Private L.A. (23 page)

“You have no idea what kinda broad I am,” she said, rasping in laughter at Anderson Cooper, who didn’t seem to know what to make of her.

Neither did Cobb, who felt like he wanted to pick something up and smash it. Johnson had been his best man, the one who’d been with him longest, the most loyal friend he’d ever had. It was Johnson who’d carried Cobb, seen to his medical care after the explosion that turned his face into a spider’s web.

“I don’t get it,” Hernandez said. “How does a chain-smoking grandma from Minnesota kill Johnson?”

Anderson Cooper asked virtually the same question on-screen.

The old lady didn’t miss a beat. “She pulls the trigger,” Mrs. Wanta said.

Cobb wanted to reach through the screen and throttle the bitch, who went on to reveal to Cooper that she was in Los Angeles “seeing the sights alone because my damn fool of a husband, Barney, wouldn’t get out of his—”

Cobb couldn’t take her anymore and muted the screen.

Watson was gazing at him. “We still good, Mr. Cobb?”

Cobb felt the others watching him, looking to him for leadership. “You think we’re jeopardized because they’ve got Johnson’s body?”

The other three men shrugged or nodded.

“Fear not, gentlemen,” Cobb said. “I believe we’re still good to go for quite a while yet. I mean, we don’t officially exist, do we? Isn’t that what they did to us? Stripped us of everything, threw us to the hyenas?”

“They did, Mr. Cobb,” Kelleher said, anger flaring across his face. “And thorough bastards they were about it.”

“So what exactly makes any of you think they can identify us, let alone locate and catch us before we’re finished here, and long gone?”

AFTER NINE THAT
night, I returned to the office for a conference call with Mattie Engel in Private’s Berlin office regarding an embezzlement case she’d been working on for nearly a month on behalf of Sherman Wilkerson, our client who lived above the beach where the first No Prisoners bodies were found.

I hung up believing that Engel had the situation well in hand and would be ready to file a full report to Sherman sometime the following—

A knock. I looked up, saw Justine, felt that little pang I always get in my chest when I haven’t seen her in a while.

“Got a minute?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. “I was going to have a drink. Want one?”

“Oh, God, I’d love one,” she said, coming in and sitting down hard in an overstuffed chair by the couch.

As I reached into my lower desk drawer to get out a bottle of Midleton Very Rare Irish Whiskey, I was thinking again that something had changed about her recently, aged her in a way I’d never seen before.

I handed her a glass with two fingers of Midleton in it neat. She took a sip, closed her eyes, and said, “That helps.”

“You saw that No Prisoners struck again?” I asked.

“Heard it on the radio. Some grandmother killed him?”

“We believe No Prisoners is several people acting in concert. The dead guy’s just one of them.”

“ID yet?”

“Sci and Mo-bot are working with the FBI on that.”

Her eyebrows rose. “So we’re back on that case again?”

“Just the lab for now,” I said. “But there’s a twist in the demand No Prisoners made to the mayor that might bring us in deeper.”

“A twist you can’t discuss?”

“For now,” I said.

She nodded absently.

“You wanted to tell me something?” I said. “If not, I was going to head over to see Rick.”

Justine startled, confused, but then nodded. “That picture Sci sent me? I know who the mystery girl is. Her name is Adelita. I’ll tell you her last name later.”

Intrigued now, I sat in a chair across the coffee table from her, sipped the whiskey, and listened as she told me all she’d learned about Adelita from Cynthia Maines.

Six weeks before the Harlows were to fly to Saigon for filming, Maines was sent over to organize the family’s living arrangements and to hire a staff in Vietnam. She was not there when Adelita came into the Harlows’ life. Jennifer was always hiring and firing nannies, usually one a year, sometimes two. She’d fired her last nanny twelve days before the family was to fly to Vietnam, and no one she’d interviewed in the meantime suited her.

Enter Adelita. She’d only been in Los Angeles three days, here on a student visa from Mexico to study acting for six months. She had defied her parents on her eighteenth birthday and used a small inheritance from her grandmother to fund a plane ticket, a few months’ rent, and the acting lessons.

Eight days before their flight to Vietnam, the Harlows were at their Westwood apartment, staging up before the big move overseas. Adelita ran into Jennifer Harlow, one of her acting idols, on the sidewalk outside a deli. Jennifer was harried, trying to deal with Miguel, who was throwing a fit, while she juggled a phone call regarding
Saigon Falls
.

Star-struck as she was, Adelita charmed Miguel into calming down. Impulsive, perceptive, Jennifer talked to Adelita, took her to lunch with the children, got her to admit she wanted to be an actress.

“Jennifer offered her the job as nanny,” Justine said, reaching to pour herself more whiskey. “The idea was that she’d get to see the world and get to really understand the life of an actor.”

I said, “Sounds like the offer of a lifetime, one of those fated meetings you used to hear took place at soda fountains where stars found their fortunes.”

“Right?” Justine said. “Anyway, Maines said Adelita accepted, flew to Saigon with them a week later. She said Adelita was great with the kids, and the entire family seemed to love her. The nanny was evidently a pretty good actress as well. They gave her a minor role in the film. She plays the daughter of an American diplomat fleeing Saigon as the Vietcong advance.”

“Where is she—Adelita?” I asked.

“I’m coming to that,” Justine said, taking another large draw on the whiskey, which surprised me because I’d never seen her drink like this before.

Maines said something happened to Adelita about halfway through the nine months in Vietnam. The girl who had been so enthralled by the Harlows’ world, so excited to be given a part in their film, became infinitely more subdued. She worked just as hard, cared for the children just as well, but something was definitely off about her.

“Maines tried to get her to open up once, but Adelita forcefully shut her down,” Justine continued. “In any case, before they returned from Vietnam, Adelita was offered the same vacation Cynthia was, three weeks off with a bonus of an additional three weeks’ pay. She took them up on the deal and left Saigon two days before Maines and the Harlows.”

“Where’d Adelita go?” I asked.

“Home,” Justine said, closing her eyes. “Mexico. Guadalajara, in fact.”

“Really,” I said, piecing some of it together. “So what’s her last name?”

“Gomez,” Justine said, eyes still closed, but wincing. “Same last name as the Jalisco State Police captain who put Cruz and me in jail down there.”

BEFORE I COULD
put that information into context, Sci knocked at my doorjamb, entered. He saw the Midleton bottle. “That looks good.”

“You look like you could use a snort,” Justine said, turning in her seat.

“A snort?” I said.

“Well, I don’t know,” she said, reaching for the bottle again. “What else do you call it?”

“Snort will do,” Kloppenberg said, taking the bottle from her after she’d poured a fifth and sixth finger of the whiskey.

“Any luck on identifying the shooter?” I asked as Sci got a glass.

“No,” he said. “Which is why I’m here.”

Yet another knock came at my door. Mo-bot entered, yawning, but looked at Sci pouring, said, “Gimme one of those.”

“Another strikeout?” Sci asked, pouring her a glass.

“Total wall,” she said. “Even dental records.”

“One of you want to tell me what you’re talking about?” I asked.

Sci handed Mo-bot her drink and plopped down beside her on the couch, said, “So we had beautiful fingerprints, all the DNA material anyone could need, dental pics, you name it, and nothing.”

“Well, something,” Mo-bot said. “But what
it
is isn’t exactly clear.”

“You sound like you’ve been drinking already,” Justine observed with a slight slur.

Mo-bot sipped her whiskey, sighed with pleasure, and then explained that when they’d run the fingerprints and dental records of the dead homicidal drag queen through various law enforcement databases around the world, they’d gotten a positive match.

“And?” I said.

“And nothing,” Sci said.

“Whaddya mean, nothing?” Justine asked.

“It’s like the database freezes and doesn’t let us go forward,” Mo-bot said.

“You’re being blocked?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t say blocked,” Sci said. “More like frozen.”

Mo-bot nodded. “It’s like there’s still an echo or a ghost of that guy’s fingerprints in the system that’s being recognized, but everything else about him has been scrubbed clean.”

“Is that possible?”

“Well, totally corrupted, at least,” Sci said.

“What database did you freeze in?” I asked.

Kloppenberg pursed his lips, said, “US Department of Defense personnel records. Past ten years.”

I slapped my leg. “I said this felt like military guys from the get-go.”

“But which military guys?” Justine asked loudly, the slur stronger. “Bud Rankin was an ex-marine. He would have known how to figure it out. And, you know, why aren’t we raising a toast to poor Bud Rankin?”

She’d had too much already. But I nodded, said, “To Bud. An old soul who will be missed.”

“Hear, hear,” they all muttered, and downed their drinks.

“When this is over we’ll have a proper memorial for Bud,” I said.

Justine reached again for the bottle. I slid it away from her, said, “Why don’t I get you home for some much-needed rest?”

She raised her finger at me, trying to focus, trying to argue, but then licked her lips and nodded. I put the empty glass on my desk and turned back to her, seeing the amusement on Sci’s and Mo-bot’s faces.

Justine was out cold, already snoring.

IT WAS ALMOST
midnight before I reached UCLA Medical Center. I got past security by showing my Private ID. We’ve done pro bono work for the hospital in the past, which helps when we want access at odd hours.

I reached the floor of the ICU, my mind whirling with everything that had unfolded during the day, including several things Justine had said to me before I was able to get her back to her apartment, into her bed, under the covers, lights off with a bucket by the nightstand.

In my car on the way there, she’d roused from her stupor.

“Love you, Jack,” she mumbled. “Thanks.”

“I love you, too, Justine, and no problem.”

She shook her head. “Can’t work, though. Us.”

“I know.”

Joy and Luck, her female Jack Russell terriers, kept jumping up on her bed and whining after I’d laid her in bed fully clothed.

Justine’s eyes were glassy and roaming as she soothed the dogs into lying beside her. “Sorry.”

“For what? You had a few too many. I was glad to bring you home.”

Her eyes closed. “Not ’bout that,” she said.

“Go to sleep, Justine. I’ll let the girls out, talk to you in the morning.”

“I had … I had sex with this perfect … no, not-perfect stranger, and … I’m not perfect stranger, and …”

She passed out again, and I walked the dogs and headed for the hospital, feeling oddly hollowed out by her convoluted drunken confession. Justine having sex with not-perfect strangers? Getting drunker than I’d ever seen her?

What the hell was going on?

That question was still bouncing through my brain when I went through the ICU doors and saw Angela, Del Rio’s Filipina guardian angel, glaring at me from inside the nursing station.

“He’s sleeping,” she hissed. “You can’t go in there.”

I held up my fingers in a cross and hurried past her. I could hear her clogs clip-clopping after me all the way to Del Rio’s room. Ducking inside, I found him sitting up, watching Anderson Cooper’s interview with June Wanta.

“You see this?” he asked, laughing. “Crazy old lady.”

I stopped at the foot of his bed, looked to my right, saw Angela coming, said, “Speak of the devil.”

Del Rio laughed again and then said, “Angela, it’s okay. I couldn’t sleep, and this guy’s so boring to listen to he’s better than pills or counting sheep.”

She thought about that, shot me another hostile glance, said, “You cannot sleep here. UCLA Medical Center is no Super Eight.”

“I’ll leave when he conks out,” I promised, and waited until she’d left before taking a chair. “How are you?”

“Lift the sheets,” Del Rio said.

I did and was amazed to see him moving both of his feet ever so slightly.

I said, “Keep this up, you’ll be back dancing with the Bolshoi in no time.”

“The Bolshoi?”

“Twyla Tharp?”

“Better,” he said.

“Riverdance?”

“You better quit while you’re ahead.”

The banter between us felt good. Everything in that room felt good, and I was grateful: despite all the strange and disturbing things I’d faced during the day, Del Rio was on the mend, and
my
best friend forever was in good enough spirits to crack wise with me.

“What do I need to know?” Del Rio asked. “Get me up to speed.”

I told him everything that had happened during the course of the day from the time I’d left his hospital room until my return. Mo-bot’s discovery of the bank account and shell company in the Caymans feeding millions to Harlow-Quinn Productions; Justine’s chats with the maids and with Cynthia Maines about Adelita Gomez. I gave him all of it except for Justine’s drunken admission that she loved me but couldn’t be with me, and that she’d had sex with a not-perfect stranger, or something to that effect.

When I told Del Rio what Sci and Mo-bot had found when they tried to place the fingerprints of the shooter at Mel’s Drive-In, he said, “Sounds like someone’s expunged the file.”

“Yeah, but why? FBI’s getting nowhere with DOD on this either. They’re saying there are no files. That the system is throwing false positives.”