Private L.A. Read online

  Nothing, I thought as I plunged into sleep. Nothing at all.

  Chapter 23

  AT FIVE MINUTES to six the next morning, Justine sipped the last of her espresso and then groaned as she got out of her car and shuffled across the street toward the Crossfit box. She’d had barely four hours’ sleep. Stella, the Harlows’ bulldog, had whimpered until Justine had let her up on the bed. The dog had proceeded to snore and fart all night long.

  But she really is a sweetheart, Justine thought as she entered the gym. What had happened to frighten her so badly? What had happened to the—?

  “Justine? Hi.”

  Justine startled and looked over to see Paul, the guy with the nice smile, nice eyes, and no wedding ring. He was stretching his hip flexors against the wall.

  “Hi,” she said, realizing that she must look like hell. She hadn’t even had time to run a brush through her hair before she’d run out the door.

  But Paul didn’t seem to mind. He just grinned, said, “Trying to keep up with you yesterday put me in a coma at work.”

  She flashed to the grueling workout they’d endured the day before. “Sorry,” she said, moving to get a jump rope to warm up. “What do you do?”

  “I teach English.”

  “UCLA?” she asked. It was the closest university she could think of.

  “No,” Paul said, his face falling slightly. “Bonaventure. Charter school.”

  Justine felt like she’d slighted him somehow. Instead of starting to skip rope, she said, “Teaching is a noble calling. A way to change lives.”

  Paul brightened again. “I like to think so. My students. They’re everything.”

  “That’s really nice,” Justine said, smiling as she started skipping. “You make a difference.”

  “I like to think so,” he said. “What do you—?”

  Before he could finish, the coach called the class into the group warm-up, three rounds of Russian kettle bell swings, lunges, and inchworm push-ups.

  Ten minutes later, sweating, feeling her muscles burning to life, Justine prepared to start the actual workout, a twenty-minute AMRAP, or As Many Rounds As Possible in twenty minutes, of five handstand push-ups, ten wall balls, and fifteen box jumps.

  “Handstand push-ups?” Paul moaned. “Is that even possible?”

  “Took me five months,” Justine said, kneeling on the floor, getting ready to kip herself up against the wall.

  “You’re bionic,” Paul said, and moved off to another part of the gym.

  Justine watched him go, thinking how nice it was that he really seemed to love his job, saw it as a calling. It was rare these days to meet a guy who wasn’t chasing money or power or whatever, a guy who—

  “Go!”

  She threw her feet overhead, balanced against the wall, and started to grind out the workout. One, little sister. Four more now.

  When it was over, she’d done twelve rounds in the allotted twenty minutes. Not the best in the gym, but a perfectly respectable showing given the lack of sleep. She peeled herself off the floor as Paul staggered up and said, “This is bad. I’m supposed to give a lecture on Moby-Dick in my AP class, and I feel like the harpooned whale.”

  Justine laughed. It was an absurd line, but she liked it. A funny guy too.

  “So,” Paul said. “That guy who picked you up yesterday?”

  Justine hesitated, then said, “My boss.”

  “Oh,” Paul said, looking relieved. “What do you do?”

  As a rule Justine didn’t like talking about what she did, especially with single men. When they found out she worked for Private, many of them were intimidated. One guy had recently told her he couldn’t date a woman who was capable of discovering his deepest secrets.

  “Actuarial,” she said. “Boring.”

  “Sounds fascinating, actually,” Paul said, glanced at his watch. “Feel like grabbing a cup of coffee before work? It’s only seven.”

  For a second Justine was tempted, but then she shook her head. “Can’t. Sorry, I have to be on a flight to Mexico at eight.”

  “For actuarial work?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Justine said. “Rain check?”

  “You bet,” he said, beaming. “I’d like that.”

  “Good,” Justine said, and left.

  She ran across to her car, thinking that maybe the romantic part of her life was not such a mess after all. She had opportunities on the horizon.

  Chapter 24

  I DON’T THINK I moved a muscle all night. I opened my eyes around seven thirty, rolled over, and put a pillow over my head to block out the sunlight.

  Dozing dreams are the most real, don’t you think? I do. On the edge of consciousness, my mind conjured a scene from my childhood. I lay on the grass, screaming in agony while Tommy laughed because I’d broken my wrist trying to skateboard as well as he did. I played college football, but that had more to do with my tenacity; my brother was always the gifted one athletically.

  My dreams mutated and I found myself lost in some kind of Rube Goldberg contraption populated by the people who had gathered in the mayor’s office in response to the No Prisoners killings.

  “Find him, Jack,” Mayor Wills said, sounding like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. “Stop him.”

  “By any means necessary,” Chief Fescoe said.

  “We’ll work with and parallel to you,” said District Attorney Billy Blaze, who strangely wore a button with Tommy’s ten-year-old face on it.

  “But we don’t want to know a thing about your tactics,” added Sheriff Cammarata. “Are we clear on that, Morgan?”

  In my dreams, it had all seemed perfectly clear. Find and capture No Prisoners, then turn him over, Private’s role a complete secret to everyone but a select inner circle. But when my cell rang, waking me up for good, things quickly became murkier.

  “I don’t like this, Jack,” said Del Rio by way of hello. “I’ve been up half the night because I feel like we’re being set up to take a fall somehow.”

  “They’re granting us blanket immunity in advance. I’m supposed to see a copy of the document by nine.”

  “What do they expect us to do that they can’t?”

  “I’m not sure they know,” I admitted. “Whatever it takes to get No Prisoners behind bars.”

  “They should be forming a task force or something. Put a hundred men on it. Bring in Cal Justice investigators. Bring in the FBI.”

  “City, county, and state are all cash strapped. I guess they see Private as the cheaper alternative. And they don’t want to cede authority to the bureau.”

  “I still don’t like it.”

  “I don’t either, but I gave my word, said we’d do it.”

  Silence.

  Another call came in. Mo-bot. I told Del Rio I’d call him the minute I heard anything from Chief Fescoe, hit ACCEPT, said, “Maureen.”

  “Cynthia Maines just showed up in our lobby,” Mo-bot said. “She’s demanding to know why we’ve been calling her cell phone nonstop and screwing up the first vacation she’s had with her boyfriend in almost a year.”

  Chapter 25

  AT TWENTY-EIGHT AND five-foot four in a pale-gray dress with pearls and black pumps, Cynthia Maines was a hyper, articulate, and forceful woman who’d attended the University of Southern California’s famous film school and been hired almost immediately upon graduation as the Harlows’ personal assistant and eventually coproducer.

  “So you must have been intimately involved in the details of Saigon Falls,” I said early in the conversation, setting a steaming coffee cup before her. She and I and Mo-bot were in my office.

  “Is this why you’ve been calling me?” Maines asked in disbelief. “Look, I had a firm deal with Jen and Thom. I was to get three full weeks off, and it’s only been like four days and they’ve got you calling me nonstop? I’d like to know what’s going on. I’ve tried their cells, the ranch, and the apartment lines, and no answer.”

  “Because they’ve disappear
ed,” I said.

  Her head snapped back as if she’d been popped in the nose.

  “What?”

  “They’re gone,” I said. “Somewhere between the hours of six and eight p.m. three days ago, all of them disappeared except the dog, who we found terrorized in the help’s quarters. Where have you been the last few days?”

  Maines seemed more than dazed, suddenly lost, groping to find her way through what I was telling her.

  “Mammoth Lakes,” she said in a dull voice. “I was up there with Philip, my boyfriend. We rented a house and … what are the police telling you? Why isn’t it all over the news? Facebook?”

  “Because no one knows, outside of the help; Private; and Sanders, Camilla Bronson, and Terry Graves, all of whom hired us to find you and the Harlows.”

  Maines stared off for several seconds, then looked at us. “This is for real? I’m not being punked here?”

  “It’s for real,” Mo-bot said. “Got any idea where they might be?”

  “I know where they were supposed to be,” she replied. “They’d scheduled six days at home alone on the ranch. They wanted family time. And Thom was going to begin editing everything shot in Vietnam. Jennifer was going to work the logistics of the last scenes to be filmed at Warner in a couple of weeks.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she insisted. “They could be anywhere. Where’s the jet?”

  “In its hangar at Burbank,” Mo-bot replied.

  Maines shook her head. “Then I have no idea. They could be anywhere, but that’s not really true. I mean, someone would see them.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “There is someone who claims to have seen Jennifer and Thom in Mexico the day before yesterday, very, very drunk.”

  She shook her head again. “They don’t drink. They made that pact when they got married. Neither of them has had a drop in fifteen years.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Any reason for them to be in Guadalajara, drunk or not?”

  The Harlows’ personal assistant sat there a long moment, blinking, then slowly rocked her chin right and slightly up before twisting it sharply left. “No idea.”

  “No business concerns there?” Mo-bot asked. “No plans for an orphanage?”

  “Not that I can remember. You could check with Camilla. She handles the schedule when it comes to Sharing Hands projects.”

  “You don’t have working knowledge of the foundation?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Camilla and Sanders took most of that load. My involvement was limited to arranging up-to-the-minute itineraries for visits, photo shoots, that kind of thing. Why haven’t the police or the FBI been notified?”

  I shrugged. “The three amigos asked us to keep it quiet. To wait and see if your employers turned up or if we heard from any kidnappers. I told him I’d wait until tomorrow latest before contacting the FBI.”

  “Well,” Maines huffed, and made to get out of her seat. “I’m not waiting, I’m going to—”

  “Before you do anything, could you answer a few more of my questions?” I asked.

  “Like what?” she said impatiently.

  “Oh, I don’t know, like do you stand to benefit personally in any way from the Harlows’ vanishing?”

  Chapter 26

  MAINES’S MANICURED FINGERS rolled to form fists, and her words came out hot. “There is absolutely no benefit to me. What are you, crazy? What possible benefit could there be to me in that situation? Look, I hitched my wagon to Thom and Jen six years ago when I had a lot of other compelling offers.

  “It’s been the best experience of my life,” she went on. “Demanding and maniacal at times. But magical more often than not. And fulfilling. And lucrative. In no way whatsoever would I jeopardize that. No way. Ever.”

  I believed her. “Had to ask.”

  “Any more questions?” she asked coldly.

  “As a matter of fact.”

  “What if I don’t wish to answer? I mean, it’s not like you’re cops.”

  Mo-bot said, “We both have the same goal, Cynthia, to find the Harlows and find them alive, right? I mean, the more people working the better, no matter who’s paying the bill, Harlow-Quinn Productions or Uncle Sam.”

  Maines remained stiff but nodded. “What do you want to know?”

  “Give me thumbnails on Sanders, Bronson, and Terry Graves and their relationships with the Harlows.”

  Maines thought about that.

  “Dave’s a typical attorney-agent, all business, with almost all his business coming from the Harlows,” she said. “Camilla’s a bitch but very good at what she does. She and Jen are friends. They enjoy plotting.”

  “Graves?”

  “I like Terry,” Maines said. “He’s also very good at what he does, which allows Jen and Thom to do what they do best: be creative.”

  “No beefs between any of them and the Harlows?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “No more than the normal give-and-take. Their wagons are hitched to the Harlows too. Why would they upset the golden cart?”

  “Tell us about life with the Harlows leading up to their arrival back in the States,” Mo-bot said.

  Over the course of the next twenty minutes, Maines went on to describe the Harlows’ whirlwind existence in the last year and what it took for her to help steer their personal and professional lives. She worked for them but considered Thom and Jennifer friends, people she admired and trusted. The time spent in Vietnam had been exhausting but exhilarating. And she’d been stunned at the breadth and depth of the saga the Harlows were depicting in Saigon Falls.

  “It was like every day you knew something brilliant was being created,” she said. “I felt like it was an honor to work on such a project.”

  “Sanders said the Harlows were about out of money when they got home,” I said. “Personal assets were going to have to be sold.”

  That seemed to puzzle Maines. “Is that true? If it is, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “Sanders said he told the Harlows about the situation shortly after they arrived back in the United States.”

  “Well, there you go,” Maines said. “I left as soon as I got off the plane. My boyfriend was there at the jetport waiting, and I was in no mood to stick around.”

  “So you didn’t accompany them to the ranch?”

  “I did not,” she said. “I was done once I got off the plane, and everyone knew it. Things had been intense for so long, I needed to breathe. I still do.”

  “Did Thom talk about a mysterious new investor in the film?” I asked.

  She half laughed. “ ‘There are always mysterious new investors on the horizon.’ That’s one of Thom’s lines.”

  “What about their sex life?” Mo-bot asked.

  The assistant reddened. “I … I’m their personal assistant, but I’m not privy to their life behind closed doors.”

  I said, “There were lots of sex toys in their closets.”

  Maines reddened again, looked at her lap. “Look, that’s way outside my pay grade. All I know is that Thom and Jennifer were devoted to each other and to their children, and that they led an exemplary life. And I’ve had just about enough of this. I’m going to the FBI, get them involved.”

  “I think it’s a good idea, but I don’t know what standing you’ll have,” I said as she got to her feet. “Legally, I mean. You’re not family.”

  She hesitated, glanced at the door. “So what should I do?”

  “Let me make the call first,” I said. “I’ll tell the FBI what we know, try to work with them from here on out. You can call afterwards, back me up with your concerns.”

  Maines nodded, put a card on my desk, took mine. Then she thumped a finger on the edge of the desk, said, “Remember that movie All the President’s Men, about Watergate? That guy kept saying ‘Follow the money.’ It’s always about the money, isn’t it?”

  “Point taken,” I said. “Definitely point taken.”

 
; Chapter 27

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER I was looking at copies of Cynthia Maines’s financials courtesy of Sci.

  “Maines receives a base salary of four hundred K a year,” Kloppenberg said. “But she is underwater on six different investments she made before the crash, three of them in Vegas real estate. Her cash flow is strong, but she’s got no savings to speak of. I’d describe her lifestyle as self-indulgent and her investment philosophy as incoherent. Other than a total lack of use of credit or debit cards over the last four days, Maines has a long and wide history of extravagant purchases. Luxury goods. Robb Report baubles.”

  “No bangles?” I asked.

  “Plenty of those too,” Sci said. “Tiffany’s most recently.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “I think she was lying about the Harlows’ sex life,” Mo-bot said.

  “Either that or she’s a prude,” I said.

  “But what are the chances of that in Hollywood?” Mo-bot asked. “And there was another thing she was being evasive about.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Guadalajara,” Mo-bot said. “I got the impression that she was conflicted, less than forthright.”

  I thought back and felt she was right. “Good thing Justine and Cruz are on their way there right now.”

  Sci frowned. “They took the jet?”

  “Yeah, so?” I asked.

  “I never get to take the jet,” Kloppenberg said, openly pouting.

  “Report it to a human rights commission,” I said. “And I want this same sort of report drawn up on Sanders, Bronson, and Graves.”

  “Give us a couple of hours,” Mo-bot said.

  My cell phone rang. Mickey Fescoe.

  “Chief?” I said.

  “Get down to the Huntington Pier ASAP,” Fescoe said. “I want you and Del Rio to see what we’re up against.”

  Chapter 28