Cold Hit (42 page)

At the restaurant, Alexa and I fell into a chilly silence. Dell and Chooch made small talk and tried not to get us going again.

Later, sitting in the backyard, Alexa and I attempted to clean up the trouble between us. I admitted that I knew it wasn't technically her fault this had happened to Zack.

"Technically?" she said, seizing on this one, carefully parsed word.

"You were worried about me," I added. "You went to the wrong window. Shit happens."

"I was trying to save your life."

"Yeah, but Zack was the one who actually did."

As I said it, I remembered that in the end it was Alexa who smoked Sammy Petrovitch. She and Zack had both saved my life. It seemed my life took a lot of saving. I needed to calm myself down. Yelling at Alexa wouldn't solve anything. After about five minutes of silence, I tried to change the subject.

"How do you come out on Virtue, and what he did?"

"He's just bad material. He's going away. The system is good. You can't blame the system for one bad apple. Fortunately, Nix survived, or we wouldn't be able to file against the son of a bitch. As it is, once Nix turns state's evidence, Virtue is toast. If he wants to stay in politics, he'll have to run for the convict council in Soledad."

I thought about what she said, and then asked, "Is this new, redefined system really good, or are we little by little, losing what this country once stood for?"

"We're cops, Shane. We need all the powers we can get to put dirtbags away."

"Virtue was using USPA and FISA to take away due process. Do we really want these emergency powers and lack of due process in the system?"

"Cops are getting overrun by crime," she argued. "If you don't believe me, just take a look at my monthly stats."

"Yeah, maybe." I fell silent.

"Go ahead and say it." She knew I didn't agree.

"I just don't think it's smart to give up our freedoms in an attempt to protect them."

She sat quietly for a long moment, then withou
t s
aying anything else, got up and went into the house.

On Sunday, Alexa and I went to Zack's funeral. It was a very small turnout. He told me once that he didn't have many cop buddies, and this sparse event surely proved it. Fran was there with their two boys. I was glad to see Broadway and Perry. Roger was on crutches with his leg wrapped to the hip. My bandaged left hand wasn't quite so huge now, but I still couldn't open a can of beer. Between the two of us there was enough gauze to wrap a mummy.

Emdee and I helped Roger hobble across the lawn to the gravesite. Alexa and I spoke to Fran and both of Zack's sons. They looked confused and rigid. This isn't the way anybody planned for it to end. Too much had been left unsaid. We took our places in a small group of mourners.

Just before the service began, I was surprised to see Stanislov Bambarak pull up in his embassy car, followed a few minutes later by Bimini Wright in her silver Jag. They made their way over to us. Bimini looked gorgeous in a simple black dress. Stanislov, as usual, was as big and wrinkled as a walrus.

The service was mercifully short. After it was over, we walked toward the parking lot. The Russian and the CIA agent shook hands with Roger, Emdee, Alexa, and me.

"Bit of hard cheese, this," Stanislov said, indicating the coffin. "Sorry I couldn't help out."

"Cotta people had to die to keep me alive," I said. "Come on, Shane. Stop it," Alexa said sharply. Sh
e w
as determined to get me past this.

Bimini agreed with Alexa. She looked at me and said, "Sometimes freedom comes with a high price tag, Shane."

I had asked others to pay so much that I really didn't know how to respond.

Then she smiled brightly. "Guess what? After you got us all together, Stan and I decided to compare some more notes. We finally solved the 'Eighty-five Problem. Kersey Nix filled in the blanks and confirmed our theory two days ago. Guess who the fourth man turned out to be?"

"Virtue."

I'd had three weeks to ponder it since the frustrating hours spent locked in the trunk of Sammy's car. Virtue was an FBI agent stationed in Moscow in 1985. Virtue was heartless and ambitious. He paid the Petrovitches to be his moles inside the KGB, then brought them to L
. A
. to work for him off the books. I figured back in '85, he sold information to both sides to gain power. It was a brilliant political move. By giving up some of Bimini's Russian double agents, he gained influence with the bureaucrats inside the KGB, and that allowed him to learn the identity of the American traitors. By catching Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen, he subsequently became a star in Washington. He was a traitor who thought he was a patriot.

"I guess there is some good that comes from everything," Broadway said. "If Sammy Petrovitch hadn't snapped and started killing homeless men, who knows
,
it might have ended with R. A. Virtue in the White House."

"Now that we've put the hat on that piece of business, I guess my people will be sending me home," Stanislov said.

"What people are those?" I deadpanned. "Are we talking about the directors of the Moscow Ballet?"

He chuckled. "Rather silly, I know, but you take the post they give you." He smiled at Bimini. "I've sort of grown used to it here--the warm weather, the sunshine in winter. Agent Wright said if I retire and promise not to dabble in espionage, she'll look into getting me permanent resident status."

"You know what they say?" I said smiling, "Once you buy your first barbecue you'll never leave L
. A
."

They asked all of us to join them for lunch, but I needed to talk to Fran. Alexa was going in to the office, and Roger and Emdee had plans, so we begged off and watched them go. As they headed toward their cars, Stanislov accidentally bumped up against the beautiful CIA agent. Or was it an accident?

After everybody left, I waited for Fran to leave the gravesite and took her aside. We stood under the shade of a beautiful elm.

"I put Zack up for the Medal of Valor," I said. "He's always wanted it. I think what he did, saving my life, certainly qualifies him."

Even as I said it, I realized that my chances of getting him that medal while he was still on the Fingertip suspect list were somewhere near infinitesimal.

"I don't care about that damn medal. That was Zack's fantasy. My needs are more basic. Zack Junior goes to college next year. I can't afford to send him without Zack's line-of-duty benefits."

"I'll find a way to get it for you," I took her hand and squeezed it. "Now both of you have my word."

Chapter
65

Chooch signed his letter of intent in mid-February. He was going to USC on a full athletic scholarship.

A few weeks later, to celebrate, I planned a weekend boat outing to Central California, and the whole family, including Franco, was loaded into the car with our luggage and scuba gear. All the way over the Grapevine Chooch talked about college. You could hear how happy he was.

"You gotta go with me during spring ball, and meet the rest of the coaches, Dad."

"I'm looking forward to it," I told him--and I was. Chooch had sorted out his priorities and I was proud of him.

We arrived up at New Melones Lake at 10 P
. M
. and checked into the Pine Tree Inn. The next morning, we got in the car and drove up to the lake. On the east shore was a rental dock where you could lease houseboats. We picked a bright blue one named Lazy Daze. After a short instruction course on how to run it, we loaded th
e s
cuba equipment aboard and headed out onto the lake.

I could see the Petrovitch's burned-down Swiss chalet across the water. We maneuvered up close to their dock and put the anchor down.

As I was putting on my wetsuit and air tank, Alexa said, "I'm sorry I couldn't get the department to foot the bill for this." She smiled sheepishly. "With the current budget crunch and the Fingertip case inactive, I couldn't scare up much enthusiasm."

"Right."

It was a beautiful morning. The unusually warm weather continued and the temperature was already in the mid-seventies. She was wearing a tiny string bikini, sitting in the back of the houseboat. I was tempted to jump her right there, but Franco and the kids were watching.

On that Saturday, Chooch and I made ten dives, filled our air tanks four times and found nothing. Sunday was more of the same. I dove, Chooch dove. The mountain stream that fed the lake was ice cold, and even with our wetsuits we could only stay down for twenty minutes. We were working a grid pattern I had drawn up, trying hard not to miss a patch of lake bottom. We started close to the Petrovitches' dock and moved out, circle grid by circle grid. It was tough, demanding work. The wind blew the houseboat at anchor and I had to keep sighting against points onshore to keep from missing sections.

On the last dive Sunday evening just before sunset, I found an oil drum secured to the bottom with two Danforth anchors. Chooch and I hooked a line to the drum and floated a buoy. Then I called the sheriff's office.

Monday morning a police dive boat with an electric winch was trailered up from Sonora. We finally hauled the big drum topside and set it on the rear deck of the houseboat. We had to cut the welded top off with a torch.

Inside we found Calvin Lerner.

His body was well preserved due to the icy water at the bottom of that mountain lake.

My luck had finally changed. I found what I'd been searching for.

All of Lerner's fingertips had been cut off and the Medical Corps symbol was carved on his chest, proving once and for all, that Sammy Petrovitch was the unsub.

Later that day the ME retrieved a 5.45-mm slug from Calvin's head. Ballistics matched it to the gun we found on Sammy's body--the same gun that had killed Martin Kobb and Davide Andrazack. With that, the Fingertip murders were finally down.

The Police Commission met the following month to decide on the annual Medal of Valor recipients awarded in May.

Roger Broadway, Emdee Perry, and I were recognized, but Zack Farrell was not awarded a medal.

The commission never explained why. I think, given everything that had happened, it was easier for them if Zack just faded away. "I'm not a hundred dollar bill," he'd once told me. "Not everybody's gonna like me." It was certainly proving to be true.

The LAPD Accounting Office released Zack's survivor benefits and Fran called to tell me that with the money, Zack Junior would be able to go to USC. He would be a freshman in the same class as Chooch. We made arrangements to get our sons together before school started.

That was pretty much it, except for one last thing.

On a cold day in late May, Alexa and I drove back to Forest Lawn. Rain clouds were threatening on the horizon. We stood by Zack's grave as the air grew heavy with moisture and lightning bolts shot shimmering streaks of electricity toward the San Gabriel Mountains.

Some promises are hard to keep. Where Zack was concerned, I had made too many, and kept too few.

"You're sure you want to do this?" Alexa asked. "Somebody will just steal it."

"I don't care."

I reached in my pocket and took my own Medal of Valor out of its velvet box. The gold medallion hung on a red, white, and blue ribbon. Awards and medals had never mattered much to me. They were only symbols, usually given by people who hadn't been there and didn't know what had really happened. Like love and respect, some things only gain value when you give them away.

I laid the glittering medal pendant on Zack's headstone, then said a prayer and told my partner how sorry I was. How terrible I felt about the way it ended.

"I love you, but you're a strange man," Alexa whispered, holding my hand. "How does giving your medal away help? Zach's dead. He doesn't even know."

Thunder shook the hills. "Don't worry," I told her as the first heavy drops of rain fell. "He knows."