Private L.A. Read online

  “But you’ve found something,” I pressed. Much as I love her, Mo-bot has a tendency to qualify everything if I let her.

  She nodded, annoyed. “Until roughly twenty-four hours before they disappeared, the whole kit and caboodle was on the verge of insolvency. They were burning through cash at an astonishing rate, shooting in Vietnam.”

  “That’s what Sanders said,” I replied.

  “He did,” Mo-bot replied. “He also said that Thom predicted a white-knight investor, which is what he got.”

  “When?”

  “Day after they got back,” she said, and typed on her keyboard.

  Up popped evidence of a ten-million-dollar deposit in the account of Harlow-Quinn Productions.

  “Canceled check?” I asked.

  “Ahead of you.”

  A scan of the check appeared on the screen, made out to Harlow-Quinn. The check was drawn on a Panamanian bank and dated two days prior to the Harlows’ disappearance. The account holder was identified as ESH Ltd.

  “Who’s ESH Ltd?”

  “Don’t know,” she admitted. “Yet. But here’s the really interesting thing.”

  Mo-bot gave her computer another command, and records of four other payments from ESH Ltd to Harlow-Quinn appeared. One for two million. Three for five million each. All had been made within the last twenty-four months.

  I glanced at the total, said, “Twenty-seven million. There’s the deep, deep pockets. Whoever ESH Ltd is, they own a third of this film, maybe more.”

  “Sounds about right,” Mo-bot agreed. “Whoever they are, they’ve got lots of money in the Harlow-Quinn game.”

  “And yet Terry Graves never mentioned getting a ten-million-dollar cash infusion,” I said.

  “Hard to believe,” Mo-bot said.

  Chapter 71

  “SIR, YOU’RE NOT supposed to be here,” a voice complained, and I felt my feet rudely pushed out of the way. “You need to sleep, go home, find a hotel room or something.”

  In a chair in the corner of Del Rio’s room in the medical center, I blinked awake to find a Filipina nurse named Angela glaring at me, hands on her hips. She could not have been more than five feet tall, but she was imposing and I sat up quickly, saying, “I didn’t know I was—”

  “Don’t listen to him, Angela,” Del Rio called from the bed. “Jack’s been a freeloader going way back. He’ll sleep anywhere he can.”

  I grinned. That sounded like the Del Rio I knew and loved. Then I looked back at the nurse, who was still royally ticked off. My face fell. She tapped her nurse’s clog on the floor, arms crossed, said, “I have to bathe this poor man. You want to watch?”

  “I think I’ll spare Rick that final indignity,” I said, stood, edged away from her, feeling like she might try to bite me if I wasn’t careful.

  Del Rio was laughing, so I went out the door with a major smile on my face. There were many things about my life at that point that were muddy, to say the least, but hearing my best friend laugh was not one of them. Hearing that laugh gave me hope that no matter what Tommy or Carmine or the team at Harlow-Quinn or No Prisoners might be plotting, an important part of my life was going to be all right.

  That thought was enough to keep me in a positive state as I waited until six a.m. for the cafeteria line to open, then ordered up two bacon-and-eggs-over-easy breakfasts and carried them back to Del Rio’s room, mulling over events prior to my coming to the hospital last night.

  Sanders, Terry Graves, and Camilla Bronson had not returned my calls. But Special Agent Christine Townsend had, and after hearing what we’d found in the Harlow-Quinn files, she’d promised to have someone look into ESH Ltd. The rub was that she didn’t know how long that would take.

  On the way over to the hospital, Sci had given me a full oral report on what had been discovered and not discovered at the Harlows’ estate, including the body of Héctor Ramón, the secret shaft, and the camera mounts in the panic room. He also said Justine wasn’t feeling well and had asked him to take her home early. He said she’d been quiet the entire trip down from Ojai.

  “Doesn’t sound like her,” I’d said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Sci had admitted.

  I’d called Justine’s house and cell phone several times, left messages, but had not heard back until shortly before I fell asleep in Del Rio’s hospital room. Around midnight, she’d texted me that she was okay, but dead tired and crazy for sleep.

  I knew the feeling and yawned as I entered Del Rio’s room with breakfast, only to come up short when Angela blocked the way, looking at the food suspiciously.

  “What’s that?” she demanded.

  “Bacon and eggs over easy, English muffin, black coffee,” I replied. “His all-time favorite breakfast.”

  She shook her head. “Richard is on a special diet.”

  “No worries,” I said, sweeping past her. “I’ll eat Richard’s bacon.”

  “Wait—” she sputtered angrily.

  “Angela?” Del Rio called. “C’mon, I can’t take the stuff they bring around on the carts. There’s nothing wrong with my swallow reflex. A speech pathologist lady checked yesterday. She said I was good for anything I wanted.”

  “Humph,” Angela said, glancing at me as if I were public enemy number one. “I’ll look at the chart again. If it’s not on the chart, he’s getting out of here.”

  Then she stormed out of the room. Del Rio said, “She’s kind of protective.”

  “Noticed that,” I said, putting his tray on the table.

  Del Rio’s attention flickered past the food, past me, focused on the television hanging from the ceiling. “Turn that up,” he said. “It’s the pier.”

  Picking up the remote, I turned off the mute. A gratingly familiar voice filled the room, a report by none other than Bobbie Newton, who was standing near the entrance to the Huntington Beach Pier.

  “As the pier opens for the first time since the bombing, police, local businesspeople, and residents are cautiously optimistic,” she intoned. “It was a sentiment echoed early this morning by both Mayor Wills and Chief Fescoe.”

  The screen cut to the mayor and chief hurrying into City Hall. Wills slowed, said, “There hasn’t been an attack by No Prisoners in nearly thirty-six hours, and no contact from him whatsoever. We cautiously hope things stay that way.”

  The screen jumped to Fescoe, who said, “We’re still in full pursuit of this maniac, but it is possible he’s come to his senses, realized we will catch him, and decided to end the random violence and this obscene extortion scheme before it goes any further.”

  Chapter 72

  IN THE GARAGE in the City of Commerce, Cobb and the others were watching the same television coverage, listening to the same remarks by Mayor Wills and Chief Fescoe.

  “Close enough,” Cobb said, clapping his hand against his thigh. “No Prisoners is back in action. You’re up, Mr. Johnson.”

  The wiry African-American cranked his head around, cracking his neck. “Have you developed a scene of opportunity, Mr. Cobb?”

  “We have,” Cobb said. “It will take nerves of steel to take full advantage of the situation.”

  “Luckily I’ve got them,” Johnson said.

  Cobb nodded. It was true. Johnson had been with him longer than any of the other men. He was not creative or impulsive like Hernandez. He wasn’t clever with his hands like Nickerson, or a tech genius like Watson, or a savvy Web guy like Kelleher. But Johnson did have nerves, no, balls of steel. The crazier the situation, the tighter he stuck to the plan, to the objective. Bullets could be flying. People could be dying all around him in the chaos of war, but Johnson just kept plowing forward.

  “Noon,” Cobb told Johnson. “Lunchtime.”

  “That’ll shake them up,” Hernandez said. “Shock ’em out of the mundane.”

  “Exactly, Mr. Hernandez,” Cobb said. “And when they’re good and shocked, we’ll turn the tables on them one last time and take them for every penny we can get.”

 
“I like that idea, Mr. Cobb,” Hernandez said.

  “Me too,” Johnson said. “A lot. I’m thinking a place in Tahiti, you know?”

  “Don’t let yourself start dreaming of how you’ll spend it all, gentlemen,” Cobb cautioned. “We have to be totally focused until the deed is done. Then you may dream as big as you want.”

  “Hoorah,” Johnson said softly. “Hoo-fucking-rah.”

  Cobb looked at Nickerson. “You’ll brief him?”

  “My pleasure, Mr. Cobb,” Nickerson said, handing an iPad to Johnson. “You’ll see the floor plan, as well as photographs I shot in there yesterday. I’ve identified suggested entrances, exits. This should be a target-rich environment if there ever was one.”

  Watson continued to coach Johnson through the particulars of his attack plan, but Cobb’s mind was already pushing on. He looked at Watson, who was staring as he had been for hours at the screen of an iPad.

  “Where are we, Mr. Watson?” Cobb asked. “Will you be ready?”

  Watson stroked his pale goat’s beard, looked up, nodded. “All they have to do is make the connection and it should be a short crawl back up the data stream to the open digital vault.”

  “Traceability on their end?” Cobb asked.

  “Virtually nil,” Watson said. “They’d have to be looking for us to counterattack in the virtual world, and what’s the chance of that?”

  “None, Mr. Watson,” Cobb said happily. “Their attention will be completely diverted. Outstanding.”

  Watson beamed at this rare compliment. But Cobb noticed Kelleher tensing and looking up, worried now. “We just lost Facebook. Shut us down. Too bad, we had more than three hundred and fifty thousand following the feed. I believe we’ll lose YouTube next, but as of now, we have over fifteen million hits.”

  Cobb thought about this. “They’ll try to track us through the accounts?”

  “Affirmative,” Watson said. “But they won’t get anywhere. Everything we fed them was done on stolen computers that are now in a landfill in Oxnard.”

  “Suggestions, gentlemen,” Cobb said. “Options.”

  Kelleher said, “We could go to Twitter.”

  Cobb considered that for several seconds, said, “No, I vote silence. Nothing unnerves people more than silence, especially people whose mundane lives are threatened. Every creak in the building, every sudden movement by a stranger, every loud noise gets reflected and amplified until every moment becomes tainted with fear and anguish. That’s what we’re after here, gentlemen.”

  PART FOUR

  NO EXIT

  Chapter 73

  AN HOUR EARLIER, just as dawn was cracking, Justine sat in her car down the street from Crossfit, watching the regulars filing groggily into the box, wanting to join them but feeling as if she’d betrayed them, betrayed herself by using the place as … well …

  She’d hoped that a solid night’s rest would help her see things more clearly, more rationally, but now all she felt was confusion. Who was this person growing inside her whom she simply did not recognize?

  Then she saw Paul and her confusion deepened. He was jogging down the sidewalk from the east toward the gym, that endearing smile plastered across his face. Her overwhelming impulse was to leap from her car. Part of her wanted to stop him before he entered and bring him back home to her bed. Another part of her wanted to confront him, tell him it was a horrible mistake brought on by a horrible incident, and that it could never happen again. Or at least not without their getting to know each other better. But the better part of her wanted to rest her head on the steering wheel and cry.

  For much of her life Justine had felt in control of her emotions and actions, anchored in a way that helped her help others deal with the aftermath of trauma. Now she felt weirdly unanchored, beyond adrift, as if she’d been caught in a slowly twisting whirlpool that threatened to drown the person she’d always believed herself to be.

  Fighting for air, literally feeling the panic of drowning, she threw the car into gear and, without looking, pulled out onto the street. Tires screeched on cement. A yellow low-rider pickup truck nearly sideswiped her, veered into the opposite lane, almost had a head-on with an approaching bus, but then swerved back into the lane beside her.

  Justine almost threw up from the adrenaline that flooded through her.

  The sensation got worse when an irate homeboy in shades and a wife-beater shirt hung out the passenger window of the pickup, started screaming at her, “Bitch, I should cap your ass for what you just did! There’s two kids in this car. You coulda killed us all!”

  Justine suddenly couldn’t do anything but nod and start to cry. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed back at him. “I’m having a bad, bad day.”

  The rage in the homeboy’s face lessened. “Hey, lady, pull over or something. Get a grip. You’re gonna kill someone if you don’t watch it.”

  Justine did just that, wiping away tears, pulling off the street into a strip mall parking lot. She parked away from the cars near Starbucks, away from anyone else. Leaning her head on the steering wheel, she began to cry again, and let herself do it freely. The attack in the jailhouse had upended her in ways she just couldn’t explain, couldn’t control.

  “I’ve got to see someone,” she decided, speaking out loud. “I’ve got to treat this like what it is, the—”

  Her cell phone rang. She hesitated at first to look at the caller ID, fearing Paul, or even Jack. But then she did, and saw a number she did not recognize.

  She cleared her throat, answered, “Hello.”

  “Is Ms. Smith?” came a heavily accented woman’s voice that sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Yes, this is Justine Smith. Who is this?”

  The woman’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Is Anita. Anita Fontana. I work for—”

  “I know who you are, Ms. Fontana. I remember. What’s wrong?”

  A moment’s hesitation before the Harlows’ housekeeper said with increasing urgency, “We see them on the news, but we hear nothing except the children are okay. Mr. Sanders and Ms. Bronson won’t tell us what is happened, where the children are. They won’t let us see them. They won’t let us see Miguel or …” She wept. “Please help us.”

  Whatever fugue state had gripped Justine now left her as quickly as fog on a wind. She heard the housekeeper’s anguish and from that found direction, strength. The people at Harlow-Quinn were way too controlling, she decided, way too Machiavellian, and it was about time she got to the bottom of why.

  “Tell me where they’re keeping you,” she said. “I’ll come there, tell you everything I know.”

  Chapter 74

  ABOUT EIGHT THIRTY that morning, after showering, shaving, and changing in the washroom off my office, I entered the lab and found Mo-bot already at her workstation. She was gulping coffee, munching on a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

  “Those’ll give you a heart attack, Maureen,” I said.

  Her brow rose archly. “You are parenting me now, Jack?”

  “Okay, we’re not going there,” I replied, hands up in instant surrender.

  “No, we’re not, and let me be the first to tell you, I still don’t have squat on ESH Ltd. It’s a shell company, of course, registered in the Caymans, but all I’m coming up with is a filing agent in George Town, and he’s not answering his phone or returning my calls.”

  I thought about Christine Townsend’s promise to look into the company. How long would that take?

  “We have anyone on retainer in the Caribbean?”

  “I’d be glad to pop over to Grand Cayman in the jet.”

  “You’re too valuable here,” I said.

  She pouted.

  “What can I say? It’s the downside of being supercompetent.”

  Mo-bot bit viciously into the last of her Krispy Kreme, gave her computer an order, scanned the screen, swallowed, said, “Carlos San Cielo, Puerto Rico.”

  “I remember him, good guy,” I said. “Contact him. Have him fly in there, pay Mr. Registered Agent a vi
sit in person, tell him he represents someone with deep pockets who wishes to form, say, a dozen companies there, but in return, we need a little bit of information about ESH Ltd.”

  She looked at me as if she’d caught me with my hand in the Krispy Kreme bag. “But you have no intention of forming companies in the Caymans.”

  “Your point?” I asked.

  Before Maureen could reply, Sci entered the lab, displayed a white iPhone in a plastic evidence sleeve, said, “It’s Malia Harlow’s. Last night it occurred to me that it was the only device with a memory left inside the Harlow house except those doctored security tapes.”

  “Okay?” I said.

  “I got it going at home and had a look,” Kloppenberg said, rolling his eyes at Mo-bot. “Some of the texts regarding Justin Bieber were a bit over the top.”

  “Texts regarding Justin can never be over the top,” Mo-bot shot back. She had a picture of the teen crooner taped to the side of her computer along with a dozen other pop celebrities.

  I frowned, checked my watch, and said, “Did you find anything? If not, I’m out of here. I’ve got a conference call with Peter Knight in the London office. He’s up to his waist in some sex scandal that’s breaking in Parliament.”

  “Nothing as tawdry as that on Malia’s phone,” Sci said. “And nothing that answers any questions.”

  “Too bad,” I said, heading toward the door.

  “But I found something that raises questions,” he said, stopping me.

  From his breast pocket, Kloppenberg removed a SIM card in a smaller evidence sleeve, donned latex gloves, got it out, and inserted it into a reader attached to one of the lab computers. A second later, a picture popped up on the screen. The photo was date-stamped September 24, roughly a month prior, and showed a group shot that must have been taken on a location set for Saigon Falls, with jungle vegetation and a muddy river visible in the background, perhaps the Mekong.