The Trials of Nikki Hill

by Christopher Darden; Dick Lochte

  Watching him move on to greet his other patrons, Nikki said, “That man’s a serious hunk. Somebody should put him in a movie.”

  “He’ll think that’s pretty funny. See, him and his brother, we all met makin’ the rounds out here, tryin’ to get some producer to do just that.”

  “ You wanted to be an actor?”

  “Sure. And I wound up working undercover. Pretty much the same, except the pay is lousy and the bullets are real. But I can guarantee you, actors—even the superstars—don’t eat any better than we will tonight.”

  The first course, a delicious crawfish bisque, was followed by a seafood jambalaya. She studied Virgil while they ate, trying to get a fix on why she found him appealing. He was handsome, of course. But she’d had handsome. He was...different. A man who gave his emotions full rein, moving from laughter to anger, from crude to sensitive, in the blink of an eye. Life with him would never be dull. But wasn’t dull what she wanted? Hadn’t her time with Tony taught her anything? Was it recklessness that attracted her?

  Virgil freshened their glasses with the dry white wine Desmond St. Jean had sent to their table. “I saw your boss on TV today,” he said. “You and him any way involved?”

  She shook her head. “Strictly business.”

  “I thought I caught something in his face when he started talking about you.”

  “He was talking about me on TV?”

  “Said you were his eyes and ears on the Madeleine Gray investigation.”

  “Well, that’s nice of him,” she said, feeling a little giddy from the drinks and the wine. “And you caught something in his face, huh?”

  “The camera picks up funny stuff,” Virgil said.

  “An actor,” she said. “Came all the way out here to be an actor.”

  “Why else would anybody come to this loony land?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t have a choice. I was born here.”

  “Where abouts?”

  “Grew up in South Central.”

  “Paper said your daddy was on the job for a full twenty-five.”

  She nodded, keeping her face neutral. “I didn’t see much of him. My grandma raised me after my mama died.”

  “Brothers or sisters?”

  “No.” Actually, she had a half sister, but she barely knew her. “You?”

  “Had an older brother. Passed away.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We grew up down south. Thibodaux, Louisiana.”

  “Then you’re a Creole like Desmond?” she asked.

  “Not exactly. See, the St. Jeans were part of what they call the Creole aristocracy. Their ancestors were opera singers and poets and composers. My daddy was a sharecropper. The thing we have in common, Desmond’s family and mine, is that we’re too black to suit white folks and too light to suit blacks. That’s down South. Out here, we’re professionals.”

  He looked at her. “You’re sorta fair yourself,” he said. “Got that touch of red. ‘Redbone.’ ”

  “You’re starting to sound like your alter ego, Juppy.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned at the memory. “I called you ‘Red’ that day. It fits. You mind the name?”

  She always had. But maybe she was changing.

  “It kinda goes with those freckles.”

  “Never liked the freckles.” She was definite about that.

  “They’re sweet.”

  “Enough about my freckles. I want to hear about you.”

  “Well, like I say, my daddy farmed land. His daddy was a local judge. A white man. Had himself a legitimate white family but he saw to my grandma, and he seemed to like her well enough. When he died, he left her some money. She passed it on to my brother and me. I took my share and got out of that little tarpaper shack fast as I could. I was sixteen.”

  “You came out here then?”

  “Nope. Got as far as Atlanta. Met a woman who picked me clean. Followed her and her pimp to Chicago where a cop friend of my daddy helped me get some of it back. I stayed on with him and his wife, finished high school, and then came out here to be the next Billy Dee Williams.”

  “Did you know anybody out here? The St. Jean brothers?”

  “I didn’t meet them ’til later,” he said. “But my bro was out here. Caesar. You gettin’ the idea my mama liked Roman history? Anyway, I spent my first year in L.A. sleeping on the couch in Caesar’s downtown loft.”

  “How’d he die?” she asked.

  “He was an innocent. Couldn’t tell the scumbags from the good guys. Wound up on crack.”

  He looked down at the tablecloth, lost in some private memory.

  Nikki felt her heart opening up to him. “It’s getting late,” she said.

  During the drive to Ladera Heights, they communicated mainly in silence, he glancing her way from time to time, knowing her eyes were on him. “I definitely get the feeling we’re starting something here, Red,” he said.

  She had that same feeling. It scared her.

  As they strolled to her front door, they heard Bird inside galumphing across the living room to greet them. Virgil stopped Nikki and drew her to him. When they kissed, she felt like Sleeping Beauty. Sexually speaking, she’d been asleep for so long the intoxication of a new romance was waking up her body.

  But as good as she felt, hot from the kiss and pleasantly woozy from drink, she didn’t want to give it up just then. Not on the first date with this reckless wildman. That’s why she’d left the bunny slippers out, why she hadn’t bothered to clean up the bedroom. Of course, she could run in there and fix it up in seconds .. . No! I don’t really know this man. And as good as his body feels next to mine, and it does feel good...

  With some reluctance, she pulled away from him.

  He stared at her in surprise.

  “Time to say good night, Virgil.”

  “Seemed to me that that kiss was saying ‘Come on in, Virgil.’ ”

  “Then I guess I should have saved it for next time.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “That’d be—”

  She was interrupted by the roar of a souped-up engine. The Chevy they’d been chasing earlier rounded the corner and screeched to halt beside Virgil’s T-Bird. Inside the house, the big dog sensed conflict and began to bark.

  Virgil ran down the walk, drawing his gun. The driver’s widow descended and the boy behind the wheel tossed a beer bottle that broke at the detective’s feet. Then the Chevy spun away, leaving rubber streaks along the otherwise spotless street.

  By the time Nikki reached Virgil, the car was long gone.

  “You were gonna shoot ’em for throwing bottles?” she asked.

  Virgil looked at the gun in his hand and smiled, putting it away. “See, Red. You’ve been a good influence on me. I didn’t even pull the trigger once.”

  “Any of that broken glass catch you?” she asked.

  “Naw.” He shook his head in wonder. “It just keeps get-tin’ worse. Kids so crazy, if you don’t roll over when they first mess with you, they spend the whole night following you around, tryin’ to get even.”

  “That how you see it?”

  He frowned. “Yeah. You got other ideas?”

  “They went to a whole lot of trouble. Laid in wait to trail us to the restaurant, then here. Just because you chased them on the freeway?”

  “Why else?”

  “Maybe they recognized you. Or me.”

  “Ahhh. I see what you’re gettin’ at.” He smiled. “This is the price I pay for going out with a celebrity who’s a figure of controversy.”

  “You can be an idiot,” she said. “A sweet idiot.” She kissed his cheek. “Try to stay out of trouble on your way home.”

  Watching him drive away, she doubted he was taking the incident as lightly as it seemed. She wasn’t taking it lightly at all. She gave the street a wary scan, then stepped around the shards of broken bottle and went into the house to calm Bird down. The glass cleanup could wait until morning.

 
TWENTY-NINE

  Jamal Deschamps woke up Friday morning to the smell of coffee. He didn’t care for brew, didn’t like the taste of it, but the odor was definitely def. He smacked his lips a couple times to break up the sleep dust, then let himself slowly drift to the surface of consciousness. He opened his eyes and saw two dudes parked near his bed, quietly sipping from white cups.

  He was propped up. The nurse, a horsey-looking sister with a lot of miles on her, had rigged some kind of pillow thing to take most of the pressure off his back wound. But he could feel the deep cut throbbing away. The sutured slash across his leg was singing a little pain song, too.

  Medication time.

  “One of you guys reach the buzzer for the nurse?” he asked.

  Jesse Fallon, who was nearer the hanging buzzer, gave it a squeeze.

  “Nice of you to come visit, Mr. Fallon,” Jamal said. “Been here long?”

  “Just long enough to enjoy a cup of coffee. Care for one?”

  “Nope. I get my breakfast later.”

  “They treating you well?” Fallon asked.

  “It’s okay. Who’s your shadow?”

  The man sitting on Fallon’s left was of medium height, just a bit on the skinny side, in his forties, maybe, with the goofiest comb-over Jamal had ever seen on a white guy. It sorta swirled around the man’s dome without doing much for the bald center.

  “This is Ernest Jolley,” Fallon told him. “He’s going to be handling your suit against the Los Angeles Police Department, the district attorney’s office, and the City of Los Angeles.”

  “Since when did I decide to sue City Hall?” Jamal asked.

  “We’ll ask for ten mil. I think we can expect a settlement of upwards of two,” Jolley said. He was a very pale man with blunt features and something that might have been a strawberry rash on his right cheek.

  Jamal turned to Fallon. “I don’t get it.”

  “Simple business,” Fallon said. “In today’s market, when someone makes a mistake, they pay for it. Arresting you was a mistake.”

  “Two million, huh?”

  “At the very least.”

  “How do we split that?” Jamal asked.

  Fallon seemed to find the question amusing. “Sixty forty,” he said.

  “I suppose I know who gets the forty,” Jamal said. “Let’s see, forty percent of two million dollars is...”

  “A good day’s work,” Fallon assured him.

  THIRTY

  By ten-fifteen that day, Goodman and Morales were in Halyard & Company Fine Jewelers, standing at the rear of the main showroom with the store’s manager, Leland Petit, a rangy fellow with a deep tan who resembled the late actor Rock Hudson during his healthier days. He glanced at the ring that Goodman had just handed him, then returned it, saying, with a surprising amount of sincerity, “I wish I could help you, but it’s store policy not to give out information about our customers.”

  Standing just a few yards away, his officious assistant flashed a triumphant smile.

  “Then the ring does belong to one of your customers?” Goodman asked.

  Petit grinned good-naturedly. “I don’t believe I said precisely that.”

  Goodman was conscious of Morales shifting his feet impatiently beside him, and he was getting a little annoyed, himself. “We really didn’t come here to banter, Mr. Petit,” he said. “We’re investigating a murder and we feel you have information we need. Now, we can go into your office and have a chat and then be out of your hair in ten or fifteen minutes. Or we can insist you come down to where we work.”

  Petit lost maybe a fraction of his charm and said, “I don’t imagine Mr. Halyard would expect me to abide by his policy if it meant breaking the law. So if you are legally empowered to request my assistance...”

  “We are.”

  “You have a warrant to peruse our files?”

  Goodman sighed and turned to his partner.

  The previous evening, when Morales had gone to Ray Wise with a request for a warrant, the head D.D.A. had shined him on. “Don’t worry. Halyard’s will cooperate.” Right. Well, he knew how to salvage the situation. “Hey, Wha’s yo’ problem, man?” he shouted at Petit, loud enough to be heard by every customer on the store’s ground level and possibly on the floor above, too. “You tryin’ to interfere in a murder investigation?”

  Petit paled under his tan, but he stayed controlled. Facing the room, he calmly addressed his customers, “Just a little misunderstanding.”

  To the detectives, he said, “Gentlemen, will you follow me?”

  As they passed the somewhat shocked assistant manager, Morales puckered his lips and blew her a kiss.

  Petit’s office was small but elegantly furnished, with a private display counter for special customers.

  “You want to look at the ring again, Mr. Petit?” Goodman asked.

  “I know the piece. It was commissioned through our store.”

  “The work of Emilio Rodriguez, Jr., right?” Goodman said, and was immediately annoyed with himself for letting an asshole like Petit push him into showboating.

  Not that the store manager was impressed by his knowledge. “Young Emilio created the ring,” he said.

  “For Madeleine Gray?”

  Petit’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “That’s the murder you’re investigating?”

  “Not for Madeleine Gray, then,” Goodman said. He was definitely losing it, leaping to the wrong conclusion and telling this guy too much.

  “Ms. Gray was a customer,” Petit said, apparently perplexed. “But that ring...I know of no connection...”

  “Just tell us what you do know about the ring.”

  Petit looked from Goodman to Morales, who was scratching his balls while studying a silver urn resting on black velvet. “The ring,” he said, a bit dazed, “was created for Mr. John Willins. He requested the band be both gold and platinum, symbolizing the recording industry’s highest accolades.”

  “Willins makes records?” Goodman asked.

  Petit nodded. “Mr. Willins owns Monitor Records.”

  “Got an address for him?”

  Some snootiness returned to Petit’s demeanor. “You’ve probably seen the building. It occupies a full block on Sunset with a huge monitor beacon at its top.”

  Shit, Goodman thought. That Monitor Records.

  “I meant a home address,” he said lamely.

  “I’ll see.” Petit sat down at an antique desk that held a small black laptop computer. He touched a few buttons on the machine’s keyboard.

  “Did this Willins guy say who the ring was for?”

  “I assumed for his wife. It was sized for her. He gave it to Madeleine Gray?”

  “We don’t know that,” Goodman said.

  Petit shook his head in amazement. “The man’s married to Dyana Cooper and he’s buying a ring for Madeleine Gray?”

  Dyana Cooper! Jesus. Even Goodman, who hadn’t been to a movie in ten years or purchased a cassette in twenty, recognized the name. “We don’t know who he bought the ring for,” he repeated. The idea of a celebrity of Dyana Cooper’s international stature suddenly becoming part of the Gray investigation sent a chill down his spine.

  Petit frowned at the computer monitor. “I’m afraid all we have is the billing address, which is his office on Sunset.” He stood up, shaking his head. “John Willins and Madeleine Gray,” he said, mainly to himself.

  “Listen to me, Mr. Petit. We haven’t determined the significance of the ring, if any,” Goodman said. “So I’d stay off the phone to the Enquirer for a while.”

  Petit straightened, and his handsome face showed just a hint of anger. Goodman thought that was about as much as it ever would show. “Is there anything else I can do for you?” the store manager asked.

  “How much for this silver thing?” Morales asked, pointing at the urn.

  “Nine thousand dollars,” Petit replied.

  “Nine thou . . .” Morales’ face broke into a wide grin. “You’re shittin’ me,
right?”

  Petit solemnly assured the detective that he wasn’t shitting him.

  Willins was gone for the weekend.

  The receptionist, a spectacular blond wearing wraparound eyeglasses with frames that matched her neon lime jumpsuit, referred the two detectives to his personal assistant, a slightly more subdued though no less attractive African-American in an off-white power ensemble. She listened to their request and excused herself for a minute or two, returning with the news that Mr. Willins would be tied up until two, but would be expecting them at that time at his home in the Pacific Palisades. She even offered to draw them a map to help them find the place.

  “Map? Doan need no stinking map,” Morales said, imitating one of his favorite movie characters.

  “Ignore him,” Goodman said. “We’ll take all the help we can get.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  So you seeing this Virgil again tonight, huh?” Loreen

  asked during their daily phone call. “Big Friday night date.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Go for it, girl. Do not stop and think. You do entirely too much stopping and thinking.”

  A clerk appeared at the door to Nikki’s office, waving a pink message slip. Detective Goodman wanted her to call him immediately. “Gotta run,” Nikki said to Loreen. “You sure you don’t mind dropping by the house tonight to feed Bird for me?”

  “Anything in the name of love,” Loreen said. “I’m expecting a full report later about how things go. You know how I live for these secondhand turn-ons.”

  When Nikki entered the Major Crimes bullpen at Parker Center, Virgil was the first person she saw. The outfit he was wearing was a far cry from his date attire—funky, baggy Levis and a sweat-stained black T-shirt. He was at the rear of the busy room, studying game-plan squiggles on a blackboard with a white detective with a mop of red hair who, judging by his similarly grimy duds, was probably his partner.