Blond Cargo (12 page)

“He is a cop’s son, isn’t he, Jack? I’m sorry for what I just said. I . . .”

“I deserved it.”

“I’ll book a flight.”

“I don’t know if it’s the right time. He reached out to me. He’s got to get there himself.”

“Why don’t you go back up?”

“I’m on a case.”

“Well, there it is.”

She just couldn’t help herself.

“I’ll work it from my end,” Jack said. “Tommy talked to a doctor who’s got connections in San Francisco and—”

“You talked to Tommy before you called me?” she said accusingly.

Jack’s gloves came off. “Chris did not want you to know. Asked me not to tell you. To worry you. He didn’t want the pressure. His words.”

“Well . . . thank you then,” Jeannine said, deflating. The fight had gone out of her. “What should we do? I’ll fly out.”

Jack wanted to ask her if she’d been listening but knew his ex-wife was in shock. He was glad she had Jeremy at times like these.

“When the time’s right,” Jack said gently. “He reached out. If the therapy takes, then maybe we’ll have dodged a bullet. I’ll find a neurologist up there, have him do a series of tests on Chris’s arm.”

“Oh, Jack.”

“He’s a good kid. He’ll be okay.”

Jack hung up the phone wishing he believed what he’d just said. He gave Chris another call, got his voice mail. Decided he should follow his own advice and back off.

The images from the surveillance camera at Club Martinique were surprisingly high-resolution. Jack was set up with his coffee mug and his computer on his kitchen island, while Cruz Feinberg, on the phone at his apartment, watched the images on his iPad a few seconds behind Jack.

“There,” Jack said as he hit Pause.

The crowd at the bar was five deep and he’d spotted fleeting images of Raul Vargas standing, sitting, drinking, and cruising. Definitely a man on the prowl. He downed three drinks in the first hour of the video. Jack could see Teddy dropping off the drinks, making change, and lingering with Raul while the crowds built at the bar. In hour two of the video they saw Raul standing with his iPhone close to his face, like he was looking at an app or a text. And then he surreptitiously snapped a few pictures of someone off camera in the dining room area.

“Got it,” Cruz said.

“Now what the hell is he doing?” Jack asked.

“I see it. Hold on. He’s taking a picture. Trying to look cool, checking it out, and now, now it looks like he’s sending it out.”

“That’s what I saw. Who the hell was he sharing the photo with? Love to get my hands on his phone,” Jack said. “Now hit Play again in slo-mo. There. He’s putting a napkin over his drink and walking away from the bar toward the tables. Toward where Angelica and Carol were seated.”

Raul’s image moved out of camera range.

“If Raul Vargas abducted Angelica that night, he might not have been working alone,” Jack said.

“Shit.”

“Is right. There’s one quick shot of Carol leaving the club, alone, and then a blur of Angelica moving in the opposite direction, toward the ladies’ room, as reported by Carol. I don’t see Angelica again, or Raul, for that matter. I looked at the video frame by frame. Take a break, and then go over it again. You might catch something I missed.”

“Will do. I’ll call you on your cell. Where’re you headed?”

“I’ve got to deliver some bad news to Cardona. Gallina is going to pay him a visit today.”

“Better you than me, boss,” Cruz said. “Later.” And he clicked off.

Jack grabbed his keys, ready to face Vincent Cardona. He glanced through the sliding glass doors, past the tight rows of white FedEx trucks, down onto Glencoe Avenue. He started walking back toward his front door when he realized he’d seen an anomaly. He turned on his heel and looked out again.

A green 1970s Chevy Caprice with black-tinted windows—gangbanger written all over it—was parked directly across the street from his building, in front of the Fine Wine Storage facility with a balls-on view of his loft.

Firming his lips, Jack strapped on his leather shoulder rig, checked the load on his Glock nine-millimeter, and shrugged into a loose-fitting black linen jacket to conceal the weapon. No use giving his neighbors a heart attack. Jack was already on their shit list for attracting the wrong kind of publicity for their west-side loft community. If they couldn’t take a joke, fuck ’em, Jack thought.

He took the back elevator, exited through the rear of the building, and jumped the fence onto the FedEx parking lot. He sprinted past the trucks and then across the street, ending up ten feet behind the Chevy Caprice.

He pulled out his Glock and moved rapidly forward in the driver’s blind spot.

Jack tapped the gun barrel on the driver’s-side window.

The blacked-out window powered down, and two empty hands shot out and rotated front to back to prove their innocence.

“Friend, not foe, Mr. B,” Peter said in his nasal Brooklyn twang. “Just keeping an eye on things. You know, I got you covered, so to speak.”

Jack holstered his weapon, relieved it wasn’t La Eme.

“Where were you yesterday?” he said, giving the busted gangster a hard time.

“Lookin’ for a fuckin’ parking space. I saw the action in my rearview. I almost lost my lunch. Parkin’ sucks around here. By the time I turned the fuckin’ car around, you had everything under control, thank God. I didn’t think there was any need to get involved once the cops showed. You know. Why push it?”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Jack said, tongue in cheek.

“Mr. Cardona was reasonably upset. I mean, you can’t very well find his daughter if you’re taking a dirt nap. Or he generally used words to that effect. I mean, he’s offering you protection and whatnot. You know, demanding it. In the form of me.”

“He does have a point,” Jack deadpanned.

“You think?” Peter asked, surprised.

“Do you want me to just give you my itinerary for the rest of the week?”

“That would be great, Mr. B,” the beleaguered man said.

“Get the fuck outta here.”

“What?” Peter said, eyebrows raised, checking to see if Jack was putting him on.

“Get the fuck outta here.”

He wasn’t.

“Oh . . . Uh . . . Okay, then. Huh. Let’s just keep this little conversation between the two of us. . . .”

Peter was speaking to Jack’s back as he watched him dodge traffic and disappear into the lobby of his building.

Two minutes later, Jack’s rental, a new BMW 335i, pulled out onto Glencoe and roared past.

Peter gave it a five count and burned rubber as he executed a smoking one-eighty and gave chase.

19

Angelica sat stone straight in the dinette chair. Both of her arms and legs had been plastic-cuffed to the arms and legs of the chair. She had a dreamy faraway look in her eyes as Hassan laid a bathroom towel on the small dining table, opened a zippered pouch, and pulled out an empty vial and a sterilized syringe. Angelica watched him working dispassionately.

Hassan pulled the cap off of the syringe and stepped over to Angelica like a lab technician.
He inserted the needle into the flesh of her left arm, looking for a flinch that didn’t come. Neither did the blood he was sent to extract for testing.

“Stick it in a vein, you stupid idiot.”

Frustrated, Hassan wanted to stick the needle in her heart. Instead he was the good soldier. He rubbed her arm with an alcohol pad and tried again.

This time Angelica let out a grunt but no cry. He prodded and pushed and tried to force the needle into her vein, but it rolled under the diaphanous skin on her arm and the syringe came up empty again.

“Give it to me!” Angelica ordered.

Hassan stubbornly tried again, this time in Angelica’s right arm, and cursed in Arabic as he was denied a vein.

“If you can’t do it, give it to me! I have very fine veins and they’re hard to find. Save us both the aggravation. Please.”

Hassan gave that some thought. He walked into the kitchen, opened a bottle of water, and took a long, thirsty gulp. Then he pulled his Leatherman off his waist and snipped the plastic tie off Angelica’s right wrist. Trying to remain menacing and careful to stay out of her arm’s full range, he handed her the syringe.

Angelica balled her fist; ran her forefinger down the vein in the crux of her arm, like she’d seen her doctor’s nurse do; and guided the sharp point home.

Hassan stepped in quickly, taking control of the syringe, and pulled the stopper back, filling the reservoir with hot Italian blood.

Angelica relaxed her fist, her eyes dripping with pure Beverly Hills disdain. And then a realization dawned on her. The people who abducted her wanted to know if she was healthy. If she was free of disease. If she was clean. Oh, my God. Her thoughts screamed, and the ringing in her ears reverberated as loud as a church bell. Her face flushed, and she reeled, light-headed, fighting to control her breathing so that she wouldn’t pass out.

Angelica knew at that frightening moment that she wasn’t being held for ransom. They didn’t want a ransom. It wasn’t retribution from one of her father’s enemies. Her abductors were going to sell her. She was being kept alive in order to be sold, and from the looks of her jailer, probably to someone in the Middle East.

Hassan felt the change in temperature in the room but ignored it and went about his business. He poked the full syringe into the rubber stopper of the sterile bottle and filled it with her blood. Satisfied with his work, he placed the medical supplies in the waterproof satchel.

“Untie me!” she ordered.

Hassan, who wasn’t at all pleased with how this exercise had gone, pulled out the Leatherman again and snipped the plastic cuffs off her legs first and then her left wrist.

Being careful not to turn his back on his captor, he unpacked the day’s provisions, zipped up the blood sample, and stepped out of the glass room.

“Do you have a daughter?” Angelica almost whispered.

Hassan heard it loud and clear as he locked the door securely behind him.

Angelica stood on unsteady legs, grabbed one of the alcohol pads he had left behind. As the metal door creaked open and then slammed shut, she started to rub her puncture wounds, slowly at first and then manically. Until her arms were hot, red, and threatening to bleed.

20

Vincent Cardona moved with surprising speed for a man his size. He charged at Jack, who grabbed his forearm before his meaty fist found its mark and used Cardona’s forward momentum to slam the big man against the wall. Two Italianate paintings in the foyer were jarred from the impact, and their gilded frames crashed onto the black and white tiled floor. Jack grabbed two handfuls of silk shirt, muscling Cardona off balance as the mobster tried to land a punch.

Jack heard the thuds of chairs being toppled in the back of the house. Leather shoes pounded out of the kitchen. A bullet was ratcheted into the chamber of a pistol and Peter’s nasal voice, deadly serious, gave an order:

“Let him go, Mr. B.”

“If you shoot him you’re gonna shoot me, you stupid fuck,” Cardona shouted through labored breaths. “Put the guns down, goddamn it, Frankie. You wanna shoot me?”

Jack glanced down the hallway and saw a man who looked a lot like Cardona, only twenty pounds heavier, holding a cannon pointed at his head. The big man reluctantly lowered his weapon toward the floor. Two angry goons standing behind him also dropped their weapons to their sides.

Vincent Cardona had not taken kindly to the notion of bringing the police into his personal business. Skeletons are a bitch, Jack thought.

He eased off on the pressure and Vincent pushed away from the wall. He pulled down his shirt, which had exposed a thick mat of hair underneath his striped silk Armani.

Jack took one step back, spun, and punched Peter squarely in the face. Peter looked confused as he lost control of his .38, which clattered to the floor, and his equilibrium, which dropped him to one knee.

“Never pull a gun on me unless you plan on using it,” Jack said evenly. The implied threat wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.

Frankie and the two goons headed back to the kitchen.

Jack turned and laid into Cardona: “If your daughter is still alive, and that’s a big if, we need all the help we can get. Time is not our friend, Vincent. Now, you hired me to do a job. Back the fuck off.”

Vincent Cardona was not generally at a loss for words. He did the talking and people did his bidding. His face turned a dangerous shade of purple, and he stood mute, breathing hard, contemplating the unimaginable for a father. Finally, he said, “Let’s get some espresso before the bulls arrive.” He stepped over the broken artwork and started toward the kitchen. He turned back when he realized Jack hadn’t moved.

“There’s no time. Give the detectives full access. They’re not interested in your business, only your daughter. Tompkins is the more reasonable of the pair. They’re sending a crew over to Angelica’s apartment to dust for prints today. Make sure they can get in. Now, I need to see Angelica’s bedroom,” Jack said as he moved past Peter, who was dusting off his pant leg and picking up his weapon. “And I need names and addresses to match these faces,” Jack said, handing Cardona the photographs he had found in Angelica’s apartment.

“Upstairs, on the right.”

Jack held an oval silver-framed picture in his hand. Angelica Cardona at twelve or thirteen, he guessed. Open, fresh, clear eyed, beautiful, and full of life. Jack felt her father’s pain. He thought about his own son and the crisis he was going through.

The bedroom was pink. Larger than Angelica’s entire apartment. Filled with every electronic toy and device money could buy. Boy band posters, riding trophies, oversized stuffed animals. A young girl’s dream.

The difference between the bedroom she grew up in and her new apartment was startling. Angelica was a young woman looking to redefine her life. Independence. A clean break from her past.

Jack could understand that. It was what motivated him to move out west. Leave his old life behind. It hadn’t worked out that way so far, and he hoped Angelica would have better luck. If she was still alive.

Her drawers were empty, and her closets were as neat as in her apartment. She had taken a few keepsakes with her when she moved but left the excess behind. Jack felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness in the room. Strange.