the Pallbearers (2010) (19 page)

"Yeah, that's been my take too." I went ahead and told him what I'd been thinking. "She worked in the office. She was with Pop all the time. She could have shoved those phony loan documents under his nose and got him to sign as easily as O'Shea."

"You think she's in on it?"

"In my job, it pays to be a skeptic, look at everyone. It's just a feeling. Could be nothing. Don't tell the others, but let's both watch her a little closer for a while and be careful about what we confide in her."

"Okay."

We bumped knuckles. I got out of the truck and Vargas drove off. I paid Larry the mechanic for the repaired ignition, got in the MDX, and headed for home.

Alexa's car wasn't in the driveway. She wasn't back yet. On my way into the house, I decided to pick up our mail. I opened the mailbox and saw a shoe box-sized package that barely fit inside. I pulled it out carefully and examined it. The box was wrapped in brown paper and had no address, which meant it had been hand delivered.

I'm a cop, and I don't like getting hand-delivered, paper-wrapped packages with no postal marks. I was thinking about calling the bomb squad when I noticed a small /. Straw written in ink on the top left corner where the return address should have been.

I took the package inside and set it down on the kitchen table.

"What are you up to now, Jack?" I said softly to the little wrapped box.

I took out a knife and opened it. Inside I found an old-style brown plastic Rolodex. It was from the NHB Gym. Jack had told me last night, when he'd been dangling from the teeter-totter, that he'd stolen it. I rolled the tumbler. It had about fifty names, numbers, and addresses inside. I saw Raymond "Stingray" Jackson. I also saw an address for Kimbo Sledge, who I remembered was on the Fall Brawl fight poster with O'Shea. The address for both Jackson and Sledge was identical: 1386 Avalon Terrace in Wilmington. Roommates?

There was also an SD memory card inside. No note.

"Not again,' I muttered as I took it into the den, put it into my computer, and waited for it to load. I was expecting it to contain more stolen accounting information, but this one contained a video.

The camera was set up on a hillside and was pointed down at a huge mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The house was sitting right on the edge of a land cut that overlooked all of West L
. A
. It was one of those big expensive Cliffside deals that dot Mulholland Drive. From the cool light and medium-length shadows, I estimated it to be mid-morning.

I watched a Rolls Royce pull into the drive and park. I could hear somebody near the camera mic breathing, but nobody spoke. Then the camera shut off.

It came on again a second later, recording from a different place. This time, from the short length of the shadows underneath a line of poplar trees bordering the stone drive. It looked like it was shortly before or after noon. I could hear birds singing.

In the next shot the camera position was now inside the compound of the same lush estate. The shot panned the grounds, showed the layout, then clicked off again. When it came back on, we were actually inside the house.

I groaned as I watched a moving point of view coming out of the kitchen into the living room. I could hear more quiet breathing and light footsteps on the marble floor. Jack was actually hot prowling this place in broad daylight. He panned the camera, taking in the rich decor.

Outside on the expansive pool deck, I caught sight of a short man sitting under a canopy, having lunch with a trophy blonde. The camera zoomed in. The two were chatting, laughing, drinking wine. The man was middle-aged with dark hair and a stocky build. He had an olive complexion and could have been Mediterranean. His hairline looked like it had been filled in with plugs. Then the camera went dark.

The next shot was inside a garage. Six or eight expensive cars--a Ferrari, a Porsche Boxster, a new Lamborghini. Off on the far end I saw four or five classic Indian motorcycles like the one Vargas hit coming out of the NHB Gym. The Rolls that I'd seen pulling into the drive in the first shot was parked in the foreground.

As the camera panned, I was able to read the rear license plate and wrote it down to run later. I wanted to confirm my suspicions, but I was already pretty sure this place belonged to E. C. Mesa.

The next shots were inside a sports-equipment room. From the similar walls and windows, I guessed it was probably off the garage. There were tennis rackets and golf clubs, as well as several ten-speed and mountain bikes hanging three or four feet off the floor on wall pegs.

Then the camera panned to show a door that had a brass plate that read The Boardroom. A gloved hand reached out, grabbed the knob, and turned it. Then the door was kicked open.

The room was full of surfboards. Most were standing in racks. Wet suits were hanging on plastic hangers. There were several short boards with their colorful, artistic gel coats, along with a few tri-fin thrusters with pin tails and some old light balsas from the fifties.

The camera panned to the far side of the room, and there it was, in a rack all by itself. Tail down, it stood alone in a place of honor. A big, old, classic cigar-box model.

The long, heavy antique was almost nine feet tall and pointed at both ends for maximum rail contact. It was the only board heavy enough to actually hang ten on, but nobody ever rode them anymore because they were a bitch to stay up on. Only Walt was willing to fight with one of those bastards, shuffling forward in his strange, hunched
-
over Quasimodo stance to finally grip his toes on the nose as he rode the wall of glass inside the curl.

I hadn't even seen a cigar-box board since Pop rode his during sunrise patrol years ago. So what was this one doing here?

jack must have had the same question, because he zoomed in on it and held the shot for several long moments before the camera suddenly went dark.

Chapter
33

While I waited for Alexa to get home, I spent an hour on the computer researching MMA fighting.

She arrived at a little past six. After I showed her what Jack had left in our mailbox and informed her that the plate on the Rolls checked back to Eugene C. Mesa, I poured each of us a scotch, and we settled into our chairs in the backyard to deal with it.

"Fucking Straw," I vented. "How do I get a leash on that guy?"

"Better question is, What does it all mean?" Alexa countered.

"That cigar-box board is a classic--an antique, the kind Duke Kahanamoku rode in the nineteen thirties in Hawaii. Nobody surfs on those anymore. As far as I'm concerned, it's no coincidence that thing turns up in Mesa's garage."

"If nobody rides one, then why on earth would he have it?" she asked.

"I've been mulling that, and the only thing I can come up with i
s m
aybe E
. G
. Mesa used to surf with Pop. I remember when I was a kid all kinds of random guys used to show up on that beach. Walt adopted everyone. Lotta people wanted to try and ride his rhino. Usually one wave convinced them to give it up. But maybe Walt showed Mesa how to use that oversized log, and, like Pop, he somehow got into it."

"And maybe, that's the connection between Creative Solutions and the Mesa Group," Alexa offered. "Eugene Mesa and Pop became surf buddies and later, when Pop needs money, E. C. sets up Creative Solutions to take over when Pop can't carry the financial pressure of Huntington House by himself anymore."

I nodded. "Yeah, maybe." It still didn't feel quite right, but who knows?

As we sat and sipped our drinks, Alexa kept peeking over, checking me out. She was still worried about the effect all of this was having on me. But I was through my depressed, sentimental period. I was now just kick-ass angry. I wanted to get whoever did this to Pop. The idea that they might have also framed him as a thief made me even madder.

"We still don't know what ties all these MMA fighters into this," I said, thinking out loud.

"Maybe this will help," Alexa ventured. She opened her slim wafer briefcase and pulled out a handwritten sheet with forty license plate numbers on it.

"These are the cars that Seriana and I found parked outside the nonprofit offices we visited. A lot of them probably were just using the lot and have nothing to do with this. We're gonna have to run them all, then check the names against that Rolodex that Jack stole and see who matches up."

It was a big job. We decided to skip dinner and our second drink and get right to it. The RTO on the horseshoe in the communications center began sounding frustrated with us as we kept reading off new plates for her to run.

"Damn good thing I'm a division commander," Alexa said, grinning, during one of our breaks.

I was jotting down names and addresses on index cards and began to notice the same address--1386 Avalon Terrace, Wilmington
-
kept showing up a lot. When I finished alphabetizing the cards, we began going through the gym Rolodex, looking for matches, eliminating the other names.

Here's what we ended up with.

Besides Rick O'Shea, who was the executive director of Creative Solutions and lived in a million-dollar house in Calabasas, and Christian Calabro, who held the same position at Bridge to Tomorrow and lived in North Hollywood, four of the remaining matches were also listed as living at 1386 Avalon Terrace in Wilmington.

They included the executive director of Hopeful Journey, Raymond "Stingray" Jackson, and Dane Vanderheiden, "The Striking Viking," who ran the nonprofit in Torrance.

There was someone named Jason Scott, a new name that I hadn't come across before. He was listed as running Life Promise. The last name was Gary White, referred to at NHB as "The Great" White. He was the director of Pure Emotions.

"Okay, so that gym is the nexus," Alexa said. "Wonder why?"

I pickcd up the phone in the den and called Vicki Lavicki. She answered on the first ring.

"Lavicki," she half shouted into the receiver. Her voice nearly split my eardrum. The woman had not one ounce of social rhythm or personal subtlety.

"How you coming with the computer run on No Holds Barred?" I asked.

"It's a small private gym," she said. "Basically, a fight club. Eight guys on the roster. They're managed by something called Team Ultima, Inc., which is also the name of the corporation that owns the gym.

"The address for Team Ultima is a post-office box in Delaware.

I'm trying to get the list of directors, but because Delaware is a tax haven, their corporations are tough to penetrate and it's gonna take some time.

"Also, I've been trying to catch up on this MMA phenomena. I've read some recent Internet stories that say some of these fighters at Team Ultima are starting to show up in televised events on Spike TV and are getting some pretty big purses. Six figures and up. O'Shea and Calabro seem to be the gym's two big stars."

I read Vicki the names that Alexa and I had culled from the pilfered Rolodex.

Vicki said, "Yep. All of them plus two more. There's a guy called Brian Bravo and somebody named Ivan Tronhead' Brown."

I thanked her and hung up. Then Alexa and I ran Bravo and Brown through the Department of Motor Vehicles. They were also listed as living at that same address in Wilmington.

After we hung up, it was still early, only a little past ten in the evening.

"Whatta you suppose is at 1386 Avalon Terrace?" I asked Alexa.

"Guess we better go take a look," she answered.

Chapter
34

Wilmington is in a strange part of Los Angeles. Its basically a town that eaters to the South Bays large port facility and fishing fleet, but its sandwiched between a growing Crips gang area in Compton and the docks of San Pedro. Its an oasis of fishermen and dock
-
workers inside a festering maw of residential poverty and gang violence.

The businesses and restaurants are all no-frills. Wood tu
rn
-of-th
e
-century houses line the blocks around Avalon Boulevard all the way to Anaheim Street. Wilmington was right on the way to Seal Beach, where this had all started for me years ago.

Alexa drove her BMW while I sat silently beside her, watching the exact same streets Yd watched as a kid when Pop had made this trip to the shore down the Pacific Coast Highway.

We turned onto Avalon Boulevard looking for Avalon Terrace. The cross street was so small we overshot it before I called out to Alexa.

She made a U and we drove down a seedy block, full of unkempt houses and old cars, until we arrived at 1386.

The house was a big, three-story, gone-to-seed, wood-sided Victorian that looked like it had been built in the late eighteen hundreds. It had a pitched roof, a sloping porch, and a loud party raging inside.

Alexa and I drove past and found a parking place up the street where we could observe the festivities.

There were a lot of run-down cars parked in front. A few yards from the house, I spotted Rick O'Shea's out-of-place, new, pimped
-
out maroon Escalade.

There were also half a dozen vintage Indian motorcycles parked off to the side on the dead front lawn. They all sported the popular Indian red and white or turquoise and white paint jobs. Most of the motorcycles were chromed and tricked out with studded saddlebags. Impressive rigs.