Private Read online

  Noccia nodded, got up from his chair, and asked me and Del Rio to follow him into the billiards room. He said to the men around the table, “Go outside, guys. Take a break.”

  The room emptied quickly. There was a score counter over the billiards table, but Noccia walked past it to the chalkboard that hung on the wall. It appeared to be the long-running tally of winning games.

  Noccia picked up an eraser from the tray below the board and wiped out some phone numbers that had been written in the corner.

  His back was to me as he spoke. “We have a partner in a number of construction projects: a hotel in Nevada, a couple of malls in LA and San Diego. This partner came to us with a request,” said Noccia. “We had no choice except to honor it.”

  I was mesmerized as he began to write his partner’s name with a square of blue pool chalk. At first I didn’t get it. I thought maybe he was going to draw a diagram from the partner to the man who had hired the hit.

  But that’s not what happened.

  Carmine Noccia scratched letters onto the slate and said, “This is who contracted the hit on your friend Shelby Cushman.”

  When he was sure that I had seen what he’d written, he spat on the eraser and rubbed the name out.

  He put the eraser down and walked me and Del Rio to the door, where he said good night.

  And he shook my hand.

  Chapter 104

  IT WAS PAST midnight again, and I was back in LA. I had told Del Rio I’d see him in the morning, and he looked at me like he was a dad who’d just put his small son on a school bus for the first time.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  But would I? Rick was still watching me as I got into my Lambo and strapped myself in. I got on the 10 East and then took the exit toward Sunset.

  If I’d been driving a Volkswagen, I could’ve gone faster. It was the downside of owning a fast car. It alerted every cop in the state and every good-doin’ citizen with a cell phone.

  My mind was flying out in front of my hood, and still I stayed within the speed limits, finally slowing down and stopping at the entrance to the Chateau Marmont Hotel.

  I took the elevator from the parking garage without seeing anyone, and pressed the button for Andy’s floor. I stood outside his door and used my cell phone to call him.

  The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally, he answered.

  “Jack? What’s wrong? It’s one in the morning.”

  “Everything’s wrong. I’m right outside your door. Open up.”

  Andy was wearing the same pajamas he’d worn the last time I saw him. Crumpled silk, wide maroon stripes interspersed with thin black lines.

  The room smelled like flatulence and the garlic bread sitting on the coffee table.

  “You don’t look so good,” Andy said.

  “I just flew in from Vegas,” I told him. “Then I drove here.”

  “Sit down, Jack.”

  I stood.

  “I spent some quality time with Carmine Noccia. I was at his house.”

  Andy looked into my face. There was no fear in his eyes.

  How could he not have thought that I would find out? Had he underestimated how I would react? Or was Andy a far cooler customer than I’d ever known? This was not how I thought of my fraternity brother, my close friend since we were little kids.

  I said in a voice that was ringing with shock, “Carmine told me about your request, that you were the one who asked him to have Shelby killed. How could you have done that? Tell me something I can believe.”

  Andy’s face fell and his knees caved. I watched him drop to the floor, then I grabbed him up roughly, two steely hands at his shoulders, and threw him into an armchair that almost went over.

  He was sobbing now, but I’d seen this embarrassing and pathetic act before.

  “Come on, Andy. Really pour it on, you fuck.”

  “She was a whore, Jack. You told me so yourself, but I already knew that. She was doing every perversion with every scumbag with a buck. And I had to find out about it from some lowlife greaser who didn’t know or care that Shelby was my wife.”

  “There are divorce courts,” I said, but I was thinking of Shelby, seeing her face, remembering the belly laughs at the Improv, how she’d been a rock for me and maybe my salvation right after I’d come back from the war.

  It killed me that she’d gone into whatever drug hell had made her fall so far. And then I thought about how I had introduced her to a man who had paid to have her murdered. If I hadn’t introduced them, Shelby would still be alive. I had loved her, and I had trusted him. And I missed her badly.

  How could Andy have done that to Shelby? How could anybody want to kill Shelby? She was gentle and kind and she made us all laugh—she made me laugh.

  Andy’s weeping was infuriating. The last time he’d sobbed his heart out, I’d felt his grief. Now there was no hiding it from myself: I’d been perfectly played. And my friend had done it to me.

  I didn’t know Andy Cushman anymore.

  I said, “For a bean counter, you’re a damned fine actor. Maybe overplaying it a touch right now.”

  The sobbing stopped, and Andy sobered. “Please, Jack. You don’t understand what it was like living in the same house with her. Knowing what she was doing: the junk, the men. I had to do it—but I couldn’t do it myself. I did love her, Jack. I honestly did. Please. Don’t tell the police.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I won’t call the cops. You’re a client, you shit.”

  “And a friend?”

  The pleading look just enraged me more.

  By way of an answer, I punched him in the face. His chair fell back, and when he was down, I yanked him up by his hair, kicked him everywhere: legs, kidneys, ribs. I poured a three-hundred-dollar bottle of Scotch over his head. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, nothing else I could do without actually killing him.

  Andy Cushman, my former client, my former friend, was still crying when I left his suite.

  Chapter 105

  DR. SCI CAME spinning around the corner to Justine’s office, grabbed the doorjamb, and leaned straight out as if he were a flag in a gale.

  It was ten after ten in the morning, and he’d been working in the lab with Justine’s two bar glasses all night.

  Justine placed her palms flat on her desk and searched Sci’s baby face. He was a scientist, so even if the news was bad, his expression could read happy: happy that he’d solved a problem.

  “Tell me something good,” Justine said. “Put a smile on my face, boy wonder.”

  “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news,” Sci said.

  Justine put her face in her hands. “Bad news first,” she said.

  “The good news is that I have isolated the unknown male’s DNA. It matches the DNA we found in Wendy Borman’s clothing.”

  “That’s the good news?” Justine said. “We only got a forensic hit off that male DNA.”

  “Yep, he’s still unknown. But you saw him. He’s alive and well and living in LA.”

  “Listen, Sci, good news would be that you’ve got a positive match to Rudolph Crocker. I was sitting right next to him in the bar. I wrapped up his glass like I was swaddling a baby chick. His DNA has to be on that glass.”

  Sci let go of the doorjamb, came into the office, and sat in the chair across from Justine. He jammed his flip-flops up against the side of her desk. His yellow print aloha shirt picked up the blond streaks in his hair. It made him look like he had just wandered in from a surf shop in Venice Beach.

  “The problem isn’t that Rudolph Crocker’s DNA isn’t on that glass. It’s that what I got was allele soup. So while I can’t exclude him from the sample, I can’t positively match his DNA to the DNA we found on Wendy Borman’s shirt. I’m sorry, Justine. The sample is crap.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Can you run the test again, try to isolate his DNA somehow—”

  Sci watched Justine try to twist the result he’d given her into hope. If he could
do it for her, he would.

  “—can’t you?”

  “No. If I were to guess what happened,” said Sci, “the barkeep was out of clean glasses. He rinsed out a dirty one in the sink and gave it to Crocker. New glasses came after that, and the barkeep gave a clean glass to the unknown male. Plausible?”

  “I can’t get another sample from Crocker,” Justine said. “Not in time.”

  “If you can’t find what you want on the street, go into his house and take it,” said Sci.

  “You don’t really mean break into his house…. Oh. You’re saying get a search warrant.”

  “If that’s your best shot.”

  Shit, Justine thought. She dialed Bobby’s number. She knew it by heart, of course.

  Chapter 106

  JUSTINE SIGHED, then swiveled her chair toward the windows and away from Sci. She lowered her face as she spoke urgently to Petino.

  “Bobby. Sci says we can’t exclude Rudolph Crocker’s DNA from the sample. That means he could have been one of the psychos who kidnapped Wendy Borman.

  “Right, Bob,” Justine continued into the phone. “The sample is contaminated, but Crocker is included as one of many possibilities—

  “Yes, that’s true. Crocker is one of many possible contributors, so I need a search warrant—

  “Are you serious? I only need to go into his apartment for one second and get his toothbrush—

  “Thanks for your time, and thanks for nothing, Bob. Whatever happens is on you.”

  Justine banged down the receiver, spun around, and said to Sci, “He says even if he could strong-arm a judge, the evidence would be inadmissible. I don’t care about the case right now. I want to stop this freak from killing someone tonight.”

  Sci’s phone buzzed on his hip. He glanced at it and said to Justine, “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

  Sci took the stairs to the basement lab. He found Mo-bot in her druid cave of an office, incense burning. It smelled like perfumed garbage to him.

  Mo didn’t look up from the computer. She said, “Morbid has hijacked a screen name and launched a text message to the target.”

  Sci rolled a chair up to Mo’s desk and studied the screen. The stealth program they’d created was awfully good. It could hack calls wirelessly once the outgoing number was plugged in—but it also picked up chatter.

  “Highlight Morbid and Lady D,” Sci said. “Let’s make it easier for us.” He pulled his cell phone off his belt and called Jack.

  “Morbid’s making small talk with the target,” he told Jack. “The little fuck is using the handle Lulu218. His text to her says ‘C U after school.’ Doesn’t say where.”

  Sci said to Mo, “Can you get a better fix on Morbid’s location?… Jack, he’s in West Hollywood. That’s all I can tell you right now. We’ll track the pings until we can refine his location.”

  “Can’t you trace him?” Jack asked.

  “Nope,” Sci said to Jack. “We can’t intercept the call, and that poor girl will be dead before the cops can get a court order.”

  “I’m working on it!” Jack practically shouted.

  Sci said, “Okay. We’ll keep trying,” then disconnected from the call to Jack.

  “Text Lady D,” Sci said to Mo.

  “I tried. We’re blocked. She’s being so careful, poor lamb. She knows there’s a killer out there, so she lets in the wolf wearing her girlfriend’s screen name—and she locks us out.”

  Chapter 107

  LIEUTENANT NORA CRONIN sped up Figueroa, jerked the wheel to the right, and double-parked in front of the obscure five-story white building that housed Private and its many secrets. Justine walked out of the glass front doors at a smart clip, got into the squad car, and buckled in.

  “Pisses me off,” Justine said.

  “You know, even though Bobby’s a complete prick, you gotta give him points here, Justine, because he’s right. We don’t have probable cause.”

  “Crocker and his buddy are going to kill someone tonight, another girl. That’s my ‘probable cause,’ damn it.”

  The car radio sputtered: a hit-and-run on Cahuenga and Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Nora dialed down the volume and said, “I say we hit Rudolph Crocker’s office unannounced. You stand there looking like you look. Like a prosecutor with a stick up your ass. I badge Crocker, ask him nicely to come downtown. He’s not under arrest; we just need his help with a case we’re working on. Good-citizen kinda thing. Say he could have witnessed a crime.”

  “Okay,” Justine said. “He comes in. Now he’s in the box. You say he was identified driving past the street where Borman was kidnapped five years ago.”

  “Sure. That could work. Maybe he gets nervous and says something incriminating. Or maybe he leaves his DNA on a Coke can,” Nora said. “Maybe coming into the station throws him off. So he cancels the kill tonight, and then, partner, we’ve bought more time, at least.”

  Justine nodded. “He works on Wilshire, near Fairfax. At ten forty a.m. he should be there.”

  Nora hit the gas and drove for fifteen minutes up Wilshire, located the address easily, and parked. Then she and Justine entered the chilly office building with a vivid barn-sized Frank Stella construction in the lobby.

  Nora badged the blade-thin receptionist at the long green marble desk on the second floor. She asked to see Rudolph Crocker.

  The receptionist said, “Mr. Crocker isn’t in. He’s taking a vacation day.”

  “Fuck!” Nora said, and banged her fist on the desk.

  Back in the squad car, Nora drove toward Crocker’s apartment building. “If he’s not home, we wait for him like last time,” she said to Justine.

  “Or why don’t you put out an APB on his stinking minivan?”

  Nora said, “Fine. Good call, Justine.”

  Nora gave dispatch Crocker’s name, said that he was driving a late-model blue Toyota Sienna minivan, and requested an all-points bulletin on the vehicle. “I want that van,” she said, “in connection with the Schoolgirl murders.

  “Watch. He’ll be parked right outside his apartment,” Nora said to Justine.

  But the blue van wasn’t in sight, and the doorman said that Crocker had left the building early that morning, around seven, and no, he had no idea when Crocker would be back.

  Nora and Justine settled down in the squad car parked across from Crocker’s apartment building. Nora continued with her litany of “fuck this” and “fuck that.” More than four hours later, Nora got the call from dispatch.

  “Lieutenant, that blue Sienna van is in Silver Lake. It was last seen heading north on Alvarado. Our unit was traveling south, then lost him in the turnaround.”

  Nora barked, “Tell all units to find that van, Sergeant. I want the driver pulled over under any pretext and held until I get there. The suspect may be armed and dangerous. He’s our primary in a series of homicides.”

  Chapter 108

  “JACK,” MO-BOT SAID in a voice that was unusually tame for her, “so you can keep this straight, we don’t know the real names of any of these people.”

  It was almost four thirty Monday afternoon. I was driving a fleet car, Cruz was riding shotgun beside me, and I was talking to Mo-bot, who was back at the office.

  I put Mo on speakerphone so Emilio could hear this too.

  She said, “ ‘Morbid’ is texting the unknown target, ‘Lady D,’ with a name he hijacked off her phone. It’s a friend of hers.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “So Morbid just texted: ‘I got something big to tell you. Can you meet me at Slommo’s.’ ”

  “What’s Slommo’s?” I asked Mo.

  Cruz said, “I know it. Newsstand on Vermont.”

  Mo jumped back in. “Lady D texted again. ‘I can’t girlfren. I’m cookin tonite. Goin shoppin.’ Morbid writes back: ‘This is major. I need to meet you at the store.’ ”

  “What store?” I asked.

  “Jack, you know everything I know. Uh-oh. The target says ‘OK. C u
in 15.’ She disconnected the call.”

  “Got a location, Mo? On either party?”

  “Morbid is on Montrose, closing in on Glendale. That’s as close as I can make it. Wait, Morbid’s signal is moving. Heading north.

  “Jack, he stopped on Glendale. He’s either at a light or, no, his speed tells me he’s now on foot.”

  Cruz was cracking his knuckles obsessively. He said, “There’s a Ralph’s Supermarket on Glendale. What are we looking for?”

  “Justine said he’s white, skinny. Early twenties.”

  “We’re on our way,” I told Mo-bot. I felt like I was back in combat, like I had a second chance for everything to turn out right.

  Chapter 109

  EAMON FITZHUGH, aka Morbid, spotted Graciella Gomez standing outside Ralph’s Supermarket.

  The pretty girl was wearing denim short-shorts and one of those baby-doll tops, a pink one. He came across the parking lot toward her, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans, his head down, hair covering his eyes, which were definitely lusting for this little doll face.

  “Lady D” didn’t look up. Why would she? She was waiting for her girlfriend Lulu Fernandez to meet her and tell her some major news.

  Morbid watched Graciella looking at her wristwatch, and then he walked right up to her, called her by her nickname. This is where he had to be a good actor, which he was. That was why he was on point.

  “Gracie?”

  “Yes?”

  A little shy. “I’m Lulu’s friend. I’m Fitz.”

  “Yeah? I never heard her saying she knows any Fritz.”

  “It’s been our secret so far. Forget about that. Lulu sent me to meet you because she has to go to the hospital. She’s in trouble.”

  “What? That’s not right. What happened to her?”

  “Look. Okay, she’s pregnant with my kid. She told me to tell you she’s spotting and she could lose the baby.” Fitzhugh teared up. “It’s your decision. She really needs you, though.”