This elicits an emphatic head shake. “No. It could have been Martin Kent or somebody from the MacArthur organization. I simply don’t know.”
And it’s certainly convenient that Kent and the MacArthurs are no longer alive to tell their side of the story. I turn to Rios and say, “Can you shed any light on this, Armando?”
His takes a quick glance toward Ellis. Then he looks back at me and says, “All of the arrangements were made by Mr. Kent. I don’t know where the money came from.”
And I don’t know how much Ellis is paying him to keep his mouth shut. I’m frustrated, but I try not to let it show. I turn back to Ellis and ask him about the events of Friday night and Saturday morning. He shows no signs of defensiveness when I ask him why he returned to Little Richard’s house. He says he wanted to talk about the China Basin project. He claims he was concerned about the success of the movie and the economic viability of MacArthur Films. “In all honesty,” he says, “I told young Richard that we were going to need some additional security before we were going to move forward with the deal.”
It’s the second time he’s used the phrase, “In all honesty” in the last five minutes. “What did you ask for?”
“A first priority deed of trust on MacArthur Cellars.”
This is consistent with Little Richard’s description of their conversation. I ask him why he talked to Little Richard instead of his father.
“He was more businesslike and reasonable.” He gives me a quick wink and says, “And more pliable. I wanted to warm him up to the idea before I talked to his father.”
I ask him about Little Richard’s reaction.
“He was against it. Then I told him I wanted to talk to his father.”
“Which you did a short time later.”
“Yes.”
“What was his father’s response?”
“He agreed to it. We shook hands. We had a deal. In all honesty, I was surprised.”
There’s that phrase again. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. I asked young Richard to call me a cab. He called his assistant instead.”
“Eve?”
“Yes. She drove me back to the Ritz.” He assures us that Big Dick was very much alive when Eve came to pick him up.
I ask him, “Who was there when you left?”
“Young Richard and Martin Kent.” He pretends to ponder for a moment. Then he adds, “I presume Angelina was upstairs.”
She can’t corroborate any of this. I ask, “How did Kent and Little Richard react to the new deal?”
“Kent was irate because we told him he wasn’t going to receive the bonus he had expected. Young Richard was even angrier. He thought his father was putting his family’s most valuable asset at risk. You know how families can be. They were out on the balcony screaming at each other as I was leaving.”
That might explain the shouting that Robert Neils heard from his bedroom. I ask him what he thought really happened on Saturday morning.
“I don’t know, Mr. Daley. I do know that Angelina, young Richard and Marty Kent were all very upset at Dick.”
# # #
Three a.m. We’ve regrouped upstairs in our suite. Rolanda is sitting on the couch. Pete is standing by the windows. Armando Rios is sitting in the armchair.
Rolanda is seething. “Ellis gave us nothing on the payoffs,” she says. “He constructed a perfect alibi for himself. Now I understand why he wanted to talk to us. He was setting us up. He’s pointed the finger at Angel. If that doesn’t work, he can still point the finger at MacArthur’s son and Marty Kent. There’s nobody else around to corroborate his story.”
I look at Rios and say, “Is there anything you can give us? Is there any way we can trace the money?”
Rios stares out the window for a moment. His jacket is off and his tie is loosened. Even political operatives look ragged at this hour. He addresses Rolanda. “You and your father are no longer in any danger. You will not be followed. You will not be intimidated. Your father’s market will not be vandalized. Nobody else in our community will be harmed.”
Rolanda remains skeptical. “How do you know?”
Rios’s expression takes on a cast of death-like seriousness. “You have my word.”
“How do we know it’s good?”
Rios folds his arms and says, “You must trust me.”
Rolanda ponders for a moment, then nods. I try in vain to pry additional information out of Rios, who doesn’t budge. We’ll never know what deal he made with Ellis to ensure that Tony and Rolanda won’t be harassed. We won’t find out how much money, if any, changed hands. They’ll never be able to trace it. I hope Dennis Alvarez will be able to find some evidence that might implicate Ellis or Rios in the payoff scheme, but I’ll bet he won’t. We have what we want for Tony and Rolanda. That’s enough. Dennis Alvarez can chase Carl Ellis and Armando Rios.
# # #
I’m dozing off a few minutes after four when the phone rings. For an instant, I think I’m dreaming. Then I recognize Rosie’s voice. “How soon can you get to L.A.?” she asks.
“We can probably catch a plane in a few hours. Why?”
“Kaela Joy called. Eve flew down to L.A.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she know where Eve is staying?”
“The Beverly Hills Hotel.”
How elegant. “We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
She tells me she’s on her way to the airport. She says, “I’ll meet you there.”
I realize Pete’s standing in my doorway. “Who?” he asks.
“Rosie.” I tell him Eve’s in L.A. “I’ll call the airline.”
“Forget it. Get us a car. It’s only three hundred miles. It’ll be faster to drive.”
*****
Chapter 45
“It’s Worth Taking a Chance”
“Death Valley National Park—85 miles.”
— Road sign on Interstate 15.
Pete’s sitting behind the wheel of our white Ford Taurus two hours later. “Beautiful, Mick,” he says.
He’s referring to the sunrise over the mountains surrounding the barren area south of Death Valley known as Devil’s Playground. The temperature is already in the low nineties. It will be a hundred and fifteen in an hour.
“Yes, it is,” I tell him. My eyes are closed. I’m leaning back in the passenger seat. The air conditioning is hitting my face. I’m trying to shut out the world until we get to L.A.
“What did you think about Carl Ellis?” he asks.
I open my eyes and say, “He’s an asshole.”
“Tell me something I didn’t know. He’s also smart. Did you believe him?”
“Parts of what he said may have had some basis in truth.”
“They can’t get anything past you, can they?”
“Nope. He only talked to us so he could spin his story. You can bet he was involved in the payoff scheme with Armando. He probably set up the fire at the liquor store. The only question is how he was involved in Big Dick’s death.”
“What makes you think he wasn’t involved in Little Richard’s death, too?”
“It was an accident.”
“So they say.”
“You think he was murdered?”
“We shouldn’t take anything for granted. There are too many coincidences. And I think Ellis’s alibi on Big Dick is too clean. He told us Angel, Little Richard and Kent were still there when he left. Angel’s already been arrested, so the cops will consider anything she says as suspect. Little Richard and Kent are dead. Unless the cops come up with some other evidence, Ellis is off the hook. End of story. They’re going to blame Angel or one of the dead guys.”
“What about Eve?”
“What about her? If anything, she corroborated Ellis’s story.”
“Maybe we should consider her as a suspect.”
“What evidence?”
I reflect for a moment and conclude there is none.
�
�I’ll tell you something else,” Pete says. “Eve and Petrillo and Ellis have this all worked out. They’ve compared stories and they’re getting ready to point the finger at somebody. I just hope for our sake it isn’t Angel.”
“You think there’s a conspiracy?”
“The timing is convenient. They’re going to release the movie and ask for approval of the China Basin project tomorrow. Do you really think it was a coincidence that Ellis agreed to see us—in fact welcomed us—in the middle of the night? Do you think it’s just coincidence that Eve flew down to L.A.? Do you think Petrillo’s PI would have told us about it if he didn’t want us to know? Grow up, Mick. The fix is in.”
He still has the instincts of a cop. “What do you think really happened?”
He sets his jaw and says, “I don’t know, but I plan to find out.”
We drive in silence for another half hour. I’m starting to doze off as we’re approaching Barstow. Pete turns to me and says, “So, let me ask you something else, Mick.”
Now what? “Shoot.”
“Who was she?”
“Who?”
“The woman you were in bed with when I called you about Marty Kent.”
Not now. “Long story. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over.”
“That was quick.”
“Yeah.”
“So who was she?”
“Nobody you know.”
“Come on, Mick.”
“Somebody I shouldn’t have been seeing in the first place.”
“You should stay away from married women, Mick.”
“She isn’t married.”
He chuckles and says, “How about a hint?”
“Nope.”
He sounds like Grace when he says, “Pretty please? I won’t tell anyone.”
He isn’t going to give up and we have another three and a half hours to L.A. “You promise?”
“Pinky swear.”
He’s my brother. “She’s a judge.”
This stops him cold. “Bad idea, Mick.”
“Yeah.”
He spends fifteen minutes trying to pry Leslie’s name from me. He isn’t going to get it.
We drive in silence for what seems a long time. Then he asks, “How’s Rosie?”
“Not great.” I tell him about the latest test results and the prognosis.
He takes it in and says, “What is it with you two?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never seen two people who spend so much time tweaking each other and trying to deny their feelings. Why don’t you just admit you love each other instead of pretending you’re waiting for something better to come along?”
Give him credit for being direct. “I can’t deal with this right now.”
“Maybe you should start dealing with it soon.” He regrets it as soon as he says it.
“We weren’t good at being married, Pete.”
“I didn’t say you had to get married.”
“It’s more complicated than you think.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Dammit, Pete. This isn’t your issue.”
He swallows hard and says, “Let me give you some free brotherly advice.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“Unless you want to walk two hundred miles through the desert to L.A., I’m going to give it to you anyway.”
I fold my arms and say, “Fine.”
He grabs the steering wheel tightly with his left hand and points his right index finger at me. “That’s another thing I don’t need. You’ve been giving me attitude for forty years. On good days, you’re just patronizing. On bad days, you’re condescending. Let me give you a newsflash, Mick: you’re not as smart as you think. I know you think I’m an idiot, but I’m not.”
“That’s not true, Pete.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Maybe I didn’t graduate from Cal. Maybe I didn’t get to be a priest or a hotshot lawyer. My bachelors in criminal justice from State is worth something. I had to work a lot harder for it than you did for your law degree.”
This is true. School never came easy for him. “I never said you weren’t smart, Pete.”
“You never said it out loud.”
“Don’t tell me what I was thinking.”
“Then don’t treat me like I’m a moron. I was a good cop before they took it away from me. I’m a good PI.”
I never said you weren’t. “Look, Pete—”
His face becomes more animated. “No, you look, Mick. Do you think I had it easy? I was the third of four kids. I wasn’t a star football player like Tommy. I wasn’t at the top of my class like you. And I wasn’t the baby—and a girl—like Mary. Nothing I did was good enough. Nothing ever measured up to you and Tommy. Not to my teachers. Not to Mom. And certainly not to Dad. My biggest problem when we were growing up was that I wasn’t Tommy and I wasn’t you. Nobody ever talked about me.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve had this discussion. It is, however, the first time he’s been so frank about it. It must not have been easy to have had two super achieving older brothers. I don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Pete. Maybe it’s a little late, but I think you’re good at what you do. I respect and admire you for it.”
He’s unpersuaded. “You could have mentioned it once or twice in the last four decades.”
“I’ll try to remember to do it more frequently.” I add, “For what it’s worth, if I ever get in trouble, you’re the first person I would call.”
This seems to mollify him a bit. “No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
He thinks about it for a moment. Then he guns the engine and we barrel down the 15 in silence toward the City of Angels.
# # #
We’re passing the thriving metropolis of Victorville about twenty minutes later when I turn to him and say, “So, what was the advice you were going to give me?”
“Forget it, Mick.”
“Come on, Pete. I’m listening.”
“Fine.” He turns to me and says, “For what it’s worth, I was going to tell you I think you and Rosie should try to work something out.”
Christ. “You know all the history.”
“Maybe you don’t have to be married. You don’t even have to move in together. Maybe it’s enough to decide you’re going to stop looking for somebody else. You’re going to drive yourselves nuts if you think you’re going to find somebody better.”
“We’ve tried, Pete.”
“Maybe you ought to try harder.” He sighs. “Look, Mick,” he says, “When Wendy and I got married, we both knew it was a long shot. We had very little in common, but we loved each other and we had a great time together. It was worth taking the chance. People who say they’d rather be alone are kidding themselves or just lying. You found yours, Mick. You know it and she knows it.”
“We aren’t compatible.”
“You could be if you worked at it.”
“We’re too stubborn.”
“Yes, you are.” He lowers his voice and says, “Don’t be a schmuck this time, Mick. Talk to her about it. You need each other. You’re going to wake up all by yourself one of these days and you won’t remember what the hell you spent so much time fighting about.”
I take a deep breath of the air conditioned air. I look at my younger brother—my very wise younger brother—and say, “I don’t know if she would be interested.”
“Yes she would.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I asked her.”
It seems Rosie and I are getting a lot of coaching on our love life these days. “When?”
“A couple of months ago. I was curious. And both of you seemed unhappy.”
“What did she say?”
“She wouldn’t rule anything out.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
I look up and see the San Gabriel Mountains in the
distance. Then I look at Pete and say, “What if it doesn’t work out?”
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