Troubleshooter Read online

  Tim said, “I appreciate that.”

  “You cut us in on your operation, now I’d like to cut you in on ours. You want to work with us on this thing tomorrow morning?”

  Tim set Dray’s hand by her side, smoothed her fingers flat. He rose and pulled on his jacket. “Yes.”

  Malane nodded. “Let’s have us a takedown.”

  56

  The morning sun blazed off the windshields of the parked cars. A few gardeners sat in the back of a dinged pickup, eating breakfast burritos and slurping soda from big plastic cups. One of them stood and belched, a splash of Fire Border sauce embellishing his dated FREE KOBE T-shirt. Gordita wrappers rolled across the asphalt, urban tumbleweed. Though it was past 11:00 A.M.—beyond the sticky reach of morning rush hour—still the intersection was clogged with runoff from the 10.

  Tim sat in the passenger’s seat beside Malane, the Crown Vic’s air-conditioned leather a considerable upgrade from the dog-chewed bench seat of Bear’s Ram. Bear had parked strategically across the street. Malane offered Tim the bag of sunflower seeds, and he took another handful and continued spitting shells into an empty plastic Coke bottle.

  Bear came through the radio for the fifth time in as many minutes, and Malane stifled a smile. He’d given Bear and Guerrera FBI-coded Nextels for the operation, and Tim was getting the sense that the agents tended more conservative in their radio banter.

  “Now, this fucking guy,” Bear started, Guerrera the ongoing person in question, “this fucking guy, now, he says he thinks A-Rod’s got it on Bonds in batting. Batting. Not in the field.”

  They’d been sitting on the Taco Bell since 8:00 A.M., and, as on most stakeouts, conversation was running thin. Aside from the Harley parked in the farthest parking-lot space that, at this point, they were presuming belonged to a TB employee, nothing had yet demanded their attention.

  A background murmur came through, to which Bear responded, “I don’t give a shit if A-Rod’s younger. There’s Barry Bonds, and there’s everyone else. Don’t give me your ethnic bias.” Then, more clearly, “What’s the vote?”

  Malane said, “A-Rod,” at the same moment Tim replied, “Bonds.”

  “All right,” Bear said. “Then we go to Car Four for the tiebreaker.” An FBI agent cut in on the primary channel. “Eyes up, eyes up. Babe Donovan approaching in a … looks like a Pinto.”

  “A Pinto?” Bear said.

  The car drifted into view. The orange coat had given way to rust, the subtle contrast lending it a strangely camouflaged appearance.

  Babe Donovan parked the car in the tiny parking lot and hopped out. The gardeners let out a volley of whistles and catcalls that silenced immediately as soon as her Sinners property jacket came into view. One of the guys tugged off his Dodgers cap as she passed, offering her a deferential little bow. She ignored them, hopping onto the Harley and pulling out, heading opposite the direction she’d come.

  “We’ll take it.” Bear’s rig, parked facing east, eased out and drifted behind her.

  Tim eyed the run-down Pinto. The AT, no doubt, was secured in the trunk. They only had to follow it home.

  “Just shadow her,” Malane said. “Don’t take her into custody until we get to the stash house. We don’t want to alert—”

  Wristwatch Annie turned the corner on foot, sliding along the fence line behind the restaurant. She fumbled with a set of keys, then climbed into the Pinto and sped off.

  Ten vehicles in the surrounding four blocks went on alert.

  They followed her in shifts, each pair of cars turning off after a few blocks to be replaced by another. Malane and Tim carried her into the finish, a well-kept single-story house in a middle-class section of Mar Vista. She pulled into an open garage, which closed immediately behind her. They drifted past, turned around, and parked up the block, waiting for SWAT to move in.

  Tim sat, working sunflower seeds between his teeth, occasionally shaking the Coke bottle so the soggy shells inside gave off a wet rattle. His focus, like Malane’s, remained on the platinum Jag convertible parked across the street from the house, though neither had commented on the obvious.

  Malane keyed his radio. “Sully? You on the rear fence line?”

  “Yup. Got the parabolic on the rear window. Want me to cut you in?”

  “Please.”

  A faint transmission played through Malane’s radio.

  The sharp feminine voice said, “… we all eyeballed it now, so we start with a clean accounting sheet. I don’t want one of you whining that ten cc’s dropped out of the deal.”

  The Prophet’s velvet voice: “We are agreed.”

  “Same goes for the cash. Count the down payment again now if you have to.”

  “It is all here.”

  “Seventy/thirty to the producer this round.”

  “I am aware of the deal.”

  “Then you won’t mind touching all the bases so there’s no misunderstandings. The deal’s on consignment—the money down gets laid off against profit. We hold up our end, next one goes sixty/forty. Then an even split between producer and distributor. I handle the money coming and going. That’s what you signed off on. Agreed?”

  “That is correct. I look forward to a long collaboration.”

  Rustling.

  “Wait. I have not tested the product.”

  There was a faint rumble of tires, and then, from all directions, black trucks poured onto the street. SWAT members hung off the vehicles, riding the running boards, their vest pouches bulging with flash bangs. The trucks stopped, sealing off the street and giving the target house a half-block buffer. SWAT pulled into entry formation, at least forty agents closing the divide on foot, an organized swarm of black flight suits. A Sheriff’s bomb dog led the charge, positioned to check the front door for booby traps. Only now did Tim spot a rippling of bushes at the back fence line.

  He clicked on the radio. “Bear? Take her. We’re going in.”

  The no-knock entry would’ve made the ART squad proud. The battering ram left the door flat on the entrance floor for the agents to trample. Tim and Malane crossed the street at a jog. Inside, there were shouted commands and a few yells, but no gunshots. Smith & Wesson aimed at the floor, Tim rode in on the aftermath, the safest lineup position he’d ever taken on a kick-in. His heart was pounding nonetheless. He moved room to room in search of Den Laurey.

  The Prophet, Dhul Faqar Al-Malik, lay facedown on the shag carpet of the living room, a streak of dust coloring his dark hair like a skunk’s stripe. A still-packaged extraction needle lay on the carpet where he’d dropped it, beside a portable lab kit. The FBI agents had uncovered a modest weapons cache in the front closet.

  A shrill voice said, “Get your fucking hands off me.”

  Tim stepped around the corner, where two agents were securing Dana Lake. She glared at Tim, her milky cheeks flushed a sunset shade of magenta. The money launderer—nice WASP name, clean record, just as Smiles had predicted.

  “What was your cut, Dana?”

  “This is ridiculous. I’m here to broker a surrender for my client.”

  Behind her, Wristwatch Annie was being frisked. She laughed into the carpet and said to the SWAT member, “Easy, tiger. Any more and it’ll cost ya.”

  Two translucent balloons filled with clear liquid sat on an electronic scale. The digital readout glowed red: 2.015 kg. A few agents regarded the spheres with awe. The bomb dog sat beside the table, eyeing a pizza box on the kitchen counter with interest. Next to the scale, an open computer carrying case displayed packets of hundred-dollar bills. Agents stomped through the house, industrious as insects.

  Tim asked the SWAT commander, “Where’s Laurey? Is the house safed?”

  “House is safed. No one else here.”

  “Are you sure? Are you positive? You checked the attic?”

  “Yes, we checked the attic.” He turned to one of his agents, forearm resting atop his MP5. “Who is this fucking guy?”

  Malane interceded, grabbing the
commander’s arm and talking to him in a whispered rush as Tim stepped back and holstered his .357. He checked the other rooms, moving desperately now, tearing aside shower curtains and dust ruffles. The FBI agents watched him with curiosity. Defeated, he returned to the living room.

  Al-Malik’s dark blazer had split along one of the arm seams, tufts of white thread sticking up at the shoulder. Seeing him now, Tim felt as he had when watching the televised army medic pick nits out of Saddam’s beard: how disappointingly undersize monsters were in ordinary light.

  Dana machine-gunned questions at the arresting agents: “What are you charging me with? Where’s my phone call? Do you have a history of brutality, or are you starting fresh with this arrest?”

  Malane stood beside her as she argued and jerked against the cuffs, calmly imploring her to sign an Advice of Rights form. Watching his levelheaded recitation, Tim felt a newfound respect for him. Maybe he’d misread some of Malane’s earlier coolness.

  Dana addressed Tim over Malane’s shoulder. “Don’t look at me, Rackley. You haven’t won anything here.”

  He worked his lip between his teeth, his mind on Den Laurey cruising free as Peter Fonda, but without the fruity helmet.

  “You’ve got some client list, Ms. Lake,” Malane said. “Bikers and terrorists—hell, you’ve got a full roster. It’s all about putting people together, isn’t it? Putting them together while hiding behind attorneyclient privilege. How many money launderers have you represented in the past five years?”

  “Plenty. I’m a defense attorney.”

  “And a quick study, I’d imagine.”

  “These are baseless charges. They’ll be dropped within twenty-four hours.”

  “Nice legalese on the Good Morning Vacations small print. Clever stuff.”

  “You have zero evidence to tie me to anything.”

  “Wrong answer,” Malane said. “The correct answer is ‘What’s Good Morning Vacations?’ ”

  Tim walked outside, sitting on a rickety porch swing. The neighbors were at their front doors and windows; a few kids circled behind the FBI trucks on their bikes, calling questions to the agents.

  The SWAT commander hustled Al-Malik along the walk as a helicopter swooped over the rooftops and touched down on the street. Maybe the arrest would be announced on the evening news, maybe not. The Prophet would disappear into an unofficial holding cell somewhere, hidden in Homeland Security’s long shadow, or he’d be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, where international law—and the Constitution— couldn’t get through the barbed wire and humidity. Watching Al-Malik being guided into the helo, Tim thought it likely that this was the last time he’d hear of him.

  Tim reached Bear by Nextel; he and Guerrera had scooped up Babe Donovan and were headed back to Cell Block to book her.

  Bear issued a grunt when Tim told him Den wasn’t in custody. “I’ll tell her her boyfriend won’t be joining her.”

  “Just yet,” Tim said.

  He hung up and watched the ascending helicopter ruffle the picture-perfect lawn in liquid patterns. Dana Lake made her cuffed exit in time to have her sleek hairdo blown lopsided before she was helped into a black van. The copter banked and faded. The van cruised past the partition and disappeared.

  After maybe fifteen minutes, Malane came outside and stood over Tim, thumbing his belt loop, hip cocked. His eyes, set deep in their sockets, sloped down at the outer edges. He looked hound-dog thoughtful. For the first time, Tim noticed the gold band on his left hand, dulled from years of wear.

  “No Den Laurey,” Malane said.

  “No Den Laurey.”

  “How long you been married?”

  “Ten years last month.”

  “Five myself. January. Second time through.” Malane looked up the street where the media vans were gathering at the blockade. They seemed to transform, unfolding into studio-lit dioramas. Well-groomed women gabbed against the backdrop, camera lenses pointed at them like interested faces. Malane seemed to want to say something but couldn’t land on the words. Finally he looked down at Tim, his eyes sad, or maybe it was just the shape of them. “I’ll help you find him any way I can.”

  Some of the agents on the front lawn circled up, voices high, reliving the capture. “… when he was going for the closet, you put him down.”

  A passing agent paused on the porch to thump Malane’s back. “Congrats, Jeff.”

  “Thanks.” Malane’s tone didn’t match the triumphant mood of the others. He scratched his cheek, calm and detached as always, getting back to outstanding business. “Rich told you about the cell-phone transmissions we picked up on Uncle Pete?”

  “He did.”

  “We have the evidence in hand now. That’s enough to firm the case against him. You want to tell Bear and Guerrera to meet us there when we roll him up?”

  Before Tim could answer, Malane’s cell phone trilled.

  He snapped it open. “Malane.” He listened a moment, and then his face changed. “Ah, shit,” he said softly.

  He hung up and stood, running the tip of his shoe over a patch of splinters on the porch. His eyes were moist. A few of the agents on the lawn answered their phones and glanced at their pagers, celebratory smiles dissipating instantly.

  When Malane glanced up at Tim, his face was taut, the skin blotched red on his pale throat. “I’m gonna need you.”

  57

  El Matador isn’t accessible by car or bike. The desolate beach is reachable only by a treacherous hike down a steep hill. Rock formations close in the beach, and a few large boulders thrust up from the surf, fighting the waves and sending sheets of mist across the thin strip of Malibu sand.

  The oil drum lay half buried at the high-tide mark, draped in piss-yellow seaweed. Sandpipers hopped around on stick-skinny legs. An agent shooed a coat of seagulls off the drum, the FBI lettering glittering in the moisture on the back of his windbreaker. Another avian wave washed in almost instantly, hungry heads bobbing and picking at the metal.

  One side of the drum seemed to pulse with life; it wasn’t until Tim and Malane neared that Tim realized it was crawling with crabs. A few surfers bobbed offshore beyond the break, mellow rubberneckers.

  Tim and Malane reached the cluster of agents around the drum. Some algae had collected on it, but the metal had mostly remained shiny. A blowtorch swung at the side of one of the agents. The drum’s lid, now propped back in place to keep out the critters, had previously been welded on. An Evidence Response Team agent, nineteenth-hole casual in his Royal Robbins cargo khakis and an ERT polo, held the lid shut so the struggling crabs couldn’t shove their way inside. When Malane stepped close, he let it fall.

  Malane leaned over, hands on his knees, and looked inside. He let out a deep breath, then turned to the fresh ocean breeze.

  Tim moved forward and crouched. Despite some bloating and the work the little fish had done around the mouth and eyes, Rich Mandrell’s face was still recognizable. His eye patch’s band had slid down around his neck, and his pinkie ring was dulled from the seawater immersion. A few pencils of light poked through the metal where holes had been drilled; the oil drum had probably floated for a while before sinking, prolonging his terror. One of the crabs had gotten a claw stuck through a hole; it bobbed obscenely, inches from Rich’s sea-slick hair.

  Safety-pinned to his jeans at the back of his thigh, beyond the reach of his trapped arms, was a Polaroid, faded from the salt water. But not too faded for Tim to make out the image—Raymond Smiles at the wheel of his sedan on the freeway, his face barely visible behind the tinted window and a pair of dark glasses.

  Tim found his throat gummy, so he cleared it. “Time of death?”

  The ERT agent said, “Twelve to fifteen hours ago. I’ll know more once we get the body processed. Takes some time getting equipment down here.”

  “Morning high tide brought it up?”

  He nodded, then pointed up the coast. “A bluff about a quarter mile north overlooks the water. I’m thinking that’s where
the dump was made last night.”

  “Any incisions made? Maybe with a hunting knife?”

  The ERT agent paused, surprised. “Yeah, looks to be some of that on the popliteal spaces behind the knees. Someone knew their basic anatomy, severed the tendons so the victim couldn’t kick against the lid going down.”

  The breeze whipped flecks of water at Tim’s face. Salt stung the back of his throat.

  “So he was still conscious,” Malane said. “When he was welded in.”

  “Yeah, most of his fingernails are broken off.” The ERT agent studied Malane. “He a friend?”

  Malane stood watching the brilliant sun send gold divots off the water. The surfers bobbed on their boards as the ocean breathed. He nodded, not trusting his voice, then turned and started the walk back to his car.

  58

  Malane was silent on the way to Uncle Pete’s, and he didn’t speed. He drove slowly and deliberately, hands at ten and two, staring ahead with a blank expression that on anyone else might have looked cadaverous. Behind them, a scattering of agents in duty cars followed, as well as several extended-cab Suburbans stuffed with SWAT members.

  They reached the clubhouse, and Malane hit the brakes, idling on the dirty street, taking in the chain-link, the row of bikes at the curb, Uncle Pete’s Lexus glittering in the driveway. The Dodge Ram was parked up the street, Bear and Guerrera leaning against it, arms crossed, awaiting the caravan’s arrival.

  The other vehicles remained frozen behind Malane’s Crown Vic. Tim waited for Malane to pull over and park, but he kept his hands on the wheel, head forward. He revved the engine a few times and then peeled out. The car bore down on the row of motorcycles at the curb. Tim barely had time to brace against the dash before they smashed into them. The bikes went down like proverbial dominoes. The Crown Vic wound up tilted atop a stack of crushed metal. Tim rubbed the seat-belt burn at his shoulder, grateful that the G-ride, like most, had its airbags removed, saving him a nylon nose punch.