One of the Wicked: A Mick Callahan Novel (6 page)

"Sure, in a public place and during daylight hours." She covered the phone and sent someone away.

I took a shot. "I was hoping for some oils and a fireplace and candlelight."

"Keep dreaming, Cowboy."

"Noon tomorrow for chili burgers?" I was reminding her of how we'd first met for lunch, hoping to strike gold.

"Not tomorrow and most assuredly not there." She remembered, too. "In fact, I'm having a pretty crazy week. I'll have to call you."

"Darlene, you're making me work too hard at this."
Do you have some balls, Callahan, or what?

"Like you're some kind of cake walk?"

"I didn't say that. Don't twist my words."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Time out."

"Look, Mick," she said quietly. "I will call you sometime tomorrow. I promise. Let's not fight about making up. Deal?"

"Deal. Don't let them grind you down." But she had already broken the connection.

Well, that went well.
Now, with a little luck, I'd have to do some difficult couples counseling that week, just so I could feel like a complete hypocrite.

I put the phone down and found a vegetable drink in the fridge. I walked out into the backyard. The motion detector kicked the lights on. It was cool, and a light breeze rippled through the palm trees at the end of my small property. I sat in a lawn chair and looked up at the stars. They just don't look the same in the city. Hell, everything in the sky seems smudged and greasy when you're staring up from a yard in LA.

Careful what you pray for, you just might get it.
After years of busting my hump, I was feeling homesick. I'd grown up in the northeast part of Nevada, just outside of a nothing little town called Dry Wells. My mother died when I was just a boy, and I couldn't really remember her. Despite the ugly part of those memories, and ugly was pretty much the largest part, visiting there again had reawakened the country boy. Now I missed the smell of sage, the silence, and the flat and open heat of the desert.

I sipped the drink, felt sleepy. Damn, I missed old Murphy, too. At least the cat was a living presence. I'd thought having my own house would bring comfort, but some nights it only seemed to accentuate my loneliness.

My stepfather Danny Bell emerged from the shadows in my mind and whispered:
Callahan, you're just like me. Your problem is you don't fit anywhere, with anybody.

I tried to think of a comeback . . . and failed.

"Okay, who do you want first, bro?"

"Are you done already? Damn, you're the best, Jerry."

"Flattery will get you everywhere. Are you going to get us back in trouble sometime soon? I'm starting to find the good life a little boring."

"You're a sick guy."

"There's only so much money, pussy, and sunshine a country boy can stand, you know what I mean? I like the superhero-sidekick thing we got going. Let's kick us some ass. Let me hear you say 'well, that should stir things up' one more time."

"Relax. Unfortunately, I may be about to step on my dick again."

"I was hoping you'd say that. Is your camera on?"

"Oh. Sorry." I flipped the equipment around, yawned, and sat back with my cup of double espresso. "Do you have pictures for me?"

"Does a bear shit in the woods? Have a look."

I squinted. The mug shot that appeared on the monitor was of a dark-eyed man in his late twenties, with a buzz cut designed to hide a badly receding hairline. Poor bastard. He had pig eyes, a pug nose, simian brows, and a large jaw that looked like it had taken a pounding in a boxing ring.

Jerry said, "Meet Mr. Joey Faber. Joe was born and raised in a dinky town up near Sacramento. His mother drank like a fish, married three times, and beat the shit out of him. According to state records, Child Welfare Services came to their trailer so often they should have been charged admission."

"Never took him away from her?"

"Twice, but always gave him back to his loving mommy. Couldn't make it stick for some reason. Social Workers are always overworked, underpaid, and poorly supervised. The State records are a mess."

"State records?" The kid seemed to be able to hack anyone, any time. Legal or illegal. Which often made me wonder if someone else just as good could follow the trail back to Jerry's computer and get his sorry ass arrested.

"Don't ask."

"Ask what? Okay, go on."

"Faber lifted cars as a teenager, broke into a couple of homes, just small-time shit. Got caught a few times, prosecuted once. When he was sixteen did half a year, unfortunately in the kind of place that cranks out seasoned cons with very sore assholes."

I was still studying the face. I knew Jerry would send me a file with all the facts and numbers anyway, so I just let the information wash over me while I tried to get a sense of the man we were discussing.

"You listening?"

"Yeah. So what happened when he turned eighteen?"

"Faber decided to be all he could be."

"The Army took him?"

"You know how it was, Mick. We'd just gone into Iraq. They would have taken Paris Hilton if she'd buffed up and sworn off pink."

"He got sent over there?"

"Quicker than a politician can lie."

"Combat?"

"He saw some action backing up the locals in and around Basra. Faber got one purple heart."

"IED?"

"Strangely enough, the kind where you actually get shot. Incident report says insurgents ambushed a truck he was driving. The unit got into a firefight."

"How did Faber do?"

"No John Wayne-heroics or anything, but they wrote him up okay. He returned fire, may have hit one of the insurgents, that sort of thing. His commanding officer skimped on praise all the way around. Maybe the boys half-assed it."

"Can you find out more?"

"Not without risking prison."

"Screw it, then."

"Here's something interesting, though. Just a few weeks later they changed his papers and sent him home."

"Any reason given?"

"None."

"So you figure . . . ?"

"That he got in hot water, of course, kind of like you and the SEALs."

"As in fighting?"

"Bet on it, because there are write-ups after he came home, both for fighting and boozing. Army records show him reprimanded three separate times, and he finally got a Dishonorable Discharge after doing less than two years."

I drummed my fingers on the desk. "Wonderful. A violent drunk with military experience."

"Alert the media. And hey, you turned out okay."

"Funny. What happened to him after the service?"

"I lose him for a year or so, but then he turns up in Nevada."

"Go on."

"I tracked him through the next period off credit card receipts, parking tickets, the post office and stuff like that. Faber started in that little dump near the California border, the one by the lake, and then bounced around working at a few different casinos. You know, Jackpot, Elko, Sparks, Lake Tahoe, and finally Vegas."

"He lives in Vegas?"

Jerry chuckled. "You were expecting maybe Little Rock? The guy is mobbed up, Mick. Are you going to tell me what's going on soon, or what?"

"Or what."

"Prick."

"Look, I just expected him to be located here in LA for some reason. Who does he work for in Vegas?"

"The last couple of years he's been working for an outfit called The Valley of Fire Corporation. According to their payroll records, Faber works in security. I guess they own some new casino and resort that's going up in a toilet called Loose Change, out by the Paiute Reservation near Moapa."

"Did you run down who owns this Valley of Fire Corporation?"

"Does a bear shit in the Vatican? Is the Pope living in the woods? If you dig through a mountain of legal bullshit, Valley of Fire turns out to be run by a very bad individual. The guy is one of the last of the outlaw Italian boys, from what I can tell. The rest have gone legit or caved in to the mobs from Russia and Eastern Europe."

I leaned back in the chair and examined patterns in the ceiling. "Okay, so we're looking at Big Paul Pesci."

"So you already knew that. Now you're beginning to piss me off."

I took a few moments and filled him in on Bone's story, though I knew Jerry should stay out of it. He'd already had my back a number of times; maybe too many. And this situation felt like it could go south in a hurry.

"How do you figure on handling this one, chief?"

I shrugged. "I called Larry Donato to put someone on the girl. Beyond that, who knows? I just want to gather information and see where it takes me. The only thing I see for certain is that I can't let my friend go down hard, not without trying to lend a hand."

"Donato already has that biz up and running? Cool of you to toss him some work. All his guys are qualified cops and ex-cops."

"That's what I was thinking." I rubbed my temples slowly, and my weariness probably showed.

Jerry cocked his head. "You have a lot on your own plate these days, Mick. How's it going at work?"

"It doth proceed. Excrement inevitably rolls downhill, yes?"

"Now you sound like Hal."

"I learned pedantry from a master."

"You wouldn't be looking for something to distract you from the mess at the station, by any chance?"

"There's that. But Bone is an old buddy, Jerry. You know how it is."

"I know. And if you need me, I'm in. I just don't want you trying to handle too many problems at the same time, especially if it gets hairy."

"Tell me about the other guy, Frank Toole."

Jerry shuffled papers. "He's a 'Southie,' born in the slums around Boston. No juvenile record I could find. Did one bit in the Marine Corps, got an Honorable Discharge. Two arrests, one for assault and battery, charges dismissed when the victim refused to press charges. The second beef went to trial. Toole was nailed for contracting to do a hit, but a high-powered Vegas lawyer named DeMartini got his ass out of that one by claiming it was entrapment. Oh, and that Toole was actually looking to get evidence on the guy who wanted to whack his wife and planned to turn him in and write a book about the experience. The jury bought it. The scum bag walked."

"Easy on the tough-guy talk, Jerry."

"Why? Can you tell I've been practicing?"

"Toole was already connected by that point, is that what you're telling me?"

"No way Toole could have afforded DeMartini on his own, Mick."

"And this attorney does a lot of work for Pesci."

"Give the cowboy a prize."

"You have addresses and other information on these clowns if we need it, right?"

"My man, I could steal their identities and fuck up their credit in a heartbeat, just say the word."

"Who knows, maybe we will." I got up, paced and stretched. "Okay, likewise the stripper?"

The picture arrived a second later. She was a real looker.

Jerry said, "Brandi DeLillo was born Barbara Ann DeLillo, in Newark, New Jersey. She's twenty-eight years old. Brandi dropped out of high school, moved to Atlantic City, then Nashville, and finally Vegas. She did a six-month stint in drug rehab, under court order. Prior to that, our girl had a couple of busts for prostitution and some speeding tickets, but other than that she's clean."

"Credit history?"

"Brandi tends to live large, but you'd expect that from a working girl. In the past few months she has paid off and closed down some credit card accounts, downscaled to a less expensive apartment. She's drawing pay as a waitress, so maybe she dumped her sugar daddy and plans on going back to college to become a surgeon."

"What?"

"Hey, she's probably got great hands, right?"

"Very funny."

"Thanks. Oh, and Larry Donato just e-mailed me. He's going to give us Dave Lopez to watch out for the girl. Lopez has a lot of free time the next couple of weeks and needs the extra money."

"Sounds good." I sat down again. The computer announced that I had mail, too. "Thanks, Jerry. Great job, as usual. I'll look this stuff over and let you know when I decide my next move."

"
Our
next move?"

"Jerry, I have a bad feeling about this one," I said. "Other than hiring Lopez, I'm thinking maybe I'd better keep this one simple and take care of it on my own."

Jerry shook his head. "What was that? You're cutting in and out. Can't hear you. I'll call back when I'm packed and ready to drive up."

"Hold on a second . . ."

The screen went dark. Jerry was gone.

"You must understand one thing," Nicky said. "An organization such as ours survives by demanding absolute loyalty." He held up his glass of red wine, swirled the glass and sniffed the bouquet before continuing. "And absolute honesty as well."

"Honor among thieves?"

"Quite."

The young attorney nodded vigorously. His collar was overstarched so the action made his neck itch. The two muscle men on either side of him did not respond. They were too busy searching the restaurant with lidded, suspicious eyes. They reminded the attorney of giant lizards. Maybe aliens from a dinosaur planet.

"Very nice," Nicky said. He put the glass down without finishing it and tapped a brief note on his BlackBerry. "I shall have to order a case for my collection. Are you sure you don't want to try it? This is a fine California Cabernet. It would be superb with any red meat."

Jacob Mandel shrugged. "I've never cared much for alcohol."