The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 48.

Alexa was out of the house early. I left a few minutes behind her so I could make it to Latimer Commodities Exchange by seven fifteen. I also wanted to start the spade and shovel work on Diego San Diego's background.

I was on the freeway by six forty-five, heading into town, when I finally got through to Barry Matthews, my contact on the white-collar squad who handled business and financial crime. He swung on better vines inside of L. A.'s complex financial jungle. I thought if anyone could pierce Diego's aversion to the press and get me some dirt, Barry was the one.

Once he was on the line I said, "I need a deep background check, state and federal, on Diego San Diego." I told him what little information I'd found horse breeder, polo player, commodities broker, film financier. "Also, anything you can give me on his financial and banking affairs."

"Point me in a direction. What, exactly, are you looking for?"

"I think there's a decent chance he used to be a Colombian money launderer in the eighties. That hunch is supported by the fact he dealt in easy-to-move, high-value international commerce, like gemstones and gold bullion.

"He might have a connection to a Swiss jewelry company called Farvagny-le-Grand in Geneva. I'd also like you to see if he connects to Thomas Vulcuna, who owned a production company named Eagle's Nest and was supposed to have killed his wife and daughter then shot himself. We cleared it in eighty-one."

"Supposed to have?" Barry said, alert to every nuance.

"I think we got it wrong. San Diego might have had silent dealings with Eagle's Nest. Go back before 1981 and be sure to check with DEA."

"Anybody else?" I could hear him turn a page. For a computer geek, he had some old-school habits.

"Yeah. He has a connection to Stender Sheedy Sr., the managing partner of Sheedy, Devine, and Lipscomb, a white-shoe law firm in Century City. I'd like to know what those two have been doing. Also, there might be a Thayer Dunbar connection as well."

"The oil billionaire?"

"Yeah, and listen, Barry. This is kinda hush-hush. I'd really appreciate it if you didn't farm any of it out."

"What's your timetable?" "ASAP."

"ASAP," he repeated. "What ever happened to WYCGI?"

"Never heard of it. What the hell is WYCGI?"

"Whenever you can get it."

"We'll do that one next time." Then I thanked him and hung up.

The Latimer Commodities Exchange was located on the top floor in an old brick building off Sixth Street in the Jewelry District. Jeb Calloway had signed out another gold brick from the evidence locker and brought the twenty-seven-pound London Good Delivery Bar over himself, along with a police escort to help guard it.

They arrived in a black-and-white and pulled in next to where I was waiting. The uniform carried a heavy canvas satchel with the bar inside, following Jeb and me into the elevator. We rode to the twelfth floor.

Materon Smith met us in the lobby and escorted us down the hall. She was a heavyset African-American woman in her midforties with a friendly face. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

"I got Valentine Rosinski to come in early," she said. "Hes one of the best assayers in L. A."

The lab was large, and filled with an impressive array of equipment. We were greeted at the door by Rosinski, a man with a laurel wreath of gray hair fringing his head. He was wearing a white lab coat and sixty extra pounds.

Jeb put the gold bar on the table and Rosinski studied it carefully. "Is right size for London Good Delivery Bar," he said in a semi-thick Russian accent.

He lifted it, nodded, then set it down on its face and, like Jose Del Cristo, read the Oswald Steel identification trademark on the back. Then, exactly as Jose had, he told us the bar was made pre-1985 and put a nail mark in the gold to test its softness. He weighed it, getting the same four-hundred-troy-ounce reading.

"What tests have been done?"

I looked at my case notes. "An acid test for purity which said the gold was twenty-four karats, and ninety-nine point seven percent pure. Then it was taken to an assay office downtown for an X-ray fluorescence scan, which it also passed."

Rosinski continued to study the bar. "London Good Delivery Bars would be hard to make counterfeit, yah? Very expensive to do this. Top-quality fake today would cost maybe fifty thousand U. S. dollars to produce, because today, you would need to use much real gold to pass our new tests. In 1983, not so much. Back then, they have no neutron activation analysis, no speed-of-sound tests. Weight is always a problem unless you use tungsten."

I said, "I understand that tungsten is very hard to work with because it melts at extremely high temperatures."

He smiled. "When you are stealing gold, a little hard work is not such a bad thing, no?"

"I guess not."

"Since you already do X-ray fluorescence scan, I suggest a neutron activation analysis. It s more thorough, is nondestructive, and will tell what we need to know."

"And the X-ray won't?" Jeb asked.

"If your bar has a one-sixteenth-inch layer of gold on top of a tungsten base, the X-ray will not pass through. This makes it read pure. This neutron analysis is better."

"How long 'til we know?" I asked.

"I can't start until tomorrow because I have other work," Val Rosinski said. "But tomorrow, maybe an hour or two after we open, we know."

We left the gold bar in the same spot where it began its journey-over twenty-five years ago, right here, at the Latimer Commodities Exchange.

It was only a little past eight when I got back into my car. As soon as I did, my Bluetooth beeped. I answered and instantly had Hitch's voice in my ear. He sounded excited.

"Listen, dawg. I just got a strong bite."

"On San Diego?"

"On Jamie Foxx. He wants a meet this morning. A guy from his production company just called me. I'm not sure exactly what Jamie wants to discuss, 'cause his assistant didn't have any details, just that Jamie wants to see me. The agency isn't open yet so I can't call Jerry and get a heads-up. One of my UTA guys musta given him a sniff of this yesterday."

I didn't say anything. I was getting mad.

"Shane?"

"Listen, Hitch, this is supposed to be on the DL, remember? Now you're telling me UTA is out there blabbing it around? Did you leak this to them?"

"No. I haven't told them a word about the gold. But agents are scavengers, man. They root in other people's trash. That's how they go for the gold. Excuse the double metaphor… You can't stop them 'cause it's in their DNA. Of course I told UTA about the old Vulcuna murder-suicide, but you already knew I did that. If they called Jamie, that's probably all they told him about." I didn't answer that either. "Shane, are you there?"

"Yeah."

"This could be huge, man. We gotta drop everything and go see Jamie right now."

"What about that other thing?"

"What other thing?"

"Our case, dipshit. The twenty-five-year-old gold heist with five corpses. You do remember that, don't you?"

"Of course."

"It's picking up speed. We don't have time this morning to be messing with your movie-star friend."

"Listen, dawg "

"I'm a lot of things, but not a dawg," I interrupted. "I'm sometimes a jerk, even an asshole, but I'm not a fucking dawg."

"If that's your call, fine. But here's the 411. Jamie is headed off to London on a European promotional tour for his new flick that's just coming out. Then he's in Prague for six months on the new Michael Mann film. He's leaving at noon from Van Nuys Airport on his G-5."

"So what?"

"Right now, this morning, he happens to be in Malibu looking at some property he wants to buy. He happens to want to talk to us about Prostitutes Ball. If we get our asses up there, he'll hear me out, but it's kinda time sensitive. We blow this meet, unless we wanta spend a fortune to go to Prague, we lose our chance at getting any face-time with him for half a year."

I remained silent. Or maybe I just groaned slightly.

"Okay, okay. So I'll say no. I just had to check with you, dawg I mean, Shane. Because, like it or not, I've become sort of fond of you. I'm trying to keep my partner from throwing away a bloody fortune so you and Alexa won't get stuck eating dog food after you've pulled the pin and shot through your measly police pension."

I suddenly realized I was so distracted by this conversation I was driving erratically and straddling two lanes. Cars behind me on Sixth Street started honking. I corrected and felt myself caving in to this new lust for money.

The canal house was nice, but beachfront would be better. Instead of taking our retirement sitting on lawn chairs in some public campground, wouldn't Alexa and I be happier on a sleek sixty-foot sailboat with silk spinnakers, cruising the California coast?

"I'll call him and tell him no." He paused. "So that's the decision. That's what you want, right?"

"Uhhh, well…" I was vapor locking.

"Good. I hear indecision in your voice. You're finally coming to your senses. Listen, I got directions here. It's off Trancas Canyon, but it's a little confusing. Meet me at Moonshadows restaurant on the Coast Highway out by Malibu in half an hour. Can you make that?" "I don't know," I said. "I'm not sure we should be doing this." "Its a lousy two hours out of your life, get a grip, Scully." "Okay, okay. I'll see you there."