Loose end? Her words made no sense. Neither did the name Guzman—no way this woman was Spanish or Mexican. If she had a single feature that wasn’t Anglo-Saxon, Drucker couldn’t find it, and he stared hard enough to notice. For once, Drucker wished his house had fewer trees and less brush. In fact, he’d have happily allowed every one of LA’s four million miserable losers to see into his yard, to witness this criminal act of breaking and entering. While his mind raced to figure things out, he kept asking himself what if. What if these men elected to pull their guns and use his head as a bull’s eye? Nobody would care. In LA, people minded their own business. What a horse-shit city. Help, he wanted to scream, but the word had no voice.
“I am from Ensenada Partners. You know us?” the woman asked, seeming to feast on his confusion.
Unfortunately, Drucker knew quite a bit about Ensenada—none of it good. “Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, humble and contrite. “You’re the Mexican connection—the one that funnels funds—”
“You talk too much, Mr. Drucker.” She nodded and the small man struck Drucker’s jaw with the back of his hardened knuckles. Drucker recoiled, acting the part of a whimpering dog.
“Huh,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “Talk too much?” Adding to everything else, the steel edge in her voice cut through to his spine, making it difficult for him to remain erect.
“I have it from a contact of mine that you are someone the SEC intends to investigate,” the woman said. “Could you enlighten me as to your conversation with an Agent Dawson last week?”
Drucker attempted to look pliant through a steady head-bob. Despite the dreaded men flanking Guzman and the pain of a swelling cheek, he couldn’t help but focus on her. About the size of a child, yet possessing full cleavage and perfect hips, the woman had alluring, deep-set blue eyes that seemed entirely dead to him. In return, she regarded him as she might an annoying gnat, in need of extermination. What was she doing here? he wondered. She clearly didn’t mind putting herself at risk, showing up personally at his door like this—she probably enjoyed the danger. She would bust his balls, and when he went down, spit on him. That’s what he saw in her face.
“This guy Dawson,” Drucker began, “said he had interest in how I managed such big returns. He said I seemed to have a sixth sense when trading in my aggressive fund—the one I manage for Stenman Partners.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I use stock and currency charts—technical analysis. I showed him the paperwork . . . I know the drill. Everything documented.”
“Did you book those other trades?”
“Other trades? You mean the ones losing all that money?”
“Yes. Those.” Sarah gave a subtle nod and the larger man began to clean up the shards of wood. The other moved a step closer to Drucker.
“Yeah, I booked them. Why anybody’d want to lose so much money over the course of a couple days beats me, but I do what I’m told.”
“Did you find those losses stressful?” Sarah looked down the deep corridors of fear in Drucker’s damp eyes.
“Uh, uh. Not my money.” Drucker took a half step back, but a hand pinched his shoulder. He froze.
“Have another drink, Mr. Drucker.” Sarah nodded in the direction of the open bottle resting on a table next to an armchair. As she did so, the thick man finished cleaning the pieces of door and switched off Drucker’s television.
“No thanks.”
Drucker swore at himself for panting like a dog and stuttering like a damn fool. In the middle of Drucker’s silent tirade, the scar-faced smaller man shoved the bottle to his lips. Drucker choked as expensive whisky flowed half down his throat and half down his shirt. He tried to scream, but the needle that struck his neck put him to sleep in half a breath. As if the bones had been yanked from his body, he folded and sprawled across the white carpet.
Where am I?
This was the first thought popping into Stanley Drucker’s battered head as he regained consciousness. Every bone ached. As he lay on his back, railroad tie rigid, glass shards dug into his skin. He looked up a sheer brick wall, while the smell of urine—some of it his own—hung in the fetid air. He’d awakened, he determined, shivering in an alley. Twenty inches above his face, the scarred man who had attacked him, who had stuck him with the long needle, looked down at him through gun barrel eyes. With flaring nostrils, the man resembled a baby bull, ready to attack. Drucker bent a weakened arm to his face, hoping to remove a pair of sunglasses blurring his vision. He pulled, and immediately tried and failed to scream.
“Time for a challenge, Señor Drucker.”
Drucker struggled to lift himself, but a vicious heel kicked his raised shoulders back down, causing his head to bounce off asphalt.
“Not yet, mi amigo. You must learn the rules first.”
Drucker flopped side to side like a dying fish on a dry dock. He struggled to focus on his tormentor’s expression, but the heavy tint of his glasses prevented that.
“Let me explain how we play this game.” The voice came across as a whisper, sounding almost intimate. “Your sunglasses have been attached to your head with epoxy, and your tongue, injected with a toxin, is swollen.”
I can take care of any investigation. I’m an asset. Drucker listened to his gurgled sounds and nearly choked over his thickened tongue and the saliva building inside his mouth.
From his jacket pocket, the male enforcer, Ferret-Face, removed two rectangular metal boxes, each fitting into a palm. He then reached down and yanked Drucker’s half-naked body to its feet, forcing a box into each of Drucker’s hands. Ferret-Face clamped Drucker’s right thumb onto a raised button on the first box.
More awkwardly, and never releasing the first hand, he did the same to Stanley Drucker’s left thumb. Tears dribbled down Drucker’s cheeks, and teetered on his upper lip until they built up and cascaded over, falling five empty feet to his blistered toes. With his gaze following that salty flow, he became aware of spider-webbing wires connecting several pounds of explosives strapped to his legs and hips. Barely visible across his naked chest were the words: Death Death. He recognized the building across the alley and street as the police station.
“Here are the rules,” the man said, his words sounding rehearsed. “If you take either thumb off either device, you will explode. If you try and disconnect any wire, you will explode. If anyone else presses either of these buttons, relieving you, you will explode—each button is sensitive to your thumbprint only. In thirty minutes, no matter what you do, you will explode. This should be challenging. Do you understand?”
Drucker understood all right. He clasped the detonators, putting maximum pressure on each of his thumbs.
“And by the way,” the man said with a smile, “I will have saved you mucho dinero. You are not going to require a casket, I think.”
Turning a corner, the well-dressed Mexican used a cell phone to call a local television station, alerting them that a suicide crackpot, lurking near the police station, had explosives strapped to his body. He even identified the man as one Stanley Drucker, violent alcoholic, divorced, unstable, and manager of a local fund that lost millions of dollars just this week.
Rancho Santa Fe estates average four acres of grounds and more than 10,000 square feet of house. Nearly every one has a tennis court, a pool, and a stable of horses. Ayers’ estate went beyond even these lofty averages.