The Girl Buried in the Woods

by Robert Ellis

  Matt shrugged it off and glanced around the office. The idea that Burton was on board gave the investigation a blood transfusion—an entirely new status. Before he had a chance to really think about it, Burton rushed back into the room.

  “Sorry about that, Detective. I’ve got all afternoon open now. Let’s get out of here.”

  The prosecutor walked over to his desk, returning the papers to his file. Matt watched Val move to the coatrack, then help her husband get into his jacket.

  “Will you be home late?” she said.

  Burton glanced at Matt and turned back. “I don’t think so.”

  She nodded like she’d heard him say the same thing a thousand times. Burton met her eyes.

  “I’ll do the best I can,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

  Matt gathered his things and started for the door. Burton grabbed his briefcase and led the way out.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Burton drove a dark-gray Audi SUV that looked as if it hadn’t been washed since the rainstorms. As they pulled out of the garage onto the street, Matt slid his laptop case aside and stretched his legs.

  “My wife’s a fan of yours,” Burton said. “She’s taking a few days off to help me move. She designs children’s clothing. The reason I mention it is that she’s got an artist’s imagination. She wants to hear about everything she’s seen and read in the news.”

  Matt smiled. “That’s okay. I’m getting used to it.”

  “Good,” Burton said. “I can call you, Matt, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “And I’m Mitch.”

  Burton made a right onto West Temple Street, then another onto North Grand. Within a few minutes they were cruising down the 110 Freeway heading south to San Pedro. Matt had made the trip to Terminal Island many times in the past. Depending on traffic and the number of slowdowns, the twenty-five-mile drive could take anywhere from forty-five minutes to three or four hours.

  Matt pulled a file out of his laptop case. “Why is Joseph Gambini our first move?” he said.

  Burton thought it over. “Because anything Robert Gambini has done or might be doing wouldn’t be with his uncle’s blessing.”

  “Why not?”

  Burton glanced his way, then back at the road. “Because they hate each other.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “It’s a blood thing. A family issue, and it’s irrevocable.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Robert has nothing to do with the Gambini Organization and never has.”

  Matt shook his head in disbelief. “He isn’t a friend or a player? He has no involvement, no business, no participation with the Gambini crime family at all?”

  Burton flashed an ironic smile. “None,” he said flatly. “But that doesn’t mean that Uncle Joe doesn’t know exactly what his nephew is up to. You know what I mean?”

  “Why would a man like Joseph Gambini agree to talk to us? Why would he want to?”

  “He seemed agreeable on the phone,” Burton said. “But that doesn’t mean he’ll give us anything we can use. All he knows is that I didn’t put him away this time. The Department of Justice got him. A federal prosecutor trying to score points, Marvin Sanders. He went after Gambini’s bank accounts. He didn’t need to do that, but he did. He put Joe away for ten years on charges of racketeering and extortion that didn’t add up. But the headlines did, and so did the media coverage. Marvin Sanders is from South Carolina and thinks he’s gonna be a senator someday.”

  “How much time has Gambini done? What about parole?”

  Burton checked the mirror, moved into the left lane, and picked up speed. “He served eight of ten and was released. About a week later, he was seen outside one of the casinos on the Westside. He was sipping an espresso and smoking a cigar with two members of a major crime family from New York. They turned out to be best friends from childhood, the meeting by chance. But like I said, Marvin Sanders wants to be a senator someday. For him it’s all about the kill. He sent Gambini back to prison for the remaining two years of his sentence and got more of those headlines he likes so much. As you’ve probably guessed, Sanders is a small-time guy. Our office thought the move was petty and we said so in public, and Gambini knows that, too.”

  Matt grimaced. There were too many people like Marvin Sanders in the world. Too many people who deserved a hard pushback. No wonder Burton thought the crime boss might talk to them.

  He let the thought go, glanced at the speedometer, and saw that they had settled in at a brisk ninety miles an hour. Traffic had thinned out, and they were making good time. Burton had already reached the Seaside Freeway.

  Matt sat back in the seat as they turned onto Terminal Way and approached the prison’s main gate on the right. Straight ahead was a guard tower and to the left, the parking lot and prison entrance. Matt fished his ID out of his pocket. Terminal Island was a low-security federal prison for male inmates set on the water in beautiful Southern California. Still, it never ceased to amaze Matt how much barbed wire could be wrapped around the walls of a three-story building like this one. He knew that the barbed wire was there for show. That the Federal Bureau of Prisons hoped to dispel Terminal Island’s reputation as “Club Fed” after a series of embarrassing scandals. Matt couldn’t recall many of the details except to say that six prison officials had been indicted for selling drugs to inmates. Based on the overwhelming amount of barbed wire encasing the buildings—based on the size of the show—that wire had to add up to a lot of drugs for a lot of inmates and, at least for a few, a lot of cash underneath the table.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Joseph Gambini was waiting for them in a meeting room. He was seated at a table, wearing a jumpsuit the color of orange juice spilled over light wood and holding an unlit cigarette in his right hand.

  “Does my nephew know that you’re onto him?”

  Matt glanced at Burton, then back at the CEO of the Gambini Organization.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Matt said as he approached the table. “He followed me through Venice last night, but that could mean a lot of things.”

  Gambini shrugged, then turned to Burton. “This is the guy you were talking about?”

  Burton nodded. “Detective Jones. Hollywood Homicide.”

  “The one in the funny papers?”

  Burton gave the crime boss a grim smile. “They’re not so funny these days, Joe.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “I guess they’re not.”

  A moment passed as Gambini turned to the window. Matt followed his gaze through the bars and thick mesh of barbed wire to a cargo ship that had been stacked with containers and was being led out to open water by a pair of tugs. When Burton pulled a chair out from the table, Matt turned back to Gambini and sat down.

  He couldn’t help thinking about the photograph hanging in Burton’s office and guessed that it was taken twenty years ago when Gambini would have been about forty years old. Despite the time, setting, and circumstance, Gambini didn’t seem to have changed much. He still had the look and feel of someone comfortable in their own skin. Someone who lived above the fray and without worries. Someone who knew that in the end, he would survive, and everything would turn out okay. His dark hair was gray now, his thin build meatier, and his brown eyes framed by age lines. But he looked healthy and seemed smarter than most—the kind of guy Matt had always thought he needed to keep an eye on.

  Gambini turned from the window and gave Matt a long look. “If my nephew thinks you’re onto him, that’s not good, Detective. Not good for you.”

  Matt noticed that Gambini was wearing a gold watch and a wedding band. Both looked high-end and out of place for an inmate in a federal prison. He leaned his elbows on the table.

  “What’s going on between you and your nephew, Mr. Gambini? What happened?”

  The man crossed his legs, then casually rubbed his chin with two fingers. When he spoke, he didn’t seem rushed or fazed, his voice low.

  “I kept Robert’s moth
er and father out of the family business. His father was a loser. They didn’t live that well. I made sure they had enough to get by, but that’s about it. Robert always resented it.”

  There were three paper cups on the table, along with a pitcher made of plastic and filled with ice water. Gambini filled a cup for himself, looked at Matt and then Burton, and filled two more. After a first sip, the crime boss cleared his throat.

  “I kept them out of the business,” he repeated. “They didn’t have the knack.” He laughed a little as he thought it over. “In a way, it turned out to be a good thing for Robert. He went to college. He got an MBA from Wharton. But in the end, with all that higher learning, he still wasn’t smart enough to see things straight. After he graduated, he came to me and wanted to work for the Gambini Organization. I refused, just like I always had. I refused for the same reasons I refused his father.”

  Matt noticed that Gambini was wearing a polo shirt underneath his worn-out orange jumpsuit. When he lowered his laptop case to the floor, he shot a quick look at the man’s pant legs and spotted a pair of jeans beneath his prison garb. The jumpsuit was like the barbed wire. The whole thing, a ruse.

  Club Fed.

  He could remember a cartoon that appeared in the editorial section of the newspaper around the time indictments were handed out here at the prison. The single-frame sketch depicted an inmate resting on a chaise lounge by the water while a prison guard served him a gram of cocaine and a glass of wine on a silver tray. The caption read, “Will there be anything else, sir?”

  Matt let it go, took a sip of water, and sat back in his chair. “Why refuse to take Robert in?” he said. “Even if we put his illegal activity aside, do the math. Your nephew owns a chain of pot shops. He obviously knows how to make money. Why wouldn’t he have been an asset to you?”

  Something changed in Gambini’s eyes, almost as if storm clouds had swept across the sky of his face and were blocking the sun in his eyes.

  “Because he’s got the gene,” the crime boss said emphatically. “The ‘mean Gambini gene.’ He got it from his father—my father. And our father got it from our grandfather. He’s mean. He’s vicious and cruel. He keeps an enemy list. A shit list. He’s always got somebody he hates. You ever meet anybody like that, kid? They hate everybody they know they can’t beat, right? And they love stabbing them in the goddamn back. That’s how they get that feeling of power. That’s how their little game works. If they’re surrounded by losers, they’re the king on top. And that’s what makes them dangerous. That’s why I didn’t want them anywhere near my business. They’re crazy motherfuckers. They just don’t know it yet.”

  Matt met the man’s eyes. “How come you didn’t get it? The gene your brother got from your father. Why not you?”

  Gambini must have been thrown off by the question. The storm clouds vanished, and his face cleared. He looked around the meeting room and laughed.

  “Because I got this,” he said joyously. “I’m living the good life now; can’t you see it, Detective? The feds took all my cash. They took my buildings, my casinos, my homes, and my cars. They got my toys—that little prick that nailed me thinks he got everything. But I still got this.” Gambini tapped the top of his head with a finger. “I still got what’s in here, Detective. And I’ve had a lot of time to think things over. A lot of time to sit in the sun and work on not getting burned. In two years, I’m out of this place. In one year, seven months, three days, and six hours, I’m free as a fucking bird. Watch me fly, kid. Watch me fly away and never bother nobody again.”

  Another long moment passed. Gambini drained the paper cup, crushed it in his free hand, and tossed it in a trash basket beside the table. Matt turned to Burton.

  “How much of what’s happened did you tell him?”

  Burton leaned closer with his eyes wide open. “Enough that he can probably guess what your next question will be.”

  Gambini flashed a scary smile as he measured Matt up. “You ought to be an attorney, kid. You wanna be my lawyer?”

  Matt ignored the question and fired one back. “Why do you think Robert is watching the waste management company? Is he keeping an eye on things because he’s already in with them and doesn’t trust them? Or do the three partners have something he wants?”

  The crime boss shook his head. “All things being equal?” he said.

  Matt nodded carefully. “All things being equal.”

  “What the hell could they have that he wants?” Gambini said. “What the hell could they have that he doesn’t already have ten times over? I think it’s a better bet that Robert’s watching something on those train tracks. Something in a freight car that’s either there right now or on its way.”

  Matt gave Burton a look, then turned back. “That doesn’t make any sense, Mr. Gambini. If it’s about a drug shipment on a freight car, then why was Moe Rey working for DMG?”

  Gambini seemed to be genuinely surprised and turned to Burton. “What’s one of my couriers got to do with any of this?”

  Burton met the man’s hard gaze. “Moe Rey was murdered the other night, Joe.”

  “Murdered?”

  Burton nodded. “According to Matt, his supervisor, and Chief Logan, he was executed. They think a young girl witnessed the killing. They were found buried in the same grave up the hill in Elysian Park.”

  Gambini still appeared stunned. “Moe Rey was a nobody. My nobody. He was harmless. Why would anyone want to kill him?”

  Matt pushed the paper cup aside. “We’re not sure. But we think it has something to do with the two hundred grand we found hidden in his kitchen pantry.”

  Gambini gave him a long look. After several moments, he turned back to Burton.

  “Two hundred grand?” he said. “Cash?”

  Burton nodded again. “Hundred-dollar bills, Joe—banded in packs of ten thousand and sealed in two Cryovac bags.”

  Matt stared at Gambini and still couldn’t get a read. Nothing was showing on the man’s face except for the effort Gambini appeared to be making to put it together.

  Matt decided to take a guess. “Moe Rey was associated with your family,” he said. “You described him yourself as one of your couriers. Are you worried that before his death he’d crossed over and was working for these guys at DMG, or even your nephew?”

  Gambini gave Matt a passing glance that seemed to suggest they were so far off the same page, any further conversation would be meaningless. Yet Matt could see the man was still chewing things over. Then, without warning, Gambini stood up like he’d had enough, walked over to the door, and gave it a light tap. As he waited for the guard, he turned back to them. Matt noted the storm clouds. They were drifting across Gambini’s face again, his brown eyes dark as night. When he spoke finally, it was more of a low rumble than anything else.

  “I think you’ve turned everything upside down, Detective. My nephew is insane. I think he snapped and hurt the girl, and that’s what this is all about. When he realized Moe Rey saw him do it, he lost his cool and decided to kill both of them. Maybe, in his warped mind, he greased Moe Rey just to get back at me. Either way, he dumped them into a hole, hoping that whatever the fuck happened would go away. Only it didn’t go away, and now it’s working on him. My guess is that he’s hunting down witnesses and looking to clean things up. Like I said before, Robert doesn’t know how to let things go. He keeps that enemy list, and it sounds like it’s growing. If he followed you through Venice last night, I’d bet the house you’re invited to the party.”

  The guard arrived. Gambini gave Burton a hard look, then turned back to Matt with those dark eyes of his. Everything became quiet and dead still.

  “Nice meeting you, kid.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Burton spent a good deal of the drive back to the city on the phone. According to his assistant, the prosecutor’s personal files on Robert Gambini had already been packed up and moved to his house on Mulholland Drive.

  Matt didn’t mind. He wanted time to process the
interview with Joseph Gambini before Burton offered an opinion. He didn’t trust Gambini and thought that most of what he’d witnessed had been a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters. He was also wrestling with the fact that his mind and body had become weary, and he needed a decent night’s sleep. The muscles in his arms and legs ached. Thoughts were bending into each other. Twice over the past half hour he caught himself in a free fall, only to be jolted awake by one of the many potholes on the freeway or the shrill sound of the ringer on Burton’s phone.

  He pulled himself together as he felt the elevation changing and saw Burton start the climb up Coldwater Canyon Drive. They were just north of Beverly Hills, the homes almost storybook. But once they made the turn onto Mulholland, Matt had no doubt that they were passing through one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles. Just the view of the basin outside the passenger-side window was enough to shake the cobwebs out of his mind.

  “We’re close,” Burton said. “Hopefully Val found the files.”

  Matt nodded. “Do you think that the prosecutor from South Carolina got all of Gambini’s money?”

  Burton smiled. “He works in Washington, you know. He’s a fed.”

  Matt shook his head. “Either way, you said he’s vicious. Do you think he cleaned Gambini out?”

  A gate opened just ahead on the left, and Burton pulled into a driveway before a three-door garage. Matt got out and looked up at the house built into the hills above. He knew that there were people who lived in houses the size of buildings on this road. People who lived in cold, sterile dwellings as far away from reality as their money could take them. But Burton’s place wasn’t one of them. In one sense it was a modern house—not big or small but just the right size—and well landscaped to keep the neighboring houses screened out. In another sense, though, Burton’s home reminded Matt of a country villa in the hills of Italy, a place lost in time and swathed in good feeling.