Blond Cargo (19 page)

“I know what you’re thinking, Jack. You’re good, but not that good. I didn’t orchestrate the meet. Don’t shoot the messenger.” Leslie bit his ear, her hands drifted below his belt, and he started to get aroused despite his anger at being manipulated.

Jack throttled down a mile offshore from the pier and dropped anchor. Then he wrapped his arms around Leslie and drew her into a hard kiss. The sea had flattened to an easy roll. A flock of gulls squawked and glided overhead, their white bodies fading into the black sky as she spun around, leaned her back against Jack’s chest, and pulled his arms even tighter.

Jack nuzzled the back of her neck and then bit the lobe of her ear. She growled, “Owww,” but pushed back against his groin, demanding more. The scent of her perfume, the salt air, the distant lights, the sound of the ocean lapping against the boat’s hull, and the feel of her body moving against his were driving him crazy. He slid his hand under her sweater and then her bra. Her nipples were rock-hard from the cool night air.

The Ferris wheel mesmerized as it changed colors and patterns and then surprisingly blinked out.

“Now, Jack.”

Jack took Leslie by the hand and led her into the teak-paneled, amber-lit cabin, where they dissolved into the soft flannel sheets on the bunk. Their clothes came off in a fury. Their bodies were hard and cold but their lovemaking was hot, and as Jack slid into Leslie’s wet sex and as she wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling him deeper, and as they moved and rolled and came together in perfect rhythm, Jack and Leslie were overcome by a wave of pure, sexual, orgasmic release. Angry sex for Jack. Victory sex for Leslie. Plenty of fury, sparks, and chemistry.

Jack fell onto his back. The amber glow of the wall sconce played on their gleaming bodies like candlelight.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Jack said, breaking the silence, breathing hard.

“That was damn near perfect, Mr. Bertolino.” Leslie’s delivery was the only thing dry in the bed.

“Hmmm,” he said through a smile. Jack rolled onto his side and put his lips close to her ear. His ragged breathing telegraphed his intentions. “Then how about we double down and let it ride,” he suggested, already rising to the challenge.

Jack got no argument from the deputy district attorney.

30

The exterior of the Spanish colonial house was as deceptive as the mayor’s political sensibilities. Modest and self-effacing at first glance, its grandiosity was revealed as Jack stepped through the thick distressed-oak front door.

Jack was dressed to impress in a gray Donna Karan suit, with a striped blue shirt he left open at the collar.

An overweight Hispanic woman with intelligent brown eyes, wearing a starched black uniform, answered the doorbell. She gave Jack the once-over, taking her responsibilities very seriously, before allowing him entry. Jack liked her immediately. The woman looked as if she could handle the mayor’s household, he thought as he was ushered through the grand two-story foyer into a living room the size of Jack’s loft.

The room was furnished with ultramodern Italian furniture, and the mayor, whose smile sparkled brighter than the white wall paint, beckoned Jack over with an outstretched hand. He was sitting military straight in a black Eames lounge chair. A young man, who was taking measurements of the mayor’s face, stepped back deferentially as Jack shook the proffered hand.

“Mr. Mayor.”

“Jack. They’re taking my measurements for Madame Tussauds wax museum,” the mayor said, as if having his face replicated in wax was an everyday occurrence. The room smelled of pastries and fresh coffee, and breakfast foods had been set up on a Noguchi coffee table. He hadn’t had time for breakfast, but he knew why the meeting had been arranged and didn’t think he was going to be staying long enough to eat.

“Thanks for coming in,” the mayor said as the wax sculptor adjusted his head back into proper alignment. Then he circled him snapping digital photographs of the mayor’s head and zoomed in on specific features.

“You look busy,” Jack said, hoping to bring a quick end to the meeting. It was not to be.

“Oh, come on, Jack,” the mayor said, gesturing to the blank wax head propped on a pedestal, next to a laptop, that the young artist spun, measured, and made notations on. Next to the head sat an open briefcase filled with hair samples that went from blond to black, multicolored glass eyeballs, and an array of false teeth in varying shades. “Lyndon B. Johnson used to hold meetings in the crapper. Don’t let this little circus throw you off your game. No offense meant.” He directed his last comment to the artisan, who smiled, adjusted a steel caliper on the mayor’s right ear, and then inputted his findings into the laptop.

It didn’t escape Jack that the mayor had just compared himself to an ex-president. Lofty aspirations, big ego—no surprise to Jack, who waited for the reason he’d been summoned to be revealed. The mayor sneezed, pulled out a monogrammed cloth handkerchief, and blew his nose.

“You’ve been treated well since your move to L.A., haven’t you, Jack?”

“You mean, other than being arrested for murder?”

“Water under the bridge. My job offer still stands. You should take it.”

“A very generous offer, Mayor, but I’m afraid I’d be a political liability.”

“Let me worry about the politics, Jack.” And then as an aside, “I’ve got someone I’d like you to meet. Maria.”

The wax sculptor was adjusting the caliper over the mayor’s left ear as Maria appeared from the foyer. Jack followed her out of the living room and down the hallway past the oversized professional kitchen, to a room in the rear of the house. The wooden door was closed, and when Jack turned around, Maria had already moved silently back toward the kitchen.

Jack turned the brass knob, opened the heavy door, and stepped in.

The wood-paneled room smelled of Cuban cigars, aged scotch, and saddle-soaped overstuffed leather armchairs. Big-screen television, two landlines: this was the room where deals were consummated for one of the most influential cities in the world.

A man of the cloth was standing stone still by a window that looked out on a sprawling manicured garden and lawn. The cardinal stood six feet tall, thin but not frail, and his red robes appeared to glow in the soft spring morning light that filtered through the white gauze curtains. The tableau looked too studied to be accidental, Jack thought wryly.

At first glance, Cardinal Ferrer appeared lost in prayer, unaware of Jack’s presence. Until he turned around. His fine brown skin shone like translucent parchment paper, his clear gray eyes blazed, and Jack understood that the man of God was just searching for an opening gambit.

“Welcome, Jack—it is all right if I call you Jack?” he asked, making the question an inevitable statement of fact. His voice, a rich baritone, had an educated Spanish lilt.

“Jack works for me, Father.”

“Call me Cardinal, Jack.”

Jack shook the man’s hand. It was smooth and dry, with unusually long, slender fingers. When they’re steepled in prayer, they must wield some power, Jack thought. He was already uncomfortable with the tone of the conversation but chose to remain respectful.

“You look like a good Italian-American Catholic. Are you still practicing, Jack?” the cardinal asked.

“I got a lot of practice when I was a kid. I think the designation at this point in my life is
fallen
.”

That elicited a thin smile from the cardinal. “That can be rectified,” he said with firm conviction.

“Good to know.”

“Father Geary?”

“Excuse me?” Jack said as old memories came flooding back.

“He was your priest at Queen of the Most Holy Rosary?”

The cardinal had done his due diligence. Jack wasn’t happy about the snooping, but he wasn’t surprised.

“He left the priesthood and ran off with a wayward nun,” the cardinal said, his tone condescending and dismissive.

“We were all rooting for him. Geary was a good guy, deserved to be happy.”

Jack could sense a slight change in the cardinal’s controlled demeanor and enjoyed his discomfort.

“He didn’t have the right stuff. Religious fortitude. He was a quitter.” The cardinal put the emphasis on
quitter
, as if the perceived slight against God was a personal affront.

“If you say so, Cardinal.”

“You played baseball in high school and then for a year in college. Your transcripts said you had promise. Why did
you
quit?”

Jack was getting pissed now. “A tailing fastball I couldn’t control. What can I do for you, Cardinal?” Jack asked, wanting to get the hell out of Dodge.

“We don’t quit on anyone, Jack, we Catholics. If you ask for forgiveness, we forgive. It’s a benevolent system. Redemption is the glue that has bound our religion together for over two thousand years.”

The man was charismatic, Jack conceded begrudgingly. The rich tone of his voice demanded attention. It must have been effective from the pulpit, but it wasn’t working on Jack.

“So, again, what can I do for you?”

Jack had stared down gun barrels, psychopaths, politicians, and fools, but the cardinal was good. Jack knew that he hadn’t worked his way out of the ghettos of Mexico City and ascended to the nosebleed heights of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy without possessing a steely core. Jack had also done his research.

“The homeless population in Los Angeles County is pushing ninety thousand at last count. It’s a blight, personally, spiritually, and economically. Drugs, prostitution, rape, murder, all by-products of living on the streets. I witnessed it every day of my childhood growing up. The Catholic Church changed my life; the Vargas Development Group is going to change the fabric of life in downtown Los Angeles, and they have our full support. Their architectural plans call for two hundred low-income units to exist alongside upscale condos in one tower and then commercial spaces in the second.”

“Very white of them,” Jack uttered as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

“Excuse me?”

“So the Catholic Church is in the turnaround business?” Jack asked, fighting to rein in his attitude.

“Save a soul, save a child, save a city.”

“Make a good bumper sticker.”

“Do you want some coffee, Jack?” the cardinal asked, trying to diffuse the energy in the room. He gestured toward the mayor’s desk with his long, elegant hands, where a silver tray had been set up with an ornate silver coffee urn and white bone china. Jack shook his head and the man of God poured himself a cup.

“If the mayor’s offer isn’t rich enough, come to work for the church. We have a well-equipped security department with international reach. We could use someone with your exemplary background.”

“As long as it’s hands off Vargas.”

“Eight years of work, Jack, cleanse a neighborhood, lives saved. Do you know how many children live on skid row?”

“I think I’m about to be educated.”

“Sometimes in life, one makes decisions based upon what would serve the greater good. No?”

Jack knew he was being quoted. Serving the greater good had been his rationale for going into business with drug-dealing confidential informants. It was all in his files.

But instead of taking the bait, he looked past the cardinal and focused on a black-framed picture that was displayed on the mayor’s power desk. It was a publicity photo taken at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on an empty lot that was located directly beside the transient hotel, the Regent, that Jack knew was owned by the Los Angeles archdiocese. A man Jack intuited was Philippe Vargas stood holding a Gulliver-large pair of scissors. The smiling mayor mugged directly into the camera to his right. Then Jack spotted a man he was sure he had seen before.

An electric charge sparked on the back of Jack’s neck and shot down his spine. He could now put a face with the name. The last time he had seen the polished, swarthy man standing to the right of Raul Vargas was outside of the Iraqi club in the city of Costa Mesa. It was Malic al-Yasiri, Vargas’s golden goose.

The cardinal followed Jack’s gaze toward the photograph and air-tapped his long finger to make his point.

“Philippe Vargas is building a school and day-care center where the hotel now stands so that their mothers can be retrained and join the workforce. Two acres of the development will be green-zoned parkland for the residents with children and dogs.”

Jack stopped him before he could go on. He’d heard just about enough.

“I think Philippe Vargas might be guilty of pushing Pope John Paul the Second out of line.”

“I’m not following you.” The cardinal’s laser eyes were searing; no benevolence now.

“For sainthood, Father. For sainthood. Sorry, but I’m not buying. His son is a drug-dealing scumbag who may also be a kidnapper, a rapist, and a killer. I’ll back off when I run him to ground.”

The cardinal’s face turned as red as his vestments.

Jack nodded and started to leave.

“Oh, Jack . . .”

“Yeah, the conversation never happened,” he said over his shoulder as he pushed through the heavy doorway and left the man of God to dwell on what was to come. It might not be as divine as he’d hoped.

Jack winked at Maria, who blushed as he passed the kitchen, and stopped at the entrance to the living room. The mayor was standing now, and the blank wax head had been propped on top of a mannequin, a clone of the mayor, wearing one of his signature suits. On the laptop computer was a 3-D picture of the mayor’s face covered in green grid lines and numeric measurements.

The mayor raised his eyebrows in a question. “How did it go?”

“He didn’t threaten me with eternal damnation,” Jack responded.

“Give him time,” the mayor added with no humor as the young artist tightened a tape measure around his neck.

Jack strode crisply out of the mayor’s house and picked up speed as he jumped into his car and powered away. He was heading straight for the marina to scrub some of the stench from the meeting off his pagan soul.

31

“The prodigal son . . .” Philippe Vargas said with all the recrimination a powerful man could muster with three words.