Young waits for the sun to go down.
Has his troops assembled in the parking lot of the Ritz and they all have their assignments. He's edgy as a mother duck because if he pulls this off tonight it's the biggest organized crime roundup since the Appalachia raid. He has names, records, aliases, safe houses. He knows where the weapons are, what they are, who they belong to. He makes half these busts, he can start a ball rolling across the whole country. Start winding ROC up in Arizona, Texas, Kentucky, West Virginia, New York.
He's just waiting for dark.
Jimenez is likewise stoked. Got him his share of the list, his share of the collars, because for once the Feds are playing team ball. So he has his guys posted all over So-Cal. Got a freakin' battalion ready to hit in L.A., another squad down here in Orange County, some more troops in San Diego. Just waiting for the sun to go down.
Sandra Hansen, she's sitting in the room at the Ritz, guzzling Diet Cokes like they could settle her nerves. She won't get the satisfaction of going on the busts. She can't ever even admit that Cal Fire funded half this investigation. All she can do is sit by the phone and hope that it goes down right, that something doesn't come along to fuck it up.
Because it's a tricky deal.
The bust's tonight.
Fifty million dollars' payment in the morning.
Then her guy starts filling them in, in exchange for complete and total immunity for anything except a capital offense. The whole deal signed off on by Claims, Mahogany Row and an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies.
So tonight's a big night.
She looks out the window at the. beautiful stretch of beach and one of those incredible red California sunsets and all she wishes is that it would be morning.
Nicky's gazing at the sunset, too.
Lev and Dani behind him on the lawn like lengthening shadows.
"It is as if we're in the cell again," Nicky says. "The three of us in a corner against the world. We are fighting for our lives. New lives. Years ago in that hell I promised you new lives. I promised you Paradise. Tomorrow – if we do what we have to do tonight – we will have those new lives.
"We are just a few steps from safety. Tonight will tell the story."
Just a few steps from safety, but all the plans are made.
It will be a bloody night.
It already has been. Jimmy Dansky and Jack Wade dead in a fiery pas de deux.
And the sister.
There can be no mistakes this time, which is why he's ordered Lev to do it. Lev will make no mistakes.
All other problems will disappear.
And I am a shifting cloud in a twilight sky.