Yesterday's Echo (33 page)

The La Jolla post office was just a block down from the police station on Wall Street. I dropped the letter into a curbside mailbox, making sure to stay out of view of the Brick House.

I'd need all the luck I could hold onto during my meeting with Stone.

Using my iPhone, I Mapquested the address he'd given me on his business card and set off. If I hurried, I could make his 9:00 p.m. ultimatum. He lived in one of the mansions populating the narrow streets that serpentined up the back of Soledad Mountain. Stunning views of La Jolla and the Pacific Ocean, out of reach of the common folk below. I recognized the house from my infrequent trips up to the cross at the top of the Mount Soledad. Unassuming from the front, its backside hung off a cliff, splayed out like a giant glass-and-copper crab ready to pounce.

A Mercedes SLK coupe sat in the half-moon driveway. I crept past through the shifting fog and parked on a side street above the house. Stone had told me to bring everything I'd gotten out of Windsor's locker, but he may not have known what everything
was. I knew he wanted the flash drive of him and Angela Albright and the birth certificate. He'd get one but not the other.

I wouldn't give him Melody. Her secrets were my own for now, to be revealed later only if she took the DA's deal and flipped on me. Windsor's payoff ledger was my insurance policy against the police if they came after me without Melody's help. The birth certificate was my life insurance policy against Stone. That would stay behind, too.

I pulled the flash drive from my backpack and shoved it into my pants pocket. The backpack containing the rest of the Windsor booty went into the massive trunk of the Cadillac. The night fog was cool and heavy on my face. It seemed like days instead of hours since the Santa Ana winds had swept through town and left everything raw.

I made it to the house without being seen or ambushed. Maybe the ambush was waiting for me inside. The front door was a slab of hand-hammered bronze and loomed all the way up to the eaves. It looked like it could be lowered over a moat or open into a dungeon. My bet was on the latter.

I pounded the door a couple times, stepped back, and expected the worst. The door opened and I wasn't disappointed.

My stun-gun dance partner stood in front of me in full parade dress. Gold rings laddered up each ear, silver studs impaled through lip, and eyebrows. I had the sudden urge for a giant horseshoe magnet. The only metal missing was a stud through his nostril. That had been replaced by cotton packing to correct the nose I'd broken. I instinctively slid my right foot back a few inches and felt some flex in my knees. His mangled face lay flat, but his blackened eyes lasered violence.

The night was behind me, thick, gray, and black. One quick move and I'd be back into it. Even with my twisted ankle, I knew the kid wouldn't catch me on the injured leg I'd aerated with a paring knife two nights ago. But I stayed still and waited for round three to begin. If he made a move, I'd meet him in the middle. But
he just stood there holding open the dungeon door. We stared at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move.

“Eight fifty-eight. Just under the wire.” Peter Stone appeared over the kid's shoulder. Insincere smile stretched above the hard chin, shark eyes zeroed in on prey. “Luke, invite our guest in.”

Seeing them together, I noticed the resemblance for the first time. Square jaws. Stabbing widow's peaks. Hard eyes. Luke's not quite yet dead, but on their way to Stone's shark stare. Take away the kid's broken nose and black eyes and the family bloodline was evident.

Father and son.

If I went inside, would I ever come out? How many holes had Stone dug back in the Nevada desert? Had he or Luke been the one who pushed the needle into Windsor's arm?

But if Stone had wanted me dead, he'd already had plenty of chances. No, he hadn't killed Windsor, not over a birth certificate. And if the certificate meant so much to him, I had leverage. It was time to trade.

Luke pulled the door open farther and stepped back. I entered, adrenaline at full pump, ready for the arm of Stamp Heaton to shoot out of the dark and lock around my neck.

It never did, but Luke stopped me with a hand on my chest. I tensed, ready to counter but Stone's voice stopped me.

“Simple precaution, Rick.”

Luke patted me down, probably looking for weapons or a wire. I had only my wits. He came up empty, and motioned for me to follow his father. “Clean.”

“Of course. Rick's a smart man,” Stone said.

I didn't need his sarcasm to tell me that smart wasn't the proper adjective to use for someone who'd enter Stone's lair unarmed and alone. Desperate times.

Stone wore gray slacks and a blue La Jolla Country Club golf shirt. The normal waiting period to get accepted into the LJCC was about a lifetime. He'd been in town ten minutes and had some-how
jumped to the front of a line where wealth was added up in generations instead of liquid assets.

I followed him across a grand marble foyer that swirled in black and white into a dark hardwood-floored living room. The entire back wall was glass and looked down on La Jolla. On most nights it must have been quite a view. Tonight it was a gray smudge.

Cold art and framed mirrors hung at sharp angles on the walls. I got the feeling Stone spent more time eyeing the mirrors than the art. Furniture: black, square, and uninviting. The room looked staged, rather than lived in. A realtor's imagination for the wealthy bachelor.

Stone stepped behind a polished mahogany bar. Luke stood sentinel at the edge of the foyer, guarding the exit. I caught his eyes, then moved mine down to his broken nose, then onto his wounded leg, and back up again. I finished the trek with a thin smile, reminding him that I'd beaten him with my hands tied behind my back. Evened up, he'd go down quicker this time.

“Yes, you and Luke have an unpleasant history.” Stone's voice pulled me out of the challenge. “Young men and testosterone have a long journey to reason.”

“I guess your son isn't, yet, as reasonable as you.”

“Nothing gets past you, does it, Rick?” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I guess there's no hiding one's genes.”

But I knew the last week had been all about Stone keeping the genes belonging to the birth certificate hidden. I'd use that knowledge when I had him on the ropes. Right now, we were circling and sticking jabs.

“Drink?” He held up a bottle of Macallan.

“Eighteen-year-old or twenty-five?” I asked.

“Eighteen.” The same vintage I'd served him at Muldoon's that first night with Melody.

“Pass.” I could use a drink, but scoring the minor point tasted better.

A genuine laugh escaped his mouth. “Really, after we conclude
this small bit of business, you must come work for me.” He swept a hand around the expensively decorated, unlived-in room with a view. “Even with all this, amusement is rare.”

“I'll think about it.” I glanced over at Luke and then back at his father. “Looks like you have good health coverage.”

A low growl rumbled from Luke behind me.

“Cradle to grave.” Stone poured himself a drink.

“Same go for your other employee, Stamp Heaton?” The tainted ex-cop with ties to Windsor, Melody, Scarface, and Stone. Linchpin to the whole sordid mess or bit player?

“Mr. Heaton is part time. We could work out something more permanent for you.” He took a sip of his Scotch. “Come. We'll talk in my office.”

Stone walked out of the living room to the entrance of a hallway that shot off to the left of the foyer. He stopped and looked back at me when he realized I hadn't followed. Luke blocked the exit to the front door. If I broke now, I figured my football instincts could get me past an injured tough guy I'd already beaten once before. I'd have room to maneuver in the open foyer. If I followed Stone into his office, the hallway walls narrowed retreat.

“Are you coming, Rick?” Stone gave me the teeth. “You didn't come all the way up here just for the view, did you?”

Stone was right. I still had a grand jury waiting to indict me on Monday. I'd come to get information that could keep me out of prison. If I ran now, I couldn't stop until I hit Mexico.

I walked out of the living room and followed Stone down the hall. Luke limped behind me. Photographs of Stone with major and minor celebrities covered the walls. Homage to his casino days in Las Vegas. There wasn't a single picture that didn't have an autograph on it. But there were no portraits of Stone with a wife or son.

The hallway led to an office at the far end of the house. A window panoramaed around the entire left side of the room. The view matched the one in the living room. Luke stopped outside the office and closed the door behind me.

“You should feel privileged, Rick. No one is allowed in my office.”

I didn't feel honored, only wary.

Stone sat down in a wingback leather chair behind a large mahogany desk. A picture frame sat directly in front of Stone, facing him. Maybe it was the one photo of someone close enough to him that a signature wasn't required. He motioned me to one of the two white-cushioned chairs that were on my side of the desk.

Stone opened a desk drawer and pulled out a thick letter envelope. He placed it next to a laptop computer in front of him and steepled his hands.

My muted phone vibrated my thigh in my pocket. It would have been rude to answer it when a man was about to offer me a wad of cash.

“I'm sure you're aware of the grand jury impanelling Monday. Fifty thousand dollars could go a long way toward securing an adequate attorney.” He smiled. “Or give a jump start to someone who needed to leave town in a hurry.”

I wasn't surprised that Stone knew about the grand jury. He had ears everywhere and fingers in every pocket. Maybe he'd been feeding the police information about me. That I'd broken into Adam Windsor's storage locker. Tightening the vise on me so I'd give him what he wanted and then hope to survive the courts or flee.

I pulled the tiny flash drive of Angela Albright's misdeeds out of my pocket and tossed it across the desk to Stone. He picked it up and plugged it into his laptop. The back of the laptop separated me from Stone and what he saw. I'd already seen it. A dark past best forgotten.

Life came into Stone's dead eyes. But the hard end of life. Pain. He moved his eyes over to the picture frame facing him then back to the computer screen. The pain pulled deeper. The only other emotions I'd ever seen in his eyes were malice and contempt.

I almost felt sorry for him. He looked up from the computer at
me and I saw the eyes of a wounded predator. Then I felt sorry for myself.

“I take it you've seen this?” The smooth superiority was replaced by unhidden shame.

Stone ashamed of a tryst with a onetime hooker? It didn't add up. Were the eyes of the person in the photograph facing him adding to his shame?

“I didn't get any pleasure from it.” The truth.

“Where's the rest?”

“What do you mean?”

“I want Windsor's computer, all other flash drives, and any original videotapes.” Barely concealed anger pushed the shame out of his voice. “And the birth certificate.”

Good. I'd gotten under his skin and knocked him off his cool control game. Time to push harder and see if any truth spilled out. “You mean Louise Abigail Delano's birth certificate?”

“Yes.” Angry reptilian hiss. His eyes again shot toward the photograph in front of him and then back at me.

Stone might have once been a Vegas boss, but he'd make a crappy poker player. His eyes were a tell. The photo in the frame facing him was a picture of his daughter. I'd bet the fifty grand in the envelope in front of him on it.

“You mean your daughter?” I grabbed the picture frame and flipped it around.

Angela Albright smiled up at me.

Maybe I'd been wrong about the identity of his daughter. I heard a desk drawer close and looked up.

The gun in Stone's hand told me that I'd been right.

Adrenaline squeezed sweat out of my scalp and vacuumed a hole in my stomach.

“You overplayed your hand, Cahill.” Hard stare. Rage on a strained leash. Light from the desk lamp glinted off the Kimber .45's stainless-steel slide as Stone pointed it at my chest. “You could have walked out of here with a pocket full of cash. Now—”

My flat face belied the fear raging through my body. Metal-work on the picture frame bit into my death-gripped hands. Sweat trickled from under my arms down my sides. I willed my muscles to relax and tried to slow my breathing.

“You pull that trigger and the tape of you and Angela in the sack goes viral, along with the proof that she's your daughter.”

I was all in on a bluff. Time to see who was the better poker player. All I had riding on it was my life.

“I didn't take you for a blackmailer, Rick. Murderer maybe, but at least an honorable man.” He squeezed his eyes down on me. “Fifty thousand dollars wasn't enough for you?”

“I don't want a dime from you. Whatever you and Angela did behind closed doors is your own business. I'm just trying to stay alive and out of prison. I leave here alive and you can have everything.”

Stone studied me with predator eyes. A trace of humanity bubbled up in them. He set the gun down on the desk. I let out a breath.

“Adam Windsor was human detritus.” His eyes drifted over my shoulder like he was looking at the past. “I let him run some women and drugs to my high rollers in the casino. Then I found
out he was pimping his own wife, Melody. When I took her away from him and got her straight, he tried to get even.”

Stone as hero. Saving women from prostitution. Even the ones he'd arranged to work in his own casino. I kept my eye on the gun six inches from his hand and listened to more of the legend.