wondered if you had placed the name since then.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Any reason. Sometimes if a name makes the news and a witness sees a picture, he comes back to me and says, ‘Oh, yeah. I remember him now.’ Or ‘I didn’t know his full name. People just called him Manny,’ or something. Anything like that happen to you?”
“No.” He was becoming alarmed. The girls must have told Slosser he laundered money for their boss, Rogoso. That was a major crime, a federal crime. All he could do was hope there was no evidence left to prove what they’d said, and that maybe they hadn’t told Slosser that Kapak had done the shooting.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who used to see Rogoso. They say you knew him well. They say you took his drug money and mixed it with your take from the clubs. Then you would send a check to a fake company Rogoso controlled for some imaginary service—linen or advertising or something.”
“They have the wrong man.”
“They all say they have the right man, and that you had a business relationship with Rogoso for years.”
“What people?” Of course it was the girls. There was nobody else who would know and tell. But maybe they’d had to give Slosser something but resisted giving him everything. Saying they’d been there and seen it would get them in trouble, maybe get them killed.
“Lots of people. Some worked for him, some didn’t.”
Kapak felt better. That’s all it was. The two teenaged girls were all they had. Kapak could go into court and look pretty honest and substantial beside two teenaged drug mules in short skirts and tattoos. “Well, they’re wrong. I never knew him.”
“I think I know what must have happened. He was a mean, violent guy. Everybody agrees on that. He got upset because you got robbed a couple of times, and it made him feel unsafe. He called you in to see him, you argued, and he told his men to kill you. Isn’t that right? And then you killed him in self-defense.”
Kapak smiled and shook his head. “I did all of this last night? I’m sixty-four years old. I don’t go quick-drawing guns and shooting everyone in sight so I’ll be a big hero. I don’t own a gun, and I’m sure you must have checked my record to see if I ever did.”
“I think you were at Rogoso’s house, and that you shot the three men and burned the house to cover it.”
“I didn’t do any of those things. I wasn’t there.”
“Where were you last night between midnight and three o’clock?”
“We already talked about that this morning. I was at Wash, then at Temptress until two. I talked to my guys at Siren a few times.”
“Anybody see you in any of those places?”
“A lot of people. Dozens of them,” Kapak said. “I talked to them, and they talked to me. I stood around a long time watching bartenders to see how they were keeping up with the demand. I spent time talking to my manager at Wash, Ruben Salinas, and his assistant. I talked to waiters, busboys, even a few dancers, the security guys.”
“Sounds like an awful lot of people. It seems almost as though you were trying to construct an alibi.”
“It might seem that way, if I didn’t do it every night. But I do—seven nights a week. You’ll find out when you start talking to the people who work for me.”
“I have no doubt your lawyers can bring in lots of people to swear you were in sight all evening, but it doesn’t mean you were. I’ll level with you. I’ve got really strong reasons to think you did this. I also know you did it in self- defense. If you’ll just tell me exactly what happened, it will save us both a lot of time and effort, and you a lot of money. The law will also go a lot easier if you’ll be honest about it. You and I both know what Rogoso was like. He was arrogant and vicious. He was trying to kill you right then. All you have to do now is agree with me.”
They sat and stared at each other across the table for a long time. Finally Kapak said, “I’d like to call my attorney now.”
32
JERRY GAFFNEY and Jimmy Gaffney and Vassily Voinovich were in the garage of Voinovich’s house. Since he had come to Hollywood, Jimmy Gaffney had seen these little old houses with high-peaked roofs that made them look like witches or goblins lived there and wondered what sort of person really did. It turned out that the sort of person was Voinovich. Whatever it reminded him of in his Russian life, it seemed to make him calmer.
The garage was far too small for his SUV, and so it served as a workshop and storage space. Jimmy Gaffney pulled his body armor over his head, then blew out a breath of air. “Man, this is hot. I feel like I’m in some kind of press.”
“It’s not there to be comfy” Jerry said. “If you take a round in the chest, you’ll be damned glad you’re wearing that thing.”
“Not always,” Voinovich said. “I saw two bulletproof vests pierced in one fight when I was back home. It was a war between the security forces of a bank and a department store.”
Jerry stared at him thoughtfully. “Well, probably nobody is going to be firing military ammo around here. If they do, at least now we’ll know why we’re dead.”
Jerry put on his shirt over the armor and buttoned it. He had the same squared-off barrel torso that Voinovich had with his vest on. He put on a shoulder holster to hold his Glock pistol, then knelt to put a small ankle holster under his right pant leg to hold his .380 pistol. He put on a thin windbreaker over his gear and shrugged a few times to shift everything into the right places. He went to the workbench to pick up his ski mask and one of the three radio receivers.
Jimmy Gaffney began to pick up his gear and stow it in his pockets.
Voinovich stood fully armed and equipped, his head nearly to the lower rafters of his little garage. He tried pressing the Talk button on his radio and listened to the static sound as the channel came to life, then nodded to himself and put it in his jacket pocket. He said, “I’d like to talk about the plan some more before things start happening.”
“All right,” Jerry said. “We’ve got to stay loose. First we find out where he is. We take him in our car and drive away. Probably we keep moving. We call, or let him call, the club managers to arrange a ransom. All three managers have signature power for major accounts set up to run the clubs. None of them has the kind of history that would make me worry. They came up to where they are by making sure there are enough cocktail napkins and olives behind the bar. They’re managers. So we give them something they know how to manage—getting us some cash. We pick it up, let Kapak go, and take off”’
“Okay,” Voinovich said. “We agree on the general outline. That’s how it’s done. It would be easier if he had a family, so we could deal with them and have them tell the managers what to do.”
“Then there would be more money around,” Jimmy said. “The kind you can put your hands on.”
Jerry said, “Look, you’ve got to kidnap the guy you have, not make up some imaginary guy who would leave more cash lying around.”
“It’s all right” Voinovich said. “We’ve got to think about the details. We’ll need plastic restraints for his hands and feet. We’ll need a cloth sack to put over his head so he can’t recognize any of us and doesn’t know where he’s been taken. That’s important.”
“We should try it on first,” Jimmy said. “We want to be sure he can’t see, but he can breathe.”
“Not too well,” Voinovich said. “If he can breathe easily, then he can yell too. We don’t want that.”
“No, we don’t want that” Jerry said. “If we’re quick and do this thing right, he won’t have to wear it for long.”
Jimmy looked at his brother. “What if everything doesn’t go right?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I said. You’re talking about everything going right. What if instead it all goes wrong? What if he doesn’t come with us just because we point a gun at him? What if they can’t come up with the money in one day? What if he does something stupid? Do we shoot him?”
“I guess we’d have to.”
“Then what do we do with the body?”
