Robert Crais - Hostage

Glen wheeled around in a slow U and headed back up the street, still thinking about it when he saw that another television news van had joined the line. Glen decided to take a flyer, and lowered his window when he reached the van. The driver was a balding guy with a rim of hair behind his ears and loose skin. A trim Asian woman with pouty lips perched in the passenger seat. Glen guessed her for the on-air talent, and wondered if the puffy lips were natural or man-made. Women who injected shit into their lips creeped him out. He decided that she was probably a spitter.

Glen said, “Excuse me. They wouldn’t tell me what’s going on, just that some people in the neighborhood are being evacuated. Do you guys know anything about this?”

The woman twisted in her seat and leaned forward to see past the driver.

“We don’t have anything confirmed, but it looks like three men were fleeing the scene of a robbery and took a family hostage.”

“No shit. That’s terrible.”

Glen couldn’t give less of a shit except that it was ruining his day. He wondered if he could talk the reporter into letting him come along.

“Do you live in the neighborhood?”

Glen knew that she was angling for something, and began to relax. If she thought he had something that she wanted, she might be willing to get him inside.

“I don’t live here, but I have friends in there. Why?”

The line of cars had moved forward, but the news van stayed where it was. The reporter flipped through a yellow pad.

“We’ve got unconfirmed reports that there are children involved, but we can’t get anyone to tell us anything about the family. It’s a family named Smith.”

The big Mercedes sensed the heat. The air conditioner blew harder. Glen didn’t feel it.

“What was the name again?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Walter Smith. We’ve heard they have two children, a boy and a girl.”

“They’re being held hostage? These three guys have the Smiths?”

“That’s right. Do you know them? We’re trying to find out about the kids.”

“I don’t know them. Sorry.”

Glen rolled up the window and pulled away. He drove slowly so as not to attract attention. He had the strange sensation of being removed from his body, as if the world had receded and he was no longer a part of it. The a.c. was roaring. Walter Smith. Three assholes had crashed into Walter Smith’s home, and now the place was surrounded by cops and cameras, and their whole fucking neighborhood was sealed.

Three blocks later, Glen pulled into a parking lot. He took his gun from the glove box and put it back in his pocket. He felt safer that way. He opened his phone again, and dialed another number. This time, his call was answered on the first ring.

Glen spoke four words.

“We have a problem.”

Palm Springs, California

5:26 P.M.

SONNY BENZA

Oxygen was the key. Sonny took a deep breath, trying to feed his heart. He was forty-seven years old, had high blood pressure, and lived in fear of the stroke which had claimed his father at fifty-five.

Benza stood in the game room of his mansion perched on a ridge above Palm Springs. Outside, his two kids, Chris and Gina, home from school, were splashing in the pool. Inside, Phil Tuzee and Charles “Sally” Salvetti, sweating like pigs, pulled an extra television next to the big screen, 36 inches, a Sony. They were rushed and frantic, anxious to get the set on. Between the big-screen projection TV with the picture-in-picture function and the Sony, they could watch all three major Los Angeles television stations. Two showed aerial views of Walter Smith’s house, the third some pretty-boy talking head outside a gas station.

Sonny Benza still refused to believe it.

“What do we know? Not this TV bullshit. What do we know for sure? Maybe it’s a different Walter Smith.”

Salvetti wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking pale under the Palm Springs tan.

“Glen Howell called it in. He’s at the house, Sonny. It’s our Walter Smith.”

Tuzee made a patting motion with his hands, trying to play the cooler.

“Let’s everybody take it easy. Let’s relax and walk through this a step at a time. The Feds aren’t knocking on the door.”

“Not yet.”

Phil Tuzee was close to pissing himself. Sonny put his arm across Tuzee’s shoulders, giving the squeeze, being the one in control.

“We got, what, ten or fifteen minutes before that happens, right, Phil?”

Tuzee laughed. Just like that, they were calmer. Still worried, still knowing they had a major cluster fuck of a problem, but the first bubble of panic had burst. Now, they would deal with it.

Benza said, “Okay. What exactly are we dealing with here? What does Smith have in the house?”

“It’s tax time, Sonny. We have to file the corporate quarterlies. He has our records.”

The bristly hairs on the back of Benza’s head stood up.

“You’re sure? Glen hadn’t made the pickup?”

“He was on his way to do that when this shit went down. He gets there and finds the neighborhood blocked off. He says Smith doesn’t answer his phone, which you know he would do if he could, and then he gets the story from some reporters. Three assholes broke into Smith’s house to hide from the cops, and now they’re holding Smith and his family hostage. It’s our Walter Smith.”

“And all our tax stuff is still in that house.”

“Everything.”

Benza stared at the televisions. Stared at the house on the screens. Stared at the police officers crouched behind bushes and cars, surrounding that house.

Sonny Benza’s legitimate business holdings included sixteen bars, eight restaurants, a studio catering company, and thirty-two thousand acres of vineyards in central California. These businesses were profitable in their own right, but they were also used to launder the ninety million dollars generated every year by drug trafficking, hijackings, and shipping stolen automobiles and construction equipment out of the country. Walter Smith’s job was to create false but reasonable profit records for Sonny’s legitimate holdings which Benza would present to his “real” accountants. Those accountants would then file the appropriate tax returns, never knowing that the records from which they were working had been falsified. Benza would pay the appropriate taxes (taking every deduction legally allowable), then be able to openly bank, spend, or invest the after-tax cash. To do this, Walter Smith held the income records of all Benza businesses, both legal and illegal.

These records were in his computer.

In his house.

Surrounded by cops.

Sonny went over to the big glass wall that gave him a breathtaking view of Palm Springs on the desert floor below. It was a beautiful view.

Phil Tuzee followed him, trying to be upbeat.

“Hey, look, it’s just three kids, Sonny. They’re gonna get tired and come out. Smith knows what to do. He’ll hide the stuff. These kids will walk out and the cops will arrest them, and that’s that. There won’t be any reason for the cops to search the house.”

Sonny wasn’t listening. He was thinking about his father. Frank Sinatra used to live down the street. It was the house that Sinatra had remodeled to entertain JFK, spent a couple of hundred thousand to buff out the place so he and The Man could enjoy a little poolside poon as they discussed world affairs, sunk all that money into his nest only to have, after the checks were signed and the work was done, JFK blow him off and refuse to visit. Story goes that Sinatra went fucking nuts, shooting through the walls, throwing furniture into the pool, screaming that he was gonna take out a hit on the motherfucking President of the United States. Like what did he expect, Kennedy to be butt-buddies with a mobbed-up guinea singer? Sonny Benza’s home was higher up the ridge than Frank’s old place, and larger, but his father had been impressed as hell with Sinatra’s place. First time his father had come out to visit, he’d walked down to Sinatra’s place and stood in the street, staring at Sinatra’s house like it held the ghost of the Roman Empire. His father had said, “Best move I ever made, Sonny, turning over the wheel to you. Look how good you’ve done, living in the same neighborhood as Francis Albert.” The Persians who lived there now had gotten so freaked out by Sonny’s dad, they had called the police.