Strange Bedfellows v5

by Paula L. Woods

  “I would never pay someone to shoot my father,” Mario said through gritted teeth.

  “Why not?” I asked. “After all, he turned against you as his successor.”

  “That’s not it!”

  “Then why not?” Thor repeated, taunting him now. “Because you’re such an upstanding citizen?”

  “No!” Mario shouted. “Because, for all the sins my father’s committed, God’s got a greater punishment in mind for him than I could ever imagine!”

  I picked up a file, walked over to Mario, and sat in the chair next to him. “I know you haven’t been exactly chomping at the bit to help our investigation these past few days, Mario, but I’m surprised at this outright hostility toward your father. You’ve always impressed me as a loyal and dutiful son. Why the sudden change of heart?”

  “The truth needed to come out.” He turned away from me a bit, head down as he mumbled. “He’s been lying for too many years.”

  I leaned forward and caught Thor’s eye, saw him nod encouragement. “Lying about what, Mr. Zuccari?” I watched as Mario sat awkwardly in his chair, hands cuffed behind his back, his jaw working furiously. I leaned over and whispered: “Frankly, Mr. Zuccari, this bull you’ve been spreading around about your father contracting to have Malik Shareef murdered is a little hard to accept, especially given the fact that you were the one who was paying hush money to Leykis and Ybarra.”

  “Don’t forget the money he paid Nilo Engalla to stop investigating the embezzlement,” Perlans added.

  “I did no such thing!” Mario asserted, but his eyes told me otherwise.

  “I’m sorry, but my client doesn’t have to listen to this,” Sarkisian said, rising from his chair.

  “Yes, David, he does!” Merritt interrupted. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this if we have any hope of putting a face on this thing, what with the embezzlement, the conspiracy, and now Chuck’s condition taking this unexpected turn.”

  “But you’ve already got Gabriella in place, running the company!” Sarkisian protested.

  “Gabby’s just a placeholder to appease her mother and get us through this transition,” Merritt scoffed. “Everyone knows that Mario’s the brains in this company. So if he’s going down, I need to know so we can develop a strategy with the analysts.”

  He turned to Mario. “You know we’ve called a press conference for two, which is the timing the PR consultant advised to mitigate damage to the share price before the closing bell. Mario, please, for your sake and the sake of the company, help us get this thing resolved.”

  After a long silence Mario shrugged a reluctant agreement. From the folder we’d received from Latent Prints that morning, I laid out the photos and reports for the attorneys to see. “Our Latent Print technician matched Mario’s thumbprint on the envelope used to send the money to Nilo Engalla.”

  “But they never took my fingerprints!” Mario protested to Sarkisian.

  “Didn’t need to,” I said. “We had these.” I spread out the photographed fingerprints from the old letters Chuck had sent to Mario while he was in college as well as those taken from Mario’s bank statements and the letter from Belle Thornton to Chuck. “Your prints are on all three.”

  Thor added: “All we have to do now is get a print from you to confirm our suspicions.”

  “And there’s more.” I picked up the copies and walked back to my chair. “I think this letter that we found taped under a drawer in your desk is the real reason you’ve had a change of heart toward your father. Your thumbprint was on it, too.” I slid the plastic-encased letter from Belle to Zuccari across the table for Merritt to read. “Does this sound familiar, Mr. Merritt?”

  Merritt leaned over to examine the letter. “I never saw the original, but it reads like the letter Chuck got from that nutcase last year.”

  “She’s not a nutcase!” Mario protested.

  “You know this woman?”

  “The nutcase is Mario’s mother,” I said softly, sliding the photo of Mario, Belle, and Chuck across the table for Merritt to see. “He’s been visiting her and paying for her care for the last seven months, according to her nursing home. How long have you known she was alive, Mario?”

  Mario fingered the photo, and swallowed hard to hold back the tears. “Since February. She called the office, told me about the private investigator tracking her down, and asked if we could meet. So I went to New Jersey, and she was able to explain a lot of what happened when I was little, before that second stroke paralyzed her.”

  Merritt fell back in his chair. “Are you sure this isn’t some kind of hoax?” he asked faintly. “I was under the impression your mother died a long time ago.”

  “So were a lot of people.” I proceeded to give the attorneys a rundown on the strange family history which the two men listened to quietly while Mario fumed. But when I got to Alma’s connection to the Zuccari’s first wife and son, Mario’s shoulders slumped and he moaned as if he’d been sucker punched. Obviously, Belle hadn’t shared this part of the story with her son.

  When I was finished, Merritt groaned and lowered his head into his hands while Sarkisian just stared at his client in disbelief. “This is a disaster!” he muttered. “When news of this leaks out, the stock is going to drop like a rock!”

  But Mario just stared, his gaze fixed on some distant shore none of us could see. I approached him again cautiously, aware that the interview could go sideways any minute. “Mario,” I began softly. “I don’t blame you for forging those payment authorizations to Sonrisa. You’d discovered how your family had sent your mother away. The money Johnson and Carruthers were kicking back to you was a small price for how your family ruined your life.”

  Mario just stared, his head barely nodding.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you used the money to pay for your mother’s nursing home care.”

  “My mother said them taking me away from her like that was as good as killing her,” he whispered. “She said her life was never the same after that.”

  “Not another word!” Sarkisian shouted.

  Merritt cleared his throat. “David’s telling you right, Mario.”

  “I don’t care anymore,” Mario insisted, pushing away his statement. “Dad never told me he suspected Alma of infidelity. I heard that from Gabriella. I said that because I couldn’t think of any other reason Dad would have hired those two to do something so horrible. But now I get it—Dad wanted Alma and the baby dead. The sin he had committed was too much to bear.”

  “You’re saying your father did hire them?”

  He nodded. “They had a note in Dad’s handwriting, detailing his and Alma’s movements for the entire week, and highlighting the dinner arrangements at Ristorante Rex that night and what time they’d be leaving the restaurant. They waited a half block away from the restaurant until ten, the time Dad promised to have everyone outside.”

  “Where’s this note now?”

  “Leykis and Ybarra kept it for insurance purposes, they said.”

  “Where would Leykis and Ybarra be now?”

  “Where they always are on Mondays,” Mario replied. “At the hospital with my father and Alma.”

  How’d it go?” Billie asked as we emerged from MIA’s office.

  “Got him dead to rights on the embezzlement,” I replied, “but he wouldn’t cop to the conspiracy to murder charge. Swears his father was the one who contracted with Leykis and Ybarra. Claims there’s a letter in his father’s handwriting that spells it all out.”

  “Who was the intended victim?” Billie asked.

  “Mario thinks Alma. Why?”

  “My interviews with the responding officers and the diagrams of the crime scene back up that theory. She and Zuccari were only a few feet apart when they fell. So, if Chuck Zuccari really did try to push her away when he saw the car coming, he didn’t do such a good job.”

  21

  After the Dust Has Settled

  By noon, Mario and his attorney were on their way to boo
king on the embezzlement, the FBI was working with Merritt on the logistics of hooking up Natalie Johnson and Felton Carruthers at the company’s headquarters, and Wunderlich and Perkins were wrapping up the transfer of files to the Feds’ custody. While Thor was updating our lieutenant, Billie had gotten home addresses for Leykis and Ybarra from CZ Toys’ human resources department, and the two of us had prepared and obtained a judge’s signature on a warrant to search the apartment they shared in Cerritos as well as the office they maintained at the hospital.

  We’d hit their apartment first and spent two fruitless hours tossing it. Now it was three, and Billie and I were heading farther south, dropping behind that Orange Curtain as we led the way for the black-and-white containing Thor and a couple of uniforms from Central Bureau. As I guided the car down the same stretch of I-5 I’d covered with Thor just a week ago, I couldn’t help thinking what a difference a week had made—in this case and in my life. But although I’d uncovered the reasons behind my brother’s behavior, I still hadn’t cracked the mystery of Paul Taft, just as there was something about Chuck Zuccari’s behavior and motives that still puzzled me. “I know we’ve been over this before,” I said to Billie, “but do you really think Chuck Zuccari contracted with those roughnecks to kill Alma and her baby?”

  “Before your interview and my reassessment of the crime scene, my money was on Mario,” Billie conceded. “And even though he’s got a motive, too, the more I think about Chuck Zuccari, the more I’m liking him for the shootings.”

  “Just because Mario says so?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “If the truth about Zuccari’s marriage to Alma ever got out, it would have ruined him socially and politically as well as done some serious damage to his company. And given what I’ve heard about him being so sensitive to appearances, he could have resorted to murder to save face.”

  “Zuccari just doesn’t seem the type to take such overt action.”

  “I disagree. From everything I’ve heard and read in the files, Zuccari’s been a shrewd businessman for almost thirty years. All the deals he’s done, and the risks he’s taken to make his company a success—I don’t see him letting it go down the tubes because of something in his past.”

  “But the man’s a weasel when it comes to his personal life! He let his family run his first wife away on a humbug, then lied to his son about what really happened.”

  “What would you have done under the circumstances?” Billie asked.

  “Told the truth, for starters!” I snapped.

  “Chill, Charlotte!” Billie said, glancing at me sideways as I maneuvered through traffic. “There’s no need to run us off the road because Zuccari lied to his kid!”

  Or because your parents lied to you, my little voice chided. “Sorry. But I could sooner imagine Chuck Zuccari making up some excuse and divorcing Alma than contracting to have her killed. And, if he did, why have it done in the front of the Oviatt Building, with all those witnesses? A dozen places would have been easier logistically than downtown L.A.”

  “Yet, in a perverse sort of way, I understand it,” Billie said. “Remember that guy in Boston who killed his wife and claimed it was some ubiquitous black man? He had the Boston PD scooping up every black man in a jogging suit for miles around. At least Zuccari didn’t play the race card!”

  “We did it for him,” I replied. “We were so preoccupied running after gangbangers and Black Muslims, the suspect right under our noses almost got away. Even from his hospital bed, Chuck Zuccari’s been playing us for chumps all along.”

  Billie snorted. “Player got played, far as I’m concerned. He’s the one who’s near death, not Alma or his kid.”

  “Yeah, but look at the damage he’s done to them, physically and emotionally. Neither of them will ever be right after this.”

  I pulled into the parking structure, showed the attendant my ID, and told him to let Ms. Gipson in Administration know we were there. Before we left, Thor had notified the hospital’s chief nursing officer and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department of our intention to interview and possibly arrest Chuck Zuccari’s security guards so they could provide adequate backup. Gipson had asked that we call as soon as we arrived so someone could meet us at the entrance.

  “Justice, you and I will interview Leykis and Ybarra in the administration suite while Billie and the guys here search their office,” Thor explained after we joined him and the uniforms around the black-and-white. “One way or another, we’re hooking them up, for either the extortion or the murder for hire.”

  “Won’t they get suspicious if they get a call to report to Administration?” I asked. “It would be better to surprise them.”

  “The hospital’s administrator and the OCSD determined they didn’t want to risk jeopardizing anyone’s safety if things go sideways, so this was the best alternative.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble for a man who’s brain dead,” Billie said.

  “Even so, they’ve got to think about patient safety first, Zuccari’s or anybody else who’s on that floor.” Thor checked his watch. “Alma was due in Administration by three. Gipson said she’d call the unit and get her to come down on the pretext they needed to meet with her to review some paperwork related to disconnecting her husband’s ventilator. Then she was to call Leykis and Ybarra down, have the deputies intercept them and hold them for us.”

  A redheaded male in a brown uniform hurried toward us, said, “Heard you arrived,” and introduced himself as Lieutenant Cordell Doyle, chief of police for the sheriff’s Mission Viejo division. “There’s been a change of plans. We’ve set up a SWAT command post right off the lobby.”

  “SWAT?” Thor frowned. “What happened?”

  “We’ve got a situation,” he said, leading the way in a trot.

  As we moved quickly to the entrance and through the lobby it was obvious from the number of cars and deputies milling about that the initial plan had backfired. “Our deputies had taken positions at the main elevator lobby on one,” Doyle explained. “Zuccari’s wife came down as planned, no problem. But Leykis and Ybarra took the stairs, saw two of our deputies, turned tail, and ran back upstairs. At the top of the stairs, they drew their weapons and fired on Deputy Locke, who returned fire, wounding one of the assailants.”

  Locke and his partner had ended up in the ER, Leykis and Ybarra in Two South. “They’ve taken Zuccari’s nurse as their hostage,” Doyle explained.

  “What about the one who’s wounded?” I asked.

  “Luis Ybarra,” Gipson supplied. “Nurse O’Farrell’s tried to patch him up, but she said it’s serious.”

  “So you’ve opened negotiations?” Thor asked.

  “With Leykis, about ten minutes ago,” Doyle confirmed.

  “Any demands?”

  “Just that we get someone in there to patch up his buddy.”

  “Will you?” I asked.

  “Not if it means jeopardizing anyone else,” Doyle snapped.

  In the makeshift command post they’d set up in Admitting, one of the interior conference rooms had been given over to OCSD communications equipment and hospital floor plans. Another white male whom Doyle identified as Lieutenant Ingram, the SWAT commander, was talking via walkie-talkie to his colleagues while a brown-uniformed female and her male counterpart were poring over the floor plans with a clearly tense Avis Gipson and an engineering type. Off in one corner, Alma Zuccari sat in her wheelchair, the activity around her barely registering in her lost eyes.

  While Billie went to comfort her I asked Doyle whether we knew Leykis and Ybarra’s exact position. The female deputy, a brown-skinned Asian with FERGUSON on her nametag, replied: “They won’t tell us, but we’ve been able to observe a trail of blood down the main corridor of the unit, leading off to the right.”

  “So they’re probably in Mr. Zuccari’s room,” Gipson added.

  “Is there another way onto Two South other than the main entrance?” I asked.

  “There’s a service entrance t
hat opens up onto the main corridor,” the engineer said, indicating a door to the left of the unit’s entrance on the plans.

  I felt the glimmer of an idea and said, “If you cut power just to that Two South Unit”—and saw the engineer’s hesitant nod—“what happens to Mr. Zuccari’s ventilator?”

  “Nothing. The backup generator will kick in.”

  “How long does that take?”

  “Just a few seconds,” he replied.

  “In those few seconds, will the loss of power set off the alarms on his ventilator?”

  Gipson nodded. “It should, but—”

  I glanced at Billie and Deputy Ferguson, the glimmer coalescing into a plan. “What sizes do you ladies wear?”

  By two, the three of us were dressed in blue scrubs, white lab coats, and IDs cobbled together by Human Resources. We waited on the second floor, a dozen yards from the entrance to Two South and a red crash cart at the ready, while Doyle stood at the elevator lobby, walkie-talkie in hand, waiting for a signal from the command post.

  Earlier, when we were working out our plan and contingencies downstairs, I had argued that it was important that the team sent in there be female. “A couple of ex-cons like them will smell cop all over your guys or ours. At least we stand a chance.”

  And since I was the only female officer who’d been on the unit before, I’d insisted that I be part of the team sent in. So they’d found Ferguson, Billie, and me some surgical scrubs and masks, with a flowered surgical cap for me as an extra disguise. Ferguson and Billie had gotten a lesson in the maintenance of ventilators from the engineer, and Gipson had given me last-minute instructions on how a physician would approach and treat Ybarra’s injury. As I listened I had a fleeting thought that I should call Aubrey, but since I hadn’t seen or talked to him since going to the office Sunday morning, I couldn’t figure out what I would say.