Private L.A. Read online

  Then again, maybe she’d just been asked to rep him for arraignment. I prayed that was the case. If Dunphy planned to defend Tommy through the criminal phase, he might as well call ahead to San Quentin to reserve a cell.

  I noticed something else. Neither Tommy’s wife, Annie, nor his nine-year-old son, Ned, was in the room. I had no time to consider what their absence meant because a door behind the bailiff opened. A sheriff’s deputy led my brother in. He’d surrendered himself earlier in the day and now wore an orange jumpsuit, wrist and ankle shackles.

  True to form, Tommy appeared not to care, as if he were wearing his latest suit from Hermès and had come to the room for a high-level meeting among equals. He spotted me, winked, then turned, sat, and began whispering to his attorney.

  The wink. I kept seeing it. Was this it? Was he going to implicate me in a killing that I absolutely had not committed? Clay Harris might have killed my ex-girlfriend, but I still suspected that Tommy was behind it somehow. And that would explain why he had gotten rid of Clay—to tie up any loose ends. Now he was trying to pin Clay’s murder on me. Was my brother going to destroy me for spite?

  “The State of California versus Thomas Morgan, Jr.,” the clerk announced.

  Alice Dunphy nudged Tommy. My brother stood, looking at ease, in control, unshaken by the gravity of the proceedings.

  “Charge?” the judge asked.

  “Murder in the first degree,” Billy Blaze said, paused for dramatic effect. “Your Honor, the state plans to seek special circumstances in this case.”

  Special circumstances. Blaze was seeking the death penalty for my brother. The charge and the potential penalty shook me. They seemed to mildly amuse Tommy, however, because he looked back over his shoulder at me and winked again, as if to say, “Care to join me in the gas chamber, brother?”

  “Ms. Dunphy?” the judge said.

  Before the public defender could speak, Tommy put his hand on her forearm. “I’d like to speak on my own behalf, Your Honor.”

  “Only a fool acts as his own attorney, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Tommy said, turning on the Irish charm. “I’ve been called a fool and worse many times before.”

  Judge Greer sighed. “Your choice, Mr. Morgan. How do you plead?”

  “Not guilty.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” the judge replied, then looked at the district attorney. “Bail, Mr. Blaze?”

  “The state seeks remand,” Billy Blaze said. “Mr. Morgan is a flight risk.”

  “I’ll surrender my passport,” Tommy offered. “And, Judge, just so you know, we, I, am going to mount a vigorous defense. I know who the real killer is. I have compelling evidence, over-whelming evidence that the real killer is …”

  His voice faded. The next moment was as long as any I have ever experienced, as long as the moment after a Taliban rocket hit the rotor of my helicopter in Afghanistan, my life once again hanging in the balance.

  Chapter 34

  “YOU’RE ARRESTING US?” Justine cried at Commandant Raoúl Gomez of the Jalisco State Police, and Arturo Fox, the chief of municipal police in Guadalajara.

  Bizarrely, or at least it seemed so to Justine, the two high-level law enforcement officials had arrived at virtually the same time in the courtyard below Leona Casa Madre’s apartment, roughly a half hour after Emilio Cruz had called the body in and not ten minutes after the first uniformed officers had arrived. The two men had gone cold, hard, and sardonic when Justine and Cruz presented their Private badges and identifications.

  “You are in this country conducting an investigation without declaring yourself to law enforcement, without working through proper channels?” Commandant Gomez asked. He was a small, imperious man who delivered nearly everything he said in a scornful tone.

  “We told Immigration who we were,” Cruz said.

  “It is customary to notify the police,” Commandant Gomez said.

  “There’s a body upstairs,” Justine said. “We thought you’d like to know.”

  “Yes, you did want us to know,” Chief Fox replied. He tapped his temple with a thick finger. “But I think the two of you are clever. I think you tell us this to cover your tracks.”

  Fox was as big as Gomez was small, with a broad belly and cheek wattles that shook with indignation as he delivered the accusation. Gomez watched, flicking the nails of his index fingers against his thumb pads.

  “Don’t be a couple of corrupt jackasses trying to show off your penises to each other,” Justine retorted. “The woman’s been dead at least a day or two. We only just arrived in Guadalajara. Check the facts. Look at the time stamp on our passports.”

  Justine had moved to dig out her passport, but Chief Fox and Commandant Gomez seemed only to have heard her calling them corrupt jackasses trying to show off their penises, because that was when Justine and Cruz had been told to put their hands behind their backs and she’d demanded to know if they were under arrest.

  “Of course you’re under arrest,” Gomez snarled. “You broke into an apartment. You may have murdered someone. And have you not heard? In México, we have Napoleonic law. Here you are guilty until proven innocent, and that has not a thing to do with jackasses or penises or corruption.”

  “Look,” Cruz said, trying to remain calm. “I’m sorry. She’s sorry. We’re here looking for five missing persons. We believed Señora Casa Madre might have some knowledge of their whereabouts. We found her dead. End of story.”

  “Yes?” Chief Fox said, not buying it. “Who is this missing people?”

  Justine and Cruz exchanged glances. Then Cruz said, “Thom and Jennifer Harlow, the actors, and their three children.”

  At that Gomez’s head jerked back as if he’d sniffed something fouler than the decomposing body of Leona Casa Madre. But then Chief Fox chortled disdainfully, “You really do think we are corrupt jackasses.”

  “Take them away,” Commandant Gomez barked at one of the uniformed officers standing guard. “We’ll see if this story of much nonsense changes after a night in the cells.”

  Chapter 35

  EVERYONE IN THAT courtroom was staring at my brother, including me and District Attorney Blaze, who filled the silence before Tommy could finish his thought and implicate someone else, probably me, in a cold-blooded killing.

  “Objection, Your Honor!” Billy Blaze shouted. “This man can’t just go around accusing people of murder, slandering them in a public venue without cause. If Mr. Morgan has such evidence, he should have brought it to my office, which he has not.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Greer said, glanced at Tommy while my insides churned. Even from my angle, I could see that my brother was enraged that his little drama had been interrupted; and I half expected him to start shouting that I was to blame, that I had gotten him drunk, committed the murder myself, put Tommy in the victim’s car, fled the scene, or some diabolical nonsense like that.

  “Mr. Morgan,” the judge went on. “The matter is bail, not your countertheory regarding the manner of Mr. Harris’s death.”

  “I am not a flight risk, Judge,” Tommy insisted. “I have a business here, a wife, a son. And these charges are not true. I plan to fight. I plan to win.”

  Greer hesitated, but only for a moment. “Mr. Morgan, you are to surrender your passport to my bailiff. And your bail is set at five million dollars.”

  She rapped her gavel.

  Five million? That number sank in, along with the general weakness I suddenly felt as the adrenaline that had seized my body began to ooze away. Tommy did not have five million. He was a recovering gambling addict. He didn’t even have the five hundred grand he’d have to come up with to get a bondsman to cover his bail.

  But my brother looked unruffled at the figure, said, “I can live with that.”

  Judge Greer rapped her gavel, looked at her clerk. “Next.”

  A sheriff’s deputy came for Tommy, while a new inmate appeared from the door to the holding cells. Tommy looked at me,
said, “Help me, brother.”

  I watched him disappear as if he’d gone overboard in the darkness, leaving me the only one capable of throwing him a lifeline.

  “Morgan,” Billy Blaze said in a harsh whisper, and pointed toward the door.

  I startled, got up, and followed the DA into the outer hall, where in that same harsh whisper, Blaze demanded, “Who’s he gonna implicate?”

  “I have no idea. Tommy and I aren’t close.”

  He squinted. “And yet you come to your brother’s arraignment?”

  “Blood’s thick,” I replied coolly. “Haven’t you heard?”

  Billy Blaze studied me. “I think the chief and the mayor have grossly overestimated you, Morgan.”

  “Think whatever you want, Billy,” I said.

  The district attorney clucked his disapproval and said, “I’m watching you, Jack. Your brother’s a killer. It wouldn’t surprise me if you turn out to be one too.”

  As Billy Blaze walked off toward the elevators, I wasn’t thinking about what he’d just said to me. I was wondering instead if the strange tattered bond that still existed between my brother and me was strong enough to warrant my posting his bail on a murder charge that he might try to implicate me in as part of his defense.

  In all honesty, the thought of Tommy sitting in a jail, stewing, forced to ponder a life behind bars, or worse, a death by lethal injection, definitely had its appeal. But in the next moment I thought of my late mother, who’d told us often that as toddlers we’d spoken our own language, and that the blood of twins was thicker than any other bond, and that by our shared DNA we were committed to each other for life.

  Enslaved to each other is more like it, I thought, unsuccessfully fighting the idea that I could just walk away. Keep your enemies closer, wasn’t that the old saying? In any case, it was the argument I relied on as I took the elevator to the clerk’s office, where I planned to find out what I needed to do to post the bail and get my brother back where he belonged for the time being: at home with my sister-in-law and nephew, not sitting in a cell, resentful and plotting ways to destroy me. Or at least that was how my illogic was evolving when the elevator doors opened. I went to the clerk’s office, where a plump, cheerful woman at the front desk said, “How can I help you, handsome?”

  I smiled, saw her name tag, said, “You made my day, Judy.”

  Judy tittered, “Just doing my job, sir.”

  I pulled out a checkbook. “I’m here to make bail for Thomas Morgan, Jr.”

  Her face fell into confusion. “Well, someone’s just done that.”

  Shocked, I said, “Who?”

  “Me,” said an all-too-familiar voice.

  I looked to my left and saw an overeducated, impeccably dressed, and utterly ruthless gangster named Carmine Noccia leaning against the counter, holding a BlackBerry.

  Chapter 36

  RICK DEL RIO was born into a family of hunters who lived in southern Arizona. His grandfather often took him out into the desert and taught him how to track deer, javelina, and quail. One of the most important things Del Rio learned from his grandfather was to move swiftly through country where there were no new tracks or old ones; and to slow to a crawl when he found fresh sign, as it usually indicated the animal was about to bed.

  Standing close to where Chief Fescoe would drop the money at the far end of the pier, Del Rio felt like he was in his prey’s bedroom somehow, but he couldn’t understand exactly why it had intentionally cornered itself, or at least exposed itself so blatantly to capture.

  At the same time, there was no doubt in Del Rio’s mind that the killer or killers felt comfortable, confident, even, that a pickup of two million dollars could be made as well as a daring escape. But were they actually going to have Fescoe make the drop at the end of the pier, or did they plan to take him on some kind of long runaround like in those old Dirty Harry movies he loved so much?

  Since Jack had left for his brother’s arraignment, Del Rio had walked all around the drop zone from above, studied it from the beach, both north and south aspects, imagining a boat, a Jet Ski, a scuba man. He realized that in a few hours the underside of the pier would be black and shadowed. No Prisoners might approach underwater, but someone smart enough would spot the bubble lines, right? But what about a rebreathing apparatus? And what about the issue of a watcher, someone looking for signs of police presence?

  Del Rio picked up his cell and hit a number he’d called almost an hour ago. “Mentone,” came the reply.

  “Anything, Kid?”

  “No one I can peg yet,” said the Kid.

  Del Rio then called Bud Rankin, a former LAPD cop Jack had hired the year before. Rankin was sixty-two, a virtual chameleon and an expert at surveillance. He was working the pier.

  “Maybe they’re not on site yet,” said Rankin, who’d also come up with nothing.

  “No way,” Del Rio said. “If it was me extorting that kind of money, I’d definitely have someone making damn sure the cops weren’t all over the place.”

  “I’d best keep looking, then,” Rankin said, and hung up.

  Del Rio’s attention returned over the rail, down to the water and the pickup spot. The ocean was turning grayer and white-capped. It could be dangerous to be down there, so close to the pier’s pylons, if the wind really got roaring. But Del Rio couldn’t see any other way to handle it. This time he called Jack.

  Chapter 37

  I FELT MY cell phone vibrate in my pocket but ignored it, every bit of me focused on Carmine Noccia the way a mongoose might focus on a particularly mesmerizing cobra. In too many ways, Carmine was the epitome of the New Age mobster. He came from a long line of organized criminals, stretching back generations through Vegas to Chicago to New York to Palermo.

  But he personally exhibited none of the old Mob’s more stereotypical traits, the “deze and doze” accent, the cultured attire of a die-hard strip club fan, the spontaneous and ruthless acts of violence against all debtors and perceived traitors. Carmine had gone to Dartmouth, had done a stint in the marines as a commissioned officer, mustered out as a captain, and had even attended Harvard Business School for a semester. He’d studied the ways of the elite and wore their fashions, manners, dialect, and affectations as an almost flawless persona.

  “It’s been a long time, Jack,” Carmine said, his dark agate eyes betraying nothing, the muscles in his exfoliated cheeks betraying nothing. His hand reached for mine. “Always a genuine pleasure.”

  “Why would you post bail for Tommy, Carmine?” I asked, shaking his hand with zero enthusiasm.

  His grip firmed as he smiled. “Tommy and I go way back, remember?”

  “I remember you wanting his legs and arms broken for welshing on bets.”

  “You always buy into such dramatic nonsense, Jack,” Carmine replied, releasing his grip and making a dismissive gesture. “Be that as it may, regarding Tommy, stuff happens, and allegiances change when circumstances warrant it. That’s the mark of a pragmatic leader. And I very much consider myself a pragmatic leader, able to deal with changing circumstances.”

  I made every effort to show no reaction, but I got the subtext of his reply as if he’d tattooed it on my skin. Earlier that year, Carmine had used leverage that I resented to force me and Private to track down a hijacked truck full of contraband prescription painkillers with a street value of thirty million dollars. We found the oxycodone shipment but used a remote third party to report its whereabouts to the local DEA office. They’d seized the stash before Carmine’s men could get to it. I knew Carmine suspected me of a double cross, but I also knew he had no proof of it. Or at least, that was what I believed.

  I’d regrettably come to know the mobster when Tommy was mainlining his gambling addiction and into Carmine for six large. I’d gone to Vegas and paid my brother’s debt, doing it for the benefit of my long-suffering sister-in-law and nephew, not Tommy. I hadn’t been free of Carmine since.

  And now he had coughed up Tommy’s bail. Why? The mob
ster was all about leverage, so that was what this was at some level. But designed to lift what? Or move whom? And for what reason? Revenge? Against me?

  “You honestly think you’re getting that bail money back?” I asked.

  Carmine adjusted the French cuff of his custom shirt. “The difference between you and me, Jack, is that I rarely bet unless I know what horse is going to win. Emotion plays no part in it. Anyway, I have to be going, give Tommy a ride home. Great seeing you. Let’s catch up real soon, shall we?”

  Before I could reply, my cell phone vibrated again in my pocket and Carmine moved by me as if I were now some stranger on the street. I checked caller ID, hit ANSWER, and watched Carmine disappear toward the elevators.

  “What do you know?” I asked.

  Del Rio said, “Come to the pier. I want to run my plan by you.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “You might want to pick up a five-millimeter neoprene wet suit with hood and booties on your way.”

  “I suppose a swim is unavoidable in this case.”

  “I’m hoping less of a swim and more of a skim, Jack.”

  Chapter 38

  INSIDE THE GARAGE in the City of Commerce, Cobb listened intently to Hernandez, who had been keeping track of one of the two men Chief Fescoe had met with, the one who had remained behind, the one who had been all over the pier, studying it from every angle.

  “He’s not a cop,” said Hernandez. “At least he doesn’t act like one.”

  “What’s he acting like, then?” Cobb demanded.

  “Like a scout,” Hernandez replied. “He’s making it damn tough for me to stay clean. And I think he’s brought in a second guy, older, maybe sixty. He’s been scanning the beaches and restaurants with views of the pier.”