Blond Cargo (34 page)

Deak piloted his armored vessel into the pool of light. His men carefully pulled Angelica and then Jack out of the water and onto their able craft. The young sailors handed Angelica a blanket and politely averted their eyes until she was wrapped, warm, and safely strapped into one of the rear seats with a bottle of water.

Deak immediately headed back to the marina. An EMT unit was standing by to transport Angelica to Saint John’s Health Center.

“The bird will stay put until emergency vehicles arrive and contain the scene. Sorry about your boat.”

“Worth the sacrifice,” Jack said, glancing back at Angelica, who was staring mindlessly out over the water. He had seen that look before. Shock had finally set in.

“Got a call from your friend Detective Nick Aprea. Sorry I missed your text. It’s hard to hear sometimes out on the water.”

Jack clapped him on the shoulder. “You are the man.”

“Nick’s going to meet us at the marina, said something about unfinished business. Said you’d understand.”

Jack did. It was time for payback.

48

“How’s this for timing?” Nick said to Jack. “The fat lady’s singing.”

Jack and Nick were standing in the foyer on the third floor of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. Music could be heard bleeding through the doors of the Catalina Ballroom.

Jack’s hair was slicked back from his time in the water. He was still dressed in damp black clothes, and his five o’clock shadow was pushing thirty-six hours. Nick looked the worse for wear, having splashed down himself. Neither one of them gave a rat’s ass. They were hopped up on adrenaline, ready to grab the prize. These were the moments they lived for.

They had conferenced with the event’s security team, who were off-duty police officers, already on high alert because of the dignitaries in attendance. Everyone understood the play; all the exits were covered. The only thing they asked for was discretion.

Jack and Nick agreed. A simple arrest. By the book.

The placard on the easel next to the door announced the “Downtown Redevelopment Gala.”

The guests of honor: the Vargas Development Group.

A rotund soprano from the L.A. Opera was regaling the crowd with an over-the-top rendition of Adele’s “Someone Like You.”

Classically trained singers trying their hand at pop music felt like fingernails on a chalkboard for Jack. But he wasn’t there to critique the music. Then again, he couldn’t help himself.

“A thousand damn dollars a plate. I’ll bet the chicken was as bad as the music.”

“Let’s go see,” Nick said with boyish fire in his eyes.

They stepped through the double doors and waited in the back of the ballroom to let their eyes adjust to the dimmed lights and get the lay of the land. A sea of black ties, white tablecloths, and pastel gowns filled the room.

Uniformed waiters were placing crème brûlée in front of the diners. Wine and coffee were being poured, and all eyes were on the soprano, who held an impossibly long note.

And there—Jack lasered in on the raised podium—was the man of the hour.

Malic al-Yasiri.

The devil in a three-thousand-dollar tux, his face still infused with the blush of success.

Being recognized for excellence by the mayor of Los Angeles was a personal best, Malic thought. He glanced down at the honor the mayor had presented him with: a simple sculpted piece of glass with his name embossed in gold. It filled him with pride. It helped him brush aside his annoyance at Hassan for not keeping him in the loop. He trusted that one of his pressing problems had disappeared by now. He would be more discerning when picking his women in the future. But everyone needed a bit of recreation, he told himself. The rules were different for powerful men.

He thought of his wife, Kayla, and again was forced to temper his anger. Her lack of respect would not be tolerated in the future.

Losing the Matisse was a minor setback, one that would be rectified. If he was capable of achieving citywide recognition in a two-year period, his future was limitless. His face was sure to grace the real estate trade publications, and that alone would thrust him onto the national stage. The media coverage and connections made at tonight’s gala guaranteed his future.

Jack wondered if he was enjoying himself too much as he watched the dog-and-pony show playing out on the stage. Nah. Malic al-Yasiri was basking in the limelight, unaware that his wife had turned on him, that he’d never walk his daughter down the aisle, that his loyal soldier was dead, his million-dollar boat destroyed, and the glass award sitting in front of him would ultimately raise more money than its worth on eBay, because he was about to be exposed as a notorious killer.

Raul sat at the B-table, swollen and glassy-eyed, nursing his bandaged hand, which Jack knew was throbbing despite the drugs he was taking.

As the guest of honor, a smug Philippe Vargas shared the power table with the mayor and the cardinal, whose spot-lit red vestments oozed salvation. The mayor leaned over and whispered something amusing into his fine girlfriend’s ear. He winked and then stepped in front of the podium. He was all smiles and goodwill as he adjusted the mic and gave thanks to the opera singer, eliciting a subdued round of applause.

Two cloth scrims hung on the wall behind the mayor. One depicted a black-and-white panoramic photograph of downtown Los Angeles from the 1920s.

The second scrim, hanging directly behind His Eminence, depicted a modern downtown skyline, in vibrant color, with the Vargas Development Group’s new project digitally overlaid and magnificently highlighted front and center.

Jack’s money was on Malic jackrabbiting. The man wasn’t going down without a fight. Too much ego, he thought.

After twenty-five years of law enforcement Jack still didn’t understand the fight-or-flight response. The criminals never got away, he mused. They rarely won. In the high-speed car chases that played in a loop on the local news, the bad guys never escaped, and they watched a lot of television.

Lieutenant Gallina and Tompkins stepped quietly through the ballroom doors with arrest and search warrants in hand. Gallina gave Nick the go-ahead nod. This was one time Gallina, a political animal, had no desire to take the lead.

“I would like to thank everyone here tonight,” the mayor said, oblivious to the drama about to play out on the ballroom floor. “All of my friends. You are an inexorable force for change.”

Malic’s smiling eyes shifted from the mayor to the subtle movement in the rear of the ballroom. He narrowed his eyes, not sure what he was observing. Then his smile vanished.

Malic al-Yasiri locked eyes with Jack Bertolino.

He took an impulsive drink of water as he watched his adversary walking in his direction.

“And in this case,” the mayor continued, “the change is positive. We will save lives, create jobs, educate the poor, and improve the quality of life in the City of Angels. We will let our city truly become worthy of its namesake.”

Some of the well-dressed attendees started to turn in their seats and follow Malic’s darkening gaze. The Los Angeles district attorney’s table turned as one, and the DA lurched forward, whispering something to Leslie Sager.

She leaped out of her seat and charged over, stopping the men in their tracks.

“Jack,” she whispered heatedly. “What in the hell are you doing? Whatever it is, this is not the right time.”

“We’re good,” he said.

“If you don’t turn and walk out of here,” she said, looking from Jack to Nick and back again, “you’re both finished, and there’s nothing I can do to help.”

This was the wrong time for explanations, Jack thought.

“No, we’re good,” Nick said.

Leslie looked a final heartfelt question at Jack, who gave her a tight smile. Incredulous, she shook her head and walked back to her group.

When Jack glanced up at the head table, Malic’s chair was empty. The cloth scrim depicting the Vargas Development Group’s new Los Angeles fluttered in the breeze behind the mayor.

Jack pounded up the aisle with Nick fast behind.

Tim Dykstra, the mayor’s head of security, and a few of the mayor’s cohorts rose to stop them, but Nick flashed his badge, running interference.

A crash of plates from behind the scrims attracted Jack’s attention, and he ran toward the sound. Behind him the voices in the ballroom rose in a wave of panic.

The mayor stopped talking, and if looks could kill, the cardinal would’ve ended Jack’s life then and there.

Jack pushed through the two scrims and found a uniformed waiter on his hands and knees surrounded by broken glass, silverware, and crockery. He jumped over the man, banging the door to the kitchen open, his gun leading the way.

A security guard was down, bleeding, his hands wrapped around the hilt of a steak knife protruding from his stomach.

Two stunned dishwashers jabbed their fingers toward a side door.

“Where does it go?” Jack asked.

“The dumbwaiter. To the bar, to the basement.”

“Call 911, get an ambulance now,” Jack said as he pushed through the door. A stairwell was located next to the small service elevator. Jack pulled the dumbwaiter’s safety door open and looked up the shaft. The dumbwaiter was headed up to the revolving bar on the thirty-fourth floor of the hotel. It was tight quarters, and already too far up, he thought, not sure Malic could have even fit.

Nick ran in as Jack was opening the stairwell door. Jack pointed upward with his Glock. Nick nodded, pointing down. They split up and Jack started up the stairs.

One flight up, the fire door was ajar. Jack slipped through. It opened to the fourth-floor pool deck, where a wedding was in progress. Five hundred people were gathered around a brightly lit blue pool. The bride and groom stood in front of a female minister, reciting modern vows.

Jack held his gun down at his side as he skirted the perimeter of the pool. The groom caught his eye and gestured with his head to the side of his flower-strewn platform. The bride gave him a snarky look as two cops entered from the main doorway.

Malic burst back through the crowd, sending a knot of unsuspecting wedding guests splashing and screaming into the pool.

“Freeze,” Jack ordered, his gun trained on Malic’s kill zone. But Malic, gambling that Jack wouldn’t risk the shot, juked to the right, blasting through the central doors leading to the atrium.

Jack raced after him. In a matter of a few steps he was right on his heels. Jack leaped and bulldogged his prey to the marble floor.

Jack’s gun skittered over the edge of the walkway and splashed down into the koi pond four stories below.

Malic twisted his body around, and Jack hammered his face with a bone-splitter, bouncing his head off the marble floor, a punch that would have taken most men out. Yet Malic answered with a four-inch paring knife he’d grabbed from the kitchen on the run. His muscled arm pistoned upward.

Jack caught his wrist with his left hand, stopping the honed steel blade inches from his face. He landed a powerful right to the side of Malic’s head, stunning him. Jack grabbed the knife hand with both of his and, summoning all of his two hundred and thirty pounds, muscled Malic’s hand sideways, bending his arm at an unnatural angle. He pressed farther until a sickening snap occurred. The knife clattered to the marble floor. Jack snatched the weapon as Malic silently keened.

Jack grabbed the killer by the scruff of his neck, forcing his anguished face to look directly into his eyes. Then he pressed the blade to Malic’s cheek just below his eye socket.

“I could kill you right now,” Jack said with dangerous calm, breaking the skin and drawing a drop of blood, “but then you’d win. You’d be dead, but you’d take me with you.”

“Do it,” Malic said, his voice gravel, his eyes taunting.

“Not on your life.”

Jack pulled the knife away and pushed himself up on stiff legs. The two uniformed police officers came running in from the pool deck as Nick Aprea stepped off the elevator.

Nick holstered his weapon as he looked at the unnatural angle of Malic’s broken arm, his lifeless hand, and his face, which was devoid of color.

“How in the hell am I gonna cuff him, Bertolino?”

“By the neck works for me.”

Nick let out a grim laugh and let the two uniforms deal with Malic until an EMT arrived. He’d have a police escort to the hospital and then on to Central Jail. They heard one of the cops reading him his Miranda rights as they started to walk away. Nick pulled up short.

“So, your friend,” he kind of blurted.

“Who?” Jack said.

“You know . . .”

“Who?”

“Your bud,” Nick said.

“Mateo?”

Jack knew where this was headed and let Nick swing in the breeze.

“What?” he repeated, suppressing a grin.

“He did good,” Nick said low.

“I must be going deaf. What?”

“Fuck you, Bertolino. Your guy did okay.”

“Rogues’ gallery my ass, Aprea.”

Jack laughed and Nick turned beet red.

“I think this is yours, wiseguy,” Nick said as he grabbed Jack’s gun from the small of his back.

Nick handed the Glock, handle first, to his friend, and both men watched as pond water drained out of the barrel of Jack’s favorite weapon.

49

The press conference the next day turned a PR nightmare for the mayor into a law-and-order triumph. The headlines read,
A MONSTER IN OUR MIDST
and
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
.

A sex slavery ring had been broken up, a killer brought to justice, and a treasure trove of priceless Iraqi artifacts would be returned to the National Museum of Iraq. The president of France called the mayor personally to thank him as soon as word leaked that the masterpiece
La Pastorale
by Matisse, a national treasure that had been stolen in the Musée d’Art Moderne heist, had been recovered.

On a political roll, the mayor was thrown softball questions about the honor he had bestowed on Malic al-Yasiri the night of his arrest. Brighter men than himself had vetted him, the smiling mayor said self-deprecatingly. Mistakes were made, but the greater good was served.