NYPD Red (10 page)

“MICK, ARE YOU serious?” Gabe said.

Mickey sat motionless. “Serious as a body bag.”

“What the hell is going on? Why would you want to blow me up?”

“I don’t
want
to blow you up,” Peltz said. “I’d rather talk business.”

“No problem,” Gabe said. “Talk.”

“First, get rid of the gun. Wherever it is, reach for it, and set it down on the floor. If you shoot me, you’re dead a half second after I am.”

“Okay, relax,” Gabe said. “I mean,
don’t relax.
Just keep pressing hard on that button.”

He reached inside his windbreaker pocket, took out the Walther, and slid it across the floor. Peltz picked it up and put it on top of his workbench.

“We good?” Gabe said.

“So far.”

“Okay, so talk business.”

“I didn’t call you so I could blackmail you, Gabe. That’s what you’re thinking, but that’s not my style.”

The Chameleon just nodded.

“I got a memory like a steel trap,” Peltz said. “Eight years ago we did a bunch of
Sopranos
episodes together. I remember we were on location in Jersey, just hanging out, and you told me you had an idea for a movie about a guy who starts killing off a bunch of assholes in the film business.”

“Half the people who work in this business come up with that idea,” Gabe said.

“I didn’t get much sun in prison, Gabe, but I didn’t get stupid. That day, you and me talked about a bunch of cool ways to kill people off. One of them was swapping blanks for real bullets in a prop gun. Funny that you should be on the set today when Ian Stewart gets killed exactly that way.”

“It doesn’t mean I had anything to do with it.”

Peltz just grunted. “It’s also funny that the Molotov that got tossed at Brad Schuck tonight was a wickless. The same one my father taught me to make. The same one I taught you. Now that I see you again in person, you look about the same size as the guy who tossed it.”

“I’m average height, average weight, along with a million other guys.”

“But I’ll bet you’re the one guy behind those three pricks getting offed today.”

“I’m not, Mick. I swear.”

“Then why were you so quick to come running over here in the middle of the night? And why’d you bring the gun? I told you—I didn’t ask you over here so I could blackmail you.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

“Because I want in,” Peltz said. “Remember the ending I pitched for your movie idea? Get about a hundred of those dickwads all together in one place and blow them up. You loved it. You going to do it?”

“Even if I was the guy behind all these killings, I could never afford to put something like that together. You of all people ought to know, Mickey. Explosives cost an arm and a leg.”

“An arm and a leg.
Ba-da-bump.
That’s why I like you, Gabe. You got a bomb under your balls, and you’re not afraid to crack wise with the guy who’s got his finger on the button.”

“Jokes aside, Mickey, C4 is cheap if you got a license to buy it legal. But once you’re out there on the black market, it’s hard to find, and even if you can, the prices are through the roof.”

“Not if you know where to shop. Listen to me, Gabe; if you’re looking for the big bang, I’m your powder monkey. I not only know where to get what you need, I know how to rig it, and where to put the charges for the best body count.”

Sweat dripped down Gabe’s face as he stared at the chrome cylinder in Peltz’s hand. Mickey might kill him, but he didn’t seem bent on blackmail.

“Why would you even want to get involved?” Gabe asked. “Why risk going back to jail?”

“Because I could buy shit cheap, mark it up, make a few bucks, and still save you a bundle. And because I’ve spent the past twelve hundred and eighty-three nights laying in a prison cell thinking how I could get even with the system that put me there. So either tell me what’s on your wish list and I’ll make it happen, or just go home. I’m not going to blow the whistle on you. I’ll be glued to the TV rooting for you.”

Gabe reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and put it in Mickey’s free hand.

Mickey scanned it for less than thirty seconds. “I’d make a few adjustments, but not bad for an amateur. I guess I taught you pretty good.”

“How much would I need?”

“Sixty pounds of C4 should do it,” Mickey said. “It’s big enough to do the job and light enough to carry around in a backpack.”

“Can you get it?” Gabe asked.

“Piece of cake.”

“Fast?”

Mickey coughed up a raspy laugh. “You want cheap
and
fast? Maybe if it was a blow job outside the Lincoln Tunnel, but we’re living in a post-9/11 world, Gabe. Speedy delivery jacks up the price.”

“How much to get it by tomorrow?”

Mickey took a beat. “Twenty-five thousand plus another five for my connections and my expertise.”

“Thirty total,” Gabe said.

“If this were a film production doing it on the up-and-up, the sixty pounds along with my services would be double, maybe triple,” Mickey said. “Thirty thousand is the friends-and-family price.”

“Take another look at that diagram I gave you. Does it make sense? Are the charges in the best places to do the most damage?”

“Like I said, I’d have to finesse it, but that’s why I tacked on the extra five thousand. I get paid for blowing shit up, not for blackmailing. It’s thirty thousand, all in, and if you want the plastic by tomorrow, I need the cash today. Do you have it?”

“No,” The Chameleon said. “But I know where to get it.”

“Then go get it.”

“It’s a two-man job,” The Chameleon said. “You interested?”

“It would have to be me and my parole officer. Son of a bitch is tracking me 24/7. Can’t you find somebody else?”

“Probably.”

“Then do it. I’ll be right here waiting for you.”

“I’m going to need my gun back,” Gabe said.

“You going to shoot me with it?”

“Hell no, but I hate walking along Skillman Ave. without it.”

Mickey picked up the Walther and passed it back to Gabe. “See how much I trust you?” he said.

“It probably doesn’t hurt that you got your finger on the pressure-release trigger,” Gabe said.

“You mean this?” Mickey said.

He lifted his thumb off the cylinder and the silver button popped up.

Gabriel leaped from the chair.

“Boom,” Mickey said.

“You bastard,” Gabe said. “It was all bullshit.”

“You call it bullshit,” Mickey said, letting loose one of his signature croaky laughs. “I call it special effects.”

“I TEXTED YOU twenty times,” Lexi said.

“I texted you back on the first one,” Gabe said.

“God, Gabe—if I write
‘what happened?’
you can’t just text back
‘we’ll talk when I get home.’
It’s not a real answer.”

“Sometimes real answers don’t translate to typing on a telephone.”

“Whatever. Did he try to blackmail you?”

“Just the opposite. He wants to help.”

“
Help?
What kind of
help?
”

“Remember the original ending I had for this movie?” Gabe said.

“Kaboom!” she yelled, flinging her arms into the air. “That ending?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“It’s the best. I loved it. But you said we didn’t have that kind of money in the production budget, and I said how come Wile E. Coyote can afford to buy all that TNT from the Acme Dynamite Company, and we can’t?”

“I got good news,” Gabe said. “I found Mr. Coyote. It’s Mickey Peltz. He can get us what we need. Cheap.”

“How do you know we can trust him?”

“Lex, I know him. I’ve worked with him before. He’s not going to screw us, and he can get his hands on everything we need. Think of him as part of the production team.”

“How much does he want?”

“Around thirty thousand. But only five of it’s for him. The rest is for the C4.”

“I don’t know why you’re so excited,” Lexi said. “It’s still thirty thousand more than we’ve got.”

“It’s too good to pass up,” he said. “I can get the money.”

“What are you going to do? Stick up a bank?”

“No. A production company.”

Lexi gave him the frowning-schoolmarm look that always cracked him up. Head down, lips tightly pursed, chin tucked to her chest, and her index finger drawn across the bridge of her nose so she could look at him over fake granny glasses.

“Oh, really, young man,” she said in a high-pitched but stern voice that was a cross between Bea Arthur and Lisa Simpson. “Do you actually think you can walk into Paramount, or Fox, or MGM, point a gun at them, and single-handedly walk out with a bag full of money?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered, laying on his Arkansas schoolboy accent. “’Twouldn’t be none of them big-ass studios. It’d be much smaller. And ’twouldn’t be just me by my lonesome neither. I got me a partner in crime.”

Lexi’s face changed, and she slipped out of character. She sat down on the edge of the bed, hurt, deflated. “You and Mickey?” she said, her eyes watery. “He’s your partner now?”

“No, dummy,” Gabe said. “I’m talking about me and you.”

LEXI JUMPED FROM the bed. “You and me? Really? Are you serious?”

“I told you that you’d be getting a scene to play. This is it.”

“Give me the details. Tell me everything.”

“Remember last week when I was an extra in that courtroom movie? I was Juror Number Seven. We shot it on location down on Chambers Street.”

“I remember,” she said.

“I got friendly with the line producer, Jimmy Fitzhugh. We hung out. Talked motorcycles. He’s got a Zook—a brand-new Boulevard. Great wheels. I’m thinking, since I had to get rid of the Kawasaki, maybe when this is over, I’ll get me one too.”

“Anyway…,” Lexi said.

“Anyway, they’re shooting uptown this week at Fordham University, and the production trailer is parked on West Sixty-second. Every morning Jimmy gets on his bike early so he can cruise in from Rockaway and beat the traffic.”

“Where’s the money, Gabe?”

“He keeps it in the trailer.”

She shook her head. “Not thirty thousand. They don’t keep a shitload of cash around to pay the union guys on payday anymore. Now they write checks, and a check cashing service comes in with bags of money and a couple of armed guards.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I’m not still playing the dumb hillbilly schoolboy, Lexi. I’m not saying we should go up against a couple of trigger-happy rent-a-cops. Jimmy Fitzhugh has cash in his trailer, and it’s not there to pay the union guys.”

“Then what’s it for?”

“Coke.”

“Get out of here.”

“Jimmy’s boss has money up the wazoo,” Gabe said. “He also likes to party hearty, and nose candy is always on the menu. But the boss man is too high-profile to risk getting caught doing a transaction, so if a line producer wants to work for him, part of his job is to score the dope. Jimmy told me he’s been doing it three years now. Never a problem, and the big guy always gives him hazard pay.”

“Pretty sweet setup. How do we get the money?”

“Jimmy shows up at the trailer. I stick a gun to his head. And I know for sure he won’t put up a fight. It’s not his money, and if it gets stolen, I bet the boss doesn’t even report it to the cops, because they might figure out what he was using it for.”

“What do I do?”

“It’s your big break, kid,” Gabe said. “You get a speaking part. Jimmy knows me, which means he could easily recognize my voice. So I can’t say a word. You just tell him to hand over the money, then you play lookout while he fills up the bag. Once we have the cash, I pay Mickey, and I guess you know what happens after that.”

Lexi grinned. “Yeah. Kaboom.”

I GOT TO GERRI’S DINER a few minutes after 5:00. Business was brisk, but they weren’t so busy that I couldn’t eyeball every booth, every table, and every counter stool. Cheryl wasn’t in, at, or on any of them.

“You want some breakfast, Zach?”

It was Gerri Gomperts herself. Gerri is a Force of Nature—tiny enough to fit into a twenty-gallon soup pot and tough enough to single-handedly take on a junkie who was so strung out that he tried to rob a diner around the corner from a police precinct. Turned out Gerri didn’t need a cop. She whacked him across the forehead with a hot spatula. The poor guy needed forty stitches before they could even book him.

“No thanks, Gerri,” I said. “Just a large coffee to go.”

“We’re all out of coffee to go,” she said. “We only have coffee you can drink here.”

I looked at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, Zach. I’m meddling. It’s what I do. Now go sit in that corner booth over there till that
gawjus
lady shrink comes out of the restroom. She just ordered breakfast.”

I sat at the booth and two minutes later the restroom door opened and the shrink stepped out. I had to agree with Gerri. Cheryl was
gawjus.

“You again,” she said, sitting across from me. “I saw the mayor’s press conference last night, so I’m not surprised you didn’t get much sleep.”

“It wasn’t the mayor who woke me up at four in the morning,” I said.

“Don’t tell me your new partner is still keeping you awake.”

“No,” I said, “this time it’s her husband.”

I told her Spence’s middle-of-the-night theory, sparing no detail. “And when I finally said to him that the actual city of Los freakin’ Angeles can’t be the criminal mastermind behind these murders, and I asked him if he’s got a lead on a human suspect, guess what he says?”

She smiled. “I’m going to go with…‘That’s your job, Detective Jordan.’”

I pounded my hand on the tabletop and the silverware jumped. “That’s exactly what he said. Damn, you’re good.”

“Thanks, but that was too easy. The way you set it up, there was only one answer.”

“So what do you call that—you know, what Spence is doing?” I asked. “Is it passive-aggressive behavior?”

“I don’t think so. He sounds pretty genuine. I think he really wants to help.”

“I appreciate it,” I said, “but there are four million people in LA. Why doesn’t he call me once he’s narrowed it down?”

“The mayor made the usual promises last night about working around the clock, blah, blah, blah, and bringing about a swift conclusion to this tragedy,” she said. “Where are we really?”

“Somewhere between desperate and deep shit. We don’t even have enough on this guy to ask you to do a profile.”

“I’m sure you’ve already figured out that he’s someone on the periphery of show business who hates the business and everyone in the inner circle,” she said. “Which narrows it down to every actor, writer, and waiter in the Tri-State Area.”

“Unless Spence is right,” I said, “and he’s on loan from the LA Chamber of Commerce.”

“Can I change the subject for a minute?” she said.

“Sure.”

“How do you feel about opera?”

“Sounds like one of those trick shrink questions,” I said. “If Zach is a cop, and he likes opera, then he’s got as much chance of cracking this case as he has of finding a vegetarian pit bull.”

You keep working at it, you get the million-dollar smile. I got it.

“A friend of mine had to go out of town and she gave me two tickets to see
La Traviata,
” she said.

“And let me guess—you love opera, but none of your friends do.”

“Actually, I hate opera…I take that back. I only went once, twelve years ago, and I walked out after three hours, and I think they still had another seventeen and a half hours to go. But I’ve got these tickets, and I’m trying to broaden my cultural horizons. Kind of a post-Fred renaissance.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I have to be honest with you. I’ve never been. I know all the clichés like ‘it ain’t over till the fat lady sings,’ but I’m a virgin.”

“Perfect,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly ask someone who loves it. I’d be stuck there. But if you go, we can make a deal. If one of us hates it, we’ll stay—at least for a while. If both of us hate it, we bail out, and go bowling, or find a tractor pull somewhere.”

“In my case, a tractor pull would actually broaden my cultural horizons. When?”

“Saturday night.”

“If I’m not still chasing maniacs, it’s a date.”

We sat and talked for another half hour. By the time I had to leave, I was sure of one thing—Cheryl Robinson was ready for her post-Fred renaissance. I just wasn’t sure I was ready to be part of it.