Private L.A. (26 page)

A tremendous crashing noise out in the street in front of her house tore her away from the computer.

Joy and Luck went nuts, racing across the living room and up onto the couch below the front window, howling and barking. Justine got up, looked out through the blinds, and saw Jack’s Touareg smashed into the side of a black Trans Am.

Jack was holding a gun on a man who was obviously bleeding to death.

MY IRISH LUCK
that two of my favorite LAPD detectives were sent to investigate what had happened in front of Justine’s house. Lieutenant Mitch Tandy and Detective Len Ziegler were the same duo who had attempted to railroad me for my old girlfriend’s murder. I kept things professional, answered every question straight, told them I’d been with the mayor and Chief Fescoe that morning, that I’d driven to Justine’s to check on her, and what had happened during the attack.

“He said he was hired?” asked Lieutenant Tandy, a tough little guy in love with tanning beds.

“He said it was a job,” I replied. “I asked who hired him. He died.”

We were standing in Justine’s driveway. She stood off to the side, holding Joy and Luck on leashes, taking in the swarm of crime scene investigators and patrol officers who’d taken over her neighborhood.

“Convenient, he croaks like that,” said Detective Ziegler, a former swimmer gone to pot, with big shoulders and a Milwaukee tumor where his waistline should have been. He looked more and more like a walrus every time I saw him.

“For who?” I asked, already knowing where this was leading.

“You,” said Ziegler, who also seemed to approach everything in life through the prism of conspiracy theories that crystallized out of his head in all sorts of illogical shapes and sizes.

“You know, Len, for once I agree with you,” I said. “It was extremely convenient for me that he died and I didn’t. Sorry if I don’t apologize for that.”

Tandy gave a flick of his hand, calling off the conspiracy walrus. “Any idea who’d want you dead, Jack?”

I was unnerved to come up with multiple possibilities, Carmine Noccia, No Prisoners, whoever took the Harlows, and my own brother among them. But what good would telling these guys do? I’d just be asking them to stick their nose in affairs I’d rather keep quiet.

“No,” I said at last. “I’ve been doing nothing lately but spreading good cheer and doing good deeds. Ask anyone.”

“Right,” Ziegler said. “You’re a regular Thom Harlow.”

I ignored him, talked to Tandy. “You’ll tell me who he is?”

“I think you know who he is,” Ziegler said.

I did, actually. I’d searched the car and found a wallet and ID: Vladimir Karenoff, thirty-seven, resident alien currently living in Brighton Beach, New York. The car was registered in New York as well. I’d taken photos of all his documents and returned them before the police arrived.

Looking at Ziegler placidly, I said, “And I think you know I know who he is.”

“What?” Ziegler said, confused.

“I’m walking away now,” I said. “You’re sworn to uphold the law, so go find whoever tried to kill me.”

I went toward Justine and the dogs. We hadn’t had time to say much to each other since she’d called 911.

“Want some coffee?” she asked, looking anxious, sad, and wan in a way I’d never seen before.

“I’d love some.”

Inside the bungalow she had the blinds drawn, but the windows behind them were open and you could hear the vague rumor of the ongoing crime scene investigation. Every once in a while one or the other of the dogs would start growling at the noise, and Justine would hush her. My mind was clanging, and my hand was trembling at the memories of the attack. If I hadn’t gotten my foot on the pedal, who knows?

Justine came over, poured me coffee. I studied her as a way to escape my own thoughts, and as she turned, it struck me that she was carrying some heavy burden. Her not-so-perfect lover?

“You all right?” I asked.

She nodded. “Just a little green around the gills. I’m not used to drinking that much on an empty stomach.”

I said nothing as she sat on the opposite side of the kitchen counter, stirring her coffee and finding it terribly interesting.

“How do you deal with it?” she asked at last.

“What are we talking about?”

“Violence,” she said. “You seem at ease during times of violence.”

“I wouldn’t say at ease,” I replied. “I was just taught to be resourceful when things get chaotic.”

“You either have the capacity for it or you don’t, I suppose,” she said.

“What’s this all …?”

She shook her head. “We’ve got more important things on our plate. I’ve been looking into Sharing Hands.”

I still wanted to know what was going on with her, but I could tell she was in no mood to go there. So I said, “The orphans’ charity?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s quite a remarkable operation.”

Justine showed me the Sharing Hands website, summarized the reviews the organization had received from various philanthropy watchdogs that cited the Harlows’ commitment and the charity’s foresight in building an endowment.

“Makes them sound like saints,” I said.

“It does,” Justine said. “Then again, how many family-values congressmen get caught with mistresses?”

“More than a few. Let’s keep digging.”

We scrolled through a dozen or more references to Sharing Hands’s good deeds before spotting an aberration in the comments section below an article about the charity that had run in the London
Times
two months before.

The comment was signed, “A. Aboubacar.”

Mr. Aboubacar claimed to be from Nigeria.

“They promised us an orphanage and a school,” Aboubacar wrote. “They say they have built several in my country. But ignore the Harlows’ glamour. Come here and look for yourself. There are none that I can find.”

Justine said, “He’s probably just a kook, don’t you think?”

The rest of the testimonials we’d looked at had been so uniformly full of praise that I was about to agree with her. But then I noticed something that had been staring us in the face all along.

Doors began to open in my mind, and through them I saw dimensions we’d never considered before when it came to Thom and Jennifer Harlow.

“What?” Justine said, seeing something in my expression. “You believe him?”

“We have a bunch of things to check out before I’ll say that,” I replied. “And then we’re going to have a face-to-face chat with the friendly crew over at Harlow-Quinn.”

DAVE SANDERS LIVED
in Brentwood in a sprawling Georgian manor surrounded by a high wall and a gate that faced North Carmelina Avenue. Driving one of the company Suburbans now that my Touareg was totaled, I pulled up to the gate around seven thirty that night, about forty minutes after the Kid alerted us that Sanders had returned home and, surprise, was entertaining this evening. His guests? Camilla Bronson and Terry Graves.

I hit the buzzer by the gate, looked up at the camera. After several moments, Sanders answered gruffly, “What do you want, Morgan?”

“I’ve got the Harlows’ staff from the ranch with me,” I said. “They’d like to see the children.”

“Impossible,” he snapped. “What business do you—?”

“I’ve got a writ here,” I said, cutting him off and waving a piece of paper out the window. “Signed by Judge Maxwell, ordering you to allow them to see the Harlow children. If you do not open this gate, I will call LAPD, and they will see the order carried out.”

For several seconds Sanders said nothing, then, “I don’t know what you’re up to, Jack. But fair warning, I don’t trust you.”

“Feeling’s mutual, Dave,” I said brightly. “Now open the gate.”

A pause, then a loud click and the steel gates swung back. We drove onto a lighted drive that split before a long narrow reflecting pool that finished in a fountain in front of the house.

“Wasn’t this place in
The Beverly Hillbillies
?” I asked Justine as I took the right fork in the drive.

She looked at me quizzically. “Sorry, that show was a bit before my time.”

“Mine too, but watch it sometime,” I replied. “A classic. I really think this might be the place where Jethro and Miss Hathaway did their funny business.”

She looked at me like I was nuts, and then laughed. It was good to see her smile again. We parked out front where the cement drive gave way to a mosaic of inlaid stone. We got out, opened the back doors, released Anita Fontana, Maria Toro, and Jacinta Feliz, who turned nervous and submissive when Sanders opened the massive front door and came out under the portico, followed by Camilla Bronson and Terry Graves.

“Where’s this writ?” Sanders demanded.

I handed it to him, winked at the publicist and the producer, said, “Amazing how swiftly judges react when the FBI’s special agent in charge requests something. And you’ll see that Justine Smith is named as court-appointed supervisor of this and future visits.”

For once Camilla Bronson was at a loss for words. Terry Graves acted as if we were unpleasant bugs come to call.

Sanders read the writ closely, looking for loopholes, I suppose, but the document was ironclad. He handed it back to me, sniffed, “You could have called and made an appointment.”

“And miss breaking bread with the Harlow-Quinn team?” I said. “Not a chance. But first: the kids?”

The Harlows’ attorney nodded stiffly toward the door. The housekeeper, the cook, and the maid went by him quickly into a large marble foyer with a sweeping staircase that rose to a second floor. I came in last, nodded, said, “In the old
Beverly Hillbillies
show, didn’t Jed Clampett live here, in this house?”

Sanders looked insulted. “He most certainly did not.”

“Striking resemblance.”

In a deepening huff, the attorney led us off the foyer to a screening room where the children were watching a movie about a tailless dolphin.

“Miguel!” Anita cried.

The boy looked over the seat at her, acted as if he’d expected never to see her again. “Nita!” he yelled, and ran into her arms.

The Harlows’ housekeeper fell to her knees and embraced the boy, tears streaming down her face as she kissed him and spoke to him in Spanish, calling him her little one and her best boy. Pressing her shiny cheeks to his, she looked radiant and complete in an unexpected way. As if the two were deep soul mates.

Malia and Jin were on their feet, hugging Maria Toro and Jacinta Feliz, who’d also broken into tears.

“Look how big you get,” the cook said to Malia, who towered over her.

“You good?” Jacinta asked Jin.

Jin glanced at Sanders, bit her lower lip, but nodded.

“They’re being well cared for,” Camilla Bronson declared.

“Dave’s hired round-the-clock help,” Terry Graves said.

“Cook. Maid. Tutors. Psychologists,” Sanders added. “Even a physical-fitness instructor. And we got a Wii and a Nintendo installed. Isn’t that right?”

Malia shrugged and then bobbed her head.

“But he won’t let us go out, Nita,” Miguel complained to the housekeeper. “He won’t let us watch TV hardly ever. He won’t tell us what happened to Thom and Jen. And he keeps Stella in a kennel all the time.”

Sanders gave a sickly smile to the boy, then to me and Justine, and said, “The dog’s been peeing everywhere.”

“And I advised that the children not be seen in public,” Camilla Bronson said.

“We’re trying to protect them from the howling mob,” Terry Graves said.

“I’m sure you are,” I said. “But who’s here to protect them from you three?”

Sanders acted as if I’d slapped him, sputtered, “How dare you insinuate that anything untoward has ever—”

“We’re fine,” Malia said to Justine. “No one’s hurt us or anything.”

Jin nodded, but her brother’s head was bowed.

Sanders’s chin rose and he gazed at us in triumph.

“Jack,” the publicist said. “You don’t really need to be here, do you?”

I winked at her a second time. “Why don’t you go get the dog so the kids can play with her, and then the five of us will have a little chat.”

“About what?” Terry Graves asked icily.

“C’mon,” I said. “You sound like someone who likes to know the end of a movie before you’ve even seen it.”

AFTER BRINGING STELLA
to the screening room, where the bulldog was greeted like Cleopatra returning to Luxor, Sanders reluctantly led us into his private library, a polished, meticulous man cave done up like an alpine lodge: oxford-red leather club chairs and couch; a poster-sized photograph of the attorney skiing at Aspen when he was younger; his framed degrees from USC and Boalt Hall; and a massive flat-screen television above the gas fireplace where the moose head should have been.

“What’s this all about?” demanded Sanders, who was flanked by Camilla Bronson and Terry Graves, both of whom were regarding Justine and me as if we were ferrets or some other kind of blood-seeking weasel.

I took one of the club chairs while they remained standing, said, “We think we’ve made a break in the Harlow case. Several, in fact.”

Their expressions mutated through a variety of emotions, surprise, skepticism, and wariness, all in a matter of two seconds.

“What—?” Camilla Bronson began before Sanders cut her off.

“You were fired, Jack.”

“Absolutely,” Terry Graves said. “Whatever you’ve turned up, don’t expect to be paid for it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of that,” I said, marveling at the way the man’s brain worked. “But you should know that people who work at Private are suckers for lost causes. We also have a deep aversion for jobs left unfinished.”

The producer’s eyes darted to Justine and back. “What have you found?”

“That the three of you are colossal liars,” I said, speeding up before any of them could protest. “We can’t figure out exactly why yet.”

“But we’re close,” Justine said.

“Get out,” Sanders said hotly. “Take the help with you. Time’s up.”

I didn’t move, said as firmly as I would to one of Justine’s terriers, “Sit down. The three of you. Or I will make a call to the FBI that will turn your world so fucking far upside down and confining, it will take a Houdini act on your part to get any of it right again.”