Beating the Babushka Read online

  Cape shrugged. “Well, it was awfully sweet of you gentlemen to stop by and check up on me. Can I call you a cab?”

  The Major narrowed his eyes and moved his right hand slightly, as if brushing lint from his lapel. Ursa took one giant step forward. Cape figured one more step and Ursa would be standing on top of him.

  Cape held up his hands. “Okay—okay. I’ll drop the case.”

  The Major gave him a look that said “convince me.”

  Cape dropped his hands to his lap with a sigh of resignation. “In fact, I had already decided to drop it—I was thinking of going to Hawaii instead.”

  The Major snapped his fingers lightly and Ursa stepped back, disappointment etched across the gargoyle face. Cape moved his hands forward and pulled a revolver from the holster mounted to the bottom of the desk drawer. He lifted the gun deliberately and pointed it squarely at Ursa’s head.

  “You know,” said Cape, “now that I think about it, it’s hurricane season in Hawaii.”

  The gun was a Ruger .357 magnum, blued steel with a four-inch barrel. The kind of gun designed to get your attention and hold it, and it seemed to be working on the Major. He rocked back on his heels in surprise, his head unconsciously turning toward his giant comrade.

  Ursa had the opposite reaction and rolled onto the balls of his feet, a distinctly feral sound starting somewhere deep in his throat. Compared to going to prison for fifteen years and having every bone in your body broken, then dancing with a bear, the prospect of getting shot wasn’t a big threat.

  Cape shifted his aim to the Major’s chest, pulling back the hammer with an exaggerated motion. “You go first.”

  The Major nodded and said something in Russian under his breath. Ursa stopped growling and blinked, as if awoken from a trance. Then he turned suddenly and pulled open the door. The Major looked over his shoulder at Cape as he was crossing the threshold.

  “Hawaii would have been nice this time of year,” he said quietly, a small smile playing around the edges of his mouth. Pulling on his hat, he turned and left. Ursa stepped into the hallway without turning back, pulling the door gently until it latched.

  Cape brought the hammer down slowly and put the gun on his desk before releasing the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He was about to take another deep breath when the wall adjacent to the door exploded.

  Plaster and bits of wood flew across the room as Cape grabbed the gun and crouched behind the desk, taking aim at the wall. His first thought was a shotgun blast fired from the hallway.

  A massive fist protruded through the wall, knuckles red with blood and fingers white with plaster. As Cape stared, the hand disappeared, replaced a moment later by Ursa’s milky eye glaring at him. Then the eye vanished and the hand reappeared, this time with the middle finger extended.

  Cape heard the Major’s muffled voice and the hand retreated back through the hole it had made. The heavy klip-klop of angry feet faded down the hallway.

  Cape dropped the gun on the desk and sat down heavily. He looked around the office, now shrouded in a fine white mist of plaster. Outside the window the fog had rolled in, turning the city a pallor as dead as Ursa’s sullen orb.

  Cape put his head in his hands and muttered to himself.

  “Maybe there’s a direct flight to Maui.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Angelo took a deep breath as he reached the end of the hall. Set into the wall adjacent to the door was a small lighted button connected to an intercom. Before he could press the button, he heard a familiar voice asking him to come in.

  Harry Berman’s office was smaller and more intimate than his brother Adam’s. The walls were lined with bookshelves instead of video cassettes, the chairs wood and leather instead of brushed chrome. It was a more human environment, even though it currently lacked a human occupant.

  The television mounted behind the desk was fifty inches wide, a flat plasma display easily seen from almost any angle in the room. Above the screen was a camera, a red light above the lens announcing the presence of its owner even before he spoke.

  The face on the screen was benevolent in close-up, the broad smile stretching a good thirty inches across the wall. The eyes were brown, enormous, and gentle. Lines around the eyes suggested that the man with the rugged good looks was older than he appeared, but his voice still sounded boyish and cheerful as it reverberated through the speakers mounted on either side of the screen.

  “Hard day, Angelo?” asked Harry Berman.

  Angelo shrugged, looking at the face on the screen instead of directly at the camera. “Just the usual, sir.”

  “I read the newspaper,” said Harry, his smile spreading across the wall. “Quite a story.”

  “Mr. Berman—I mean Adam—the other Mr. Berman,” began Angelo haltingly. “Adam’s worried about the asteroid movie getting off schedule.”

  The smile disappeared, leaving in its wake a suddenly small mouth pursing its lips. The wall seemed to move as Harry’s eyes shifted, glancing first to his left, then his right.

  “A man might have been murdered,” he said solemnly. “While working for this company. We have a responsibility to that man’s family. Did he have a family, Angelo?”

  “A daughter,” replied Angelo. “He had a daughter. I understand he was a widower, so the child is being taken by her aunt and uncle.”

  Harry shook his head sadly, giving the impression the entire room was shaking in an earthquake.

  “He was part of our family,” he intoned. “The Empire Films family.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We need to set things right.”

  “But we don’t know if there was a crime committed,” protested Angelo, wondering if he sounded as unconvincing through the speakers.

  The brown eyes hardened. “Then we must find out, Angelo.”

  “But the schedule—”

  Harry cut him off, a giant hand appearing and then vanishing from the screen. Angelo felt like he’d almost been swatted.

  “Damn the schedule,” said Harry. “The integrity of this company is at stake, Angelo. That’s more important than any movie.” A wry smile spread across the screen. “Even one of my brother’s asteroid movies.”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  “Harry.”

  “Okay, Harry.”

  “I understand there is a detective.”

  “Yeah,” said Angelo. “Grace hired him.”

  “But he works for us.”

  Angelo shrugged. “I told Grace to explain the ground rules to him—you know, when working on one of our productions.”

  “Good,” said Harry, the giant face moving up and down. Angelo started to feel queasy, made a mental note to take Dramamine before his next visit. This fucking office was like an Imax theater.

  “Take care of him, Angelo.”

  Angelo shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, Harry.”

  “And Angelo?” One foot-long eyebrow rose higher than the other.

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t forget who you work for.”

  “I won’t,” said Angelo, careful not to look directly at the camera.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “He looks like a pretzel.”

  The man in the oven had his legs twisted behind his back and over his head, his arms bent to force his hands between his knees. The death grimace was so severe it looked as if he were about to laugh, his predicament unbearably funny. His back was broken just above the pelvis so he could fit into the oven. If there were yoga classes in hell, this is what they would look like.

  “He looks like a Goddamn pretzel,” repeated Vincent.

  “That’s the idea,” said Beau wearily. It was six o’clock in the morning. Beau rubbed his eyes and looked forlornly at the empty coffee cup in his hand.

  Vincent pulled a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket and stepped closer to the oven. He was wearing a gray double-breasted suit with a yellow tie and shiny black loafers. He looked like someone who got up early and enj
oyed it, even on the weekends. Beau suspected he’d been awake when they got the call and had already eaten a complete breakfast.

  “Who did you say this guy was?” Vincent asked.

  “Pete Pirelli, also known as Pete the Pretzel. That’s the joke, Vinnie. Why just kill the man when you can twist him into a knot and stuff him into an industrial oven at a bakery? And here I was, beginning to think you had a sense of humor.”

  Beau’s voice echoed faintly around the huge expanse of the bakery. The building was a converted warehouse in a neighborhood that had been nothing but warehouses until a few years ago, when the Internet boom pushed out the manufacturing companies to make room for residential lofts costing two million dollars and trendy restaurants serving fifty-dollar plates. Now the lofts cost less than half what they were built for and most of the restaurants were gone, but the manufacturing and warehouses were gone for good. The bakery was one of the few original buildings left.

  Two uniformed policemen milled about near the entrance while two others marked off the area around the ovens. Each oven was six feet wide and maybe two feet high, able to handle everything from pizza to pretzels. The lingering stench in the air smelled like neither.

  Vincent wrinkled his nose and frowned as he peered inside the oven. “And why was he called Pete the Pretzel?”

  “The fuck should I know, Vinnie?” said Beau testily. “Maybe he ate ’em by the bag full. Maybe he was double-jointed. You never know with these mob assholes.”

  “So he was one of Frank Alessi’s guys?”

  “Yeah, Pete was a bagman. Made deliveries, took payoffs from the protection racket. Not very high on the Mafioso food chain.”

  “Drugs?” Vincent pulled a pencil from his jacket pocket and poked tentatively at the corpse’s cheek.

  “Oh yeah,” replied Beau. “Frank’s operation is pretty big for a small city—loan sharking, extortion, some construction—but drugs are definitely a staple. Poor Pete would have followed the traffic here in town, made deliveries here and there.”

  “So this was Freddie Wang’s handiwork?”

  Beau nodded. “I’d say it was payback for the zoo—why else would you kill a mug like Pete?”

  Vincent rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re in the middle of a war over the drug trade.”

  Beau shrugged. “Seems that way to me.”

  “Swell.”

  “Maybe we can let the scumbags kill each other,” said Beau. “Go back home and get some sleep.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “Yeah, but I ’spect the captain might frown upon that sort of laissez faire attitude.”

  Vincent raised his eyebrows. “Did you say laissez faire?”

  Beau scowled at Vincent. “What—you didn’t think a brother could speak French?”

  “Do you speak French?”

  “Fuck no,” replied Beau. “Don’t know why anyone speaks French, do you?”

  “They speak it at the Olympics.”

  “I thought the Olympics were Greek.”

  “I think the French bought them out.”

  “Another mystery,” said Beau. “I can say croissant and laissez faire just fine, and that seems to cover about every situation I can think of. Around here it helps to know a little Spanish, some Chinese—but French? Let’s be serious.”

  “Then why’d you get so defensive when I asked?” demanded Vincent.

  “Just fuckin’ with you, Vinnie. You got to learn to relax, especially at this hour.”

  “I get up at five every day—mornings are the best part of the day.”

  “I knew it,” said Beau, shaking his head sadly. “You’re a morning person, that’s your problem. You know what the best time of the day is, Vinnie? Night—that’s the best part of the day.”

  “That’s Homicide. As soon as the body goes down, you get up.”

  “Never should’ve left Narcotics.”

  “Maybe we could ask Frank Alessi and Freddie Wang to kill each other after dinner.”

  “Then I’d be a happy man.”

  A uniformed officer walked over and mumbled a few words to Beau before handing him a phone. Beau listened for a few seconds, then put his hand over the mouthpiece.

  “How long you think we gonna be here?” he asked Vincent.

  “Depends when the ME shows up, as usual. Why?”

  “We got another appointment,” replied Beau. He moved his hand and spoke rapidly into the phone. “Fine. Stay there, and we’ll meet you in an hour. That’s right, an hour. And I want you to make a phone call for me.” He grabbed a card from his wallet, read the number, and hung up, handing the phone back to the uniform.

  “Who was that?” asked Vincent.

  “Johnson,” replied Beau. “Remember how that lady producer said the studio put the crew in corporate housing at Golden Gateway Apartments?”

  “What about it?”

  “The signed warrant came back, and Johnson tossed the dead guy’s room.”

  “He found something?” asked Vincent, disbelief evident in his tone. Neither of them expected anything to come from the search, a bullshit favor for a nonexistent case.

  “About ten kilos of heroin.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Never should have left Narcotics,” said Beau.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’m worried about a bear.”

  The man behind the counter looked skeptical. Over the years Cape had found that guys who worked in gun shops were like that—it took a while to earn their trust. All the political heat over the second amendment had made them paranoid. Cape might have been an ATF agent or government official posing as a customer, trying to catch them using the wrong registration forms or screwing up the background check. Cape hadn’t bought a new gun in a long time, and apparently he didn’t look like a serious hunter.

  “You hunting moose or caribou?” asked the man, narrowing his eyes.

  Cape noticed the man’s name tag. “Well, Bill, I was thinking about hunting some moose, and I’m afraid a bear might attack me.”

  “Where you gonna find bear?”

  “Alaska,” said Cape. He’d checked Google earlier.

  Bill visibly relaxed. He took a step back from the counter.

  “That was a trick question, wasn’t it?” asked Cape.

  “Ain’t no moose ’round here,” said Bill conspiratorially. “What kinda firearm you want?” He swept his arm across the glass counter.

  Every kind of handgun imaginable sat beneath the glass, arranged by manufacturer. Behind him, racks holding rifles and shotguns three and four deep ran the length of the thirty-foot wall of the store. Mounted directly behind Bill, just above the gun racks, was a plaque reading Remember the Alamo. This struck Cape as somewhat out of place in California. He looked around the store and decided that Davy Crockett would still be alive today if he’d had this many guns.

  “Actually, I’m all set in the firearms department,” said Cape. “I’m looking for more of a deterrent.”

  Bill’s disappointment showed. “Deterrent?” He made a face that suggested the word tasted bad.

  “Yeah, I understand the Department of Fish and Game doesn’t want you to shoot a bear unless you absolutely have to. You know, only in self-defense, like if the bear comes at you suddenly while you’re stalking the moose. They’d rather you scared it away.”

  Bill nodded sullenly, obviously displeased that a supposedly pro-hunting group like Fish and Game would discourage anyone from shooting anything. He squatted suddenly, disappearing for a moment behind the counter. When he emerged, he held a narrow canister in his right hand that looked like shaving cream.

  “Wear this on your belt.” He held it for Cape to examine.

  Cape read the label out loud. “Bear Be Gone. Effective to almost thirty feet. One-time use only.” He looked up at Bill. “What is it?”

  “Concentrated pepper spray,” said Bill. “Same as the police use, only in a bigger dose. Only get one shot, though.”

  �
��I’m hoping I won’t need one,” said Cape. “But I’ll take it, just in case.”

  Bill leaned over the counter and dropped his voice. “You want my advice, you shoot that bear. Put him down.”

  Cape nodded solemnly as he took the canister. “Remember the Alamo.”

  “Fuckin-A.”

  Cape’s phone started ringing as he walked back to his car. The theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly played itself out in high-pitched electronic tones until he thumbed the right button. The phone had come preloaded with the ringtone and he kind of liked it, though he wasn’t crazy about cell phones. Though he had to admit it was useful, carrying the phone sometimes made him feel like he was on a leash. He’d only given his number to four people. Beau was one of them.

  Ten minutes later he was driving across the Oakland Bay Bridge, wishing he’d pulled the top down. High taxes and restrictive city ordinances had chased all the gun shops out of San Francisco, which forced Cape to drive to San Leandro, where it was hot as hell, and the air conditioning in his car hadn’t worked in years. But as he passed the sign reading “Welcome to San Francisco” at the midpoint of the bridge, Cape felt the vestige of the morning fog and a chill from across the water.

  He pulled onto the first exit ramp and headed downtown, contemplating what Beau had told him and wondering how to tell his client something that she didn’t want to hear.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “He’s here.”

  The Major nodded in acknowledgement after a moment’s hesitation. He’d also heard the door chimes but took an extra beat to process what Ursa had said. Though Ursa spoke only Russian, his ruined nose and throat made his voice a guttural rumble that even the NSA couldn’t decipher.

  “Get him,” said the Major.

  Ursa shambled through the door of the back office into the front of the store. “Medical Supplies” was stenciled neatly across the plate glass window, partially obscured by the silhouette of a man holding a box. Ursa made his way past an obstacle course of wheelchairs, canes, and metal walkers, ignoring their guest until he’d latched the front door and flipped a Closed sign so it faced the street. He looked right and left out the window but the block was quiet, a few parked cars and little traffic.