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Letty unconsciously slipped her 938 from her jeans pocket and clicked the safety on and off, until Cartwright, looking at the gun, asked, “Do you know what you’re doing there?”
“I’m willing to patrol, but you know what?” Letty asked, slipping the gun back into her pocket. “You and I aren’t enough. We need more people.”
“Talk to Delores Nowak. Get that Kaiser guy out here.”
“Kaiser would work as the last-ditch guy, inside the hotel, but not so much on patrol—he’s too visible,” Letty said. “He looks like a soldier. Can’t help it. He’s the first guy they’d try to ambush.”
“Might have some deterrent effect,” Cartwright said.
“I don’t want to sound stupid, but... do you think a couple of the Ladies might help out?”
Cartwright looked away, raked her lower lip with her teeth: “Could, not a bad idea,” she said, after a minute. “With women... the Russians wouldn’t see them coming. If we could get Jane Longstreet. And Patty Bunker. Jane is a federal employee, Patty does contract security work, you’d have to pay her.”
Letty shrugged, thought about the cash they’d taken out of Loren Barron’s behind-the-photo hideout and the boxes of chips taken from the warehouse. “We can pay her. We’re gonna sell those chips. Is Longstreet in the Unspecified Agency?”
Cartwright shook her head. “No. She’s ATF. I bet if your senator asked for her in just the right way, the ATF would send her out here.”
“I’m gonna ask them,” Letty said. “You patrol, I’m gonna make some calls.”
Letty called Colles,asked that Kaiser and Jane Longstreet be briefed and sent to LA. “Longstreet’s an investigator with the ATF, but it’s actually Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms andExplosives, and since we had hand grenades used out here, we think theymight agree to send her. We’re asking for her by name. Kaiser, of course...”
“I’ll get you Kaiser for sure and ask for this Longstreet,” Colles said. “Should have them by tonight.”
Patty Bunker wasn’t working that day. When Letty explained the situation, she said she would catch a plane to LAX. Letty didn’t know her well but remembered her as a chubby dark-haired woman with a tendency toward overbright red lipstick and oversized plastic handbags, in which she kept large-frame revolvers. Though armed, she specialized in surveillance and surveillance technology.
With the arrangements made, Letty asked Baxter about the cash from Loren Barron’s house, and he grumbled something about how he’d hoped nobody would remember it. He agreed to give it up to pay Bunker.
“Nineteen grand and change. Seems like a lot.”
“You wouldn’t have any use for it anyway, since you’re gonna get killed,” Letty said.
“You got me there,” Baxter said. “Now go away. I’m reading.”
He was reading a jumble of text, numbers, and symbols that shouldn’t make sense to anyone, but apparently did to him. “By the way,” he said, as she turned away, “SlapBack is up again. They claim they were taken down by Antifa.”
“They were,” Letty said. “You and me are about as anti-fascist as they come.”
He nodded: “Yeah, when you think about it.”
Kaiser called: “I’m loading up. What do you want me to bring? I’m thinking M4, the 870, maybe a couple of flash-bangs...”
“Body armor...”
After talking to Kaiser, Letty found Able in the next suite and asked him about the sale of the computer chips. “We’re gonna need the cash and we’ll need to take a little off the top, to pay for protection,” she told him. “Not much; just a little.”
“I talked to Carl, he’ll need a couple of days’ notice to take them all—time to gather up cash. He’ll be brokering sales to other people around the country.”
“Pretty much a straightforward criminal, then, a fence,” Letty said.
“He’s not the only criminal around here,” Able said. “I’m looking at you, Charlie, or whatever the fuck your real name is.”
“Get the cash,” Letty said.
Victoria and Stepwere also talking about money.
They kept their savings in investment funds, under corporate names; not enough in any one of them to be noticeable, but then, they were invested in seventeen separate funds. Victoria was busy transferring them to similar funds in Switzerland, while Step and his employees were bundling hardware—chips, computer workstations, high-speed printers—and packing it as carefully as they could into shipping containers.
Step rented four warehouses under four separate corporate names but was now afraid to use any of them. Instead, he had moved all of his current merchandise into semi-trailers, which he kept moving until it was time to transfer the merchandise into containers.
