Chapter 6

The next couple of weeks went much as had that first day back from Phoenix. We were feeling our way to get attuned to the neighborhoods of South Los Angeles. The main thing we found out about the Sharks was that they had subdivided South LA into districts that were ruled by nine lower-level managers. The top manager who was overseeing the whole operation and was reaping most of the benefits was actually in a minimum security prison serving the last eight months of a sentence for some trivial crime.

The cops and district attorney's (DA) office were gloating that they had put away Miguel Mendoza, the kingpin of the Sharks, but the Sharks were laughing at them because Mendoza was having a safe vacation while still having the full advantages of bossing the Sharks gang. Mendoza was not running the day to day operations of the Sharks, but he had not done that for more than two years. Nevertheless, he was making all of the major policy decisions for the gang while he was waiting quietly for early release on good behavior.

While in jail, Mendoza had called for the murder of some of his worst enemies. He was not even on the suspects list because the cops and DA were convinced that he could not have had anything to do with the murders. After all, he was safely locked up and out of contact with his gang. In actual fact, Mendoza had daily contact with the Sharks through several prison employees who were also on his payroll. Every day, they smuggled in and out sealed envelopes whose contents were unknown to them. Thus, they could claim virtual innocence if they were ever caught.

Meanwhile, each local sector leader was trying to prove that he was the obvious choice to be the high mucky-muck when Mendoza finally did retire. That meant that the depredations of the Sharks gang were growing. What this amounted to was that we had nine gangs to deal with, even though they all carried the name of the Sharks and did not battle each other directly.

Getting all of this information was tedious and time consuming, so we were not able to move on the Sharks as fast as we would have liked. Also, we were distracted by the mass of independent operators not directly affiliated with the gangs. However, Jenny had a brilliant idea of how to help with that problem: we let it be known that the Sharks were going to be blamed for every action by the independent operators that robbed or mugged or raped or otherwise caused trouble in their territory.

We would take reprisals against the Sharks unless they policed their claimed territory. At first, they didn't believe that we meant what we said, but a few attacks on "innocent" Sharks proved that we had meant what we had said. At that point, the independents moved elsewhere, and we would get to them later.

This campaign was interrupted by Jane finding that mansion that I mentioned earlier. We visited it, and found it to be a monstrosity in many ways. It had three floors and two basements that were served by four elevators scattered about the building. Each floor had 15 bedroom suites that included a sitting room and a private full bathroom. The ground floor had the usual complement of parlors, ballrooms, sitting rooms, dining rooms, kitchens and half-bathrooms to match the rest of the house.

The first basement contained full living quarters for all of the servants, and these were of a better quality than most of the suites in the better hotels. The second basement was one massive empty space, perfect for our proposed "bat cave." Hell, this was the perfect headquarters for the Grey Ghosts for an indefinite time to come. The only real problem that we could see was in providing the number of servants that such a mansion should normally have.

Yes, the servants were going to be a problem because they would have to be in on most, if not all, of the secrets of the Gray Ghosts. We needed to recruit a cook, a butler, and several maids as soon as possible just to keep the mansion from decaying under us. Naturally, we needed help with this, and Jenny suggested that we ask Liz to take over the job. She would have had her baby by the time we had possession of the mansion, so she should have the time to do the interviewing for the jobs.

Jenny called Liz that afternoon and explained our problem. Liz was willing to do it for us, but she wanted to see the mansion first. We invited the whole family to join us for a grand tour as soon as the sale was complete, and that was scheduled for next week. Jane had found a lawyer for us, and the appointment was set up.

Susan had another dummy company for us which only did business in Europe and Africa, and could be used as the source of our money to pay for the mansion. All of its money was "earned" outside of the USA, so we would not owe any taxes on the money transferred from the Cayman account. This was the ploy used by General Electric and dozens of other American corporations to avoid American taxes. She supplied a CPA to go to the closing with us to take care of that. That way, we didn't have to know what was going on. What we were doing was not illegal, but it was confusing as hell to anyone not used to the transactions.

Anyway, we found ourselves the new owners of what was widely known about town as a White Elephant, and there was speculation about when it would be back on the market. We didn't care what other people thought because we had special needs that the mansion would solve very conveniently. We had the utilities reconnected and got ready to move in.

The previous owner, a former movie star who decided that she would be more comfortable on the Italian Riviera simply abandoned the furnishings in place because it was easier to do that than to try to sell them or to move them to Italy. That way, we got a complete house full of furniture, though we would eventually get rid of a lot of it. On the other hand, we were able to move in immediately by using the furniture already in place, and that saved us a lot of bother.

Everybody from Phoenix showed up to view our latest acquisition, and they were impressed at its size and potential, so they agreed that the $13 million that we had paid for it and the associated land was actually a good buy. Not only did we get the mansion, but we wound up with a peninsula extending into the ocean so that we had the potential of power generated by tidal action, wave action, and ocean wind. Not only that, we could get our own water with a small desalinization plant. And last, but not least, we had some beautiful beach to enjoy. To hell with the naysayers, we had a virtual paradise!

Naturally, we spent the night in our new mansion, and the family returned to Phoenix the next day. It was only two weeks until Liz was due to deliver, and she had already made all of the arrangements in Phoenix, so she went there to have her baby.

Two weeks later, on the day specified, Liz rushed to the hospital to make her delivery, and Judy Alice Brinkley was born as quickly and as easily as Johnny had been. Judy did not have the problems that Johnny'd had, but it was noted by the nurses that she was born without any body or head hair. No matter-that was not important, anyway.

We were too late for the delivery, but we did get to see Judy and to compliment Liz over what a wonderful baby she had delivered, and we meant it, too. We stayed in Phoenix for two days just out of the joy of being with the family and visiting Jenny's family who wanted to know when Jenny was going to have a grandchild for them to carry on over. Jenny managed to dodge that question by inviting the Wards to visit us in our new home. They were assured that we would have plenty of room for them. Unfortunately, at that time, we did not have a picture of the mansion to show them.

We returned to our new home reassured with Liz's promise to come to rescue us within four weeks. She wanted to get used to Judy in familiar surroundings before moving to LA, even for the short time. Of course, Johnny was anxious to move right away so that he could swim in the ocean.