate to do so now. He would do whatever it took to survive. Even if it meant killing a cop.

“I want to know about this guy Talley. Find out everything there is to know about him, and every way we can hurt him. By the end of the day, I want to own him.”

“We’ll own him, Sonny.”

“We better.”

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