Blond Cargo (15 page)

Jack was double-parked on San Vicente while Cruz made a Starbucks coffee run when the laptop emitted a pinging sound, alerting Jack that his quarry was on the move again. He paged Cruz, who hustled out of the store with two iced coffees and a bagful of doughnuts.

Five minutes later, they were traveling south on the San Diego Freeway, wiping powdered sugar off their lips. Jack finally eyeballed Raul’s Mercedes traveling ahead of them. Jack corrected his speed to follow at a safe distance. Cruz shared a small fist pump before returning to the moving car icon on his computer.

Raul’s Mercedes would have looked out of place in the tired strip mall he pulled into in the city of Costa Mesa if not for the other incongruous cars that populated the lot. Over a million dollars’ worth of exotic cars. The sun was oblong and looked like a Dalí painting dripping below the horizon. The orange glow did little to dress up the string of faded yellow stucco retail shops that called the strip mall home. A hair salon, liquor store, video rental, and head shop completed the loop. It was a classic sixties spread, without any pretension of architectural detail.

Jack continued past the lot as Raul exited his vehicle. Jack executed a U-turn on Pomona Avenue before pulling to the curb a half a block down on Nineteenth with a clear view of the mall.

Raul had already disappeared inside one of the shops, and unless he was getting his hair permed at Raphael’s hair salon, he was probably headed to the very end of the L-shaped complex.

The red-lacquered door had no name over the entrance and no windows. With his cell phone Jack took a photo of an address painted over the door in black. It was a private club, bar, or restaurant of some kind. Jack wouldn’t know until he got a look inside. He snapped off a few quick shots of the nearby license plates and made a mental note to run them by Nick Aprea.

He ducked down in his seat as another car pulled into the lot and parked. Two men exited a silver Porsche 911. They checked out the neighborhood before walking the length of the concrete lot and disappearing behind the red door.

“Guy on the left was packing heat,” Jack said, “wearing a shoulder rig. You get a fix on their ethnicity?” he asked Cruz, who had mirrored Jack’s movements and was sitting low in the car’s leather seat.

“Middle Eastern.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

“But you think?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. What the hell is Raul doing out here?”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Cruz said knowingly.

“Too risky at this point. We sit and wait.”

“I’m starved.”

“You just ate three doughnuts.”

“Yeah, but that was an hour ago.”

Jack laughed and his own stomach growled loud enough to set Cruz to laughing. It got instantly quiet when a Lincoln Town Car pulled into the lot and an impeccably dressed, dark-haired man slid out of the backseat, walked directly up to the red door, and stepped inside without ever looking back.

“Hmmm,” Jack said. “
El
jefe
has arrived.”

The odd grouping of hard, armed young men who were seated at multiple tables scattered around the room stood as Malic made his entrance. It looked like a meeting of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Yet Raul remained seated, a slight not missed by the eighteen Iraqi gangsters. Malic ignored him and shook a few hands, clasped a few shoulders, and shared a few whispered comments with his men, who seemed lifted by his attention.

A fully stocked bar lined one end of the room, and Middle Eastern music played softly in the background. Raul finished his Grey Goose on the rocks and went to pour himself another while he waited for an audience with Malic. In the office they were business partners; in the Iraqi social club Malic was the
man
.

Raul stood at the bar and drank until he felt Malic’s presence next to him.

“I’ve got a problem,” Raul said as he locked eyes with Malic.

“Make it quick, I’ve got a pickup tonight,” Malic snapped.

Not the way Raul had played the conversation in his head. He took another sip of his vodka to save face but knew he wasn’t fooling anyone.

“Jack Bertolino,” Raul stated. “He’s asking a lot of questions. Too many questions. About the girl, about Paradise Cove, about me.”

“And this is my concern why?”

“Because if my problems bleed over to the Vargas Development Group, it will affect your bottom line. The deal is tenuous at best. Bad publicity will bury us. He needs to go.”

Malic seemed to give that some thought. Raul couldn’t read the man. His eyes were like black pits. Raul wanted to scream. If Malic hadn’t killed the girl at Paradise Cove, there wouldn’t have been a trail leading to his doorstep. If he hadn’t kidnapped the Cardona bitch, none of this would have been happening.

“It was on the news. A gangbanger tried to take Bertolino out. A drive-by on a cycle, for crissake. We could do it the same way, and they’d take the heat.”

Malic finally spoke. “It should all be handled by the end of next week,” he said, no inflection in his voice. “The girl will be out of the country and no longer our concern. If Bertolino remains an irritant, we’ll handle him then.”

The imposing man turned on his heel and walked away, leaving a red-faced Raul standing impotently at the bar. Also not missed by the young Iraqi gangsters.

Jack snapped a tight photo of Malic’s face as the red door swung open. He took another picture of Hassan, the red-bearded driver, who emerged from the limo and opened the rear door for his boss.

“Definitely Middle Eastern,” Jack said to Cruz. “Iran, Iraq. Some-damn-where in that part of the world. We’ll find out.”

“The guy with the red beard had crazy eyes.”

Jack nodded and photographed Raul, who stormed out of the club, jumped into his car, and did a tire-burning exit.

“Doesn’t look like our boy’s riding high,” he said as he threw the BMW into gear. When it became clear that Raul was driving toward Malibu, Jack peeled off 10 West and headed for home.

24

Malic piloted the cigarette boat with one eye on the Garmin GPS color display screen and the other peeled for fast-moving cargo container ships that had crossed the Pacific from Asia, headed for San Pedro, Long Beach, and L.A. harbors to off-load. He had inputted the coordinates of the meet but was running behind schedule. Malic was totally in his element piloting his fifty-foot go-fast boat. The Marauder SS, with its dual-charged Mercury Racing engines and acceleration that was mind-numbing, sliced through a three-foot wave like a steak knife through butter.

Unimpressed, Hassan was seated next to him. He wanted to take care of business and slip back into the warmth of his own bed. He ran the back of his fist across his copper-red beard and prayed that all would go well tonight. He didn’t like being out on the open sea when it was choppy, although it did offer a small measure of safety from the Coast Guard’s radar if they were out cruising the coastline.

“There,” Malic shouted over the thrum of the engines.

In the distance both men could see the faint blinking green light. In seconds they pulled alongside a white wooden panga, sunk dangerously low in the water with four hooded occupants aboard. Hassan tied off onto the panga and the men made short work of off-loading seventy-five bales of marijuana with a street value of three quarters of a million dollars. When the precious cargo was secured in the holds of Malic’s craft and business had been concluded, Malic reached out a hand as one, and then a second person, stepped carefully from the panga onto his luxury craft.

“Welcome to America, girls,” Malic said graciously with his slight English accent. Two hoods were pulled back, revealing a startling, fresh-faced blond and a raven-haired beauty.

“It is very pleased to be meeting with you,” the raven-haired woman said.

She couldn’t be more than seventeen, Malic thought. It only increased her value. He would sample his latest acquisition and then place her in one of his clubs, where she would work off her sale price, the cost of transporting her illegally from Eastern Europe into Mexico and then across the border into the United States. The manager of his club, who worked the girls, would subtract the cost of her illegal papers, clothes, room, and board—an added tariff—the cost of doing business.

The girls took their seats, both excited and apprehensive that their journey was coming to an end. They had traveled halfway around the world looking for a better life. Hassan untied the ropes and took his seat as the two vessels drifted apart.

Malic pushed the throttle forward and the million-dollar customized boat rocketed back toward the safety of his compound walls.

Jack was kneeling, shirtless, on his bed as he undid the first button on Leslie’s silk blouse and started working his way down. He was making sure she’d never forget how good it could be. When he fumbled with the fourth button, she unbuckled his belt, undid his fly, and dropped his pants below his waist on a three count. As he unfastened her bra and tossed it across the room, she grabbed his aroused self, which was peeking out the top of his Jockeys, and squeezed to just this side of pain, making him growl.

Jack rolled onto his side and kicked off his pants. Leslie helped dispatch his briefs, using her feet when they got stuck around his ankles. He slipped his hand against the arch of her lower back and pulled her close, feeling the warmth of her breasts burn against his chest and her sex rubbing against his. She pushed in tighter, and their lips and tongues and moans and beating hearts started syncing up.

The four phones that were scattered around his loft rang as one. Louder than hell.

Undeterred, Jack moved from one luscious breast to the other, blinded by the moment. Lost in the scent and the sensuality. The phone finally went to voice mail.

Then Jack’s cell phone rang and vibrated on the granite kitchen center island like a windup toy. They rolled onto their backs to catch their breath until it also went to voice mail.

Then Jack’s fucking landlines rang again.

“Get it, Jack. Get it over with and come back to bed,” Leslie said, totally annoyed.

“I hope I’m not calling at a bad time,” Carol Williams said, not waiting for an answer, “but you’re not going to believe what I found on YouTube. Well, I didn’t find it, but I have it now.”

“Who is this? And do you know what time it is?”

“It’s Carol Williams, and you told me explicitly to call twenty-four/seven if I had anything to report. I know that because I take direction very well. Believe me, you’re going to want to have this conversation.”

“It better be good, Carol.”

“Angelica Curtis is alive.”

Jack’s mood changed instantaneously. “That’s better than good.”

Leslie, not being a part of the conversation, was less than thrilled and didn’t hide her frustration as Jack walked naked into his office.

“Hey, so I just got off the phone with Barry Freid, and
the great
teacher
is not one to make home phone calls,” Carol Williams said. “Barry’s assistant found it surfing the Web, and, well, I’m the only one who saved your card.”

“Are you sure it’s Angelica?” Jack asked.

“I sure as hell am. It’s Angelica, all right, and she’s doing a monologue, and she’s good. Really good,” she said with a trace of envy. “You can’t take your eyes off the screen. She was never that plugged in in class. It’s short, but it’s Angelica, all right.”

“This is great, Carol. You did good.”

“Well, thank you, Mr. Detective. Maybe you should offer me a job. This waitressing thing is killing my feet.”

Jack let that one pass.

“Can you send it over to me?” he asked.

“I’m sending you the URL as we speak. Don’t know where it was generated from, but it shouldn’t be too hard to track down.”

Jack’s computer dinged, letting him know an e-mail had arrived.

“Got it, Carol. Thanks. I’ll get back to you if I have any questions.”

“Hey, call me anyway when this is over. It appears, according to my ex-boyfriend’s critique, that I might be sexually repressed after all. Why don’t you come over and try and heal me? You know, a mercy mission. For the greater good.”

Jack could hear the smile in her voice and was glad he didn’t have the Skype screen turned on, as he was sitting in front of the computer in his birthday suit. “Maybe in ten years,” he answered.

“Hell, in ten years you’ll be too old to help.”

“Ouch.”

Carol laughed as she hung up the phone.

To his amazement, Angelica Cardona’s image filled the computer screen. Her eyes blazed with controlled intensity. She was smiling, but there was no joy in the eyes of “Maggie the Cat.” It was a nuanced performance. A woman drowning and fighting for her life.

The recording was no more than ten seconds long, and Jack viewed it twice, concentrating on the background more than the performance. Trying to ascertain a location. Something about the camera work was off. Jack couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Is that your missing person?”

“Angelica Cardona,” he said as the clip went to black.

Leslie handed Jack his robe, which he gladly shrugged into and hit Play again.

“Big Daddy shares my attitude toward those two! As for me, well—I give him a laugh now and then and he tolerates me. In fact!—I sometimes suspect that Big Daddy harbors a little unconscious ‘lech’ fo’ me . . .”
And the screen turned to black.

“She’s beautiful,” Leslie said. “It’s from
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
.”

Jack nodded in agreement. “I saw the script in her apartment. Does she look like she’s being held against her will?”

“Hard to say. I don’t see any bars on the windows.”

“I don’t see any windows.” He checked the screen for the origin. “A Jahmir 8 posted it two days ago.” Jack keyed up the video again. The person posting had written, “My new girlfriend.” Nothing added under personal description. Category: Entertainment. License: Standard YouTube License.

“Shouldn’t be too hard to track down,” Leslie said.

“Look at the background. At the wall, the tile work. It’s blurred but intricate. And is that the edge of someone’s head? In the far right corner of the screen?”