As I lay in my bed listening to Alexa's rhythmic breathing I suddenly realized that I was having a midlife crisis. I was nearing the end of my police career and had very little set aside. As a child, my life had only been about me. I was the most important part of every equation. As I got older, I felt smaller and smaller inside my surroundings. This whole movie deal seemed to have kicked these hidden insecurities into overdrive. Now I tried to put things into a better perspective.
Sure, it would be nice to be wealthy, to drive a Carrera and have a huge house with a city view. But I knew if I wanted to have true happiness, I needed to rein all that bullshit in. It just wasn't me. At least not anymore. I had built this castle in exactly the right place.
It wasn't on Mount Olympus. It was in Venice Beach, California. That was my reality. And you know what? That reality was pretty damn good.
There were no angels singing, but I got to hold one in my arms.
As I fell asleep I was thinking not many guys got to do that.
Chapter 48.
Alexa was out of the house early. I left a few minutes behind her so I could make it to Latimer Commodities Exchange by seven fifteen. I also wanted to start the spade and shovel work on Diego San Diego's background.
I was on the freeway by six forty-five, heading into town, when I finally got through to Barry Matthews, my contact on the white-collar squad who handled business and financial crime. He swung on better vines inside of L. A.'s complex financial jungle. I thought if anyone could pierce Diego's aversion to the press and get me some dirt, Barry was the one.
Once he was on the line I said, "I need a deep background check, state and federal, on Diego San Diego." I told him what little information I'd found horse breeder, polo player, commodities broker, film financier. "Also, anything you can give me on his financial and banking affairs."
"Point me in a direction. What, exactly, are you looking for?"
"I think there's a decent chance he used to be a Colombian money launderer in the eighties. That hunch is supported by the fact he dealt in easy-to-move, high-value international commerce, like gemstones and gold bullion.
"He might have a connection to a Swiss jewelry company called Farvagny-le-Grand in Geneva. I'd also like you to see if he connects to Thomas Vulcuna, who owned a production company named Eagle's Nest and was supposed to have killed his wife and daughter then shot himself. We cleared it in eighty-one."
"Supposed to have?" Barry said, alert to every nuance.
"I think we got it wrong. San Diego might have had silent dealings with Eagle's Nest. Go back before 1981 and be sure to check with DEA."
"Anybody else?" I could hear him turn a page. For a computer geek, he had some old-school habits.
"Yeah. He has a connection to Stender Sheedy Sr., the managing partner of Sheedy, Devine, and Lipscomb, a white-shoe law firm in Century City. I'd like to know what those two have been doing. Also, there might be a Thayer Dunbar connection as well."
"The oil billionaire?"
"Yeah, and listen, Barry. This is kinda hush-hush. I'd really appreciate it if you didn't farm any of it out."
"What's your timetable?" "ASAP."
"ASAP," he repeated. "What ever happened to WYCGI?"
"Never heard of it. What the hell is WYCGI?"
"Whenever you can get it."
"We'll do that one next time." Then I thanked him and hung up.
The Latimer Commodities Exchange was located on the top floor in an old brick building off Sixth Street in the Jewelry District. Jeb Calloway had signed out another gold brick from the evidence locker and brought the twenty-seven-pound London Good Delivery Bar over himself, along with a police escort to help guard it.
They arrived in a black-and-white and pulled in next to where I was waiting. The uniform carried a heavy canvas satchel with the bar inside, following Jeb and me into the elevator. We rode to the twelfth floor.
Materon Smith met us in the lobby and escorted us down the hall. She was a heavyset African-American woman in her midforties with a friendly face. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
"I got Valentine Rosinski to come in early," she said. "Hes one of the best assayers in L. A."
The lab was large, and filled with an impressive array of equipment. We were greeted at the door by Rosinski, a man with a laurel wreath of gray hair fringing his head. He was wearing a white lab coat and sixty extra pounds.
Jeb put the gold bar on the table and Rosinski studied it carefully. "Is right size for London Good Delivery Bar," he said in a semi-thick Russian accent.
He lifted it, nodded, then set it down on its face and, like Jose Del Cristo, read the Oswald Steel identification trademark on the back. Then, exactly as Jose had, he told us the bar was made pre-1985 and put a nail mark in the gold to test its softness. He weighed it, getting the same four-hundred-troy-ounce reading.
"What tests have been done?"
I looked at my case notes. "An acid test for purity which said the gold was twenty-four karats, and ninety-nine point seven percent pure. Then it was taken to an assay office downtown for an X-ray fluorescence scan, which it also passed."
Rosinski continued to study the bar. "London Good Delivery Bars would be hard to make counterfeit, yah? Very expensive to do this. Top-quality fake today would cost maybe fifty thousand U. S. dollars to produce, because today, you would need to use much real gold to pass our new tests. In 1983, not so much. Back then, they have no neutron activation analysis, no speed-of-sound tests. Weight is always a problem unless you use tungsten."
I said, "I understand that tungsten is very hard to work with because it melts at extremely high temperatures."
He smiled. "When you are stealing gold, a little hard work is not such a bad thing, no?"
"I guess not."
"Since you already do X-ray fluorescence scan, I suggest a neutron activation analysis. It s more thorough, is nondestructive, and will tell what we need to know."
"And the X-ray won't?" Jeb asked.
"If your bar has a one-sixteenth-inch layer of gold on top of a tungsten base, the X-ray will not pass through. This makes it read pure. This neutron analysis is better."
"How long 'til we know?" I asked.
"I can't start until tomorrow because I have other work," Val Rosinski said. "But tomorrow, maybe an hour or two after we open, we know."
We left the gold bar in the same spot where it began its journey-over twenty-five years ago, right here, at the Latimer Commodities Exchange.
It was only a little past eight when I got back into my car. As soon as I did, my Bluetooth beeped. I answered and instantly had Hitch's voice in my ear. He sounded excited.
"Listen, dawg. I just got a strong bite."
"On San Diego?"
"On Jamie Foxx. He wants a meet this morning. A guy from his production company just called me. I'm not sure exactly what Jamie wants to discuss, 'cause his assistant didn't have any details, just that Jamie wants to see me. The agency isn't open yet so I can't call Jerry and get a heads-up. One of my UTA guys musta given him a sniff of this yesterday."
I didn't say anything. I was getting mad.
"Shane?"
"Listen, Hitch, this is supposed to be on the DL, remember? Now you're telling me UTA is out there blabbing it around? Did you leak this to them?"
"No. I haven't told them a word about the gold. But agents are scavengers, man. They root in other people's trash. That's how they go for the gold. Excuse the double metaphor… You can't stop them 'cause it's in their DNA. Of course I told UTA about the old Vulcuna murder-suicide, but you already knew I did that. If they called Jamie, that's probably all they told him about." I didn't answer that either. "Shane, are you there?"
"Yeah."