THE MALIBU MANSION might have stood on one acre or three, but it was nobody’s idea of a tract home. Jane found it hard to size it from outside the stacked-stone estate wall.
The guard at the gatehouse wore gray slacks and a white shirt and a maroon blazer. The cut of his coat allowed a concealed weapon. Mr. Trahern and guest were expected. In their wake, the solid green-patinaed copper-clad gate swung shut across the quartzite driveway.
The grounds were expansive and tropical, graced with phoenix palms and royal palms and palms she couldn’t name, with all manner of ferns. Flowers everywhere. Lawns as smooth as putting greens.
The house was a marvel of white stucco and glass and teak, curved at every corner, with dramatically cantilevered decks.
She parked in the circular drive and said, “Here we go again.”
“You’ve been here before?” Trahern asked.
“No. Here we go again with rich people. Is there no limit to the number of them?”
“You’ll like this one. He’s a San Diego boy. Donates big-time to every good cause I bring him—”
“Half the do-gooders in the world are bad-doers pulling a con.”
“Donates big-time to every good cause I bring him,” Trahern repeated, “and never uses it for publicity.”
She walked with him to the front door. It was opened by a man dressed in white shoes, white slacks, and a tasteful white Hawaiian shirt with no decoration except the outlines of palm trees stitched in the palest of blue thread.
Jane mistook him for the owner, but he was a casually dressed butler. “The mister is waiting in the garage. I’ll take you to him.”
“That’s all right, Henry,” Trahern said. “I know the way.”
In those expansive rooms of sleek modern furniture accessorized with Asian antiques and art, the lumbering Dougal Trahern looked even more out of place than did the humble Ford Escape parked in the grand driveway. But he seemed to feel at home.
They passed a wall of glass beyond which lay a breathtaking view of the sea, gray under the ashen sky, phalanxes of whitecaps marching toward the shore.
An elevator took them down to a subterranean garage paved in limestone and containing a collection of maybe two dozen cars.
The owner was there, too, a surprise to Jane. One of the most famous movie stars of his time. Tall and handsome and black. His killer smile had melted hearts worldwide.
He and Trahern hugged, and upon being introduced, the actor took both of Jane’s hands in his. “Any friend of Dougal’s is—highly suspect! But not in your case. What agency represents you?”
Trahern was quick to translate, “He means talent agency.” To the actor, he said, “Jane isn’t in the business. You might say right now she’s something of a private investigator.”
“I’ve played a P.I. more than once,” the star said, “and I’ve had to hire a few, but none of them with your impact, Miss Hawk.”
The Gurkha RPV Civilian Edition was parked in the center of the garage, under pin spots. It appeared as formidable as the tactical armored vehicles, armored SUVs, and special-purpose law-enforcement vehicles that Terradyne, its Canadian manufacturer, sold around the world. Over eight feet high, more than twenty feet long, with maybe a 140-inch wheelbase. The Gurkha stood on large run-flat tires. The only obvious difference between it and the military version was the lack of gun ports.
It looked as if it were a Transformer just starting to change from an ordinary vehicle into a robot colossus.
The actor beamed with the affection of a passionate collector as he said, “Six-point-seven-liter V8 turbo diesel. Three hundred horsepower. Gross weight of this baby with all the options and both forty-gallon fuel tanks filled is like seventeen thousand pounds, but it handles sweet, gives you all the speed you need, and while you’re in it, you’re safe unless you plan to go up against a tank.”
Trahern handed an envelope to the star. “A check for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I’ll need the pink slip signed.”
Bemused, the actor said, “Dougal, I still don’t get this.”
“What’s to get?” Trahern harrumphed. “I can’t wait months and months for Terradyne to deliver one. And you’ll be gone for months on location for those two movies…which, by the way, don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning you another Oscar. You can order a new Gurkha and have it when you get home.”
“But you can borrow this for nothing.”
“No good,” Trahern said and glowered and shook his massively haired and bearded head. “I could get myself in trouble with this, so it’s better for you to have sold it than loaned it to me.”
Not with concern, but with the interest of a born adventurer, the actor said, “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“Every kind,” Trahern replied, his expression dour and his brow beetled as if he were a gifted foreteller who could see no possible futures except dark ones. “And that’s all I’ll say. You need to have plausible deniability. Unless you want to change your mind, not do this at all, leave your old friend with his bare ass hanging out.”
The actor fashioned his face into a God-forbid expression. “I’d be blinded by the blight. Keep it under wraps, Captain.”
Trahern said, “If we do what we need to do and bring the Gurkha back, you can buy it from me minus the cost of any repairs, if you want, or I just keep it, whatever. But now we’ve got a long night’s drive ahead of us. As much as I’d be enchanted to hear you tell some of your interminable Hollywood stories, I need that damn pink slip.”
The actor grinned at Jane. “Isn’t he something?”
“He’s something,” she agreed.
“I guess you know what you’re getting into with him.”
“I guess I do.”
16
* * *
WHEN THE LONG, sloped street was clear from intersection to intersection, Bureau cars pulled across two lanes, barring traffic from entering either end of the block in which stood the Branwick residence.
The neighbors in the house downhill from Branwick’s were not home. The neighbors on the other side had been quietly shepherded out of their place under the cover of night and escorted a safe distance from any potential action.
Uphill and across the street from the target house, Silverman and Special Agent Harrow stood watching from the darkness under the street trees and from behind a Roto-Rooter van that was in fact an undercover vehicle on loan from the Drug Enforcement Agency. In the back of the van waited the six members of the SWAT team, who were suited in hard high-impact armor, waiting for the order to go.
The night had been still. Now a light breeze came out of the west, stirring the trees into a whispering conspiracy.
In the target residence, lights glowed through most if not all of the ground-floor rooms, but only in part of the second story. Draperies hung open, the rooms beyond apparently vacant.
Initially, two agents approached the Branwick place dressed in street clothes with light-ballistic Kevlar vests under their shirts. No head protection. Their appearance did not scream police.
One of them climbed the four steps between the stone lions and moved to a section of wall between the front door and a window. The second man went to the east side of the house, let himself through an iron gate, and moved out of sight to the back of the residence.
The agent at the front, standing beside the window, pressed to the glass a two-inch-diameter suction cup at the center of which was a highly sensitive condenser microphone with a wide pick-up pattern. Clipped to his belt, an analytic audio processor the size of a pack of cigarettes was programmed to identify and screen out the rhythmic noise of bathroom-vent fans, refrigerator motors, and appliances, in order that voices and the irregular sounds of human activity would be more easily discerned. He wore an earpiece, so that he could hear what the processor deemed relevant.
The listening device also transmitted to a remote receiver, which in this case was Silverman’s smartphone.