His wishful thinking got me to thinking.
Stuart went on, "But we can't touch him. No one can touch him. Not the police, not the FBI, not the courts. No one."
"I can touch him," I said, surprised as hell that the words came out of my mouth. I really hadn't thought this through. Not in the slightest.
Stuart snapped his head around. "What did you say?"
I plowed forward, what the hell. "I said I can touch him."
Stuart squinted at me.
"What exactly does that mean, Sam?"
"It means I can hand-deliver you Jerry Blum."
"I'm not following."
It was a crazy idea. Too crazy. But Stuart was hurting and furious and frustrated, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do. Unless....
I said, "Do you really want to face Jerry Blum alone, the man who killed your wife?"
"More than life itself."
"Then what would you say if I told you that I could bring you Jerry Blum?"
"I would say you're crazy."
"Yes, maybe a little."
"But you don't sound crazy."
"Good to know."
But my crazy idea had sparked something in him. In the very least, it had given him something to take his mind off his pain. He turned in his seat and faced me.
"How could you do this?" he asked.
"I have contacts," I said vaguely.
"And your contacts can get you Jerry Blum?"
"Yes," I said. "Sooner or later."
"And I would face him?"
I nodded. "Alone."
"Man against man?"
"Mano y mano," I said, which, I think, meant man and man, but what the hell did I know?
Stuart said, "What about all his bodyguards, his shooters, his hired killers?"
I shook my head. "It would just be the two of you. Alone."
"And would anyone else know about this?"
"Just me, you, and Jerry Blum."
Something very close to a smile touched the corners of Stuart's mouth, but then he shook his head and the smile was gone. "As much as I would like to believe you, Sam, I have to face the fact that this is nothing more than a fantasy - "
"I can get him," I said, cutting him off. "Give me two weeks."
Stuart stared at me long and hard, then finally he nodded and grinned. He looked good when he grinned; it made his perfect bald head look even more perfect.
"Okay, I believe you," he said. "Why I believe you, I don't know, but I do."
We both sat back in our patio chairs and I listened to the wind and the waves and the sounds of someone in the condo below us making a late night dinner. Shortly, the smell of bacon wafted up. God, I used to love breakfast for dinner.
Stuart rolled his head in my direction. "And what if I kill him?"
"Everybody's got to die sooner or later," I said.
"You're a tough woman."
"Getting tougher by the minute," I said.
Chapter Eighteen
It was midnight, and I was sitting in my minivan with my laptop near the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel. No, I don't normally hang out at the Ritz Carlton, but this was as good a place as any for what I was about to do.
Orange County's only five-star hotel sat high on a bluff, which, if you asked me, looked exactly like a cliff. Anyway, I was parked in the guest parking lot in the far corner of the far lot. I doubted I had attracted much attention. Just a small woman in a big van.
A small woman who was about to get very naked.
My windows were cracked open and far below the steep cliff - I was going with cliff - was the pleasant sound of the surf crashing along what I knew were mostly smooth, sandy beaches.
I briefly thought about what I had gotten myself into, and the further away I was from Stuart and his heartbreak, the more I realized how crazy my idea had been.
Think about it, Sam: you promised to deliver one of the West Coast's most notorious gangsters to a mild-mannered widower - for a one-on-one smackdown.
Yeah, I've had better ideas.
Of course, as things presently stood, Stuart would never see justice. Or, if he did, it might be years before Blum was locked behind bars again, and that's if the feds could pin anything on him, which I seriously doubted. After all, Blum had been in prison awaiting trial when the plane went down.
A hell of an alibi.
And so what do you do, Sam? You offer to deliver a murderer to a man who's only outstanding physical attribute was perhaps the world's most perfectly bald head?
Stuart was a slight man, to say the least. Jerry Blum would no doubt kill the grieving widower with his bare hands. In fact, Blum had probably done exactly that throughout his career in crime.
And that's if you managed to somehow even get to Blum.
It's good business to under-promise and over-deliver. Well, in this case, I had over-promised...and might just very well deliver a murderer.
Great.
I shook my head. I've had better plans.
Jerry Blum needed to go down. One way or another. Having Stuart face the gangster was probably not my best idea, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. For now, I would let the details of the showdown percolate for a few days and see what else I could come up with.
I drummed my long fingers on the steering wheel. I might be a smidgen over five feet, but God blessed me with extraordinarily long fingers. Was it wrong to really love your own fingers?
Of course, now my fingers and thumbs were capped by very strong-looking nails. Not claws, per se, just ten very thick, and slightly pointed nails. Okay, fine. They were claws. I had fucking claws.
Sometimes I hate my life.
Earlier, I had made a few phone calls to my contacts and I had gotten the address to Jerry Blum's lavish Newport Beach fortress. The gangster lived on a massive estate overlooking the ocean. In fact, it was a tiny island just off shore, but not too far offshore. A bridge connected the island.
Now, with my laptop glowing next to me, I used Google's satellite feature and studied the lay of the land from above, memorizing the various features of the island. There weren't many. The sprawling home spanned the entire north end of the island from side to side, leaving only a few acres of trees along the southern tip. For me, the trees were a good thing.
Birds get lost in trees.
But do giant vampire bats?
Once I had the images locked in my brain, I powered down the laptop and scanned the area. All was quiet in this remote section of the Ritz Carlton parking lot. I quickly stripped out of my jeans and blouse and everything in-between. It was the in-between stuff that left me feeling especially vulnerable. And although I had been sitting in my seat for nearly a half hour, the vinyl was still cold to the touch, probably because I was cold to the touch, since my body heat had gone the way of the dodo bird.