Blues in the Night (24 page)

It took Gulik a few seconds to get the gist of the comment. Mace was able to shift slightly on the chair, waiting for the punch. To his surprise, Gulik shrugged and pressed two kielbasa-like fingers against Mace's forehead, pushing him and the chair over backward.

Momentarily disoriented, lying on his back, he saw what appeared to be two Guliks towering above him. ‘Get us coin, funny man, or we kill your pussy. We kill fat bastard you work for. We kill you.'

‘I get it,' Mace said, his eyesight refocusing. ‘You guys kill people.'

Gulik rested a foot on his chest. The foot was encased in the biggest Dr Martens steel-toe boot Mace had ever seen. ‘Maybe I break your ribs,' the big man said. ‘Stomp broken edges into heart.'

Mace had a sudden memory flash of Wylie's broken body. He blinked it away and said, ‘That might make it difficult for me to deliver the coin. You should check with your boss Jerry Monte first.'

‘Jerry Monte?' Klebek said in what sounded like genuine surprise. ‘What's he got to do wit' any—'

‘Shawt opp,' Gulik ordered his associate. He turned back to Mace. ‘You think we work for la-di-da who sing and dance?' Gulik said. ‘We work for Maxil Brox, you dumb mothofoker.'

There was something weird about the two of them, something off, but Mace couldn't get a fix on it. Something strangely familiar, too. ‘What do you think Brox would prefer?' he asked. ‘Me dead, or the coin?'

The big man glared at him, nodded and removed his foot. He took a cellular phone from his pocket and placed it on the floor next to Mace's head. ‘What time?' he asked his associate.

The man on the bed looked at his wristwatch. ‘Four twenty-eight.'

‘OK,' Gulik said to Mace. ‘You get coin and wait for call from Maxil Brox at exactly six a.m. He tell you what to do. You don't answer or you don't follow his instructions, we kill your pussy, we kill your comrade.'

The other man rose from the bed and they both headed for the door.

‘It'll take me longer than an hour,' Mace said. ‘Even if I wasn't tied up.'

Gulik paused, thinking about it. ‘Mr Brox call you at
seven
a.m.,' Gulik said. ‘No later.'

‘Be sure to tell him you left me like this. My guess is he'll give you guys a special reward for making it impossible for me to do anything but lie here.'

Gulik paused at the door. He walked back to Mace. Giving him a wide, gold-tooth grin, he said, ‘So helpless, huh?'

He raised his huge foot and brought it down hard and fast, breaking several rungs of the wooden chair.

Then, laughing, he followed his partner from the cabin.

FORTY

E
ven with the smashed rungs, it took Mace a while to splinter the chair enough to free his limbs. It was a quarter to five when he found Wally lying behind the counter in his office, unconscious; five nineteen, by the time he left the wiry old man sitting in a customer chair, mixing sips from what he called a ‘breakfast brewski' with puffs on a double doobie to take the edge off his head pain and cursing the ‘baboon who fucked me up.'

Mace ripped the tracking device from Angela's Mustang and tossed it into a pathetic little marijuana garden that Wally, or somebody, was tending next to the manager's office. Too impatient to put the top up on the convertible and ignoring the dew slick on the bucket seat and steering wheel, he started up the car and ground his teeth waiting for the wipers to clear the ocean-salty moisture from the windshield.

Then he was off to Paulie's house on Mulholland, using the drive time to pick at the scattered pieces of information he'd been given by Gulik and others and place them in context with what he'd already figured out.

He had decided, for example, that Paulie had to be the victim of the piece, the only participant who had played by the rules. The goat, in other words. There was no question but that his long-time rival, the late Tiny Daniels, had hijacked the coin with the formula. Mace knew this to be a fact. He'd gotten it straight from the horse's mouth.

If what Corrigan had told him was even a half-truth, Tiny had been partnered with Russian mobster Maxil Brox. The two clowns who'd taken Angela had said they were working for Brox. He should have realized that with the first accented syllables to spill out of Gulik's gold-toothed mouth. And yet there was something about the man with Gulik . . . Reacting in surprise to Mace's comment about them working for Jerry Monte, the guy on the bed had momentarily lost his Russian accent, had, in fact, substituted “wit”' for ‘with'.

There was no rule saying Brox had to hire only his countrymen. But that didn't explain why the guy had pretended to have a Russian accent. Was it possible that Gulik had been faking his accent, too, but was a better actor?

Mace was keeping it at a cop-free fifty-five miles per hour along the nearly vacant Pacific Coast Highway, letting the cool, damp morning air clear his head. He understood that, by continuing to focus his thoughts on Brox and his two bully-boys, he was avoiding the one thing that meant the most to him: Angela's place in the puzzle. From the jump, he'd assumed she was not merely an innocent pawn in the plan to hijack the coin. Someone – the odds were on Tiny – had put her up to romancing Paulie to find out the shipping information.

But how deep was her involvement in everything that had happened since the theft? When Mace had walked in on her the night of Tiny's death, she'd been in bed, druggy and naked. But the silk panties he'd picked up from the carpet had been still warm from her body. Why had she stripped down just before he arrived?

At the time, he'd wanted to believe the gunshots had awakened her from a drug dream long enough to remove her clothes in anticipation of the arrival of her lover, Tiny's bodyguard, Carlos. Now he wondered if the whole thing hadn't been a charade to distract him from following Tiny's killer. Was it possible she had set up Tiny for the kill? If so, on whose orders? Brox?

His thoughts were interrupted by high beams filling his rear-view and lighting up the Mustang's interior. The vehicle was overtaking him much too quickly. He felt very vulnerable sitting in the topless car. He swung into the right lane and slowed a little, braced for the worst.

The speeder, an old souped-up Bonneville, zoomed past, twin exhausts roaring like a dragon in heat. About one car-length behind was a Highway Patrol sedan, it's red light flashing.

Just another LA car chase. But, because of the early hours and the light traffic, it would probably not even make the morning news. Still, it had spooked Mace enough that he stopped the Mustang at the side of the road and put up the top.

He was aware of how little protection a canvas cover offered. But it made him feel safer. He recognized this as a symptomatic trend. He was putting too much emphasis on feelings, too little on logic. That was courting disaster, with an emphasis on courting. He followed the PCH as it melded into the Santa Monica Freeway. With dawn drawing a bright white line along the horizon behind him, he forced himself to continue to rework the puzzle parts.

He knew Tiny, knew the fat man was greedy enough and arrogant enough to think he could slide a fast one past his Russian mobster partner, especially if Brox was a bit wary of setting foot on US soil. But Brox had evidently considered the coin worth the risk.

His presence helped to explain a thing or two. Sweets had claimed that ‘the fat man' had sent him to kill Paulie. But, as Paulie noted, if that had been true, it was doubtful that his limo mate, Thomas, would have accepted a contract on Tiny. If the limo trio were working for Brox, however, Paulie's murder would have made sense. The Russian could have seen him as a loose end that needed clipping. At the same time, Paulie's murder would have served as a warning to Tiny to stay in line. And, if Brox was thinking about opening a California branch, as some of his competitors had done on the East Coast, a weakening of Montdrago's operation would have made Paulie's removal even more appealing.

But Paulie hadn't been killed. And Tiny . . .

Mace was distracted by a jackass in a Toyota van behind him hitting his horn. He moved to the far right lane and let the guy zoom past. He noticed that the sky had gone from black to a charcoal gray and traffic was picking up.

He took the exit that carried him to the San Diego Freeway and even more traffic heading north.

Focus
,
he demanded of himself.

The attempt on Paulie's life had failed. And Tiny, who was trying to cut Brox out of an incredibly rich payday, had to be dealt with. How to do that and still tie Montdrago and Company to the fat man's murder?

He'd already considered the possibility that Thomas and his crew hadn't picked him up by chance at Point Dume. Sweets had seen Mace parked by the side of the road and recognized him as the guy who'd snapped his wrist. They'd grabbed him with the idea of setting him up for Tiny's death. If he hadn't escaped, he might have been left dead or dying at the crime scene accompanied by ‘evidence' that he'd been hired to kill Tiny Daniels. Paulie would have been in the frame, too, the man who'd brought Mace to LA for the hit. Even Montdrago might have been ensnared, as an accessory before and/or after the crime.

Brox was the puppeteer, pulling all the strings, Mace thought. But where did that leave Angela?

Was she on the Russian's payroll? Had she been the one who'd knocked him out at the deserted motel where she'd insisted they stay? Everything he'd ever learned or experienced, behind bars or on the street, told him that the answer to both questions was ‘yes'. But if she was playing it straight with him . . . or if he'd misread the signs, or forgotten something crucial . . .

No! Fuck the what-ifs. You spent a few hours with her. In bed, for Christ's sake, when everything seems possible. A week ago, you didn't even know she existed. Use your brain. Stop thinking with your dick.

FORTY-ONE

H
e almost overshot the Mulholland exit, had to swing in front of an early morning commuter who was lucky enough to have good brakes, but unlucky enough to have been drinking from a coffee mug. The Mustang was a peppy little car and Mace pushed it past the Skirball Center and up along the drive. He was going to have more than enough time to retrieve the coin before Brox's call, but he felt some need for speed.

He concentrated on the road, a good thing because it wound up beside a deep valley and some of its curves were extreme. He arrived at Paulie's shortly before six, just as dawn was breaking, painting the ranch-style home and the area with a warm golden glow that seemed so out of context it almost made him laugh.

He parked the Mustang on the cement slab beside Paulie's SL55 and Range Rover and a black Cadillac convertible with tinted windows.

The Caddy was locked up tight. There was a small pink rental sticker on the left hand corner of the windshield. The newborn sun hadn't begun to burn off the dew that covered the three cars. The Caddy had been there a while. Maybe it belonged to a lady Paulie had met in the night, but it made Mace cautious enough to avoid the front door.

He circled the house, taking quick peeks through the windows. There wasn't much of interest to see until he reached the glass doors that separated the living room from the red brick patio and the fake jungle pool and waterfall.

He'd been wondering why anybody would want a waterfall in their back yard. All that splashing. His current state of anxiety had been doing a good enough job of aggravating his bladder. The constant gurgling water was pushing the need to urinate past the need for caution.

Inside the living room, the too-modern chandelier was blazing.

He scanned the room – the darkened widescreen TV, the slightly rumpled carpet, the empty chairs and sofa. He had almost decided to move on when he saw the tip of a man's shoe poking out from behind the corner of the sofa.

Nothing stirred in the room.

Mace moved to the far edge of the glass door, but he could see no more than the whole shoe and an inch or so of the man's stocking. The foot was too large for it to be Paulie's.

Mace continued his tour of the building's exterior until he came to a door flanked by garbage bins. The door was closed but somebody had used a pry on it, leaving the frame splintered and the lock useless. He pushed the door open and several horseflies deserted the bins to try their luck inside the house. Mace followed them into a kitchen that smelled of lemons.

It was a smart, modern-looking room, complete with a skylight above a fancy food-prep island. There was pale wooden cabinetry, an empty metal sink, a shiny metallic space-age refrigerator. A stove/oven big enough to handle dinner for the UCLA football team.

The flat black floor tiles were made of a rubbery material that gave Mace's step a little bounce. Everything looked store-display new. He wondered if Paulie had ever fixed a meal there.

He checked his watch. 5:52 a.m., over an hour before Brox's promised phone call. He listened again for any stray sound. Just the buzzing of the flies, probably wishing they'd stayed with their friends.

He moved around the island and paused only briefly at a door leading to the rest of the house. A swinging door. He pushed it open soundlessly and carefully eased it back into position behind him. He followed the short hall to the entrance to the living room, where he stood, listening again.

The foot belonged to Drier. It and the rest of the man's body lay sprawled on the carpet beside the sofa. His head rested against the bottom of the sofa, twisted at an ugly angle. There were bruises on his neck. His eyes were open, but they weren't seeing much. The blood on his chin was not fresh.

Mace knew the man was dead, but he checked anyway. Cold corpse.

He turned from it and approached the giant TV screen. He ran his hand over the upper edge until he found the coin he'd stuck there, embedded in a wad of Wylie's chewing gum. The gum had dried out and popped free cleanly.