“Also correct,” he said.
“Okay, so I’m supposed to believe your names are Victor and Hugo. Who do you guys hang out with, HG and Wells?”
“I do not know any HG and Wells,” he said. “I am Victor’s spiritual adviser.”
“Spiritual adviser,” I said.
“That is correct.”
In the background, I heard Victor say, “Tell … him … the … rest.” Hugo attempted to cover the mouthpiece with his hand but it was a small hand and I could still hear them talking, plain as day.
Hugo said, “He’ll laugh at me.”
Victor said, in a commanding voice, “Tell … him!”
Hugo removed his hand from the mouthpiece and told me he was something, but his voice was so small I had to ask him to repeat himself.
“You’re the what?” I asked.
“Supreme commander of his army.”
“I’m trying to think of something funny to say,” I said, “but you’ve rendered me speechless.”
Hugo said he and Victor had amassed an army of little people all over the country. “We have soldiers everywhere,” Hugo said. “Hundreds. Some are captains of industry. Others have access to information surpassing all but the highest pay grades. We’ve even got a little person on the White House kitchen staff,” he boasted.
“What is he,” I asked, “a short order cook?”
He covered up the mouthpiece again and I heard him tell Victor, “Say the word and I’ll kill the bastard. Turn me loose on him, that’s all I ask. I’ll cut out his liver and dance on it.” He was shouting now: “I want to dance on his liver!” Victor took charge of the phone.
“Mr. … Creed … you … have up … set my … gen … eral.”
“C’mon, Victor, cut the crap,” I said. “I need to know if Monica’s alive. If so, I need to kill her. Thanks to you, it’s become a matter of national security.”
“We … should … meet,” he said. “There … is much … ground … to … cover.”
We agreed to meet Tuesday morning at Café Napoli in New York City. “You got an address for me?” I asked.
“Hes … ter and Mul … berry,” he said. “In … Little … Italy.”
“Little Italy,” I said.
“You … see I’m … not … without … a sense … of hu … mor, Mr. Creed.”
“You gonna have soldiers at the restaurant?”
“Eight o’ … clock be … fore the … place … opens up,” he said.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
CHAPTER 31
After completing my conversation with Victor and Hugo, I placed a call to headquarters and told Lou Kelly that the hotel bomb wasn’t a terrorist strike. “It was a personal attack against me by Joe DeMeo,” I said.
I gave him all the embarrassing details regarding my tryst with Jenine, told him about Coop the driver getting killed and about Jenine and Star and how their house had been sterilized.
“This Jenine, she the one you’d pegged for Callie’s body double?”
“She was, and she’d have been perfect.” I didn’t tell him about the birthmark photos I’d taken. It seemed like an intrusion, somehow.
“What you’re saying,” Lou said, “Jenine and her friends, and most of the prostitutes in LA …”
“The pretty ones,” I said.
“All the pretty prostitutes in LA: working for Joe DeMeo?”
“Not working for him as in being pimped, but yeah, he finances their Web sites, has his people monitor the sites and the girls, and pays them for information.”
“Information he can use to buy influence with politicians, maybe the Hollywood elite?”
“Otherwise, how would he know where and when I was planning to meet Jenine?”
“He’d set this up even before your meeting at the cemetery,” Lou said.
“Otherwise his guys would have shot me there.”
“Not the easiest thing to do with Quinn guarding you.”
“Yeah, but DeMeo had nine guys there the night before. DeMeo told me they spotted Augustus. Still, Quinn would have killed a couple, and I might have done the same, but we were out-manned and on Joe’s turf. He could have killed us both. And should have,” I said.
“Why have a big shootout in the middle of the day? Better to use Jenine to bomb you,” Lou said. “He already knew you planned to visit a hooker in Santa Monica.”
“Make it look like a terrorist attack,” I said. “Kill Jenine, let her take the fall. They’ve got her computer, which ties her to me, and they can make it look like she was working with terrorists.”
“And Joe DeMeo gets away with pinning the hotel bombing on the terrorists.”
“Joe’s a slick one,” I said.
We were silent a moment while Lou’s mind worked it. “You tell Darwin about DeMeo yet?”
“I wanted to bounce it off you first.”
“Uh huh. Well, we better let him be the one to tell the world,” Lou said.
“Or not tell them.”
“You think he’ll try to cover it up?”
“I think he’ll keep the blame focused on the terrorists. He left the possibility open with Monica, and this is a logical extension. It’s easy to believe, and it’s good politically; it justifies his job and budget and brings the country together.”
“He’ll have to tell the Feebs something,” Lou said.
“Whatever he tells them, our focus is Monica. After we confirm her death, we’ll give them the hotel bombing and let them take the credit for solving it.”
“That’s worst case scenario,” Lou said. “We might get lucky, find and rescue Monica. Then we give the Feebs all the glory and get a ton of future favors in return.”
I said nothing.
There was a short pause and then he said, “Oh, right. I got it. There will be no rescue.”
I said, “Just so we’re on the same page.”
Lou sighed. “This business,” he said.
“Don’t get me started.”
I told Lou to get some full-timers working on any connection they could find between Baxter Childers and Victor.
“Tell me about Victor,” he said, and I told him what I knew, except for the part about the spy satellite.
Then I asked, “How long you think it’ll take to find a connection?”
Lou laughed. “Five, maybe ten minutes.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
“Donovan, you and I each have our specialties, and for both of us, some jobs are harder than others. When you tell me that on the one hand you’ve got a world-famous surgeon, on the other an angry quadriplegic midget with dreadlocks, and you know there’s a connection and want me to find it—well that’s like asking you how long it would take to kill a hamster with a shotgun.”
“So that’s a yes.”
“It is.”
I told Lou to also contact the LAPD and bomb squad techs and get back to me ASAP. The more we learned about the bomb, the more we’d know about Joe DeMeo and the extent of his power.
“No way the attack on you could have been an inside job?” Lou asked.
“I don’t think so. If our guys, including you, wanted to kill me, it would be a lot easier to just poison me.” I glanced at Quinn and noticed him watching me with amused indifference. “Of course, Quinn knew about both Jenine and the hotel,” I said, “but it’s hard to pin it on him.”
Quinn pricked up his ears.
“Not because he’s my friend,” I said, aiming a smile in his direction, “but because he didn’t know my plans for after the DeMeo meeting. I didn’t tell him about the hotel or Jenine until a few minutes before we got there. And he didn’t know her name or what she looked like until she arrived. None of that really matters, because Augustus could kill me anytime he wants when we’re testing the ADS weapon.”
Quinn nodded and closed his eyes, glad to know he wasn’t a suspect. Now maybe I wouldn’t try to murder him in his sleep.
“One more thing,” Lou said. “They’ve got your cell phone number.”