Troubleshooter Read online

  “Whoops,” Malane said flatly. “Looks like she got away from me.” He shoved open his door and navigated down the mound of bike parts.

  Sinners and slags gathered behind the chain-link, cursing and shouting. The SWAT team filed into the front yard, subduing them. One of the clubhouse dogs got a face-blast of Mace, after which she and the other succumbed to the come-along leash.

  Malane placed his hands on his hips, regarding the heap of broken motorcycles. “You know, I’ll probably end up paying for that,” he said, his voice barely audible over the background shouting. “But it’ll be worth it.”

  Bear said, “We’ll all chip in.”

  Malane and Tim moved through the commotion, Bear and Guerrera at their backs. They breached the front door, heading up the stairs, handguns drawn but pointed at the floor. A few of Pete’s deeds, marked by missing pinkies, slithered past them in the narrow upstairs halls, running to safety. The sounds of energetic sex issued from Uncle Pete’s room, interrupted at intervals by a whirring noise.

  Tim pushed open the door with his foot, keeping both hands on his .357. Uncle Pete sat in the darkness, an immense shadow, the light of the TV turning his face watery blue. Hound Dog sat at his side, and he stroked the poodle’s topknot absentmindedly, eyes glued to the screen session. His other hand commanded the remote control resting on the arm of his padded lounge chair. His fat fingers twitched, and the porn tape fast-forwarded, played, fast-forwarded. Wearing boxers and a wife-beater undershirt, he filled every crevice of the chair. Hound Dog’s black-marble eyes pulled over to Tim, his upper lip wrinkling in a silent growl. As they approached, he rose to all fours, snarling. Bear snapped his fingers, and the poodle sat back down and lowered his head to his paws.

  Keeping his eyes on the screen, Uncle Pete said, “Howdy, Trouble. I heard yer grand entrance down there.”

  “You told me to come back with formal charges and a warrant,” Tim said. “Here I am.”

  From downstairs came the boot vibrations of agents taking over the house.

  Emitting a groan of exertion, Pete reached for his cell phone on the floor. “I gotta call my lawyer.”

  “We’ll save you your daytime minutes,” Tim said. “Hell, we’ll put you in the same cell as her.”

  To his credit, Uncle Pete didn’t give up much. His eyes widened a touch, the lines smoothing from his forehead, and his hair seemed to shift back slightly on his skull. But he didn’t so much as turn.

  He bobbed his massive head, settling back into his chair. “Let me wait for the money shot.”

  He fast forwarded a few more seconds, then let the tape play. Sounds of explosive release. He nodded at the screen. “Atta boy, Peter North.”

  With great effort he pulled himself to his feet and offered Tim his wrists.

  59

  The detention enforcement officer waited respectfully, key in hand. Tim pressed his knuckles on the cool steel door, gathering his focus. The command post was humming with activity; he’d slipped out unnoticed. By comparison Cell Block was peaceful, the quiet broken only by the squeak of boots on tile and the incessant hacking of a prisoner a few cells over.

  The search of the clubhouse had turned up all order of incriminating evidence to shore up the case against Uncle Pete. Dana Lake’s files would likely prove a treasure trove, but first the FBI would have to navigate through a minefield of legalities regarding confidentiality—the U.S. Attorney’s office was on it full bore and feeling more confident than Tim had seen them regarding a major case. On his way into the command post, he’d caught Winston Smith, the AUSA, whistling in the hall in an uncharacteristic show of buoyancy.

  Bear and Guerrera had followed Babe Donovan back to an apartment in West L.A., where they’d made the arrest. In the laundry room, they’d discovered a laminating machine around which were scattered the raw materials from a number of forged IDs, including an access card for a Burbank Airport maintenance worker. They’d also found a drawerful of badges from different law-enforcement agencies, awards for successful assassinations. The Cadillac Miller Meteor hearse had been hiding in the covered garage. An elderly neighbor reported that Babe used to park a yellow Volvo in her second space, the same make and model of the car left behind on the 10 freeway to clog traffic minutes before Den and Kaner’s break. The building’s garage security camera confirmed the plates; the Volvo tied Babe to the murder of two federal officers and a civilian.

  Six hours after the clubhouse raid, the deputies continued to sift through seized papers. From the first wave of analysis, Smith was preparing to indict eleven other Sinners. Tannino had stopped by the post to declare that they had enough to sink the organization.

  But, not surprisingly, nothing had turned up on Den Laurey. Tim had put out alerts at the borders and airports and BOLOs to all agencies in the surrounding states. He’d contacted law enforcement in each city where the Sinners had a chapter, urging increased surveillance. The Service’s public-information officer had released a selection of Den’s photos to the news stations and was negotiating with the Times for tomorrow’s front page. The more time passed, the greater likelihood that Den would slip away. And after a while Dray’s assailant would recede into the Top 15, his face becoming one of many in the lineup of flyers posted in the admin corridor at the rear of the courthouse. Unsolved cases. Open investigations. Dangerous individuals whose pictures the deputies walked past every day on their way to new business.

  Tim nodded, and the officer pulled back the steel door. Through the mesh gate, Tim could see Babe sitting on the molded plastic bench, her legs spread in a slightly masculine manner. He entered and stood opposite her.

  Her feathered hair, seventies sexy, stood up in the back from her leaning against the wall. She had a big—perhaps enhanced—chest but a petite frame, so the orange jumpsuit bagged around her like a clown costume. A band of sunburn saddled her pug nose. Her surprising cobalt eyes remained impenetrable, but her face had loosened with fear or dread, her jaw held slightly forward as if to control her breathing. For the first time, Tim saw her as a kid, not far removed from college girls or the daughters of his older colleagues. Her file showed she was from a middle-class family. She’d taken a wrong turn and wound up on the back of a Harley and now here. It was almost hard to believe the role she’d willingly played in Den Laurey’s assault on Greater Los Angeles.

  “Hello, Ms. Donovan. I’m Tim Rackley.”

  She pulled her head back, regarding him over her nose. “You got a smoke?”

  “Not on me, no.” He crouched, bringing himself eye level. “There’s no way around you doing some time, but I can help you.”

  “If I sell out my man? You gotta be joking.”

  “You’re looking at a lot of time, Babe. Maybe life.”

  “So what? You can live on the inside. You can have a life on the inside.”

  “Who told you that? Den?”

  “No, it wasn’t him. We’ve had plenty of family go down.”

  “Being inside is hell, Babe. A year feels like a lifetime. After a few you won’t remember who you are now. It’s not a life.”

  “Neither’s being a traitor. You citizens don’t understand that.”

  “You don’t think taking marching orders from bin Laden is being a traitor?”

  “Sinners don’t take orders from no one. Least of all a bunch of ragheads.”

  “So think for yourself now, Babe. This is the end of the road for you. It’s the end of the road for Den, too. Help us close this thing out without anyone else getting killed.”

  She made a derisive noise deep in her throat. “Man, you’re clueless. Even if I didn’t love the Man—which I fucking do more than anything— selling out a Sinner is the lowest thing a member of the family can do. The lowest. There’s a code, and you don’t break it. No matter what.”

  “But you’re not a Sinner.” He watched the rage flare in her shiny eyes; his remark had cut her deep. He continued, more placatingly, “If you help us find him, we’ll have a better shot
at taking him alive. We can plan the takedown better. Control the situation. Make sure he doesn’t end up coming in in a body bag.”

  “Why? So he can get the lethal injection or the chair or whatever you fuckers use nowadays? No way. We both know why you’re here. You don’t know where he is. And when the Man doesn’t want to be found, he doesn’t get found. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “You gotta admit, we’ve done pretty well so far.”

  She broke eye contact, slumping back on the bench and blowing her bangs out of her eyes. The stretched collar of the jumpsuit dwarfed her delicate neck. “Sure, you got your news headlines. But a month from now, he’ll just be another bad guy on another list. You’ll forget all about him. He can live how he wants, even.” Her eyes held a hope that was at once naïve and affecting.

  “He shot my wife,” Tim said. “I’m not gonna forget about him.”

  She jerked her head back. Her voice came high with her surprise. “Who’s your wife?”

  “The sheriff ’s deputy.”

  “Right.” She bit her lips. “Right. So, like, I’d believe you that you’d try to take him alive.”

  “You’re the only one who can help us arrange a lower-risk takedown.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I don’t want to kill him. But if I have to …”

  “You will.” She read his face. Her eyes teared up, and she lifted them to the ceiling. For the first time, her voice trembled. “He’ll never come in alive. Never.”

  “You don’t know that. I’ve seen things play out in ways I never would’ve predicted. You help us, we can work something out with the prosecutor. You don’t want to be in a penitentiary for the rest of your life.”

  “You don’t get it, asshole.” Her sudden anger caught him off guard. She shoved back into the corner of the bench, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’m fucking done. That’s the deal. And I honor my deals.”

  “What do you mean, you’re done?”

  “You think the Man’s gonna talk to me now? Pop by for conjugal visits? You think he hasn’t already changed all his numbers, ditched all his hideouts? Our hideouts. I’m in here—that means he’s closed the book on me.” Tears clung to her dark lashes. “If he walked by me on the street now, he’d keep walking. And I’m glad. Because that’s what he needs to do to keep alive.” She let the tears run, not bothering to wipe her cheeks. They slid down her neck and darkened the seam of her jumpsuit. “Even if I wanted to help myself, I couldn’t. He’s too smart to trust me anymore.”

  Her face twisted, and she lowered her head into her arms and wept. Her cries were resonant and mournful, seeming to rise from deep within her. He could hear them even after he closed the steel door behind him, even after he reached the end of the cell-block corridor.

  Already the other prisoners were screaming for her to shut the fuck up.

  60

  Thomas was cocked back in his chair, hands laced behind his head. Jim and Maybeck cleared the conference table, tossing crumpled papers at the corner trash can and mostly missing. Miller hauled out chairs, returning them to the surrounding offices. Bear and Guerrera pulled down the pictures from the wall, taking with them Scotch-tape patches of paint or leaving tacks behind. Bear had brought in his dogs, Boston, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, and Precious, the medically discharged star of the Explosive Detection Canine Team, named for Jame Gumb’s companion in The Silence of the Lambs. Precious, whose nose had saved the life of virtually every deputy in the room, was greeted like the prodigal daughter, pulled from colleague to colleague to be scratched.

  Tannino had dissolved the command post, which Tim grudgingly recognized was the right thing to do. It didn’t take a command post to track a single fugitive. With the other nomads dead or in custody, the mother chapter crippled, the AT seized, and the distribution network disabled, the threat Den Laurey posed had been diminished, if not eliminated. The Escape Team could pursue him from the squad room, a priority among others, under Tim and Bear’s direction. But Tim knew that the imperative dulled once the deputies went back to business and spread out among desks rather than gathering around a single table with a single objective.

  He watched quietly from his chair as the post continued to be dismantled, trying to construct a strategy for the next phase and failing miserably. At this point Den was a cutout operative. The last series of arrests had severed all connective tissue; there were no links to trace back to girlfriends, fellow Sinners, or the mother chapter. Even the incipient drug operation had been rolled up. Den was accustomed to living in the shadows—it would take either a huge break or dumb luck to flush him out.

  The others, heady from the series of busts, didn’t seem to share Tim’s despondency. Miller gestured at him apologetically, and Tim rose reluctantly so he could carry away his chair.

  “Hey, girl,” Jim said, guiding Precious to the end of the table. “Go on and eat a piece of Mrs. Tannino’s fruitcake for us.”

  Precious sniffed the hardened crust, then backed up and sneezed violently.

  The room erupted in laughter.

  The scene triggered Tim’s memory of the kitchen during Dana Lake’s and the Prophet’s arrests. A sudden uneasiness made itself known, a splinter working its way to the surface.

  He thought of Babe lying in her cell. Aside from exercise breaks, that was about the most space she’d be permitted for the rest of her life. Her defiance had been undulled. Sinners don’t take orders from no one. Least of all a bunch of ragheads.

  He remembered his own words about the Sinners to Tannino and the mayor: Don’t expect honor among thieves—they’re famous for double crosses, drug burns, cop killings.

  What had Smiles said about Allah’s Tears? That’s the beauty of it. They don’t need a continuous pipeline, just a one-off—a single risk with a huge payday.

  A chill washed through Tim. The German shepherd. At the Prophet’s house. It had been sitting in front of the table holding Allah’s Tears. The drug’s powerful olfactory signature, even sealed inside the belly bags, should have drawn the dog’s attention, not let it fix on a few stale pizza crusts across the room. Tim flashed on the extraction needle lying in the carpet near Al-Malik’s head. Unused.

  Tim gestured to Bear and Guerrera. They must have noted his intensity, for they came immediately, both dogs at their heels. Jim was gnawing his way through a slice of Mrs. Tannino’s own, Miller making odds on his finishing it.

  Tim, Bear, and Guerrera headed out of the evaporating command post, laughter trailing behind them.

  61

  Uncle Pete stared out through the bars of his holding cell at the three deputy marshals and the score of FBI agents. The cell was dimly lit, devouring his wide form, but his eyes floated in a band of light. Tim couldn’t see his mouth but could tell from the crinkles at his temples that he was smiling.

  A closer look at the down-payment bills—which totaled $7.5 million—had revealed them to be fake. Sweat beaded at Bear’s hairline; he fanned himself with a packet of counterfeit hundreds. Malane was holding a test tube of the seized substance; minutes earlier, to emphasize his findings, the ERT agent had downed a shot of it. The Allah’s Tears and Den Laurey were at large and, Tim was sure, enjoying each other’s company.

  Malane shook the test tube. “Sambuca.”

  Uncle Pete’s voice emerged from the dark cell. “Is that so.”

  “You burned the Prophet. And al-Fath.”

  “I never heard of no prophet, friends, but I’ll tell you this: We sure as shit ain’t scared of a bunch of Allah-lovin’ sweat monkeys hiding in caves halfway around the world.” His eyes bunched with another smile. “In fact, it warms my heart to think you’re fixin’ a cot in Gitmo for another A-rab. We Sinners may be badass motherfuckers, but we ain’t anti-Amurican. So if you think we burned al-Fath, then hell, you can hang a medal around my fat neck. I assume that’s what you’re all here for? To honor my supposed intelligence work?”

  He enjoyed a good genuine laugh, his bulky shadow
rippling like a cape.

  The Operation Cleansweep task-force headquarters overlooked the VA cemetery. The government-issue headstones formed razor-straight lines on the lush green turf. A few durable Christmas wreaths provided splotches of color, but not enough to detract from the smog and granite.

  The similarities between this room and the Service’s command post were striking. Same tacked photos, same day-old food, same weary air of expired adrenaline. Bear was speaking in hushed tones over the phone to Tannino, his posture indicating that the conversation was going about as expected. Tim and Guerrera waited patiently for him to finish so they could head back and regroup in the squad room.

  Smiles sat on the table, folders resting across his thigh, one loafer tip dipped to the carpet as if stirring waters. Malane had pulled Tim aside and asked him not to make reference to the Polaroid found pinned to Rich’s jeans. Tim had agreed reluctantly; he generally objected to office secrets, no matter the motive behind them, but it wasn’t his command post and he couldn’t see what would be gained by Smiles’s knowing. Especially right now. Tim assumed he’d make a different call if he found himself in possession of like information about Bear or another colleague, but he’d learned that his preconceived assumptions weren’t particularly useful to him or anyone else.

  “So from Uncle Pete’s perspective, how was the double cross supposed to play out?” Smiles asked. “I mean, once the Prophet does the test and figures out the Sinners ran the switch on him …”

  “He kills Dana Lake, and then Pete doesn’t have to pay her cut,”

  Tim said.

  “And Wristwatch Annie?”

  “She’s a slag, not a Sinner,” Guerrera said. “Expendable.”

  “Why burn the producers? Kill the golden goose?”

  “Two liters is enough to feed the street for nine months. I mean, socio, fifty million dollars in hand? Weighed against what? The stability of terrorists and the drug trade?”