CHAPTER 18

SEBASTIAN PARKED IN the driveway, behind Frank’s Buick. It was coming up on eleven, the neighborhood quiet and peaceful, as it always was, and Frank, bathed in the soft light coming from the porch, was standing outside, pruning a rosebush and collecting the clippings in a small plastic bucket. Frank insisted on tending to all the landscaping, his only hobby besides yoga, which he did alone. Frank preferred doing everything alone.

Frank placed the bucket on the ground, and as he walked toward the car, brushing his hands together, Sebastian looked around the neighborhood. Some of the surrounding homes were dark, the owners having jetted off to one of their other homes, maybe going on another long vacation. Sebastian couldn’t shake the feeling that Paul’s sniper friend, this Guidry character, was hidden somewhere in this darkness, looking at him through the crosshairs of a target scope.

Sebastian was well protected, as long as he remained inside the car. After his assassination attempt, he had brought the Jaguar to a company that specialized in outfitting cars, trucks, limos—any type of automobile—so they could withstand pretty much any type of possible security threat. The Jag’s windows had been replaced with a glass designed with a special polymer that could absorb a round from a sniper rifle. The car had enough armor plating to withstand a bomb blast and still be driven. The new tires, if punctured by a round or a knife, would drive for almost fifty miles before fully deflating.

“Paul’s not going to make another long-distance run at you,” Frank said, after he slid into the passenger seat. “When he comes at you next, he’ll use someone we don’t know, do it in a crowded place where you feel safe and—”

“He, or she—you never know—will come up and plant two rounds in my head and I won’t see it coming. Right, I know. Where’s Ron?”

“He had to cancel. His daughter went into labor.”

“You said there’s a development regarding Paul.”

“The LAPD finally got the toxicology report back on Sophia Vargas. They found Viramab in her system. Paul’s using that in his transfusions. Now, to answer your next question, yes, I’ve put out feelers to the underground suppliers who are still in the business of manufacturing it.”

“The Armenians—at least here—are the only ones who are still using it.”

“Right. We’re looking for new purchases made over the past, say, four to six months. If Paul is smart, he’s covering his tracks well.”

“This is the big development? You could have told me all of this over the phone.”

Frank buckled his seat belt. “Let’s go.”

“Where, exactly, are we going?”

“Dancing,” Frank said.

* * *

The address Frank had given him was in West Hollywood—WeHo, as the young kids called it now, a cutesy name Sebastian particularly despised. Or maybe deep down he just despised West Hollywood, a place that, for as long as he could remember, was the cool place for cool people who didn’t have to worry about how they were going to pay for their fancy dinners and fancy drinks at the coolest nightclubs and coolest restaurants. When you grew up poor, as he had, you always carried a grudge against the rich—which was ironic given the fact that he owned an empire that was worth billions.