Dead Is Dead (The Jack Bertolino Series Book 3) Read online

  The twelve months he had spent at Lompoc Federal Correctional Institution, housing low-security male prisoners, destroyed his sense of humor, hammered home the need for discipline, and kicked his violent proclivities up a notch. It also served as a master class in breaking and entering, and expanded his connections for offloading stolen property.

  Once a month, on the full moon, he’d launch his one-man kayak for a midnight run from Marina del Rey to Shark Harbor, on the backside of Catalina Island, just to keep his anger in check and his head screwed on straight.

  * * *

  Toby hit the remote control and pulled his car into the two-car detached garage that was the same design and age as the family’s Craftsman house. The siding was gray-green with dark-brown wooden trim.

  Jumping out, he grabbed the .22 and stashed it in a hidden compartment he had made behind a loose wooden board on the rear wall. When he rehung the rake, shovel, and clippers over the secret panel, it disappeared. He slid his surfboard up on one of the rafters next to a vintage longboard and a pair of kayaks. He shook out his wetsuit and hung it on the backyard clothesline to dry.

  Gazing at the back of the house he and his brothers had occupied since the death of their parents, he gathered his thoughts. Toby knew questions would be raised with the murder of Tomas Vegas, but decided he could handle anything thrown his way. With his emotions firmly in check he jogged into the house through the rear door. Just another perfect day in the sun and the surf.

  * * *

  Toby Dirk idolized his oldest brother, Terrence, who was a nihilist and didn’t believe morality was worth a crap. He had all but raised Toby after their father dropped dead of a massive coronary in their men’s clothing store on Main Street in Santa Monica.

  But Terrence didn’t have to inculcate his young brother. He discovered, while fucked up on eighteen-year-old Macallan, expounding his theories on life, death, and beating the odds, that he was preaching to the choir.

  Sean, the middle brother at age twenty-six, was an unapologetic hellion who had dropped out of Venice High soon after his father’s death. He used his intelligence to live off the fat of the land and developed into a prolific second-story burglar and break-in artist. Why waste a brilliant mind? He was a good earner, but he got sloppy and was busted for selling a roll of stolen gold coins and a platinum Rolex to an undercover cop posing as a fence.

  Mrs. Dirk, widowed and confronted with a mountain of undisclosed debt, never recovered from the shock of having to give up her membership at Wilshire Country Club. She turned to the comfort of Dr. Jim Beam, rarely leaving the sunroom in the rear of the family’s bungalow, just east of the canals in Venice. The empties stacked up outside her door as she exponentially shrank in size. The boys knew it was just a matter of time before she disappeared altogether. The more they tried to help, the more ornery she became, until they finally threw in the towel. His mother had chosen to march inexorably toward her own prepaid burial site next to her philandering husband in the family plot.

  All the while Terrence had constructed a well-defined business model for the family’s criminal enterprises: five more years of pinpoint assaults, continue to launder their dirty money through the family store, keep a low profile, make conservative investments, and then cash out and buy a compound in Costa Rica and a summer home on the Scottish coast. They would all retire young enough to enjoy the fruits of their discipline and labor.

  Nothing wrong with that plan, Toby thought. Live for the pump, and then live like gentry. He was all in.

  * * *

  “How was the surf?” Sean asked as he slid the cutting board onto an upper shelf, flipped the cabinet door shut, and turned to face his brother. At six-foot-three, he stood two inches taller than Toby, as wiry as the rest of the family. The main difference, though, was that Sean’s time in the slammer had rendered his face unreadable.

  “Two-foot swells, but nice curls,” Toby answered as he swept the watch cap off of his head, shook out his hair, and tossed the cap onto the kitchen table. He avoided Sean’s probing gaze as he opened up the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, and sucked it down in one tilt of the head.

  “You there all day?”

  Toby didn’t like his tone but played dumb. “Yeah.”

  “With your buds?”

  “Yeah, why?” he said with attitude.

  Sean opened the dishwasher, banged a plate in, and closed the door with more force than intended. “Friend of yours met his maker today. You didn’t hear?”

  Toby had already rehearsed the right face. “What the fuck, Sean? What’re you talking about?”

  “Tomas Vegas,” he said, devoid of emotion. “Shot dead.”

  “No shit?”

  Sean focused his stony eyes on his brother. “You didn’t know?” It wasn’t a question.

  Keep the face. “No.”

  “You had nothing to do with it?”

  “Fuck you, Sean!”

  Sean took in a deep breath and let it out with a labored sigh. “Good to hear,” but he wasn’t letting his brother off the hook just yet. “’Cause a little girl took a bullet to the back of the brain pan. She’s dead, too.”

  Sean’s eyes lasered into his brother. Toby didn’t blink, but his mind was whirling. That’s what the lady was crying about. He knew it couldn’t be Tomas Vegas. The pause that stretched out between them developed an uncomfortable life of its own.

  “That sucks,” he finally said, tossing the accusation along with the empty bottle into the recycling bin. His shot banged slightly off the 1950s red Chambers stove that dominated the large kitchen.

  “Yeah,” Sean said. “You know we don’t need any heat, of any kind. We’ve got a lot going on.”

  “I know.” Toby was loose again, in control.

  “There’re a lot of people who are aware of the threats you made against the scumbag.”

  The older Dirk brothers, overly protective of Toby by long habit, didn’t sanction his relationship with Eva Perez. The beautiful blonde had the good looks of a Valley Girl, but her roots were gangland. Eva’s mother was an exbanger who eked out a better life for her daughter. She’d cut off ties with her set and raised Eva as a single mom. Terrence and Sean didn’t buy the conversion. They thought Eva was trouble in spades.

  “Hey, I’m not the only one,” Toby said. “I’m cool. If it happened today, I was on the water. It couldn’t have been me.” He kept his voice casual as he dug for more information. “So how did the girl get shot?”

  “Stray bullet. Drive-by. They said on the news it went through a window.”

  He felt his heart sink. “Huh. Where?”

  ”Across the street from Mrs. Montenegro’s house. That Guatemalan family.”

  “That’s the shits,” Toby said almost to himself.

  Sean’s voice grew hard again. “Nobody cares about a drug-dealing banger, but a six-year-old girl, they’ll be lighting candles and sitting vigil until they find their shooter. It’s a good thing you were surfing today, Toby, because your name’s gonna come up, sooner or later. You’ll be on a list, and the cops will be asking some hard questions.”

  “Fuck Vegas. Fuck that scumbag. I wish I had pulled the trigger,” Toby said, not having to fake his anger. “But, hey, that’s terrible about the girl.”

  “And your homies? They will vouch for you?”

  “Sean, seriously, go fuck yourself. You’re fuckin’ up my mellow.”

  “Okay, brother.”

  But he didn’t sound convinced, and Toby quickly changed the subject.

  “Terrence?”

  “At the shop.”

  “I’ll jump in the shower and head over,” Toby said as he sauntered out of the kitchen.

  He was well aware that Sean continued to watch him move down the hallway. To escape his gaze, Toby took the stairs two at a time.

  * * *

  Jack
Bertolino was staring up at the ceiling of his loft with a satisfied grin. A duvet cover was draped haphazardly over his nether regions and his hands were laced behind his head. His arms were heavily muscled, his body scarred, a roadmap of battles fought. A pale crescent scar under his left eye straightened when he grimaced or smiled. A man-made barometer of his mercurial moods.

  Diana Krall’s live Paris recording of “The Look of Love” played softly in the background. The loft smelled of garlic, onions, and sex. A perfect trifecta, Jack mused contentedly as the door to the bathroom opened and out stepped Susan Blake. One towel wrapped around her head, the other around her supple body.

  “Not sure if that was a good idea,” Jack said, smiling.

  Susan matched his smile. “That’s not what you shouted ten minutes ago. Were you taking God’s name in vain or testifying?”

  “The latter,” he said, hand-raking long strands of damp dark hair off his forehead. The silver-gray that feathered his temples gave him an air of solidity; his intense brown eyes, danger.

  “You can put the blame squarely on the tomato sauce,” Susan said. “I take full responsibility. There’s something about a man taking command of a kitchen that makes me weak in the knees.”

  “My good fortune. Still.”

  “You mean you don’t like to shit where you eat?”

  “Lord,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Oh really,” she said quickly. “You should hang out backstage some time. Theater people are notorious potty mouths.”

  Susan took a look around Jack’s loft. It was fifteen hundred square feet of concrete and glass. Two bedrooms, two bath, open floor plan. The front bedroom served as Jack’s office, along with a galley kitchen, and a sliding wall of glass that opened onto a balcony that was reminiscent of a NYC fire escape. It had just enough room for a top-of-the-line Weber grill, a bench, and a handful of wooden stakes that were populated with green tomatoes.

  “I like it,” Susan said. “It’s got a New Yorky feel.”

  Jack hadn’t been looking to change his life when he stopped in Marina del Rey after dropping his son at his first semester at Stanford. But he fell in love with the area, decided to take a flyer and reinvent himself. He picked up the unit in a fire sale after the real estate bubble burst and the building went into foreclosure. He packed up his life on the East Coast, and the fourth-floor unit now served as his home and his office.

  “You should get another boat,” she said, “living this close to the marina.”

  “It’s in the works. Hey, I’m gonna rinse off,” Jack said, stepping out of the bed, “and we can finish what we started.”

  “Really, Jack,” she said, coquettish.

  “The pasta.”

  “Hah!” Susan barked in a friendly, astonishingly unladylike way.

  Jack loved the unpretentious outburst and said, “I’ll save the rest for dessert.”

  Susan gave him a swat on his bare ass as he walked past. She headed over to the wall of glass and gazed past the FedEx lot next door toward the landing lights on the jumbo jets, strung haphazardly like constellations, making their final descent into LAX. The sky was midnight blue threatening black. The full moon on the rise just above the horizon was a startling pumpkin orange.

  Her cell phone chimed. Susan ran for her bag, grabbed the phone, checked the caller ID, and with a groan let the call go to voice mail.

  Jack was drying off in the bathroom when Susan’s cell phone chimed a second time. Able to see her reflection in the mirror, he watched her walk out onto the balcony, quietly closing the sliding glass door. Jack didn’t want to interfere, but he couldn’t help but observe Susan getting worked up and then, red-faced-angry, abruptly terminate the conversation.

  Jack stepped into his jeans and shrugged into his black T-shirt as Susan walked back into the loft avoiding eye contact.

  The tension in the room was thicker than the marine layer threatening to envelop the FedEx lot.

  “You get some bad news?” Jack asked, trying to tread lightly.

  Susan spun toward him, ready to attack. “What are you talking about?”

  “Easy with the attitude,” he said, still relaxed. “I could see you on the balcony, the phone call. You didn’t look too happy, and you look a damn mess now. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s none of your business,” she snapped.

  “Now, that’s where you’re wrong,” Jack said. “I was hired to protect you. It’s not your call.”

  “Stop pushing, Jack. You don’t know me well enough. Don’t overstep your boundaries.”

  He gave a slight laugh. “Our boundaries became a moot point tonight.”

  “Bullshit. We had sex, Jack. Sex. You only know what I want you to know. Stop talking or you’ll get hurt. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s the last thing I want. To hurt you.” And the fight seemed to drain out of her. For a split second she seemed a lot older, worn out with strain. “Please take me home, Jack. I’ve got an early call and I’m not feeling very well.”

  Jack didn’t have to be asked twice, but as they prepared to go, he couldn’t help but wonder what the call was all about. He had thought this assignment was going to be easy, but he recognized the tingle he felt on the back of his neck. Trouble was brewing on the other end of that phone call.

  * * *

  A lanky blond man with a hawkish nose and dark, close-set eyes, wearing a yellow and black bandanna, was hiding out in his black Ford Explorer. He was parked across the street from Jack’s building on Glencoe Avenue. His telephoto lens was so powerful, Susan and Jack’s images so sharply defined, that he felt as if he were part of the conversation. And then they stepped out of view. They didn’t look very happy, the man thought. He laughed for the first time in days, knowing he was the cause of their discomfort.

  The man’s reverie was cut short by the arrival of a rusted Winnebago that rattled to a halt at the curb, blocking his view, and settled in for the night. The blond man cursed and was about to pull away when he saw Jack’s Mustang roll out of the building’s underground parking garage and speed down Glencoe with Susan in the passenger seat.

  The blond man thanked the gods for this piece of good fortune and followed their car at a safe distance. The arrival of this ex-cop on the scene wasn’t going to stop the gravy train. He had the star right where he wanted her.

  * * *

  Four wireless phones echoing in the empty loft announced that Cruz Feinberg was on the line. Cruz was a millennial computer genius who handled everything technical in Jack’s company. Jack tossed his keys into a wooden bowl next to the door and hoofed it over to the kitchen extension. He picked up a millisecond before the call was directed to voice mail.

  “Turn on channel two,” Cruz said with enough urgency to spark Jack’s curiosity. He picked up the remote from the couch, hit Power, and his flat screen pinged to life.

  The onscreen tableau showed a scene of mourning: lit candles, a small shrine of flowers, stuffed animals, and cards penned in childlike scrawl.

  And a framed picture of a little girl.

  A loose group of grieving family members stood behind a microphone that was set up in front of their house. A female reporter introduced Mrs. Sanchez, the victim’s mother, who was inconsolable, but spoke bravely in broken English through her tears.

  “My Maria, she is only six. My angel. Gone. Who did this to my angel? Why you do this?”

  The woman’s eyes rolled back in her head, her knees buckled, and she reeled. Her husband grabbed her before she hit the sidewalk. Still, she dissolved in a flurry of choking sobs and stark grief only a parent could fully understand.

  Jack knew this was the shooting that had occurred while he was on the movie set.

  “Do you know the family?” he asked Cruz.

  “Yeah, the Sanchezes. They live a few houses down from my place.”

 
Cruz had moved into a garden guesthouse in Venice, near the Rose Café, as soon as he started working for Jack on a regular basis. The hours were ungodly when they were on a case, and living at home had led to hassles. His parents were sad to see him go, but glad not to be woken up in the middle of the night.

  “Their son Juan is at the police station,” Cruz said. “It looks like he was involved in a drug deal with the male victim and lucky to be alive. The word on the street is the deal was just pot. The police think it was a gang-related drive-by.”

  “Is Juan a banger?”

  “No, just a kid, a worker bee. Still in high school.”

  The female reporter, caught up in the emotion, reiterated Cruz’s story in hushed tones and drew Jack’s attention to the screen. He’d seen too many of these reports and attended too many of these scenarios when he was a detective working undercover in narcotics. They always left him feeling empty and angry. Frustrated at the waste of human life.

  “They’re good people,” Cruz went on. “Father’s an illegal, afraid of the police, afraid of being deported, afraid for his family, and doesn’t know who to talk to. His son needs help. I thought . . . ?”

  Cruz had proven himself in the heat of battle, but you couldn’t teach compassion and Jack was impressed.

  “Why don’t you and I meet for breakfast at Three Squares, and then take a drive over? When the emotion settles down some.”

  “That would be great, Jack. It’s a heartbreak.”

  “I’ll see you at nine.”

  Jack clicked off and listened to the reporter implore the television audience that if anyone had seen, heard, or knew anything about the shooter, they should call the Pacific Division of the LAPD. The phone number and address on Culver Boulevard flashed by on a crawl at the bottom of the screen, obscuring the dead girl’s photograph and the makeshift shrine.