Private L.A. Read online

  She was going to find out. As she returned to the ladder, questions and hypotheses darted through her mind. What were the cameras for? In case they had to use the panic room and wanted to document intruders?

  She supposed that was possible, but for some reason it didn’t make total sense to her. She tripped the switch; the door slid open again. She left it open and climbed back down the ladder. She almost turned and stepped back through the open pocket door into Jennifer Harlow’s closet but decided to go all the way down the ladder first.

  As she neared the bottom, her flashlight beam picked up an alcove of sorts set opposite a steel door. There were three steel shelves set in the cement in the alcove. On the wall between each shelf were an electrical socket and another of those cable connections. She looked closely at the shelves and saw no dust. Which meant what? The shelves were cleaned regularly? Or had they been cleaned after something was removed from them?

  Unable to answer, Justine turned toward the door, spotted a switch beside it. She flipped it up. Nothing happened. She shrugged, turned the dead bolt, and yanked open the door.

  In the darkness she heard a crash and then a voice yelled out, “Who’s there? Identify yourself or I swear to God, I’ll shoot!”

  Chapter 65

  “BROTHER DEAREST,” TOMMY said as he entered my office, arms spread wide. He was wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit, no tie, and appeared to have hit the tanning salon earlier in the morning.

  I remembered my brother winking at me in the courtroom the day of his arraignment. Was this part of his plan? Figure out a way to get me to admit that I was at the scene when Clay Harris took a 9mm round to the chest? It was not beyond Tommy to go this route. I still suspected that Tommy had hired Clay to kill my ex-girlfriend in the first place. In order to frame me for the murder. Since that didn’t work out, it only made sense that he’d try to frame me for Clay’s murder instead. But I had no proof.

  Carmine entered my office right behind Tommy, his skin an even deeper red against his starched white collar and yellow cashmere sweater. “Jack,” the mobster said, as if we were long-lost golf buddies. “How gracious of you to entertain us at such short notice.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “What’s the proposition?”

  “What, no business pleasantries?” Tommy said, taking a seat across the desk from me.

  “I’m not feeling particularly pleasant, brother,” I replied.

  Tommy beamed at me as if I’d said something of deep significance.

  Carmine shut the door. He looked around my office, a space I intentionally keep devoid of personal effects. In my line of work, I’ve found that it pays to know more about other people than they do about me. Carmine gazed at me, popped his chin up. “Place bugged?”

  “Good idea, but no,” I said. “You fellows wearing wires?”

  Tommy cocked his head as if I’d gone paranoid, which I had.

  “Nah,” Carmine said. “I was never one for taping myself.”

  I said nothing. Tommy scowled but took off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, and showed me his chest and back. “Satisfied, brother?”

  “Carmine?” I said.

  “Fuck you,” Carmine said, as Tommy tucked his shirt back in.

  I sighed wearily. “What’s the proposition, then? I’m a busy man.”

  “I heard that,” Tommy said, and laughed. “Saw that too: the expression on your face when Bobbie Newton caught you with the Harlow children. It was worth the price of admission. You’re a television star, brother, you really are.”

  “Glad to have entertained you,” I shot back. “By the way, I found it interesting that you designed the security system at the Harlows’ estate, Tommy. The one that was so easily foiled.” I looked at Carmine. “You two didn’t have anything to do with their disappearance, did you?”

  The mobster acted insulted. “Do I look like I’m in the business of kidnapping celebs?”

  Chapter 66

  I SMILED AND said, “You look like a man capable of anything, Carmine.”

  Carmine smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Wasn’t meant that way at all.”

  That wiped the smirk off his face, which reset as hard and as cold as I’d ever seen it. He sat in a chair across the desk from me, crossed his legs, a man who felt like he was in control. “You fucked me over big-time, Jack.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Six million in oxy,” Tommy said.

  “I can’t control the DEA,” I said.

  “But you can tip them off,” Carmine growled. “It’s the simplest explanation, and I’ve come to believe that the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation.”

  “Could simply be that someone in your organization ratted you out, or someone stumbled into the load and reported it. Shit luck.”

  Carmine shot me his patented shark smile. “Doesn’t matter in this case, now does it, Jack? It’s what I believe happened, am I right?”

  I said nothing.

  Carmine said, “You gotta pay, Jack. You gotta balance things.”

  I did not reply.

  “Heh,” Tommy laughed, and I wondered if he’d been drinking. “It’s not like you’re gonna find some horse head in your bed.”

  “Miracle of miracles. How about a guy carrying piano wire in the backseat?”

  Carmine pursed his lips. “You’re behind the times.”

  “Nothing like that,” Tommy said.

  “Nah,” Carmine said. “Your brother gave me deep insight into your complicated psyche.”

  “Imagine that,” I said.

  “Right?” Carmine said, and then made a gesture with an index finger that encompassed the room. “Tommy here says you love this place, Private, more than anything in life, like every day you’re trying to make up for the fuckup your father turned out to be.”

  “Deep, Tommy.”

  Tommy grinned and turned his palms up. “Truth’s the truth.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re selling Tommy this dump,” Carmine said.

  “We’re buying you out, Jack,” Tommy confirmed. “Putting Private where it should have been in the first place: in my hands.”

  “Private’s not for sale and never will be.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for economies of scale, you know?” Carmine said as if he hadn’t heard my reply. “With Tommy’s company holding the lion’s share of the security system design business, it doesn’t make sense to go to all the trouble to build up our own investigative business when your company, Private, is right there for the taking.”

  “Harvard B School,” Tommy said, tapping his temple with one finger. “Great mind, that Carmine.”

  “Do your homework, doltish,” I snapped. “Carmine never finished Harvard B School. He got tossed out for cheating on an accounting exam.”

  Carmine’s red skin turned livid, but he held his voice in check. “That’s a lie, but it doesn’t matter, Jack. Instead of piano wire, we’ll offer you three point two million, which is a hell of a lot more than the company’s assets. And you get the fuck out of L.A.”

  “If you’d actually finished Harvard Business School, you’d know a company like Private is not valued on assets as much as client base and reputation, Carmine,” I replied calmly. “Private’s value is ten times your quote at minimum, but it doesn’t matter because, as I said, the company is not for sale.”

  “Of course it is,” Carmine said agreeably, “because you are about to put it up for sale, Jack, and be more than willing to take our preemptive bid.”

  “Why in God’s name would I ever do that?” I asked just as agreeably.

  The mobster looked like a cat that had just polished off a nice plump rat. He rubbed his belly, said, “Because if you don’t you’ll be looking at the inside of Folsom or Pelican Bay with a reservation for a chemical cocktail.”

  I felt my stomach go queasy, a feeling that deepened toward nausea when Tommy said, “If you don’t sell, brother, I’ll have to go with
defense plan B, which calls for me putting you at the scene of Clay Harris’s murder, gun in your hand, with a cold reason for vengeance for what that bastard did to you. It’s a much more plausible story than my supposed motive, definitely enough to cast reasonable doubt, and that’s all I really need to skate on this. You, however, will be in for a world of shit.”

  “Unless you sign over the company, of course,” Carmine said, pulling a checkbook from his pants pocket. “I’m prepared to put down good-faith money right here, right now. We’ll let the attorneys take care of the rest, okay?”

  Tommy was almost gloating at the corner he and Carmine had boxed me into. Either I sold them Private, or my brother implicated me in a murder where I was present at the scene, but not a participant. Not to mention the possibility of piano wire.

  I studied each man in turn, examining the angles of their proposition in my mind. “Can I ask what defense plan A is, Tommy?”

  “Attorney-client privilege on that one, brother,” Tommy said. “But don’t worry, it’s just as bombproof. A shocker, as they say on Court TV.”

  My twin seemed more than confident about the power he held over me, and over the company our father had left to me and not him. Carmine, meanwhile, looked like he’d just had a second helping of rat.

  The mobster said, “Let’s just get this over with, shall we? Ten percent good? Three hundred and twenty grand earnest money?”

  Chapter 67

  “SCI!” JUSTINE YELLED. “Don’t shoot!”

  “Oh, my God,” she heard Kloppenberg grunt. Shaking, she stepped back and flipped the switch in the shaft, flooding Thom Harlow’s basement editing room with light. Sci had his hand on the console, struggled to get to his feet. He looked at her, affecting dignity with his nose up; he pushed his glasses tight to his forehead, said, “Well, you succeeded in scaring the living bejeezus out of me.”

  Justine laughed and put her hand over her heart. “It didn’t do much for my blood pressure either.” She looked around. “What were you doing down here?”

  Kloppenberg brushed lint from his jacket sleeve, said, “Going over it a second time. As a matter of fact, I was wondering what was behind that door when the lights went off and you jumped out.”

  “I didn’t jump out,” Justine said. “You make me sound like the boogeyman.”

  “I thought that’s who you were, exactly,” Sci said. “What’s up there?”

  Justine described where the shaft led and what she’d found.

  “So all computers and all cameras were taken with the family,” Sci said.

  “Anything in here?”

  He shook his head. “All the editing equipment is intact, but there’s no hard drives, no film.”

  She frowned. “Nothing at all to do with Saigon Falls?”

  “Nothing.”

  Justine ran the facts as she knew them through her head. The shaft connected the Harlows’ bedroom suite to the panic room and the editing room.

  The children had said that their father had spent much of their first days home down here in the editing room, working on the film, which was what Thom had told Sanders he was going to do when they got back.

  Was the film behind their disappearance? Had Thom’s cameras happened upon something politically explosive while they were in Vietnam? Or something that implicated …

  McCormick, the FBI forensics tech, entered the editing room, looked surprised to see Justine, glanced at the open door to the shaft, frowned, but said, “Thought you should know, Sci. Cadaver-sniffing dogs just hit. We’re digging for a body.”

  Chapter 68

  I POINTED A finger toward my office door. “Private’s not for sale and you two were just leaving.”

  “Heh,” Tommy said. “That’s not how this is—”

  “It’s exactly how this is ending,” I said, then gazed over at the mobster. “Carmine, I respect you, so I’ve got to level with you. I told a fib earlier.”

  “Gee, that’s a fucking surprise. Gonna come clean now? Tell me you did tip the Feds and you’re sorry? Sorry, no—”

  “This place is bugged,” I said firmly, staring him right in the eye. “Audio, video, multiple angles. I’ve got every bit of your little extortion scheme on record, including your admission that you sought contraband narcotics and participated in a conspiracy to rig my brother’s trial with me as the fall guy.”

  Carmine’s rat seemed to be giving him sudden indigestion. “That’s bullshit. You show me.”

  “No, I think I’ll show FBI Special Agent in Charge Christine Townsend, a personal friend, and take my chances in court, where I will testify against my brother,” I said, and folded my hands across my chest, not looking at Tommy at all. “Anything else to say? Or are we done?”

  Carmine licked his lips, looked around the office, trying to spot the bugs. Then he smiled. “You think you can outmaneuver me?”

  “I just did.”

  That pissed him off completely. He stared bullets at me, muttered, “You fucked me. And Carmine Noccia is like an elephant when it comes to that sort of thing.”

  “So you’re having tusks implanted to go along with your phony Harvard MBA? Is that what you’re telling me?” I asked.

  “You’re a dead man, Jack,” Carmine said, stood, nodded to Tommy.

  “A pleasure, Carmine, Tommy,” I said. “As always.”

  I waited until they slammed the door behind them, then held off another minute before collapsing into my chair. Sweat pooled at my lower back. They’d had me and I’d bluffed my way out. There were no bugs in the room. No audio. No video.

  But there sure as hell were going to be by the end of the day.

  Chapter 69

  SCI AND MCCORMICK used soft brushes to whisk away the last of the soil covering the corpse’s face. The victim’s chest and denim shirt were already exposed, revealing a bloom of dried blood and the exit hole of a bullet wound. He’d been shot through the heart from behind. He’d been in the ground at least five days and the smell on the downwind side of the grave was worse than the odor in Leona Casa Madre’s bathroom.

  Justine crouched upwind, listening as the barking cadaver dogs were loaded back into a kennel truck and watching Kloppenberg and the FBI tech work, uncovering the dead man’s bloated features. For reasons she did not fully grasp, these things only served to throw her mind back to the attack in the jail cell. She saw Carla coming for her with that knife, that shiv.

  Justine’s breath began to speed and so did her heart. Spots appeared before her eyes. Suddenly she wanted to be anywhere but by a grave.

  Then she heard Sci say, “It’s Héctor, Héctor Ramón, the groundskeeper.”

  The spots faded and she looked down at the grotesque mask the decomposition had crafted. “How can you know that?”

  Kloppenberg gestured to a silver bolo tie around the victim’s neck. “I saw a picture of him in his quarters. He was wearing it.”

  “We’ll run dental records to confirm,” McCormick said.

  Much the way her mind had whirled back to the attack in the cell in Guadalajara, Justine’s thoughts now flew to the timeline of events she’d been carrying around in her head. Based on the surviving security camera footage, Jennifer Harlow had last been seen leaving the house on her evening run around eight. Justine would bet that Héctor Ramón was killed at roughly the same time, or shortly thereafter in that two-hour gap that Del Rio had discovered. But why kill the groundskeeper? Why not others?

  “Are the dogs still searching?” she asked.

  “Dissecting the estate on a grid pattern,” McCormick said.

  Justine blinked, nodded, felt indescribably tired. She looked at Sci. “I’m not feeling that well, Seymour. Think I need to head back to L.A.”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Just a little light-headed,” she said. “And there’s not much more I can do here today anyway.”

  Sci’s elastic face turned concerned. “I’ve never heard you trying to cut short your workday before, Justine. You want
to see a doctor?”

  “No, I just need to go home, get some sleep. I’ll be better tomorrow.”

  Chapter 70

  GUIN SCOTT-EVANS WORE a mask, a bikini made of iridescent feathers, and glittering high-heeled pumps. She held out her hand to me, said, “Have you seen Tommy or Carmine anywhere? They’re late for the ball, Jack, and I so wanted to dance.”

  “Jack?” Mo-bot called, and rapped on my doorjamb.

  I startled awake from a nap on the sofa in my office, sat up, looked around groggily, saw the wonder lady moving toward my desk, and groaned. “Time is it?”

  “Four in the afternoon,” she said. “Sci just called. Cadaver dogs sniffed Héctor Ramón’s body at the Harlow estate.”

  That woke me up. “Any other bodies?”

  “They’re looking.”

  Mo-bot is by nature a mothering type. She also has a case of OCD when it comes to messiness, and rearranges my desk whenever she can. She started stacking folders, said, “Found a few things in those files you brought me.”

  “Tell me,” I said, sitting up, desperately wanting a cup of coffee now.

  Maureen looked down at the hopelessness of my desktop, hesitated, sighed, said, “It’s better I show you.”

  I followed her down the hall to Sci’s lab, trying to figure out why I was so damn tired, then remembering that facing down a mobster and a conniving brother is a stressful thing, wrings you out. I stopped in the office break room, got a cup of coffee, and then went to sit beside Mo-bot at her workstation, looking at an array of screens that displayed scans of various legal and financial documents detailing the activities of Harlow-Quinn Productions and the making of Saigon Falls.

  “This is dense stuff,” Mo-bot began. “And some of the accounting practices at work here are as archaic as a film studio’s. And forgive me, I haven’t waded through half of it yet, but—”