Blood and Justice: A Legal Thriller (Brad Madison Legal Thriller Series Book 4)

by J J Miller

  After the service, the crowd began to shuffle out of from the pews and into the aisle. Pete and I were standing together when he grabbed my shoulder firmly.

  “Listen, Madison. I’ve got to go now, but what are you up to tonight?”

  I had absolutely no plans other than a few hours at home watching SportsCenter.

  “Not much,” I said.

  “Why don’t we grab a meal together, have few beers and do a proper catch up?”

  I’d been keeping to myself in recent months. So much so, turning down social invitations had become a reflex. But not this time. Pete was a good man, and the thought of us hanging out and shooting the breeze appealed to me. Besides, I wanted to know what else he knew about Henry’s situation.

  “That’d be great, Pete,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  “My family’s got a restaurant. China Doll. It’s on Sunset. How’s seven?”

  “Seven’s fine.”

  “Don’t you dare pull out on me, Madison.”

  “I won’t.”

  We shook hands quickly and Pete shifted into the aisle and made for the door. After a moment, I followed him then waited outside to see if I could get an opportunity to speak with Laura Tuck.

  A string of mourners consoled her before she began making her way to the parking lot.

  “Mrs. Tuck,” I said as I approached, and she turned to face me.

  “Yes?” she said and waited for me to introduce myself.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss, ma’am. Please accept my sympathies.”

  “Thank you,” she said flatly. Her tone surprised me. It was like I’d earned her disapproval without ever meeting her.

  “Mrs. Tuck. My name’s Brad Madison. I’m a friend of Henry’s. Well, I was one of his recruits.”

  As I spoke, her expression hardened into a glare.

  “So you’re Brad Madison.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, you have some nerve approaching me.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t play me for a fool, son. You were helping Henry to divorce me.”

  I guess he must have told her.

  “Well, Mrs. Tuck, the truth is we never got that far. And to be honest—”

  “Don’t play the nice guy with me. And don’t introduce yourself as a friend when you’re just his lawyer. You were going to leave me destitute.”

  “We had one conversation during which Henry made it clear he wanted to do right by you.”

  “If you were any kind of friend, you would have advised him to come to his senses and save his marriage.”

  “I didn’t get the chance to advise him on anything, ma’am.”

  “Sure, you didn’t. If you had done the right thing instead of trying to make a buck out of that fool, he’d still be alive today.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. I won’t bother you anymore.” I bowed my head quickly and turned to walk away.

  “I bet you feel proud of yourself,” she called out to me as I walked. “I suspect you’ll be chasing some kind of payment to come out of his estate. You leech.”

  I kept silent. I kept walking.

  Family law. Like I said, it’s the pits.

  Chapter 3

  When Pete Chang said China Doll, the name rang a bell. I’d never eaten there but I’d heard good things about it. A quick scan online revealed it was one of LA’s best Chinese restaurants. Standing in the foyer, I got an immediate sense of why.

  Ahead of me was a vast dimly lit room filled with round, white-clothed tables—enough to feed an army. Exposed beams and columns of dark teak framed the space, a white wooden framed lantern hung over each table, and golden dragon statues were stationed in every corner. Beside me a water feature bubbled away soothingly while the combined smell of incense and roasted duck filled the air. Across the room to my left was the exposed kitchen, and behind a glass panel hung about two dozen glistening birds. All of a sudden, I was ravenous.

  As I resolved to claim one of those ducks as my own, a woman in a red cheongsam approached me. Her straight black hair arced down from a fringe to frame a face of striking beauty.

  “Mr. Madison?”

  “Yes,” I said, both surprised and delighted she knew my name.

  “I’m Pete’s sister, Marcia,” she said, extending her hand. “He told me to keep an eye out for a handsome man who looks a little lost.”

  “He said that?” I quickly wondered what sad tale Pete had spun about me. A divorced, chronically single workaholic with (very) occasional bouts of PTSD. What’s not to like?

  “The first bit. The second was my little joke. I can see you haven’t been here before.”

  “Guilty as charged. Thanks for coming to my rescue. I can’t believe your Pete’s sister.”

  “We’re fifteen years apart, and we’ve got five siblings in between. Come with me. I’ll show you to your table.”

  I fell in behind Marcia as she walked gracefully between tables, leading me to a secluded area at the back of the restaurant.

  “Where’s Pete? Doing his nails?” If there was one thing I remembered about Pete Chang from the old days, besides his exceptional fitness, it was that he was an obsessive groomer. I hadn’t thought about him for years but the memory of him always holding us up before we went out to a bar came back to me.

  Marcia laughed. “Probably. Once he’s done with the mud mask treatment he borrowed off me.”

  There was a flirtatious warmth about Marcia that enlivened me. Twenty minutes earlier, I was half tempted to turn the car around and head home, calling Pete to say I wouldn’t be coming. To some extent, I was inclined to hide from the world, which may sound odd given my often high-profile cases. But since my divorce from Claire, I hadn’t held onto any relationship long enough for it to get serious. And on the two occasions I tried, I was cut loose. I was conscious that a grim acceptance of singledom was setting in, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to embrace or reject it.

  “He won’t be long, Mr. Madison.”

  “Please, call me Brad.”

  “Okay, Brad. Pete’s just helping Mom out with a business matter that’s just come up.”

  “No worries.”

  “I’ll get you a drink. What would you like?”

  I asked for a Tsingtao and Marcia swung away to oblige. No doubt about it, Mr. and Mrs. Chang had something special in their DNA, producing such fine-looking offspring.

  I’d barely had the chance to check my emails when Marcia returned with my beer. As I took the ice-cold green bottle in my hand, Pete appeared.

  “Madison,” he said. I released the beer and stood to shake his hand. “I’m glad you made it, bro.”

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t?” I asked, like pulling a no-show had never crossed my mind.

  “Are you kidding me? I bet your yearbook superlative was ‘most likely to get a better offer.’ Something tells me you haven’t lost that Madison magic.” Pete put his arm behind the small of Marcia’s back. “Don’t get any thoughts about Marcia. She’s taken.”

  Pete lifted her left hand to show off an impressive engagement ring. Marcia beamed, clearly enthralled with the ring and what it signified. I suddenly felt way too old for allowing myself to think she was flirting with me.

  “He’s a lucky man. Congratulations, Marcia. When’s the big day?”

  “That’s partly why Pete was late. We are trying to settle on the best date so we can have the reception here. And if you know anything about Chinese weddings, you know it’s going to be bigger than Ben-Hur.”

  “Getting our guest list down to three hundred is going to be tough, given the size of our extended family,” said Pete.

  “Good thing your brother has a fine brain in that pretty head of his. I’m not surprised your mom is leaning on his management skills.”

  Marcia took her brother’s arm. “And I’ll be leaning on him to walk me down the aisle.” The two of them looked at each other so sweetly, I couldn’t help myself.<
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  “Pete and Marcia. Are you sure your surname’s not Brady?”

  They laughed briefly before their smiles both faded as one.

  “Well, with Dad no longer being with us, I wouldn’t want anyone else but Pete beside me.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  Pete patted my shoulder. “How could you? Dad passed away six months ago but he left a big hole. Come on. You hungry? Let’s eat.”

  Once Pete sat down, he looked up to Marcia knowingly. “Okay, Sis. Like I told you, bring it on.”

  “I hope you came with an empty stomach, Brad,” she said with a smile before leaving us.

  After a few rounds of dumplings, a waiter wheeled a whole duck to the table and began slicing off pieces and laying them onto a platter. That done, he took the rest of the carcass away to be transformed into sang choi bow.

  “Pete, I wanted to ask about Henry,” I said, placing a slice of crispy-skinned duck into a pancake and drizzling hoisin sauce over it. “Are you saying his girlfriend dumped him, so he went and killed himself?”

  “That’s what Longley told me. When they found him he was holding a photo of her, and there was a Dear John text on his phone, apparently.”

  Detective Ward didn’t tell me that. Maybe they hadn’t processed Henry’s phone data by then.

  “Did you know Henry at all? I mean since boot camp, obviously.”

  Pete finished his mouthful and took a swig of beer. “Wouldn’t say I knew him. I just knew we were in the same industry. Well, that’s my understanding at least. I heard he’d pumped some money into the rival of the company I used to work for.”

  “Which company?” Henry never told me the company he wanted to extract himself from.

  “HardShell Security.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I’m not surprised. It’s only been around a few years and it operates in a pretty niche field.”

  “What kind of field?”

  “The cannabis kind. When Prop 64 passed to legalize recreational cannabis use, the industry blew up. And this guy called Quinn Rollins saw there was a gap in the market and he stepped in to fill it.”

  Pete told me HardShell was a private security company that specifically catered to businesses thriving in the burgeoning cannabis economy. The growers, dispensaries, and labs that were making a lot of money in the new “green rush” found themselves with a major problem. Cannabis was now legal in California, but as far as federal law was concerned it was still illegal, classed as a Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

  “That means if a traditional bank accepted cannabis money they could be prosecuted for money laundering,” I said. “Or aiding and abetting a federal crime. I’m starting to see the problem.”

  “Exactly. So now you’ve got a lot of cash—and we’re talking a mountain of cash—that can’t just be wheeled down to the local Wells Fargo branch for safe keeping. You have to find something like a sympathetic credit union, of which there aren’t that many.”

  “So just to get your money banked and to be able to access it when yo want is a major issue?”

  “Yeah. Then there’s the other big issue.”

  “Which is?”

  “Think about it. You’ve got literally a truck-load of cash that you have to transport to a credit union a few hundred miles away. You’ve just become the biggest target for road agents since the Prohibition Era.”

  “And that’s where HardShell stepped in?”

  “Yeah. They collect your weed and/or your money and get it to where it needs to go. Guys with guns riding in unmarked armored trucks, ferrying millions of dollars’ worth of cash and weed across the state.”

  “Sounds like the private contractors running amok in Kabul,” I said. And I could see where the company name came from: in conflict zones, a hard-shell vehicle meant armor-plated vehicle.

  “It’s not too different. Most of Quinn’s men are vets who went on to work for private military contractors overseas.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I used to work for Rollins’ competition, Bravo Security.”

  “And Henry Tuck had invested in HardShell, is that right?”

  “That was the word on the street. It wasn’t out in the open. As far as I understood it, he was a silent partner.”

  “Did Bravo pay well?”

  “They paid very well.”

  “So why aren’t you still working for them?”

  Pete shook his head and reached for his beer. “It was getting too crazy.”

  “How so?”

  “It was like the Wild West, Madison. What I said about road agents wasn’t hypothetical. Our vans were like stage coaches, and we drew the bad guys out of the woodwork.”

  Now that Pete mentioned it, I’d read about a couple of incidents where cannabis dispensaries had been ram raided with the crooks making off with a cash-laden ATM.

  “They hit your vans?”

  Pete nodded. “First time I got stung, we were making a run from Eureka up in Humboldt County down to one of our compounds in San Diego. We pulled over for a piss break, middle of nowhere, and a bunch of guys with masks and guns appeared, tied us up, and stole one and a half mill.”

  “Inside job?”

  “Had to be.”

  “And that wasn’t the only time. We were about to do a pick-up at a grower’s farm, but fifteen minutes before we got there, it was raided. This time they left no witnesses alive. Three people dead and eight-hundred grand’s worth of weed gone.”

  “Same guys?”

  “Who knows? But my guess is yes.”

  “And that’s when you got out?”

  “No. I stuck it out for a while longer. Then I made the decision to leave a couple of weeks ago.”

  “How come?”

  “I saw the writing on the wall. Another company got hit. Three dead and one in hospital. It’s out of control, Madison, and the cops and governments won’t do anything about it. Until the feds change the classification of cannabis, nothing’s going to change. It was only a matter of time before I got hit again. I’ve got a wife and kids. To hell with that. From now on, the only business I’m interested in is feeding people.”

  “I had no idea it was so hectic. Sounds like you made a wise move.”

  “I now realize how much of a lifesaver the cashless economy is. If someone comes in to rob my restaurant, there’s no till to empty. All they’ll get is a couple of PIN pads. They’re never going to bother. That’s peace of mind for me, right there.”

  A waiter came with more food and more beer. Pete took a swig and leaned back in his chair. “Enough about that, Madison. What’s going on with you? When I saw you today, I just got a sense everything’s not A-OK with you. How you doing?”

  Through dinner, I sensed this was coming and was ready to wave Pete off. But with a few drinks under my belt, and the genuine care Pete displayed, I decided to let my guard down a little.

  “I don’t know, nothing’s majorly wrong. Work keeps me busy but outside that I’m just going through the motions right now. My life’s fine. It really is. I mean, I’d like to have more time to spend with my daughter, but that’s not something I can change.”

  “You got a good woman in your life?”

  I laughed and leaned back. I looked at Pete like this topic was territory that I didn’t want us to wade into. Any higher than ankle deep, anyway.

  “I guess the straight-out answer is no.”

  “As far as I can tell, that would have to be on your account. I can’t imagine you’d have too many issues finding yourself a girlfriend. Hell, the way Marcia was looking at you I thought her wedding might have to be put on hold.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, right. But thanks for the flattery. I’ve been divorced over five years now. And I can tell you there have been some fine women in my life since. But just when things seem to be going right, they go all wrong.”

  I went on to tell him a little about Abby Hatfield, the Hollywood actress
I fell for right when Claire and I decided to get divorced. Then there was Jessica Pope, the prosecutor who I battled in the courtroom and enjoyed a friends-with-benefits relationship with. Then, right when we both realized we wanted something more, she upped and moved to Washington D.C. Six months later, Jessica told me she was engaged to a senator.

  “Who’d have thought it. The great Brad Madison, getting dumped. Not once but twice.”

  “I don’t need sympathy, Pete.”

  “It’s not sympathy. It’s funny.”

  “Prick.”

  We laughed and proceeded to demolish our banquet. It felt good to get that off my chest. I don’t know whether I felt more or less like a loser.

  Chapter 4

  I got the Uber to pull over at a 7-11 a block or so from my apartment building. I was pretty drunk but not so much that I forgot I was out of coffee and that I’d need a heart-starter in the morning courtesy of my espresso machine.

  I liked living in Santa Monica. I was close to Bella, who lived with her mom Claire in a fine house on the Venice Beach canals. How I came to be a Santa Monica resident was a long story. The apartment used to belong to my younger brother Mitch. About two years ago, he told me he wanted to sell. He never gave me a convincing reason why, and pressing him risked pushing our relationship back to where it was for most of our adult years—that is, almost non-existent. All he said was that he needed a change, had to get out of LA, and was thinking about moving up to San Francisco to join a real estate firm. The apartment was actually a gift from me—which is a long story in itself—but I saw this as my cue to get out of my rental and into a near-new apartment complex in the heart of Santa Monica. I offered Mitch market price and he accepted.

  I hadn’t heard from my brother since, but that was not unusual. With his history of gambling, I figured he’d sold out in order to settle some kind of debt. When I offered to help him out if he was in a financial bind, he denied it and reassured me it was nothing more than a mid-life crisis.

  I shifted my supplies to my left arm as I dug into my jeans pocket for my keys. Looking ahead, something I saw at the entrance to my building made me slow my pace.