Dark Justice

by Sinclair, Rachel

  “I’m inclined towards the latter, but I think that you get the picture, no pun intended.” He sat back in his chair and lit up a cigar. “What did you want to see me about?”

  She took a deep breath. She had rehearsed this scene in her head, over and over, until she had her lines memorized. She saw it as she always saw her movie scenes, in great detail. She had seen his office, she had seen her talking to him, she had seen his reaction. Everything.

  She was prepared.

  “I need your help.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m not letting you out of your contract, Wentworth. I don’t know what you have up your sleeve this time, but if you try to get out of this movie, I’ll sue you for everything you got.” He got out some Tums and popped about ten into his mouth. “I knew I shouldn’t have hired you. Lorena told me that hiring you was going to put me into the hospital for stress, and I didn’t listen to her.”

  “I need your help,” Addison said calmly. “Here’s what I’m going to do.” Another deep breath. “Please let me speak.”

  “Or what? What will you do if I don’t let you speak?”

  At that, she got her phone out of her purse. She pulled up the video she made of him desperately trying to resuscitate the dead hooker Charlotte, while screaming at her to help him. She handed it to him without a word and smiled when she saw his face go white. His eye twitched, over and over again, and he took another huge puff off of his cigar and got the Tums out again and finished off the bottle.

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “I knew you would be.” She nodded. “Okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go off the grid. Completely. A new life, a new face, a new identity. I already have it arranged. I have a plastic surgeon in Italy who is going to completely make my face over. I’ve had a documents guy create a new passport, birth certificate and social security number. I’ve gotten a new background created. I’m going to find out what it’s like to live a life anonymously. Completely anonymously.”

  She took a deep breath through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. Her plan filled her with peace. Nothing but peace. She was looking forward to starting over. Nobody was going to know except for Katie and her family in Brooklyn. Katie had actually agreed to disappear with her, for she, too, was tired of Hollywood. The two decided to start over in Rome, Italy, and they were going to raise her baby together. Not as lovers and lesbians, but as friends.

  Katie was the only person that Addison trusted in the world, except for her family.

  “Yeah, okay, you’re going to fucking disappear. What does that have to do with me?”

  “You’re going to help me.”

  Art raised an eyebrow and looked skeptical. “How the fuck am I supposed to help you?”

  “You’re going to do three things for me. First, you’re going to pressure your son-in-law, Jeff Pappas, to declare me dead almost as soon as I go missing. Second, you’re going to talk to the head of the movie studio, Cinecitta, in Rome, and get me a job in some of the movies that are being produced through that studio. I want the lead roles, not supporting roles. You have to make that clear.”

  “Okay. I can do both of those things. What’s the third thing?”

  “You’re going to make sure that the cops arrest Senator Nash for my murder. I can’t tell you how important this is. I want Michael going down for this murder, and only Michael.”

  Art raised an eyebrow. “And how the hell am I supposed to convince anybody that Michael Nash did this?”

  “It’s easy.” At that, she gave Art a copy of the DNA test that she had done. She had swabbed Michael’s cheek while he slept at her house one night, and sent it in, along with the DNA test she had done on her baby in utero. “Here is a copy of a paternity test I’ve had done on my unborn baby. It shows that Michael is the father of my baby. That gives him motive.”

  Art nodded his head. “So he knocked you up. So what?”

  “It gives him motive to kill me,” Addison said. “I’m having his baby. That’s going to destroy his political career. It’s going to kill it dead.”

  “Yeah? What else you got on him?”

  “Well, that’s it. The paternity test. But I want you to lean on Jeff Pappas, your son-in-law, to arrest Michael. Give him this paternity test, tell him that Michael has reason to kill me, and press him to arrest Michael.”

  “And what if Jeff refuses?”

  “You tell him the consequences if he refuses. Tell him the truth, that I have incriminating evidence that will put you in prison for the rest of your life. I know that you’re constantly giving him money to pay off his gambling debts, and he doesn’t want that gravy train to end. I think that he’ll dance if you play the right music for him.”

  Art shook his head and popped some more Tums into his mouth. “You’re killing me, Wentworth, do you know that? You’re putting this on me, you’re laying all this bullshit on me. You want me to throw an innocent man under the bus for a murder that’s not even going to happen. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I realize that. But I know you. You have no love for Michael. You have no love for anybody but yourself. I think that your conscience will more than allow you to do this to him.”

  “You don’t know how much love I have for Michael Nash. I mean, I’ve got no love for him, but he’s been very useful to me over the years. Plus, he’s running for president, and, trust me on this, he could be more than valuable to me and my interests if he actually gets the nomination and wins the presidency. You’re asking me to give all that up, and for what reason? So that you can go off and live it up over in Italy while the media sharks circle around looking for something to eat. And you’re throwing me out as chum, aren’t you?”

  “Listen, Art, being in the middle of my murder investigation will give you lots of publicity. I know that you love nothing more than publicity, whether bad or good. Just think, when I go missing and I’m declared dead, it’s going to be the biggest story of the year, maybe even of the decade. You’ll be in the middle of it. You’re going to be giving my evidence over to the cops and the media and everybody is going to want to talk to you about what you knew about me and my affair with Michael.”

  Art just shook his head. “I want nothing to do with that. I want nothing to do with throwing Michael under the bus like that. I’ll have the cops declaring you dead. I’ve got no problem with calling the studio head over at Cinecitta and telling him to hire you for their films. But asking me to finger Michael Nash is just a bridge too far.”

  Addison narrowed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Art, that last part is non-negotiable. Do you hear me? It’s non-negotiable. The last thing I want, and I mean the last thing I want, is for some poor schmuck to end up on the hook for killing me. That’s what’s going to happen if you don’t do what I ask you to do. I’m serious. You have to do that. If you don’t, I’m going to be sending that video I made of you reviving that poor Charlotte over to the police. If you want that to happen, then it will happen. If I find out that you’re not holding up your end of the bargain, then I’ll have no choice but to make sure you pay.”

  Art rolled his eyes. “Easy, easy. I’ll do what you want me to do, but I won’t be happy about it. I won’t be happy about it. You’re going to be killing the goose that has laid the golden eggs for me, and will be laying many more golden eggs in the future. I’m telling you, I would love to have POTUS in my back pocket, and you’re taking that away from me. He’ll really dance for me if I blackmail him with that DNA test that you’ve given me.”

  Addison just sat there, her arms crossed in front of her. She had all the cards, and she knew it. “You’re going to do it. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to do it.”

  “Why do you hate him this much?”

  “He hurt me. He hurt me, not just emotionally, but physically.” Addison started to cry. “I just found out that I’m not special to him. I’m just one of many people he was having sex with. I talked to Sonny Mancino, because he
was trying to buy my story. I know Sonny and what he does, and I want no part of that catch and kill. He admitted to me that Michael has had many, many, many sex partners. I really thought that he and I were exclusive and that-“

  To her surprise, Art seemed like he was actually listening to her. “That what?”

  “I thought that he was going to leave his wife for me. I thought that I was going to be First Lady. I was a fool, a complete fool.”

  Art nodded his head. “You were a fool. Yes, that’s true. Addison, you’ve been in this town since you were 22. You haven’t yet trained yourself to know a player when you see one?”

  “No. I guess not. I was blinded by him, I guess.”

  “Blinded by his power and your fantasy.”

  “Yes. Right. Also, he attacked me physically. He almost strangled me. He could have killed me. I want him wiped off the face of the earth. You have to help me do that.”

  Art leaned back in his chair. “Okay. But I’m not going to like it.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  And that was that. An agreement was struck. If all went well, Addison was going to have a new life. A completely new life.

  It was going to be heaven.

  Or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Once we got back to Los Angeles and Addison came clean, the circus intensified to a 22 on a scale of 1 to 10. Carter got out of jail, of course, and this entire thing actually ended up benefitting him - Addison knew that he had grounds for a multi-million dollar lawsuit for all that he went through, so her lawyer settled with me, acting as Carter’s lawyer, for $10 million. I took 30% of that, and Carter was set for life as far as money went.

  Not only that, but everybody wanted Carter’s story. He was popular, more popular than he had ever dreamed. Better yet, he had a girlfriend. She was a computer geek who he met at a comic-book convention. She announced that she knew who he was, because she had followed the entire trial, and that she couldn’t figure out for the life of her why Carter spent his life being rejected.

  “You’re a cutie,” she said, taking his hand.

  Carter was stunned. “I am?”

  “You are. I can’t believe you don’t know that.”

  They had been dating ever since, and Carter called me to tell me that he was the happiest he had ever been. “I can’t believe how it all worked out, Ms. Justice,” he said. “I mean, I’ve been able to buy a condo, I have a girlfriend and best yet, I’ve told my mom to go and pound sand. She’s been wanting some of my money, telling me that I owe it to her somehow.”

  That was rich, considering we found out the truth about exactly how that hair got into that murder scene. His mother confessed all on the night that he was sprung from jail after Addison came forward with her story. She was beyond sloshed, and she went ahead and confessed.

  “Now that that bitch Wentworth turned up alive, I might as well tell you a secret,” she slurred to Carter that night. “Senator Nash put me up to giving him one of your hairs. He planted the hair at the scene. I’m only telling you that because Nash won’t be in trouble now. I did it to save him from having to go to prison.”

  At that, she went and vomited while Carter stood there stunned. He later told me that he couldn’t believe that she would do such a thing, yet it wasn’t surprising to him, at the same time.

  “Mom has always hated me, but I had no idea that she hated me that much,” he said. “I’m done with her.”

  And he had the ability to be truly done with her. His new condo was in the Pacific Palisades and it was beautiful. I went to visit him and he showed me around. He also told me that he, for the first time, was looking forward to going to college. “I never thought that I’d be able to afford it before,” he said. “But I’m going to try for early acceptance at UCLA.” He smiled. “Now that I have this condo, I don’t want to leave it, even to go to school.”

  I also solved another mystery - what Addison was saying when she bemoaned the person who betrayed her. Apparently, she and Art Loffino had an elaborate deal where Art was not only going to pressure the police chief to declare Addison dead, but he also was going to pull strings with Cinecitta to make sure that Cinecitta would give Addison a job when she finally was ready and her plastic surgery had healed up enough that she looked normal.

  He also was supposed to go to the press and the police and tell them to look at Senator Nash and only Senator Nash. According to Addison, if Art would have done his job in this regard, Senator Nash would have been on the hook for Addison’s “murder.” He was specifically supposed to train his son-in-law, Jeff Pappas, the Los Angeles Chief of Police, onto Senator Nash. He also was supposed to reveal the results of Addison’s DNA test to the press and to the police.

  It turned out that he didn’t do this part of the bargain. He had hired a hacker to hack into Addison’s phone and erase some piece of evidence she had on there. She didn’t have a copy of this piece of evidence, whatever it was, because she didn’t reveal that part, so, when that evidence was erased, she was out of luck. She no longer had leverage over Art at that point, so she couldn’t force him to do what she wanted anymore.

  “That’s how things got so screwed up,” Addison bemoaned. “My plan would have been perfect if it was Michael Nash who was up for my murder, not your poor client.”

  She soon found out that Art didn’t hold up this part of their bargain because he and Senator Nash were tight. Art wanted Senator Nash in his pocket, so he didn’t want him to go to prison. He was blackmailing him with Addison’s DNA test results, and he was going to try to get as much out of him that he could.

  I remembered that Art had tried to convince me that Senator Nash was the father of Addison’s child, which actually was the truth, according to Addison. He also encouraged me to focus on him for Addison’s murder. This didn’t square with what Addison told me about he and Senator Nash being so tight together.

  “Well, Art cut Michael loose when it came out that Michael was having an affair with me. Art knew that Michael wasn’t going to be POTUS anytime soon, because of the revelation of our affair, so Art had no use for him at that point. That was why he was willing to throw Michael under the bus when you went to see him. By that time, though, it was too late. If Art would have trained the cops and pressed on Michael in the first place, before your client was arrested, it would have worked out. By the time Art told you about Michael, it was just too late.”

  She shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

  Carter had forgiven her, especially since he was wealthy because of what had happened. I hadn’t quite forgiven her, but I knew that I didn’t need to hang onto anger about the whole thing. What I didn’t know was whether or not she would have come clean if I didn’t happen to have run into her at the movie studio. She told me that she was going to come clean, but I had my doubts.

  As for Addison herself, she had a lot to answer for. The tabloids, magazines, news channels and Internet went absolutely wild when she revealed herself. That story blew up to where people were declaring it to be the story of the century. It was bad enough that her “murder” became such a media circus, but when she turned up alive, the circus suddenly went from boiling to exploding.

  Yet, she became more popular than ever. Everybody wanted a piece of her, because she was the biggest story of the year, maybe the decade. I doubted that she was going to be the biggest story of the century - I found that to be a tad hyperbolic - but she definitely was a ginormous story.

  I guess that it was a happy ending for everyone, even for Senator Nash. I long suspected that he was the actual person to plant that hair. I thought that he was a sleaze, but there was no way that I could prove in a court of law that he was the one who tampered with the crime scene. When Carter asked Shaylene about it the next day, when she was semi-coherent, she denied it all.

  Nevertheless, I turned Senator Nash’s name over to the police for investigation about that hair being placed at the murder scene. No
body did anything about it, as I knew would happen, so I was pretty angry.

  Senator Nash didn’t really pay for what he did. He was still a senator, and, despite the fact that he had attracted quite a few primary challengers for his seat, he was still leading in the polls. He would never be president, but he apparently was still going to be senator, and I thought that that was not justice.

  Still, the person who mattered in this mess - Carter - was happy, and that really was all that mattered.

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  Also by Rachel Sinclair

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  Harper Ross

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  Emerson Justice