Private Read online

  “Necessary? Not for Christine,” Peggy Castiglia said.

  Justine’s head throbbed. She clenched the phone and said, “Peggy. Someone has already murdered thirteen girls—that we know about. Christine is our only real lead so far. Do you seriously want to get in the way of bringing down a killer?”

  “I can’t afford to worry about other girls, Dr. Smith. If you had a daughter, maybe you’d understand. Just stay away from Chrissy. Don’t make me call the authorities.”

  “I am the authorities. I can have her interrogated as a material witness,” Justine said, her voice high, strained, getting away from her. “Please,” she said to Peggy Castiglia. “Don’t make me force her to talk to the cops.”

  “You just try it, Dr. Smith. I’ll fight you to my last breath.” And then Peggy Castiglia hung up the phone.

  Chapter 75

  JUSTINE WAS SEETHING as she headed toward home on the freeway. Sci had gotten viable DNA from Wendy Borman’s clothes, but there were no matches in the database. Without a match, she couldn’t put a name to the DNA left by Wendy Borman’s killer.

  They were so close—and they were nowhere.

  And right now, the Street Freeks were planning another kill.

  Justine saw a familiar exit sign and made a snap decision. She took the off-ramp and turned in the direction of Bobby’s house.

  Bobby had a way of quieting her anxiety. Maybe he could reason with Peggy Castiglia. If not, he could start legal proceedings to get her daughter’s cooperation.

  Okay, good.

  Bobby’s car was parked in the narrow one-car spot that clung to the sloping roadway above his house. Justine parked on the verge of the hill, walked through the gate, and rang the bell. When Bobby didn’t answer right away, she took the familiar stone path around to the vast back lawn with its extraordinary canyon view.

  She slipped off her shoes and let her feet feel lush grass.

  Then she saw him. Bobby was in the hot tub, so Justine called out, “Bob. I’m returning your call.”

  He stood up in a self-conscious crouch—and that’s when Justine saw that a woman was in the hot tub with Bobby. She was naked.

  Chapter 76

  JUSTINE TOOK IT all in at once. The woman in the tub screamed, then covered her small breasts with both hands. Bobby’s face contorted with anger as he called out, “Justine. Stay right there.”

  He patted the edge of the hot tub for his glasses while his “date,” bright pink from the heat, shouted at him, “Get me my robe. Please, I need my robe!”

  Justine recognized the naked woman now. She was Bobby’s wife, Marissa, the woman he’d separated from over a year ago, the one he didn’t love anymore, the one who had moved to Phoenix and was ready to sign the divorce papers any day.

  Justine’s guts liquefied, then froze. She was so disappointed and so hurt.

  She wanted to run, but it would be better to do the hard thing. Face the truth. Get answers.

  She had a pretty good idea why Marissa Petino was here, but she had to ask anyway.

  Justine’s feet carried her within speaking range of the hot tub. She said to Marissa Petino, “I’m Justine Smith. I’m sorry to interrupt. I thought Bobby would be alone.”

  Marissa clutched a robe to her chest, turned blazing eyes on her husband.

  “Bobby, who is this?”

  Justine said, “Bobby and I have been seeing each other for—what, Bobby? About a year?”

  Bobby had tucked a towel around his waist. His glasses were perched at a cockeyed angle on his nose. He looked as though he’d lost his cool in the hot tub, and Bobby hated that. The man had to be in control.

  “Justine, damn it. This is damned crazy, you know that? Let’s go. I’ll walk you to the gate.”

  Justine ignored Bobby and said to Marissa, “Just bear with me, please. Did Bobby tell you he’s running for governor?”

  “What do you mean? Of course he told me. You mean you’re seeing him now?”

  Bobby stood between Marissa and Justine, his face so red that Justine thought he was going to try and punch her.

  “I wouldn’t have told you this way,” he said. “You shouldn’t have come here without calling.”

  “I loved you,” said Justine. “I trusted you.”

  “I never promised you anything. I never lied to you.”

  Justine slapped him and saw her handprint white against his cheek. “Everything was a lie,” she said. “Don’t you even understand that?”

  Marissa Petino cinched her robe and faced her husband. “I get it now, Bobby. Running for governor with your wife plays better than running with your girlfriend.”

  “Please, Marissa, please let’s talk about this later,” Bobby said.

  “I don’t want a ‘later.’ And thanks, Justine. I appreciate the reminder of what a snake my soon-to-be-ex husband is.”

  “My pleasure,” said Justine.

  “Can you give me a lift?” Marissa asked Justine. “My car is at the Beverly Hilton. I can be dressed in two minutes. Bobby, I hope you freaking get leprosy and die.”

  “My car is parked on the side of the road,” Justine said to Marissa. “Blue Jaguar. I’ll be waiting for you.” She turned back to Bobby. “Lots of luck in the gubernatorial race, Bob. Don’t ever call me again.”

  Part Four

  SHOOTER

  Chapter 77

  A “DO NOT DISTURB” card hung from the doorknob of Andy’s third-floor suite at the famed, or perhaps infamous, Chateau Marmont off Sunset. It was almost eleven a.m. I pounded and pounded on the solid wood door.

  “Andy. It’s Jack. Let me in.”

  “Go away,” Andy said from the other side of the door. “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying it.”

  “Come on, bozo. I’ve already told the manager you’re on a suicide watch. He’s going to key me in if you don’t open up.”

  The door finally opened.

  Andy was in rumpled pajamas, holding a half-full bottle of Chivas by the neck. His hair was standing straight up, as if he hadn’t combed or washed it in a while.

  “I fired you, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, you did, asshole. I’m not billing you anymore. I’m here because I’m your best friend.”

  I followed Andy into the sitting room. The room was dark, curtains pulled closed.

  An old Harrison Ford movie was on the television, Witness. The suite looked like a set from the 1930s, or a West Side apartment in New York, except for the open pizza box lying on a chair next to the extralarge TV. I took the pizza box to the kitchenette and dumped it into the trash. Then I returned to the sitting room and sat down.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “Fucking fine and dandy, can’t you tell?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  Andy took a pull off the bottle and said, “So what now, Jack? Last time I saw you, you told me that my wife was a whore. What else have you got for me?”

  “She was using.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  “She was a crack addict. Maybe heroin too.”

  “Hey, fuck you, Jack. Oh, for God’s sake. I mean, who cares, anyway? She’s dead, Jack. Dead. And look what she left me. I got cops on my ass all day and night. Friends avoiding me, for good reason, I guess. And this fricking room is costing a bomb and a half. All because of my whore-junkie wife.”

  “The thing is, Andy, her being a user maybe explains a few things about Shelby. Why she had a secret life, for instance. Why she needed the money. Maybe why she couldn’t tell you the truth.”

  Andy picked up the TV’s remote control and surfed around while I talked. His eyes were vacant. He was already a lost soul.

  “It’s also a lead of sorts,” I told him. “We already have a line on her dealer. As I’ve been saying, if we find out who killed Shelby, you stop being a suspect.”

  Andy finally looked up at me. “Come here, Jack. I want to give you a big wet kiss.”

  I got up and took the remote out of hi
s hand. Turned off the tube.

  “I didn’t do this to you. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Yuh-huh.”

  “Like you helped me in school. When that girl I was seeing turned out to be doing Artie Deville behind my back.”

  “Laurel… something.”

  “Right. You got me through Laurel Welky and kept me from killing that guy. Killing him, Andy. And how about when I ran my car through a phone booth in downtown Providence? You placated the dean and my old man.”

  Andy laughed. “Har-har. Your old man.”

  It was weak, but it was laughter. And I kind of recognized my friend Andy again.

  “I’m going to nail this guy, Andy.”

  “I know. You’re good, Jack. Private is good, better than it ever was under your father.”

  “I’ll take you out to dinner tonight,” I said. “Cool place. Up the coast.”

  “Thanks.” His eyes watered up.

  We hugged at the doorway, thumped each other’s backs a couple of times.

  “I fucking feel sorry for her,” he said, and started to cry. “She was in hell, and she couldn’t tell me. Why couldn’t she tell me? I was her husband. I was her husband, Jack.”

  Chapter 78

  ACCORDING TO HER movie star client and maybe her lover, Shelby’s dealer was an ex-con by the name of Orlando Perez.

  I’d read his rap sheet. He was a violent prick who’d had arrests for domestic abuse and various assault convictions on a number of occasions, ending with a three-year stretch at Chino for possession with intent. He’d been smart or lucky enough to stay out of jail since he’d graduated from that hellhole in 2008.

  These days, Perez lived with his wife and kids in a two-million-dollar faux Greek revival on Woodrow Wilson Drive. There were two cars in his driveway: a late-model Beemer and a black Escalade with gold-chain rims.

  Del Rio had been shadowing Perez for the past forty-eight hours, monitoring his conversations with a parabolic dish the size of half a grapefruit and a Sennheiser MKE 2 lavalier mic. I didn’t care about Private’s expenses on this case.

  According to Del Rio, Perez used a succession of boost phones to set up his impromptu drug deals, which took place in parking lots and on roadsides. His customers were executive types as well as models and starlets, who in all likelihood got discounts for favors provided in the front seat of Perez’s SUV.

  The front door of the house opened, and a pretty brunette carrying a baby and holding the hand of a toddler came out, got into the Beemer, and then drove right past us.

  “The wifey-poo,” said Del Rio with a smirk.

  He put on his headset and told me that Perez was alone. He was on the phone with a disgruntled client named Butterfly, telling her to take a deep breath. He’d be there soon. He’d bring her what she needed.

  “Okay, he’s meeting Butterfly in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn on Cahuenga in twenty minutes,” Rick said.

  “No, he’s not. Let’s go.”

  We got out of the fleet car and walked up to the front door of the house. I rang the bell. Rang it again. Then I yelled, “Open up, Perez. You won ten million dollars from the Publishers Clearing House.”

  I’d just told Del Rio to go stand by the Escalade, when Perez suddenly opened the door.

  He was barefoot, his shoulder-length bleached-white hair contrasting with his tanned skin and dark Fu Manchu mustache. A scar ran through the mustache, enhancing the frig-you look on his face.

  Was his the last face Shelby Cushman had ever seen? It wouldn’t have surprised me at all.

  Had this son of a bitch killed her for getting behind in her payments? I showed Perez my badge, and mistaking us for cops, the scumbag hesitated.

  “You need a fug-geen warrant, yo,” said Orlando Perez, his face balling up like a fist, the scar going white.

  Del Rio put his shoulder hard against the door, and we were in.

  “See, we don’t need a warrant,” Rick said.

  Chapter 79

  ORLANDO PEREZ SHOUTED over the ambient music, “Get outta my house. Get outta here!”

  Del Rio took his gun out of his belt and said, “Jack, I left my book in the car. The one on negotiation called Getting to Yes. Think you can get that for me?”

  I said, “Let’s wing it without the book.”

  “Yeah,” Del Rio said. “Sure. We can do that. See how much we remember.”

  Perez’s pupils were large, and he was having trouble focusing. “Hey!” he shouted at Del Rio’s gun. “I said ged out.”

  I pulled the plug to the sound system out of the wall.

  Del Rio said, “We’re not cops. But after we have a talk, go ahead and call them.”

  The dealer grabbed a gun resting in the seat of a lounge chair and got the grip into his palm. He was bringing up the muzzle of the semiautomatic when I hit him at the knees and brought him down.

  A burst of rounds went off. Blew past my ear and took out a lamp with a glass shade and a painting of a bullfighter over the mantel.

  Del Rio kicked the gun out of Perez’s hand, and I rolled the dealer over and put my knee into his back with feeling. Then I cuffed him with flex ties.

  When I stood up, Del Rio handed me his gun. Then he got a two-hand hold on Perez and dragged him by his white hair and the waistband of his jeans across the polished marble floors, past the indoor pool shaped like a bong, and into a high-tech stainless-steel kitchen that was actually quite nice.

  “Yowww-ow-owww, hey! What are you doing, yo? Cut the chit, will you?”

  Del Rio hauled the dealer to his feet and shoved his face flat onto the stove, inches from the front burner.

  “Why did you kill Shelby Cushman?” Rick shouted into the drug dealer’s ear.

  “I don’t know no Shelby.”

  Del Rio twitched the dial on the stove. Blue flames leaped.

  Perez said, “You don’t know what kind of sunnabeech I am, mister.”

  Del Rio said, “Ditto,” and turned up the heat. The dealer’s white hair sizzled and burned and scorched the air.

  “Yowww. Turn it off, mannn. Please, turn it off.”

  Del Rio grabbed Perez’s collar and lifted his head off the stove. He asked him again, “Why did you kill Shelby?”

  “I didn’t kill her! She owed me a few grand. Like four. She woulda paid. She was a good lady. I liked Shelby—everybody liked Shelby.”

  “Let me tell you how this game is played,” Del Rio said. “You keep lying and I’m going to put your face on the burner. Are we clear?”

  Perez kicked and struggled, but he couldn’t loosen Del Rio’s grip. Del Rio dialed up the flames again. The heat singeing the fuse of Perez’s mustache definitely got his attention.

  I was a second away from pulling Rick off Perez when the dealer screamed, “Listen to me. I didn’t kill her. Maybe I know who did.”

  Del Rio yanked Perez upright, spun him around, and said, “Keep it real, yo. Or you go back on the hot plate.”

  “I heard on the street. It was a hit man. For the Mob.”

  “His name?”

  “I don’t know that. How would I know that? Yowww,” he yelled as Del Rio gripped a hank of white hair and forced Perez’s face down onto the stove again.

  “Monkey. His name is Monty! Something like that.”

  Del Rio had briefed me on known enforcers, and Bo Montgomery, aka Monty, was local, which put him right at the top of the list.

  “Montgomery,” I said to Del Rio.

  Perez shouted, “That’s him. Now, turn off the gas, maaan.”

  Del Rio pulled Perez away from the stove. He said, “Be right, yo. Or I’ll be back to visit. I keep my promises, maaan.”

  Chapter 80

  NOW WE HAD something, and Rick and I were both feeling it to the max. It was a twenty-five-minute drive from Perez’s two-kilo manse to a hit man’s horse farm in the Agoura Hills, north of Malibu.

  The approach was a dusty, unpaved driveway through tall brown grass and trees marked with “No
Trespassing” signs. The drive curled around a bluff, then ran straight to a shingled farmhouse, weathered to a silvery shade of gray.

  There was a new barn behind the house and a paddock where a mule and three bay mustangs stood head to tail, swishing at flies under a tree. Beyond the paddock was a riding trail that climbed a gentle hill a quarter mile away.

  Del Rio braked the car, and light glinting off glass made me look up.

  I saw the dome shape of an Avigilon sixteen-megapixel camera mounted under the eaves of the house. I had been thinking of getting the same surveillance system for myself. It shot wide-angle high-res video in color and infrared.

  A door hinge squealed, and a man stepped out of the house with an AK-47 in his arms and a gnarly dog at his side. The man was wiry, nothing remarkable to look at, which probably helped him in his work. The dog had a head the size of a large melon. It tensed and growled as we got out of the car.

  I kept one eye on the dog as I introduced Del Rio and myself to Monty, faking a casualness I didn’t feel. The man was a killer many times over. He was holding a weapon that could turn a person into a colander in seconds.

  At the same time, I was hyperaware of my hair-trigger buddy standing beside me. Del Rio had a loaded gun stuck in the back of his waistband. He couldn’t outdraw Monty, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. Sweat formed on my upper lip.

  Monty said, “What do you want?” His voice was high, almost boyish.

  “I’m Jack Morgan, with Private. Shelby Cushman’s husband is my client,” I said. “We have no issues with you. I just need to know who wanted Shelby dead.”

  “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Morgan. I don’t know any Cushmans.”

  I kept talking. “If the hit on Shelby was personal, if killing Shelby was a message for our client, we want to work that out.”

  Monty’s thin lips hardly moved when he said, “I repeat, I don’t know any Cushmans. And if I did know that Shelby always took a nap at four in the afternoon, it still wasn’t personal, and I don’t send messages. Now, back up slow so you don’t scare the horses.”