He knew that Elizabeth Waring was not his ally and that pretending she cared about him was a police interrogation tactic she'd probably been taught in some training class. She wanted an informant, and to recruit him she needed him in trouble and desperate. She had delivered the warning about the hit team to add to the growing pile of evidence that he was not likely to make it through this without help. But that did not negate the fact that she was the only person in this hemisphere who actually preferred that he live rather than die. If he listened to her next pitch, maybe he would hear something he could use. And no matter what, she worked for the most powerful entity in this game.
He got off the freeway at Laurel Canyon Boulevard and drove along Ventura Boulevard to Lankershim, turned left and then right to go up the steep hill to the Universal Studios complex. He stopped his car on the circle at the front entrance to the Sheraton Universal Hotel, hurried inside, picked up a courtesy phone, and asked for her room.
"Hello?" she said.
"Come and meet me in the lobby. I'll be here for five minutes. If I see anything that makes me uncomfortable, I'm gone."
"Can you give me ten minutes to brush my hair?"
"Do it in the elevator." He hung up and went to sit in a velvet chair in an arrangement near the front entrance. The hotel lobby was all white and the floor yellow with black lines in geometric shapes. He scanned, looking at the people.
In the old days he could have picked out any FBI agents in something under two seconds. On jobs like this they would have been all male, and the ones who weren't white would have looked like black members of an all-star football team. Now FBI agents didn't look one particular way. He had to watch every human being within view, and if one of them let his eyes rest on Schaeffer for more than an instant, he became a possible enemy. The surveillance systems in public places like hotels should be good enough so they didn't even have to be here to see everything he did. He saw several sets of parents with kids, a couple dressed like they were on their way to the tennis courts, a group of young women who looked like the survivors of a bachelorette party.
He looked at his watch. Three minutes had passed. He turned his attention to the doors and the corridors extending out of the lobby in various directions. He had to be sure that if one of his ways out got suddenly blocked, the others were open. Then he heard a bell and an elevator door slid open.
Waring's head was up and her eyes were scanning as she stepped out. She walked toward him, and he put his arm around her waist and guided her across the lobby to the row of glass doors in front. She knew he was pressing close to her so federal officers couldn't shoot him without the risk of hitting her so she submitted to it.
They stayed together all the way to his car, and he drove off with her. As they coasted down the long hill to Lankershim Boulevard and then over the overpass to Ventura Boulevard, they were silent, each watching for signs that the other's friends or enemies were following. Finally he said, "We can talk. I don't care if you're wearing a wire."
"Thank you. I wasn't looking forward to being groped. I'm not wearing a wire." She paused. "I thought since you came for me so quickly, you might have had some kind of change of heart."
"Not exactly. I thought that you deserved a tidbit for trying to warn me. I was with Sam Lonzio the night that Chickie Salateri died."
"Sam Lonzio the Lazaretti underboss in New York?"
"Yeah. Salateri was sent out to Los Angeles to do some work for the Lazarettis."
"I remember the case. Somebody reported him missing and the Los Angeles police looked for him for over a year."
"When it's somebody like him, the cops have a way of looking where it's easy to look, not where the body's likely to be."
"So you know what happened."
"That night I was in L.A. because I had to do a job somewhere else, and I wanted to be far away from it. So I had checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, rented a car, taken a plane somewhere else, done the job, and come back. I wasn't tired, so I went out for the evening. I went to a restaurant right near where Laurel Canyon ends on Sunset Boulevard and ordered a late dinner. In walks Sam Lonzio. He sees me and comes to my table. He said, 'Can I sit with you?' I said, 'Sam. I'm here in case somebody ever asks me where I was tonight. Do you want me to say I was with you?'
"He said, 'You can't do that here anyway. Tony Lazaretti has a half interest in the place. If you eat here, you'll look like a criminal. But I've got a good alibi, and you can share it.'
"I said, 'What is it?'
"'Tonight I'm on a cruise ship that stops in Ensenada. It left San Pedro already, but there's a guy on it in my cabin using my name. If I need an alibi, I show up in Ensenada anytime before the boat leaves for Cabo, and he goes home. The crew says Mr. Lonzio's been with us for the whole cruise. I've also got a cabin in the name Don Rustin. You can be him.'
"'That's a lot of trouble.' I didn't bother to tell him that good alibis are simple. He had his own theory. But I said, 'What is it you're going to do that's such a big deal?'
"'I've got to take out Chickie Salateri.'
"'Why?'
"'He's been dating one of the Lazaretti daughters. You know, Carmine's granddaughter, Catherine. She lives out here in L.A. She was married at one time to Bobby Molto, but he couldn't ever keep it in his pants, and he didn't understand why you can't cheat on a boss's child, so she got an annulment. That was, like, five, six years ago. So lately she's dating Chickie Salateri. Only she comes home from a shopping trip one afternoon, and there's Salateri with one of those little digital cameras, taking pictures. He's taking shots of the clothes in her closet, has her bank statements out on her desk and takes shots of those. She sees him, but tiptoes back outside and comes back in making a lot of noise. He doesn't know she knows, just hides the camera in his coat. When he goes to the head, she checks the camera. There are shots of her jewelry all laid out in the little velvet drawers from her jewelry case.'
"'Why was he bothering with all that?'
"'At first we all thought he must be working for the IRS. You know-helping them say that if she had five or six million in jewelry and didn't work, where did it come from? They do that, the feds. They put your children in a bind so you can stew about it until you want to kill yourself. But Carmine Lazaretti didn't get to be old by ignoring that light coming along the train tracks toward him. He sent people from New York that Chickie didn't know, and they watched him and asked around. They found out he's been casing the house for a robbery. He's got a crew, and he's got an out-of-state fence for everything in the house. He's even hired a woman who looks a little bit like Catherine to use cloned credit cards and IDs to clean Catherine out.'
"'So you think he's planning to kill Catherine too.'
"'All of this stuff takes a lot of time to pull off. If she's dead, he's got a lot.'
"'So you're killing him tonight?'
"'They said to do it, but if I do it after he gets her, I'm dead too. Now that I see you're in town, it's like a sign from God.'
"'You want a minute to think that through again?'
"'You know what I mean. You can do it for me.'
"'Not interested.'
"'Look,' he said. 'I've killed two people in my whole life. One was a son of a bitch in Brooklyn who owned a pawnshop. Somebody's niece noticed it was suddenly full of stuff that had been stolen in our neighborhood. One of the Lazaretti soldiers took people past the front window for a week or so, and they identified what was theirs. So I got sent to handle it. The guy wasn't even armed. He just sat behind his desk and I shot him in the chest. The other one I don't want to talk about. I've got no experience. I'll give you fifteen grand to go with me and act as a consultant. I'll do all the shooting. Then we'll drive down and catch the cruise. Those ships are full of pairs of women who pay good money just to meet somebody like us, dance and drink a little, and get laid. They say a weekend like that is just the thing. It sets them right up and they're good for a month.'