feds had flipped Diego San Diego and he had started giving up names on his drug buddies.'
'So the feds protected him,' I said.
Barry nodded. 'They didn't want him compromised as a witness before they could get their major drug case to court. He wouldn't make much of a wit if in advance of those cases, he got accused of Vulcunas triple murder.'
I said, 'That's why McKnight and Norris were yanked off the Vulcuna case and it got closed down so abruptly.'
Hitch now took one of the few chairs, opened his journal to a fresh page, and started writing furiously.
'How does a production company operate as a drug laundry?' Alexa asked.
'You invest dirty drug cash in the production company and take ownership in the shows it produces,' Barry explained. 'Then after two network runs, when Eagle's Nest finally sells the shows into syndication, the owners take their money out in distribution and syndication profits. Everybody pays their income taxes and walks away rich and happy.'
'And how does the Dorothy White Foundation fit?' I wondered.
Barry started grinning. 'That's the really neat part. You'll never guess who Dorothy White really is.' He paused for effect.
We all just waited him out and the moment was lost, so he shrugged and pushed ahead.
'Dorothy White is Diego San Diego's sister-in-law. Diego's wife was Maria Elaina San Diego, but her maiden name was Blanca. Blanca is white in Spanish.'
'Duh,' Hitch said.
'Yeah, duh. But you guys walked right past it. Dorothy and Maria Elaina were sisters,' Barry continued. 'Dorothy married Thayer Dunbar. Maria Elaina married Diego San Diego. Their grandfather changed his name to White from Blanca when he emigrated from Colombia in the fifties. It was a very common practice for immigrants to do that.'
It's exactly what Chrissy Sweet had done when she married Karel Sladky. Another weird parallel between those two cases.
Hitch finished writing this and shouted, 'He shoots, he scores!'
Everybody in the room turned to look at him. His red journal was still open in his lap. His left fist up pumping air. The smile on his face quickly faded under the roomful of glares.
'He's excited because that's the main subplot that's been lying beneath the surface since the inciting event that nobody saw until it finally jumped up in the third act and tied these two cases together,' I said.
Now everybody was staring at me.
'Maybe we should explain it later,' Hitch muttered.
'So, Brooks Dunbar is what? Diego San Diego's nephew through marriage?' Alexa asked.
Hitch nodded. He was still grinning.
In the next hour an arrest warrant came through for Diego San Diego and twenty John Does as material witnesses and potential suspects in the hijacking of the Brinks armored truck and the killing of its two guards. A search warrant was written for Diego's ranch located at the end of W. Potrero Road.
Jeb called a Realtor in the West Valley and found a nearby farm that was for sale near San Diego's spread. He made arrangements for us to use it as a staging area.
I was tapping my foot impatiently while I imagined the ranch house emptying out, with the old Colombian drug boss scurrying to his jet for an escape to the town of his birth somewhere in the hills above Cartagena.
We were on the road less than ten minutes after we had the warrants in hand. I was in the back of an armored rescue vehicle with Hitch, Jeb, and a SWAT warrant delivery team.
'We need more SWAT shooters, Skipper,' Hitch said, leaning forward, an intense look on his face.
'We have one unit,' Jeb told him.
'Two SWAT teams would be better,' Hitch pressed. 'Three if possible.'
Jeb wasn't convinced, so Hitch went into verbal overdrive. 'This shoot-out will soon become LAPD campfire lore. The heroics of your takedown will be talked about for years, Skipper. They write folk songs about shit like this. It could end up being called the Battle of Simi Valley or, less favorably, Calloway's Catastrophe.' Then he lowered his voice. 'You want to protect your guys, Skipper. It's better to have extra SWAT and not need it than to need extra SWAT and not have it.'
Jeb was still reluctant, but a sense of caution finally prevailed. He made the call.
'I'd also get the SWAT chopper up over the target with a couple a Colt CAR-15 assault rifles,' I suggested in the clutches of the moment.
We sped along on the 101 freeway. A caravan of five Suburbans full of armed cops in flak vests followed by a SWAT team in a black ARV, with two more on the way.
'We're over twenty-five years late serving this warrant,' Hitch said. 'But the LAPD is on a collision course with justice.'
It sounded like the tagline for our movie.
Chapter 52
The ranch Jeb had found was small and only a quarter of a mile from Rancho San Diego. It was a holdout property that had finally been sunk by California's high state taxes. The few farm buildings were in desperate need of repair. We pulled up the drive and parked next to an old barn with faded, peeling paint.
Hitch and I walked over to the SWAT van and borrowed a couple of Second Chance flak vests, strapping them on over our clothing. Then we each checked out Heckler amp; Koch MP-5 9 mm submachine guns from the weapons box. These full-autos were acknowledged by most cops to be the Rolls-Royce of assault guns.
LAPD SWAT squad teams were commanded by a sergeant and consisted of two five-man elements. There was a hard-entrv team and an intelligence officer who was assigned the job of detailing everything about the target and the location.
The two-man sniper teams consisted of a shooter who carried a long-barreled AR-15 and his spotter, who was assigned the job of identifying potential targets with a scope.
We waited for our two additional SWAT teams, who had just called to say they were ten minutes out.
The first pictures appeared on the intel officer's closed-circuit monitor in the back of our black ARV, sent down to us by a camera in SWAT's hovering air unit. Everyone in the truck huddled around the screen and looked at the shots being beamed down by the chopper, currently flying at five thousand feet over Rancho San Diego. We could hear the faint THUMPA-THUMPA of the rotor blades.
The air unit was broadcasting a front-down view of the huge ranch house. Even on TV, it looked impressive. The two-story California Spanish with its magnificent courtyard sat facing a stable building and horseshoe-shaped paddock.
'Looks like nobody's left yet,' jeb commented, watching the monitor, which showed half a dozen Lincoln Town Cars and Suburbans parked in front of the house, being loaded with bags. Off to one side, next to the big horse barn, I could see the red and white Bell Jet Ranger that had been out at Trancas Canyon this morning.
'You need to keep that bird from leaving,' I told Jeb, who relayed that instruction to our air unit.
Then the two arriving SWAT units rolled up the drive in their new black Armored Rescue Vehicles. The commanding officers of the three SWAT teams began making geographic drawings of the site.
About ten minutes later we reviewed the layout of Rancho San Diego. As we watched the monitor, we could see the red and white chopper was now being loaded with big suitcases.
'If you want to keep it contained, we need to do this now,' the SWAT lieutenant advised. He was a tall, raw- boned guy with too much chin named Rick Sherman.
He called his guys together and huddled with his SWAT sergeants, working out the plan.
Jeb, Hitch, and I were given radios and told to stay on TAC frequency six. We were also instructed to follow the entry teams up the drive, but to stay well back until the site was secured.
'We don't want you guys getting hurt or in the way,' Lieutenant Sherman said.
'In the movie, we can take a little creative license with that,' Hitch assured me after Sherman left.
