Private L.A. Read online

  WEARING BLACK POLARIZED sunglasses despite the iron-gray sky, a floppy olive-drab fishing hat, flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt that read “Bass Pro Shops,” Nickerson picked up a bait bucket, saltwater rod, and tackle box and shuffled out onto the Huntington Beach Pier, where a breeze was building.

  With the possible exception of the earbuds he wore and the fiber-optic camera hidden among the various lures stuck along the band of his hat, Nickerson looked no different from thirty or forty other men trying their fishing luck out on the pier.

  At its far end, more than a quarter mile out into the Pacific, the pier widened into a large diamond shape dominated by a red-roofed diner called Ruby’s. Nickerson skirted left of the diner and took up a position along the rail where he could monitor the pier’s west end.

  “That’ll do,” Cobb said in Nickerson’s ear.

  “How long you figure?” Nickerson muttered as he squatted over his tackle box and bait bucket.

  “Any time now,” Cobb said. “Get to work while you can.”

  Nickerson settled in like a man certain of his craft, which he was. He removed lures that looked like pale-gray six-inch squid, with trailing tentacles. When he was positive no one was watching, he reached through the lower rails of the pier and pressed the lures up against a steel girder. The hooks had been magnetized, and soon the lures, six of them in all, were tucked up under the flange of the walkway. They were very close to the color of the girders and visible only from the sea, which meant only by surfers, lifeguards, or shore patrol, and only if they were studying the girders carefully with binoculars.

  After rigging up a real lure and dropping his line over the side, Nickerson braced his pole, then crouched over his tackle box. This time he picked up what appeared to be a lead weight painted dull gray. It was about the size and shape of a matchbook, as thick as a cell phone. Hoops like the eyes of fishhooks stuck out at either end of the weight. He used brass snaps to attach steel leaders to each eye. He got two large fishhooks from the tackle box and fixed them to the unattached end of each steel leader.

  “Mr. Hernandez just spotted Fescoe coming onto the pier,” Cobb said.

  “He alone?” Nickerson asked, glancing around.

  An old Vietnamese guy stood at the rail about twenty feet to his left, jigging his pole, looking down into the sea. To his right some fifteen feet, a dad and young son rigged poles.

  “So far as I can tell.”

  The old Vietnamese guy gave a cry. Nickerson’s attention shot to him. The second he realized the old man’s pole was bent hard, he swiveled his back to the windows of Ruby’s Diner and faced the sea, knowing that all eyes would be on the fight and the catch.

  Nickerson twisted the hoops at either end of the metal weight, one toward him, one away. Then he stuck the entire rig under the railing, pressing the hooks into the plastic bellies of two of the squid lures, thus completing a circuit.

  He stood up immediately and turned to see the old angler bring up a stout bottom fish, a fantail sole that wriggled and flapped, provoking murmurs and soft cries of appreciation from the other fishermen.

  “Nice fish,” Nickerson said.

  “Good eating, this one,” the old man said, grinning. His teeth were brown.

  Nickerson nodded. But behind the polarized lenses, he was watching Chief Fescoe moving toward the westernmost tip of the pier and two men he hadn’t noticed before, one rangy and good-looking, the other shorter, stockier.

  “Fescoe’s got friends,” Nickerson murmured, and adjusted his hat so the camera better faced the trio.

  “I see them,” Cobb said.

  Watson said, “Hold still for a capture.”

  Nickerson froze, stopped breathing for a count of four.

  “Got them,” Watson said.

  “You done, Mr. Nickerson?” Cobb said.

  “I am,” Nickerson said. “You should be picking up a signal.”

  Silence, then, “That’s an affirmative,” Cobb said. “Leave them to their scamming. Move your fishing gear in toward shore. Fish for an hour. Chat with a few of the locals, then get the hell out of there.”

  “On it,” Nickerson said, and got his pole, tackle box, and bait bucket, only once glancing over toward Fescoe and the two men with him, all of whom were looking westward toward the breaking waves.

  Serves them right, Nickerson thought. Like Mr. Cobb always says, this is what you get for scamming.

  Chapter 29

  “THE PICKUP’S GONNA be here, nine tonight,” Chief Fescoe said as the breeze stiffened, throwing his hair into his eyes.

  “Here?” I said, squinting at the wind, glancing around at the diner and the deck that surrounded it. “Why would he do that? He’ll be cornered out here.”

  “No, we drop the money. It lands in the water. In the darkness.”

  Del Rio cast a jaundiced eye toward the waves and the surfers and kiteboarders plying the water below us. He said, “Still a tough pickup. No Prisoners has gotta be thinking police boats, helicopters, scuba.”

  The chief stiffened. “He is thinking that, and more. His letter says any sign of a police presence beyond me making the drop, and six civilians die.”

  “We’re not cops,” Del Rio said.

  Fescoe breathed a sigh of relief. “Exactly my thinking, and the mayor’s. You’re not cops, so your presence is safer. In effect.”

  I squinted at him, then down at the waves crashing off the pier’s stanchions far below me. “So what’s our goal?”

  “Hunt the bastard, Jack,” Fescoe said. “Set up an ambush. Capture him. Turn him over to us.”

  I thought it through for several beats. “So he claims that any sign of a police presence, he’s a no-show and kills six, correct?”

  “That’s the threat,” Fescoe agreed.

  “There’s more than one guy, then,” I said.

  Del Rio understood. “He’s got a watcher, or he’s the watcher, and someone else is making the pickup.”

  “That’s how it looks to me,” I said. “Which makes the situation more complicated. More demanding.”

  “But doable?” Fescoe asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Terms?”

  “The immunity document’s on its way,” Fescoe said. “And the mayor’s offering you three hundred grand in exchange for No Prisoners’ capture or …”

  I raised my eyebrow when his voice trailed off. “You’re suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting nothing,” Fescoe said, flustered. “You’re covered in any case, Jack. We simply can’t afford to have some lunatic, or group of lunatics, killing increasing numbers of people in Los Angeles every day. He, they, must be stopped. Tonight.”

  Looking to Del Rio, I said, “What do you think?”

  “You already know what I think,” Del Rio said. He gestured over the rail. “Long fall from here, Jack.”

  Still, the situation intrigued me. My mind was already coming up with possible ways we could set and spring the trap without triggering more murders.

  “Okay,” I said at last. “We’re in. But we’re going to need every bit of support you can give us. No matter what we ask for, Mickey.”

  “Done,” he said. “Whatever you need, Jack.”

  Chapter 30

  PRIVATE’S JET, A Gulfstream G550, began its descent into Guadalajara around eleven thirty that morning. It had taken Justine and Emilio Cruz just shy of three hours and twenty minutes to make the journey.

  Twenty-nine, with a dark, sleek ponytail and a clean-shaven face, Cruz was a former California Golden Gloves middleweight champion and special investigator with the state’s Department of Justice. He’d joined Private two years prior, and had proved an exceptional detective.

  Justine felt as if she couldn’t have had any better partner on this trip. She spoke Spanish well, but not fluently. Cruz was fluent. More, he was the kind of guy who saw things that others did not. In some ways, he was almost as good at spotting clues and irregularities as Jack was.

  Indeed, for the past ten m
inutes Jack had been the subject of conversation, as he often was when two or more members of Private were together out of their boss’s presence.

  “I know you got problems with him, but the dude’s inspiring, all there is to it,” Cruz said. “Jack gets his teeth into something, never lets go.”

  “True,” Justine said. “It’s his greatest gift. But he’s got all these walls up around him, never letting you know exactly what he’s feeling. What’s with that?”

  Justine was trained as a psychologist, and Jack’s unwillingness to reveal his inner emotions had played a critical role in the end of their short-lived intimate relationship. She figured Cruz, as a male, might shed light on this aspect of Jack’s personality.

  But Cruz shifted uncomfortably, said, “Follow the Dodgers much?”

  “Rarely, and only when it’s necessary.”

  “Right, which is exactly how I am with all this inner navel stuff,” Cruz said. “I know you’re brilliant at what you do, and I’m not criticizing your profession. Well, maybe a little. But after a while, you know, I find it better to face in one direction, in front of you, just let the past lay and get on with it, right?”

  “But some people don’t know how to get on with it,” Justine protested.

  “Like a lot of Dodgers fans,” Cruz said.

  Before she could reply, the pilot came on, told them to bring their seats upright for landing.

  Inside the terminal, an immigration officer noted they’d arrived on a jet owned by Private.

  “That’s right,” Cruz said. “We’re here to look for several missing persons.”

  “Who are these peoples?” the officer asked.

  “We’re not free to say,” Justine said. “It’s confusing. We don’t even really know if they are missing, just that we got a report that two of them were seen here in Guadalajara recently.”

  The officer had stared at them stone-faced for several moments, and then asked, “How long you stay?”

  “Long as it takes to convince ourselves whether they’re here or not.”

  “How many peoples are missing?”

  “Five,” Justine said. “A family. Americans.”

  “And you think they was kidnapped here?”

  “Or came here without telling anyone. We don’t know,” Justine said. “We’re here to try and find out.”

  The officer gave them that stone-faced expression again, then stamped their passports and said, “Enjoy your stay in México, señor, señora.”

  Chapter 31

  AFTER CHECKING IN, Justine and Cruz left the Hotel Francis in the city’s Zona Central. The temperature hovered in the low eighties. The breeze smelled of simmering chicken, probably a mole, Justine thought. In the distance, she could hear music playing. Brass horns.

  “We should make contact with the local police,” Cruz said. “See if any reports were made regarding the Harlows.”

  “Why not go right to the horse’s mouth?” Justine replied. She’d changed into a light summer shift, blue and conservative, covering her knees.

  “And whose mouth would that be?” Cruz asked.

  Justine fished in her pocketbook, found her iPhone, opened the notes app, said, “Leona Casa Madre, the blogger who made the claim on her site.”

  “She never saw them personally, right?” Cruz said.

  “No, but she claimed to have interviewed two people who saw them.”

  “Drunk.”

  “That’s what she wrote,” Justine said.

  “No, I meant her, the blogger,” Cruz said. “I looked her up as well. Two years ago, she got fired from La Prensa in Mexico City when her love of tequila overcame her ability to perform her job as one of the newspaper’s court reporters. So she’s hardly an unimpeachable source. We really should go to—”

  “No,” Justine said, standing her ground. “I have a gut feeling about this. I mean, if she can lead us to the people who actually saw the Harlows, it doesn’t matter what her past is.”

  Cruz hesitated, then said, “Jack said you lead. I follow.”

  “I like that,” Justine said.

  “Figured you would. You have an address for her?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Justine replied.

  A short cab ride later, they pulled up in front of an apartment building on the Rio Panuco, east of González Gallo Park. “Number eight,” Justine said when Cruz went to the security phone by a locked steel front gate.

  He buzzed, got nothing. He buzzed again. Nothing. A woman pushing two children in a stroller came to the gate. She opened it, looked at them suspiciously, spoke to Cruz in blisteringly fast Spanish.

  Cruz smiled, flashed his Private badge, and replied. Justine got most of it. The woman had asked who they were looking for, and Cruz had given her the blogger’s name, which the woman obviously recognized because her head lagged to one side in a gesture of What are you going to do?

  “Leona always sleeps in late, two, three in the afternoon, then up all night, that one, writing her book, she says,” the woman said. “She’s up there. Just pound on her door. She’ll hear you eventually. Maybe she’ll even answer.”

  Chapter 32

  THEY FOUND NUMBER eight on the second floor on the other side of a surprisingly well-tended garden where flowers were still blooming. Somewhere a cat was meowing, long and loud, as if in heat.

  Cruz knocked on the oak door. “Señora Casa Madre?” he called. “Leona?”

  After a minute of no response, Justine said, “I think the lady said pounding was in order.”

  Cruz shrugged, pounded with his fist, and they waited another minute. “That should have woken the dead,” he said in frustration. “Maybe there’s a back door. Or a window or something.”

  Justine was about to agree when something told her to try the doorknob. It twisted. She heard a click. The door sagged on its hinges and swung slightly inward. She pushed it open with her fingers, calling, “Señora?”

  The cat was louder now and Justine realized it was inside the blogger’s apartment. She took a step into the doorway, finding a room dimly lit by the sun sneaking through the slats of closed blinds to reveal slices of a pack rat’s nest. The apartment smelled of cat urine, rotting food, and the hint of things fouler.

  Newspapers, magazines, and books were stacked on every inch of every piece of furniture save a simple, largely bare wooden desk, which displayed the greatest sense of order in the place. The cat meowed again, louder this time.

  “Leona?” Cruz called.

  Justine pointed beyond a kitchen that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned thoroughly in months. Dishes were stacked in the sink. There had to have been at least ten empty bottles of tequila, rotgut stuff, sitting amid other trash on the counters. The garbage reeked so badly she stopped breathing through her nose.

  It was the lair of an alcoholic, one well down the road in the disease, far beyond caring about personal hygiene. Justine had been in these kinds of hovels before as part of interventions by concerned relatives. She’d never had the heart to explain to them that this sort of existence pointed to little or no hope.

  “Señora?” she called, then continued in Spanish. “We’re with Private Investigations Worldwide. We wanted to talk about the story you put up on your blog, about the Harlows?”

  But there was no reply.

  “Let’s check the bedroom and get out of here,” Cruz said. “Place makes me want to take a shower. Make that several showers.”

  Justine nodded, went to the hallway beyond the kitchen, turned on the light. The hallway had been turned into a pantry of sorts, with canned food, human and feline, stacked on shelves beside several full bottles of tequila.

  The bedroom was a shambles—clothes commingled with books and paper and trash—and Justine found herself wondering about the bizarre reaches of the human mind, how it could drift into a realm where living in a garbage dump felt like the exact right thing to do.

  The cat meowed even more loudly and then hissed as if it were facing off with a do
g. The noises came from behind a closed door in the corner.

  “Señora?” Justine called, and knocked gently at the door.

  When she got no answer, she looked at Cruz, who nodded. She twisted the knob and pushed the door open. The cat, an orange tabby with mangy fur, leaped off a counter and blew by Justine before she could fully digest what she was seeing inside the bathroom.

  Leona Casa Madre was naked, bloated, sprawled between the toilet and the bath, a broken bottle of tequila beside her. Her head was turned toward the door as if she’d been listening for something or someone before she died.

  Whether or not she’d seen Death come for her, or had talked to Death, was unclear. Her eyes were gone, eaten out of their sockets. Her lips were chewed off as well.

  “Now do you think we should contact the cops?” Cruz asked.

  But Justine was rushing from the room, wanting to throw up everything she’d eaten in the last five days.

  Chapter 33

  “ALL RISE,” THE bailiff cried at two that afternoon. “The Honorable Sharon Greer presiding.”

  Judge Greer, a handsome woman in her late forties, strode up onto the bench inside the Bauchet Street Superior Courthouse east of L.A.’s Chinatown. She sat, donned reading glasses, and asked her clerk, “How many more?”

  “Ten, Your Honor,” the clerk replied.

  “Let’s move …” The judge stopped her order in midstream, spotting the district attorney as he entered. “Mr. Blaze,” she said, cocking her head. “A surprise to find you in my courtroom. I didn’t think you did arraignments anymore.”

  “It’s an honor, Your Honor,” Billy Blaze replied, running a hand down the front of his suit jacket as if to make sure it was buttoned correctly, swiveling his head, taking in the surprisingly empty courtroom and me.

  I’d feared a media horde for Tommy’s arraignment. Billy Blaze acted like he longed for a media horde. But I imagined that almost every journalist in L.A. was working some angle of the No Prisoners shootings by now.

  In any case, the district attorney nodded stiffly at me, went through the swinging gates, set his briefcase on the state’s table. A harried, mousy woman clutching a stack of manila files hurried after him and I groaned. Alice Dunphy was defending Tommy? Dunphy was a public defender, and not the most organized person in the world.