Private: #1 Suspect (7 page)

CRUZ SPOKE INTO his phone to someone named Sammy as he headed the car toward the Hollenbeck area of East LA. When he hung up, he said to Del Rio, “I’ve known Sammy his whole life. I didn’t expect to know him this long. I thought by now he’d be just a memory in his grandmother’s mind.”

Cruz knew a lot of Sammys. He could have become a Sammy himself. He had grown up in Aliso Village, a notorious, crime-ridden housing project in the Flats. He became a boxer, went pro, was a middleweight on his way up until a bad concussion made him see double for a while. Maybe it cleared his mind enough for him to look for a way out.

He joined the LAPD for a year, then Bobby Petino—DA Petino—his second cousin twice removed, gave Cruz a job in the investigative branch of his office. A hard-ass ex-cop named Franco became his boss, and Cruz learned. He saw a lot of dead bodies, got to know people, learned what to look for to help the DA make a case. In three years, Franco was working for him.

Two years back, Jack Morgan told Bobby Petino he needed another investigator, and Petino gave Cruz another break of a lifetime. Sent him to meet Jack.

It was a good fit.

Working at Private, teaming up with Del Rio, a genuine war hero, was the greatest job Cruz ever had. The only thing better would be to head up Private, LA—if or when Jack promoted himself off the line.

Del Rio asked, “So, this Sammy. He’s on our payroll?”

“No. Strictly freelance.”

Whittier Boulevard was a four-lane strip through a broken neighborhood. In daylight, vendors stood outside their shops, hawking T-shirts and tube socks, and families shopped with their little kids. At night, drug dealers worked the dark places. Hookers worked their strolls.

But there was no time of day or night when a Mercedes looked right on Whittier. Right now, it was sticking out like patent leather shoes at a hoedown.

Cruz would have liked to be driving a Ford. A gray one. Like he had when he was working for the DA. But Jack had a weakness for good-looking cars.

Cruz said to Del Rio, “I want to park the showboat in the Kinney on South Soto. Two blocks up.”

After the car was stowed, Cruz and Del Rio walked past a minimall with run-down shops and barred windows. Crossing the street at Johnny’s Shrimp Boat, Cruz saw Sammy waiting outside La Mascota Bakery.

Sammy was thirty, white, shaggy black hair, goatee, turquoise boots with pointy toes, enough metal piercing his face to start a hardware store.

Sammy said, “Who’s this?” indicating Del Rio.

“This is Rick. He’s my partner. He’s cool,” Cruz said.

Sammy was high, eyes dilated, agitated, but ready to do a transaction.

Cruz said, “You hear anything about a big shipment of Oxy and shit, came into town last night?” He took a twenty out of his pocket, held it out with two fingers.

“A ’frigerated van?”

Cruz nodded. “What do you know about it?”

Sammy snatched the twenty, flashed a gappy smile, said, “I know that the van is locked up, off the street. There’s a lot of chatter ’bout how to get in on the score.”

Cruz said, “That tip wasn’t worth twenty cents, Sam.”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know, man. Hey, you know Siggy O?”

Cruz said, “I know Sig. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Another twenty and I can text him for you,” said Sammy.

SIGGY O WAS a black kid, six-foot-plus, two hundred pounds, Rasta hair tied back with string. A third-generation druggie, the kid was hooked before he was born.

“Duuude,” Siggy called out to Cruz. “Been so long, man. How you shaking?”

They clasped hands, patted each other’s backs, Siggy going into boxing stance, doing some feints and jabs and footwork, Cruz catching the jabs with the flats of his hands. Siggy said, “I saw you on the TV, man. On Sports Classics, you know? The MGM Grand. You and Michael Alvarez. He put you down so hard in the eighth round.”

“I know,” said Cruz, laughing. “I was there.”

“You good now?”

“I’m good. How ’bout you?”

“I’ve been straight for thirty-eight days,” Siggy told Cruz. “I’m in a program. I don’t miss a meeting,” he said. “Very cute women there. They want to take care of me. But that’s cool. I want to be taken care of.”

More laughing, and then Siggy said, “So, whatchoo need, ’Milio?”

“We’re looking for a van that was jacked last night. Shitload of pharmaceuticals inside.”

“It’s air-conditioned? With vegetables and shit on the outside?”

“That’s right,” Cruz said.

“I gotta live, bro. What’s in it for me?”

“Fifty for the location. Two hundred more if we recover the goods.”

“Two fifty? ’Milio. There’s millions in that truck, homes. Millions.”

Siggy worked Cruz up to a hundred in advance, and when Cruz gave him the money, he said, “Warehouse on South Anderson. A flowerpot company, or, more like, looks like a flowerpot company. High-tech security all around. I hear the van is parked inside, and ’Milio, if you cut me in, I’ll cut
you
in.”

“We’re not going into the drug business, Sig. Thanks anyway. What else have you heard?”

“I heard the van was stolen from the Eye-talians and it’s not going to stay in that warehouse too long.”

Cruz said, “Thanks, Siggy.”

“Good seeing you, bro. You got my number now?”

“Give it to me.”

Siggy tapped his number into Cruz’s phone. Then the two clasped hands, bumped shoulders. The big kid lumbered off down an alley.

And Cruz called Jack.

“We’ve got a lead on the van,” Cruz said. “It’s stashed inside a warehouse. Sure. Okay. Really? No kidding.”

Cruz told Jack where they would be and closed his phone. He said to Del Rio, “Jack has a new guy he wants us to work with. He used to be a ballet dancer.” Cruz paused. “Does that mean he’s gay?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of don’t ask, don’t tell?” Del Rio said.

DEL RIO HAD parked on South Anderson, across from the Red Cat Pottery warehouse. The warehouse was red brick that had been whitewashed a few times; whitewash was flaking off, revealing partial names of previous, now defunct, businesses.

From their spot on South Anderson, they could clearly see the loading dock around the corner on Artemus. There was a sixteen-wheeler parked in the bay, a guy with a forklift loading pallets into the back. A couple of brothers were on the sidewalk smoking, then they flicked their butts into the gutter and climbed up into the cab of the big rig.

At five in the afternoon, vans and small trucks were making their last drops in this mixed-use light-industrial area. Gates were closing, people leaving for the day.

Twenty minutes into their wait, Del Rio heard a motorcycle coming up the street behind him, then the motor cut out. In the rearview mirror he saw a guy get off the bike and disappear into his blind spot.

Del Rio heard the back door of the fleet car open.

He jerked around to see a guy get into the backseat with a black-and-silver helmet. He was about thirty, blond, blue eyes, five-ten, 160, and tight. Muscles rippled under his T-shirt.

Had to be the ballet dancer.

Dude reached a paw over the seat, said, “I’m Christian Scott. Scotty. How ya doing?”

Del Rio shook his hand. “Rick Del Rio. This is Emilio Cruz. My sidekick.”

Cruz said, “Yeah, I kick him in the side from time to time. Nice to meet you, Scotty.”

“Thanks. You too. Is this the place?” he asked, looking out at the Red Cat warehouse.

“We’ve been told it is.”

“Have you checked it out?”

“Nah, we’re just watching the paint fall off. They should be closing up in about a half hour.”

“Okay with you if I do a little reconnaissance now?”

“No problem,” said Del Rio.

Scotty got out of the car. There was a little spring in his step as he crossed the wide street, went over to the loading dock on Artemus, and shouted something up to the forklift driver.

The driver pointed to a door up a flight of metal stairs and Scotty waved at him, took out his phone, sprinted up the steps, and pulled the door open.

“I don’t know if he’s gay,” said Del Rio. “A little bouncy on his feet, maybe.”

“Bet you a hundred this Scotty was a cop.”

“How do you figure?”

“I know eleven hundred cops. He feels like one of them.”

“Then I’ll keep my money. And I’ll ask him,” Del Rio said.

Another fifteen minutes had passed—Del Rio feeling uneasy that the guy had been in there for so long, wondering what Jack knew about him and how Scotty was supposed to fit into the team—when Scotty came around the corner, a piece of paper rolled up in his hand.

He looked both ways as he negotiated the street traffic, then he got back into the car.

“I inquired about a job,” he said, grinning. “This is my application form. I got a little tour of the place.”

Del Rio was laughing inside, but he didn’t show it. The kid was smart.

“What did you see?”

“Very decent security,” he said. “Got cameras over the doors, wires in the windows. The van, gotta be the one we want. It’s white, scraped all to hell on one side. Parked in the back northeast corner. I didn’t want to be too obvious, but I walked by it.”

“Jesus,” said Cruz. “You do a lot with fifteen minutes, dude.”

 “Let’s get this fifty-thousand-dollar ride off this block,” Scotty said. “I got pictures.” He showed his phone. “Maybe we can work up some ideas.”

I DROVE THE Lamborghini into my short stub of a driveway and swiped the key fob across the pad. The iron gates rolled open, and I saw a notice taped to my front door. I wasn’t close enough to read it, but I knew what it said.

“Do Not Enter by Order of the LAPD.”

I turned off my engine and sat for a couple of minutes, trying to imagine my brother walking Colleen up to the door at gunpoint. I saw him jabbing a gun into her back, going into the house with her. And then I couldn’t see any more.

Was Tommy so sick, so morally corrupt, he could actually kill Colleen? Honest to God, I didn’t know.

I got out of my car and walked down the narrow side yard, along the fence and out to the beach. The sun was still bright at five p.m. Yesterday at about this time, someone had been readying Colleen for her last mile.

I headed south, parallel to the shoreline, passing two enormous houses and one small one that had resisted the real estate brokers and the bulldozers. The fourth house had a hybrid Victorian-contemporary design with a high profile and a wide deck.

It was where Bobbie Newton lived.

Bobbie was a gossip columnist, the queen of prime-time celebrity news, and the ex-wife of some Wall Streeter back east. She was sitting out on her deck, tall drink in her hand, feet up on the railing. She wore an open shirt over her hot-pink bikini, a white visor in her blond curls, dark glasses, and a Bluetooth cuddling her left ear.

She was talking and watching the waves.

I called to her and she took down her feet, sat upright.

“Bobbie—can I come up? I need to speak to you.”

“I’ll come down,” she said. “Call ya later,” she told whoever she was talking to. “I gotta go.”

She set her drink on the deck and came down the short flight of wooden steps, holding on tight to the handrail.

I thought about my history with Bobbie. It had happened after my first breakup with Justine, way before Colleen. I thought it had ended okay—no-fault incompatibility. But when I found the envelope at my back door without a note, my key inside, it was a crystal-clear “Screw you.”

Bobbie was combustible, and I didn’t like that about her. I’m sure there were a few things she didn’t like about me. But we’d been neighborly since our split.

Now, as she crossed the beach and came toward me, seabirds flew up from the sand. And I saw from her expression that we weren’t friends.

She put her hands on her hips and said, “If you want to know if I told the police I saw you last night, the answer is yeah, Jack, I damn well did.”

“I WASN’T ON the beach last night,” I told Bobbie Newton. She had taken off her glasses, and I was looking into her little bloodshot eyes. She drank early and often. Another thing I hadn’t liked about Bobbie.

“I wasn’t hallucinating,” she said. “You were on your phone. I heard it ring. I ran by and called out to you, ‘Hey, Jack.’ You pointed to your phone, like, ‘I’m talking.’ And then you
waved
. That signature wave of yours.”

“What? You’re saying I have some kind of…wave?”

“Like this.”

She lifted her right arm, cocked her hand back, fingers spread like she was holding a football.

I used to play college ball. Tommy didn’t.

“Nobody ever told me I have a unique wave.”

“Yeah, well, I’m telling you. I’ve seen you wave, what? A hundred thousand times?”

“It was past six o’clock, Bobbie. That’s what you told the police.”

“So?”

“The sun was going down. Maybe you thought it was me because you expected to see me. It wasn’t
me,
Bobbie.”

“Tell it to the judge,” she said.

Bobbie raised her hand above her head, cocked it in a football hold, and trotted up the beach.

I stared after her. What the hell was she talking about?

I hadn’t been on the beach the night I found Colleen’s body in my bed. But Bobbie was unshakable. And as a gossip reporter, she was well-connected. She had to be the one who’d set the Internet wildfire naming me as the number one suspect in Colleen’s murder.

I hiked back up the beach, twenty yards behind Bobbie, wondering if she’d actually seen Tommy, thinking he was me. Or had she seen
no one?

Had she made this story up to show me payback is a bitch?

I walked from the beach to my driveway and got into my car. I took off, south on PCH toward Santa Monica. I wanted to see Colleen’s closest friend. Through her, he’d become a friend of mine. I had to be with someone who knew her, felt what I felt, who would understand my grief.

My mind churned, and the next time I checked, I was on the 10 going east, not knowing if I was driving the Lambo or it was driving me.

But I knew exactly where to find Mike Donahue. I pictured him as I had last seen him, standing behind the bar.