Please God, let her survive.
Mercifully, we didn’t get pulled over, and when we got to Santa Monica AP, my plane was waiting for me on the tarmac, gassed up and ready to go. Justine’s legs were shaking as I helped her into the copilot’s seat. Justine is afraid of heights—and of flights in small planes. I thought she might be sick before we got into the air.
I climbed into my seat and reassured her over the roar of the engine.
“The Cessna 172 is an extremely stable aircraft,” I said, “very forgiving, even to a beginner. Plus, I know what I’m doing, as you know.”
“Let’s go, okay?” she said.
She buckled up. I gave her a pair of headphones, then I concentrated on my aircraft.
The sky was dark but with decent visibility. I went through my checklist, and once we were cleared for takeoff, I made sure my compass and directional gyro were aligned to the heading of the runway, then departed with a bit of a right crosswind.
I focused on the airspeed indicator, and while keeping the airplane running straight down the runway, I waited for it to reach the critical speed of about sixty before putting a little back pressure on the control yoke. As the spinning propeller exerted a leftward force on the airplane, I pushed in a bit of the right rudder.
Then I flew the runway heading until I was given vectors to proceed on course toward Atlantic Terminal, one of the private hangars at McCarran International, an hour and fifty minutes away.
The Cessna climbed out at a fairly standard five hundred feet per minute, and once we were at five thousand feet, I leveled out the plane and got us into cruise mode.
Los Angeles was lit up below us. The cars on the roads and freeways looked like a mechanical representation of a human circulatory system. Civilization glowed. After we cleared the suburban sprawl outside of LA, the vast desert was absolutely black.
We flew in a clear, starlit sky, and finally, my lovely, profoundly loyal, and very brave friend Justine relaxed. When we were about fifteen miles from McCarran, I began pulling the power back to 2,100 rpm, which set up a nice three- to four-hundred-foot-per-minute descent to the airfield.
Ten minutes later, we were taxiing toward the hangar, the hotels on the Strip looming in the background. When we were safely at a stop, I helped a very shaky Dr. Smith to the ground.
I hugged her.
She clung to me, and then, holding hands, we trotted toward the Atlantic Terminal and the hired car waiting to take us to the hospital.
Chapter 111
THE RIDE FROM the airport to Mountain View Hospital was swift and silent. Justine and I arrived just after one in the morning and went straight to the ICU, where a dozen hysterical parents were waiting for news of their kids, casualties of a bus plowing through the doors of a nightclub.
There was no getting to see Val.
I stalked Dr. Steven Ornstein, the attending physician, until I cornered him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. He told me he was sorry, but only family members could see Val.
“I’m her father,” I said.
He gave me a tired smile, said, “Yes, I see the resemblance. What’s your name again?”
He found my name on Val’s admissions forms, then took me into a niche in the hallway and summarized her situation.
“She nearly drowned,” he said. “That’s not a figure of speech. She was half dead when she was brought in. Right now, she’s undergoing tests of all kinds. That means chest x-rays and CT scans as well as a neurological assessment. If her brain was deprived of oxygen for too long, she could have seizures or permanent damage.”
I said, “You’re saying she almost drowned in Las Vegas? In what? The Bellagio fountain?”
“She was found semiconscious on the bank of a pond, her hands bound behind her back with plastic ties. She had lacerations from the ligatures,” the doctor said, indicating his wrists. “There were abrasions on her thighs, and she’s got a pretty good contusion on her forehead. She could still die. It happens. But she fought like hell.”
I said, “Are you saying she was dumped in this pond?”
“There’s a car in there. I understand divers are going in when it gets light,” the doctor said.
I wanted to curse the paint off the wall, bang my head against it. I thought of Val, terrified, bound inside a car trunk, the water coming up around her face. Christ. I wanted to kill whoever had done this to her.
I thanked the doctor, then Justine and I took up a vigil in the waiting room outside the ICU.
During the following hours, we put down several quarts of coffee. At around four, I went to shake down the snack machine, and when I returned with Bugles and Doritos, Justine was laughing.
She said into her phone, “Three against one? Are you some kind of ninja? I’ll tell him. Yes, I’ll call Caine. Get some sleep.”
Justine hung up, still smiling.
“You okay, princess?”
She said, “You bet,” and filled me in.
“Lester Olsen and Barbie Cooper were about to kill Bryce Cooper with an injection of potassium chloride. That would have been fatal in a couple of seconds, but Scotty was waiting for them. He shot Olsen twice. Not fatally.”
“Damn. That’s a damned shame,” I said. “How did Scotty miss?”
“Jack.” She laughed some more. “Anyway, Olsen is hospitalized under guard. Barbie is in lockup. Scotty was released after the APD questioned him. He said—” Justine cracked up again. She was a little manic, but still, she was enjoying herself.
“Scotty said to me, ‘I don’t know if Bryce Cooper is going to press charges against me for breaking and entering or if he’s going to throw me a parade.’”
I laughed with her, then shared my salty snacks as we talked about Olsen, that psycho with the twenty-four-karat-gold balls. Scotty hadn’t known about Val’s encounters with Olsen, but we were sure that before Olsen flew to Aspen, he had tried to kill her.
He’d almost done it.
How had Val survived?
I desperately wanted to know.
Chapter 112
BY EIGHT IN the morning, Val had a room of her own, and Justine and I had seats on either side of her bed. Val looked like she’d done time inside a cement mixer.
The left side of her face was bruised and she had a line of stitches and sutures over her left eyebrow. Both of her wrists were bandaged, and leads went from her body to an array of beeping machines around her.
She looked small and very frail.
It broke my fucking heart.
I touched her arm above the bandages, and Val opened her eyes and looked at me. Recognition spread across her face and she lit up with such happiness, my feelings of remorse and guilt almost dropped me to the floor.
I said, “Val. How are you? How do you feel?”
“I feel like the world’s biggest jerk, since you ask.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. I was so relieved that she knew me, that she was lucid, speaking in complete sentences, for God’s sake. It was as if sunshine had flooded the hospital room. I squeezed her arm and said, “I’m so glad you’re back.”
“I really blew it,” she said, squinting her bloodshot eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Justine said, “Val, you were heroic. That’s the truth.”
Val turned and saw Justine gripping the bed rail, looking like she was going to bawl. Val reached out with both arms and Justine hugged her. I found a box of tissues, handed them around, took some for myself.
There was some crying, and then Val collected herself and got very serious. “We have to find Lester Olsen,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”
Justine quickly sketched in the story of Scotty’s night in Aspen, then said, “Olsen and Barbie are guests of the Aspen PD, and Scotty is in a first-class hotel without a scratch on him.”
“That’s the best news I’ve ever heard,” Val said.
I said, “If you’re up to it, Val, what the hell happened?”
“Oh God.” Val sighed. “Yeste
rday, I think it was yesterday, I went to Lester’s office to pick out my so-called future husband.”
Val told us about the error that gave her away, about Olsen’s stuffing her into his trunk at gunpoint, about the car going into the water, and about the moment when she realized she was going down.
“I couldn’t get my hands free of the zip ties.”
Her voice broke. She looked at her bandaged wrists.
“I kicked through the divider, and then I kind of rolled into the backseat.
“The driver’s-side window was down,” Val said. “Water was flooding in like a dam had broken, and it was pinning me inside the car. But there was a bubble of air at the ceiling, and when the car was underwater, I took a deep breath and swam for the window. I’m a Miami girl, remember. I can swim.”
Val eked out a brave smile, then I asked her to go on.
“I remember cracking my head on the doorframe, Jack. I lost some air when I did that, but I pushed off from the car and got onto my back and just kicked until I surfaced. And that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up here.”
“You’re amazing, Val. No other word for it,” I told her. “I’m sorry this happened. You took a mic and a recorder to a gunfight, and that’s my fault. I should have sent someone to back you up.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a gunfight, Jack. Or any kind of fight. I was just trying to get the guy to incriminate himself. And now I don’t even have the recorder.”
I said, “You have your life. And we have you. You’re going to be a great investigator, Val. In fact, you should take my job. You’ll do fine.”
“It’s a deal. You heard him, Justine.”
Val had a great smile and a very decent handshake.
I hugged her. “I’m very proud of you,” I said. “You’ve got a gigantic future at Private.”
Chapter 113
JUSTINE AND I had just arrived at the Atlantic Terminal for our flight back to LA when I got a phone call from a man I’d hoped I would never hear from again. I was wrung out from my night at Mountain View Hospital, but it was either speak with the head of the Noccia crime family or wonder what Ray Noccia wanted until he showed up at my door.
I chose the find-out-now option.
I stabbed the Answer button on my phone and said my name, then listened as Ray Noccia said, “It’s been a long time, Jack. A couple of years, right?”
“What can I do for you, Ray?”
Rain was starting to come down. Justine and I ducked into the closest hangar as the downpour began in earnest.
Noccia said, “I’ve got some business to discuss with you.”
“You know that’s not going to happen, Ray. I’m not interested in your business. I thought we’d been over this.”
“Don’t be dramatic, Jack. I want a conversation. That’s all.”
I told him I was working, that I’d call him after I checked my schedule.
“And, listen, Ray, I’ll pick the time and the place.”
I hung up, and, standing under a dripping overhang, I said to Justine, “Want to grab something to eat when we get to LA?”
She looked drained, but then, we were about to get into a plane again.
“What does Ray Noccia want with you?” she asked me.
I shrugged.
“Like always with the Noccia family. It will be what I least expect, when I least expect it.”
Chapter 114
IT WAS SUNNY in LA when I dropped Justine off at her house and then called DA Bobby Petino from my car. I left him a message saying that I had to speak with him urgently.
Then I drove home, took a shower, and was dressing for work when Bobby returned my call.
I said, “Bob”—and he cut me off.
“Jack, you’re on my call list. I heard about Lester Olsen and what he did to your assistant and the rest of it, but the Love for Life racket is a job for the Vegas DA, not me.”
“I was calling you about something else,” I said. I put Petino on speakerphone, sat on the edge of my bed, and pulled on my shoes.
“As I said,” Petino went on, “you’re on my call list. I need a minute and I’ve only got a second.”
The man is an attack dog, all the way. I know Justine likes him and might even be dating him. I don’t understand how she can stand him.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Talk to me.”
“It’s about Hal Archer.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your client, right?”
“Yep. He’s mine.”
“Well, FYI, even though he may have been a Love for Life target, it doesn’t matter. Even if Archer was set up, manipulated, whatever, there’s no case for self-defense. Archer outweighed his little wife by a hundred pounds and she was unarmed.”
I went to my closet, picked out a tie, looped it around my neck.
Petino said, “I’ve got enough evidence to indict him a hundred times over. So I’m going forward.”
“I never doubted you were going to prosecute, Bobby,” I said. “Meanwhile, I need a favor. And I need it right away.”
“I’m listening, Jack. What do you need?”
Chapter 115
TWIN TOWERS CORRECTIONAL Facility is a deceptively modern-looking prison system on ten acres. The main entrance at 450 Bauchet opens into a clean, well-lit, and tiled lobby called the Inmate Reception Center, as if the IRC were a hospitality suite at a convention center rather than central booking for the two thousand inmates who are bused in daily and warehoused in this cesspool until their arraignments and trials.
Bobby Petino had left my name at the front desk. I picked up an escort, Officer Eugene Calhoun, who kept his own counsel, escorted me to an elevator, and took me up to the sixth floor, where I glimpsed the tier of overstuffed pods jam-packed with desperate, unwashed humanity. The sickening sight of this hellhole brought back memories of a wretched time I wanted to forget.
Calhoun and I passed through a series of steel-barred gates, arriving at last at a cubicle divided by a wall of glass that is generally used by prisoners and their attorneys.
The room was furnished with a shelf in front of the glass, a telephone, an aluminum chair, and a caged light overhead. I took my seat, drummed my fingers until I heard footfalls in the hallway.
Calhoun unlocked the door, showed Hal Archer into his side of the bisected room, and locked the door. He came back to me and said, “You’ve got ten minutes.”
“Stick around, Officer,” I said. “We won’t be that long.”
Archer had been incarcerated in this medieval snake pit for a week and had lost a few pounds. His skin sagged, and his knuckles were abraded. He was doing pretty well, considering.
He sat down heavily, gave me a scathing look; he picked up the receiver on his side of the Plexiglas wall and I picked up mine.
“It’s about fucking time you got here, Morgan. I’d be on a yacht right now if your father were still alive.”
Hal Archer was a heinous prick as well as a conscienceless murderer.
“My father’s dead and I think you’ve been on your last yacht. This is a courtesy call, Hal. I came to say that there’s nothing I can do for you. Good luck in the joint.”
I hung up the phone, took the elevator downstairs to the IRC. I made a couple of calls from the lobby to check that Petino had made good on his promise, and then I walked out the doors of the prison and around to the back of the jail.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Rick came through the doors of the prison wearing jeans and an ugly green shirt. A guard opened the gate for him and he came through, his face lighting up when he saw me. He extended his hand. We shook, embraced, broke apart still smiling. He smelled bad but he looked good.
“Hungry?” I asked him.
“How come I’m out?”
“Dexter Lewis had more important things to do than try you for punching him in the nose.”
“So you leaned on Bobby Petino.”
I grinned.
“Good,” Rick sa
id. “Once I’ve had a shower and a shave, order will be restored to the universe.”
“I’ll run you by your house.”
“You were saying something about lunch, Jack? Where are we going?”
“Feel like having lobster with a mobster?”
“If the lobster doesn’t mind, it’s okay with me,” said Rick. “Where’d you park the car?”
Chapter 116
RICK AND I sat at a table on the open deck at the back of the Lobster, a charming old eatery on Ocean Avenue at the head of the Santa Monica Pier.
From where we sat, I could see the Pacific Wheel, the Carousel Building, and the red awnings over a paved walkway that zigzags down toward the pier and water.
Rick was leaning over a bowl of clam chowder, shoveling it in. He hadn’t had a meal worthy of a human being in two days, and I didn’t see why he should wait for Ray Noccia.
I sat back in my seat, tried to enjoy the pretty scene, but the truth was, I was worried.
Last year, despite my wanting nothing to do with organized crime, Ray’s oldest son, Carmine, coerced me into recovering millions in stolen pharmaceuticals belonging to the Noccia family.
We did the job perfectly. The Noccias got screwed without knowing it. Private was kept out of sight and I was sure that we’d left no trace of what we’d done.
Now I was having doubts.
About half a year ago, Carmine Noccia had teamed up with Tommy to blackmail me. Carmine suspected I’d double-crossed the Noccia family with the pharmaceutical case—but I got him off my back easily enough. Ray Noccia was a different story. He had the power that Carmine didn’t.
If Ray Noccia had found me out, he might be looking at me to pick up the ten-million-dollar tab. Actually, people had been killed for much less.
Rick finished his soup, mopped up the remains with his bread. He burped and was going for the last of his wine when a gray-complexioned, gray-haired man in a gray sports jacket came up the stairs with a couple of goons at his heels. They stood in the entrance as a smiling Ray Noccia approached our table.
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