Hard Exit, page 25
Mike had probably squirreled away a lot of money in various accounts, likely overseas. But dead guys can’t initiate wire transfers, so he’d probably opened those accounts under an assumed name, or more than one. He’d still have to have a lot of cash somewhere. Or cocaine.
He’d been Amanda’s supplier for two years, and they’d snorted lines together in Loews a few nights before. But because I’d lived with Amanda, he wouldn’t have risked hiding his stash or go-bag at her house.
But then it hit me.
The red kayak that had hung under Big Bill’s deck wasn’t Big Bill’s insurance—it was Mike’s nest-egg. Or part of it. And maybe leverage against Milford, evidence that Mike could turn over to authorities if the situation had played out differently.
How had Mike convinced Big Bill to secure it under his deck? Had he approached the sad, old man as a stranger and said something like: “I heard you invented the Wave Skimmer, sir, but I bet you’ve never seen a red one like this? Someone must’ve screwed up at the factory, got the mix wrong. I tried it, but it’s not my thing. You can have this one, if you want it.”
Or had he let Big Bill in on the smuggling, promising to cut him in? “This will go a long way to paying for that full-time care your wife needs.” Or did he simply threaten him? “Keep this for me, old man, until I need it. If it’s gone when I get here, I’ll kill your wife first, then your son, making you watch me stab them both. Then I’ll kill you slowly.”
Of course, I didn’t know that Mike had anything to do with the red kayak until, late on the night he faked his death, I found a brown, extra-large canvas duffel bag secured with half a roll of brown duct tape above the pressure-treated brown beam that held up one side of Big Bill’s deck. Even in daylight, the bag would have been out of sight from below. Only moonlight brightened the area outside of the deck, so the fifteen-by-fifteen-foot space was in near-total darkness. I spent ten minutes moving an overturned whiskey barrel from one spot to the next, standing atop it, then feeling blindly for what my gut told me would be there. Finally, it was.
I cut the bag down, tore off the tape, and unzipped it. Inside were four kilos of cocaine bundled as the ones that Jen and I had taken from Kenny had been, $100,000 in one-hundred-dollar bills, bound in bricks of $10,000, three changes of clothes, including a pair of work boots and a pair of flip-flops, and a Moroccan passport with the name Andrew Holton next to a photo of Mike Sherwood.
I closed the duffel, carried it in the dark across the sand to Amanda’s house, removed $80,000, and set the duffel on the yellow Wave Skimmer hanging below her house. I pulled down the blue kayak, opened the hatch, put the eighty grand inside, closed the hatch, and hung the kayak back on its hooks. I went back to Big Bill’s deck to get ready.
I hauled both whiskey barrels to the corner under the deck across from the corner in which the duffel had been hidden. I set the barrels against each other on the diagonal—the hypotenuse to the right-angles of the corner. I’d created a wall that a man could crouch behind after slipping through the small opening on the left side. I smoothed out the circular marks the barrel had made in the sand as I’d searched for the duffel in the rafters.
I’d carried the Mossberg shotgun, the Beretta, the Ka-Bar knife, and the night-vision goggles with me. I didn’t want to use the weapons, but Mike was fighting for his freedom and his life, so he’d kill me without hesitation if he had to. I promised myself I’d do whatever was necessary to continue breathing.
He arrived at 2:15, carrying a revolver in his right hand, with a backpack slung over his left shoulder. He walked through the soft sand slowly, stopped, and looked around, apparently seeing nothing because he pulled a flashlight from his leather jacket. He shined the beam around the space, looking for the whiskey barrels so he could move one beneath where he’d stowed the duffel bag.
When he moved the beam to his left, he saw the whiskey barrels and the black muzzle of the shotgun. I’d wedged the shotgun between the barrels where their downward curves met, with the black barrel aimed into the middle of the space, about where Mike stood.
He fired five shots into the barrels, trying to hit the fool stupid enough to ambush him from behind them. He probably knew I’d be that fool.
But I wasn’t behind the barrels—I was above the far rafter, where the large duffel had been. I was tall enough to jump up and grab the beam without needing to stand on a barrel, and I was strong enough to pull myself up. I wore the night-vision goggles, and for the last two hours had been listening carefully and lowering my head and right arm every so often far enough below the beam to see if he’d arrived. As he fired the fifth shot, I leaned down far enough to take aim, holding the rafter with my left arm, and fired a bullet into his left calf.
He fell to the sand as his screams mingled with the thunder of the gunshot. He dropped the gun and flashlight and grabbed his calf, writhing in pain. I swung off the rafter, badly scraping my left forearm as I fell. I took three steps toward him, grabbed his gun, and stepped away.
He looked up at me and winced, but then he managed to smile. I heard sirens in the distance, and I knew the deputies and the DEA agents would arrive by foot any second.
“Subterfuge,” he said. “A real-world fumblerooski. I’m impressed.”
I didn’t say anything. So much adrenaline coursed through me that I felt my racing pulse in my temples.
“Kind of bullshit, though,” he said. “Technically, I wasn’t aiming at you.”
I walked over behind the barrels and crouched behind them for a second. “Yes, you were.”
When I stood, he was holding a knife in his right hand. His left still tried to slow the bleeding in his calf.
I aimed the Beretta at him and said, “What are you going to do with that, dice vegetables?”
I saw beams of light bouncing wildly out on the beach, then heard the sounds of law-enforcement officers running toward us. The first deputy and two DEA agents reached the area in front of the deck. Mike raised the knife in front of him and said, “There’s something you should know.”
Three shafts of light shined on Mike and glinted off the knife. He faced me, perpendicular to the light beams coming from his left.
“Drop it,” the three law enforcement officers said almost simultaneously, aiming their weapons at him. Two others arrived with guns drawn. The sirens now sounded stationary, meaning more deputies and agents were running toward us.
“I slept with Jami.”
No, you didn’t, I thought. Not a chance.
He was trying to provoke me, so I’d shoot him. I had a better chance of being Miley Cyrus than he had of sleeping with Jami. She’d always been polite, even friendly, to him, but she’d told me he gave off a vibe she didn’t trust. She’d been a better judge of character than I had been.
My pulse slowed, the adrenaline dissipated, and the danger to me had all but passed. Instead of excitement and anger, I felt extreme sadness. What had I done to cause him to hate me?
“Fine, don’t believe me,” he said. “You got the best of me here, I’ll give you that, but you’re still kind of clueless. You didn’t know about Amanda, so what makes you so sure about Jami?”
Shouts of “Drop the weapon” and “Drop it now” came from the officers and agents on the beach.
“Listen to me, Jack,” Mike said. “Here’s your chance to prove you aren’t a coward, a failure. Prove you’re a man.”
The Beretta was still aimed between his eyes. His revolver sat on the barrel to my right, with the shotgun between the two barrels.
“She was up for almost anything, but she loved it when I degraded her. You know, the stuff you wouldn’t do to her.”
He drew the knife behind his head, and more than a dozen bullets from five guns tore him to pieces. He died instantly.
But I didn’t kill him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The authorities questioned how I’d shot Mike in his calf, apparently from a high angle, but I told them he’d lost his balance while shooting at me, then spun around, falling backward toward me when the bullet hit him. They seemed not to believe me because all five of Mike’s bullets had missed me while I was supposed to have been crouched behind the barrels, the ones riddled with bullet holes. But the authorities weren’t going to consider charging me because their shoot was bad, and they knew it.
The eighteen bullets that tore through Mike supported this argument. If Mike had thrown the knife, it would have missed me. I’d ducked when he’d lifted his arm. Letting the shoot disappear quietly made sense to them because they didn’t have to kill him, even though that’s what he wanted them to do. Because I’d ducked, I didn’t see him get torn apart. I only saw what was left of him.
Both the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration received plenty of press for dismantling a major drug ring and for capturing the murderers of Chris Cerveris, Big Bill Watson, Jason Gilson, and probably others. I was mentioned in two articles and on one news broadcast. Amanda was dragged into it because of her relationship with me, although I didn’t read any stories connecting her to Mike. Because the world is fascinated by famous people, especially those who fall, news vans soon parked in front of Moonlight, which didn’t help Amanda’s battle to find sobriety. Someone had leaked her presence there.
Marty Milford awaits trial. The video of him killing Titan was sent to every Southern California law enforcement agency, then was leaked to social media, along with a description of his maroon Mercedes-Benz SLC 300 roadster. The footage of him being chased onto the USC campus and being surrounded by cop cars played on every news station. He didn’t pinch the grip of the revolver between his index finger and thumb when the cops told him to put his hands outside the car. He presented his left hand holding the gun as though ready to fire it, with his index finger on the trigger. The cops yelled at him to drop his weapon. He didn’t. They yelled again. He didn’t. Eventually, a cop shot the driver’s-side rear tire, and the impact and surprise caused Milford to drop the gun.
I didn’t envy Milford’s defense attorneys, not with the prosecution having a video of him killing a man, in addition to the recordings of him contracting two hits. The red kayak we’d turned over would likely make a courtroom appearance, along with whichever expert witness the prosecution found to explain the chemistry behind the smuggling scheme.
Jason Gilson’s murder bordered on being gratuitous. He’d probably been in the room when Chris had threatened to turn Milford in, but believing that Gilson had enough backbone to rat someone out made about as much sense as a soup sandwich.
Kenny isn’t likely to make it into witness protection. He lost his leverage when Mike was killed and Milford was apprehended. Kenny couldn’t hand a big fish to authorities. Even though I understood the financial difficulties his mother’s medical bills were inflicting on him, I couldn’t let him get away with helping to kill two of my friends, so I sent the recordings of him confessing to the district attorney. Kenny’s cooperating with authorities, so he may get out of prison one day.
His mother, Mildred Slattery, will not likely see her son again. I told him I’d help with her medical bills. The $80,000 I’d received from Jami’s life-insurance policy had been sitting in my safe for nearly nine years. I’d been unable to think of a use for it that was worthy of Jami’s memory. But Jami would have supported using the money to help a woman fight carcinoid tumors. After I washed the $80,000 that I took from Mike’s duffel through the Bicycle Hotel & Casino and the Commerce Casino, I added the remaining $65,000 to the fund for Mildred.
Alphonse and Deion never showed up at Jen’s, or if they did, something tipped them off before they barged in. So far, no charges have been brought against them for the three murders, and I’m betting nothing will ever stick. I think the park shooters have a fifty-fifty chance to beat the multitude of charges brought against them. My guess is that the workers in the Compton Wave Skimmer shop and the guys Jen and I saw in the San Felipe factory have vanished. I won’t lose sleep if they got away because they were all pawns in a game rigged against them. Jen is teaching me how to focus on the present and the future while giving the past its due but never trying to change it.
She fixed up a room on the bottom floor of her house for Game, who spends weekends with us about once a month. Rachelle joined her son here for a weekend last month. She can’t stop thanking me for saving her son’s life and for giving him direction, but I owe Game far more than he owes me. I realized how close I was to the edge when I handed the Beretta to him that night and gave him permission to shoot me. The sliver of self-awareness that presented itself thereafter allowed me to see who I was, who I wasn’t, and how much of myself I’d been throwing away.
Game’s participation in solving the murders—all but assuring Milford’s conviction—has given him a goal in life: He wants to become a private investigator, my partner, despite my suggestion that he pursue another career path.
But it could have been worse: He could have wanted to direct movies.
The cases I’ve had in the last five months haven’t required the assistance of the now-seventeen-year-old neophyte gumshoe with the ability to crack wise and to pass a basketball, but I’ll find him something.
“However,” I told him, “I’ll only think about making you my partner if you graduate from college.”
“You got it, Dawg.”
Every morning, I sit at my antique rolltop desk in our library filled with novels, histories, biographies, and science journals to write the book I abandoned long ago about baseball great Ed Delahanty and other unsung heroes, such as Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first Black man to play Major League Baseball; Major Taylor, the first Black cycling world champion; and Josh Gibson, the best all-around hitter in baseball history who played for the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the Negro Leagues.
I write longhand on yellow legal pads with the Montblanc pen Jami gave me. On the desk sits the baseball card Amanda gave me of Big Ed Delahanty, wearing a light-blue uniform with red stockings and belt, and a blue-and-red striped cap. The title of the book is: Only the Winners. That was the headline of the article I’d sold to Esquire many years ago. The editors changed the headline to “At All Costs,” but Jami had come up with the original title, so that’s the one I’ll fight to keep if a publisher wants to publish the book after I finish it.
Before I lost my wife to an accident, lost my mother to cancer, lost two friends to murder, and one to suicide-by-cop, I’d believed I could complete a well-researched, intriguing book. But I lost confidence in myself, lost my way, and lost hope. Now, however, with Jen having taught me how to love again and Jami whispering encouragement, I still could become the man I hope to be. I’m getting closer every day.
Amanda shouted to me over the sound of the breaking waves two mornings ago from her deck, while Jen and I drank coffee on ours.
“Jack! Hey, Jack!”
“Yes?”
“Got a proposition for you.” She slurred the “s” in proposition. It was 9:15.
“What is it?”
“What do you say you write my autobiography? Probably done with acting, and I know a lot of dirt. A lot.”
“Don’t doubt it, but I can’t write your autobiography. You have to, by definition.”
“I mean ghostwrite it, stupid.”
“No, thank you, but I’ll lend you my pen.”
“Oh, screw you, Jack, you fucking fuck.”
“You always had a way with words,” Jen said.
“You fuck off, too, Little Miss Jennifer.”
Jen turned to me and said, “I’ve been called a lot of things in my day. Oddly, that’s now one of them.”
“With language skills such as hers, how could her autobiography not fly off the shelves?”
Jen made it to ninety meetings in ninety days, and she attends at least four meetings a week. She found a sponsor whom she likes and respects, and they’re working the steps together. I’m very proud of her.
We’ve settled into a kind, supportive, laughter-filled, mutually fulfilling relationship. We paint, cook elaborate meals, and exercise together, and we generally feel good about our future.
But trouble intruded into our lives again last night. After dinner, while I was reading on the couch next to Jen, she said, “I could be paranoid, but I think someone’s watching me.”
“Where?”
“Pavilions yesterday morning and the rocks on the point in the afternoon, with binoculars. I mean, he could be just a normal pervert getting his jollies by staring at me.”
“What did he look like?”
“Couldn’t tell on the point. Too far away. But I got a good look at him at the market because he kept walking slowly past me in each aisle in the opposite direction. I know that happens while shopping, but he didn’t have a basket and didn’t buy anything.”
“What did he look like?”
“White guy. Maybe sixty-five. Six feet, jet-black hair, obviously works out. Giant silver sunglasses and a handlebar mustache, like he’s Elton John in the Old West.”
Not good.
“Did he say anything?”
“Only ‘Ain’t you that model?’”
“You get that all the time.”
“Yes, but this felt different.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I guess the back-and-forth without him really shopping and the intensity of his stare. At one point he walked into a kid because he was staring at me. By the time I got to the alcohol aisle, I thought about buying something.”
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t be tested like that. Did he have surgery scars on his neck?”
“Not that I noticed. Why?”
“Probably my dad.”
“Great. Just what we need.”
This morning while I was writing, my cell rang. I let it go to voicemail because I didn’t recognize the number. I listened to the message: “Looks like you’re doing good for yourself, son. Not bad for a cop’s kid, huh?” He sounded drunk. “Saw you on TV. And that’s some girlfriend you got. Yowza. Your mom never looked like that, not on her best day or in her dreams, rest her soul. Well, anyway, you got my number now. The past is the past, as they say. Can’t change none of it. Your brother still won’t talk to me, but he’s always been sensitive like that, holding grudges, acting all wounded. Thought I’d try you. I miss my boys. We had some good times, didn’t we? Give me a call sometime.”
