A Song for the Asking Read online

  “Uh, no, sir.”

  Kane scowled. “I thought not. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s seeing people farting their lives away—especially if those people happen to be Kanes. Now, the way I look at it, every second of so-called vacation time not spent sleeping, eating, or crappin’ should be devoted to bettering yourselves, policing the premises, helping your mother, and earning money for college. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

  Sensing their father’s seriousness, the children shook their heads.

  “Speak up!”

  “No, sir!” they answered as one.

  “Good. You, Tom,” Kane continued, again addressing his oldest, “probably think you’re hot stuff because you got a football scholarship to the University of Arizona. Now, I’ll admit playing for the Wildcats ain’t bad, but with your talent you could have made any college team in the country. Why didn’t you? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you never made the decision to totally commit. As usual, you just sailed along doing barely enough to stay ahead of the pack. Now you figure to cruise through the summer—lay back till you leave, surf a little, do some rock climbing. Am I right?”

  “No, sir,” Tommy responded.

  “What, then?”

  “He was planning on spending the summer chewing the buttons off Christy’s blouse,” Allison spoke up.

  “Quiet, Allison. Tom, as you’ve obviously failed to come up with some constructive endeavor, I’ve taken the liberty of getting you a job myself.”

  “But, Dad, I—”

  “No, buts. Tony Stewart, an old buddy of mine from the department, is in the contracting business now. He’s framing a bunch of houses up near Paradise Cove. You start Monday morning at seven. If I can, I’ll drop you off on my way to work. Otherwise, your mom will take you.” Kane shifted his gaze to Travis. “You’re going to be working there too, kid,” he added.

  “What about piano practice?” Travis asked. “This summer Mom wants me to—”

  “Do it afterward. A little job experience won’t hurt you. Hell, it’ll probably get you a lot further in life than tickling the ivories. Is this going to be a problem?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good.” Kane turned to his youngest. “Nate, have you been giving Sam his pills like you’re supposed to?” he asked, referring to the Butazolidin tablets the vet had prescribed for the dog’s arthritis.

  “I … I forgot yesterday,” said Nate, his cheeks flushing to nearly the color of his curly red hair.

  “You’ve been forgetting more than yesterday. That’s the kind of attitude I’m talking about here. Sam could barely walk this morning.”

  “I won’t forget anymore,” Nate promised.

  “You’d better not,” said Kane. Then, to his daughter, “Allison, you’ve been dying to shoot off your mouth, so here’s your chance. What’s your plan for the summer?”

  “Well, Pop, now that I hear what you’ve lined up for the boys, I think I’d like to bend nails with them, too. You know, hang out on the job and drive all those sweaty young carpenters wild …”

  “Make ’em puke is more like it,” snickered Nate.

  “Shut up, flea, before I accidentally step on you.”

  “Both of you close your yaps or I’ll do it for you,” Kane ordered. “Allison, as both you and Nate are too young to hold down real jobs, your duty’s going to be to assist your mother in any activity she designates. In addition, I want you to police the beach in front of the house daily—all the way to the water. That means bottles, Styrofoam, tar, seaweed, dog turds, and dead surfers. If it ain’t sand, I don’t want to see it. We have the Fourth of July party coming up in two weeks, and I’m gonna be checking. Which reminds me—all of you start collecting driftwood for a bonfire. After the fireworks show we’re going to put together a blaze that’ll give those peckerwoods in Santa Monica something to talk about.” Kane paused, mentally reviewing his points. Satisfied he had left nothing out, he said, “Okay, that’s the duty roster for the summer. Any questions?”

  Tommy shifted uneasily. “What about climbing? Trav and I were figuring … I mean, we had that trip planned to Mineral King before I leave for Arizona, and—”

  “Negative. I already told you. Climbing’s out.”

  “C’mon, Dad, that’s not fair. Last summer you said we could attempt that wall on Needleham Mountain.”

  “That was before you got your slot on the U of A football squad. If you want to do some bouldering or a few easy scrambles out at Joshua Tree or Idyllwild, fine. But that’s it. I can’t chance your getting injured before the season starts.”

  “The trip’s definitely off?” asked Travis.

  “The climbing part, anyway. If we go, it’ll be to backpack only.”

  Tommy stubbornly shook his head. “Dad, you said—”

  “Is that understood?”

  “Aw, Dad …”

  “Tom, is that understood?”

  Tommy nodded reluctantly. “No climbing.”

  Kane paused again, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. “Nobody else wants to whine? Good, because I have a couple more points to cover. But first, let me ask you all a question: What’s the most important thing about being a Kane?”

  The children’s response was automatic. “Kanes stand together, no matter what.”

  “Right. So when it comes to this summer’s assignments, if one of you screws up, you’re all in trouble—no matter what. Tom, your being the oldest, I expect you to make sure there’s no slacking off in my absence.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” said Tommy dryly. “I’ll do my best to fill your size thirteens.”

  “You do that,” said Kane. He started to say something more, then stopped, glancing up as a window opened on the second floor.

  “Dan, Arnie’s here,” Catheryn’s voice floated down. “He says to come on up when you’re done haranguing the children. I can get breakfast going if you have time.”

  Kane glanced at his watch. “Tell him I’ll be right there, Kate,” he yelled back. “But hold off on the grub. Arnie and I will grab something on the road.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Kane answered. Then, turning back to his children, he quickly concluded his talk. “Now, the last thing I want to cover this morning is asking you to join me in wishing your brother Nate congratulations on his birthday,” he said, placing his hand on his youngest’s shoulder. “He turns nine today, and as this is his last year in single digits, I want you all to show him special consideration. That includes you, Allison.”

  “Special consideration?” Allison moaned, clutching her throat. “Anything but that.”

  Ignoring his daughter’s theatrics, Kane lowered his voice and spoke directly to Nate. “This investigation I’m on right now is keeping me pretty busy,” he said softly. “I’ll try, but there’s a good chance I won’t be attending your party tonight, so I’ll say it now, just in case. Happy birthday, kid. With a little luck I may be off tomorrow, and if so, I have something special planned. Keep the day open just in case, all right?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “That goes for the rest of you, too,” Kane added, turning back to the others. “Any more questions? No? Then get moving.”

  2

  By nine that morning, although the Santa Ana winds were just beginning their adiabatic rush to the sea in earnest, the temperature had already risen into the nineties. Since the beginning of the week, searing gusts from the desert had rocketed the mercury to triple digits, sending waves of shimmering, superheated air rising from the pavement and baking the streets and denizens of Los Angeles alike into a torpor. Not surprisingly, the effect on the population had followed classic and predictable trends. Like similar winds throughout the world—the Mediterranean sirocco, the Chinooks of the eastern Rockies, and Africa’s dust-laden, suffocating simoom—the Santa Anas blasting across southern California had sent the murder ra
te in the City of Angles soaring.

  Parked on a side street off Pico Boulevard, Kane sat in a dun-colored Chevy Impala, jammed uncomfortably behind the wheel. He stared through a pair of Bushnell 7x50 binoculars, ignoring a salty trickle of sweat inching down his face. Briefly taking his gaze from a third-floor apartment down the street, he wiped his eyes, then resumed his watch. His partner, Arnie Mercer, shifted miserably in the seat beside him.

  “Looks like today’s going to be another hot one,” Kane noted. “At least nothing’s on fire this time.”

  “That’s ’cause everything burned the last time around,” Arnie observed irritably. “Who gives a damn, anyway? This whole pus-bag dung-heap of a city could burn clean to the ground and nobody’d give a shit, including me.”

  Kane grinned and lowered the binoculars, glancing over at the stocky man who had been his training officer when he’d first graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy, his partner when he’d made detective four years later, and his D-III supervisor for most of the time he’d spent on the homicide unit after that. “Jeez, don’t hold back, Arnie,” he said. “Lemme know how you really feel.”

  “I just did,” Arnie replied, reaching for the radio. He paused, studying the four-story apartment building down the block. “Anything?”

  Kane raised the binoculars and again trained them on a corner window three levels up. Through the dusty glass he could make out vague shapes in the room beyond: a floor lamp, a door, a tacky picture of a sad-eyed clown. No movement. Next he focused on a maroon Ford parked at the other end of the street. Special Agents Tinley and Marcus. After watching the FBI operatives for a few seconds, he shifted his gaze back to the apartment. “Know what the three most overrated things in the world are?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Champagne, caviar, and the FBI.”

  Arnie smiled. “Right on all three, pal.”

  Despite Kane’s attempt at humor, both men knew his joke hit disturbingly close to the truth. Ever since the FBI had muscled in on the murder/kidnapping case that Kane and Mercer were presently investigating, things had gone down the bureaucratic drain. Not that they had started off all that well to begin with.

  Anatomy of an investigation gone bad: On Tuesday afternoon what had apparently begun as a simple mugging on San Vicente Boulevard had turned into murder when Mrs. Agnes Sellers, while struggling with three men wearing ski masks, fell and struck her head on the curb in front of the Tiny Tots Day Care Center. As Mrs. Sellers lay in the gutter dying of a cerebral hemorrhage, the men grabbed a small boy who’d been with her and fled in a late-model van, which various witnesses subsequently described as gray, light blue, orange, and tan. The first policeman there, Officer William Patterson, called the West L.A. homicide unit, and twenty minutes later Kane arrived on the scene.

  Standard so far, but the seeds of what would soon become, as known in departmental jargon, a classic clusterfuck had already been sown. When the deceased Mrs. Sellers—a nanny in the home of T.J. Bradley, the senior Republican senator from California—failed to return home with eight-year-old Timothy Bradley II, the mugging turned murder became murder/kidnapping.

  Senator Bradley caught the first flight back from D.C. Although the LAPD had jurisdiction over both the murder and the abduction, Senator Bradley insisted that the FBI be brought in on the kidnapping portion of the case. Then, to further complicate matters, someone in the mayor’s office leaked the story to the press, and by late afternoon the street outside the West L.A. Division on Butler Avenue resembled a media circus, with a throng of network news crews doing simultaneous, side-by-side stand-ups outside the station.

  That evening a ransom demand for two million dollars came in on the Bradleys’ unlisted home phone. An LAPD tap on the line traced the call to a telephone switching station in Nevada, at which point—citing a technicality involving jurisdiction over state lines—the FBI assumed primary control of the kidnapping phase of the investigation. Even though the murder portion of the case remained his, Kane suddenly found Bureau agents Tinley and Marcus shadowing his team as uninvited observers.

  Suspecting that the kidnapping had been an inside job, Kane ran checks on everyone close to the family. A number of possibilities turned up, including Sylvia Martin, an individual who had briefly worked at the Bradleys’ house as a temporary cleaning woman. Ms. Martin, currently on probation, had served three years for burglary at CIW, the California Department of Corrections’ Institute for Women at Corona. Kane also learned that she had a common-law husband, Paul Escobar, whose rap sheet ranged from car theft to armed robbery. When interviewed, Ms. Martin denied having seen Escobar for months. But something—a hunch, an indefinable sixth sense Kane had developed over the years—told him she was lying.

  Meanwhile, the FBI set up a ransom exchange. Following piecemeal instructions left in phone booths across the city, they placed the money in the trunk of a car that was to be driven to a Century City office tower, then left to be valet-parked in the building’s subterranean garage. Unfortunately, a Beverly Hills patrol officer inadvertently stopped the ransom vehicle for a traffic violation a mere two blocks from its destination. Seeing this, the abductors, who had apparently been tracking the car’s progress, decided to abort.

  As the Bureau scrambled for a new toehold on the case, Kane took a different tack. Reasoning the kidnappers must have concocted a plan, however unlikely, for removing the money from the building without being caught, Kane examined every point of egress. Nothing. Then it hit him. The kidnappers didn’t have to leave with the money immediately—all they had to do was stash it somewhere in the building, then collect it at a later time. But where to leave it? The answer turned out to be almost laughably obvious: The First Regional Bank of California occupied the building’s entire first floor.

  Kane checked all safety-deposit-box accounts that had been opened recently at the bank. One renter’s name jumped out: Ramon Estrada. The address and social security number he’d provided proved fictitious, and a clerk at the bank—when shown a picture of Paul Escobar, Sylvia Martin’s common-law husband—identified him as the man who had opened the account, requesting several large boxes. Since then, lacking an address for Escobar, Kane’s team had been running a twenty-four hour surveillance on Ms. Martin’s apartment. To date the stakeout had proved fruitless. Now, as they watched for the second sweltering day in a row, Kane was beginning to wonder whether he had made a mistake.

  “They got another ransom call last night,” Arnie said, still squinting at the apartment building down the block. “It’s supposed to go down later today.”

  “Uh-huh. Think the kid’s still alive?”

  “Do you?”

  “It’s been three days.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I don’t know, Arnie. This stakeout’s a long shot, but right now it’s the best we’ve got. Let’s just hope Escobar shows and something comes of it.”

  Arnie spoke into his handset. “Deluca, you got anything?”

  Detective Paul Deluca was stationed in a storefront across from the Martin apartment. He had a parabolic microphone trained on the third-floor window. “She’s up. I just heard the toilet flush.”

  “Banowski, how about you?”

  John Banowski, the final member of the team, had taken a position in an alley behind the building. “Nothin’.”

  Arnie tossed the handset onto the seat, then reached for a large metal thermos at his feet. He filled a paper cup with coffee, handed it to Kane, then poured another for himself. Kane pointedly looked away as Arnie withdrew a small flask from the glove compartment and fortified his drink. An uncomfortable silence followed as both men continued to study the building.

  Before long stakeout boredom set in once more. “Remember when you thought your life was going to amount to something?” Arnie asked.

  “Yeah,” Kane chuckled. “Thank God those days are over.”

  “At least you have your family.”

  “For now. Tommy’s taking
off for Arizona at the end of August. I’ll tell you, if that kid plays like he did his final two varsity seasons—Santa Monica High went undefeated this year, eight and one last year—he’s going to set the Pac-Ten on its ear. Did you hear he was voted All Western Offensive End by the Times?”

  Arnie grinned. “I know, I know. You already told me at least thirty-five times. What’s new with Allison and Nate?”

  “About the same. Far as I’m concerned, Allison’s grounded till the next century for that safe-sex parody she wrote in her school paper.”

  “You have to admit it was well written.”

  “That doesn’t change things. Considering she’s the smartest one of the bunch, she sure manages to screw up. And lately all she seems to care about is reading those god-awful science-fiction stories she has stacked in her room. She’s even writing them now, if you can believe that.”

  “Are they any good?”

  Kane shrugged. “Who knows? Now, as for Nate—there’s hope for that one. He’s a tough little guy.”

  “Yeah, he sure is,” Arnie agreed. “By the way, I heard some of your pep talk to the kids this morning. You got Tommy and Travis jobs?”

  “Uh-huh. Working construction with Tony. It ought to do them some good. Especially Travis. Kate’s got him all turned around with her music plans for him and whatnot. By God, that’s going to change.”

  “Have you listened to Travis play lately, old buddy? He’s—”

  “Yeah, yeah, he’s good. So what? That and a buck will get him a cup of coffee.”

  Arnie shook his head. “Now, don’t take this wrong, Dan, but did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re a mite hard on your kids?”

  “Hell, no,” said Kane. “We both know the world’s an unforgiving place, and getting nastier all the time. I want that bunch ready for what they’re going to find when they get out here. And if I have to boot their tails to toughen them up, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  “Well, you’ve never had a neurotic need to be loved,” Arnie noted dryly.

  “True,” said Kane, his voice softening. “But I’ll let you in on a secret, partner, just so you don’t get the wrong idea. I may grouse about them from time to time, but I would stack up those kids of mine against any you want to name. If anything ever happened to one of them …” Kane paused. After a long moment he continued. “I know I can’t protect them forever,” he said, “but I think more of those kids more than I can say. I’d step in front of a bullet for any of them without hesitation, and that’s the God’s truth.”