We walked out of earshot of the cops and had postgame huddle.
'That's it for me,' Vonnie said. 'My show just got closed. If I know the great Tito Morales, starting tomorrow I'm gonna be down in part six handling DUIs. I think it's finally time to put my legal skills to more constructive use.'
'I'm sorry,' I told her.
'Hey, life is all about taking chances. It was getting time for me to move on, anyway.'
Then she returned to her tan Geo and drove off. In a minute, the thin trail of white smoke that had spewed from her hanging exhaust pipe was all that was left to remember her.
'Nice gal,' Alexa said. 'We got hosed, but she brought the wood.'
'Except everybody now knows what we're doing,' I told her. 'Tony, Jane, the entire sixth floor is gonna find out in less than an hour. We're in the sauce.'
She didn't answer, remaining strangely quiet for a long moment. Then she asked, 'You ever hear of anybody named E. Emmett Riley?'
'Who's E. Emmett Riley?'
'There are plaques and framed certificates of accomplishment to Mike Church and the NVNTA from this Riley guy hanging all over that office in there.'
'So?'
'According to the plaques, Emmett Riley's kind of muckity-muck with California Homeland Security.'
I must have looked lost.
'I wonder if Mr. Riley knows what's really going on with this little bus company,' she said.
Chapter 48
E. Emmett Riley was in an oversize tenth-floor office at Homeland Security located on Wilshire Boulevard. He was the Assistant Secretary to the Deputy Director of California Homeland, or some equally confusing title. I've long held the belief that ninety percent of the people who use initials in front of their names are purebred assholes. The evidence of this is overwhelming. F. Lee Bailey, for example, or H. Ross Perot. Watergate was full of them: E. Howard Hunt, H. Robert Haldeman, G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy probably was an exception because, unlike the others, he manned up and went to prison without giving up teammates.
E. Emmett Riley was a little man in a brown suit whose hair looked like it had been drawn on his head by a cartoonist. His rosy complexion shined and he had glossy, manicured fingernails that reflected light like little shiny windows.
'I don't see how this information is any of your concern,' he said, busily protecting one of America's great national secrets.
'Mr. Riley, all we're asking is that you tell us what the Department of Homeland Security's interest is in this little bus company. It's not such a big deal,' I said.
'Do you have a supervisor I might contact?' he said, looking directly at me, ignoring Alexa because after all, as everyone could plainly see, she was just a great-looking chick.
'Yeah. She's my boss,' I said and nodded at Alexa. He flicked a glance over at my beautiful wife.
'Hi there,' she said, smiling at him.
'She's your boss?' Incredulous. Struggling to adjust.
'Yes. She's Lieutenant Alexa Scully, and if you can have somebody go to the LAPD Web site, you'll see she's pictured there as the acting head of the Detective Bureau.'
He turned abruptly around and for the next minute, those polished fingers flew over his computer keyboard. He quickly accessed the LAPD Web site and, sure enough, right there on the command structure management tree was a smiling press photo of Alexa. Then, with a little flourish, like Liberace finishing a piano run, he removed his polished fingernails from the keyboard and swiveled slowly around in his giant chair until he was again facing us. His expression seemed only slightly more cordial.
'I still don't-'
'Humor us,' Alexa said, interrupting him. 'Please don't make me take this to Chief Filosiani. I thought we were all supposed to be sharing information these days. Part of the new interagency guidelines.'
It was a tough problem for E. Emmett. Like any good midlevel bureaucrat, he knew information was power and he hated sharing power with anyone. But the fact was, in this post-9/11 world, we'd all been tasked by the President of the United States with information sharing. I could see all of this calculating behind hazel eyes. Finally, he leaned forward.
'I'm not sure-'
'I am,' Alexa interrupted.
His resolve began to dissolve like Alka-Seltzer in a glass of cold water. He tipped forward and hit an intercom. 'Liz, bring me the NVNTA file.' Then he leaned back in his chair.
Two minutes of uncomfortable silence followed. Man, I hate bureaucrats. Give a guy an office with any kind of government seal on the door, and you instantly have a testosterone problem.
Finally, Liz arrived. Liz, as you might expect, could have worked in reception over at Penthouse magazine. She swept into the office on three-inch platforms and handed Emmett the folder before disappearing back out the door like a vision sent by God. E. Emmett licked his fingers carefully before opening the file and examining the contents.
'Okay, what do you want to know?' he asked, the words coming out like tooth extractions.
'You sent several letters of merit and congratulations to this bus line. We were wondering in regard to what?' Alexa said.
'Which tells me, you obviously don't have enough P. C. to serve a warrant on this bus line and that's why you came to me. This is just a fishing trip.' Snotty and bitchy, even in defeat.
'Obviously you haven't worked many investigations,' Alexa said pleasantly. 'If you had, you wouldn't make that statement.'
'I wouldn't?' he said, smiling at her. I guess he smiled because she was too pretty to sneer at.
'No, you wouldn't because the minute you serve a warrant, you alert the suspect that you are investigating him. We like to save the warrant serving for last.'
He tried to look as if he was evaluating this as a tactic. Then he shrugged slightly as if to say, 'If that's your silly way of doing things, okay, but at Homeland we do it differently.'
'So, what were all the letters and commendations about?' Alexa pressed.
She had him on the run. E. Emmett Riley was obviously enamored of beautiful women, but they made him nervous and he wasn't quite sure how to handle them.
'The NVNTA has been upgrading their security,' he said reluctantly. 'They've been spending a great deal of money to conform to our threat assessment transit guidelines. That's why I wrote the letters.'
'You are, of course, aware of the fact that this nonprofit bus line only provides transportation for a limited number of senior citizens in a very small community,' she said.
'They met the minimum two-hundred-fifty-seat bus-line-size limit, which qualifies them as a full-fledged transit authority,' he said. 'Beyond that, it's not our concern.' He was back on familiar ground, curling a lip at us.
'Why not?' Alexa now gave him a beautiful, sweet smile. You could almost feel him wilt under it. Like Secada, Alexa knew how to use her assets.
'Because we're tasked with trying to get any qualified transportation agency to conform to our top threat level security guidelines. In order to do that, these companies have to undertake a significant capital outlay, which quite frankly, many are unprepared to do. So we provide incentives to encourage them. The more security a bus line, train, or airline has, the harder it is for terrorists to strike. I should think that's pretty obvious.'
'So NVNTA was spending a lot of money,' Alexa stated.
'NVNTA has been simply incredible,' he said, looking at his file. 'They are a nonprofit line and transport only about a thousand people per seven day week. But despite that, they've met every single one of our guidelines. They've passed all of the safety checks, as well as meeting this agency's most stringent requirements. Everything, I
