"Who gave the order to kill that old man, Teddy?"
"What old man?"
"Porfirio Guzman, twelve years ago."
"The old beaner?" Teddy asks. Then looks up and smiles. "Kazzy said his boss told him to. So Kazzy told me to. And you can't do a thing about it, Deputy Dawg."
Problem is, Teddy Cool is right.
You can't do shit because you don't have shit.
You have a witness to Nicky moving furniture in and out the night of the fire. The same witness puts Nicky on the scene, contrary to his recorded statement.
But if you use the witness they kill the witness.
Deja vu.
You have the fake remnants.
Yeah, you have char samples, too. Look what happened with them.
You have the guy who made the fakes and he's dead.
All burned up.
Okay. You have two missing Vietnamese kids driving the stolen truck that picked up the furniture. And you have an attempted hit on the deputy who was investigating the missing kids.
And nothing to hook any of it to Nicky Vale.
Jack looks around the garage, sees a gas can.
Pours the contents around the floor as Teddy screams.
Jack pours the rest of the gas over Teddy's head. Some of it scatters and seeps down through the garage door.
Jack squats down next to him.
"What did Nicky do with the furniture?"
"What furniture?"
"Shit, where did I put my matches?"
"I DON'T KNOW NOTHING ABOUT NO FUCKING FURNITURE!"
Teddy isn't lying. Teddy is too scared to be lying.
"Give me something, Teddy," Jack says. "Something I can use."
Teddy's thinking it over. Jack can see that Teddy's weighing relative fears. His fear of Nicky Vale against his fear of burning alive. Jack knows he's going to win because the flame is immediate and the other is still abstract and Teddy doesn't have a good grasp of the abstract.
"Westview," Teddy says.
"What?"
"What I got to give you," Teddy says. "I just hear Kazzy talking about something called Westview. Something he's got going on with Nicky Vale."
Jack pushes the button and the garage door opens.
Teddy's boys are standing there with guns pointed. Three shotguns, two pistols, and a Glock.
"Good idea," Jack says. "Let's have a blazing gun battle. Barbecue Teddy Cool."
"Put 'em down! Put 'em down! Put 'em down!" Teddy screams.
Jack walks through them to his car. Gets inside, opens the window and says, "He sang like a little girl. What can I say, guys? He's still my bish."
Starts the car and drives away.
Wondering, what the hell is Westview?
106
Nicky looks across the desk at Paul Gordon, who's sniffing the top of his cappuccino to make sure that it's nutmeg and not cinnamon.
That important task done, Gordon looks up at Nicky like, I'm ready for you now.
For his part, Nicky will be glad to leave the man's ego behind.
"Ready?" Nicky asks.
"I'm all yours."
"Tomorrow morning," Nicky says, "Tom Casey will call to offer $50 million to settle my claim."
Gordon freaks. In his wildest imagination he never dreamed that Cal Fire would go for the $50 million. He was counting on them turning it down. What the fuck good is Cal Fire if it suddenly gets smart?
"Don't worry," he says. "I'll turn it down. I'll find a pretext."
Nicky shakes his head.
"You'll accept that offer."
Gordon turns white.
"That's not the plan."
"It is now."
"The hell it is," Gordon says. "I've spent years setting up these suits. I've got the cops, I've got the judges. You can't bail on me now."
Nicky shrugs.
Gordon's voice gets shrill. "Nicky, what the fuck are you thinking about?! We can ride Jack Wade for hundreds of millions of dollars! Don't settle for the short money now!"
"Jack Wade has played his role," Nicky says.
Wade's on his way out.
Then Gordon gets it.
"You son of a bitch," he says. "You cut your own deal."
"Accept the offer," Nicky says. "You'll get your fee."
"Fuck you," Gordon says. "We're taking it to trial. We're taking all of them to trial."
"In that case," Nicky says, "you're fired."
Gordon laughs. "You can't fire me, you jumped-up little hood. You need me. Without me, they'll eat you alive. You think you can stand down Cal Fire and Tom Casey without me?!"
Actually, yes, Nicky thinks. I think I can.
In fact, I know it.
He stands up. Says, "You're fired."
Gordon flips out.
Follows Nicky down the hallway yelling, "You think you're the only heavy hitter in town?! You need me, I don't need you! I'll have Viktor Tratchev in this office in five minutes! Maybe he has the brains, he has the vision! Or Kazzy Azmekian! He has the balls to see this through! He's not going to let you crash this, you jumped-up little greasy Eurotrash hood! You can't fire me!"
A very tawdry scene, Nicky thinks as he gets in the car. And Gordon should not have played the Tratchev card. Or the Azmekian one. Very self-indulgent. Very uncool.
Two cards he should have held close to the chest.
And "jumped-up little greasy Eurotrash hood"? One might be tempted to take that personally.
Oh, well.
He leans back into the seat.
Almost there, he thinks.
A couple of steps to safety.
And the turnaround inside one generation.
Fifty million dollars tomorrow.
Fifty million dollars of squeaky-clean money.
But there's work to be done first.
"Ritz-Carlton," he tells Dani.
Take the first step.
Dani waits out in the car while the pakhan has his meeting.
107
Uncle Nguyen's head is throbbing.
He's just had to tell Tommy Do's distraught mother that her idiot son is probably not coming home for dinner.
Ever.
So there's a lot of wailing and sobbing and other irritating noise – this woman has a piercing shriek that goes through Uncle Nguyen's head. She completely drowns out the Angels game and won't settle down until Uncle Nguyen promises her vengeance.
He finally gets rid of her with that promise and goes down into the basement where he has Tony Ky hanging by his wrists, and just to improve his mood he gives Tony a couple of two-handers across the back with a bamboo rod, which elicits a satisfying grunt of pain, and then he says to Tony, "Tell me who these Russians were."
And Tony tells him – tall skinny Russian, tall fat Russian.
He doesn't know their names so Uncle Nguyen takes a Jim Edmonds swing at his back – like good for a three-bagger in any park in America – and asks him who they were working for.
"Tratchev," Tony says.
Uncle Nguyen has a tough time with this.
He's been doing business with Viktor Tratchev for years and it's always been a good and mutually profitable relationship. So he gets Tratchev on the phone and asks, "What is this shit all about?"
"What shit?"
"Two of your people hired two of my boys for an errand and the boys haven't come back."
"Which of my people?"
Uncle Nguyen describes them.
Tratchev is very happy to hear this description. The last thing in the world he needs right now is a beef with the Vietnamese. First thing he needs right now is an ally against Nicky Vale, so he says, "You're talking about Dani and Lev."
"You had better send Dani and Lev over for a chat."
"They're not mine."
"Whose are they?"
Tratchev tells him.
Uncle Nguyen asks, "Do you have a problem if I do what I need to do?"
Go figure, Tratchev doesn't have a problem.
108