Los Angeles
January 2000
The motorcycles went into the garage on the back end of Julian’s lot. A gun-metal gray Saab came out. It seemed a little understated for this crew, but then maybe understated is exactly what you need sometimes.
We all got in the car. Julian driving, Ramona shotgun, me in the back with Gunnar and Lucy. Gunnar took the middle, keeping himself between me and Lucy, no doubt. An undercurrent I was already aware of, no matter that they were all six or seven years older than me, that he should have been looking at me like I was nothing more than a lost child.
It was late afternoon. The sun hanging over the ocean. We rode back toward Beverly Hills, but this time we cut north, heading up Laurel Canyon Boulevard, into the Hollywood Hills. The road twisted and turned as we went higher and higher. There were houses on either side of the road. Big money boxes. Bold statements of modern architecture. Some of them hanging off the edges of the cliffs, daring an earthquake to tip them over into the canyon below.
We passed Mulholland Drive, then a private gated road with a smartly dressed guard sitting in his little white guardhouse. Up another hairpin turn, then another. Julian pulled the car over onto the shoulder. Everyone got out. They seemed to know their parts in the play, exactly what they were supposed to be doing at every moment. Julian took a good look around, making sure we were out of anyone else’s direct sight. He went right up to the edge of the gravel shoulder, where there was a dense growth of sage and chaparral and other hostile-looking plant life, all leading down into the canyon. Gunnar joined him on the edge. He gave Julian a quick hug, turned to give the rest of us a wave, and then disappeared into the brush.
Ramona scanned the canyon below us with a pair of binoculars. Julian produced a cell phone. While the two of them kept watching Gunnar’s progress down the canyon, Lucy popped open the trunk.
“Here,” she said, handing me the jack. “Make yourself useful.”
I gestured to the wheels. Which one?
“Doesn’t matter. Take your pick.”
The right rear tire seemed to be on smooth level ground, so I hooked up the jack back there, put the tire iron in the slot, and started cranking. It was a solid idea, I realized. If somebody drove by, it would look perfectly natural for us to be here. We could even finish up and drive away if we really needed to, and then come back later.
“Our man’s upstairs,” Ramona said. “I don’t see the bodyguard.”
She kept watching. Julian stayed ready with the phone. I was ready to look busy with the tire if I heard a car coming up the road. Lucy was pacing now, muttering to herself. She looked more nervous than the rest of us put together.
Finally, the phone made a low buzzing sound and seemed to jump in Julian’s hand. He pushed a button and listened.
“We’re trying to locate the bodyguard,” he said. “Just hang tight.”
Ramona kept peering through the binoculars, moving them back and forth slowly.
“There,” she finally said. “The guard’s upstairs now.”
I looked down the canyon and saw a residential road, about a quarter mile below us. On the far side of that road was another large ultramodern house, one of the most impressive of all. Nothing but shining metal and glass. The yard was gravel and Japanese topiary. A long black sedan sat in the horseshoe driveway, partly eclipsing the front door.
As I kept watching, I saw a figure crossing the road, moving quickly but not frantically. Hurrying but not rushing. He went around the car and stopped directly in front of the door.
“You’re clear,” Julian said into the phone.
Gunnar opened the door, stepped inside, and then closed the door behind him.
That’s when I heard a car coming up the road. I tapped on the back of the trunk to alert the others. They hid the binoculars and the phone while I went around to the side of the car, as if inspecting the tire.
A little red Porsche rounded the curve, winding through its gears. I saw sunglasses, blond hair, and then the car was gone. The driver didn’t even slow down.
Ramona went back to the binoculars.
“He’s on his own now,” she said. “Do you see anything?”
“No,” Julian said. “I don’t see anybody. Anywhere.”
“Fuck fuck fuck.”
“He’s okay,” Julian said. “You know he’s okay.”
“I’m sure that prick has a gun in the house.”
“Gunnar’s okay.”
“I need a drink.”
“That won’t help.”
“It won’t help you.”
“Guys, please,” Lucy said to both of them. “Just shut up for a minute, okay?”
“He’s okay,” Julian said. “Everybody should stop freaking out here.”
“I said shut up!”
That got everyone quiet for the next few minutes. I could only wonder how these guys could be the absolute best if they acted this way all the time. Lucy took the binoculars away from Ramona and peered down at the house. Julian kept scanning the landscape, looking at the other houses in the distance, no doubt wondering when someone would finally notice us all standing up here.
Then his phone buzzed again. He looked at it without answering it.
“He’s in,” he said. “He’s okay.”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Ramona said.
She pulled Lucy away from the edge and opened the back door for her. I pulled the jack off and put it in the trunk. A few seconds later, we were all in the car and Julian was spraying gravel as he pulled onto the road.
“Take it easy,” Ramona said. “Don’t get us killed, eh?”
“I hate this part so much,” Lucy said. “We should all stay together. All the time.”
“This is the only way,” Julian said. “He’ll be fine.”
“What time is it now?” Ramona said, looking at her watch.
“We’ve got a few hours to kill,” Julian said. “Plenty of time to go get dressed.”
“What about him?” Ramona said, looking over the seat at me.
“Yeah, we’ve got time for that, too,” he said. “Michael, what do you say we go do a little shopping?”
____________________
I still didn’t know how this was supposed to work. Gunnar had just sneaked into somebody’s house, and the rest of us had apparently just abandoned him there. To go shopping.
Now, if it sounds like these guys were just leading me around by the nose, you’ve got to understand… I mean, yes, the Ghost had drilled the rules into my head. You’re the specialist. Make sure you understand exactly what’s going on before you commit to anything. If it doesn’t feel right, you walk away. At the same time, he also told me that these guys on the other side of the white pager were as good as it gets. Unorthodox, yes, but money in the bank. So what was I supposed to do here? Right or wrong, I decided to let it play out. At least for the time being.
So there we were in Beverly Hills. Julian parked the car on Rodeo Drive, and they steered me into the first overpriced clothing store they could find.
“All right, let’s do this right,” Julian said. “Just trash him up and we’ll get out of here.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but it didn’t take long for me to find out. The two women dragged me off to the fashion suits and started holding them up to me like I was a dress-up doll. Lucy picked out a suit that was, I swear to God, the brightest red you could ever find in the universe of clothing.
“Hello?” Ramona said. “Black?”
“Black is too easy,” Lucy said. “Use your imagination.”
“He’ll look like Santa Claus, babe. That’s not quite the effect we’re going for.”
“He won’t look like Santa Claus, he’ll look like Satan. He’ll look absolutely evil.”
“We don’t have all day,” Julian said. “Just go with the black suit, okay? Lucy, go pick out a red shirt if you want.”
So that’s how I ended up with the European-cut black suit and skintight red shirt. No collar. Two gold chains. Thin leather black belt. Black leather shoes with no socks. There was no time to have the suit tailored, so it hung off of me a little bit. But Julian said that was just fine. He said it added to the effect.
He paid for the clothes, and I’ll just say one thing about that. Forget being a professional safecracker. Just open a clothing store in Beverly Hills. The working conditions are a lot better, and you’ll make a lot more money.
Then they hustled me over to a hair salon and asked one of the stylists to give me a quick once-over. He looked at me and my do-it-yourself haircut and said I was unsalvageable. Julian laid a wad of twenties on him, and he suddenly got a little more motivated.
“Okay, last thing,” Julian said when we were back on the sidewalk. He took my cheap sunglasses off and threw them into a garbage barrel. Then we went into a fashion “eyewear” store, and the women had their second fight of the afternoon, this time over my new sunglasses. At least I had served to distract them for a while from poor Gunnar stuck in that house in the canyon.
Finally, with a new pair of ridiculously priced gold-rimmed sunglasses over my eyes, they all looked at me and had me turn around a couple of times. I was pronounced acceptable. We got in the car and took off back to the house in Santa Monica.
I sat in a chair feeling disoriented and quite freaked out actually while the rest of the gang went off to get dressed. Here’s where I wish I could talk, I thought to myself. Yeah, here’s where talking would be especially useful. So would getting up and walking out the door, for that matter.
Julian came down the stairs, looking even more dressed to kill than I was. His fashion suit was the color of freshly poured cream. He had a purple silk shirt with an actual collar, and the whole outfit looked like it had been especially created and tucked and tailored just for him. He had a bottle of cologne with him. He put some on his hands and slapped my cheeks.
“You’re looking sharp,” he said. “You’re looking like you belong in this town.”
He washed his hands in the kitchen sink. Then he poured a couple of glasses of red wine and handed me one. He didn’t sit down. He went to the window, looked outside, went to the kitchen, and looked at the clock. Then he went back to the window.
Another half hour passed. Finally, both of the women came down together, their high heels clicking on the stairs. Ramona was in black, Lucy in a dark shimmering burgundy. Skintight, lots of leg, lots of chest. Hair pinned up. Lipstick and long dark eyelashes. Eye shadow almost glowing. Lucy looked especially transformed with all the makeup. The unevenness of her eyes was even more pronounced now, but somehow it made her bone-chillingly beautiful.
Julian looked at them and smiled. “What do you think?” he said to me. “Do they pass?”
“How long has it been?” Lucy said. “Gunnar must be going crazy by now.”
“You know how he is,” Julian said. “He’s the Zen master.”
“Let’s just go. I can’t stand waiting.”
We all piled back into the Saab. It was dark now. A cool Thursday night in January in Los Angeles. We rolled down Santa Monica Boulevard again. The traffic was even heavier now. The weekend had already begun, or so it would seem.
Julian turned north and took us right into the heart of Hollywood. A right on Sunset Boulevard, past nightclub after nightclub, all with long lines out front. Eventually, he pulled into a parking lot, just past Vine Street. He chose a spot right near the street and parked nose facing out.
“Okay,” he said. “Game faces on. Michael? Just act bored. That’s all you have to do.”
We got out of the car. Like all the other clubs on Sunset Boulevard, this one had a long line of people waiting to get in. Everybody dressed to kill. Julian led us right to the front of the line. There was a bouncer standing there, a prototypically cast-iron man bulging out of his shirt. He took one look at Julian, gave him a little nod, opened the ropes, and let him in. He gave Ramona and Lucy the same little nod. I got a quick once-over, but he didn’t stop me. I took a look back at the people waiting in line as we walked past them. Nobody seemed especially happy to see us waltz through, but nobody looked ready to start a riot over it, either.
As soon as we got inside, my ears were assaulted by the music. The relentless, pounding beat you could feel right up your legs, into your gut. The lights were flashing from every direction. Spotlights and lasers, all in perfect time with the beat of the music. We were still twenty feet from the dance floor, but Julian had his hands up in the air already. He edged his way through the crowd to the back corner of the room, where a tight spiral staircase led up to the balcony level. There was another bouncer at the top of the stairs. Like the first one, he gave Julian a nod and let us go past.
Most of the tables up here on the balcony were already taken. The rich and famous and beautiful. Or so I gathered. They didn’t look any different to me than the people downstairs. Julian went to the corner table, in its own little cage like one of those private boxes in an old theater. He unhooked the rope and let us into the cage. There was just enough room for the four of us.
A hundred people were all dancing right below us, as if for our entertainment. The lights kept painting everything red then yellow then blue then green. I sat there, drinking it all in. Wondering what the hell was going on. Wondering how the hell this had anything to do with Gunnar sneaking inside that house up in the canyons.
“Drinks, ladies? Michael?”
Ramona and Lucy wanted champagne to start off the evening. I shrugged my shoulders. Champagne, whatever. I’m fine.
There was a little button set into the frame of the cage. Julian pressed it, and about five seconds later, a woman dressed in what looked like a black wetsuit unzipped halfway down her chest came calling.
Julian ordered a bottle of Cristal, and she was gone. Two minutes later, she came back with a bottle, an ice bucket, and four champagne flutes. She popped the bottle and poured. Then it was time for the toast. Julian looked into Ramona’s eyes and said five words.
“A la Mano de Dios.”
We all drank to that. Then Julian settled back into his chair and watched the dancing crowd, moving his shoulders to the beat. Finally, a dark figure appeared and leaned into our cage.
“So the party can begin now!”
He was tall and thin. His suit was dark gray with pinstripes. White shirt with the top three buttons undone. His hair was tied back in a tight ponytail. Somewhere in the ocean, a shark was missing its cold eyes because this man had them.
Julian stood up, shook the man’s hand and did the half-body hug. The man kissed Ramona’s hand, then went for Lucy’s. Then he got to me.
“Do I have the pleasure of finally meeting your friend?”
“Indeed you do. Wesley, this is Mikhail. All the way from Moscow.”
“I’m honored,” he said. “I hope you had a good trip.”
“He doesn’t speak any English,” Julian said. “He refuses to learn even a single word.”
That seemed to impress the man profoundly. “I hope you’ll enjoy the hospitality of my club tonight,” he said, shaking my hand. “Even though I realize you have no idea what the fuck I’m saying.”
He laughed at his own joke. Then he whispered something into Julian’s ear. Then he was gone.
“You made an impression,” Julian said to me. “He thinks you’re beautiful, too.”
“Americans are suckers for Russians,” Ramona said.
Just roll with it, I thought. For once, I’m glad I can’t say the wrong thing.
Julian took a sip of champagne, then looked at his watch.
“Now that we know our man Wesley is on the premises…”
“Let’s go,” Lucy said, standing up and taking my hand. “You and me.”
Julian and Ramona stayed in their seats. As I stood up, I spotted our host on the other side of the balcony, putting the power schmooze on another table. I nodded toward him, and Julian gave me a little smile.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s the man we’re taking down tonight.”