The Rabbit Factory (46 page)

"This is Mrs. Pardini," he said, gesturing to the woman. Frankie had described Vicki Pardini as thirty-five, fantastic body, your basic bored Beverly Hills housewife. He hadn't exagger

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ated the body, but this housewife was far from bored. Sitting only a foot away from Joey the Cap, my guess would be she looked to be somewhere between petrified and shitting in her pants.

"We're all adults here," Cappadonna said, "so let me get to the point. Your brother Frankie took $50,000 from Mrs. Pardini with the understanding that he would buy her a particular stock. Instead he bought something else, thinking he'd make a mint for himself with her money, but it turned out to be crap and he lost it all. Am I right so far?"

"Yes," she said. "He took my fifty thousand."

"The questions are for Mr. Lomax, sweetheart," Cappadonna said. "You just sit tight. Have I given a fair account so far, Mr. Lomax?"

"Yes," I said.

"So now, the stock he should have bought has gone up and up and up. But since your brother doesn't have the money, he decides to seduce Mrs. P. in the hope that amove would triumph over good business practice. Correct?"

"That's the way I understand it," I said.

"Good. Now, your brother has taken advantage of this lovely woman's trusting nature and her virtue, and in an emotional

moment she recruited someone to teach him a permanent lesson. However, a mutual friend of yours and mine, who does not want to see your brother dead, contacts me, and I contact Mrs. Pardini, because I think I can help her regain her money and her dignity. It's the ebb and flow onbusiness. One hand washing the other. The only barrier to success here is, does your brother currently have the money?"

"How much does he owe?"I

"The new bottom line is $115,000. The stock he should have

bought is now worth ninety thousand. Then there's a $10,000 fee from your brother to me for brokering this transaction. Then there's another $10,000 brokerage fee from Mrs. Pardini to me, which as a gesture of contrition your brother will pay on her behalf. If you're good with numbers, you probably added it up, and it's only a hundred and ten. The other $5,000 we'll put in the poor box, because the church was kind enough to let us use their space for a private function. Payment is due at noon tomorrow. And we don't accept American Express."

"That's a lot of cash," I said. "Most banks are closed on the weekend." n

"I hear that's an excellent time to make a large withdrawal." He handed me an aluminum attache case. "It should fit nicely in here."

"And where do I deliver?"

"Tomorrow, you go to the Century City mall. Park on the lower level and go upstairs to the 12-Plex. Buy a ticket for the noon movie in Theatre Six. You got that?"

"Theatre Six. Noon."

"My two associates will be sitting in the next-to-last row I with one empty seat between them. You sit in the last row directly behind the empty seat, put the case on the floor and slide it under the seat in front of you. The lights will go down, they will leave with the money, and you will sit tight for fifteen minutes.",;Ś/

"What if I want to stay and watch the rest of the movie?"

He laughed. "It's good to see you haven't lost your sense of humor. You can stay there till Christmas. What you can't do is Śmove for fifteen minutes. By then, we'll have double-checked the contents of the package. If it's all there, your brother is free

to go about his business without fear of reprisal, and Mrs. P. is free to go about hers without fear that her husband, who is a business associate of mine, will ever have to be troubled by knowledge of her error in judgment. Your basic win, win, win."

I took another look at Mrs. P. She didn't look like she was on the winning team. "And the brokerage fee that my brother pays," I said, "that would be the extent of our family's obligation to you for your services?"

"Well I would hope that you would remember me fondly if I ever get a summons for jaywalking," he said, patting my shoulder like we were old friends.

Jaywalking. This coming from a man who has been quoted as saying the only way for two men to keep a secret is if one of them is dead. He turned to Vicki. "Say goodbye to Mr. Lomax. You won't be seeing him again."

She barely moved. "Goodbye," she said.

"I apologize for my brother," I said. "I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt you. He has an addiction. He gambles."

"I have an addiction myself," she said. "I keep getting involved with assholes."

Cappadonna shook my hand. "You're a lot classier than your brother," he said, as he walked me to the door. The two thuglings escorted me to my car and watched me drive out of sight.

-J1

' drove home, made coffee, showered, shaved, and thumbed

through the LA. Times. According to unconfirmed reports,

.four thousand Lamaar employees had resigned. It seemed like a small number considering the magnitude of the threat. But the paper pointed out that most low-level workers wouldn't bother resigning. They would just stop showing up. And there were thousands of mid-level employees who wanted to quit, but they couldn't find any bosses to quit to.

At 6:00 I called Big Jim. "Good news," I said. "They agreed to call the dogs off Frankie. It'll cost money, but he'll live to i fuck up another day."

"Thank God," he said. Not, How much. Thank God. That's Big Jim.

"The price tag is a hundred and fifteen thousand," I said.

"Ouch," he said. "There goes my plan for retiring before I die." /

"It's expensive raising kids. And we need it in cash by noon .tomorrow."

"No problem," he said. "I got it right here in the safe."

"Of course you do. Who doesn't have a hundred and fifteen thou just lying around the house?"

"It was Angel's idea. She said sooner or later we're going to need it, so I cashed my CDs. When they say 'substantial penalty for premature withdrawal' they ain't kidding. The guy at the bank told me I was making a mistake, and I told him I made the mistake when I decided to get your mother pregnant for the second time. What kind of crooks are you dealing with that won't take a check?"

"Technically, they're not doing anything crooked," I said, "They just happen to have the juice to help us out. The only crook here is Frankie."

, "I'm sorry you had to get your hands dirty," he said. "I'm amazed you found time. I've been watching the news. I figured you'd be up to your nuts with the Lamaar fiasco." ;

"I got three hundred FBI agents and the Secretary of Home land Security helping me on Lamaar. I decided they wouldn'i miss me for a few hours if I worked the Frankie Lomax fiasco,"

"Thanks," he said. "How do we make the payoff?"

"There is no we. You deliver the money to me tomorrow morning at 10:00. I'll deliver it to them."

"Why can't I go with you?"

"Because you'll annoy the shit out of them, and they'll wani more money. Dad, this is my operation. We are doing it my way,

"You're so fucking stubborn. You take after your mother, he said. "Alright, fine, I'll bring you the money. Diana's ap;iri ment at ten.",

"What makes you think I'll be at Diana's apartment?"

"Because, Detective Numbnuts, you don't just take aflri your mother."'.,..Ś.

I hate working weekends. Especially when I'm one of two hundred cops looking for a terrorist in a haystack. It reminds me of voting. You know your vote doesn't count, but you go through the motions, because it's been drummed into your head that you might be the one person who makes a difference.

I got to the FBI offices at 8:45-I'd been awake five hours and felt like I'd already put in an exhausting day. My partner, on the other hand, was raring to go. "The tip lines are lit up like Figueroa Street on Cinco de Mayo," he said.

Tips on major crimes come in from psychics and psychotics, publicity hounds, and cat ladies who want nothing more than a detective to come over to the house and chat over a cup of tea. It's frustrating, time-consuming, and usually unrewarding work. But occasionally, someone with a legitimate lead gets through, which is why we're willing to open the floodgates.

"We got a break," Terry said. "A woman in Dallas saw the 'guy who bombed the Burger King yesterday. This just came in Vom the Bureau Chief down there. Garet said we should stroll

by his office when we finish looking it over. I read it. You may want to move faster than a stroll."

He handed me a thin stack of paper that had been stapled together. I grabbed it and started reading like a kid at summer camp who finally gets his first letter from home.

Bonnie Dolan, a thirty-five-year-old freelance fabric designer, called the local FBI office two hours after the explosion. She had been tentative at first and asked the agent if an old man at Burger King had had a seizure and busted his head open before the bomb went off.

After some prodding, the agent determined that Mrs. Dolan and her two daughters had gone to Burger King just minute before the blast, but a man in the parking lot had convinced them to leave so they wouldn't have to see the seizure victim. When the news broke, Dolan began to wonder if the man kepi her out of the restaurant to keep her kids from getting hurt in the explosion.

"He had a thick Irish brogue," Mrs. Dolan had said, "and Lord knows those people know a thing or two about bombs. He said his name was Liam Flaherty and he lived in Brooklyn, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was as big a lie as the old man supposedly bleeding on the floor."

That day's surveillance tapes had been destroyed in I lie blast, but there was an Arby's across the road that picked up Mrs. Dolan's minivan as it pulled out of the Burger King. It alwi picked up a late model Taurus that pulled out directly behiritl her, but the plates were unreadable. ; .

Working under the theory that the bomber scouted the i place in advance, the agent got Burger King's surveillance tape from the past seven days. The same Taurus had been tlii'ir

three different times before Friday, but the driver wore sunglasses and a baseball cap that hid most of his face. The car was identified as having been rented from Hertz six days prior at DFW Airport.

B' Hertz had recorded the entire transaction, with sound, on high-quality tape. This time the man was in plain view. Mrs. Dolan positively identified him as "the gentleman who kept her family from getting blown up."

BHe had used a New York driver's license, but both the name and number turned out to be bogus. Based on the time stamp on the rental contract, the agents--there were now twelve of them working the lead--pinpointed an American Airlines flight as the one that had brought him to DFW.

f, His passport said Declan Brady. Interpol verified that the an on the Hertz video was indeed Declan Brady, a mercenary from Belfast who was suspected of five professional hits, but never arrested. In the grand scheme of things Brady was considered a low-level nuisance because his victims were usually other lowlifes whom Interpol was happy to see eliminated.

The report noted that while Mrs. Dolan had made a positive ID, she had mixed emotions about being Brady's accuser. "He must have some good in his heart," she told the agent. "Look at what he did for me and my girls."

The Taurus had been returned to a Hertz office in downlown Dallas thirty minutes after .the bomb blast. The car had l)een cleaned and re-rented long before the agents had even gotten the first phone call from Mrs. Dolan.

Airport security tapes were scanned, but there was no indication that Brady had left Dallas on a flight out of DFW.

His picture was distributed to every cop in Dallas, all rent

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a-car offices in the area, and all checkpoints along the Texas Mexican border.

The heat was on.

We didn't stroll to Church's office. We flew.

Church was sitting at his desk. The sling was gone. "How's the shoulder?" I said. "Hurts like hell, but I hate walking around looking like a casualty."

"Did you want to talk about this field report from Dallas?" I .said.

"First things first," Church said. "I just spoke to Ike. I wanted to let you know before the press picks it up. He's gone underground. Snuck out of town in the middle of the night."

I was surprised, and a little disappointed. "That's too bad," I said. "I thought he was the kind of leader who would tough It: out with his people."

"He is," Church said. "They're just not going to tough it out L.A. He went to higher ground, and he took fifteen hundred of his people with him."

Terry let out a low whistle. "That's almost as big a posse as I lie one that travels with Britney Spears."

"Ike's biggest concern has been the well-being of the people who are sticking with the company. He feels like they're

I

on the front line, so he moved them out of harm's way. And they took all their family members with them. It was a mass exodus, and they pulled it off without a hitch."

"Do you know where they are?" I asked.

"Yes. And some of my men are with them. I'd rather not tell you guys until you have a need to know."

"I don't want to know," Terry said.

"I don't want him to know either," I said. "He tells his wife everything."

"Now let's talk about the field report from Dallas," Churcli said. "What did you guys think?"

"It's great," I said. "If Dallas can nail this Brady guy, he'll give up the people who paid him. This could be the break we've been looking for."

"Yeah," Terry said. "This is the best news we've had sintv we found out that the dead guy in the Rambo suit was actually a dead pedophile."

"It's good to see you so upbeat," Church said. "Most guya who work a hundred-hour week get cranky by Saturday."

"Speaking of working around the clock, I need some pci sonal time tomorrow morning." /'// be forking over my father'ť life savings at the 12-Plex to save my kid brother's ungrateful as, "How about if I come in around 2:00?"

"How about if you and Terry both take tomorrow of I You've been working double shifts for two weeks straight, (ill your batteries recharged."

I was seeing Diana tonight. The thought of extending it into the weekend, with just one small interruption to pay foi Frankie's sins, was tempting.