Private L.A. Read online

  “Why is that?” Kloppenberg asked.

  The publicist said, “Because Jennifer Harlow is a certifiable, world-class shopaholic.”

  Chapter 10

  “IT’S TRUE,” SANDERS said. “The Harlows, and Jen in particular, rack up a lot of credit card charges every day. But since the night before last, nothing.”

  Out the helicopter window the Harlows’ Ojai ranch came into view, a beautiful, otherworldly place with a sprawling white ranch house, gardens, fountains, barns, and other outbuildings flanked by horse pastures and groves of almond, orange, and pecan trees.

  I spotted the two Suburbans in the driveway before we landed. As the rotors died down, I finally released the tension in my fists, and all sorts of ideas bounced around in my mind. Were we on some kind of wild-goose chase? Would the Harlows just be sitting inside having breakfast?

  Climbing from the helicopter after Sanders, Camilla Bronson, and Terry Graves, I spotted three middle-aged Latina women in maroon uniforms trotting toward us from one of the outbuildings.

  The publicist, the producer, and the attorney immediately veered off course and went straight to the women, with my team in tow.

  “Have you spoken to anyone?” Camilla Bronson demanded.

  The three wrung their hands, shook their heads. The tallest, whose blouse was monogrammed “Anita,” said, “No. I swear to you. We do exactly what Mr. Sanders say. We go to our rooms, say nothing to nobody. Just wait for you. We no sleep.”

  “Let’s continue to keep it quiet,” Sanders replied.

  The publicist glanced at me, said, “The press jackals will be all over this if we let them.”

  “Besides, we really don’t know anything yet, do we?” Terry Graves said.

  We followed him. Behind me, I heard Sci whisper to Mo-bot, “Well, I was thinking alien abduction, little green men looking to perform experiments on the most beautiful beings on Earth. What about you, Maureen?”

  “Specters? Ectoplasmic transport?” she said.

  I had to suppress a grin.

  “Who ya gonna call?” Kloppenberg whispered. “Private Ghostbusters!”

  I glanced over my shoulder to find the two of them beaming at their wit, and Del Rio and Justine hiding their smiles.

  Sanders turned from the three Mexican women. “Is there something funny in all this?”

  “No, Dave,” I said, covering. “Not at all.” Looking to Justine, I said, “You interview the help.” To Del Rio, I said, “Take the outbuildings and the security system. Sci, Mo-bot, you’re inside with me.”

  “We’re coming inside too,” Camilla Bronson said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” I said. “At least until we’ve done our initial sweep.”

  “Not a chance,” the publicist replied icily, and followed Sci and Mo-bot toward the veranda. Terry Graves and Sanders followed her.

  Before I could argue with them, Justine squealed with delight. A female Old English bulldog had appeared out of nowhere, panting, nervous, her white fur and paws soiled as if she’d been digging in the dirt.

  “That’s Miss Stella Kowalski,” Anita choked, tears welling in her eyes as Justine went to pet the bulldog. “She’s the children’s. Miguel’s. You see? The dog goes everywhere with them. Even Vietnam. This no good. She’s therapy dog. Miguel … he loves her.”

  At that the bulldog began to whimper and cry.

  Chapter 11

  IT TOOK US several hours to make an initial inspection of the Harlows’ ranch house. Most rooms remained in mothballs, the furniture still wrapped in plastic. But the core area of the sprawling home spoke of a family wearily trying to resettle after a long journey, and, yes, of a life interrupted.

  Littering the kitchen counters were dirty dishes, half-eaten meals, and glasses crusted with dried red wine. The fridge was filled with vegetables, fruit, cartons of soy milk, and the pantry was stocked with a multitude of gluten-free items. The trash in the compactor stank of chicken blood. A cold mug of coffee sat in the microwave, which flashed “Finished.”

  The telephone answering machine was filled with multiple messages from Camilla Bronson, Terry Graves, and Sanders, as well as several production assistants, film editors, and fashion designers, all of them apologizing for intruding but desperate for a few minutes of the Harlows’ time. The television in the den off the kitchen was on, muted, showing the Cartoon Network and Scooby-Doo facing down yet another monstrous imposter. Lining a hall that led out to the garage was evidence of Jen Harlow’s legendary consumerism: stacks upon stacks of unopened boxes, recent and past shipments from various catalog merchandisers. In the garage, we found five wheel-less cars set up on blocks under custom covers that identified them as a Bugatti, a Maserati, a classic Corvette, and two Land Rovers.

  “That’s not right,” Terry Graves said, openly worried now. “Thom told me he was looking forward to driving the ’Vette.”

  There were pictures of the celebrity couple all over the house. Most of them were what I call power shots, photographs with politicians, say, or with various Hollywood moguls, at awards ceremonies and the like, images designed to boost an insecure creative soul.

  A few candid photos showed the couple with their three children: Malia, thirteen, adopted in Ethiopia; Jin, eleven, adopted in China; and Miguel, eight, adopted in Honduras, and born with a severe cleft palate. More images depicted Thom or Jennifer or both in some far-flung and impoverished land, posing with gangs of smiling children, or holding a withered infant in their arms.

  Camilla Bronson’s lower lip trembled as she saw the photos, and she said, “Oh, God, what’s happened to them? They’re such good people.”

  I left her and went to the west wing of the ranch house, which held guest quarters, a state-of-the-art gym, an indoor pool, and a twenty-seat screening room. The pool was empty. The gym and the screening room appeared unused.

  Lights burned in the hallway that led to the east wing and five bedrooms laid out like a dormitory, with two bedrooms on either side of the hall and the Harlows’ master suite at the far end. The bedroom on the right-hand side, closest to the living area, was Malia’s. Her suitcases were half empty on the floor. An iPhone 4S with a dead battery lay hidden between the bed and the end table. The sheets were rumpled and cast lazily aside, as if the teen had gotten up for a drink of water, or to go pee, or maybe had just left the bed unmade for the day.

  Jin’s room across the hall was more chaotic, with clothes in piles on the carpet and strewn on the furniture, a canopy bed covered in stuffed animals, and another menagerie on the dresser.

  The bedroom of the boy, Miguel, however, was different, neat-freak different, the bed made with almost military precision. But when I walked past the bed I smelled something acrid in the air. Sniffing around, I soon found its source. Someone had wet the bed.

  The room across the hall from Miguel’s was empty, the mattress stripped, the blankets folded and put into clear plastic protectors. I wondered if it had been set aside for some future fourth orphan the Harlows planned to adopt.

  I reached the master suite, a simple yet elegant space with a Steinway grand in the corner, shelves bulging with books, and a huge teak bed, crisply made with fresh white sheets and a folded duvet. A bay window overlooked the orchards. Paintings and several mirrors, including one narrow mirror six or seven feet long, hung horizontally, high on the interior wall of the bedroom, all feng shui remedies, no doubt.

  “Found the Oscars,” Mo-bot called to me as she exited a massive walk-in closet to my right, hands behind her back. “They were all wrapped in newspaper and stuck at the bottom of one of Jennifer’s drawers. Can you imagine doing that to an Academy Award, Jack?”

  “The Harlows are unimpressed with themselves,” Sanders said, coming in behind us with Camilla Bronson and Terry Graves.

  “They don’t judge themselves on the basis of public accolades,” Terry Graves said. “Deep down it’s always about the work.”

  “If you say so,” Mo-bot replied with little c
onviction. “Know what else I found piled on top of the Oscars?”

  “I couldn’t imagine,” the publicist sniffed. “As I said, Jennifer has one of everything.”

  Mo-bot smirked as she brought out from behind her back a rather large and anatomically realistic dildo with a suction cup jutting out the back end.

  Chapter 12

  “YOU KNOW WHY they’ll go for it?” Cobb asked Nickerson as he steeled a knife with a short, wicked-looking obsidian blade. “They’ll go for it because big-city hot shots or not, deep down they’re just like some limp-dick chieftain in the Old Country: small-minded, predictable, and therefore susceptible to fear. Ignorance breeds it, fear, which is useful, as you know.”

  “Damn straight, Mr. Cobb,” Nickerson replied, turning the blade. “Justifiable in a state of war.”

  They were in the garage in the City of Commerce. Johnson was sacked out on the cots. Kelleher and Watson worked at computers. Hernandez watched coffee drip and worked more salve into his new tattoos.

  Cobb made a pistol with his fingers, aimed it at Nickerson, and said, “Perfectly justifiable in dire times such as these. People who get power have to be worms in order to get power. What we’re doing is just electrifying the soil they live in, getting it so hot and shocking they’ll be forced to surface and squirm in the light of day. Then we’ll have them.”

  Hernandez came over, set a mug in front of Cobb, said, “With all due respect: the pharmacy? Is that the place to maximize our efforts?”

  Cobb ran two fingers over the spiderweb of scars on the left side of his face and considered Hernandez with cold intent. Hernandez was brave to the point of being impetuous, which made him one of Cobb’s best men and also his worst man. Hernandez had amazing physical skills and would fight to the death if provoked, but he tended to ad lib on plans when it was unnecessary. And he couldn’t see the big picture, a general weakness of character and intellect, at least as far as Cobb was concerned.

  “For this to work, Mr. Hernandez, we don’t want anything that could be construed as political,” Cobb said at last. “Nothing symbolic, if you will. No statements. Nothing to suggest this is anything other than a single maniac at work. So why the pharmacy? It’s mundane. It’s everyday, and because of that more people will relate to it, and the fear and the panic and the pressure will grow. We want every citizen of L.A. to feel like their daily lives are jeopardized.”

  End of discussion. He turned from Hernandez, glanced at the atomic clock on the wall—fourteen hundred hours—and said, “Okay, Mr. Watson, upload it.”

  “Straightaway, Mr. Cobb,” Watson said, and began giving orders to his iPad. “I’m taking it through scrubbing sites in India, Pakistan, and Hong Kong. Zero chance they’ll pull an IPN on us.”

  Cobb understood. “Make sure you mix up the paths you take online. It’s just like being on the job. No routine routes. Change it up, all the time.”

  “Got the Facebook page up,” Kelleher said, pivoted in his chair, stroked his red beard. “You like?”

  Cobb glanced at the iPad in front of the big man. A Facebook page filled the screen, topped with the headline NO PRISONERS: FACES OF WAR L.A.

  “Outstanding,” Cobb said. “Show them their ignorance, sow fear through them virtually. I’m going to catch a nap before things really ramp up.”

  “Sixteen hundred?” Hernandez asked.

  “Yes,” Cobb said before going to a cot and lying on it with one arm flung over his eyes. As a matter of survival, he had long ago taught his mind and body to shut down on command. When they did so this time, he plunged into a deep, dark void that after an hour gave way to dreams.

  It was night. The chill wind smelled of wood smoke, tobacco smoke, coffee brewing, horse sweat, and the high desert. Boots crunched on sand and rock. Dogs began to bark before gunfire threw jagged flares through the night.

  Women and children began to scream. In his dreams, Cobb heard men begging for mercy. He felt nothing but satisfaction at the screaming, at their pleas, and with that grew a sense of righteousness that surged when the first explosion hyperlit his mind, shook his body so hard he thought for a moment he’d been hit by the rocket-propelled grenade.

  Then Cobb bolted upright, instinctually grabbing the throat of the man shaking his shoulder. Watson choked and looked down at him bug-eyed.

  “No, Mr. Cobb!” Kelleher yelled, grabbing his wrist. “It’s a good thing.”

  Cobb came free of the dream, fully awake, and slowly let go of Watson’s throat.

  “We’ve gone viral,” Kelleher said as Watson choked and coughed.

  “Already?” Cobb said, sitting up, shedding the grogginess. Johnson and Nickerson were standing there too.

  Watson crowed in a hoarse voice, “One hour twenty in, we’ve got seventy-five hundred hits on YouTube.”

  Kelleher grinned. “And two thousand thumbs down on Facebook.”

  “Those numbers will grow,” Cobb remarked.

  “Definitely,” Hernandez said behind him. “Frickin’ exponential.”

  Cobb twisted to see not bald Hernandez but blond-locked and bearded No Prisoners slipping the mirror sunglasses on to complete his disguise.

  Cobb smiled, said, “Outstanding in every goddamned way, Mr. Hernandez.”

  Chapter 13

  “PUT THAT THING away,” Sanders snapped, reddening after the initial shock of seeing the dildo in Mo-bot’s hand. “Jennifer Harlow’s private, uh, needs are not at issue here.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Mo-bot shot back. “There are drawers full of sex toys and gear in her closet. His too.”

  Camilla Bronson blanched. “You cannot mention this to anyone!”

  She must have said that six times over the next fifteen minutes as we discovered all manner and size of dildo, butt plug, suction tube, cock ring, and artificial vagina in the Harlows’ closets. There was also a sex swing and a device that resembled a gymnast’s vaulting horse equipped with a powerful motor inside and a mechanical penis jutting out of the top.

  “Never seen one of those before,” I commented.

  “It’s called a Sybian,” said Sci, who’d just come in. “The penis attachment not only goes up and down, it can be set to rotate or corkscrew.”

  “And you know that how?” Terry Graves asked.

  “Kit-Kat’s got one,” Kloppenberg replied matter-of-factly.

  Sanders frowned. “Who the hell is Kit-Kat?”

  “Sci’s virtual girlfriend,” Mo-bot said.

  Not really wanting it discussed that my chief criminologist’s private life consisted of online video sex with a woman in our Stockholm office, I quickly changed the subject, asked, “Find anything in the kitchen, Seymour?”

  Sci nodded. “Enough mold and bacteria to say those dishes and glasses are from thirty-six to forty hours ago at the outside. I’ll be able to give you a more definitive answer once we get back to the lab.”

  Thirty-six to forty hours. Which meant the Harlows had left the house voluntarily or involuntarily roughly two days after they returned home from Vietnam. What had happened in those two days?

  I left the others and again walked around the house, trying to see something I’d missed on the first pass, trying to imagine the things that might have unfolded in the time before the family disappeared. Had they left on their own, or at gunpoint? In what vehicle? And what about the caretaker, and the personal assistant, Cynthia Maines?

  I had more questions than answers, and the growing feeling that I was indeed missing something, something that was staring me right in the face. Then again, little of the scene made sense to me. There were no signs of violence that I could find, no indication that they’d been forcibly taken, no blood, no broken furniture, certainly no ransom note or demand of any kind.

  So what had happened here?

  I discovered an editing room in the basement below the east wing of the house, with five big screens all linked to a main-frame server and a state-of-the-art editing and mixing console. I tried a door beyond the consol
e. It was locked.

  I turned, my eyes drifting across the electronics in the editing room, and it hit me. There were no computers anywhere. No desktops. No laptops. No tablets. No handhelds except for the dead iPhone in Malia’s room.

  This was a wealthy family in a home equipped with the highest-end techno-gadgets. No computers beyond that phone? Impossible. So they were gone too. But there had to be some kind of backup system, right? A cloud connection, at least.

  I was about to go find Mo-bot and the trio I’d come to call the Harlow team to dig into that issue when Del Rio found me.

  “Went through the caretaker, Héctor Ramón’s, place, Jack,” he said. “It’s like the main house, used, but abandoned. There’s a cat down there, walking around meowing.”

  “No signs of struggle?”

  “None,” Del Rio said.

  “Maybe Sci’s not that far off, then. Maybe that’s what scared the bulldog and made the computers all disappear. It is an alien abduction.”

  “Yeah, maybe, except for the fact that for two hours the night before last, either the electricity blacked out and the backup to the security system suffered a complete failure, or the system was disarmed and fucked with by total pros.”

  Chapter 14

  ME, DEL RIO, Sci, Mo-bot, Sanders, Camilla Bronson, and Terry Graves were all crowded into a small room off the garage watching a big screen split into ten frames. Each frame displayed a different feed from security cameras arrayed around the ranch, at the gate, near the barns, above every exterior door, and at intervals on the roof, panning the near grounds.

  “Fairly sophisticated system,” said Del Rio, who on the whole is largely unimpressed with security he didn’t himself design. “Redundant controllers. Satellite link. Cable link. Pressure sensors inside the fences. Lasers in the hallways. Fiber optics in the windows. Panic room off the master suite.”

  “I didn’t see any panic room,” Sci said.

  Del Rio tapped a feed that showed a room equipped with couches, a refrigerator, and two sets of bunk beds. “Entrance is off Jennifer’s closet. Looks like a frickin’ fortress. But obviously they never made it in there.”