Vigilante

by Stephen J. Cannell

  It was certainly conceivable that he or his wife could have been involved in Hannah’s death. I could easily see a chain of events where Stephanie confronted Nurse Trumbull in that hospital ER, threatening her over the affair with her husband, and then, when they didn’t break it off, killing her.

  It was also possible that an argument had developed between Nurse Trumbull and Lester over his refusal to leave his wife. He could have been the one who killed Hannah. Both scenarios tracked. I decided this was probably the right moment to confront him after all. I took my shot.

  “You used to date an open homicide named Hannah Trumbull back in 2006,” I said. “You and Stephanie were married when Hannah was murdered. That puts you on a very short list of suspects, along with your wife. Nash knows about it. He’s going to be using this stuff on his show. My suggestion is you should tell me what went down with Hannah. You’ll get a better hearing with me than with him.”

  Lester didn’t even flinch.

  “Just remember who you’re fucking with,” he said in that menacing whispery growl. Then he turned, got back inside the Navigator, started the engine, and sped away.

  The morning was getting off to a bad start.

  CHAPTER

  34

  The HMS Bounty was moored beside the big dock in front of Fisherman’s Village in Marina del Rey. Its 215-foot masts towered above the marina. I’d read up on it before driving over. It was an exact copy of the original HMS Bounty, launched in London in 1787. Since then several replicas had been commissioned. This particular ship was built in Nova Scotia in 1960 for the Marlon Brando MGM movie Mutiny on the Bounty.

  Green and brown paint glistened brightly on her hull and reflected the morning sunshine bouncing off the water, lapping against her wide beam. The massive vessel was pulling against half a dozen two-inch-thick mooring lines in the brisk breeze, causing the ropes to creak loudly.

  I stopped my Acura in front of a red velvet rope cordoning off the gangplank and gave my car to the valet.

  Nix Nash was greeting guests, standing in front of a banner that said:

  WELCOME TO V-TV SEASON THREE

  He was decked out in British yacht attire—white pants and a blue blazer that had an ornate pocket crest of some kind. Under the jacket he wore a crisp white shirt with a three-inch-tall Tony Curtis collar. As I walked up, a warm smile broke wide on Nash’s cherubic face.

  “Didn’t figure you’d come,” he said, happily clasping my hand in both of his.

  “How could I pass up a swell invite like this?” I replied, matching his phony delight.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw my Acura being pulled off by a valet in a red coat, and I wondered how many bugs would be installed while I was out at sea. I would have to make an appointment at the Scientific Investigations Division to have the car electronically swept when I got back.

  “We’re casting off in about ten minutes,” Nash was saying. “Go aboard and get yourself a drink.”

  “This is some boat,” I said, admiring the vessel.

  “Not a boat, it’s a ship. Actually, as you’ll come to see, the HMS Bounty is sort of a metaphor for my life’s work.” A statement that made no sense to me at all. “I went to a good deal of trouble to get it up here for this party. It usually berths in San Diego. See you aboard.”

  He turned to greet other arriving guests as I climbed the gangplank and stepped onto the crowned wooden deck. There was a man standing amidships wearing a period British naval officer’s uniform and giving out information about the Bounty to a crowd of partiers.

  I hovered in the back of the group and listened for a minute as he said, “She’s a hundred-twenty-feet long at the waterline and one-eighty at the rail, so you can see there’s a nice overhang, both fore and aft. This vessel has four hundred thousand board feet of lumber and ten miles of rigging on two masts. She weighs slightly more than five hundred displaced tons. There are four carriage cannons, two on each side. Each cannon has been decommissioned, but they once fired four-pound lead balls.”

  He went on, but I wasn’t here for a lesson on old sailing ships of the Crown and stepped away to wander the deck and check out my fellow guests. It was a well-dressed, affluent crowd with a definite Hollywood tilt. I recognized the usual smattering of B-list celebrities and reality-show stars. Most of the women were young and dressed to distress. A four-piece string quartet was playing period chamber music on the fantail. Two bars set up on the main deck were doing a brisk business. A sign on a nearby easel announced their specialty was the Bounty mai tai, made with actual grog. Most everybody was trying one. So far, I estimated at least a hundred people were onboard.

  I stepped up to the bar and ordered a bottled water. I intended to keep my wits about me for this cruise.

  “You’d be in the category of last person on earth I’d expect to see here,” a man’s voice said.

  I turned to see Frank Palgrave standing behind me, holding a mai tai, wearing white slacks and an aqua-colored Palm Springs–type shirt. A red sweater was tied jauntily around his neck. Back when I knew him, this kind of screwy Troy Donahue look would have never been a choice. In the intervening years Palgrave obviously had experienced a big emotional refit of some kind. In this glitzy setting, in my beige-on-beige getup I was beginning to feel like a smudge of dirt on polished glass.

  “Nash invited me. Some bash. He sure knows a lot of rich, flashy people,” I said, indicating the crowd.

  “He practiced here for six years. Hard not to get connected when you have a big, exciting personality like his.”

  “And these swells don’t mind that he went to prison for embezzlement,” I said.

  “Only makes his star shine brighter,” Palgrave said, smiling. “Fantasies of shower rape—it’s a secret Hollywood turn-on.”

  We stood for a moment, neither quite sure how to continue.

  “So Frank, what’s really going on here?” I finally said, trying to get something going.

  “In what context?”

  “Pick the context. You were a good cop once. Let’s start with what you’re doing working for this police saboteur?”

  He hesitated, looked around, then pulled me away from the group at the bar and led me over to a vacant spot by the rail. He turned his back to the water so he could keep an eye on the crowd over my shoulder as he spoke.

  “I work for him ’cause I got this troublesome little problem I haven’t been able to solve,” he began.

  “What’s that?”

  “I gotta eat to say alive.”

  “You have a pension.”

  “My ex-wife has my pension. After the divorce, all I ended up with is a shack so far out in the West Valley even meth cookers won’t go there.”

  “So you sold out to this cop hater?”

  He took a moment and then leaned in closer. “Listen, once you get past all the obvious bullshit, Nix isn’t such a bad guy.”

  I started to speak, but Palgrave held up his hand.

  “I know; I know. It looks bad on TV, but honestly, Shane, that Atlanta case was being screwed up. Nix actually performed a service there. Those APD cops were working it like a couple of Alzheimer’s patients. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they missed. That schizoid bum Nix found was crazy as a shit-house rat. He had a yellow sheet full of violent priors and he’d been wandering around in Piedmont Park for six months threatening people. Twice he attacked Atlanta PD patrol officers when they were called to get him to stop sleeping in the public toilet. Cole and Baron walked right past him and he was standing in plain view the whole time.”

  “I talked to Cole. He says he’s not sure Fuzzy was the doer.”

  “Right. Fuzzy. Those two imbeciles couldn’t even put a real name on him. Nash had to do that too. Before we aired, we did a deep background, found out the guy was named Joffa Hill.” Palgrave smiled. “Just another example of the slipshod fast-food way those two were working the case. God knows how many girls’ lives were saved because of Nix, and all Cole and Baron could do
was bitch about it.”

  “So, Nix Nash is straight and you’re happy to be working for him.”

  “I’d rather be playing golf, but since I shank every other shot, my game won’t support me. As far as private gigs go, this one ain’t half-bad. Give him a chance. You might be surprised.”

  Half an hour later, the mooring lines were thrown from the dock up to the deck crew, all of whom wore British navy uniforms, circa 1800. Then with two 375-horsepower John Deere diesel engines chugging stoutly beneath us, the magnificent vessel motored out of Marina del Rey at a stately four knots. We turned south, passing the Coast Guard station, then the UCLA Marine Aquatic Center, before finally clearing the breakwater and heading into open water.

  I watched as the crew scaled rope ladders and unfurled the topsails on both masts. With 20 percent of the canvas up, you could feel the wind begin to take the boat, heeling it over slightly as we continued out.

  I was here to collect intel, so I went looking for former FBI agent J. J. Blunt, Judge Web Russell, or Marcia Breen.

  I found Marcia in the middle of a group of people. She spotted me and winked. A few minutes later she found a way to break free and joined me by the rail.

  “You look really great,” she said. “It’s nice to see a little beige cotton mixed in with all these sequins.”

  “My sparkle comes from inside.” I smiled and said, “You look pretty great yourself.”

  She nodded demurely to accept my compliment. “So how’s the marriage going?” Holding my gaze longer than was necessary. “That working out like you wanted?”

  “It’s great. We’re very happy.”

  “As an old friend, I guess I should be glad,” she answered. “Unfortunately, I’m not.”

  “We had our shot, Marcia. It didn’t gel. We’ve both moved on. Besides, when I was at the studio, I saw the way Nix looked at you.”

  “The things some of us are willing to do for what’s left of our careers.” She smiled ruefully, then turned her gaze toward Nash, who was mingling with guests about twenty feet away on the far side of the deck.

  “We won’t be able to talk for long because Nix doesn’t quite trust me with you,” she said. “He knows we used to date. He’s afraid I might get all giggly and accidentally let a few show secrets slip. You, on the other hand, know what a hard-ass I can be, so that’s never gonna happen.” She toyed with the plastic swizzle stick in her drink.

  “Frank thinks Nash is a good guy,” I prodded.

  She was silent for a few seconds. “I guess we all see what we want to.” Then she leaned slightly closer and lowered her voice: “Be very careful, Shane.”

  “You want to give me something a little more definitive?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just can’t. If you knew why, you’d understand. All I can tell you is watch your back, ’cause what’s coming will probably hit you hard.”

  “There you are,” Nix Nash enthused as he moved up.

  Now that we were at sea, he had added a white captain’s hat with gold braid on the visor. The snazzy lid was taking his already over-the-top costume to the edge of comedy. I would have said it made him look ridiculous, but I’ve learned any committed adversary, even one wearing a tutu, should command your complete undivided attention.

  He looked at Marcia and said, “Would you excuse us, honey?”

  “Of course,” she said brightly. “I was just on my way to talk to Brad and Larry about the script for next week’s show.” She smiled at me again and left.

  “You have scripts?” I asked, in mock surprise.

  Nash was shorter now because he was wearing boat shoes, not risking the three-inch Cuban heels on this rolling deck. He laughed good-naturedly and said, “I’m going to view your being here as a hopeful sign, Shane. Come on; I want to introduce you to a new, potentially exciting concept.”

  I walked with him across the deck, then followed him down a narrow ladder to the crew quarters below.

  I had no idea where we were going or what would happen next.

  CHAPTER

  35

  Nash led me aft through a dim, lamp-lit corridor to the stern area and stopped in front of a large mahogany door. The gentle roll of the ship was pleasant as we crossed the mostly calm bay outside the jetty. I could hear the faint sounds of laughter along with the string quartet on the fantail directly above us. Nix took out a key to the captain’s quarters.

  “I’ve kept this cabin off-limits,” he said as he worked a key into the lock. “Because of who I’ve become, I’ve found of late I need to have my chances to get away, create some distance between myself and the fawning public.”

  Nothing too humble there.

  We stepped inside; then he closed the door and turned the latch. The cabin was richly appointed in red leather with plenty of teak and oak. Across the entire stern was a row of mutton-bar windows, which provided light while affording a view of the frothy white wake stretching out behind us as we rolled along.

  “Drink?” Nash asked, smiling congenially.

  By way of an answer, I held up my bottle of water.

  “Not taking any chances, are you?”

  “You go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll use any advantage I can get.”

  He poured himself a drink from a bar setup on the port side of the room while I checked out the rest of the magnificent cabin. The area ran the entire width of the ship and included a large table and seating, which I guess was designed to duplicate the captain’s mess where William Bligh entertained fellow officers while at sea.

  Nash turned, drink now in hand, and studied me carefully. “You’re making a huge mistake not joining up with us,” he said. “We’ve got a good team.”

  “I’m sort of a loner.”

  “I don’t mind loners. I’m sort of one myself. There’re all kinds of ways to fight this fight, Shane. For instance, I’m no longer a cop or a lawyer, but right now I’m making an even bigger contribution to the legal system than ever before. If you join me you can also be more effective. We have right on our side and we have a powerful electronic megaphone, so people actually hear what we say. It’s important work. I won’t keep asking. This is sort of it. Last call.”

  The ship lurched in a trough. I was braced, but Nix grabbed for the edge of the captain’s table. He regained his balance as the ship steadied its roll.

  “Was this last-call concept the exciting idea you wanted to expose me to?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. He took a moment to study me. “I wanted to expose you to a negative civic phenomenon, which you’ve been participating in. I’m going to try to get you to stop. It’s something called the broken-window theory. Ever heard of it?”

  “Never.”

  “Pretty simple, really. All it says is, in troubled neighborhoods when a window gets broken you must fix it immediately, because when people see broken windows they tend to lose hope and that loss of hope causes anger and anger causes more broken windows. I know you see me as some sort of anti-police spokesperson, but all I’m doing is going around fixing broken windows.”

  “So am I.”

  “Not so. You’re actually the guy breaking them. Arresting the Sanchezes was a broken window. Hannah Trumbull’s blown murder investigation, another.”

  “Look, Nix, in the interest of not spoiling your premiere party, I don’t want to get into that whole Edwin Chavaria snipe hunt. Let’s just leave that and move on.” He held my gaze, looked speculative for a moment, and said nothing.

  “I spent some time reading about you on the Internet,” I continued. “Made some calls to departments in Atlanta and Florida. I’m trying to understand why you have such a hard-on for cops. That’s the primary reason I accepted this invitation.”

  “And what did you learn?” he said, his slightly superior smile in place, never taking his eyes off me.

  “Getting thrown off the Florida Marine Patrol over losing that serial killer might explain some of it. At least that’s wha
t the Marine Patrol cops in Dade County think. However, my bet is there’s a lot more than just that going on.”

  “Lee Bob Batiste was a mistake,” he said. “I don’t make many, but that was a big one. Borrowing money from my law firm and not correctly accounting for it was another. I paid my debt to society on the so-called embezzlement charge and I count Lee Bob as an important lesson learned.”

  “That swamp rat kills nine people in the Everglades, he’s still walking free because you blew up the case, and you think it’s an important lesson learned? You’re going kind of easy on yourself there, don’t you think?”

  He frowned, then took a minute to gather his thoughts. “Since you seem so interested in that chapter of my life you might as well hear the real facts.” He sounded frustrated now, even annoyed.

  “Bobby Batiste was illiterate and semi-educated. He barely spoke English. He was Cajun, raised in the Louisiana swamp, but he moved to Florida in the eighties. The guy was so loony he lived up in a giant cypress tree on the west side of the ’Glades. He ended up killing campers who crossed the imaginary boundaries of an imaginary empire he thought he ruled. He drew lines of death for miles around his tree house. Anybody who wandered in there got killed. He was a scavenger who’d steal food out of his victims’ backpacks and turn it into Cajun dishes over their own campfires. He had this strange dream of creating a kingdom in the swamp where he would bring kidnapped women to help him repopulate. He had actually already started building his capital city using money and credit cards he took off the dead bodies.”

  Nash set his drink down before he said, “I wanted that collar. I wanted the killings to stop. I arrested him and had him in cuffs. He had some of the victims’ DLs in his wallet; I got a little anxious and started asking questions. I never thought Bobby would just flat out confess to nine murders right when I grabbed him, but that’s what he did. He thought he was a demonic angel, immune from human prosecution. I’d never seen that kind of deep psychotic illness before, so yeah, I learned a big lesson there. Before I end my time on earth, I intend to fully atone for that mistake.”