Private jm-1 Page 9

“What are you talking about?”

  “You saved my life back there. I’ve been waiting for this day.”

  “Not even close. They were just messing with us. You’re delirious.”

  “Shit,” Del Rio muttered.

  “Why was Shelby working for Glenda Treat?” I said.

  “She was your friend, Jack. I barely knew her.”

  A muted ring came from my briefcase in the backseat. I asked Del Rio to pass me the phone, and he did. I opened it, saw that I had a dozen missed calls. I said hello to Colleen.

  “Where’ve you been, Jack? I’ve been calling and calling.”

  “I know that. I was at the spa. What’s going on?” I asked her. My jaw was throbbing, my skull was a ball of pain, my ego was messed up.

  “Justine wants to speak with you.”

  “Put her on.”

  “I’ll warn her that you’re a wee bit cranky.”

  “Put Justine on, Colleen. My mood couldn’t be better.”

  Justine’s words came in an agitated rush. “The mayor got an e-mail from the son of a bitch,” Justine told me. “He said that he left Marguerite Esperanza’s running shoes in a mailbox on La Brea. The lab is going over the shoes now. Jack, where the hell are you?”

  I said, “Hang on.”

  There was a gas station coming up on the corner of Sunset and Fairfax. I pulled in.

  “We’ve got almost a full tank,” Del Rio said.

  “Use the restroom. Wash the blood off your face. Justine? You still there?”

  “Blood? What happened to Rick? What’s going on? Why aren’t you in the office? What’s this about a spa?”

  I got out of the car and walked to a secluded part of the Chevron’s concrete lot. I told Justine about the pool party at the “spa” and that Glenda Treat had confirmed that Shelby had worked there but not why.

  “You’re a shrink; explain this to me,” I said. “Why was she a working girl?”

  “Without knowing her, I don’t think I can.”

  “Pretend you’re doing a profile. Just starting one.”

  There was a pause. Then she said, “ Shelby was a comic, right?”

  “A good one.”

  “Okay. Well, if you combine equal parts narcissism and self-hatred, you might come up with a stand-up comic. You might also come up with a prostitute.”

  I must have groaned.

  Justine said, “Was I too rough, Jack?”

  “ Shelby must have found out something she wasn’t supposed to know. Maybe about the Noccias.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not over.”

  “I know. Jack?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you coming to the office? Sci and I have two very different approaches to the Schoolgirl case. I need another opinion.”

  “Sounds like we’re making progress,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

  Chapter 48

  Four pairs of eyes looked up in dismay, and maybe even shock, when Del Rio and I entered the war room.

  “No one died,” I said.

  “Because there were too many witnesses,” Del Rio added as a charming note.

  Colleen came in to take orders for lunch as I was winding up my theory of the Shelby Cushman-Noccia family connection. She looked at me, wide-eyed and stunned. My jaw was bruised pretty badly. I had a nice laceration on my cheekbone. And those were just the injuries she could see.

  “We were outnumbered,” I said.

  “The usual?” she asked me.

  “Extra fries,” I said. “Extra ice.”

  When Colleen left, I turned the floor over to Dr. Sci.

  “Jack, I’ve been over this with Mo. We agree. If the Schoolgirl killer is baiting his victims with fake messages, he has to have wireless access to their mobile phones in real time.”

  Mo-bot piped up. She was sleeveless, showing off a colorful mess of tattoos. It was hard to imagine her at Harvard, where she’d gone through her PhD. She took off her bifocals and said, “What Sci is implying is that we think the scum is waiting at a location, probably in a vehicle that won’t call attention. We’d say a van.

  “Scum grabs the signal out of the air and accesses the target’s mobile unit and basically clones it. That’s how he’s able to send his own messages using a screen name from one of the victim’s friends.”

  “If he can do that,” Sci said, “he can block all other messages, incoming and outbound. As far as I know, there’s no program that can hijack cell phone content wirelessly,” Sci said.

  “But it’s imaginable. If you can imagine it, it can be done,” added Mo-bot.

  Chapter 49

  “ Hold on to that thought. Justine?”

  Justine had dark circles under her eyes, but she still looked good. On the other hand, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her smile. This case had a hook in her and wouldn’t let go.

  “Something’s been nagging at me for a couple of days,” she said, “and it finally crystallized this morning. Five years ago, another girl was left dead in the same alley where Connie Yu was found. I went through the LA Times archives and found the story.

  “Her name was Wendy Borman. She was seventeen,” Justine continued. “Like Connie Yu, she left her house to make a quick trip to Hyperion Avenue and didn’t come back. Her body was found the next morning.”

  “Wendy Borman is an unsolved case?”

  Justine nodded and said, “She was killed by manual strangulation. She had a bruise behind her ear that came from a concussive blow with a heavy object. There were no witnesses, no sexual assault, and no forensic evidence. Sound familiar to you?

  “And how’s this? Her handbag and cell phone were taken. Also, she’d been wearing a necklace, a hand-wrought gold star on a chain. It wasn’t on her when they found the body. Her mother said she always wore the necklace.”

  “So obviously, it was made to look like a robbery-homicide.”

  “Makes me wonder how long these Schoolgirl killings have been going on. How many girls has this sick bastard killed? How many different ways? Was there somebody even before the Borman girl?”

  We reviewed assignments and workloads over lunch. Everyone in the room was expensive, but I didn’t much care. Obviously neither did Justine.

  I said, “Everything basically goes on hold but Cushman, NFL, and Justine’s case. That’s all we do until all three cases are closed. And we will close them.”

  I limped up the stairs to my office, and Colleen followed me to my desk.

  “You got a call this morning,” she said. “Maybe it’s a prank, but it’s evil, Jack. You should listen to it. Seriously.”

  She picked up the receiver, got into voice mail, and switched over to speaker.

  I was sorry Colleen had to hear the eerie electronic voice that came over the phone.

  “You’re dead,” the caller said. Colleen looked shocked, and for good reason. Nothing about the voice sounded like a hoax.

  I took Colleen into my arms and held her against my chest. She made a purring sound like a cat, then laughed at herself.

  What was I going to do with this lovely, lovely woman?

  I said to her, “Not yet, Colleen. I’m not dead yet.”

  Part Three

  What’s Love Got To Do With it?

  Chapter 50

  I was standing next to Colleen at a horseshoe bar that smelled faintly of an honest day’s labor. “I come here most nights after work,” she said of Mike Donahue’s Tavern. She was wearing a pink fitted jacket over a flowered dress, her long hair falling in waves around her shoulders. Colleen was working hard to become an American citizen, but I saw why this dark Irish pub with its stout on tap and olde Irish barflies made her feel at home.

  I felt troubled about what was happening between us. Colleen and I had been seeing each other for about a year, and we took that fact two different ways. To Colleen, it meant “time to get off the stick.”

  While we waited for our table we drank black and tans and sho
t darts, a beginner’s game called Round the Clock. My throwing hand was still messed up from the fight with Mosconi, and Colleen was beating the socks off me.

  “You shouldn’t let me win, Jack,” she said. “I’m going to take a lot of guff for this.”

  “You don’t think I’m losing on purpose, Molloy?”

  “Try to hit the number eight,” she said, patting my hip.

  My next flight of darts missed the mark, but I was laughing at myself, enjoying Colleen as she stood poised to throw, showing a lovely angle from her fingertips to her heel. Her first dart landed on the twenty, ending the game.

  “I guess this means dinner’s on me,” I said.

  She laughed and kissed me as her friend Donahue came out of the kitchen. Donahue was thirty-six and bearded. Colleen had said he was already suffering from gout.

  “So this is the man who robbed us of your heart,” he said.

  “Mike’s a sweet talker,” Colleen said, hanging an arm around my waist. We followed Donahue to a table in a snug corner of the back room. After we’d eaten, the waiter came out carrying a cake blazing with candles.

  When all the clapping and whistling was over, I leaned across the table for a kiss. “Happy belated birthday, Molloy.” I pushed a little gold-wrapped box toward her. Colleen’s face brightened as she peeled back the tape and paper. She slowly lifted the lid on the box.

  “Thank you, Jack. It’s lovely,” she said, taking out a gold wristwatch.

  “It suits you, Colleen.”

  “Go on then, Jack. You don’t have to say tha’ when you mean sumthin’ else,” she said.

  Message received loud and clear. It’s not a ring.

  Chapter 51

  Colleen’s rented bungalow was in Los Feliz, a homey, artistic community with low buildings and one-family dwellings packed together on charming streets. We sat in my car and I told her why I couldn’t stay tonight, even though we were celebrating her birthday.

  People walked dogs in the street; kids ran by, shouting to one another. Idyllic stuff. Colleen looked down at her folded hands and at the little gold watch that gleamed dully under the streetlight.

  “Rick and I are flying to Las Vegas in an hour,” I told her.

  “You don’t have to explain. I made the arrangements into McCarran, Jack.”

  “It’s just business, Colleen. I’m not going to a casino.”

  “It’s fine, Jack. I have to study tonight anyway. I wouldn’t be much fun. Thanks again for the lovely birthday, and the present. It’s the nicest watch I’ve ever owned by far.”

  She gave me a peck on the lips, then reached for the door handle.

  “I’ll walk you to the door.”

  She sat back until I opened the car door, then she stepped primly out. I marched alongside her, past the mop-head rosebushes and lavender in the narrow garden bordering the walk. She fumbled for her keys. “Have a safe flight.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said. Then I went down the fragrant walk to my car. I felt terrible about leaving her tonight, but I had to go.

  The lights went on inside the cottage.

  I tracked Colleen’s movements from the entryway to the kitchen to the little sitting room where soon she’d be doing her work with a cup of tea, the radio on to keep her company.

  I imagined her looking at her new watch, thinking of all the things she might have said to me, and what she’d say to me tomorrow. I started up the car and pulled away from the curb. At a stoplight, I called Rick.

  “How’re you doing?” I asked him. He’d been in a black mood since the incident at Glenda Treat’s. Del Rio is the toughest man I know, and he held a grudge about that beating.

  “I’m just leaving,” he said. “I should be at the airport in twenty minutes, traffic permitting.”

  “This is a reminder,” I said. “Bring your gun.”

  “Yeah. And Jack, you bring yours.”

  Chapter 52

  Carmine Noccia’s home was a half hour from McCarran Airport, fifteen minutes from the Strip in Las Vegas. I braked the rental car outside the high gated entrance to a community populated by celebrities, sultans, casino moguls, and others of the mysterious uber-rich who are often the clients of Private.

  Del Rio got out of the car and spoke our names into an intercom. The gates swung open.

  I drove along a twisting road to another gate, this one with Noccia’s number worked into wrought iron next to the intercom. Del Rio buzzed, and then that gate too opened and admitted us.

  I put the car in drive and almost immediately heard an impossible rush of water. We drove across a bridge over a man-made river, past tennis courts and stables, then we arrived in the forecourt of a Spanish-style house fronted by up-lit date palms.

  It was a little hard to believe that this over-the-top oasis had been constructed on barren sand, but that’s what had happened.

  A man in jeans and an open-necked red shirt opened the massive front door, showed us into the foyer, and told us to put our hands on the walls. He took our guns and frisked us for listening devices.

  I saw Del Rio ’s face darken. He was cranking up his anger, but I warned him with my eyes.

  The mutt in the red shirt said, “This way,” and led us through a series of archways and high-ceilinged rooms, past wiseguys shooting billiards, to a great room with glass doors leading out to a pool.

  Carmine Noccia was sitting in a chair in front of a fireplace, reading a hardback book.

  He was of medium build, and although he was only forty-six, his hair was going gray. He wore a gray silk sweater and slacks, casual but excellent fabric and cut. He certainly looked the part of a wealthy capo, scion of the last significant Mafia family on the West Coast, a man taking in several illegal millions a week.

  I knew quite a lot about Carmine Noccia. He had graduated with honors from Stanford and got his master’s in marketing at UCLA. After graduation, he’d proven himself to his father, and over the past ten years he’d run prostitution, and probably drugs, for the family business. The don’s son had never been charged with murder, but prostitutes had been found in Dumpsters. A middleman who’d imported girls from the former Soviet Bloc had disappeared. And my gun and Del Rio ’s were on top of an antique cabinet in the foyer.

  We crossed the threshold, and Noccia immediately got to his feet, putting his hands in his pockets. He asked us to have a seat, and Del Rio and I plopped onto the leather sofa at an angle to his chair.

  Noccia said, “Did you bring the money to bail out your brother? I hope so. Otherwise, you understand, this is a waste of my time.”

  I patted a pocket of my jacket and said, “I need your help on something else. Someone killed Shelby Cushman. It looks professional, and that’s how LAPD is taking it. If you know who shot her, I’d like to know. She was a friend of mine.”

  As I was talking, Del Rio got up and began strolling around the great room, examining photographs and the rifles hanging from hooks on the walls. He asked Noccia, “You ride those horses in the stable out there?”

  “I don’t know who killed Shelby,” Noccia said, following Rick with his eyes. “I can tell you that we liked her. She was a good lady. Very smart, very funny.”

  I took the thin envelope out of my jacket and handed it to Noccia. He opened the flap, peered in at the cashier’s check for $600,000.

  Tommy’s gambling debt was now paid in full.

  “I’ll get this to the right people,” Noccia said. He put the envelope between the pages of the book he’d been reading: The Audacity of Hope. Interesting. I wondered if he was pro or con on Barack Obama.

  “If I hear anything about Shelby, I’ll give you a call,” he said. “You impressed me tonight, Jack. You did the right thing by your brother.”

  Chapter 53

  The next morning at Private, Andy Cushman sat in the chair across from my desk. His face was very red, with bright white circles where his shades had been, evidence of too much time spent out by the pool. His hair was combed. He ha
d shaved, and his clothes were neat and clean. It didn’t look as though Andy had hit absolute bottom, but I knew in the next few minutes, he’d be there.

  “You’ve got news for me,” he said.

  Colleen brought in my Red Bull and Andy’s espresso. We both thanked her.

  “Andy, I have something to tell you. You’re not going to like it.”

  “Don’t worry, Jack. Whatever it is, I can take it. That’s why I’m here.”

  I nodded as if I agreed. Then I told my old friend that we had found out where Shelby had been working before she was killed: the Benedict Spa.

  Andy jumped up, shouting as he stabbed the air with a forefinger. “What the fuck are you telling me? She worked there? That’s a hundred percent horseshit. It’s a lie! Somebody’s jerking your chain, Jack!”

  I waited for Andy to finish his rant and sit back down. I understood why he was upset. “I wouldn’t tell you if we hadn’t checked it out, Andy. I’m sorry. But it’s true.”

  Andy’s face was nearly purple with rage. His breathing was fast and shallow. I worried that he might have a heart attack in my office, maybe a fatal one.

  “Then tell me why, Jack. Tell me why. She had everything she wanted. Jesus, we had a very active sex life.” He pushed away from the desk. “I want proof; I need it. That’s your business, isn’t it? Proving things? Proof, Jack, proof.”

  “ Del Rio and I went to Las Vegas last night and met with Carmine Noccia.”

  Andy did a double take. “What’s he got to do with it? This doesn’t make any sense, Jack. None at all.”

  “He owns the Benedict Spa. He knew Shelby, and doesn’t dispute that she worked for him. But he has no information on who killed her. So he says.”

  “You’re telling me that my wife was a whore and a liar, and on top of that, she was working for the Mob? Why, Jack? She didn’t need money.”

  I said again, “I’m very sorry, Andy.”