“I only want one thing. To find that girl’s killer.”
“I want the same thing.”
I gave Tandy my boarding pass and Aldo’s contact information. I said I wouldn’t leave town. I said I wouldn’t take a piss without asking him first.
The ME came and the CSIs arrived after that. I gave the lab techs my prints, some fresh cheek cells, and my dirty clothes.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked Tandy.
“Not yet,” he said. “You have a friend in high places, Jack. But you can’t stay here.”
I called Rick Del Rio.
Twenty minutes later, I got into his car.
“What the hell happened?” he asked me.
I told the story again.
CHAPTER 10
Rick Del Rio lived in a one-bedroom house on the Sherman Canal, one of four parallel canals bounded by two others at the ends, a whimsical interpretation of Venice, Italy.
The houses were small but expensive, built close together, fronting the canal, backed by little alleys. Rick drove down one of those alleys, lined with garbage cans, telephone poles, garage doors, and the occasional row of shrubs along a back fence.
Del Rio’s garage door was painted green. He pointed the remote, the door opened, and he drove in.
“I don’t have much in the fridge,” he said.
“That’s okay.”
“Half a chicken. Some beer.”
“Thanks anyway.”
We went up a few steps, through the door in the garage that led to the kitchen.
Del Rio said, “No one knows you’re here. Go into the living room. Try to relax.”
I’d been here before. The three-room, cabin-style house was pristine inside. White walls, dark beams, every chair and sofa down filled. Centered amid the furnishings was a coffee table made from a wooden boat hatch, polyurethane-protected against beer and scuff marks.
I collapsed into a chair wide enough for two, put my feet up on the table, and hoped to hell the world would stop spinning.
I heard Del Rio puttering in the kitchen and just closed my eyes. But I didn’t sleep.
I thought about a night seven years before. I’d been flying a CH-46 transport helicopter to Kandahar, fourteen marines in the cargo bay, Rick Del Rio in the seat beside me, my copilot.
It had been a bad night.
A rocket-propelled grenade fired from the back of a 4x4 hit our aircraft, taking out the tail rotor section, dropping the Phrog into a downward spiral through hell. I landed the craft upright, but the bomb had done its work.
Men died horribly. A lot of them. I knew them all.
I was carrying one of the barely living out of the cargo bay when a chunk of flying metal hit me in the back.
It stopped my heart-and I died.
Del Rio found me not far from the burning wreck and beat on my chest, brought me back to life.
I was out of the war after that, worked for a small PI firm out in Century City. Then my crooked, manipulative bastard of a father sent for me.
He grinned at me through a Plexiglas wall at Corcoran, still giving me the business, but this time literally. He handed me the keys to Private and told me that fifteen million dollars was waiting for me in an offshore account.
“Make Private better than it was when it was mine,” he said.
A week later, having been shanked in the shower, he died.
Rick didn’t have a rich father. He was fearless and knew how to use a gun. After his tour, he came back to LA. He did an armed robbery, got arrested, convicted, thrown into jail. When he was released early for good behavior, he came to work at Private and I bought him this house.
I knew everything about Rick. I owed my life to him, and he said he owed his to me.
My friend came into the room, saying my name. I looked up, saw the face only a bulldog’s mother could love. He’s five foot eight inches in his bare feet, an ex-con and a highly trained former US Marine. He was carrying a tray-a tray. Like he was a nurse, or maybe a waiter.
He kicked my feet off the table and put the tray down. He’d made sandwiches out of that leftover half chicken, spread some tapenade and honey mustard between the long slices of a baguette, thrown in a few leaves of romaine. And he’d brought two bottles of beer and a church key.
“Eat, Jack,” my wingman said. “You take the room upstairs. Don’t fight me on this. It’s dark up there, and if you try, you can sleep for nine hours.”
“I can’t take your room.”
“Look,” he said. He opened the lid of an ottoman. It folded out into a bed. “Take the bedroom. You’ve got a full day tomorrow.”
“Colleen.”
“Colleen for sure. And you got my text? You’ve got an appointment first thing. Carmine Noccia is coming to see you.”
CHAPTER 11
My assistant, Cody Dawes, stopped me at his desk, said, “Morning, Jack. We need to go over some things-”
“Just the red flags, Cody. I’m still dragging my tailpipe.”
“Sure, okay, uh. I’m giving you my notice.”
“What? What’s the problem? I thought you were happy here.”
“I got a speaking part in a Ridley Scott film. I’ve got lines.”
He grinned broadly, clasped his hands together, and maybe jumped off the ground. I stuck out my hand, shook his, and said, “Good for you, Cody. Congratulations.”
“I’m not leaving you in the lurch. I’ve lined up people for you to see. I screened them all myself.”
I sighed. “Okay. What’s next?” It was half past eight a.m. in Los Angeles, meaning it was half past five p.m. in Stockholm. My circadian rhythms were still on Central European time.
“Mr. Noccia is here. I had to put him in your office.”
“I thought I’d have a little time before he got here.”
“He was waiting at the curb, Jack. Inside a Mercedes with three other guys you wouldn’t want to marry your sister. I opened the front door. He said he wanted to come in, so I brought him upstairs. Judgment call.”
“Do you still do coffee?”
“Yes, I do,” Cody said with a grin.
I went into my office.
It’s got two sections; my work space at one end, a seating and meeting space at the other. Carmine Noccia was sitting in a chair by my desk.
“Carmine,” I said. I shook his hand, went around my desk, took my seat. All the phone lines were flashing. A three-inch-high pile of paper was stacked to my right. My schedule was up on my computer monitor, just waiting for me.
“You’re looking good, Jack. Like you spent the night in a gym locker.”
“Jet lag,” I said, “feels just like that.”
Noccia smiled. He was a handsome guy, midforties, perfect teeth, salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a custom-made suit and hand-stitched Italian loafers.
Carmine was what a modern-day Mafia rock star looked like. You looked at him and saw the Ivy League-educated businessman, not the son of a sitting don, the Mafia capo and killer.
Cody brought in a large silver thermos of coffee and a plate of biscuits, and when he left, I said, “Del Rio told me you had to see me urgently.”
I tried to keep it out of my voice, but what I was saying was, What the eff do you want?
CHAPTER 12
Carmine Noccia said, “It’s a fucking disaster, Jack. One of my transport vans was jacked in Utah. Three of my guys were killed, dumped in the desert. I don’t think the cops are going to help me recover my property-which needed to be done yesterday. It’s a good thing I’ve got you in my corner.”
I don’t do business with mobsters.
Make that past tense. I didn’t do business with mobsters until my identical twin brother, Tommy Jr., racked up a six-hundred-grand gambling debt and I paid it off to keep Tommy’s sweet wife from becoming a widow.
A few months ago, Del Rio and I had flown to Vegas to see Noccia in his over-the-top, Spanish-style manse complete with racehorses and a man-made recirculating river located about fiv
e miles from the Vegas Strip.
I’d brought a cashier’s check for the full amount of my brother’s debt, and Noccia and I had exchanged favors. We realized that day that we’d both been in the Corps. As marines liked to say about themselves, “Never a better friend. Never a worse enemy.”
Carmine Noccia and I had shaken hands on that.
Now Noccia poured coffee for himself, used the cream, passed it to me. He said, “My guys were good. The highway robbers were better. And that’s all I know about the sons of bitches.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last night,” Noccia said. “Our van was coming west from Chicago. We had a tracking device in there. No one knew anything was wrong until the van passed Vegas and kept pinging until it got to LA. The jackers must have discovered the GPS and trashed it when they stopped to check the inventory.”
“So you think the van is in LA?”
“I would say yes. LA is a big distribution hub. It’s a valuable cargo, Jack.”
“Drugs?”
He nodded. “Prescription variety.”
“How much?”
“Street value of thirty million.”
Now I understood why Noccia had been waiting for me before our doors opened. In the past, the Mob had frowned on the drug trade, but pharmaceuticals were a fast-growing and highly profitable business, just too good to pass up.
Pharmaceuticals were also easy to steal at any point along the distribution chain. Even a mom-and-pop store with a twelve-dollar padlock on the gate could have a hundred fifty grand worth of Oxy in stock on any given day.
Every pill was a tiny profit center, 100 percent FDA approved. The largest tablets of OxyContin were 80 milligrams. At a buck a milligram, one 80 mg pill was worth eighty bucks, and they came in bottles of a hundred. That meant one little bottle was worth eight thousand dollars. A truckload-thirty million or more.
Noccia had a big problem. He was desperate to control the damage and at the same time he couldn’t let anyone know he was dealing in pharmaceuticals. So instead of turning his own crew loose on the underground, he’d come to me.
More people died from illegal prescription drugs than all the street drugs combined. This was a very bad business and I wanted no part of it.
Noccia leaned in toward me, fixed me with his big brown eyes. “I’ve been waiting thirty years to say this, Jack. I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
CHAPTER 13
I gave Noccia a smile I didn’t mean and said, “Carmine, I don’t do drug-recovery missions. We do corporate work. Government contracts. You know.”
“You do more than that, Jack, but that’s your business. I’ll give you ten percent of the street value. That’s three million dollars-cash. All you have to do is find the merchandise. With your connections, it’ll take you a few days, tops. Three million dollars, Jack. How many cheating husbands do you have to tail to make that?”
Cody buzzed me on the intercom. “Mr. Morgan, your nine o’clock is here.”
I said to Carmine, “I wish I could help you, but this isn’t my kind of work.”
I ran my eyes over my schedule; my appointments were stacked up like incoming aircraft at LAX, every half hour to the end of the day. I thought about Colleen, lying on a cold slab, the medical examiner slicing her open from her collarbone to her bikini line.
As I sat here, cops were going through my house, putting my life under their Slap Chop while Carmine Noccia dangled millions of dirty dollars in front of my face.
I lifted my eyes and looked at the mafioso with a big future, a future that had now been compromised by the loss of a monumental inventory and three men.
Carmine’s expression was cold. No more kiddin’ around with Godfather lines. He interlaced his manicured fingers on my desk.
“I’ll double your take to twenty percent,” he said. “Tax free, six million in cash.”
The bigger the offer, the more I wanted nothing to do with it-or him.
“Thanks, but I’m not interested, Carmine,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’ve got another meeting.” I got to my feet.
Noccia also stood up.
We were the same height.
“You misunderstand me, Jack. You’ve got the job. What you want to tell me is how fast you can recover my merchandise-because very soon those goods will be all over the country and I’ll be out thirty unacceptable million. Call me when you have the van.”
“No, Carmine,” I said again. “No can do.”
“What part of ‘can’t refuse’ don’t you get, Jack? You know where I’m going. ‘Never a better friend.’ I’m calling in my marker. Here’s my number,” he said, writing it across an envelope. “Stay in touch.”
He tossed the pen down and it skidded across my desk as he walked away.
I heard Noccia say to Cody, “I can find my way out.”
I sat back in my chair and looked out at the wide cityscape of downtown LA. If I didn’t take the job, what would happen? Was I prepared to go to war with the Noccia family?
I got Del Rio on the line, kicked it around for a few minutes: what was possible, what was the wisest, safest plan of attack. Rick said his piece. I said mine. And then we kicked it around a little more.
When we had a working plan, I asked Cody to show my nine o’clock appointment into my office.
CHAPTER 14
The attractive woman sitting in a blue armchair made me think of old black-and-white gumshoe movies adapted from novels by Chandler, Hammett, Spillane.
Amelia Poole looked like Sam Spade’s new client: glamorous white female, late thirties, short brown hair, no bling on her ring finger.
In place of a cigarette holder and a fox fur around her neck, Ms. Poole gripped an iPhone and had a fine necklace of gold chains and diamonds at her throat.
“Looks like you pulled an all-nighter, Mr. Morgan,” Ms. Poole said with a quick grin, stashing her phone in her handbag. “I know because I just pulled an all-nighter myself.”
“I’m sure yours was more interesting than mine,” I said, flashing on Del Rio’s bedroom with its military mattress and plain white walls.
Amelia Poole had a pretty smile, but it was forced. Her eyes were somber.
Why had she come to see me? Was she being sued? Stalked? Did she need me to find a lost child?
I knew from her dossier that Amelia Poole had bought and renovated three old hotels in choice locations into first-rate, five-diamond Poole Hotels. I had been to the rooftop bar at the Sun, stayed a couple of times at the Constellation in San Francisco. I agreed with the ratings.
Also in her dossier was mention of some unsolved robbery-murders in her hotels and a couple others that had sent a shiver through the California Chamber of Commerce.
The cases were still open, but tourist slayings didn’t make the front page in the current political-economic climate.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Poole, but I wasn’t told why you wanted to see me.”
“Jinx,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Call me Jinx. That’s the name I go by.”
“I’m Jack,” I said.
I poured coffee, and she told me that she had heard about Private and that she knew we were damned good. She continued to look nervous, as if she were trying to keep whatever was bothering her under wraps.
Ms. Poole played with her diamonds, took snapshots of me with her darting eyes.
I said, “So, what brings you to Private?”
And then she blurted it out. “A guest was killed in his room at the Sun last night. I haven’t told anyone. I haven’t even reported it to the police. I’m scared. This is the third guest who was killed in one of my hotels, and I don’t know what to do.”
CHAPTER 15
Hotel robberies weren’t rare, but hotel murders were. Jinx Poole told me that all of the murder victims-three at her hotels, two at other California hotels-were businessmen, out-of-towners traveling alone.
“The police are worse than hopeless,” she sai
d. “The last time they came, they shut the place down, closed the bar for forty-eight hours. They interviewed every guest, freaked out my staff, and didn’t come up with a suspect, not one!
“Our bookings tanked. We’ve got empty rooms in high season-I mean, who’s going to stay in a hotel where someone was murdered?
“Jack, I’m desperate. People are being killed. I don’t know why. I don’t know who is doing this. But all I have are these hotels. I need your help.”
I wanted Jinx Poole to have the LAPD work the crime and hire Private to set up an airtight security system going forward-but the woman was getting to me.
She was vulnerable, but she was bravely working hard to solve her problem. I liked her. I understood her feelings. Completely.
Still, we didn’t have the manpower to take on a multi-victim crime spree on the wrong side of law enforcement. We were booked to the walls, and now our number one job was finding whoever killed Colleen Molloy.
I asked Jinx questions, hoping that her answers would help me decide what to do.
She told me that the dead guest at the Sun was Maurice Bingham, midforties, lived in New York, an advertising man who was in LA on business.
No sounds of a fight had been reported. The hotel staff knew Bingham. He paid his tab by credit card, didn’t make extraordinary demands. He wasn’t due to check out until tomorrow-which was promising news.
It meant that no one was looking for him yet in New York and that it was reasonable to assume that this early in the day, with the “Do Not Disturb” light on, housekeeping hadn’t yet found his body.
“Tell me about your security system.”
“Cameras are in the hallways, of course. And we have a few at the pool.”
“I need you to shut down the cameras on the murder floor for about an hour so we can get in and out. Can you do that?”
“Yes. So you’ll take the job?”
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