Harbor Nocturne (13 page)

Lita Medina jumped to her feet, but Brigita Babich said, “Sit down, sweetheart. Rest yourself. Are you hungry? I have some
mostaccioli
I can warm up for you. And we have sauerkraut, made the Croatian way, with tomato sauce.”

* * *

Hector Cozza finally bit the bullet, and it was a hard bite. After he’d read the entire
Los Angeles Times
story about the disaster at the container yard in Wilmington, his call to Kim resulted in his having to hold the cell phone away to save an eardrum.

“Hector!” the Korean shouted. “I call you six times yesterday and today! Where you were?”

Hector had never known the Korean to be this angry. He said, “My cell phone died on me and I didn’t even know it. I was kinda sick, too. Musta ate something that didn’t agree with me.”

“You meet with me in one hour. The Russian bar. You be there, Hector. You listening to me?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there,” Hector said. “Rasputin’s Retreat in one hour.”

When he clicked off, he thought, Christ! Not that miserable place. He figured maybe he should get there early and have the surly commie bartender pour him a few ounces of vodka. He was going to need it before facing Kim. He understood vaguely that part of the calamity in the container storage yard was somehow going to blow back on him so that Kim could evade responsibility for it with Markov, or whoever the fuck was Kim’s partner on that deal.

That was the thing about working with these people: Hector never quite knew who was totally in charge. By now, Hector was sure that neither Markov nor Kim were bucks-up businessmen. The more he nosed around and checked licenses at the establishments, the more he came to conclude that everything was leased: the property, the cars, even some of the kitchen equipment and restaurant furnishings. He’d seen a bill from a restaurant supplier that proved as much.

He wished he could find out where they both lived. He suspected that Markov lived up on Mount Olympus, in the Hollywood Hills, because Kim had said something about coming
down
from the boss’s house, near where “other Russians lived.” Hector knew that there were a number of Middle Eastern and Eastern European home owners up there, some of them with holdings but some of them living on fast talk and flash money. As to Kim, well, he just figured that the big slope probably lived in Koreatown with the rest of the pig-guts-and-kimchi crowd. Kim had probably invested plenty in the latest human-trafficking venture that went very sideways, so Hector guessed he was low on bank.

All this made him remember that the horrible Russian pervert Basil was back in town, and Hector had the phone number Ivana had given him of a dude with one foot who might turn out to be a soul brother to the Muscovite freak. If he was to lose points with Kim, maybe he could get some back with Markov. That is, if he could make Basil happy by organizing a little drinks party with the peg-leg guy and fulfill the Russian’s fantasies. He could get Ivana to be there too, or one of the other bitches that would fuck anything if the price was right, even freaks that got off on amputation.

Well before it turned dark, 6-X-66 had started getting routine calls in east Hollywood. There was a burglary report to be taken at an old bungalow owned by a Hispanic legal secretary who worked in Century City. And a van had been stolen on Western Avenue near Fountain while a pest control specialist whose van was lettered with “Virgil the Vermin Slayer” was away from it, treating a house for dry rot.

The exterminator’s first words to Hollywood Nate and Britney Small were “I only wish I could poison the fucking vermin that stole my truck!”

The reports were Nate’s to write, since Britney was the driver, and afterward she drove to the station to get them signed by a supervisor.

While they were sitting in the report room, Nate said to her, “A sure sign of aging is when a cop would rather write reports than drive. If you notice, the young hotdogs always wanna drive. None of them wanna ride shotgun and keep books.”

“I guess I must be aging,” Britney said. “I don’t mind writing reports at all. In fact, I kinda like it. I always got A’s in English.”

Nate smiled at his young partner. “Sure, Britney, you’re aging. In about five years you might actually be able to walk into a club on the Sunset Strip and buy a drink without getting carded. How old’re you, twenty-two?”

“Twenty-four,” she said. Then she grinned and added, “I’m getting to be an OG, too.”

None of the Old Guys ever complained about being assigned with petite Britney Small, by virtue of her proven bravery and the street cred she’d earned in last year’s gunfight. In the two years she’d been at Hollywood Division, she’d made a name for herself as a calm and reliable partner with a quiet sense of humor who always had your back.

Nate said, “Please tell me that you don’t see a thirty-nine-year-old hunk like me as an OG. I’m an actor, and the aging process makes actors irrelevant. Tell me you’re kidding or I’ll kill myself in the parking lot before my fortieth birthday.”

“Okay, I’m kidding,” Britney said. “You’ll
never
be an OG. And you really
are
a hunk. All the women in the locker room talk about Hollywood Nate and how you’re so ripped from all the working out, and how they’d die to have your gorgeous wavy hair—”

“Which is getting very gray on the sides, if you’ll notice.”

“Which only makes you sexier. And I think that one of these days you’re gonna get a call from your agent—”

“I fired the worthless bastard.”

“Or a call from somebody in show business about a big movie where they need a handsome copper type, and it’ll be you that gets the gig.”

Nate took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and said, “Young Britney, you just earned yourself a soda. Get us both one, and make mine diet.”

It was 9:15
p.m
. by the time Hector Cozzo got to Rasputin’s Retreat. The small parking lot was jammed, so he parked his red Mercedes SL on the boulevard, making sure there was plenty of room fore and aft of his bumpers, since those fucking old Russkie drunk drivers would be coming and going all evening. When he got inside he couldn’t find a place to sit except at the end of the bar.

It took several minutes for the burly Russian bartender to saunter down to him and raise his chin an inch or two by way of recognition.

“Has Mr. Kim come in yet?” Hector asked.

“No,” the bartender said.

“Gimme a vodka,” Hector said. “Better make it a double.”

“Russian or shit vodka?” the bartender mumbled.

“Russian, of course,” Hector said, with a smarmy smile that brought a scowl from the bartender. Hector thought he’d better watch the big asshole to make sure he didn’t spit in the glass.

Hector finished that one and was about to order another when he saw Kim enter. Hector watched the Korean go straight to the back office and he knew that the slope had a key to every door in every building Markov leased. As Hector was walking through the dark and increasingly noisy barroom, he saw two men in Members Only jackets sitting at a small table near the door. One of them looked to him like the Armenian who’d stopped him outside Shanghai Massage to inform him that only Armenians should be operating massage parlors in or near Little Armenia.

Hector got to the office door, tapped three times, and opened it. When he entered, Kim stepped from behind the door and, grabbing him by the back of the neck, threw him across the room, where he banged his right hip into the corner of the desk and yelped in pain. Then Kim strode forward and, with a leg sweep, kicked Hector’s pins out from under him. He hit the Oriental rug hard on his back, his head bouncing off the floor.

Hector yelled, “What the fuck?”

“You shut up your mouth or I kill you!” Kim said.

“Okay, I won’t say nothing!” Hector promised, cringing. “I won’t even
think
nothing!”

The Korean was about fifty years old and only a little over six feet tall, but he was very wide, large-boned, and heavily muscled. Kim had hands like goalie mitts and the lantern jaw of André the Giant, and while Hector was on his back looking up, he felt that he
was
looking at the Giant’s buckethead cousin. The Korean’s eyes were lifeless, and his big yellow teeth were bared, as if he wanted to take a bite out of the small man cowering at his feet.

“Mr. Kim,” Hector said, averting his eyes. “Can I jist ask why I’m being treated like this?”

The Korean sat on the edge of the desk and stared down at Hector Cozzo, who didn’t dare get up. All Hector could hear over the buzzing in his ears was Kim breathing. It sounded rheumy, like the wheezing of Hector’s asthmatic younger brother, which he’d listened to for years.

“You promise me the container will get stolen and brought to me,” Kim said.

“No, Mr. Kim!” Hector said. “I’m sorry to disagree, but you got it wrong. I said I would
try
to make that happen for you. I only promised I would talk to a cruiser I know with the Harbor City Crips. I said that if you were sure of the exact location and the number on the can, his posse
might
be able to go in with guns and a stolen truck and do the job. That’s what I promised, because it’s been done before. But the stupid nigger got busted, and there was a parole hold on him and the plan fell apart!”

“You know how much money I lose?” Kim said.

Hector spotted a relaxing of Kim’s neck muscles and felt he might be able to cross this hazardous stream without disturbing the dead-eyed croc eyeing him on the bank.

“Mr. Kim,” he said, “please let me remind you I was jist suggesting a stopgap service when your deal fell apart. I mean, I didn’t ask you no questions, but I know it musta cost you plenty to bribe somebody, maybe a security guard at the container yard? But it was really the trucker that screwed you big-time when he went south with the retainer money you musta paid him. Am I right? If your trucker had picked up the container as planned, none of this woulda happened.”

Kim held up a hand to silence Hector’s babbling. He said, “You say you will help me get the container.”

Kim’s lip was still curled in menace, causing Hector to hang on to his cringe and reply, “Not exactly, Mr. Kim. Because I’m an old San Pedro guy, I jist said I
might
be able to help you, but I never asked you for no front money, did I? How could anybody have predicted that the”—he almost said “stupid bucketheads” but stopped himself in time—“that the migrants in there would light a stove or a heater or whatever the fuck they lit after the escape door got blocked? Was that my fault, too?”

Hector could literally see the Korean mulling it over, his jaws clenching and unclenching, his brows knitting, relaxing, then knitting again as the thug reconsidered.

Finally Kim said, “Stand up on your feet.”

Hector got up painfully, saying, “My hip feels broke.”

Kim said, “I lose money. Mr. Markov, he lose money. Now
you
will lose money, too. You will pay me a fine of twenty thousand dollars. You pay to me five thousand a month. You don’t pay, the interest adds on. You understand me, Hector?”

“Mr. Kim, you don’t see tits on me, do you?” Hector whined. “Why do you treat me like a bitch for trying to help you?”

“I am make it very easy on you, Hector,” Kim said. “You do not got no idea how much we lose on this deal.”

Until then Hector had thought that Kim was acting as an independent contractor without Markov on Asian smuggling operations. “I did my best for you,” he said. “And for Mr. Markov.”

“Next time you try more hard,” Kim said. “Now go. If Mr. Markov is very mad and wish to fire you, I will still want my twenty thousand dollars. You understand?”

Before he opened the door, Hector said, “Mr. Kim, jist to avoid more trouble here, do you have any idea what happened to Daisy?”

Kim’s eyes narrowed again, and he stood up from the edge of the desk abruptly. In a guttural voice he said, “Why do you talk about Daisy?”

Hector said, “I was told by a girl at Shanghai Massage that Daisy’s sister was one of the dead girls and that Daisy was threatening to go to the cops. The second I walked in I was gonna tell you that, but you didn’t give me a chance.”

Kim said, “I know nothing about the sister and nothing about Daisy. Where is Daisy at?”

“Nobody knows,” Hector said. “She ran away.”

“Let her go,” Kim said. “We do not need her. We got other employees who do better work. Tell those girls they better forget Daisy. You understand me?”

“I understand.” Kim had moved so close to Hector he could see long scratches along the Korean’s jawline on one side of his face.

“I want you to know something I learn from a Filipino,” Kim said. “He learn it from the drug smugglers. Seven-Up keeps the fizzy longer than Coke or Pepsi.”

“I don’t get it,” Hector said.

“For shooting up the nose when you sit in a chair with hands tied behind you. The pain feels like your head blows up. I always keep plenty of Seven-Up, Hector. You remember that.”

Hector opened the door and shuffled back out through the crowded barroom, grimacing from the pain in his hip and from Kim’s terrifying talk of torture. He noticed that the two men were not at the table by the door. That was when he remembered that he was going to tell Kim he thought he’d seen the Armenian who’d fronted him off, but he wasn’t going back in that office now. Not for anything.

When he got to his car he was relieved to see that nobody was even close to either bumper, even though the street was jammed with parked cars and the night traffic was as relentless as usual.

He was about to use his keyless entry when he spotted it. Scratched across the hood of his beautiful red Mercedes SL, in eight-inch letters, was “AP.”

Hector stood beside his car and yelled, “Motherfuckers!”

He heard brakes screech, and a male voice beside him said, “Is everything okay?” He looked around and saw that a black-and-white police car had stopped in the traffic lane with its light bar turned on.

“No, things ain’t okay!” he yelled to the passenger cop. “Look at my car!”