MACK DROVE INTO the park in his older model navy-blue Ford Ranger. He, too, cruised through once, getting the lay of the land, and then drove over to us. He parked his car like cops tend to do, driver’s window to driver’s window, before he shut it down. Over at that same entrance, still a long way off, my nephew Bruno came into the park on foot, moving along the tree line beside the asphalt drive.
Mack’s window whirred down. “Holy shit, Bruno, what the hell happened to your face? That didn’t happen at the jail. You didn’t look that bad.” He leaned forward in his seat to see Marie. “Ah, man, what happened to you two?”
“We were up at the hotel in the room when these three thugs burst in. They jumped me and attacked Marie.”
Mack tried to look around me to get a better look at Marie. “She okay? You okay, Marie?”
She waved. “I’m fine.”
“Who were they? I told you not ta mess with Don Brodie. Man, he’s bad news. They’re already calling him ‘Don the Don.’”
“Mack, they were deputies. All three of ’em were from a special team.”
His eyes went large, his mouth dropped open. “Are you shittin’ me? How do you know? Did they identify themselves?”
“No. When the leader got up close and personal with my wife, she got a look at his star clipped to his shoulder holster.”
“Sons a bitches. Dirty-assed, corrupt cops. What’d they want?”
“They want Noble.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He’s in the can for the rest of … Oh, no, no, no, they wanna bust him out, don’t they?”
“Yeah. You seen this?”
Marie handed me a copy of A Noble Sacrifice, and I handed it to Mack through the windows.
The way I handed the book to him, the first thing he saw was the back cover. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch, is that you, Bruno? You were cute as the dickens, weren’t you? What happened, man, you turned ugly. Sorry, Marie, no offense.” He held the book picture up for comparison.
“None taken,” she said.
“Hey, I’m sittin’ right here.”
He turned the book around, looked it over. “Your brother wrote a book?” He opened it and thumbed through it.
“Yeah, you didn’t know about it?”
“Nope.”
“Mack, it’s on the LA Times bestseller list for nonfiction.”
He held up the book. “No way can this be nonfiction, not if your brother wrote it. And I probably missed it because I don’t read much, and I’ve been on graves until just recently.”
I liked Mack a lot, more so than my brother, but his disparaging remark cut me close to the quick, and I suppressed the urge to say something rude. I said nothing instead.
“Besides,” Mack said, “the name Johnson’s like Jones and Smith. And look, he used Johnny as a first name. I wouldn’t have recognized the name even if I were a big reader.” Mack lost his smile. “You’re not gonna bust Noble out, are you, Bruno?”
My nephew caught up to us and got in the backseat without being asked.
“Johnny Mack,” I said, “this is my nephew, Bruno Johnson.”
“The hell you say.” He started his car and jerked the gearshift in reverse. Then he backed up, got out, and came around to the passenger side. I didn’t know his intent and jumped out of the car.
Mack opened Bruno’s door and stuck out his hand. “I’ll be a son of a bitch, another Bruno Johnson, ain’t that somethin’?”
My nephew shook hands with him. Bruno didn’t smile.
“That’s right,” I said. “And he’s an intern over at Lennox Station.”
Mack took a step back. “Well, I’ll be damned. I got a good friend works Lennox, Pete Sommers.”
Bruno slid out of the backseat displaying a rare smile. “Really? You know Lieutenant Sommers?”
“Yep, got some shit on him, too, so if he ever gives you a hard time, tell him you know all about that shift-run to Vegas. He’ll shit his pants.”
Marie got out and stood with us, her smile not as bright as usual. She carried what Blue Suit did to her on her shoulders like a smothering weight.
Mack sobered. “Sorry to hear about your kids. We’ll get ’em back. You have the great Bruno the Bad Boy Johnson on your team, you can’t lose.”
I took a step closer. “Mack, you’re not in this. You can’t be.”
“Don’t start up on that tired old tune. It won’t do you any good, and you know that. Let’s get on past it and get this thing goin’, so Bruno junior here can get his kids back.”
“I’m not a junior.”
“I know that, but hey, you could do worse, kid.”
“I don’t think he feels that way,” I said. “Come on, we can talk about all that mess later. We need to get Noble out.”
Mack nodded, “First tell me what you got goin’ with Don Brodie.”
“He’s the one who has the two children.”
Mack’s expression turned grave. “You sure?”
“It’s the LACF and D that has them,” my nephew said.
“Shit.” Mack turned to my nephew. “How do you know? Are you sure?”
“Lieutenant Sommers told me.”
“Who are they?” Marie asked.
Mack said, “Los Angeles Consolidated Freight and Design. It’s a cocaine distribution network, pure and simple, with a bullshit name. They’re just trying to make a Gucci purse out of a pig’s ear. That name’s their cover, their brand. On the street, they call ’em the Coffin Dancers, which is more appropriate with the way they deal with malcontents, competition, and people who get in their way. They’re low profile, ghosts, until they need to take care of business and put someone in the ground. They know how to drop bodies without witnesses or physical evidence. At least so far. One day the midlevel crook tryin’ to move in on the business is there, the next he’s gone and no one knows what happened to him. It’s a missing person case without the body.
“They’re bad news, Bruno. They run all the coke in LA. There’s a joint task force; LASD, LAPD, State DOJ, and the FBI, are up and running with fifty investigators working on this group exclusively for the last eighteen months. Wire taps, pin registers, the works, and they never seem to get a handle on ’em, not so much as a foothold. This group is that good. The task force even has a mobile command post they use full time and move around as needed.” Mack looked back at me. “This is serious shit. Every time they think they’ve cut off the head of the snake, the snake grows a new one, comes right back stronger than before.”
“And this guy Don Brodie?”
“He’s just recently been identified, new info within the last couple of weeks. Now they’re thinkin’ that he calls all the shots. I’m surprised Sommers even let that out. I’m surprised Sommers even knows about it. The task force only just got a whiff of this guy Brodie, and that was nothing but luck, buddy boy. They got him through GPS on an associate’s car. And if Brodie’s half as bad as the talk on the street, then you better watch your back. Seriously.”
“What kind of background does he have? Where did he rise up, what neighborhood?” I asked.
“That’s just it, the guy’s a ghost, just like his organization. They have ten investigators on Brodie, just on him, ten of their best. He rarely leaves that bungalow in Beverly Hills. He eats room service and, twice a week, he has a high-dollar escort come visit, a redhead each time. They got his prints and he comes back with nothin’, not so much as a birth certificate, not a piece of property in his name, no relation to any corporations or shell companies, no family, I mean zilch.”
“That’s not possible,” I said. “Not with today’s information highway.”
“I know.”
“You get a look at him?”
“No. Wong’s on the task force, on the FBI contingent, and we stay in touch. This guy Brodie looks like some kind of nerd. I seen a photo. He wears glasses and sweaters like he’s some kind of yuppie trapped in the seventies. He has twenty-four-seven security all around his bungalow, must cost a fortune.”
“If he doesn’t use a phone, get around the money or dope, they’re never gonna get him.”
“That’s right. Why does the LAFC and D want your brother out?”
Marie held up the book. “This caused the whole mess. Noble wrote about a dope deal that went down twenty-five years ago. A half ton of coke went missing, and Papa Dee and his lieutenant disappeared with nine million dollars in diamonds.”
Mack gave a long whistle. “Nine million in diamonds. Those are probably worth even more in today’s market.” He paused, shook his head. “I’m not buyin’ the coke, though. Diamonds like that would probably fit in the palm of your hand, a half ton of powder, no way. Someone would’ve found it. That’s a lot of blow.”
My nephew said, “I don’t care about the diamonds or the dope. I just want my kids back.”
We discussed the plan, to spring Noble, set the time, and disbanded. Mack insisted on being involved, and since he worked at the sheriff’s department, I got overruled. We’d use his plan, also against my better judgment. A plan that, on its face, appeared beyond ridiculous. Mostly because it called for me to ride a wheel-chair right into the lion’s den. Mack said for his plan to work we needed only to “pretend you know what you’re doing. It’s just that simple.”
When we left, I let Marie drive, which rarely happened. I had to get back to the book, back to the “Ghettocide” chapter to find out what happened.