They parked her car in the garage and went inside. Shane gave her another beer, took a second one for himself, then walked her around the house, silently pointing out the bugs. She nodded at each one, then pointed at him and mimed grinding a camera-show time.
She went to the front door, opened it, then slammed it loudly.
'Hi, honey. Where've you been?' Shane called out. Alexa walked into the living room.
'Those pricks downtown! I swear I'd like to shoot that fucking Filosiani,' she said.
They both moved over to the bugged lamp in the living room. Alexa sat near it, but Shane started moving around the room to change the sound density on the mike. He'd heard tapes on hundreds of bugs and they were never clean recordings.
'Whatta you expect?' Shane said, roaming around, picking up a magazine, then dropping it. 'Y'know it's all politics down there.'
'Right. I'm busting my ass and all I'm getting is grief. Did you read that horrible article in yesterday's Times?' she asked.
'Yeah, saw it after you left. Pathetic.'
'Sometimes I just want to pull the pin. Get the hell out, like you did,' Alexa fumed.
Shane crossed to her and sat. 'Listen, I met a guy tonight, a guy nobody in our Organized Crime Bureau even knows is in town.'
'Do we need to discuss this now?' She sounded bored. 'I'm really tired.'
'Yeah, we do. Our OCB spotters shoulda picked him up at LAX, but he slipped in here. Your hotshot goomba squad missed him completely. He's a made guy from the East Coast.'
'Just what I need. Now I gotta deal with some vacationing wiseguy while I got all this other shit to contend with.'
'He's not on vacation. He's in town to set up a new business.'
'Who is he?'
'If I tell you, you gotta promise it stays with us. I don't want this going to OCB.'
Alexa remained silent. They both waited patiently, then Alexa cleared her throat. 'Just tell me; let's not play this game.'
So Shane gave her a glowing account of Dennis Valentine: telling her how smart he was, how careful, and how he was intending to take over IATSE. He ran through it point by point, leaving nothing out.
When he finished, Alexa was quiet for almost a minute. 'If he tries to organize a labor union, I can promise, we'll shoot it down-fast!' she exclaimed.
'Honey, stop thinking like a cop for a minute. This is a chance to get rich. He offered me a piece of his scam. He'll make us partners. If he pulls it off, it's worth a fortune.'
'You think he can really do that? Take over IATSE? How much can that be worth?' She sounded both amazed and skeptical at the same time. Alexa, like most cops, was a superb actor.
'What if, tomorrow, I handed you a hundred thousand in cash for just having a meeting with him and saying you're willing to think about it?'
'A hundred thousand to just think about it? You're kidding.'
'I'm telling you, this guy is for real. He's serious.'
'A hundred thousand for just talking to him?'
'All he wants now is for us to agree to agree. Once he starts cutting special deals with producers and studios, he's afraid some union guy will squawk. Then it could go to the D. A. for an investigation. If it does, all he wants is for you to put the right guy on it. A guy we can control.'
'You're serious?'
'Honey, this is our little winery and restaurant in Mill Valley. This is all our dreams answered; a chance at a peaceful, normal life away from all that glass-house bullshit.'
She finally said, 'I'm not saying I'm absolutely gonna do it, but I think we should hear him out. Why don't you call him back and set something up?'
They left the room and went out to the pool; Franco trailed along behind them. They sat on the pool deck sofa and Shane put his arm around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder, while Franco licked his paws, cleaned his face, and watched.
Shane's mind was lasering over his myriad of problems.
Chooch was now exposed to Valentine as well as to Amac. Shane was worried about that and was slowly becoming very depressed over it. He wished the boy would come home so he could hold and hug him. He wished he could send his son away to protective custody until this was all over.
Alexa picked up on his thoughts like a Gypsy mind reader.
'I know,' she said softly. 'I'm worried about him, too.'
Chapter 25
They left a new note for Chooch taped to the refrigerator, then got in the car and drove to the Valley.
Chief Filosiani's house in Studio City was a modest duplex on La Maida. Shane and Alexa pulled her Crown Vic into the driveway, exited, and found Filosiani waiting for them in the living room. He wore a red bathrobe over pajamas, and had fleece-lined slippers on his feet. He whispered that his wife, Mary, was asleep in the bedroom as he led them into the den.
The chief's den was wall-to-ceiling clutter and way too small to accommodate his vast police reference library. The Day-Glo Dago had run out of space and overflow volumes were stacked everywhere. Big, blue LAPD binders, filled with procedural manuals from other departments, were piled on the floor waiting for his determination as to whether they contained anything worth implementing in L. A. He had one bookshelf packed with ten fat volumes of the Psychological Pathology of Homicide, another with volumes on ballistics and ESD. One entire wall was devoted to the emerging field of DNA and forensic investigations.
The chief cleared some space on the small four-foot-long sofa, and Shane and Alexa squeezed onto it together, as Filosiani lowered himself into a creaking Early American rocker. 'You said on the phone it was important,' he probed.
Shane and Alexa filled him in. When they got to the part about the foiled La Eme drive-by on Dennis Valentine, he furrowed his brow.
'I don't like,' he said. 'Means Valente's already got more traction here than we realized.' He slowly leaned forward. 'Do you realize how lucky we are you stumbled onto him when you did? You're on the inside now, with a real shot at busting his operation.'
'That's why we came over,' Alexa said. 'This film scam of Shane's is good. Valentine told him tonight that he wants me to be his department mole. We've got to keep the sting operation going, but we're out of money.'
'I just gave you a hundred thousand, then I get an e-mail from you this afternoon that said you put in another ten and needed forty more. I authorized it and had it transferred. What happened to all that?'
'Gone,' Shane said.
'Gone?' He was furrowing his brow. 'A hundred and fifty thousand in one day?'
'Well, actually, it's more like two days, but yeah. Beyond that, I've just made a verbal deal with Mike Fallon's agent. It ain't cheap, but the good news there is I don't have to pay him if the film doesn't go past the second week of preproduction. We went into preproduction today, so we've got thirteen days left. I also cut a deal with a director named Paul Lubick. Nicky and I did it over the phone with his agent this afternoon. Lubick's not cheap, either. The guy has more assistants than a NATO commander.'
'Shane, need I remind you that we're not gonna ever make this movie?' Filosiani said.
'You can remind me all you want, Chief, but as long as these guys don't know it, they're gonna set up to do things the way they always do.'
'How much?'
'Well, at least a hundred more to start with. I'll go back to Lubick's agent and try to cut a more front-end-
