The Color of Greed (Raja Williams 1) (4 page)

Raja sipped a decent scotch near the bar while
taking pictures of all the guests who passed by. A few foreign
nationals stood out in the crowd, but most of the guests were
ordinary-looking American men who would have been obscure without the
bejeweled women and heavily muscled men that followed them around the
room. Realizing he hadn’t seen Clarice for some time, Raja made
his way to the patio outside to check on her. He found her sitting
alone with three empty shot glasses on the table in front of her, not
a good sign.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he asked
gently, sitting down beside her.

“You don’t want to buy these thoughts.
That bastard.”

“Who?”

“I had a visit from the governor. Told me how
fond he was of Randy ... blah, blah, blah. I had to pinch myself to
keep from screaming.” She showed Raja the blood on her palm
where she had dug her fingernails.

“You know, Clarice, we don’t yet know if
the governor was involved.”

“I know what I know. I don’t trust that
bastard.” Clarice was drunk. Raja knew better than to argue.

“It is time to get you a ride home.”

“I drove here, damn it.”

“Yes, you did. But you’re not driving
home.” Raja waved for a waiter and arranged for a ride. “I
have more to do. Go with
…
” He paused and looked at the waiter.

“Max.”

“Go with Max. He’ll take care of you.
I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Not too early,” said Clarice, taking
the waiter’s hand. The waiter led her to the coatroom to get
her wrap.

Raja returned his attention to the other guests. “Am
I going to run out of film in these cameras?” he asked into his
headset.

“They are digital, and they automatically
upload to my computer and then clear for more pictures. You can’t
run out,” said Vinny.

“How about the batteries?”

“Are you looking for an excuse to leave, Raj?”

“You got one?”

“Have you taken a shot of everyone at the
party?”

“Everyone but the caterers and the valets.”

“Sounds good, but what about your little
girlfriends?”

Raja noticed the two twenty-somethings who were
shadowing him around the party. “Perfect. I knew you’d
come up with a reason for me to leave. I’m out of here.”
Raja headed to the oversized double front door that stood open.
Clarice was gone, already on her way home in a limousine. Once
outside, Raja handed his ticket to the valet and waited, taking in
the view. The clear moonlit night over Los Angeles showcased
thousands of glistening lights that covered the city like Christmas
decorations. The vista had an almost fairy-tale quality. LA was a
wicked temptress who could steal your soul and make you forget who
you were. It was one reason Raja never stayed there too long.

Chapter Four: Leonardo

The smooth rev of a familiar engine brought him back
to where he stood. The valet braked hard in front of Raja, enjoying
the opportunity to drive the classic car. Raja smiled. He drove many
hot cars, but the customized 1966 Alpha Romeo Duetto was one of his
favorites.

“Nice car, sir,” said the valet.

“Thanks,” said Raja, never taking his
eyes off the car. The red Duetto glistened in the spotlights, purring
like a cat. Raja climbed behind the wheel.

The round headlights swept left and right as the
low-slung red sports car wound along Mulholland Drive high over the
city. With the top down, the wind blew the driver’s wavy hair
straight back, and the pale moon highlighted his high cheekbones and
strong jaw. The narrow mountain road was as dark as it was
treacherous, with sudden hairpin turns and steep embankments that
dropped off into thin air. Raja loved it. The Alpha Romeo hugged the
asphalt like a slot car as it slalomed along the winding road.
Halfway down the mountain Raja tried to brake going into a sharp turn
and felt the brake pedal sink uselessly to the floor of the tiny
sports car. Only his cat-like reflexes and a quick downshift kept the
car from sliding over the edge as it careened painfully around the
curve in the road. The emergency brake proved just as useless as the
car hurtled downward faster and faster. Twice he scraped the car into
the left side embankment slowing it down enough to screech around
another hairpin curve. The next turn would be the worst, where the
narrow edge dropped one hundred feet below the road at the spot the
locals called Deadman’s Bluff. Raja knew he would never make
the turn at sixty miles per hour. He steered into the turn and then
spun the leather wheel the other way, turning the car sideways to its
forward momentum. For a brief millisecond the car paused as the tires
dug into the road. In that instant Raja opened the driver’s
door and threw his body out. Then the tires bit hard and the car
flipped sideways, tumbling and bouncing several times before
disappearing over the edge. Raja slid along the dirt and came to a
stop just as a loud explosion echoed off the canyon walls below.
Dusting himself off, he walked to the edge and stared down at the
burning wreckage. Someone was threatened by his presence in LA.
Whoever it was they were desperate enough to try to kill him, and
stupid enough to piss him off by destroying his beloved 1966 Duetto
Spider.

Raja brushed his hair back and pulled out his cell
phone. First he called Clarice Hope to make sure she was okay but got
no answer. Next, he punched the number two on his speed dial. After
the calliope of rapid beeps, the phone rang once and he heard Vinny’s
familiar voice on the other end.

“You missed me, didn’t you?”

“You might say that. I wanted to make sure you
were okay.”

“I should be worried about you. I was sure you
were going to leave with those two young heat-seeking missiles.”

“You know me better than that.”

“True dat. Let me guess. Right now you are
sipping expensive scotch in a too-cool West Hollywood bar.”

“Wish I were. I’m standing up on
Mulholland Drive. And Leonardo is gone.”

“What do you mean? Stolen?”

“No, gone—as in gone up in flames.”

“O-M-G.”

“Your data was right. We are on to
something—something big. Someone just tried to kill me. Must
have cut the brake lines.”

“Hot damn! That’s great!”

“Great? It’s a good thing you are still
in Florida.”

“You know what I mean. By the way, are you all
right?”

“Thanks for asking. Yeah. Nothing a couple
fingers of The Macallan won’t fix. But I’m going to need
your help here, Vinny. Seems I poked a particularly nasty hornets’
nest.”

“Your wish is my command. When do you want me
there?”

Raja could always count on Vinny in the clutch.
“Next flight you can get. Call me when you are an hour from
landing.” He closed his cell phone and watched as the fire
below began to die out. The sirens of the fire trucks were already
getting louder. He decided to be gone before they arrived. There was
no point wasting time with questions he already knew the answers to,
and being assumed dead would buy him time to regroup. He looked for a
spot where he could work his way down on foot, and disappeared into
the darkness.

Raja had gotten into the party on the widow’s
invite and only done observation on the scene. Granted, as an
independent private investigator he had some celebrity of his own due
to a number of high profile cases he had previously handled, but the
fact that someone was on to him fast enough to rig his car at the
party meant the stakes were high. It also meant that the widow was
being closely monitored. As he made his way down the hill, he called
Clarice again to check on her. No answer—straight to voice
mail. Damn. Raja called a cab to pick him up when he reached the road
below. By the time he stepped out of the bushes onto Wrightwood Drive
near the bottom of the Santa Monica Mountains, a yellow cab was there
waiting a hundred yards ahead. Raja waved and the backup lights
flashed on.

The cab eased back to where Raja stood and the
driver peered cautiously out a partially open window. “I don’t
get too many calls like this,” said the cabby, noticing Raja’s
dusty and torn tux. “You said you had a breakdown. Where’s
your car?”

Raja pointed behind him into the thick brush of the
canyon. A faint orange glow flickered from the spot where the car had
crashed.

“Some breakdown. You’re lucky you’re
still breathing.”

“No kidding.”

“You want to go to the hospital?” asked
the cabby, unlocking his doors.

“Nope. Sunset Boulevard will do,” said
Raja as he climbed into the back seat.

The cab stopped in front of a cheap Hollywood motel
where Raja checked in under a different name. Then he walked to a bar
on Sunset Boulevard where he sat in the shadows nursing a glass of
cheap scotch and reviewed the case. He had crashed an exclusive party
held for the California governor. The affair had been held at some
unknown muckity-muck contributor’s house, undoubtedly as
payback for millions donated overtly to the governor’s election
fund, or covertly to a slush fund the governor controlled. Ain’t
politics grand. Raja had come at the request of a recently widowed
heiress who claimed that her husband, a man twenty years her junior,
had been murdered, not for sleeping around, which she admitted he
did, but for something more serious he had supposedly stumbled upon.

Raja was never shy about crashing directly into a
case. More often than not, his “bull in the china shop”
approach would shake enough information loose for him to resolve
cases quickly. Sometimes that approach created dangerous blow back,
but that came with the job.

However, Raja also knew when he needed to collect
more data before proceeding. This was one of those cases. He called
them icebergs—lots more there than was easily seen. You better
do your homework or you could end up like the Titanic.

Back at the governor’s party in the hills, a
man whispered something into Stanley Bryce’s ear that brought a
sly smile to his face.

Chapter Five: Vinny

Raja was killing time in his drab green motel room
when he got the call that Vinny would soon touch down. He grabbed a
taxi to LAX. Forty minutes later he was standing on the arrival level
carpet scanning the people coming off the planes. Most were
worried-looking businessmen in a hurry for morning meetings. A few
grandmothers were being swarmed by fawning family members. When a
gangly young man with a Tampa Bay Rays baseball cap pulled tight over
his head and an oversized denim jacket walked down the ramp, Raja
could not help but smile. Vinny liked to travel incognito. The young
man stopped in front of Raja and pulled off his cap. A large wave of
long blond hair spilled out.

Vinny was Livinia Moore, a twenty-seven-year-old
computer geek who could have been a runway model if she wasn’t
so brilliant at hacking computers. Vinny tossed her hair back and
flashed her gorgeous smile. Then she threw her arms around Raja’s
neck and hugged him like the enthusiastic little sister she thought
she was.

Raja pulled her off, only slightly annoyed. He had
first crossed paths with Vinny on a smuggling case in the Bahamas.
She had been tracking money for the U.S. authorities, and stumbled
across the smugglers, who were less than appreciative. After Raja
saved her life, they became inseparable. There was something to be
said for the old Chinese proverb about being responsible for anyone
whose life you save, although since that time, Vinny had saved Raja’s
ass more than enough times to pay him back with interest. Now they
were a fifty-fifty partnership based on mutual admiration, trust and
purpose. Vinny was also Raja’s closest friend.

“Raj, I’m glad you are all right. And,
I’m so sorry about Leonardo.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Raja, wistfully. “I
loved that little car. This case has already gotten way too
personal.” Raja’s love for classic sports cars had
started with a young boy riding the hills behind Kingston, Jamaica,
in his father’s black 1958 Jaguar XK150S convertible. He kept
that original car in his garage on Clearwater Beach. Collecting
sports cars was one of his passions, and he never met a classic
two-seater he could resist. He owned dozens, and kept them maintained
and garaged in various cities just so he could drive them whenever he
was in town. In LA he kept a 1966 Alpha Romeo Duetto named Leonardo
in a private garage east of the city. With upgraded brakes and tuned
suspension, it was a dream to drive. Leonardo had been one of his
favorites.

Although it was an expensive, extravagant hobby,
Raja could certainly afford it. He was loaded. One rumor held that
Raja’s great-grandfather had found a pirate treasure worth
millions on a small Caribbean island, making him instantly rich, a la
the Count of Monte Cristo. Another story was that his
great-grandfather had been a pirate himself, raiding ships off the
Spanish Main that were loaded with loot. The truth was less exotic.
Raja’s ancestors had worked the sugar cane fields dawn to dusk
until they had saved the money to seed a small Cuban molasses label
called Raja’s Molasses, meaning the king’s molasses.
After building a substantial business, his grandfather had wisely
cashed out to a sugar conglomerate before Cuba fell to Castro. Smart
investments in coffee futures did the rest. Raja was named for that
original company. When his parents’ plane went missing in the
Bermuda triangle, Raja had inherited everything, leaving him with
more money than he could count.

Raja and Vinny grabbed two large bags from baggage
claim and headed outside.

“Looks like you’re over mourning for
Leonardo,” said Vinny, noting the bright-red Ferrari 355 Spider
Raja was now driving.

“It’s a rental. There’s no
replacing Leonardo, but we do have a case to solve. Should we head to
Studio City so you can set up shop?” asked Raja, loading her
bags into the trunk.