The Lost Witness
Page 11
16
Nathan G. Cava strode down the long row of cars in his suit and tie, worrying that maybe Vinny Bing the Cadillac King had been the wrong choice in a dealership. He could feel a punk salesman tagging along, nipping at his ankles like a stray dog. And something was going on in the main showroom. He hadn’t been inside yet, but he could see some sort of commotion through the glass and sensed that there was a problem.
He glanced back at the salesman—the mealymouthed man jabbering away on autopilot—and regretted giving the idiot his name.
He had chosen Vinny Bing’s dealership because it was on the south side of town. Poor people lived here, and he hoped that he might get a better deal. He already knew which car he wanted. An SRX Crossover. Not as big as his beloved Hummer, but enough car to feel at home in. He particularly liked the size of the sunroof. The retractable glass extended from front to back, taking up most of the roof of the car. Cava thought it might come in handy for surveillance work. Still, he would be sorry to see the Hummer go. It was almost new, and he liked the way it drove. The fact that people got out of his way and left him an open road. Even those creeps in their BMWs.
Cava continued his march down the aisle, ignoring the salesman. He knew the car he wanted, but couldn’t decide on the color. In the best of all worlds he would have chosen black. But for someone in his line of work, he thought that it might be safer to go with something less stark. Something that would blend a little better in the neighborhood. He had narrowed his choice down to two, and as he continued walking, he spotted them parked side by side.
He stopped and gave the two cars a long look, then turned to the salesman and waved his hand in a call for immediate silence.
“What color is that car?” he asked.
“Oh, you’ve picked a good one, sir. That’s an SRX, and it’s priced just right. It’s on sale today. If you buy it in the next hour you’ll save even more.”
“What color is it?”
“We call that one ‘Light Platinum.’ And it’s the best.”
Cava pointed to the second car. “What color’s that one?”
“That’s ‘Radiant Bronze.’ You couldn’t make a better choice, Mr. Cava. It’s the best.”
“How can two cars be the best?”
“They’re all the best. That’s all we sell here. Just name your price and I’ll run it by Vinny—simple as that. Want the keys? Let’s test her out.”
Cava turned and looked down at the salesman. He was dressed in a ratty suit and his wrinkled shirt needed a hot iron.
“I don’t want a test drive. I want the car and I want it in Radiant Bronze. Now, go get Vinny.”
“We need to do this inside, Mr. Cava. We’ve got a deal room.”
Cava paused a moment. He didn’t know what a “deal room” was.
“I’m okay with that,” he said finally. “But I don’t work with a translator. If you want the deal, bring Vinny.”
“Okay, okay. But don’t come in until I give you the signal.”
The man winked at him, then cantered ahead and disappeared into the showroom. Cava didn’t get it. But then, he hadn’t understood anything the man had been saying for the past ten minutes.
He started walking toward the showroom, worrying again. Thinking that maybe he should head back to the Hummer and bolt. Take his chances that he wouldn’t get stopped. The witness probably saw his face and knew that he drove a Hummer, but that’s as far as it would go. No one had his plate numbers because he had taken the precaution of lifting a temporary set from the C Lot over at Los Angeles International Airport earlier that night, then switched back.
He could split right now and take his chances. But was it worth the risk?
He held out his hands and realized that they were trembling. Not enough that anyone would notice, but not rock steady, either. Not kill steady. He heard the salesman call out his name and looked up.
The little guy was holding the showroom door open and waving at him. Cava guessed that this was the signal.
He took a deep breath and stepped through the door. Heard Ray Charles singing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” Saw the bright lights hanging from the ceiling, and a man moving in from the right with a video camera. A second camera was pointed across the room at a man with a grotesque smile slowly descending a staircase from the management offices on the second floor.
Cava tried to keep cool and focused in spite of the confusion. The man making his runway entrance down the stairs was wearing some sort of weird costume. At first, Cava thought that he might be dressed up as Santa Claus or maybe even the Burger King. But after a while he put the scene together with the cameras and music and decided that the bizarre-looking jerk was just Vinny Bing, the Cadillac King.
Cava turned to the camera in his face and covered the lens with his right hand. When the cameraman tried to pull away, he tightened his grip on the lens. Then, a kid in jeans and a T-shirt ran over and started hyperventilating in his ear.
“Be cool, man. You’re on the show.”
“What show?”
“Vinny’s show. We’re shooting the second season. We’re on cable TV, man.”
Cava met the prick’s eyes, ready to snap the lens off the camera. “This is live?”
“No. It won’t be on until next year. The season starts in January. Not this coming January, the next one. If you wanna make the cut, you gotta be cool. You cool?”
Cava’s eyes swept across the showroom as he thought it over. He spotted the tent pitched in the middle of the floor—the neon sign that read let’s do da deal blinking over the entrance. The king was still working that staircase, his smile growing from cheek to cheek with each new step. A year from now and Cava would be the invisible man living thousands of miles away. No one would be looking for him anymore. Still, he wondered if this might not be a hallucination, or even a side effect from taking that sleeping pill last night and waking up too soon. Either way, unloading the Hummer had become a fucking nightmare.
“I’m cool,” he said.
“Then let go of the camera and shake Vinny’s hand.”
Cava released his grip, ignoring the angry look on the cameraman’s face. After another deep breath, he crossed the showroom floor. The king had hit ground level and was approaching him now. As Cava moved closer, he noticed the letters VB dangling from the king’s necklace. The letters were two inches high and encrusted with diamonds. The king extended a weak hand and Cava shook it.
“My name’s Vinny Bing, the Cadillac King. I heard you want an SRX Crossover in Radiant Bronze.” The king turned his head, looked into the camera, and flashed a TV smile. “Let’s do da deal.”
People started clapping. Salesmen standing at their desks and the video crew. Cava didn’t say anything, noting the cheap rings on Bing’s fingers and sizing up the man as they entered the deal tent. That speck of ketchup on the side of his mouth filled out the profile pretty good. His read was so clear that it felt like it came right out of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Vinny Bing was an overweight, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing motherfucker in his early thirties. A first citizen from Generation Over and Out. Generation Done. One of the eighty percent crew who had given up the use of utensils and ate all three meals with their hands. Given up reading in favor of watching and consuming until their brains turned into guacamole and a bowl of broken tortilla chips with too much salt.
Both video cameras followed them into the tent, along with a short, round man holding a boom mike. Bing moved behind the desk and sat down on what looked like a toy throne. Then the irritating salesman who had been hounding Cava ran in and handed Bing a spec sheet on the car.
“Where we at?” Bing said, smacking his lips. “Whatta we gots?”
Cava watched the king’s eyes glide over his name on the sheet of paper. After a moment, he tossed it aside, pulled his pad and pen closer, and batted his eyes at the camera like he was ready to do big business.
“Okay,” he said. “Customer Cava wants the SRX Crossover in Rad
iant Bronze. Are we talkin’ about the V6 economy package, or the four point six Northstar V8? With the eight you get three hundred and twenty horses under the hood and feel like you’re in a rocket ship.”
“I want the rocket ship,” Cava said.
Bing smiled at the camera again. “Sweet,” he said. “I like this guy. He’s the quiet type, but I like him anyhow.”
Then Bing cupped his left hand and jotted down a number on the pad so only he and the camera could see it. He tore off the sheet, folding it over and passing it across the desk.
“Merry Christmas,” he said. “A special price ’cause you’re Vinny Bing’s special friend. And I’m gonna give you even more. Just say the word and the king throws in the Convenience Package, the Driver’s Package, even the Seating Package. I don’t care because it’s Christmas. I’m throwing it all in for free.”
Cava unfolded the paper and glanced at the secret number—well aware that the three packages went with the V8 and were part of the base price. He had test-driven the car at the auto strip in Glendale, researched the numbers on the Web, and knew exactly what Vinny Bing had paid for the car. The king was beginning to smell a lot like a grifter.
“What about the sunroof?” Cava said. “How ’bout throwing that in, too?”
Bing laughed. “That sunroof’s part of the Luxury Premium Pack. It’s an ultra-view.”
“But I thought we were friends.”
Bing paused a moment. “Your name’s Nathan, right?”
Cava nodded, his eyes pinned on the grifter. “Nathan G. Cava.”
“What’s the G stand for?”
“Good.”
“Anyone ever write a song about you?”
“Not yet.”
Bing laughed again. “Well we can still be friends, Nathan. But it’s gonna cost you an extra five K.”
Cava did the math. The package went for forty-two hundred, not 5K. The king wanted to steal another eight hundred dollars.
“What if we’re talking cash,” he said.
“Then we’re friends again, Nathan. Real good friends. Let’s do the deal while everybody’s watching. Let’s show ’em the cash.”
Unloading the Hummer had become more than just another L.A. media nightmare. It had been painful. The back-and-forth bullshit lasted for more than an hour, so long that the shake in his hands was visible now. Even the king had mentioned it when the cameras shut down.
Cava exited the Financial Services office and followed the salesman out to his Hummer so he could collect his things. He had paid the balance between the two cars in hundred-dollar bills. Although he regretted having to buy another car so soon, he could afford the additional expense. Between the cash he’d found buried in the Iraqi desert and the money he would receive from his three-part Hollywood deal, Cava would be set for life.
It would be a modest life. Not like the generals who said they were looking for Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, the ones who always knew that they weren’t there and were really searching for the man’s cash. Not like his superior officers who were loading coffin after coffin with greenbacks by the millions and shipping them home with tears of joy dripping down their cheeks. But enough to lay on a beach somewhere. Enough to keep medicated and to spend the rest of his life trying to forget old memories and create new ones.
Coronaville.
Cava hit the door locks on his key ring and walked ahead of the salesman. As he emptied the glove box into his briefcase, he tried to ignore the smell of the leather seats. Tried not to look at the teched-out dashboard and stainless-steel gear shift. All the things he loved about the car. He reached over the passenger seat and cleared out the center compartment. He worked as quickly as he could, aware that his hands were shaking so hard he came off like a drunk. When he finished, he scanned the interior and spotted his Ray-Bans clipped to the sun visor. Slipping them over his eyes, he stepped back and handed the salesman his keys.
It felt more like a funeral than anything else. Watching the little guy in the cheap suit get behind the wheel of his baby and start her up. Listening to the machine purr. Facing the reality that his road-warrior days were over.
The salesman turned to him and laughed. “Hey, this thing’s got less than seven thousand miles. How come you unloaded it?”
He called it a thing. Cava bit his lip.
“Doctor’s orders,” he said. “High blood pressure. I’m tired of people flipping me the bird.”
The salesman laughed and shot him a look like he was crazy. Then Cava snapped shut the passenger door and watched the Hummer pull off into the bright sunlight. When it disappeared behind the building, he slipped off his shades, shouldered his briefcase, and trudged back into the building. The king was making another entrance, working that staircase again. This time the victim was a sixteen-year-old girl standing beside her father. They looked like innocents. Grifter bait mesmerized by all the lights and cameras. Cava felt sorry for them.
He checked his watch. His new wheels wouldn’t be ready for another fifteen minutes. When he glanced inside the waiting room and found it empty, he walked over to the couch in front of the TV, opened his briefcase, and fished out his daily planner. Paging through the week, he made an effort to settle down and focus on his medication schedule. He kept meticulous records because he had to. He had been on the Iraqi version of the zone diet ever since he hit the desert.
Xanax in the morning, Ambien CR at night, keeps a soldier boy from climbing out of his skin.
It was the war zone diet everybody followed because you were in real deep shit and on your own. No one could tell who the enemy was and no one could escape. When he was transferred to Eastern Europe, the pills were given just as freely, no questions asked. Just a wink and a smile with a shot of water for all the good work he was doing to save the fucking sand world.
It was Saturday, December 15. According to the notation in his planner, he had popped two milligrams of Xanax he didn’t remember taking at 6:00 a.m., along with a Boniva, the once-a-month solution to maintaining strong bones he had seen advertised so often on TV. If he went by the book he’d have to wait seven to eight hours before taking another Xanax. He spent a moment looking at his hands trembling before his eyes. Then he ripped open the side pocket in his briefcase and picked through his medications. When he found the bottle of Xanax, he shook a pill onto his palm, tossed it into his mouth, and swallowed it dry.
Sometimes just taking the pill made him feel right again. Sometimes half an hour went by before the drug kicked in. He gazed around the room. The TV was switched to CNN. As his mind began to loosen up, he started thinking about Fontaine again. Once the king gave him the keys to the SRX, Cava planned on making his maiden voyage a return trip to Beverly Hills. He needed to lock in the doctor’s weekend schedule and figure out how he was going to handle things with the girlfriend and those two bodyguards around. Something quiet that no one would notice for a while. And what about the witness? Now that he’d traded in his car, should he keep the witness on the back burner or amp up his pursuit?
He looked back at the TV. When he saw a photograph of the girl he’d murdered, his mind bolted to the surface. They were running the story on CNN, but the focus seemed to be on the detective investigating the case. A woman named Lena Gamble who worked out of the Robbery-Homicide Division and solved another case last year. Apparently she was trying to locate a witness to the murder. Someone who helped but hadn’t come forward.
Cava jotted Gamble’s name down as quickly as he could, mesmerized by the sight of her. He looked at her tangled hair. Her angular face and long body. Her hips hidden beneath her clothes. The video on the screen had been taken at night with a telephoto lens eight months ago during the wildfires. Gamble was exiting a crime scene with a shotgun in her hands. Her cheekbones glistened with fresh blood spatter. But it was the determination on her face, the smoke in her dusky-blue eyes that he found so captivating. When the report cut back to the present and ended with side-by-side photographs of the victim and her
killer, he gazed at the blurred-out image of himself and realized that he wasn’t shaking anymore.
“That guy looks like a goddamn ghost,” a woman shouted.
Cava turned and found the woman sitting in a chair by the coffeemaker and donut tray. She was an older woman. The kind you see with a cigarette in her mouth working the slots in Vegas. He hadn’t heard her enter the room. She looked back at the TV and squinted through her glasses.
“I can’t tell who he is,” she went on. “But I’d bet the house he’s an ugly son-of-bitch.”
Cava gave her a long look, then started laughing. He was feeling good again. Right again. Thanking the gods of modern medicine.
“You got that right, lady. I’ll bet that guy’s ugly as sin …”
17
Lena hit Rhodes’s speed-dial number on her cell as she pulled out of the lot. After two rings, he picked up.
“Where are you?” he said.
“Just leaving the bank. Did Barrera make it in?”
“No, but Klinger’s here.”
She shrugged it off. “I’ve got news,” she said. “Jane Doe made a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit six days before she was murdered.”
Rhodes didn’t say anything right away, but she could guess what he was thinking. Fifty thousand dollars was on the table. People had been killed for a lot less.
“You think she was blackmailing Fontaine,” he said finally.
“It would explain why he lied to us.”
“It would explain a lot of things.”
She filled him in on her meeting with Steve Avadar, working her way through the victim’s weekly deposits until she reached the check from Western Union and the kid stealing money from the ATMs one small piece at a time. The kid she believed had witnessed the abduction and walked into the lobby at Parker Center to deliver the package.
“So, our witness is a thief with a guilty conscience,” Rhodes said.