The Power Of The Dog (76 page)

It’s good, though, that Peaches flipped, because Callan don’t have to worry about him calling Sal Scachi, who can’t be happy that Callan has gone off the reservation. Callan knows too much about Scachi’s work—all that Red Mist shit—to be out there in the wind, so it’s a good thing that him and Peaches are disconnected.

Little Peaches turns to his brother. “Are you feeding this guy?”

“Yes, I’m feeding him.”

“Not this grapefruit shit,” Little Peaches says. “Jesus Christ, get him some sausiche, a little prosciutto, some raviolis. If you can find any. Callan, they got a Little Italy in this town, you couldn’t get a cannoli with a machine gun. Italian restaurants here they serve sun-dried tomatoes. What is that? A couple years out here I am a sun-dried tomato. It’s always eighty-three and sunny here, even at night. How do they do that, huh? Is anyone gonna get me some coffee, or do I have to order it like I’m in a fucking restaurant?”

“Here’s your fucking coffee,” Peaches says.

“Thank you.” Little Peaches sets a box on the table and sits down. “Here, I brought doughnuts.”

“Doughnuts?” Peaches says. “Why are you always sabotaging me?”

“Hey, Richard Simmons, don’t fucking eat them if you don’t want them. Nobody’s putting a gun to your head.”

“You fucking asshole.”

“Because I don’t come to my brother’s house empty-handed,” Little Peaches says to Callan. “Good manners make me a asshole.”

“A fucking asshole,” Peaches says as he grabs a doughnut.

“Callan, eat a doughnut,” Little Peaches says. “Eat five. Every one you eat is one my brother doesn’t, I don’t have to listen to him whine about his figure. You’re fat, Jimmy. You’re a fat, greasy guinea. Get over it.”

They go out on the patio because Peaches thinks Callan should get some sun. Actually, Peaches thinks that Peaches should get some sun, but he doesn’t want to seem selfish. It’s Peaches’ opinion that there’s no reason to live in San Diego if you’re not going to go sit in the sun every chance you get.

So he leans back in the chaise, opens up his robe and starts to slather his body with Bain de Soleil.

“You don’t want to fuck with skin cancer,” he says.

Mickey sure doesn’t. Now he puts on his Yankees cap and sits under the patio umbrella.

Peaches opens a chilled can of peaches and scoops a few into his mouth. Callan watches a drop of the juice plop on his fat chest, then merge with the sweat and suntan lotion and run down his belly.

“Anyway, it’s good you showed up,” Peaches says.

“Why’s that?”

“How would you like,” Peaches says, “to do a crime where the victims can’t go to the cops?”

“Sounds okay.”

“Sounds ‘okay’?” Peaches asks. “Sounds like heaven to me.”

He lays it out for Callan.

Drugs go north—Mexico to the States.

Money goes south—the States to Mexico.

“They just put the bones—six, sometimes seven figures—into cars and drive it across the border, into Mexico,” Peaches says.

“Or not,” Little Peaches adds.

They’ve done three of these jobs already, and now they got word that a narco safe house in Anaheim is bursting with cash and has to make the trip south. They got the address, they got names, they got the make of the car and the license plate. They even got an idea about when the couriers are going to make the run.

“Where are you getting the info?” Callan asks.

“A guy,” Peaches answers.

Callan figured it was a guy.

“You don’t need to know,” Peaches says. “He takes thirty points.”

“It’s like being back in the dope business, except better,” O-Bop says. “We get the profits but we never have to touch the stuff.”

“It’s just basic, honest crime,” Peaches says. “Stick ‘em up, give me the money.”

“The way the Good Lord meant it to be,” Mickey says.

“So, Callan,” Little Peaches says. “You in?”

“I dunno,” Callan answers. “Whose money are we taking?”

“The Barreras’,” Peaches answers with this sly, questioning look in his eye, asking, Is that a problem?

I don’t know, Callan thinks. Is it?

The Barreras are as dangerous as sharks, not people you fuck with thoughtlessly. That’s one thing. Also, they’re “friends of ours”—according to Sal Scachi anyway—so that’s another thing.

But they murdered that priest, straight up. That was a hit, not an accident. A stone-pro killer like Fabián “El Motherfucking Tiburón” don’t shoot nobody at point-blank range on accident. It just don’t happen.

Callan don’t know why they killed the priest, he just knows that they did.

And they made me part of it, he thinks.

So there’s gotta be payback for that.

“Yeah,” Callan says. “I’m in.”

The West Side gang is back together again.

O-Bop watches the car pull out of the driveway.

It’s three in the morning and he’s tucked down in his own rig, half a block away. He has an important job to do: Follow the courier car without getting spotted and confirm that it goes onto the 5. He punches a number into his cell phone and says, “It’s on.”

“How many guys?”

“Three. Two in front, one in back.”

He hangs up, waits a few seconds, then eases out.

As per plan, Little Peaches calls Peaches, who calls Callan, who calls Mickey. They start the chronometers on their watches and wait for the next call. Mickey has it timed, of course, the average drive time from the driveway to the on-ramp of the 5—six-point-five minutes. So they know within a minute or so when they should get the next call.

If they get the call, the plan is in place.

If they don’t, they’re going to have to improvise, and no one wants that. So it’s a tense six minutes. Especially for O-Bop. He’s the one doing the work right now, the one who can fuck it all up if he gets himself spotted, who has to stay where he can see them but they don’t see him. He lays off at varying distances. A block, two blocks. He gives a left-turn signal and flips his headlights off for a second so he looks like a different car when he turns them back on.

O-Bop works it.

While Little Peaches sits, sweating, an hour and a half south on the 5.

For three minutes.

Four.

Big Peaches is in a booth at Denny’s off the highway, just a little north of Little Peaches. He’s scarfing down a cheese omelet, home fries, toast and coffee. Mickey don’t like them eating before a job—a full stomach complicates things if you get shot—but Peaches is like, Fuck that. He don’t want to jinx himself by taking precautions about what if he gets shot. He polishes off the greasy potatoes, takes two Rolaids out of his pocket and chews on them while he looks at the sports section.

Five minutes.

Callan tries not to look at his watch.

He’s lying on the bed in a motel room at the Ortega Highway exit, off the 5. Got HBO on and he’s watching some movie he don’t even know what it is. No point in him sitting out there on a bike in the cold. If the couriers get on the 5 there’ll be plenty of time. Looking at his watch ain’t gonna change anything, it’s just gonna make him nervous. But after what seems to be about ten minutes he gives in and looks.

Five and a half minutes.

Mickey don’t look at his watch. The call will come when it comes. He’s sitting in a car parked at the Oceanside Transportation Center. He smokes a cigarette and goes through in his head what happens if the couriers don’t take the 5. Then what they should do is call it off, wait for the next time. But Peaches ain’t gonna let them do that, so they’ll have to scramble. Try to guess the route from the info that O-Bop’s giving them and find a way to get ahead of the courier car and then figure out a place to take them down.

Cowboy-and-Indian stuff. He don’t like it.

But he won’t look at his watch.

Six minutes.

Little Peaches is about to yank.

A million in cash on the line and—

The phone rings.

“We’re good,” he hears O-Bop say.

He presses the restart button on his watch. One hour and twenty-eight minutes is the average drive time from the on-ramp to this exit. Then he calls Peaches, who picks the phone up without taking his eyes off the paper.

“We’re good.”

Peaches checks his watch, calls Callan and orders a piece of cherry pie.

Callan gets the call, coordinates his watch, phones Mickey, then gets up and takes a long, hot shower. There’s no hurry and he wants to be loose and relaxed, so he stands in there awhile and lets the steaming water pound his shoulders and the back of his neck. He can feel the adrenaline start to build, but he don’t want it to get too high too soon. So he makes himself take the time to shave slowly and carefully, and he feels good when he notices that his hand isn’t shaking.

He also takes his time dressing. Slowly puts on black jeans, a black T-shirt and a black sweatshirt. Black socks, black biker boots, a Kevlar vest. Then the black leather jacket, tight black gloves. He heads out. He paid in cash the night before and signed in with a fake name, so he just leaves the key in the room and locks the door behind him.

O-Bop’s job is easier now. Not easy, but easier, as he can lay back a good distance from the courier car and get closer only as they get near off-ramps. He has to make sure that they don’t throw a curve and exit onto the 57 or the 22, or Laguna Beach Road or the Ortega Highway. But it seems like Peaches’ hunch was right, these guys are headed straight up the gut—they’re staying on the main road all the way down to Mexico. So O-Bop eases back, and now he can talk on the phone without fear of getting spotted, so he fills Little Peaches in on the details: “Blue BMW, UZ 1 832. Three guys. Briefcases in the trunk.” This last bit ain’t great news, as it causes an extra step once they’ve taken the car down, but of course Mickey made them practice this option so O-Bop ain’t too worried about it.

Mickey worries.

That’s what Mickey does. He worries and waits until the Amtrak window opens, then he goes in and pays cash for a one-way fare to San Diego. Then he walks over to the Greyhound station and buys a ticket to Chula Vista. Then he goes back to his car and waits. And worries. They’ve practiced this dozens of times, but he still worries. Too many variables, too many what if’s. What if there’s a traffic jam, what if there’s a state trooper parked nearby, what if there’s a backup car and we don’t see it? What if someone gets shot? What if, what if, what if …

“If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle,” is what Peaches had said to all these worries. Now he finishes his pie, has another cup of coffee, leaves cash for the bill and tip (the tip just the right amount—not too small, not too large; he don’t want to be remembered for any reason), and goes out to his car. Takes the gun out of the glove compartment, holds it low in his lap and checks the load. All the bullets are still there, like he thought they’d be, but it’s a habit, a reflex. Peaches has this horror of going to pull the trigger someday and hearing the dry click of an empty chamber. He straps the gun into his ankle holster and likes its comfortable weight as he starts the car and steps on the gas pedal.

Now they’re all in place: Little Peaches off Calafia Road; Peaches on the Ortega Highway exit; Callan on his bike, waiting at the Beach Cities exit in Dana Point; Mickey at the Oceanside Transportation Center; O-Bop on the 5, following the courier car.