Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) (23 page)

His professionalism restored, Mankowitz took his briefcase in hand and stepped from the Mercedes, clicking on the alarm that sounded with a chirp. He walked toward the back of the car, the entrance to his building just beyond, but slowed as a long, old car glided to a stop in the alley, blocking the entrance to the lot.

Darian put the car in park and stepped out, looking at the man from across the hood of the Buick. Moises got out from the passenger side. He was just a few yards from the clearly frightened white man. At almost the same instant both men produced their Ingrams, leveling them at their target.

“Wait! No!” Mankowitz dropped his briefcase and took an unsteady step backward. But it would change nothing.

Moises fired first, grabbing the front end of his Ingram and raising it just a bit from the center-mass point of aim he’d been instructed to use. The thirty rounds began impacting just below the lawyer’s pronounced Adam’s apple and stitched up the length of his face. Only a third of the .45-caliber slugs actually found their target, but that was more than enough to turn Seymour Mankowitz’s head to a grotesque bloody rose of flesh and bone. Darian’s shots were placed well, all but five devastating the lawyer’s midsection. What remained of the body flopped backward a few feet, tumbling to the ground at the side of the Mercedes.

“Get in!” Darian yelled, checking their surroundings quickly for any witnesses. There were none.

“Did you see that?!”

“Here.” Darian handed his weapon across the seat to Moises and dropped the Buick into gear, resisting the urge to stomp on the gas. Instead he pulled away from the scene quickly, but without screeching the tires. “Put ‘em in the bag.”

“Oh man!” Moises reached over the front seat and buried the still smoking Ingrams in a large duffel, his heart pounding. “Did you see that fucker go down?!”

“Easy, Brother Moises,” Darian cautioned, though his own adrenaline level was still high. “Get yourself together.”

“Right,” Moises said, nodding sharply. He took several deep breaths as Darian put distance between them and their victim.
I did it. I offed him. I can do it!

“Are you okay?”

“You bet, Brother Darian. A-OK.”

Darian reached over and gave the young fighter a gentle punch in the arm. “I knew you would be. I knew it.”

So did I
. That thought struck Moises as somehow strange, but he was beyond harboring any concern as to why that was. It was just the way it was now. His new reality.

*  *  *

Priority One in the morning was always getting the Braun coffeemaker running. Wisely, Frankie used pre-packed filters, and was religious about keeping the small plastic pitcher beside the machine filled with water. No running to get this or mess with measurements. Just drop in the filter, pour, and switch it on. And there was just enough time to refill the pitcher before the line of black liquid would pass the one-cup mark on the glass pot. She stepped from the cubicle on her way to the water cooler, a trip that was cut short by the sight of Hal Lightman approaching. “What are you doing here? You were on late last night.”

“I was
here
last night,” Lightman corrected her. In one hand was a stack of green-and-white computer printout. “When’s Art getting in?”

“In a bit. I’m doing the early shift this morning. Why?”

“I think I found something.”

Frankie put the pitcher down and motioned for Hal to lay the stack on Art’s empty desk. “What is it?”

“I was running down Birch and Associates, looking for permits and business licenses, et cetera, and this came back from the county.” He pointed to a copy of the fire department safety inspection done just three months earlier.

“It passed. So?”

“Look at who owns the space Kostin was leasing.”

Frankie’s eyes shifted to the pertinent information. “Green Hills Trust? This is the same place that owned his house.”

“I don’t care if he did pay a big chunk of his rent on that house up front—this is too much to consider just a coincidence.”

Way too much
, Frankie thought. “Do you have the info on the trust?”

“On my desk.”

“Bring it over,” Frankie said with some excitement, knowing that coincidences were often found to be conspiracies when illegality was involved. It was time to move on this, and fast. “Let’s get digging.”

And there was another person who’d want to join in the dig, Frankie knew. She picked up the phone and dialed with one hand. Art answered on the second ring.

*  *  *

Ray Harback led the two men through the airlock-like pair of doors and into the noise of the physical plant one level above 73. “This is the stuff your boss was interested in.”

Roger shifted the weight of the “camera” bag on his shoulder and leaned close to their guide. “He said he wanted good shots of the flow monitor setup.”

Harback nodded, one hand holding his hearing protectors. “Over here.” He walked a short distance and pointed to the large outflow conduit. “This is it.”

Mustafa brought up the rear as his comrade engaged the white man in a distracting conversation. He had his own bag, but there was nothing approximating a camera in it. Not even close.

Harback felt a jab in his back and turned, freezing at the sight of the boxy-looking gun pointing at his gut. The man he had been talking to removed a similar weapon from his bag and shoved it in his ribs. “What... What is this?”

Mustafa gestured with the gun for Harback to back up, directing him around a corner where the ductwork disappeared into the floor. Roger laid his weapon on the ground and removed the cylinder from his bag, seeing in his peripheral vision the suppressed Ingram in his comrade’s hand buck twice. He had it on single shot. A smart move, Roger thought, considering all the concrete in this space. It could have been ricochet city had any rounds missed.

“Dead,” Mustafa yelled, his mouth close to Roger’s covered ears. “I’ll watch the door.”

Roger nodded and stepped over the duct to the opposite side, seeing the access panel immediately. He twisted the twin latches and swung it up on its hinges. Next he took the cylinder. The switch he was supposed to throw was on the top, covered by a piece of tape that had held it in the unmarked
safe
position. Without realizing it he took a shallow breath and held it, then removed the tape and pressed the switch in one motion. A red LED came on, which he took to mean that the thing was now live.
Live
. That was an odd way to put it, Roger thought, considering...

But that it was, leaving just sixty minutes. He looked at his watch and made a mental note of the time, then closed the access panel and hopped back over the ductwork. “It’s set.”

Mustafa nodded and slid the still warm Ingram into the long camera bag, as did his comrade. “All right, Brother Roger. This is it.”

“Let’s scoot,” Roger said, knowing he did not want to be anywhere close when the shit went off. Mustafa’s willing acceptance of his suggestion convinced him that he had company in that desire.

*  *  *

The Green Hills Trust had been established in early 1992 by a smattering of well-to-do senior citizens concerned that their idle savings were not being served well by the declining bank interest rates. Real estate, they had decided, was an attractive option, particularly when the low property prices brought on by a weakening economy spurred a buyer’s market. And prices would certainly go up again. Until then, when a tidy profit could be realized by selling high, a decent cash flow could be had through renting. That was the plan.

But something else had come of that venture, something Frankie and Hal were endeavoring to discover.

“These old folks own over a hundred units,” Hal said, reading from his half of the printout. “It’s about a fifty-fifty split between residential and commercial.”

Frankie looked up from the stack before her. “You checked out the people that manage the properties, right?”

“They’re as clean as clean can be,” Hal answered. “They just show the properties when someone asks and collect the rent. Besides, they’re just working people. No connections to anything other than the obvious.”

Lightman was a healthy cynic, with a suspicious nature thrown in for good measure. If he was branding someone as clean, Frankie knew, they were. “All right, what about the members of the trust?”

“A gathering of geezers,” Hal said, little hope in his voice. He passed the list of those who had bought into the trust to Frankie. It ran eight pages. “I looked at the first page and moved on. The average age has to be something like eighty.”

Not the sorts to be behind this thing, Frankie thought as she verified Lightman’s analysis of the members’ ages. She flipped through the list and saw no reason to lower the threshold he had set. “A mortician’s dream. Some of these people are past ninety. A couple even—”
Wait. Back up.
“Hal. Look.”

Lightman looked to the spot that Frankie’s finger indicated. “C. C. Royce.” His eyes came up, peering over the bifocals he used for reading. “Royce.”

Frankie opened the appropriate drawer and removed a file that held the breadth of the information they had gathered on Monte Royce.
The bastard
, she thought, one of his statements made during their interview of him coming to mind. ‘
You can imagine she is quite old....
’ It didn’t take her long to find confirmation of her supposition. “Here. Canadia Conyers Royce.” She handed the pertinent page from the CEO’s biography in his company’s annual report. “Mother of Monte.”

“Son of a bitch,” Lightman commented, removing his glasses. “It looks like Mommy Dearest was doing a little recruiting of tenants for her little boy.”

“It looks that way,” Frankie agreed without enthusiasm. There was still the nagging question as to why Monte Royce would be involved in this. This new information only solidified a link between Royce and Kostin. It provided no connection to the man they believed was actually running the show: John Barrish. He was safe— “Hold on.”

Lightman saw his fellow agent sit bolt upright. “What is it?”

“Barrish,” Frankie said. “He was cleaned out in that suit a couple of years back, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Frankie set the Royce file aside and paged back through the list of properties owned by the Green Hills Trust, finding what they had all been looking for on the last page. “Yes!” she exclaimed, bringing her fist joyously down on the folded printout. “We have them.”

“Who?”

“Look here,” Frankie said. “Green Hills not only owns Kostin’s house and the office he leased, they also own the house John Barrish is living in. Art and I were up there last week.”

“Shit. You were right.”

“This is it,” Frankie proclaimed with satisfaction. But there was no time for celebration. They had to move now. “Hal, get Omar in here and get to Barrish’s attorney. We’re going to do this right. No legal snafus. Tell his attorney—Mankowitz is his name—that we’re bringing his client in for questioning. That’s all. Also tell Lou to get a tactical team ready to move on Barrish’s house. Make sure he alerts Captain Orwell.”

“Do you think the stuff is up there?”

“If it is we’ll be ready. I’ll go pick up Royce for questioning. Once we have everybody in our hands we’ll get Horner to bless an arrest warrant for Barrish and Royce.”

“Royce may crack now,” Lightman surmised.

“What? Use his mother as leverage?” Frankie stood and grabbed her jacket. “What makes you think I’d use such an underhanded method?”

“Just guessing,” Lightman said, his face plastered with a knowing smile.

Frankie reached the elevator just as Art was stepping off. He saw the look immediately. “What?”

“Come on,” she said, herding him back into the elevator. “We’ve got Barrish. Direct link to Royce.”

Art thumped the elevator door as it closed. “Dammit, yes!”

“I’ll give you all the details in the car,” Frankie promised.

“Where are we going?”

She smiled. “To nail one Monte Royce’s ass.”

Art nodded, joining the smile. It was good to start the morning on a high note. Taking Royce down was only slightly below the highest. But he could wait to nail John Barrish...for a while.

THIRTEEN

Body Count

“Your nine o’clock canceled,” Lena told Anne Preston as she walked through the door of her outer office. A devilish grin accompanied the revelation.

“Hmmm.” Anne shook her head, and headed for the door to her office. “I’ve got work to catch up on.”

“Go see him,” Lena said, stopping her boss in her tracks. “You know you want to. It’s only an hour.”

Anne looked to her secretary and smiled. “I knew I hired you for some reason.”

“Go.”

One billable hour down the drain, but the standard cancellation fee and the chance to see Art was the flip side. It was a fair exchange. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Say hi for me, too,” Lena told her.

“I will,” Anne assured her, then headed back the same way she had come. Five minutes later she was driving west on Wilshire on her way to surprise her man.

*  *  *

The drive north on the 405 took Art and Frankie a little longer than they’d anticipated, thanks to a fender bender that was clearing on the right shoulder, but the northbound 101—actually heading in a westerly direction for that stretch—was free and clear, allowing them to reach Monte Royce’s Westlake Village place of residence in less than thirty minutes. But arrival only presented a fresh problem.

“Excuse me,” Frankie said as she pulled the Bureau Chevy up on the wrong side of the street, blocking the gated driveway to the Royce home. The uniformed woman looking inward through the wrought-iron bars turned toward her voice. “Do you live here?”

The woman eyed the stranger suspiciously, a reaction Frankie noticed and alleviated by showing her shield. “No, I’m the nurse for Mrs. Conyers Royce. But no one is answering the gate phone.”

Frankie put the car in park and got out. Art did also and walked over to the woman. “How often do you come here?”

“Every day about this time,” the nurse explained nervously. “Mr. Royce leaves once I’m here. He never leaves until I’m here.”