Private Page 4

  Justine said, “So a hacker gets into the girl’s phone, figures out who she trusts, and takes on a friend’s identity by texting from a no-name phone.”

  Sci said, “That’s what I’m thinking. A ghost in the machine. But that still doesn’t lead us to the killer. We hit a wall after that.”

  Chapter 13

  JUSTINE GOT TO her feet, quickly changed places with Mo-bot, and put her fingers on the computer keyboard. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she said. “If the Schoolgirl psycho walks and breathes, he’s got fingerprints and hair and skin cells. The more times he kills, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”

  She hit a couple of keys and projected a summary of the Schoolgirl case up on the flat-screens.

  The time line placed the murders at roughly every two months for the past two years, except that recently the pace was accelerating. Next to the time line was a map of East LA with electronic flags representing the victims’ locations.

  The faces of the victims took up another screen.

  The girls were of all descriptions. Light. Dark. Some pretty. Some fairly plain. Scholars. Athletes. Some thin. Some not. All high school girls. All unreasonably, tragically dead.

  “We should put out the word about these no-name phone calls,” said Mo. “Talk to the school principals again. Do a TV campaign about fake text messages with personal info.”

  “Saying we’re right about this,” Justine countered, “as soon as we broadcast a warning about texts from unlisted phones, the killer is going to change his pattern. And then we’ll be nowhere again. He might even accelerate the murders further. We know he likes publicity.”

  “About what you said, Justine,” Sci said in his usual nasal monotone. “The different profiles. How could a man who would set a girl on fire do it only once? How could that same person shoot someone from fifty yards away?”

  “What are you thinking, Sci?”

  “What if it’s more than one piece of shit? What if it’s more than one killer?”

  Chapter 14

  RUDOLPH CROCKER was hiding out in a toilet stall in the eighth-floor men’s room at Wilshire Pacific Partners, a private equity firm, when his cell phone vibrated. He had been fantasizing about a new temp, Carmen Rodriguez, who had a perfect rack, beautiful brown eyes, and was practically brain-dead. He was thinking about asking her out on a date, preferably an all-nighter.

  He fished the phone out of his jacket pocket, saw that the call was being forwarded from his direct line. It was Franklin Dale, senior partner, one of “the ancients.” Crocker answered, and Dale invited him to have a drink after work.

  Crocker had been an equities analyst for over a year. He’d done his work diligently while at the same time keeping his head down. His concept was to be one of those bright young men with a huge future in number crunching, a dull and steady sort of worker who kept the portfolio safe, the profits flowing, and his light hidden safely under a bushel.

  Now he had to have a drink with pesky Franklin Dale.

  At seven p.m., Crocker locked his office door and met Dale at the elevator bank. They took the car downstairs together, and Crocker wondered if maybe the old fuck was gay and going to make a move on him.

  Two drinks and a bowl of cashews later, Crocker had been told that he was doing extremely well, and that dinosaur Franklin Dale was highly impressed with his work. Dale said that he thought Crocker was an outlier, a guy with hidden talents who would be rewarded the longer he stayed at this fine old firm.

  As if that would bake his fucking cake. As if he cared what Franklin Dale thought about him or his work.

  By the time Crocker got home, it was half past nine. The rest of the night was his, and this was going to be great.

  He dressed for his run, and ten minutes later he was jogging around the Marina del Rey, his mind on the recent outing when his group had taken Connie Yu down for the count.

  Sweating and panting, Crocker slowed outside one of the slips in the marina. He put his hands on his knees and caught his breath.

  When he was sure he was alone, he took a pint-sized ziplock bag out of his pocket and began to bury it under a heavy coil of rope.

  When he was done, he calmly finished his run. He came through the entrance to his apartment building, waved to the doorman, and went upstairs.

  After his shower he took a prepaid phone from the charger base.

  He texted a message to LA’s mayor, Thomas Hefferon, telling him where he could find Connie Yu’s ear.

  He signed it “Steemcleena.”

  Chapter 15

  THREE DAYS HAD passed since Shelby Cushman had been murdered. Still no charges had been filed, and I couldn’t get a peep one way or the other out of the DA’s office.

  I had breakfast with Andy in his office, a corner in a smart new office building on Avenue of the Stars.

  Andy told his assistant not to put through any calls. Then he eased shut his office door. I could barely recognize his drawn face. There were bags under his eyes, and he’d obviously stopped shaving.

  “I’m not sleeping,” he said. “In case you missed that, Jack.”

  He gulped down his coffee as he unlocked his file cabinets, pulled folders, and explained to me what a very successful hedge fund manager did to keep his edge in Los Angeles.

  “These people out here, actors, agents, studio heads, lawyers to the stars,” he said, waving his arm so it took in the whole of Hollywood, “they make tens of millions. They don’t know what to do with it, so they give it to me. I invest it for them. I get a percentage of whatever I invest for my clients,” he said. “Five percent, usually.”

  “And if the investments tank?” I said, thinking of the housing meltdown, the credit crunch, money swirling down the drain, taking with it the well-heeled and struggling alike.

  “People hold it against you if you lose their money, even if it’s not your fault.”

  “So you’ve got disgruntled clients.”

  Andy sighed.

  “You want the truth, Jack?”

  “No, for Christ’s sake. Please lie to me, Andy. The more you lie, the more likely it is that you’re going to go to trial. I know the DA. He’s going to sic one of his young sharks on you, and they’re going to tear you into great bloody chunks—”

  “Stop,” he said.

  “If someone wants to hurt you, I have to know about it. C’mon, Andy. You have to tell me everything. This is Jack.”

  “I was skimming,” Andy said. It came out just like that—with no preface or warning. “I’m no Bernie Madoff, so don’t look at me like that. I’d charge a fee, then I’d take a little of the principal off the top and ride the investment for myself. I was careful. But shit happens, and you can’t let the clients know, of course.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “My investments dove in the first wave. You remember when Lehman went under? I doubled down, tried to recoup my losses, and lost even more. A couple of my clients got burned to the ground.”

  “Give me the files, Andy. I want to see your biggest losers. I want to know exactly who they are. No more secrets.”

  Chapter 16

  WHEN A DOOR says Private, you want to know what’s on the other side.

  When an envelope says Private, you immediately want to open it.

  I entered Private through the reception area, waved to Joanie behind the desk, and climbed the grand spiral staircase that wraps around the open core of the atrium. The staircase always gives me a lift. Reminds me of the cross section of a nautilus shell.

  I was on my way into my office on the fifth floor when Colleen stopped me.

  “You’ve got company,” she said. “Lots of it. Suits. Expensive ones.”

  I went to the threshold and saw three men lounging in my seating area, a corner furnished with upholstered armchairs, a deep blue sofa, and a chunk of polished sequoia I use as a coffee table. This was where people came with their secrets, and where those secrets were always kept in confidence.

  Two of
my unscheduled visitors were smoking like tobacco company CEOs. Colleen said, “The gentlemen said they didn’t want to be seen in reception. What a surprise.”

  The third man turned to face us, and with a start, I realized I was looking at my uncle Fred. Fred Kreutzer is my mom’s brother, the one who always told me to call him any time I needed an ear. He taught Tommy and me to play football when we were kids and encouraged me to play in high school and then college.

  In short, Uncle Fred was the stand-in good dad for the man who’d sired me. Fred had gone further in football than I had—much further. He was a general partner of the Oakland Raiders.

  The big florid-faced man stood, gave me a crushing bear hug, then introduced me to his associates, men I now recognized.

  Evan Newman was as refined as Fred Kreutzer was rough. His suit was hand tailored. His hair had been sprayed into place, and his fingernails were as gleaming as his handmade shoes. He owned the San Francisco 49ers.

  The third man was David Dix, a legendary entrepreneur, the kind of guy they write about in business school. Dix had made a killing in Detroit during the eighties, got out of auto parts before the meltdown in ’08, and bought the Minnesota Vikings. I remembered something I’d read about him, that his apparent happiness masked his fundamental heartlessness. Sounded like an epitaph to me.

  Evan Newman stood up and came toward me with a convincing smile and outstretched hand. “Sorry to barge in like this,” he said. “Fred said you would see us.”

  “We have a problem,” Uncle Fred said. “It’s urgent, Jack. A screaming five-alarm emergency, actually.”

  “We’d like to be wrong,” said Dix. “In fact, I have to say, if we’re right, this could cripple the game of professional football.”

  Dix beckoned to me to sit. “We’ve got money,” he said. “You’ve got the best people for this. Sit down so we can lay out a nightmare for you.”

  Chapter 17

  EVAN NEWMAN BRUSHED invisible ashes off his trousers and said, “We have reason to suspect a gambling fix in our league, Jack, something that could be as bad for football as the Black Sox scandal was for baseball.”

  I was bothered by this intrusion into my office, but also intrigued. Andy’s inventory of former clients was calling to me from my briefcase, Justine needed me on the Schoolgirl murders, and I had a conference call meeting with our London office in twenty minutes—a scandal in the House of Lords no one knew about yet.

  I looked at my watch and said, “Give me the highlights. Please. I’ll help if I can.”

  Fred spoke up. “Jack, we think this thing may have started about two years ago—in a wildcard play-off game. On paper, winning should have been no problem for the Giants. Their opponent, Carolina, was good, but a couple of defensive backs were out. Their quarterback had a hairline fracture in the index finger on his throwing hand. This game shouldn’t have been close. But you may remember this, Tommy—”

  “Jack.”

  “Jack, I’m sorry. Jesus. Anyway, in the third quarter, Cartwright’s touchdown run, into a hole you could’ve driven a Brinks truck through, was called back. The ref said it was a holding penalty, and in the fourth quarter, as New York was trying for the kick that would’ve sent the game into overtime, there was another penalty that took them out of field goal range.”

  Fred went on, his face getting redder. “New York lost by three. At the time, the calls just looked bad. There was the usual talk in the sports press that eventually faded as the play-offs moved ahead.”

  “Okay, Jack.” Dix spoke next. “Fast-forward to the third game of last season between the Vikings and the Cowboys. Different set of circumstances but basically the same scenario.”

  My uncle jumped in again. He wanted to tell the story play-by-play. “This time the Vikings get a forty-yard pass called back at the end of the second quarter that would’ve sent them into the locker room ahead by seventeen points.”

  Fred was gesticulating angrily, telling me that another questionable holding penalty wiped the pass off the board. “As they lined up at the end of the fourth quarter for what would’ve been the winning field goal, the Vikings get called for an illegal shift which nobody, nobody saw except the referee.

  “Again it takes them out of field goal range, the game goes into overtime, and they lose.”

  I saw where these stories were going, of course. Bad calls happen in football and people scream about the officials and then they get over it. For Fred Kreutzer, Evan Newman, and David Dix to come to me, it meant they had more to go on than alleged bad calls in a couple of games.

  Newman said, “We’ve looked at the tapes ad nauseam, Jack, including last Sunday’s game in San Francisco. We see a pattern. All told, eleven games stink badly over two and a half years. Nine of the losing teams had winning records and seven of them made the play-offs.”

  My uncle said, “A lot of people lost a lot of money on these games. They’re starting to wonder if there’s something funny going on.”

  “Why come to me?” I asked. “Why not take this to the commissioner first?”

  “We don’t have any proof,” said Dix. “And frankly, Jack, if something did happen, we don’t want the commissioner and the press and the public to hear about it. Ever.”

  Chapter 18

  EMILIO CRUZ CAME through my office door first, and Del Rio arrived maybe five minutes after the owners had left. I waved them both into chairs. “We’ve been tapped by three NFL team owners,” I said, “and they could be representing a dozen more. One of them is Fred Kreutzer. Fred is my mother’s brother.”

  Cruz lifted his eyebrows. “Fred Kreutzer is your uncle?”

  “He is. He and some other owners think that games are being fixed. They see a pattern of long-odds underdogs winning too often, and based on questionable calls.”

  “That’s nuts.” Cruz frowned. “You can’t cheat at football. You can’t predict a game-changing play, and even if you could, there are cameras on every move. Every second is under a microscope.”

  “If that turns out to be the case, we’ve got happy clients,” I said, “and nice paychecks. We’ve been guaranteed double our rate for fast, thorough, and very confidential work.”

  “They’re saying the players are rigging the games?” Del Rio asked.

  Del Rio is my age, but the years he spent at Chino aged his face and shattered his faith in people. I think the sanctity of football is one of the few things he still believes in.

  “Fred says that they didn’t find any player infractions, just calls that may have been crooked. Or else the refs were seeing optical illusions.

  “Before we make any decisions on this, let’s talk about the Cushmans. I saw Andy this morning,” I said. “The press is all over him. He hasn’t been charged, and he wants to get out of town. I told him to check in to a hotel and not tell anyone but me where he’s staying.”

  “He’s got good reason to worry,” said Del Rio. “Whoever killed Shelby got in and out of the house with the skill of a Beverly Hills proctologist. I’m looking into contract killers. I’ve got a couple of leads. We’re going to break this one, Jack.”

  I asked Cruz and Del Rio if they could work both cases, and they said they could. That was the usual response at Private—we hired the best, at very high pay, and they expected long days and challenging cases.

  “I want you to do thorough background checks on Shelby and Andy,” I said.

  “What are we looking for that you don’t already know, Jack?”

  “The answer to one simple question: Why would anyone kill Shelby Cushman?”

  “No problem,” said Del Rio. “Two cases for the price of three? I can go with that.” We all laughed, then Cruz and Del Rio left and went to work.

  I had been alone in my office for about sixty seconds when Colleen stepped in and closed the door.

  “Your eleven o’clocks are here, Jack. I don’t like the looks a’ them.”

  “No? They’re just lawyers,” I said.

  Colleen grinn
ed. “Just lawyers. Sure thing. Smirky lawyers. Sweaty lawyers.”

  A minute later, she showed the two men in. I knew them by reputation.

  Their names were Ferrara and Reilly, and they represented Ray Noccia, head of the Noccia crime family.

  Chapter 19

  I SHOOK HANDS with the men coming through the door and offered them seats.

  Attorney Ed Ferrara was wearing a dark three-piece suit. His associate, John Reilly, wore black jeans and a black cashmere sweater. Reilly searched my office with his eyes, checking for hidden cameras in the bookshelves. I don’t think he spotted them.

  Ferrara said, “It’s nice to meet you, Jack. You come highly recommended by several sources.”

  “Always good to hear,” I said. “How can I help you?”

  Reilly dug into a pocket and pulled out a photograph of a very pretty blond woman in her early twenties. I thought I recognized her, Elizabeth something, an actress. I’d seen her on Craig Ferguson once or twice.

  “This is a picture of Beth Anderson. She’s a film actress,” Ferrara said, “and she’s also Mr. Noccia’s good friend.”

  Ray Noccia was at least seventy years old. After waiting for two generations, he had just taken over the top job from his uncle Antonio, deceased. And he was “good friends” with twenty-something Beth Anderson.

  Reilly was saying, “Beth hasn’t been seen in a week. She doesn’t return Mr. Noccia’s calls. He wants to make sure nothing untoward happened to her.”

  “Sounds like a job for LAPD,” I said. “You should give them a shout. I highly recommend them.”