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

  He grabbed his .22, keeping it low, and easily chambered a round. As the doctor approached on his way down the hill and the safety of his home, Toby pushed away from the Jeep and stopped the man with the barrel of his rifle.

  “Dr. Brimley?” Toby asked, knowing the answer.

  “Look, I-I don’t have my wallet,” the doctor sputtered, hoping it was a robbery. And then, “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  “That’s not important right now. It’s my girlfriend that’s important, Brimley. She’s the reason I’m here. Eva Perez, my girlfriend, said I should forgive you.”

  “Who? I don’t know who you’re talking about.” The doctor had put on his officious attitude now, fighting to control the situation. Yet Toby could see he was on the verge of hysteria.

  “The baby she was carrying was mine, Doc. My blood. And you took such good care of her, she’ll never have another. You played God, judge, and jury. You put your hands on her, you cut her, and you made sure of that.”

  The doctor’s eyes betrayed a dawning recognition; he knew what this beef was about, even if he didn’t remember the particular woman. His hand moved slowly into his red training jacket, reaching for his cell phone.

  The first bullet punched a tight hole in the center of Dr. Brimley’s forehead. As it filled with blood, it looked like a dark red Buddhist marking. A third eye.

  But this was no holy man, Toby knew. He watched dispassionately as the doctor’s eyes went gray, his skin turned ashen, and he crumbled to the pavement, rolling onto his back, his mouth twitching his last garbled words.

  Toby stood over the doctor’s body. “Forgiveness isn’t in my lexicon, scumbag. I only wish I could kill you twice!” He fired another round into the doctor’s heart and then a third into his groin. The lithe man’s body bucked with the muzzle blasts, then went still.

  Toby, well aware of the noise he’d made, moved quickly. He tossed the rifle into the back of his Jeep. Grabbed the doctor by his Reebok cross trainers, pulled him, skull thumping, over the curb, and rolled his lifeless body down the hillside into the scrub bushes below and out of sight. Let the vultures have their way with him.

  Toby picked up the three shell casings, jumped into the Jeep, and executed a smooth U-turn, being mindful not to leave identifiable tread marks. His grim smile widened as he glided down the macadam road, gaining speed with the sharp angle of descent that finally matched his racing pulse.

  Ten

  Susan Blake’s face was as tight as a porcelain doll’s. Tommy sat across from her in Jack’s booth at Hal’s, disconnected, while Jack sat next to Susan, staring straight ahead, fighting for calm.

  “That’s crap, Jack,” she said.

  “I’m keeping the painting, Susan,” he said in measured tones. “It was a beautiful gesture, greatly appreciated. I’m just paying for it, that’s all.” But Jack was sure the issue wasn’t over. “It’s the thought that counts on this one,” he said, and knew he sounded lame.

  “Oh bullshit!” she said a bit too loud. If not for the volume in Hal’s Bar and Grill that night, heads would have turned. “It’s bad luck, you know. Returning a gift. I thought all you Italians knew that.”

  “All you Italians?” The blush on Jack’s neck burned his ears and rose to his face. “I’m not returning it, in any case. It’s . . .” Jack realized he should stop talking. He didn’t do well verbally when he was put on the spot.

  Stone-faced, Tommy sipped the dregs of his Gray Goose martini and twirled the olive with the toothpick in the empty glass. He wasn’t drawing any fire.

  “Oh hell, Susan,” Jack plowed on. “It’s beautiful, but too damn expensive. C’mon now, I’ll straighten it out with Terrence. It’s too soon.”

  “It wasn’t too soon . . .” she snapped and then wisely chose not to finish the sentence. The low blow had landed, and Jack was now officially pissed off.

  And then Susan switched emotional gears on a dime. Jack had never seen anything like it. “We’re not always so disagreeable, Tommy.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, taking a long sip of the empty glass. A move not lost on Jack, who controlled his impulse to laugh at his friend’s discomfort.

  Jack motioned for Arsinio, his favorite waiter, and hand ordered Tommy another drink.

  “Who’s hungry?” he finally asked.

  “You know what,” Susan said, “I’m going to call it a night.” So, Jack wasn’t off the hook, after all. She took a light sip of her chardonnay and pushed the nearly full glass away. Tommy was mesmerized by her every move. “I had a five a.m. call and I’m really wiped out. Are you coming by the set with Jack tomorrow, Tommy? I’ll introduce you around. You can’t say no,” she said as if the emotional outburst had never occurred.

  “If it’s not too much bother,” he grinned, a big kid.

  “Oh, Lord no, it’ll break up the day,” Susan said, already on the move toward the exit. Jack grabbed her wrap and caught up, escorting her through the dining room, past discreet turning heads, diners pleased to have a star in their midst.

  Everyone was pleased but Jack. He wanted to toss the damn painting out the window, but then again, it did speak to him. And he could afford it. His problem right now was that he trusted her taste in art more than her mercurial emotional crap that left him cold and confused.

  The limo was parked in front of Hal’s, but Susan turned left, and when she got to the corner made another left up the street, away from the early-evening crowds on Abbot Kinney.

  Jack stayed at her side, vowing to remain silent but losing control.

  “You know, I find this whole situation a little bit crazy,” he said.

  Susan flinched on “crazy” as if Jack had slapped her.

  He soldiered on. “Who in God’s name spends eighteen thousand dollars on a gift for someone they hardly know?”

  “You said we had crossed boundaries.” Punch.

  “And you said we just had sex. Sex! Your words.” Counterpunch.

  Susan took a swing at Jack, who caught her wrist in midflight.

  “Calm down,” Jack said through clenched teeth. Wondering how he’d let this encounter spin out of control.

  “Let go of me,” she said as if Jack was the perpetrator of the violence.

  “Take a deep breath.” By degrees he loosened the grip on Susan’s wrist, trying to defuse the moment.

  “You’ve got quick reflexes, Mr. Bertolino.” Her stone-cold face crinkled into a sly smile that dazzled, but Jack didn’t trust for one moment. “By the way, I talked Terrence down to fifteen. Don’t you dare let him charge you full price.”

  They walked back to Hal’s in silence. Jack got Susan squared away in the limo, took a few deep breaths to slow his heart rate, and reentered the restaurant.

  Angry but hungry as hell.

  * * *

  “Where the fuck is he?” Terrence tossed over his shoulder. He was sitting at a workbench in the family garage, wearing rubber surgical gloves and concentrating on loading his two spare clips.

  The two Hobie kayaks were already loaded onto a trailer, hitched to the rear of his Ford F-350, which had been backed into the garage to be protected from view. Sean walked over with a lithium-manganese battery that powered the German-made electric motor on the craft and stowed it easily into its custom compartment next to another battery that was already locked down in the trailer. “I’m not his mother,” he said, low.

  “His mother wasn’t his mother.”

  “Probably getting a full dose of Eva,” Sean said without attitude, nonjudgmental.

  “Let’s hope that’s all he gets from her.”

  Sean was always the calm one before a crime. He had the most practice. “Cut him some slack. He’ll be at the launch site with the Mercedes, gassed up, food in the cooler, and ready to roll up north, all things being equal. Plus, he’s better on a job when he’s relaxed.”<
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  “If he doesn’t show, I’m calling it off,” Terrence said, hitting the release in the heel of his HK P7. He checked the rounds in the magazine of his 9mm to make double sure the eight bullets were ready for work. Measure twice, cut once. Terrence was fastidious to a fault.

  “He’ll be there,” Sean said, elongating the words.

  “Did you put fresh batteries in the walkie-talkies?”

  “Done.”

  “You armed for bear?”

  Sean pulled a sawed-off Mossberg 590a1 shotgun with a nine-shot magazine out of the storage compartment of his Hobie by way of answer. It carried four reloads in the stock of the weatherproofed black synthetic stock. Perfect for sharks on his long trips to Catalina, and a workhorse if needed in a life-and-death experience out on the open sea.

  “I have my ankle rig on too,” Sean said. “But we won’t need it if I timed it right. I’ve got the coordinates programmed into all three GPS systems. And we’ll work a grid in the general area in case they changed the play. If they dump the pot, we’ll find it.”

  “Whoever spots the tuna boat calls it in but lays low, and the two men out will swarm,” Terrence said, pulling off the white protective gloves with a snap and tossing them into a trash bin.

  “Hell, we’re stealth,” Sean said, referring to the black paint on the kayaks that rendered them nearly invisible on the open sea. Both brothers were dressed entirely in black.

  A black watch cap would keep Terrence’s distinctive red hair obscured. “The full moon isn’t our friend tonight,” he observed.

  “You fucking worry too much.”

  “Somebody has to,” he said pointedly. “I’ll be on my cell. Did you charge your phone?”

  “Yes.” And then, “Ten o’clock. Straight up.”

  “Straight up, brother.”

  Sean started for his truck and then turned, his mood darkening. “You think Toby killed Vegas?”

  “I would’ve,” Terrence said without blinking an eye.

  “Why’d he lie?”

  “To protect us.”

  Sean rolled that notion around. “Given any thought to our move if it goes south on him?”

  “We’ll worry about that at the appropriate time.”

  Pure bullshit. Sean knew for a fact that his brother was always thinking three moves ahead of the field. He chose to let the lie pass. He had more pressing issues on his mind, like the Sinaloa cartel. He walked out of the garage and jumped into his truck.

  Terrence stepped out behind Sean and watched the F-350, towing the kayaks, rumble down the driveway, make a wide turn onto the street until the edge of their Craftsman house snuffed out the red taillights. He glanced skyward, worried about the full moon again. He checked his cell phone, looking for the text from Toby that hadn’t been sent. Frustrated, he hit the remote button sending the custom doors rolling down and headed into the house.

  * * *

  Jack’s desk was littered with the Tomas Vegas files. The Hollywood Hills sparkled in the distance, but Jack hardly noticed. A half-empty bottle of Cab and a half-full yellow pad with a list of Tomas Vegas’s potential killers kept him occupied. Jack scoured the files for people or groups who had clear motivation for wanting the gangster dead. A grudge shooting thoughtfully planned, expertly executed.

  Except for the one errant shot.

  On a clean page Jack made a second list, pulled from court records of Vegas’s arrests, his court appearances, and his victims, dead and alive. He then added their family members who had testified for or against him.

  The page looked like a dysfunctional family tree, but it would help Jack get an overall feel for the scope of the case.

  He also flagged one particular court case where Vegas had been called as a witness for the prosecution and added the female defendant to the list.

  One of the local rags had called the murder of Vegas an assassination. It chaffed Jack. Presidents and heads of state were assassinated . . . gangsters got murdered.

  The shooting had a military feel, he thought. Surveillance, scheduling, precision shooting.

  Jack still wondered why the gunman’s first bullet flew high and wide.

  He’d check fathers, brothers, and sisters for military background, law enforcement, and anybody with a personal grudge.

  He agreed with Nick: a revenge killing felt right.

  * * *

  Sean Dirk pulled his watch cap low on his forehead to keep any light from reflecting off his face and putting the mission in jeopardy.

  It had taken close to three hours to arrive at the previous cartel drop-off point, two miles east of Catalina, and now it was a waiting game. The temperature on the water was a comfortable sixty degrees; the night sky was brilliant with planets, constellations, and the Milky Way, a reminder to Sean of his insignificance in the grand scheme of things.

  The only illumination on the black surface of the sea was the full moon, and at one o’clock it perched far over the horizon and shone like a beacon across the ocean surface, splitting north from south.

  Sean had cut off all communication with his brothers until the drop-off was completed. Sound traveled great distances on the water, and as long as he stayed low, and silent, tucked neatly into his Hobie kayak as it bobbed with the light chop of the waves, he was all but invisible.

  After an hour of nothing but a container ship crossing between his position and the twinkling lights of Los Angeles behind him, Sean started to doubt. The plan was his, and he’d never hear the end of it if the brothers came up empty.

  Then he saw them.

  A quarter mile west, with the island of Catalina looming beyond, a fifty-foot fishing boat cut sharply through the reflected moonlight, raising wild ripples of silver. The boat circled once, and then without pause dumped a large parcel off the stern of the boat and powered away, due south, at a high rate of speed.

  Sean’s heart pounded as he keyed his walkie-talkie and alerted the troops, shouting out coordinates. He clicked on the kayak’s motor, checked for all-clear behind him, and throttled silently ahead toward the bales of drugs floating in the water beyond.

  They were engaged in a race against time. The first job would be to find the GPS beacon on the packages and disable it. Then Terrence would drag the floating bales of drugs to Shark Harbor, on the backside of Catalina, where they would be broken down, stowed in the body of the kayaks, and returned to a protected cove on the mainland, where the F-350 and the Mercedes van were parked.

  Terrence would power back to Marina del Rey. If he were stopped and searched by the Coast Guard entering the marina, he’d be just another hapless fisherman with an empty hold who got skunked by the fickle sea. He’d pick up the F-350 in the morning. In the meantime his brothers—driving the drug-laden van—would head to Sacramento and a major payday.

  Eleven

  The Dirk brothers heard the boat before they saw it. The loud thrumming engine of a high-powered ski-boat. It was closing the distance fast, running without lights.

  Terrence had discovered and dismantled the GPS beacon imbedded in one of the waterproofed bales, but that discovery came too late, as the volume of the throaty engine grew nearer.

  Sean had already tied off the marijuana to the rear of Terrence’s Zodiac, ready to roll, while Toby drifted off to the side, lying in wait.

  A twenty-eight-foot Scarab traveling at thirty miles an hour was in danger of plowing into the brothers as it entered the drop-off area. The two men aboard didn’t see the Dirks at first, because their eyes were trained on the onboard GPS screen. At the last moment, the passenger looked up and yelled, “Fuck!”

  The pilot throttled back and cranked the wheel hard to the left, generating a huge wake that threatened to scuttle Sean’s kayak as it pulled alongside the two smaller crafts.

  “It’s about fucking time!” Terrence shouted angrily over the sound of their
engines as the two men on the boat eyed them with surprise, then suspicion. Terrence stayed on the offensive, “Let me get this offloaded so we can get the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Who the fuck’re you?” the pilot of the Scarab shouted, his eyes black as ball bearings.

  “Who the fuck am I?” Terrence shot back. “I’m your fucking meal ticket, fucking thirty-minutes-late assholes.”

  The pilot of the Scarab pulled a Glock 9mm and the stocky man in the passenger seat leveled an AK-47 at Terrence in response.

  “I’m gonna ask you only one more time,” the pilot said, “and then I’m done talking. Who the fuck’re you?”

  “You didn’t get the memo, scumbag,” Sean jumped in, not reacting to the hardware pointed at his brother but letting his kayak drift away from the Zodiac, splitting the focus of the men on the boat. Two targets were harder to hit than one.

  Terrence picked up his brother’s thread. “There was Coast Guard up and down the coast. We met the captain five miles out and busted our humps to get here on time.”

  “Here’s how it’s going to play,” the Scarab’s pilot said, not buying it. “You two are going to load the bales onto the back of our craft, and if you do it quick enough, we’ll give you a lift back to shore and you can do your explaining to the Sinaloa boys. They’re good at getting to the meat of a story.”

  The passenger with the AK snorted at the implication.

  “Do it yourself,” Sean hissed, not backing down, still drifting wider.

  The pilot growled, “And did you call me a scumbag?”

  Toby’s first bullet ripped into the pilot’s cheek, shattering his teeth. He screamed in searing pain and blind-fired his 9mm in the direction of the shot.

  Terrance drew his P7 and rapid-fired, hitting the pilot in the neck, and then the shoulder, and then the abdomen. The pilot grabbed for his throat with one hand, his belly with the other, and flopped onto the windshield, bleeding out over the glass before slipping to the deck.