Upgunned Read online

  People in my trade come and go like sports stars, with about the same half-life; it’s true. As you age you gain cunning but erode reflex. You also accumulate a lot of stray leverage, which is one reason why the government sends new assassins to kill old ones. I conservatively estimated I was still at the peak of my ability, and had another five years to a decade to free-agent. I corrected that estimate after this whole thing with Dominic Sharps went down.

  Once you think of every contingency, it’s the surprise that wallops you, and the Dominic job provided a doozy.

  * * *

  Once the Metro Rail project had gutted Hollywood (literally; sinkholes appeared in the streets to swallow vehicles), more marketing geniuses arrived to “revitalize” the area’s most famous intersection. That is, scale up to magnetize more tourists. At the same time, decrepit and defunct office buildings of five stories or more were sitting empty, easy prey for developers who opted to retrofit them into elite “living experiences” patterned after the all-in-one mall-world model. To try and straddle the club trollers trapped between seedy railroad bars and newer lounges with door guards and dress codes, some style wunderkind opened the Vine Street Bar & Grill far too early—uptown prices at a downmarket intersection nonetheless famous for crossing Hollywood Boulevard. Tourists in flip-flops and Disney T-shirts were horrified at the prospect of paying twenty-six dollars for a Cobb salad. The joint crashed and burned within months. Presently it was a meat-rack sports bar with pretensions of Irish pubdom. The six-story Equitable Building in which it was housed changed owners several times, then fell under the redevelopment hammer until it could redebut as even pricier condo space … the same year the economy and housing market ate shit and died.

  The entire intersection of Hollywood and Vine—originally Prospect and Weyse until 1910—had undergone this tortuous resurrection into condos and lofts. The Taft Building on the southeast corner was Hollywood’s first high-rise. Charlie Chaplin had offices there. Across Vine to the southwest corner was the old Broadway department store monolith, shut down since the 1980s. The northwest corner was the first to fall. Originally the site of the Laemmle Building (think Universal Studios in the 1930s), it absorbed a half-block in every direction in its prime, then it vanished a piece at a time. By the 1970s, the corner slot had become a Howard Johnson’s coffee shop known for the loser actors that hung around its bank of pay phones waiting for callbacks. Then it became a succession of clubs, ending with the Basque in 2008, when it was mysteriously torched (for the insurance), then torn down. Right now—no kidding—it’s a parking lot.

  I was grabbing a burger at Molly’s when I noticed the Equitable Building, bannered as if still under construction, appeared to have occupants already. The contrast was as bold as a rash: Molly’s was a magical hole-in-the-wall charbroiler that had been steaming away—if its signage was to be believed—since 1929, still with the best onion rings for miles, served too hot to touch in plastic baskets by smiling Korean ladies. (If you’re sharp you might remember Keanu Reeves grabbing a bite there in that sci-fi movie, the one that’s not The Matrix.) The first Molly, the redheaded founder, had long since gone to glory, her story lost in the mists of ancient history … or, in L.A. terms, anything that happened more than five years ago.

  Molly’s inevitable doom was cast in the shadow of a former bank; it was too unaesthetic to be retro and some invisible someone, somewhere not in Hollywood, would insist it be murdered to make way for yet another wine bistro or chic eatery designed to attract the type of trendoids and scenesters you never want to stop killing. Spaz West. El Place. Some too-cool watering hole that would repel the Boulevard looky-loos trundling along clutching their bottled waters, but which would gladly ravage their plastic with caste-appropriate scorn. Molly’s shack only took cash.

  Predictably, the freshly minted office space surrounding Molly’s was mostly vacant.

  I wondered what bogus sophistication might cost these days. A million, two million, just for a foothold? I gave the Equitable a closer peek.

  Me, I had an apartment in Brentwood, another utility lair in Thai Town, and a nicer though mostly empty house deep in the Valley, complete with false walls and a stash safe sunk in seven feet of rebar-strutted concrete.

  The only honest entry on the Equitable’s buzzer register was for a photography studio on the fifth floor. The sixth, fourth, and second floors were untenanted; this I confirmed with the security desk as I picked up a brochure.

  Vacant space in yet-to-open (or already closed) buildings can provide an excellent hide if operations need a cool-down period. Even if they don’t have interior walls yet, you got bathrooms and electricity, and nobody can hear anyone screaming.

  I filed the data away for future use, thinking to request a status pull on the current occupants from Mal Boyd. You never knew what would prove useful.

  * * *

  We took Dominic Sharps coming out of a press conference, while media stragglers were chasing him down the stairs.

  Dominic Sharps was sixty-two years old, a throat cancer survivor who had undergone several knee surgeries and despite medication maintained a cholesterol count that could fell a rhinoceros. He was a diabetic. He had been an Air Force F-16 pilot in the eighties. One wife, bland marriage, five kids—one of whom, Stacy, worked volunteer time for a sex abuse hotline, which was a bullet point in our favor. His eldest son, Rich, was a prosecutor with the DA’s office who had reaped some face time on the news for a couple of interrelated cases about film stars, little black books, and sex-for-hire—another big plus. Mal Boyd’s homework was specific and enlightening.

  Sharps had arrived from his house in the 90210—the flats, not the hills—in his chauffeured Town Car, so I used the backup we had prepared as a chase car. It was identical to Sharps’s BMW, a two-year-old 7 Series that took three days to match to the naked eye.

  In the hour-plus absorbed by the press conference, Bulldog appropriated most of his driver costume from Sharps’s chauffeur, whom we left duct-taped in his trunk on the top floor of the parking structure adjacent to the ArcLight Theater. His clothes were hopeless—Bulldog was too slender—but the tie, cap, and glasses were useful, and the rest was just dead, boring black-and-white businesswear. Bulldog had actually worked briefly for a livery service sometime in his mysterious past, and knew the rudiments. He had always broken the carry rule for drivers, and was breaking it in theory again today, packing a SIG P250 with a short reset trigger, chambered, I thought, for .40 caliber. Not certain because this gun was modular, designed to pop apart to change caliber at will; I heard the Hong Kong police had courted it when they finally got past revolvers.

  Interestingly, in the back of Sharps’s own Town Car we found the watery remnants of a huge go-cup of diet soda and a take-out bag from Pinches Tacos on Sunset. Sharps had stopped for a snack on his way to the podium.

  Sharps did not have a personal bodyguard for this gig, which was an advantage. The next time you find yourself in an argument over who should be permitted to carry concealed weapons, ask yourself why politicians who don’t carry insist that their bodyguards always be packing.

  Blackhawk was stationed in the gnat-swarm of reporters with the correct press passes on lanyards, a wholly fake ID for Canal 34 (one of the Metro area’s Hispanic stations, which had chosen not to attend this media event), and a heavy powerpak belt that provided handy concealment for his sleek little Colt .380 hammerless. Just in case. Nominally a backup gun, I think it was some kind of Blackhawk family heirloom. Both men had refused to go unarmed and I thought, whatever works. Keep the subcontractors happy.

  I was already dressed in a foolproof LAPD officer’s uniform. Unlike many smaller police departments, the LAPD has a two-stripe chevron for the rank of corporal—often for what is called a Field Training Officer. Not lofty enough for Dominic Sharps to realize he should know me personally, yet the FTO pin would tell him I was a cop in charge of other cops.

  Sharps emerged in a mild fluster of reporters with residual que
stions and desperately outthrust equipment. Blackhawk’s task was to herd the group by walking point, leading the flow, staying between them and Sharps when Sharps got to his waiting vehicle. At that point I would intrude, tell Sharps there was an emergency, he needed to get in the car immediately, and escort him inside the rear. He would wonder what was up and allow me to board behind him while Blackhawk body-blocked any stragglers. As far as Sharps knew, he was hustling into his own car with the full rear cover of a uniformed officer.

  That part worked smooth as glass.

  When the black-masked door closed, Bulldog leaned through in his chauffeur’s getup and shot Sharps in the chest with the Taser. All his blood sugar converted to lactic acid in a single spasm, and he became a floppy toy.

  We were off and running.

  While Sharps lolled around in the seat, drooling, I hit him with the first of the tripaxidine B hypos and he slumped quietly into semisleep. I frisked him and tossed his mobile phone out the window.

  “Time,” I said to Bulldog.

  “Two minutes ahead,” he said, meaning we had beaten our own rehearsal schedule.

  About now, Blackhawk would be picking up the other car—the clone of Sharps’s BMW—to rendez with us at the Chalet, which was not the place you’re thinking of. This was the other one, not available on Maps to the Stars.

  Three hours earlier, Bulldog had installed a total of eight runabouts on the Chalet’s ambient video cameras, which would cover our preplanned path from the parking garage to the suite where Cognac awaited us. I had arrived with her at noon and swept the rooms for bugs and hidden lenses, just in case the hotel had provided some nasty extras not on the menu of services.

  “Ngg,” mumbled Sharps. “Gahh.”

  “He okay?” said Bulldog, eyes front.

  “Yeah, for our purposes.” I checked Sharps’s pulse and it felt as though the vein was trying to jump out of his skin. He was sweating like a gym monkey on a treadmill in a sauna.

  We were twenty flat road minutes from the hotel.

  “B-dog, I think this guy’s going into cardiogenic shock.”

  “What?!”

  Sharps was haddock-pale. He was having a heart attack. That was not supposed to be a risk with the Taser, but here it was, happening anyway. It could have been his shitty diet. Maybe he had the flu. It could have been his diabetes. It could have been a witch’s curse, for all I knew.

  “He just stopped breathing!” Dammit to hell, I was probably going to have to give this slob mouth-to-mouth. “Keep driving!”

  Bulldog kept it rock-steady and did not distract me with chatter. That’s one of the reasons I hired him.

  I quickly got Sharps horizontal, opened my Boker Magnum stainless blade with a flick of the wrist, cut away his necktie, and ripped his shirt open.

  He had gone into arrest. His heart was not beating.

  CPR was simple. Everybody should learn it. Chin up, clear airway, pinch nose, blow twice until you see the chest rise. Two one-second breaths. Then thirty pumps, right between the nipples, slightly faster than once per second.

  CPR was tough. The leather seat cushions gave visibly every time I pushed down on his chest with my interlaced hands. There was not much space to get Sharps’s feet elevated. He was, as they say, unresponsive.

  “Hospital?” said Bulldog.

  Even if we jacked a convenient ambulance—which wasn’t around anyway—the EMTs would see us and possibly recognize Sharps, which meant we’d have to hogtie or kill them, leaving a spoor trail someone might follow.

  “No, keep going!”

  I continued CPR until I couldn’t breathe anymore.

  Sharps was dead by the time we arrived at the Chalet. Dead Dominic was no good to the smear campaign. If his body was found, he would assume martyr status no matter what his sins.

  I grabbed the first of my disposable cell phones and called Blackhawk, who wanted to know what was up.

  “Change of plan,” I said.

  * * *

  Cognac raised a brow when we entered the room hauling a body bag like a tote of heavy gym equipment. Sharps must have weighed around 250.

  Blackhawk, per instructions, had brought the bag, empty. Another contingency that had to be set up and paid for in advance. Ops tended to burn through a lot of materiel you never used. Better to have it and not need it than vice versa.

  We had sweated our cargo along the planned route into the hotel, trusting the roundabouts on the cameras to hide our improvisation.

  Then I had to call Mal Boyd.

  “Everything on schedule?” he asked in his wheezy voice.

  “We’re right in the middle,” I lied. “Tell me, Mal—will still photographs do instead of video?”

  “Our sponsors did not specify,” he said, aware enough to keep the conversation hermetically nonincriminating. “I suppose that will suffice. As long as the photos are not—”

  “Digital? Pixels?” I interposed. “So it doesn’t look like a pasteup in Photoshop?”

  “Precisely, dear boy.”

  I already had a photographer in mind, but first I had to ring Oz.

  Ozzy Oslimov was a failed makeup artist, failed doctor wannabe, and most recently, failed mortician. His skill sets never seemed to accommodate his recurrent addiction to opium. He preferred odd jobs that financed his apparently endless program of cosmetic rejuvenation and had undergone enough procedures to fill a textbook on how to look like a human Hollywood robot. When I reached him, he wasn’t on the nod—fortunately for me—and seemed excited at the prospect of an à la carte gig, right out of the air. I sent Bulldog to collect him and transpo his ass to the Chalet, doublequick.

  The printout Mal Boyd had provided on the new loft residents of the former Equitable Building at Hollywood and Vine had sketched a useful portrait of the fifth-floor tenant, a photographer named Elias McCabe. His tax records revealed that someone else paid for his space. His work ethic seemed admirable—more often than not he was up in his studio, grinding away on starlets or models or god-knew-what when he wasn’t grinding away on shoot work. He was vaguely noteworthy within his own nest of pretentious culture-vultures for his predilection for shooting on film, old-school. (Hell, even I knew the last roll of Kodachrome had rolled off the line in 2008.) The samples provided from a few of his shows suggested an unmerciful eye for the sculpting qualities of light and photochemistry. I liked his still lifes, his urban studies, especially the examples I saw of geometric patterns in the everyday, which suggested a hidden order to even the most random of assemblies. It was all a matter of point of view.

  “This fellow might just save our asses,” I told Blackhawk.

  “Your ass,” he said. “This ain’t my fuckup, and you have to pay me either way.”

  If I had pulled an abort, he and Bulldog would get snippy and Cognac probably would have spent an hour kicking me to death with her spike heels for free … and not in a nice way.

  “So what do I do?” she asked, sipping some Cristal as though she genuinely enjoyed it.

  “Just relax and watch some monster trucks on cable or something,” I said. “Until we get back. You don’t have to bother going into the Bad Room. Not yet.”

  “Where’re you going?” She didn’t really care. She was getting paid, too.

  “I need another hireling.”

  I did a quick change into my backup clothes and left word for Bulldog to marry up with us in Hollywood.

  No way in hell my new plan was going to work. But it just might, and that was the “if” that generally dooms gamblers. It dooms all of us.

  * * *

  “What’s he doing?” said Blackhawk.

  “I think he’s getting head from that dark-haired chick.” I adjusted the spotting scope.

  “So he’s home, then.” Duh.

  As soon as Metro Rail got its Hollywood-Argyle station up a block from Vine, they provided a large street-level plaza with plenty of shade, open-air space, and Deco sculpture. It lasted less than a year before they razed
it to remodel the entire block into a shopping and residential complex. The cab stands vanished. The panhandlers were sandbagged. The entire megastructure was still unfinished four years later, its hard hat zone restricted by chain link and plywood. Once Blackhawk and I climbed up, it provided an excellent vantage of the fifth floor of Elias McCabe’s studio loft, right across the street at eye level.

  “Is there a plan?” said Blackhawk.

  “Yeah. We take him.”

  “Security?”

  “I checked; it’s a joke.”

  What nightlife remained was all at ground level and straggling in the opposite direction. Bulldog even found street parking.

  “How’s Oz?” I asked Bulldog when he joined us.

  “Not stoned, happy to work, waiting at the Chalet,” Bulldog reported.

  “You tell him anything?”

  “I asked him if he could make a dead guy look alive and he said that was his specialty.”

  “He creeps me out a little,” said Blackhawk. “All that makeup. He uses eyeliner. His own skin tone looks like spray paint.”

  “Ozzy only falters when he’s looking in a mirror,” I said. “Or on the pipe.” Oslimov was, in his own peculiar way, as reliable as my two backup men. Different skills, different arena, and now, tonight, same objective. The idea that Blackhawk found any other human being weird was itself amusing.

  “Is he gay?” said Blackhawk.

  “Does it matter?” I said.

  He appeared to seriously ponder this for a moment, searching for weakness. “Guess not.”

  “Why?” said Bulldog. “Are you available for dating?” He let Blackhawk fume for a moment—just a beat, exactly right—and added, “You know, many males that fancy themselves flaming hets do so because of a bad same-sex experience.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “You ever have a threesome with another man?” Bulldog was alight with mirth. “You touch the other guy? You ever say ‘I’m just fucking with you’ and sort of really mean it, deep down?”

  “Boys,” I said. “Smooch later. If you’ll pardon the expression, we’re looking at a rear entry.”