My Special Angel

By Carl A. Flecker Jr.

Crete Sloan, a mercenary with a passion for justice, living on an island in the Atlantic plunges into a hunt-and-be-hunted game with a professional contract killer. One of Sloan’s few friends, Ben Tolberg, is murdered at the Hotel del Coronado across the bay from San Diego. Complicating the case is the crime scene in which Tolberg, intense, driven and morally straight, is found on a bed with a known high-class call girl, both of them naked, both of them dead. It is into this episode of senseless murder that Sloan is pulled from his placid island to a tangle of trouble a continent away.
Tolberg had been the chief financial officer of Ramos Appliance, owned by Willy Ramos. Gloria Syms, elegant society matron, is the recipient of the charitable dollars of Ramos Appliance for her Sisters of Service convent organization. Rachel English is the intellectually bright, demure, but sexually alluring comptroller of Ramos Appliance. According to Holly Tolberg, Ben’s daughter, Rachel is the next-in-line for Ben’s job. The case becomes complicated when Rachel discovers someone has been embezzling money from Ramos Appliance. And even more complicated when Sloan discovers who orchestrated the whole affair.
In San Diego, the contract killer turns his attention to Sloan and bungles several attempted hits. Sloan and San Diego homicide detective Danny Wu then learn there is not just one killer, but four: the contract professional and three of his protégés. The protégés are punks, amateurs trying to learn the business of murder without remorse. Underlying the mayhem is Sloan’s need to know who hired the hit man and Sloan’s fight to stay alive to bring the killer to justice.
Four brutal murders, a philandering executive and a scheme of corporate embezzlement are set in the upscale charm and glitter of San Diego and La Jolla, California. Crete Sloan wades into the morass and takes deadly aim on the contract killer and the killer’s employer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl A. Flecker Jr.
• Release date: Jan 25, 2015

Carl A. Flecker Jr.

In addition to writing, I am a dentist with a private practice in my native city of Pittsburgh, PA. I live in a suburb of Pittsburgh. For many years, I have spent innumerable hours with real men and women and now spend equally with imaginary characters. Both are a joy.

Book preview

2

At my place on the beach, I showered, shaved, threw the 110-volt connection for both the iPad and cell phone into my briefcase and headed for the door. Then a thought occurred to me. I went back, pulled the .45 from the closet, emptied the magazine, made sure the chamber was empty and threw it in the suitcase along with a separate box of shells.

I flew on the single-engine island taxi to Miami International where I stepped on a moving walkway headed for the terminal. I carried the cell phone in a holster on my hip the way cowboys carried guns in the old west. Don’t anybody tell me I’m not in the twenty-first century.

The phone rang. I flipped it from the holster. The voice was odd, sounded weary. Mr. Sloan?

Yes.

Detective Danny Wu here, the voice said. San Diego County Homicide.

Yes?

Ben Tolberg, he said.

I didn’t respond. The detective was fishing. Let him fish. Experience had taught me to shut up and let the other person roll. Detective Danny Wu would want to meet with me. The moment I’d heard about Ben’s murder, I knew I’d be involved.

Murdered two nights ago, said Danny Wu. I am informed that you are—or were—a good friend of his.

True, I said. I’ll be there late tonight.

Good. May we meet in the morning? Perhaps you can fill me in.

Fill him in. Meant they had no suspects, or right then he’d be sitting in an interrogation room raking someone over the hot police procedure coals.

Background, he said. Friends, enemies, likes, dislikes, routine things.

Okay, I said. I’ll fill you in, you fill me in. We’ll trade secrets. I’ll be at the Hermosa Vista on Prospect Street in La Jolla.

Trade secrets? he said.

I remained silent.

Okay, he said. Nice coffee shop just off the lobby. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

I’ll be there, I said.

He broke off without saying goodbye.

As I boarded the plane, I wondered how Detective Wu knew about me. Had he contacted someone in Pittsburgh? Years ago I’d been a cop on the Pittsburgh force and Homicide Commander Kellen Donpapitov would speak well of me. Had Danny Wu contacted him? Was Wu that good that he’d have done a background check on me so quickly? Or did he consider me a suspect?

I had the aisle seat in one of the rows before the wing, so I was spared the noise of the engines. The seat in the middle was empty, and a young fellow had the window seat. He wore a baseball cap on sideways, baggy jeans and baggy T-shirt. He watched a movie on an iPad, which meant I probably be spared conversation with him. That would be good.

The cabin lights dimmed. I reclined my seat the few inches they give you, leaned my head back and recalled images of Ben Tolberg.

He had been out there in California three years. His wife, Karen—his first wife that is—had married Ben when they were both thirty. They had one child, a girl, Holly, who was most likely out of college and into a career by now. Karen was not your everyday image of the California golden girl. She had aged gracefully, with creases at the corners of the eyes and creases where the smile dimples used to be. Her smile was demure, her nature generous, and her attitude positive. She was a devoted wife; stayed in the background, keeping a meticulous house and quietly entertaining folks whom she and Ben considered close friends.

Karen drank very little, didn’t play cards and had no interest in the trend of modern feminism. She read voraciously: history, literature, the sophisticated stuff. Could talk at length about any subject. Would have been a great cocktail party conversationalist had Ben ever dragged her to one of those affairs, which they both considered rather shallow. Everyone liked Karen Tolberg. Everyone. Many had knocked on her door, sat at her kitchen table over coffee or tea and sought her matronly advice.

But within a year of returning to La Jolla from Pittsburgh, Karen Tolberg was dead. Sudden death, natural cause. I had missed the funeral for reasons I don’t remember and now regret. Life is too short. Should have been there.

In California, Ben had taken a job as the chief financial officer of a rising distributorship of home appliances, an outfit named Ramos Appliance. A fellow named Willy Ramos was the founder, CEO and chairman. I had never met Willy Ramos, but now he was on my list.

After Karen’s death, Ben had spent a gruesome year rummaging around in guilt and depression; guilt for not having brought Karen home sooner, and depression because not all the money in the world could put a dent in his emotional needs.

His murder now shook the foundation of my own mortality, an event that wanted to bring forward those philosophic snippets packaged so efficiently back there in some dusty corner of the mind, time to forget the future and seize the moment, enjoy the moment, live the moment. Ben’s life had been cut short before completion, before the future, before aging, before the time for contemplating the end. Some say there is no such thing as an untimely death. Really?

The way I see it, someone forced death upon Ben way before his time.

Someone would need to pay.

3

At roughly seven thirty that evening, San Diego time, the 737 touched down at Lindbergh Field and taxied from the runway. I picked up a rental car and drove on up to the Hermosa Vista hotel in La Jolla. I could have stayed at the del Coronado but that would have only kept the vision of Ben up front to wrack my emotions. I knew the Hermosa Vista from a previous trip. It would do fine.

It was close to midnight back on the islands, but I had slept during the flight and felt no need to hit the sack. I dumped the suitcase in the room and rode the elevator back down to the lobby. The building was long and narrow, the front facing the street, the other facing the ocean. The floor was red Mexican tile that looked old. The grout was gray in color. I wondered if it was gray in the beginning or if it had just grayed with age. I couldn’t tell. The walls were a beige American ceramic. There were newspapers spread on a long mission table against the wall to the left. The wall to the right opened into a formal restaurant that had closed for the night. I grabbed a copy of the San Diego Press from the table and went to the cocktail lounge off the lobby near the entrance.

Heavily upholstered booths lined the windows along the right wall and offered views of Prospect Place. The bar ran the length of the left wall and was of a heavy red-brown wood with a generous handrail and brass foot rail. The overhead recessed lights were muted. Burgundy carpet covered the floor. There were candles on the tables and premium brands on the glass shelves of the back bar. A few couples huddled close in whispered conversation. No television. No tobacco odors. Cheese spread and crackers on the bar. I slumped into one of the window booths and ordered a gin and bitters. The waitress was a cheerful young lady who wore a cobbler’s apron, an ear-to-ear smile and a red band holding a blonde ponytail. Her nametag said Carrie.

The low level of light from the table candle and dim overheads made reading the newspaper a chore, but if I folded the paper just so and moved the candle just so, I could make a go of it. In the business section, I found what I was looking for:

THE BUSINESSMAN AND THE PROSTITUTE

FATAL TRYST AT THE DEL

Prostitute? With Ben?

The article noted that the first wife of the deceased had died suddenly two years earlier, and Tolberg had gone on to marry the socially prominent widow, Linda Hickman.

I stopped reading there, curious. Linda was twenty years younger than Ben. She was vivacious, social and had a grown daughter from a previous marriage. Some said Ben had jumped in too soon. I had met Linda only once. I was not impressed.

But then again I’m not easily impressed. By anything.

The article went on to say the two had become familiar to readers of the society page. Society page? Ben was not a social hound, always serious. Serious about work, about life. Twelve to fifteen hour days on the job and no use for small talk. Or was Ben a different person out here on new turf?

Carrie set the drink in front of me on a paper napkin and quietly left the table.

I savored the first sip, then went back to the newspaper.

The businessman was found dead in bed in a private suite in the Hotel del Coronado, the prostitute lying next to him. Both were naked, both shot in the head. The medical examiner had calculated the double murder happened sometime Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. The bodies were found at eight thirty Tuesday night when a housekeeper entered the suite to turn down the beds.

I sipped the gin.

The newspaper article continued. The woman, Laverne ‘Kiki’ Rudder, was a known forty-eight-year-old high class call girl with a string of prostitution arrests dating back to her teenage years.

"Forty-eight!"

There was a color photo of Kiki Rudder in a separate column to the right. I moved the candle to get a better view of the picture. Redhead, long hair, green eyes. The hair was wavy, parted in the middle, draped over the forehead, pulled back behind the ears and fell slightly below the shoulders. The skin of her face was pale and without the lines of age, yet not tight and unseemly as if the plastics boys had tweaked it. Her smile showed gleaming white, evenly shaped teeth, which I assumed had been capped. A skirt that extended just below her underpants seductively revealed and highlighted the appropriate curves in a way that forced me to stare at the picture a moment longer. Well, maybe more than a moment.

I sipped the drink. One of the couples in the back left the lounge.

The hotel housekeeper who’d found the bodies said she had come to work at noon Tuesday and noticed the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the door lever of the suite. At eight thirty that evening, before leaving for home, she made her rounds to turn down the beds and lay a bit of chocolate on the pillows. She saw the sign again. Thinking it hung there by mistake, she knocked and called out, Housekeeping. She repeated that two more times, then entered the suite with her passkey.

A related article noted that the previous evening, Monday, a hotel employee, Rosa Juarez, had been found dead in her car in the parking lot of the hotel, a fatal gunshot wound to the head. The reporter went on to write that Rosa Juarez worked at the hotel reception desk while supporting her invalid mother and taking night classes toward an undergraduate degree at San Diego State.

County Homicide Detective Danny Wu was quoted: We do not at this time know of any connection between the two murders.

4

Early the following morning I called Ramos Appliance, the company Ben worked for, and scheduled a meeting with Willy Ramos. The receptionist had a little girl voice and balked until I explained the Tolberg connection. She left the phone, came back and said, Ten o’clock. University Industrial Park. You know where it is? She gave me directions.

Then I parked the .45 on my hip and rode the elevator down to the lobby.

The coffee shop was in the center of the building with no view, but with the morning aromas of maple syrup, toasted bread and bacon. Beethoven or Mozart or one of the others cascaded down in soft volume from speakers concealed behind grated recesses in the ceiling. There were booths along the walls and a few small tables in the middle of the room. White linen on the tables. Some of the patrons spoke in hushed tones, as if there were something sacred about this time of day and this was their own private church service. Others sat silently. A few read newspapers.

A sign in a chrome standard said, Please Seat Yourself.

I did.

I was nursing coffee when Danny Wu arrived. His Asian appearance was unmistakable. I waved him over. He moved with composure and confidence, politely nodding to patrons who gazed his way. He was dressed in scuffed penny loafers, standard gray slacks, a white shirt, a red and blue rep tie and a tan linen sport jacket. As he approached, I rose from the booth.

Danny Wu, I said.

Sloan.

Danny Wu was not a surprise, although thinner and taller than the picture I had formed in my mind. His face was calm and smiling, his handshake firm.

He slid into the booth opposite me.

Why don’t you stay at the Del? Why all the way up here?

Too close to the deed, I said.

Wu processed that for a moment, nodded, and said, You, Crete Sloan, friend of Mr. Benjamin Tolberg. Homicide cop for a while in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where you were born and raised. Before that, you worked the other side of the street. Organized crime. You were an enforcer, elbow and knee guy, but somehow you were able to back out of the mob and keep your life. Interesting. How does one do that?

I figured Wu had run a routine background check on me that gave him some information, but not all of it. Had I not been three thousand miles from the crime scene, I would be a suspect. Wu knew that. He no doubt had crossed me off his mental list. Yet he knew enough of my past to wonder what I was up to, if anything. He appeared pleasant enough, so I indulged him.

One afternoon, I said, I woke up in a hospital half-dead with six holes in me. Put there by another enforcer, my buddy. I lay there in the hospital bed, looked at the holes in my chest and decided it was time for a career change. I wasn’t a made man. Never took the oath of Omertà, the code of silence. The Don and the other mob boys knew where to find me. Had I become a problem, I would not be sitting here talking to you.

Wu sipped his coffee and seemed to buy the explanation.

Why would your buddy, as you call him, shoot you?

He thought I had a hit on him. He’d do me first. A pre-emptive strike.

"Did you have a hit on him?"

No.

What happened to him?

Like Jimmy Hoffa, I said. Disappeared.

You? he said. You did it?

The Don, I said.

So who are you? he said.

You talked to Pittsburgh? I said.

Donpapitov, he said.

We’d called City Homicide Commander Kellen Donpapitov, Pappy. He would have spoken well of me. But Wu wanted to hear it from me. I was going to be in San Diego awhile. It would make no sense to ruffle Danny Wu’s feathers.

I worked for the mob in high school. Numbers, sports pools—

You worked for the mob in high school? said Wu.

His tone was incredulous. I accepted it as incredulous. The real question was why I would do such a thing as early as high school.

No, I said, I did not have a shit childhood. I was not abused by my parents. Little Italy. That’s what they called my neighborhood. My father ran a beer garden, my mother worked the tables. The locals all hung out at Sloan’s Grille. My father booked numbers. I went into the business when I was in high school. Simple. Made as much money as my teachers. Graduated, stayed with the mob. Became an enforcer. Go out and collect the vig, bust balls if need be. Boxed a little Golden Gloves, but ended too many matches on my back. Shot up, almost died, recovered, went to college. Pitt. Night school. Earned a degree in General Studies just to get the ticket, something to hang on the wall. But there were ancillary benefits: classical music, jazz, literature, you know the rest.

And now you live on an island in the Atlantic.

Away from it all, I said.

Wu grunted, took some coffee.

They say you’re a mercenary. What does that mean, mercenary?

They? I said.

The people of your island village. Small place. Everybody knows.

The Dane would not have given that up. Wu must have talked to Constable Bobby Helms.

Means I’m a mercenary, I said.

You fight wars for money?

"Private wars, not government wars. Personal wars."

What does that mean, personal wars? said Wu.

Someone steals your boat and you want it back. I get it—for half its value. Someone is missing—kidnapped—I find the person. A sludge of human debris rapes and murders your young daughter and you want justice. I get it for you—whatever your brand of justice.

They say Mr. Dane covers for you. How does he do that?

He screens my phone calls, I said. I have a house on the beach. It has no phone. Simple lifestyle.

Yes, they say he receives your orders, then passes them on to you.

I wouldn’t call them orders, I said.

You would call them what? said Wu.

Requests for service. Not binding. I choose the work I do.

Not all the time legal, said Wu. Not good.

I don’t work around here, I said.

Except for the murder of your friend, he said. What are we going to do about this?

I didn’t respond. We were quiet for a moment. Wu knew and I knew that I was going to hunt down Ben’s killer. I’d do it parallel to Wu, but one or the other of us would nail the killer.

Okay, said Wu. Mr. Benjamin Tolberg. Unfortunate. Ever since we find the body, everybody talks. Newspaper, television, local gossip. Lot of talk. Lot of speculation. But no clue why this man is set up for homicide. He took a gulp of coffee and looked at me. The look was a question.

I leaned back in the booth. Danny Wu hadn’t driven up from San Diego to slop small talk in a high-end coffee shop. His face read like a roadmap of a rough life. He looked haggard. His eyes were bagged, skin creased, voice tired. I wondered how many other homicides he might be working, how many balls he was juggling, frantically moving to keep them all in the air.

Don’t know, I said. I have no idea why someone would want to kill him. He was a decent fellow. More than decent. Loyal to his wife, loyal to his Jewish faith, tithed the temple, paid taxes…

The waitress poured more coffee, said her name was Amy, said she’d be happy to take an order when we were ready.

Wu politely said he was ready and looked to me for approval. I nodded. Wu ordered the mixed platter: buckwheat cakes with plum syrup, scrambled eggs, bacon and a double side of whole wheat toast.

And plenty coffee, he added.

I settled for a western omelet and a large glass of grapefruit juice, butter the toast all the way, edge to edge.

Amy left the booth. We watched her walk away, a composite of the curves of youth that could have been sculpted by Michelangelo himself. Nice compliment to the coffee and aromas. Pleasant to contemplate.

The Pittsburgh Pump & Valve, said Wu.

I was getting the hang of it now. Wu liked to ask questions with a statement.

Manufacturing plants in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Los Angeles, Atlanta, England (outside London) and one in Mexico. Tolberg was the CFO. Partnered with another friend of mine and took the company from startup to an international outfit throwing money back to Pittsburgh.

Tolberg made good money, said Wu.

Left the company with a bundle, I said.

5

Amy delivered the breakfast. Wu asked for cocktail sauce and Tabasco for the eggs. We both watched her walk away from the table.

So this decent fellow jumps into the sack with a whore, said Wu.

Not Ben Tolberg, I said.

No? said Wu.

Remotely possible but highly unlikely, I said. "He was too involved in his work and too straight to play the surly games. He would not have been with a prostitute. He was straight arrow. Almost to a fault.

"There was a time when his business partner and my friend Deke McCain wanted to bribe a foreign politician so the Pump could supply parts to that politician’s auto market. McCain went to Ben, his CFO, said he needed a hundred thou in small bills: hundreds, fifties, twenties and tens.

"Tolberg said ‘so much money, for what, petty cash?’ Ben then declared, in so many words, that paying under the table, or bribing, or whatever you want to call it, was against the law. Tolberg wanted no part of it, told McCain if he wanted to bribe politicians that he—Tolberg—would leave the company. It was a long time before the Pump & Valve sold a car part in that foreign country.

McCain told me this story many years later, you understand, but the point is Ben Tolberg was a principled fellow in all aspects of his life.

Wu nodded as if he understood.

How about the new wife? he asked. You said Tolberg had money. I assume lots of it. She will likely get it. Good motive.

Second wife is young, I said. Don’t know her. Met her once at their wedding out here, that’s it. Can’t say.

Can’t say she’s capable of murder, he said.

Another statement acting as a question.

Can’t say what Ben saw in her, I said. She’s about twenty years younger than him, physically attractive, but emotionally she’d bore me to tears.

Danny Wu gave a hint of a smile. I guessed he had met Linda Tolberg.

How about the money? said Wu. His money. A lot?

"Left the Pump &