Page 112 of Hanging and Burning

With a slight bow, Carl gestured the suited thugs toward our table.

“Have a seat,” I offered when they got to us.

There were four chairs at our table. Olo and I filled out one corner and our nemeses took the other.

Ken and I squared our shoulders at each other.

“You have violated my trust,” Paulie told Olo.

“When I violate you, you will feel it,” she replied.

A laugh that sounded like the slow ripping of sheet metal tore from Rouche’s lips.

When Paulie gave him a deadly stare, Rouche said, “I can’t help it, Junior. The girl got words.”

Junior turned to the girl and said, “I want my property back.”

“So,” she said softly. “Does Mr. Lamming know all the shit you got on him? Do all those other clients know about the pictures and files, the affidavits and secret recordings?”

“What you got on Lamming?” Rouche was no longer laughing.

“You’d do better to look to yourself, Mr. Rouche,” I interposed.

“Ain’t nobody stupid enough to keep a file on me.” The enforcer uttered these words while giving Paulie a severe stare.

“Not him,” I said. “The good old LAPD.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Not much, just a one-eyed corpse out in Redondo Beach. You know it ain’t like the old days, when you could spit on a dead man after cuttin’ off his nose.”

“You think I won’t kill you right here, nigger?” Rouche threatened.

I tried to look unfazed.

Oliya smiled affably.

I honestly believed that we were about to have a Wild West shootout right there in that posh hall, right there among the upper crust of the hoi polloi.

But just about then Carl and five uniformed policemen came into the dining room. The men left at the front desk, I found out later, had already been detained.

“Mr. Antonucci,” the ranking cop said to Junior.

“What?”

“The hotel needs you to leave.”

Rouche was staring daggers at me.

“I was about to order breakfast,” Paulie protested.

“I’m sorry, sir.” If the officer had been holding a nightstick, he would have been slapping it against an open hand.

Our two guests rose reluctantly, Rouche making sure I saw the ugliness in his soul. Then they were marched out surrounded by the officers and witnessed by people who, just minutes before, had felt that they were safe in the lives they were living, like the well-educated doctors, lawyers, and college professors in the late sixties just realizing what China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution meant for them.

I called an Uber and had it pick us up on the street behind the hotel. This car took us to a pay-by-the-day work center at the heart of Culver City.

We took a small office on the upper floor for $106 a day. Once in, we closed all the blinds and turned off the lights; this was because Olo had an infrared-and-sound device that could detect most bugs. After that we sat down to plan.