Operation Bamboozle (31 page)

Nicky Zangara took the call. “I know about you,” he said. “Mr. DiLazzari explained. You're King of the Ukraine, right?”

“There's been a development,” Luis said. “One of major significance.”

“I'll tell Mr. D. He's in the shower.”

“Perhaps I should speak to Uncle.”

“He passed away.”

“Good God. You mean he's dead?” Nicky made no comment. “That was sudden,” Luis said. “We saw him just the other day. He seemed okay.”

“Yeah, sudden. It was painless. He didn't linger. Hold the phone.” While he waited, Luis stared at a hairline crack in the wall. Everywhere he went in LA he saw cracks in the plaster. People said it was the tremors. One day there would be the father and mother of all tremors and all the cracks would connect and he'd be left holding a phone with a broken line hanging from it. Then Nicky came back. “He says meet at Van Nuys airport in an hour.” Click.

Luis found Julie and told her. “Wherever we're going,” she said, “I guess it isn't Uncle's funeral.”

They drove up the canyon road, turned right on Mulholland, then left on Sepulveda Boulevard, and they were looking down on the airport. Piece of cake. They even had time to eat a hot dog. It might be a long flight. Better to fuel up.

Van Nuys airport was not for the Bermuda shorts and Hawaiian shirt trade, nor for the drip-dry salesman with a hangover to lose and a target to beat. Van Nuys was strictly corporate. Valet parking took care of the Packard. Nicky met them in Departures and led them to a twin-engined Cessna, already ticking over. Vito was inside, half-asleep, his seat fully reclined. He flapped a hand. “We're going where?” Julie asked him.

“San Bernardino.” He closed his eyes. Duty done. Wheels were turning. Nicky asked them how they liked their coffee.

Twenty minutes later they were circling San Bernardino at five hundred feet and Vito was wide awake. “There it is,” he told Nicky. “That's my church, I own it. Cute, huh? This is first time I saw it for real. They gave it me, a gift. Ten grand, it cost. Okay, tell him to take us home.”

The Cessna straightened out and flew west.

“Well, it certainly beats driving,” Luis said. Nobody had anything to add to that. “We were sorry to hear about Uncle.”

“Yeah,” Vito said. “Neurostatic hypoplasia. The B strain.” That definitely killed the conversation.

At Van Nuys he invited them to lunch. “You'll eat with me,” is what he actually said. What the hell. They were hungry.

They went to a place on Laurel Canyon Road that looked like a millionaire's home and turned out to be a private dining club. No smog, so they ate on the terrace. First, cocktails. Julie's martini came with a single large pearl in it. “Compliments of the house,” Vito said. “Yours to keep.”

Luis peered into his vodka-tonic. “That's either an ice cube or the Koh-i-noor diamond.” He looked at Nicky. “What did you get?”

“I'm family. I get to do the dishes.”

The guests chuckled. Even Vito cracked a smile. “You see?” he said. “This man is quick. No substitute for pace, my UCLA coach told me. Either you get out in front or you fall behind. It's the American way, win or lose, survival of the fittest. You got news for me.”

Luis handed him the obit from the
Times.
Vito scanned it in fifteen seconds and gave it back. “I never knew him. I should cry?”

“General Blaskett had a great love of country, but he knew that love is not enough. He once said to me, ‘Don't talk of courage. The enemy is brave too. What's our ace in the hole?' When I outlined Operation Bamboozle he was very enthusiastic.”

“Ah,” Vito said. “Bamboozle rides again.”

“General Blaskett didn't care a damn about the income—it would all go to charity anyway—but the clandestine, almost invisible, sabotaging of Soviet economy, that scored highly in his estimation. The Ukrainians are pulling their own house down, and paying us for the privilege. The general liked that.”

“Judo,” Vito said. “Deck the guy with his own weight.”

Julie clicked her fingers. “Spot on.”

Luis said, “Bamboozle is strong in the Kiev area, naturally, that's the capital of Ukraine, and also around Lvov, another big city. We wanted to expand into the Donets Basin, much heavy
industry there. General Blaskett okayed the plans—he knew the Donets Basin, he'd visited the Ukraine prewar—and he offered to finance the first three months of the operation. After that it would start turning a profit, of course. We agreed, and then …” He shrugged.

“Destiny took a hand,” Julie said. She picked up the obit and gazed at the photograph. “Quite a knockout. Must have been really something when he was young.”

“How much?” Nicky asked. He was making notes.

“I thought …” Luis made a small juggling act. “Twenty-five dollars.”

That surprised everyone. “Seems cheap for half the Ukraine,” Julie said.

“What? No, I didn't mean that. Forget Bamboozle. No, I thought you might want to split the cost of a wreath. Knowing your respect for patriotism and so on.” Luis was stuffing the obit into his breast pocket. “Apologize. My mistake.”

“Sure, sure, the goddamn wreath, no problem,” Vito said. “How much was Blaskett putting into this Basin job?”

“He proposed a quarter of a million,” Luis said. Nicky was writing hard. “I couldn't agree. Too much for one investor. We settled on two hundred thousand. In cash, had to be cash, for tactical reasons which I don't need to explain.”

“Clandestine stuff,” Vito said. “No paper trail. Tell you what: I'll put up half, and Nicky will find ten guys in the organization good for ten grand each.”

“We should talk first,” Nicky said.

“You're starting to sound like Uncle. Find nine guys, today. You can be the tenth. We all meet up at my place, six tonight. Got that?” Vito enjoyed being executive. Nicky kept writing.

“Wait a minute,” Luis said. “I mean, I hadn't expected this. When the general died, we shelved the Donets Basin plan.”

“De-shelve it,” Vito ordered. “Now let's eat.” Exercising leadership made him hungry.

They got back to Konigsberg at midafternoon.

“I suppose you want to know what it's all about,” Luis said.

“Oh, hell. It's been a long day already,” Julie said. “Unpaid bills. Uncle dies. General Blaskett dies. We fly to San Bernardino just to see a church. Vito saves western civilization.”

“You forgot the B strain.”

“I don't want to even think about the B strain. Remember the Bruno Brothers? Vito kills people. UCLA gave him a B-plus in whacking. It's his philosophy:
I whack, therefore I am.
Look, I'm bushed. I'm going to bed for an hour.” She went upstairs.

Suppose a Chrysler Imperial gets a bash on the front wing, headlight smashed and so on. Heavy repair bill. Driver is a college kid, says he left the car in a parking lot, came back, found the damage. Suppose the insurance company thinks his story stinks, but the kid's father is a federal judge. Company hates to be screwed but equally hates to make an enemy in the corridors of power. So they ask Jensen TransAmerica Investigations to take a look. Turns out the kid was plastered, took a bend too fast, caroomed off a parked car. Now dad is grateful for the company's tact and discretion, pays for everything, kicks son's ass.

And Jensen TransAmerica has a valuable contact in the insurance company. In fact it has contacts in all such major companies. Including the one that recently insured the Olds with the Kansas plates. The new owner tells TransAmerica he bought it from a dealer, and the dealer says he took it in part-exchange for a lightly used Lincoln Zephyr. Now being driven by whom? By Sterling Hancock III, that's by whom.

The Hancock address is empty of everything bar the phone. Jensen TransAmerica has valuable contacts in the Phone Company. Hancock made few calls, but almost all were to a number in Santa Monica Canyon Road. Place called Konigsberg. Rented by a Mr. Cabrillo.

Luis answered the door. “Sterling Hancock?” he said. “Gosh. Haven't seen him for ages. Sorry I can't help you.”

But he had. Jensen TransAmerica's camera, hidden in a briefcase, had taken his photograph, head cocked, eyes smiling. It was a good likeness.

Luis took Othello for a walk in the hills, but Othello took one look at the stony slope and stopped.

“That is a sullen look,” Luis said. “You are a basset. You don't know how to look sullen.” He sat on a rock, and Othello collapsed his legs and sprawled on his belly. “Listen to me, dog. Waiting at the top of this path is a lady basset of astonishing beauty. She is this month's centerfold in
Dog's Life.
She has a sirloin steak, medium-rare, that she wishes to share with you, and a bowl of Chateau Lafitte, not perhaps the best year, but who are you to sniff at the offer? After that, you two can romp in the heather …” Othello was asleep. “I seem to be losing my touch,” Luis said. “A supreme con artist, humbled by a basset.” He sat and watched the big airliners, as tiny as toys from this distance, making their approach over the ocean to LA international airport. The afternoon grew cool. He picked up Othello and went indoors to wake Julie.

They were halfway to Beverly Hills, crawling in rush-hour traffic, when he said, “I forgot to tell you. We're not really broke. I keep a little mad money for emergencies. There's a thousand dollars in a secret part of my wallet. Two five-hundred-dollar bills.”

“Well, whoopee,” she said. “Remind me to buy milk for your lonely cornflake.”

Ten cars were parked outside the house: Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Chryslers, Lincolns. Nothing foreign. The Mafia always flew the flag and bought American. Everything except olive oil. And maybe pasta. Well, you are what you eat.

Vito had a good log fire going. There was a bar and a barman, neither doing any business. Vito's ten men stood in groups of two or three, quietly talking. Julie had never seen so much Mafia top brass in one room, and she took a good long look. They were soberly dressed, coat and pants to match, everything restrained, no flaring neckties with naked blonds painted on them. They looked like a bunch of vice-presidents from a corporation in the Fortune 500, and in a sense they were. “Last year we out-grossed Pepsi,” she murmured to Luis. “This year, Dr. Pepper. Next year, the world.” He grunted. The chairman of the board was signaling to them.

“No introductions, no drinks, no peanuts,” he said. “No chairs, either. Everybody stands. Dad taught me that. Give a guy a seat and the meeting lasts five times as long. Okay. Now listen. These people are not nice people. They may look like a bunch of Presbyterian ministers waiting for a bus, but the ten grand each man has brought was earned by blood and tears, and he'd as soon strangle his mother as lose it. Then he'd strangle you. Or maybe he'd do you first. Whichever's nearest. Did I tell you these people are not nice people?”