Hollywood Underworld: A Hollywood Alphabet Series Thriller (The Hollywood Alphabet Series Book 21) Read online

  HOLLYWOOD UNDERWORLD

  MZ Kelly

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  SEVENTY-THREE

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  SEVENTY-SIX

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  SEVENTY-NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY-ONE

  EIGHTY-TWO

  EIGHTY-THREE

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  EIGHTY-SIX

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  EIGHTY-NINE

  NEW MYSTERY SERIES

  CONTESTS:

  STREET TEAM:

  THANKS FOR READING HOLLYWOOD UNDERWORLD…

  MORE BY THIS AUTHOR:

  COMING SOON

  ONE

  A soft breeze blew in from the ocean, and mist perforated the midnight air. Nathan Caine maneuvered his skiff through calm waters, his gray eyes scanning the horizon where he’d last seen the signal lights blinking off and on. Behind him, the lights of the city were fading into the fog. A second flashing of the lights made Caine realize he was less than two hundred yards from the fishing trawler.

  Caine steered the small boat toward the trawler, squinting through thick glasses with black frames that distorted his eyes. Despite being in his sixties, the terrorist practiced a daily fitness regimen that had kept his body solid. An oddly shaped scar, barely visible, ran from just above his right eye into the coarse silver hair at his temple. He hadn’t bothered to disguise himself for this portion of the operation. There was no need, since there would be no witnesses.

  The terrorist had asthma and a heart condition, but the pacemaker he had implanted three years earlier had kept his heartbeat steady and regular. Now, with the operation finally at hand, he felt invigorated and anxious to move things along.

  As he approached, Caine killed the skiff’s engine and tossed a line to the younger of the two men on the trawler. He was in his early twenties and pencil thin.

  “We were afraid we wouldn’t find you, amigo,” the man said, tying off the line. He offered his hand as Caine stepped onboard.

  Too trusting and eager, Caine decided. He would be an easy kill. It was the older man who concerned him. He was in his thirties, with a hard, muscular body, probably from years of manual labor. There was determination and cunning in his dark eyes. It sealed his fate. He would be the first to die.

  “You have my delivery?” Caine asked the younger man.

  “Sí. It is below.” He waved a hand. “Come, have a look, compadre.”

  Caine followed him down into the cargo hold, hearing the heavy footsteps of the older man behind him. An overhead light bleached the interior of the boat into a pale amber. The smell of diesel fumes engulfed him. Caine had an aversion to dark, cramped places, brought on by serving time in a foreign prison. His lungs constricted, and his heavy breath became more labored. He fought the sensation of drowning and the urge to move back up the steps.

  Caine watched as the men took their time removing a cabinet and several planks from the floor of the vessel, revealing a second hold beneath the first. The hidden cargo area was spacious, making him aware that the ordinary use for the trawler was to carry drugs from Mexico. He smiled, deciding it would be a public service when he killed the men.

  The younger man lowered himself into the concealed cargo hold and called up to the older man for assistance. The shipping crate they grappled with was no more than four by three feet, but Caine knew it was heavy, probably weighing in excess of two hundred pounds. The men struggled with the package, groaning as they finally managed to hoist it onto the upper deck.

  Caine removed a penlight from his pocket to examine the precious cargo. He pried a board loose from the top of the crate, then inspected the small notches on the side of the silver metallic box that was nestled inside. The identifying marks were like fingerprints, telling him the cargo was his. He let his fingers linger on the welded seams of the box, a surge of adrenaline moving down his spine.

  “It must be very valuable.”

  The words caused Caine’s thoughts to surface. He saw that the young man was smiling, motioning to the cargo.

  As Caine considered his next move, the older man spoke for the first time. “Such a heavy cargo could only be one thing.” His dark eyes widened, maybe in expectation of a reaction, as he said, “Gold.”

  Caine smiled at the men, then tapped the board back onto the shipping container. He considered killing them where they stood, but it was too soon. He needed their help getting the cargo onto his skiff.

  He removed a roll of bills from his pocket, stacking them on the bench between the two men. His smile was still there. “What cargo?”

  The men quickly divided their payment, asking no further questions.

  Ten minutes later, the container had been moved onto Caine’s boat. The older of the two men came back aboard the trawler first, clasping hands with the terrorist as he came over the railing. It was a mistake. Caine seized the opportunity, using the knife he carried in his other hand to slice open the man’s throat.

  The man fell onto the deck, his death scream turning into a gurgling cry of desperation as the blood poured from his wound. He tried to strike back at Caine, but it was useless. His head flopped back in a disconnected manner caused by the severing of tendons and muscle. The man’s realization that he was dying quickly gave way to confusion caused by the loss of blood and oxygen to his brain. In mere moments, his world would be a black, spinning cauldron of desperation as the darkness engulfed him.

  With the older man out of the way, Caine took his time with his younger companion. He p
inned his knife against the man’s chest as he fell back against the skiff when Caine entered.

  “¿Por qué?”

  Caine considered the man’s question. “Why?” His brows lifted, his tone serious as he answered the question. “El enjambre.”

  His victim’s eyes grew wide with terror as Caine set to work. It was a slow death. He used his sharpened knife like a razor, making hundreds of tiny cuts as he drained the blood from the screaming man’s body.

  Two hours later, the fishing trawler had been sunk nearly five hundred yards from shore, with the bodies of the slain men concealed in the cargo hold. Caine reached shore, then found the cart he’d hidden in the rocks, using it to transfer his cargo from the skiff to his van.

  It was nearly dawn by the time he had unloaded his bounty into the garage next to the farmhouse he’d rented. The ranch was outside the city, over a mile from its closest neighbor. It was the perfect place for the assembly process that would now take place.

  It was dawn when he finished removing the wooden shipping crate that had surrounded the silver box. He took his time, admiring his treasure as a sliver of morning sunlight peeked through the upper windows of the garage. The rays illuminated the polished surface of the box, making it glisten in the morning sunlight.

  Nathan Caine smiled, his eyes bulging behind the thick glasses, drinking in the light. His thoughts drifted to the young man he’d butchered. Death. It hung in the air like a visible presence. His gaze fell to the shining metal box. As the new day dawned, he knew that death finds darkness, even where there is light.

  As he moved into the house, a heavy rain began falling. Caine, the man who the press had dubbed “Phaedrus”, thought about the question the young man on the trawler had asked of him.

  “¿Por qué?” the man had said, wanting to know why he was being killed.

  “El enjambre,” Caine had answered.

  The word had instantly registered fear in the dying man. He’d understood who was behind his death. The dead man would never know that, soon, there would be thousands more killed. His death had been the work of the Swarm.

  TWO

  “We’re sure it was Phaedrus?” I asked Joe Dawson, as he hit his horn and sped through traffic.

  My friend, an FBI agent who wanted to be more than just friends, glanced at me as he drove. “There’s no doubt. He offered up some details to the reporter about two of the recent killings that had purposely been held back from the press. Greer is mobilizing his agents, sending them our way.”

  John Greer was Joe’s boss, the head of a taskforce that consisted of dozens of FBI agents, profilers, and law enforcement officials from around the country. The recent killings he referenced were politically motivated. A terrorist group, known as the Swarm, was making a play to bring down the government, thanks to the recent incarceration of its leader, Harlee Ryland.

  So far, the de facto new head of the group, a man known only as Phaedrus, had killed a priest, the mayor of Houston, and six relatives of prominent politicians. The only clue to his identity was the shadowy image of an older man, leaving a victim’s apartment in Washington, that was captured by a distant CCTV camera.

  “Why do you think he called the reporter?” Joe asked me.

  “Cynthia McFadden is a friend of mine. Phaedrus probably knew that and wanted my direct involvement.”

  Joe swept a hand through his graying brown hair, and his pale blue eyes found me again. “Meaning this is personal.”

  I forced a smile. “Welcome to Hollywood and my life.”

  Joe hit the windshield wipers and the gas pedal. “Damn. Who says it never rains in Southern California?”

  “They’re calling the storm a drought-buster. There’s even some talk about flooding up in the foothills.”

  Joe smiled. “I don’t care if they’re building an ark. We’re having dinner at the beach tonight and taking a walk.”

  My smile grew wider as we slid around a corner and turned onto Hollywood Boulevard. “We’ll see.”

  While Joe breaks every traffic law in the state, let me take a moment and give you some background. I’m Kate Sexton, a detective with LAPD. I’m thirty-two, divorced, and live in the nearby Mt Olympus neighborhood of Hollywood with my best friends, Natalie Bump and Mo Simpson. I usually work with a canine partner named Bernie, but my furry companion was home, probably pouting about the FBI not allowing canines to do field work.

  Joe and I were on the trail of a killer who had been called Phaedrus during his contacts with the media. The name originally came from the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, describing a subject who took part in the dialogues of Socrates. In more recent times, in a work of literature, the name had stood for the highly analytical consciousness of a man who had plunged the depths of his mental illness.

  The origins of the name aside, Phaedrus was part of a terrorist group that called itself the Swarm; the legacy of Harlan Ryland, the same man who had ordered the death of my adoptive father when I was a child. While Ryland had recently died of natural causes, his granddaughter, Harlee, had taken over the organization. The good news is that she’d recently been apprehended and was in federal prison, awaiting trial. The bad news is we were working under the theory that she was using Phaedrus as a surrogate for the string of recent high-profile killings.

  Several years ago, Harlan Ryland and his deceased partner had formed a New Age religious group called the Tauists as a front for importing drugs through the movie studios in Hollywood. My father had been investigating that group at the time of his death. I’d recently learned that he was gathering evidence against Ryland when he’d been murdered. Those involved in the Tauist religion had since called themselves the Swarm, recruiting members from all over the world. The group’s objective was to overthrow the government by force.

  There’s a lot more to the story, including the work of a retired detective named Pearl Kramer, who had made it his mission to find those behind my father’s murder. I’ll fill in more of the details later.

  “Looks like something or someone has gotten everyone’s attention,” Joe said, cutting his eyes to the crowd of people in the street ahead of us. A couple patrol cars had already arrived and were trying to do crowd control, as he hit the brakes, and we slid to a stop.

  When we got out of the car, Joe showed a cop I recognized as Josh Wagner his ID. “Fill us in.”

  “Just got here,” Wagner said. The uniformed officer was pushing forty, with a decade on the job. Despite the driving rainstorm, the crowd continued to mill about the street. “There’s a victim in the display window over at the new museum.” Wagner looked at me. “I’m afraid the press is already here.”

  “Let’s work the sidewalk, get it cleared,” I said, as a couple more police units arrived.

  We spent the next few minutes moving people off the sidewalk and working our way toward the Century Wax Museum. The gallery, exhibiting the likenesses of dozens of Hollywood stars, was new to the area and planning a gala opening in the next couple weeks. As Joe and I got to the museum’s display window, we saw that it had an offering that would probably make the establishment infamous.

  As we took in the visage of the slain woman, Joe said, “It looks like somebody wanted to send us a message. They took their time with her.”

  Our victim was African-American, probably in her twenties. She was nude and trussed up with wires, like a life-sized doll at the hands of an invisible puppet-master. Her throat had been slashed, and there was blood from that wound, along with numerous smaller cuts on her body. The words Vivre Libre ou Mourir were written in black ink on her chest.

  “Any idea what it means?” I asked Joe, referencing the writing.

  He met my eyes for an instant. “Live Free or Die. It’s a saying made popular during the French Revolution. The same slogan was left on a bathroom mirror when the mayor of Houston was murdered. Apparently, it’s the Swarm’s new calling card.”

  I heard a commotion behind us and turned, seeing that some of the
press had worked their way to the front of the crowd. One of the reporters had gone live with a camera crew and was calling over to us.

  “Can you give us a statement?” a blonde woman asked. “Is this the work of the Swarm?”

  Joe turned to Officer Wagner, who had followed us. “Get these people back and shut down the entire street. No one gets in or out without my approval. No exceptions.”

  It took the officers some time, but they managed to set up a perimeter on Las Palmas Boulevard, clearing the block to the next street over. As the crowd was moving back, I caught a glimpse of my friend, Cynthia McFadden. She was behind the police line, so I went over to her.

  “I had to come after getting the phone call,” Cynthia said, her voice subdued. My friend was in her thirties, with silky dark hair that was drenched from the rain.

  “Let’s take a walk and get out of the rain,” I said.

  I lifted the crime scene tape and asked her to join me on the opposite side of the street, away from where LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division, or SID, had arrived and was beginning to set up. We managed to evade the other reporters and crowd, then found our way over to a canopy in front of a store, where we huddled.

  “I saw the victim in the display window,” Cynthia said. “It’s horrifying.”

  “Can you tell me what her abductor said when he contacted you?”

  Cynthia pulled an envelope out of her purse. “I wrote it down, so I wouldn’t forget anything.” She took a moment, smoothing out the envelope before going on. “He said his name was Phaedrus, then told me there had been a murder at the Century Museum in Hollywood. He told me to make sure you were notified.” Cynthia looked up at me. “He then said something in French. I think the same thing was written on...on the girl’s chest. I’m not sure what it means.”

  “I’m told it was a political slogan used during the French Revolution.”

  Cynthia went on for a minute, asking me about the victim and why she might have been chosen.

  “We’re just beginning to work this, so I can’t say.” Cynthia and I were good friends, and I had complete faith in her keeping things confidential, but felt compelled to add, “Even if I could, I would need you to keep everything just between us.”