…And kill Rey Palomino.
29
“It’s a simple question,” asked Conrad, the ends of his words clipped as tight as his fingernails. “What the hell does any of this shit have to do with my dead baby girl?”
Conrad Ellis loathed hearing his own voice rise above more than the average decibel. Most in his employ knew this as a fact of working life, doing their level best to keep their master happy and emotionally sated. So at the sound of his bark, his kitchen staff froze, pressed themselves against whatever stainless steel appliance they were scrubbing, and hoped to hell for calmer tones.
“I’m beside myself with abject wonder!” shouted Conrad. “How does this go from you—the feds—being after some guy who’d ripped off some blood bank in Reno. You said it was all set to arrest him. Yeah? That’s what you said. So how the hell does this turn into him blowing himself to bits along with half of Long Beach?”
From his Bel-Air veranda, overlooking the gardenia-flanked brick steps that led down to his tennis court, Conrad squinted through his sunglasses at the sun as if to dare it to make him sweat. He was feeling a hint of perspiration between his Bluetooth headset and his ear. He wondered how much buildup of fluid it would take to short out the made-in-China electronics.
“The TV? You know what it is, yeah? Every Goddamn news channel says it’s a terrorist attack. That America is, once again, under siege from a bunch of Middle-Eastern cave monkeys. So I ask you once again. What the Christ does this have to do with Pepper Ellis?”
The child’s real name was Dorothy. Dorothy after his mother. Jane was the middle name, chosen by his estranged wife for no other reason than she thought it linked such an old-fashioned first name with the last name of Ellis in a nicely metered way.
Dorothy Jane Ellis.
But Conrad never called her Dorothy or Dot. From day one he’d nicknamed his only child as Pepper. While his missus recovered from an emergency caesarian delivery, the OB had sent the father off with the baby girl as she was properly washed and weighed and fitted with a tiny pink beanie. During the inoculation process, little Dorothy cried so hard that every millimeter of her skin turned bright red. Like a jalapeño pepper. The name stuck like fly paper.
Conrad later divested himself of his billion-dollar real estate investments, divorced his wayward, plastic-surgery-addicted wife, and relocated himself and seven-year-old Pepper to the warm confines of Los Angeles. He soon discovered that by heavily investing in entertainment companies, an instant but shallow social life formed. Thus began his battle as a germaphobe. Not that Conrad found showbiz types to be infested with dangerous bacteria. The inhabitants of the dream factory were, in fact, quite hygienic compared to the average Midwesterner with whom he’d grown up trading spit and bare knuckles.
Inherently, showbiz people were a bunch of liars and old-fashioned street-cheats.
Somewhere in Conrad’s super nimble brain, he’d made a sub-primal connection between dishonesty and microbial filth. The association stuck and Conrad Ellis became a near shut-in with a psychotic aversion to the unseen organisms that grow and thrive in humanity’s Petri dish.
Any thought of leaving Southern California for cleaner climates were vanquished by the idea that Pepper would be crushed to lose her school chums, her active social life, and proximity to an acting career. So while Conrad suffered with his advancing phobia, he began taking larger financial positions in Disney and Viacom, the owner of all things Nickelodeon. Soon, cuddly little Pepper Ellis was guest acting on sitcoms like Hannah Montana and The Suite Life with Zach and Cody. Eventually, she landed her very own weekly series aimed at the constant flood of preteen girls connected to homes with basic cable.
Blessed with her mother’s features—strawberry-blonde hair, Icelandic cheekbones, perfecto-porcelain skin, a constellation of freckles, and a set of preternaturally pillowed lips—combined with her daddy’s killer acuity—Pepper Ellis, Conrad’s precocious baby girl, eventually became a bona fide TV star.
“I’m famous now, Daddy,” she’d declared only last Christmas.
“Famous enough to get into trouble,” her daddy had warned her.
“Oh, you know I’m too smart for that.”
Yes. Pepper was bright as hell. But young and vulnerable enough to still be swayed by the world that was just beginning to align at her feet. Drugs were Conrad’s biggest fear. And sex. Since setting up business in Tinseltown, he’d had plenty of young and spectacular flesh sent to his door. Each a wannabe star. He’d ask them to shower before he’d ever allow them to touch him, observing and instructing the women as they washed. The routine became its own form of personal gratification for Conrad. After, as he tried in vain to sleep, he’d think of his little girl and wonder what made her different from the high-priced harlots who’d lined up to service him. Certainly not intelligence, considering the education of some of his guests. One particular knockout had even confessed to Conrad that despite her masters degree in biochemistry, her face and body were better suited for the Three Fs of Hollywood: fun, fame, and fucking.
But who could have predicted the kind of danger that happened upon Pepper Ellis and her ne’er-do-well boyfriend on that lonely Kern County two-lane?
“I’m waiting for an answer,” said Conrad.
“And I’m saying I don’t know yet, Mr. Ellis,” Lilly clearly answered from the other end of the cellular phone conversation. “It’s going to take God knows how long to sort through all this. I’m about to be at the center of a massive, multi-agency investigation. And without yet knowing the identity of the bomber—”
“Bomber, maybe. But murderer, yes. Of my daughter, if you recall. Unless by happenstance a terrorist attack occurred at the exact same place at the exact same time you said the FBI was going to take down my daughter’s killer?”
“Did I give you information of a place and time of an arrest? Yes. As a courtesy? Yes. But we were going by one source. A source we don’t know much about. A source who, for all we understand, might’ve been working with the terrorist himself.”
“So you are saying my Pepper was killed by a terrorist?”
“I’m saying she’s not the only one,” impressed Lilly with a firm tone. “I’ve been looking at a dead FBI team in pieces and, possibly, twenty or forty more. So Mr. Ellis, I kindly ask you to let me do my job and trust that I will clue you in whenever and wherever I can.”
“Because I’m the father of the victim?” pressed Conrad. “Or because you know what I can do for you—or against you—in the future?”
“Because you figured out how to hound me in my condo at 2:00 A.M.,” cheered Lilly in a moment of pitch perfect politics. “And any man with that kind of resolve deserves both my respect and response.”
Conrad found himself nodding.
“Good enough,” he said. “For now. We’ll talk soon, yes?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer, merely clicking off the call and filling his lungs with the aroma of the blooming gardenias. The air was as sweet as expected. But little did it salve either his aching heart or the part of him that naturally distrusted lawyers.
* * * *
For Lilly Zoller, being in the spotlight was closer to a craving than a gift. She worked as hard on her outward appearance as she did her intellect and verbal acuity. She yearned for both men and women to be as intoxicated by the content of the words flowing from her collagen-enhanced lips as by her timed entrance into a room. Her goal was always to enter every major encounter with style then leave her audience in awe. And though she understood the watermark was pretty much humanly unattainable, it was a bar she stubbornly refused to lower.
That was until the son of a bitch she’d planned to arrest had blown himself and a good portion of Long Beach into microscopic bits of human DNA.
Lilly had used the call with Conrad Ellis to momentarily excuse herself from the interrogation. She even lied to the Homeland Security liaison, claiming the caller was actually her boss in Washington, Deputy Attorney General Lawrence
Knockburn. She’d needed a moment to compose herself before she’d returned to her debriefing.
“I’d like to get back to where we left off,” said Mark Stubbitz, the Los Angeles based Homeland Security liaison. Stubbitz was former FBI but looked more like a trainee out of college. Short hair, acne that hadn’t yet receded, and a piercing need to know.
“Certainly,” said Lilly, returning to her seat in the Long Beach Arena’s mezzanine. Row FF, seat 8. Homeland Security had borrowed the shabby old hockey arena-turned-function-hall as a space to perform triage on the crime scene. The floor of the building was already being striped with masking tape into a grid that would soon be filled with evidence from the blast.
As Lilly’s eyes wandered the upper tiers where she was seated, there appeared to be other debriefings taking place. One per section. She guessed that once Stubbitz was done with her, she’d move on to the next section for an interrogation by another agency.
“This unsub and the U.S. Attorney’s office interest in him,” said Stubbitz.
“Unofficial,” corrected Lilly. “This moved quickly. It didn’t go beyond me.”
“So you were tipped to the blood bank robbery in Reno,” said Stubbitz. “You see that the same perp is involved in the Kern County murders—”
“That’s a bit backwards,” said Lilly. “Agent Little—
“Dulaney Little,” confirmed Stubbitz.
“Yes. If I recall correctly, Dulaney Little brought the incident in Kern County to my attention,” fibbed Lilly, shading responsibility for the operation away from her office. She didn’t know what Dulaney would say. She had morbidly assumed that he was one of the FBI men obliterated in the blast, making it that much easier to throw his possibly dead, disarticulated body under the proverbial bus. “One of the victims was an actress on some show I’m not familiar with. But Dulaney was. He has kids so—”
“So he was the one interested in the murder.”
“Curious, I think is more accurate. Somehow he’d put the interstate thing together on his own.”
“Would you know why he chose to keep his information to himself and investigate instead of handing off to the L.A. Bureau?”
“Slow week in the U.S. Attorney’s office?” mused Lilly, a bit too glibly considering the circumstances. “Dulaney was assigned to the entire floor. I can’t say what the other prosecutors had him doing.”
“But you authorized his investigation?” pressed Stubbitz.
“I did.”
“Why?”
“My guess is that Dulaney felt things were moving too quickly for a hand-off to the Westwood feebs. In no time he’d been hooked in with the witness. There was going to be some kind of shipping transaction. I told him to go with it.”
“Sounds like more than ‘go with it,’” said Stubbitz. “I mean, you were here for the bust.”
“So what if I was?”
“That’s awful involved for a U.S. Attorney.”
“You stationed here?”
“In L.A.? I’m from here. Pomona.”
“So you’ve noticed that it’s hot.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Friday? A chance to get out of downtown and check out a few hours of action in Long Beach?”
“You’re saying that the reason we found you at the crime scene was because of the weather?” Any attempt for Stubbitz to keep incredulity from creeping into his voice failed.
Lilly leaned forward in her stadium chair. It creaked loudly as if begging to be replaced.
“As far as I know, nobody knew what was going to happen down here. Not Agent Little. Not anyone on the arrest detail. And certainly not me.”
“So it was just pure coincidence that when the terrorist detonated the bomb, you just happened to be in the bathroom inside Starbucks?”
“Told you. I had to pee.”
Stubbitz three-counted as he stared her down. Lilly met his stare with equal weight.
“Since the bomb went off, have you had any contact with Agent Dulaney Little?” asked Stubbitz.
“No.”
“Texts? Emails?”
“No.”
“You last saw him speaking with the witness?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall the witness’s name?”
“Jay? Clay? I’m not sure.”
“Hey, Ron?” shouted Stubbitz, his voice echoing over the arena. “You got a name on that witness?”
“The Porsche guy?” shouted the Homeland Security agent from two sections over. “Rey Palomino.”
“That’s it,” confirmed Lilly.
“We have a line on him yet?” shouted Stubbitz.
“Yeah,” shouted the other agent. “We found ’em at home. Bureau is sitting on him till they get an Identi-Kit over there. Should have a picture within the hour.”
“Terrorist motherfucker’s in a billion bits so we still don’t know what he looks like,” said Stubbitz.
“Anything else for me?” asked Lilly.
“Not just now,” said Stubbitz. “But hold tight. We got ATF on the way in. And I reckon we’re gonna want to get a location map so you can put a timeline to your movements. Then maybe we’ll cut you loose. Maybe we won’t.”
“I understand,” said Lilly, playing the part of the reliable teammate. She was relatively certain she wouldn’t be in any trouble for shading the truth of her connection to the crime. Surely the more the government would dig up on the mysterious suicide bomber, the further away Lilly’s tangential involvement would appear. If anything, she’d most likely end up with a lasting measure of credit for being the federal prosecutor who was inches away from collaring the S.O.B. before he’d acted so violently against the public at large.
“We’d really appreciate it you stay off TV before all agencies have debriefed you,” said Stubbitz.
Television. Yes. The nexus of Hollywood meets terrorism hadn’t yet struck Lilly. TV would be suckling at the teat of the twisted tale for months on end. How the interstate hunt for the killer of a popular young actress morphed into one of the nastiest acts of terrorism in U.S. history. It was ripe and juicy and came with career-making legs that could run for years.
A thin smile appeared on Lilly’s lips. One she covered with a shaky index finger, feigning the slightest hint of post-traumatic stress.
“No problem,” said Lilly, forcing the corners of her mouth downward in an attempt to appear somber.
But beneath Lilly’s skin, she was vibrating with the lust of possibility. If she worked the next forty-eight hours in the right sequence, she could emerge a star, playing the part of a real-life heroine in constant demand for her expert commentary at every network with a news division. Followed by a rich publishing deal, professional speaking fees, and anything else fame could conjure.
The bloody winning ticket for a Deputy U.S. Attorney.
For Lilly, the sky was never the limit. Hers was the furthest reaches of her unbridled ambition.
30
“Cool, Mom! You’re home!” exclaimed young Travis. Though the boy’s excitement was limited by his perch on the couch, Xbox controller glued to his fingers much like his eyes were to the TV screen.
Gonzo eased into the duplex, her neck elongated by a precautionary cervical collar.
“Lord, what happened to you?” said Kyle, the neighborly tenant who’d been plenty happy to look after Travis for the afternoon. He had the corners of a large jigsaw puzzle nearly assembled. The affable old gent, soft in both the middle and thighs, had entertained the oft generational delusion that the ten-year-old might actually engage in an analog challenge.
“Better than it looks,” said Gonzo, dropping her purse to the floor with a thud. She was still waiting for her boy to notice. She briefly considered standing tall over Travis until he finally deigned to look at her. The plastic collar would’ve given him a surefire charge. Thus Gonzo thought better of it. Travis had been through enough emotional trauma after her near death cab wreck only two years earlier. She’d spent months i
n rehab, including weeks in a similar, medieval-looking device.
Gonzo sat at the kitchen table and looked over Kyle’s complicated jigsaw puzzle. The photo he was attempting to assemble was an intricate depiction of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling. Gonzo groaned on the inside.
At the sound of her ripping the Velcro fasteners on her collar, Lucky made his presence known.
“Hey. That’s a lousy idea,” observed Lucky, having followed Gonzo into the house at her invitation. He’d half-thought of dropping her at the curb and starting the drive back north, but fatigue—not to mention some measure of remorse for having dragged the LAPD detective into his forty-eight hour sinkhole—had lured him through the doorway.
“Just needed it for the ride home,” said Gonzo. “Now that I’m here…”
“It’s the Luck-man!” said Travis, suddenly quick to ignore his Xbox. The boy still hadn’t so much as glanced at his mother, but showed immediate interest in the man he’d only met that very morning.
“Hey there, Travis,” said Lucky, then offering a nod to Kyle. “How are you… Aw, man. Sorry but I forgot your name.”
“Kyle,” said the neighbor.
“That’s right,” said Lucky, tapping his skull with his forefinger.
“Is Lucky staying for dinner?” asked Travis.
“Up to Lucky,” said Gonzo. “As long as he doesn’t expect me to cook.”
“Pizza!” burst Travis.
“Sorry,” said Gonzo, smirking at Lucky. “In Travis’ universe, pizza is its own food group along with Taco Bell and cold cereal.”
“Works for me,” said Lucky without really mulling it over. All he knew for sure was that he didn’t much look forward to climbing into his car for a long drive with only himself as company. His brother and only living relative was dead. For the first time in his life, Lucky feared loneliness.
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