Then Alexa took my hand. "But I'm still here. I'm on vacation with lots of free time. What do you want me to do?"
"Come with me to the IHOP for breakfast with these people. See if you can get them to stop playing police. T hey won't listen to me, but maybe you can make them understand."
Chapter 31
Nobody in the back booth at IHOP looked like they'd gotten any sleep either since we all split up five hours ago.
The restaurant was packed with a noisy breakfast crowd. As Alexa and I slipped onto the curved bench, I saw that Vicki had a calculator in front of her and work papers spread around. Vargas had started a file labeled Walter Dix. They had ordered coffee and rolls for six.
"Anybody seen or heard from our federal bank fugitive?" I asked as soon as I was seated.
They all shook their heads and looked at me with blank stares.
"What Jack did last night was a game breaker that could completely undermine everything" I said. "Even though the department hasn't made this a homicide yet, everything we do now still affects any eventual court case we might want to bring against Pops killer. We can't just be . . ."
"Stow it, Shane," Vicki interrupted. She was looking at me with hard gunfighter eyes. "We don't want to hear it, okay? Sabas told us until it becomes a murder case we aren't breaking any laws, so stop slapping everybody upside the head."
"You aren't breaking any laws, but you're very possibly trashing the end result," Alexa said, jumping to my defense. "Anything on that drive will be subject to a legal challenge should we ever attempt to use it."
"What's done is done," Seriana said. "I think it sucks that Jack went out and broke into those offices on his own, but Mr. Vargas has told us what we can do legally and what we can't. We've all agreed to follow his guidelines."
Vargas looked over at me and said, "Are you interested in any of the stuff we found out this morning, or are you just gonna sit there and bitch?"
"You've been running around doing more since I left you?" I said as my stomach sunk.
"Mostly Internet searches," Vicki said.
"Mostly?" Alexa had one eyebrow cocked, staring suspiciously over at her.
"Before I drove home, I went down to Kinney and Glass and ran a LexisNexis search on Creative Solutions. I came up with something interesting. We already knew that Creative Solutions owns Huntington House, but what we didn't know is it's also a holding corporation for six other nonprofits. They all have names that sound like new-age textbooks: Bridge to Tomorrow, Life Promises, Hopeful Journey. Each one of those nonprofits in turn controls its own foster-care facility. There's six group homes located all over L. A. that are part of the Creative Solutions family. There's gotta be almost a hundred kids in their network."
"At six thousand dollars per month per child, that comes to a lot of money," Sabas said.
"It sure does," Vicki confirmed. "It nets out at seven and a half million a year from the California Child Welfare Services."
"You think every one of these group homes is embezzling money?" Diamond asked.
"I don't know" Vicki said. "Sounds a little far-fetched. What do you think of this, Shane?"
"As long as you don't go over and start talking to any of these people, compromising the investigation, it's a pretty good lead," I said begrudgingly.
"Well, I already sorta did," she said. "I live in the Marina. On the way over here, I made a little detour and went by the Centennial House in Compton. It's owned by a nonprofit foundation called New Beginnings. I talked to the executive director, a woman named Claire Whitlock. I told her I worked at Kinney and Glass and represented a charity that donates to nonprofits. She was sort of running around like crazy getting the kids on the vans that take them to school, but I got some fund-raiser information and brochures from her."
She handed me pamphlets describing the great works of both Centennial House and the New Beginnings Foundation.
I opened up the first brochure, and there, on the inside cover, was a nice airbrushed picture of Chris Calabro. In the picture, he didn't look like an overbuilt, hair trigger with killer lats who called himself Clubber. In the brochure, he looked very pleasant, with a wide, inviting smile. You couldn't tell that under his blue blazer he was a rippling polypeptide experiment who shot human growth hormones like a heroine junkie.
"This is one of the guys we fought." I passed the brochure to Vargas, who nodded.
"Right. I hadda dump this clown so he wouldn't kill Scully."
"It's starting to come together," I said.
"Is that a veiled Tm sorry, Vicki'?" She was now sounding sort of snotty. "Are you saying you think I actually did something good here that might help?"
I sat there squirming, then looked over at Alexa, who shrugged.
No help. But I can read her and under the shrug, she was saying, Your case, your call.
"I understand why you all want to do this," I said, beginning to reconsider my position. "I get it, okay? If I was where you are, I wouldn't want to be blocked out either."
"But. . ." Vargas said.
"But there's ways to go about this stuff. There's a technique to the way we build a homicide case." I looked directly at the lawyer. "Some of it doesn't have anything to do with the way you try one."
"What if we put you in charge?" Vargas said.
"Yesterday you told me you were gonna run it and there wasn't anything I could do to stop you."
"You got some street cred with me now, esse. I'm good for you running it as long as you promise we don't get frozen out."
I thought about it for a moment before I said, "Okay, then I need a promise from you guys too. If we turn up something, before anybody does anything, you have to run it past me or Alexa for approval. After that, we can all decide on how to go forward. If we decide to make a move, Alexa or I have to be on point."
"Agreed," Sabas said, then looked at everyone and got their nods of approval.
"And if anybody sees or hears from Jack, you gotta tell me so I can get my hands on him," I added. "I can't have him tracking up this case with bad moves."
I held their gazes until they all nodded.
"Okay, then for now we'll call this the unofficial Pop Dix Homicide Steering Committee."
"Deal," they all said.
"Vicki, I want you to start an information run on the NHB Gym on Sixth Street. We need to know who owns it, who goes there, membership rosters, anything you can get online."
"I can do that," she said.
"Sabas, you come with me. We'll start checking out those foster homes. Seriana, you go with Alexa, visit all of the nonprofits, see if they have offices. Don't go inside, but if they have parking lots, write down all the license plate numbers so we can run them."
"What about me?" Diamond asked.
"Go back and keep working on the files at Huntington House. See if you can substantiate any of those phony loans or cash disbursements the auditor claimed Pop made.
"If Rick O'Shea shows up and starts asking questions about me, downplay it. Tell him I used to go there and I'm just some out-of-work guy with too much time on my hands who's poking around because I don't think Pop would have killed himself. Don't tell him I'm a cop, but if he gets goofy, give him my cell number and tell him to call me. Whatever we do, for the next few days we gotta keep this on the DL."
We broke up and left the IHOP. I settled in the passenger seat of Sabas's flamed '53 yellow pickup as he got behind the wheel. Alexa and Seriana drove out in Alexa's car to check on the addresses for the six nonprofits Vicki had given them.
"Where do you want to start, jefe?" Sabas said.
"Let's go see what a 'bridge to tomorrow' looks like." He pulled the floor shift toward him, putting the truck in gear, and we left the lot. As he turned onto the surface street, I couldn't help but wonder, while we were doing this, What kind of mischief was Jack Straw up to?
CHAPTEII 32
I found a copy of the Thomas Guide in Vargas's truck and planned a route that would allow us to hit all of
the group homes efficiently. We decided to stick with Vicki s scam of pretending to represent an entity interested in making donations to foster care.
Our first stop was a foster-care facility named Lincoln House, a collection of bungalows in the South Bay near Torrance. It was in bad need of a paint job and had no athletic field. There were twenty children living there. We got a quick tour from a bored employee who kept looking at his watch and talking about his coffee break.
The others seemed pretty much the same and were depressing reminders of my youth. By three o'clock, we'd hit them all. The last home was the Challenge House in La Mirada, owned by a foundation called Hopeful Journey. A young social worker named Barbosa Polverini showed us around.
"You got twenty-five children?" I asked, looking at the fact sheet she had given me in the office.
"Yeah, and it isn't easy, believe me." She sighed. "Like trying to keep a bunch of feral cats in a bathtub. This is a gang area. Half the time they're going out windows after lights-out to hook up with their homies."
"What's your ratio of staff to clients?" I asked. By then, Vargas and I had picked up some of the terms. A client we had learned was a child in foster care.
"Four to one," she replied.
Then Vargas said, "So your RCL is what, about five thousand per child?" We were smokin' with the lingo.
"Yeah. But it barely gets us there." Barbosa shook her head.
We thanked her and got back into Vargas's yellow pickup. We had collected half a dozen brochures from the group homes. None of the others had pictures of MMA fighters inside.
Both of us sat for a moment in the parking lot behind the Challenge House nursing our thoughts, realizing we'd learned very little.
"Wasted day," Vargas finally said.
"Not completely. These places are all struggling, and beyond that, staff morale sucks."
"So?"
"Perfect environment for an embezzler. I don't know how many of these places are missing money, but I'll bet a comprehensive audit on each one would be very illuminating."
I asked Vargas to take me to pick up my Acura, which was being fixed in Venice, two blocks from my house. I'd received a text message from Larry, my mechanic, that it was ready.
As I was getting out of the truck in front of the garage, Vargas stopped me. He had a frown on his face. "When it looked like Pop killed himself, it was somehow easier. This murder thing is really wearing on me."
"Yeah."
"I'm having a hard time with your idea that Pop stole the money; then got killed for it."
"Me too," I agreed.
"But I thought that was your whole theory. You said somebody beat him to death to find the million-five."
"He was beaten before he died, so it certainly could have happened that way."
"But it didn't?"
"Listen, Sabas. You keep telling me the law is your beat, so answer me this. In a criminal defense when you don't know who's bullshitting, how do you find the truth?"
"You evaluate motive."
"Exactly." "So?"
"Pop had no motive to steal that cash. It was already where he wanted it. It was in the Huntington House bank account."
"You're saying he was set up?"
"Yeah, maybe. State audit coming, lotta money missing. Frame Pop, kill him, make it look like a suicide, case closed."
He sat behind that oversized fifties steering wheel and just stared at me. Then he said, "You think Rick O'Shea?"
"I'm not putting the hat on anybody just yet, but he's certainly got a reserved spot near the top of my list. He could have easily got Pop to sign stuff without reading it. You know how Pop was. He was no businessman. Tell him he's signing a contract to repaint the gym and he wouldn't bother to read it, he'd just sign."
Vargas began to nod his head. "I like this a fuck of a lot better, homes."
"Good. But don't marry it, 'cause it could turn out to be dead wrong. It's just a theory. Like the missing money idea, we log it but keep moving." I hesitated, then said, "As long as we're on this, what's your take on Diamond Peterson?"
He thought carefully for a minute before he spoke. "Funny you should ask that. I've been worried about her a bit myself. She seems kinda half in and half out. Not really involved, sorta going through the motions."
"Yeah, that's been my take too." I went ahead and told him what I'd been thinking. "She worked in the office. She was with Pop all the time. She could have shoved those phony loan documents under his nose and got him to sign as easily as O'Shea."
"You think she's in on it?"
"In my job, it pays to be a skeptic, look at everyone. It's just a feeling. Could be nothing. Don't tell the others, but let's both watch her a little closer for a while and be careful about what we confide in her."
"Okay."
We bumped knuckles. I got out of the truck and Vargas drove off. I paid Larry the mechanic for the repaired ignition, got in the MDX, and headed for home.
Alexa's car wasn't in the driveway. She wasn't back yet. On my way into the house, I decided to pick up our mail. I opened the mailbox and saw a shoe box-sized package that barely fit inside. I pulled it out carefully and examined it. The box was wrapped in brown paper and had no address, which meant it had been hand delivered.
I'm a cop, and I don't like getting hand-delivered, paper-wrapped packages with no postal marks. I was thinking about calling the bomb squad when I noticed a small /. Straw written in ink on the top left corner where the return address should have been.
I took the package inside and set it down on the kitchen table.
"What are you up to now, Jack?" I said softly to the little wrapped box.
I took out a knife and opened it. Inside I found an old-style brown plastic Rolodex. It was from the NHB Gym. Jack had told me last night, when he'd been dangling from the teeter-totter, that he'd stolen it. I rolled the tumbler. It had about fifty names, numbers, and addresses inside. I saw Raymond "Stingray" Jackson. I also saw an address for Kimbo Sledge, who I remembered was on the Fall Brawl fight poster with O'Shea. The address for both Jackson and Sledge was identical: 1386 Avalon Terrace in Wilmington. Roommates?
There was also an SD memory card inside. No note.
"Not again,' I muttered as I took it into the den, put it into my computer, and waited for it to load. I was expecting it to contain more stolen accounting information, but this one contained a video.
The camera was set up on a hillside and was pointed down at a huge mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The house was sitting right on the edge of a land cut that overlooked all of West L. A. It was one of those big expensive Cliffside deals that dot Mulholland Drive. From the cool light and medium-length shadows, I estimated it to be mid-morning.
I watched a Rolls Royce pull into the drive and park. I could hear somebody near the camera mic breathing, but nobody spoke. Then the camera shut off.
It came on again a second later, recording from a different place. This time, from the short length of the shadows underneath a line of poplar trees bordering the stone drive. It looked like it was shortly before or after noon. I could hear birds singing.
In the next shot the camera position was now inside the compound of the same lush estate. The shot panned the grounds, showed the layout, then clicked off again. When it came back on, we were actually inside the house.
I groaned as I watched a moving point of view coming out of the kitchen into the living room. I could hear more quiet breathing and light footsteps on the marble floor. Jack was actually hot prowling this place in broad daylight. He panned the camera, taking in the rich decor.
Outside on the expansive pool deck, I caught sight of a short man sitting under a canopy, having lunch with a trophy blonde. The camera zoomed in. The two were chatting, laughing, drinking wine. The man was middle-aged with dark hair and a stocky build. He had an olive complexion and could have been Mediterranean. His hairline looked like it had been filled in with plugs. Then the camera went dark.
The next shot was insi
de a garage. Six or eight expensive cars--a Ferrari, a Porsche Boxster, a new Lamborghini. Off on the far end I saw four or five classic Indian motorcycles like the one Vargas hit coming out of the NHB Gym. The Rolls that I'd seen pulling into the drive in the first shot was parked in the foreground.
As the camera panned, I was able to read the rear license plate and wrote it down to run later. I wanted to confirm my suspicions, but I was already pretty sure this place belonged to E. C. Mesa.
The next shots were inside a sports-equipment room. From the similar walls and windows, I guessed it was probably off the garage. There were tennis rackets and golf clubs, as well as several ten-speed and mountain bikes hanging three or four feet off the floor on wall pegs.
Then the camera panned to show a door that had a brass plate that read The Boardroom. A gloved hand reached out, grabbed the knob, and turned it. Then the door was kicked open.
The room was full of surfboards. Most were standing in racks. Wet suits were hanging on plastic hangers. There were several short boards with their colorful, artistic gel coats, along with a few tri-fin thrusters with pin tails and some old light balsas from the fifties.
The camera panned to the far side of the room, and there it was, in a rack all by itself. Tail down, it stood alone in a place of honor. A big, old, classic cigar-box model.
The long, heavy antique was almost nine feet tall and pointed at both ends for maximum rail contact. It was the only board heavy enough to actually hang ten on, but nobody ever rode them anymore because they were a bitch to stay up on. Only Walt was willing to fight with one of those bastards, shuffling forward in his strange, hunched-over Quasimodo stance to finally grip his toes on the nose as he rode the wall of glass inside the curl.
I hadn't even seen a cigar-box board since Pop rode his during sunrise patrol years ago. So what was this one doing here?
jack must have had the same question, because he zoomed in on it and held the shot for several long moments before the camera suddenly went dark.
Chapter 33
While I waited for Alexa to get home, I spent an hour on the computer researching MMA fighting.
the Pallbearers (2010) Page 13
