#1 Suspect jm-3 Read online

  Before the car had come to a stop, Scotty was out the back door. He crossed the street in his black duds, his ski mask in hand. When he crossed Artemus, he ducked into the shadow of the pottery’s outside staircase and, as he’d done before, rattled a window until he set off the alarm.

  The alarm screamed out over a couple of square blocks, and Cruz knew that it also alerted the techs at Bosco Security Systems’ control center through the phone line.

  The same people who had manned the phones twenty-four hours ago were very likely on duty now. They’d received three false alarms from this address, and team Del Rio was counting on Bosco to tell the building’s owner and the cops that the alarm indicated a system failure, not a break-in.

  The Private investigators waited for a police response that didn’t come.

  Fifteen minutes later, under the pale light of a new moon, Cruz, Scotty, and Del Rio crossed Anderson and proceeded into the narrow gap between the Red Cat Pottery and the auto parts building next door.

  Employing a rock-climbing maneuver called “bridging,” they inched up the brick crevasse between the buildings.

  Two cars hissed past on slick pavement as the Private guys slowly ascended to the Red Cat Pottery’s roof.

  CHAPTER 101

  Scotty got a leg across the low wall at the edge of the roof, pulled himself up and over, gave Cruz a hand up, and did the same for Del Rio, who rolled onto the tar paper, saying, “Everybody down.”

  The three men hunched behind the wall, got their wind and their bearings.

  Del Rio counted off a couple of minutes in his mind, then stood up, located the skein of electric lines running from the pole on Anderson to the roof, and severed them with his wire cutters, causing a blackout inside the warehouse.

  The alarm was cut off, as were the motion detectors, the telephone backup, everything-but, shockingly, the alarm sounded again almost immediately.

  Startled, Del Rio ducked from pure reflex, then said to the others, “They have a battery backup. To the alarm. It’s gotta be wireless.”

  Cruz said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Then the alarm halted midshriek.

  Del Rio said, “That’s Bosco shutting it down, thinking that’s enough of this noise tonight. Emilio, we’re okay. We stay put. Make good and sure no one is coming.”

  A long ten minutes went by, then Del Rio got up, paced off twenty feet in from the Anderson side of the building, eyeballed approximately the same distance from Artemus, took his eighteen-volt battery-operated Sawzall out of his bag, and flipped it on.

  It made a little bit of a racket, but not the kind of thing that would wake up any watchdogs in the neighborhood or even cause anyone driving by to notice.

  Scotty and Cruz stood by as Del Rio sawed through the tar paper, the old layers of asphalt roofing, and the plywood below that, cutting through sheetrock that had little resistance to the blade.

  Roofing fell through the opening and clattered down. They listened to the ensuing silence, and then Scotty opened his bag of tricks.

  He put on his miner’s lamp and took out a thirty-five-foot length of marine-grade one-inch poly line. He tied one end to a brick chimney, put some knots into the rest of it, and approached the hole.

  Del Rio said, “Take it slow, ” and Scotty grinned, jazzed up with nervous energy.

  He pulled the knotted rope taut, then lowered himself down from the roof to the kiln room, where the clay pots were fired. Del Rio followed and Cruz was last to come down the line.

  As soon as his feet touched the floor, Cruz went to the office and found the wireless alarm backup system next to the circuit box. He took out the batteries and set up the cell phone signal jammer in case the wireless signal went active again.

  Del Rio, meanwhile, left the kiln room and went to the back-right-hand corner of the warehouse proper, where Scotty had seen the van. But Del Rio didn’t see a van. He saw racks and racks of flowerpots.

  He didn’t want to believe this.

  Private investigators had watched the damned warehouse, three shifts a day every day, for the past week. Had the van been dismantled, taken out in parts, or driven intact into a big rig?

  Del Rio was ready to call Jack, when Scotty walked past him, catlike on rubber soles, and showed him where the van was hidden behind the racks, pretty much barricaded in.

  Scotty said, “What do you think, Rick?”

  Relieved that Jack wasn’t going to have to tell Noccia that the van had disappeared, Del Rio said, “We’re good.”

  CHAPTER 102

  The van was a late-model Ford transport, white with vegetables painted on it, two doors and a slider on each side, cargo doors at the back, tinted glass all the way around.

  It was parked fifty feet away from and facing the roll-up doors at the far end of the warehouse. Whoever had parked the thing had meant to hide it. The driver’s side and rear were against the corner walls of the warehouse. The other two sides were hemmed in by metal racks of flowerpots two deep and seven feet high.

  Del Rio squeezed around to the driver’s-side door and tried the handle, but the door was locked. So were all of the others.

  Fucking A.

  He had a short crowbar in his bag. He took it out, staved in the passenger-side window, reached in, and pulled up the handle. He brushed the glass off the seat with his gloved hand, threw his bag into the passenger-side foot well, and slid behind the wheel.

  After flipping on the dome light, Del Rio looked at the ignition. He wanted to see a key dangling there. That would have been nice, but no, the only thing on the ignition was blood spatter. It was on the wheel too, sprayed all inside the windshield, and there were some bits of bone and brain matter too.

  Noccia’s wheelman’s remains.

  Del Rio looked for the keys under the mats and up under the visors. No luck. He called out to Scotty to check the tops of the tires, just in case, and when Scotty said, “Nope. Nothing,” Del Rio opened all the doors with the lock release.

  He got out of the van and squeezed past the racks of flowerpots, hitting one of them with his shoulder. The rack shimmied as if it weren’t sure if it was going to fall, giving him a shot of adrenaline he didn’t need.

  He imagined Cruz calling Jack: “Jack. Ricky had a heart attack, man. What should I do?”

  Cruz called out, “You okay, Rick?”

  “Fine. Fine. Emilio, let’s see how quick you can start this engine.”

  Cruz squeezed along the racks, got into the van, and used the screwdriver attachment on his knife to remove the guard plate from the ignition tumbler. While he stripped the wires, Del Rio groped his way to the rear of the van and checked the cargo.

  He counted the stacks of cartons, did the math, came up with four hundred cartons, all but one of them still sealed. Each carton was marked with the number of bottles per carton, so many pills per bottle, so many milligrams per pill. He took out one of the bottles, shook it, put it back.

  This was a ton of Oxy. If there wasn’t thirty million in this van, it wasn’t his fault.

  Scotty called to him, “Houston. We’ve got ignition.”

  Del Rio closed the cargo doors, came out from behind the van, and got in the passenger side. Scotty wedged himself between the seats.

  Cruz put the transmission into drive and turned on the headlights. At that moment, there was the loud, brassy roar of a motor coming from outside the building. The lights in the warehouse flickered and then they came on. It was like daylight inside the Red Cat Pottery.

  Fucking A, for sure.

  CHAPTER 103

  Cruz yanked the wires apart, cutting the engine. He snapped off the headlights too. He sat there, gripping the steering wheel, staring through the tinted windshield, thinking, Sure, there was a generator. Red Cat had a generator in case the power went out while they were making the flowerpots.

  Cruz turned to Del Rio, same instant as Del Rio grabbed his arm and ordered, “Get down.”

  Cruz did what Del Rio said, thinking
, Now what? There was roofing on the floor of the kiln room, rainwater was maybe dripping down. If that was discovered…They were walled in, couldn’t even attempt a break for it.

  Whatever getting caught red-handed meant, this was it. Literally. He had a dead mobster’s blood on his palms. He knew what to say when they got dragged out of the van and shoved facedown on the concrete floor.

  You got us. We give up.

  Scotty said quietly, “Hear that?”

  Cruz heard men talking over the roar of the generator. Their voices were getting louder as they came through the office door and into the warehouse proper.

  Cruz hoped that they weren’t going to check the ovens, that they wouldn’t look at the van. But the voices were getting closer.

  “You see it? Because I sure don’t,” said one of the men. “Where’s the goddamned van?”

  “It’s here. Stop worrying, Victor. It’s hidden in the back here. Right there. Behind the frickin’ racks.”

  It was about the van after all. Whoever was leasing the space, storing the van, he was looking to make sure his millions were still safe. These weren’t cops. They were hoods.

  Cruz got his piece out of his waistband. Del Rio was doing the same.

  The first voice was saying, “Okay, okay. Just be glad, Sammy. I want to move this thing in the morning.”

  “You say so.”

  “I say so. Sammy, you and Mark…”

  The men’s voices faded as they turned and headed back toward the office.

  Cruz thought about that one guy saying Sammy. It clicked. Sammy, with the goatee and the piercings-a guy he’d known for years as an almost-dead druggy-was moving up. This was the same Sammy who had taken twenty bucks in exchange for sending a text message and said it was common knowledge that the drug van was inside a warehouse.

  Common knowledge?

  It was inside knowledge. He had fucking known.

  Sammy’s brains were like scrambled eggs. He would say and do anything for a fix.

  And the guy Sammy called Victor?

  Cruz thought he knew that guy too.

  Cruz peered over the dash, saw the backs of the guys’ heads going into the office. The office door closed, then the lights in the warehouse went out. His heart was still hammering, his palms and underarms wet.

  Scotty was muttering, “Man, oh, man.”

  Cruz said to Del Rio, “One of those guys is Sammy. Remember him, Rick?”

  “Turquoise cowboy boots? Metal in his nose?”

  “Yeah. Sell himself out for twenty bucks. And the one looking for his van? I think that’s Victor Spano. He’s with the Chicago Mob, am I right?”

  Del Rio said, “Yeah. Spano. That could have been him. We gotta wait now. Just sit tight.”

  Time dragged, Cruz counting off too many minutes in the dark, smelling his own sweat, thinking of the time he’d been in a knife fight and the other guy had a gun. The time he’d been in bed with a woman and her husband came into the room.

  He was thinking about his last professional fight, with Michael Alvarez, the punch that had ended his career, when Del Rio said, “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  Del Rio flipped on the dome light.

  Cruz twisted the wires, got a spark. The engine turned over. He gunned it.

  Cruz turned on the headlights, sending two high beams into the pottery, and put the van in gear. He let off the brake, and the van rolled, nudging the racks until they tipped over in slow motion, pots crashing to the floor.

  Cruz backed up, twisted the wheel, and maneuvered in quarter turns until the tires were clear of the racks.

  There were two sets of roll-up doors at the Artemus side of the pottery. One set opened onto a ramp that went down to the street. The other doors opened onto a loading dock where there was no ramp. There was an eight-foot drop.

  Cruz said to Del Rio, “It’s on the left, right?”

  Del Rio said, “What?”

  “The doors to the street are on the left, right?”

  Del Rio said, “Make sense, Emilio.”

  Cruz was almost sure the doors that went to the street were on the left. He stepped hard on the gas and ran the van into the thin metal of the roll-up doors, the doorframes flying right off the walls.

  Scotty was saying, “Man, oh, man” over and over again like a mantra. Cruz went through the doors, praying he was right.

  CHAPTER 104

  I was still at my desk when my cell phone buzzed. It was Del Rio.

  “How’d it go?” I asked him.

  “Mission accomplished,” he said. “Which means our troubles are just starting.”

  “Where’s the van now?”

  “We’re in it. On the road.”

  “Did you put the tracker inside?”

  “It’s under the seat. Way under.”

  I said, “Good,” told Rick to stay on the line, and called Noccia from my desk phone. I had a ringing phone in one ear, traffic sounds and Del Rio and Cruz talking together in the other.

  Noccia picked up.

  I said to the Mob boss, “We’ve got your delivery. It’s intact.”

  We agreed on a place just north of Fry’s Electronics Paradise in Burbank.

  I said, “Del Rio has some names for you, Carmine. The guys who jacked your van.”

  “That’s more than I expected,” Noccia said to me. Then he hung up.

  I wanted Del Rio and his crew out of that vehicle. It couldn’t happen fast enough for me. I hung in with Rick for a half hour of pure screaming adrenaline overload as Noccia got a couple of his goons out of bed and we waited for his guys and mine to meet up on the shoulder of a highway.

  Rick said to me, “My date is here,” and a few minutes later he said, “They’re gone. Headed north on Five.”

  I told Rick to call Aldo for a ride, and had just hung up when the phone rang again, a 702 area code. Vegas.

  “Carmine. Is everything under control?”

  “Very under control. I’m going to sleep like a kitten tonight. I wired your fee into your account. Six million even.”

  “Thanks.”

  Noccia said, “No problem. Good job,” and hung up.

  My throat was dry. My hands were shaking. I drank down a Red Bull in one long swig and I dialed out. I got Chief Mickey Fescoe on the third ring.

  I told Fescoe that a van with a fortune in illegal pharmaceuticals was headed north on 5, that it belonged to Carmine Noccia. I pictured Fescoe, my sometimes friend, shaking off sleep, jumping out of bed, dying for me to fill in the blanks.

  “What did you say?”

  I repeated myself and then gave him the details. Fescoe punctuated every fifth word with “Holy shit” and “You’re kidding ” as I connected the dots for him. I drew a straight line between the three members of the Noccia crew who had been found shot dead on a highway in Utah to the Ford transport van holding a street value of thirty million in OxyContin.

  I said, “There’s a GPS transmitter in the van. The receiver is in Fry’s Electronics parking lot. Yeah. Inside a trash can under the flying-saucer marquee if you want to send a car for it.”

  “I’ll send someone now. I might get it myself.”

  “If I were chief of police, I’d tip off the DEA. And take them down with a traffic stop, Mickey. Keep me completely out of it.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Fescoe. “Hey, Jack, how did you come into all this information?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Right. It’s private. Sorry I asked. I don’t need to know,” said Fescoe.

  I said, “Not that I’m keeping track, Mick, but don’t forget that I helped you with this.”

  Another way of saying You owe me a big one.

  “I’ll help you if I can,” said Fescoe.

  Another way of saying I’ll help you if I can, but don’t count on me if you killed Colleen Molloy.

  CHAPTER 105

  It was a hell of a send-off for Cody.

  The Bazaar was a five-star restaurant on La Cienega, a “mov
able feast” that called up Spanish fiestas of the kind you only saw in movies.

  We had booked the tasting room, called Saam, for our party of thirty. The furnishings were leather and Murano glass, and the food was bizarre and terrific: tapas and cheesy confections and foie gras lollipops wrapped in cotton candy.

  People were lit on magic mojitos infused with end-of-the-workday relief. There were silly toasts and drunken laughter, and a couple of girls were crying and laughing at the same time.

  As I said, it was a hell of a party.

  But some people were missing: Del Rio, Scotty, and Cruz were out working the hotel murder case. Justine had given Cody a cashmere sweater and begged off the festivities.

  I wanted to be anyplace but here. But I owed it to Cody to give him a bash worthy of how much we all loved him. He’d stepped into his job after Colleen left six months ago, filling her place without a hitch. Like he was made for it. I’d always be thankful to him for that.

  I clinked my glass with a fork, and the whooping only escalated.

  “Cody,” I said. “Cody, we’re going to miss you.”

  There was whistling and guys yelling Cody’s name. Mo-bot was beaming. Even Sci stood up and gave Cody some applause.

  “We’re going to miss your clothing commentary,” I said to my former assistant, “and your impersonations of all of us, especially me.”

  I did an impersonation of Cody doing an impersonation of me, running his hand through his hair, giving himself a serious look in the mirror, straightening his tie.

  People roared.

  I said that I had put a contract out on Ridley Scott for taking Cody away from us, but that I was grateful to Cody for finding Val.

  Cody broke in to say, “Val, stand up, girlfriend.”

  And she did, laughing too, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the magic mojitos. She was just having fun.

  I said, “Cody, you’ve kept us on track and you’ve brought us a lot of happiness too. And if the acting thing disappoints you, I’m going on the record: You’ll always have a home at Private.”