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He braved her suspicious, get-out-of-my-space glare and walked to her desk. Conversationally, he said, “I hear you’re working with the Robbery Homicide Division on the Ned Talbert case.”
She slapped down her sandwich, yielding to his rude intrusion. “And Ned was a friend of yours, I know. I’m sorry about that, I really am, but I can’t tell you anything beyond what’s been in the news, and you know it.”
“So, you are working with RHD.” LAPD’s Robbery Homicide Division often took jurisdiction when homicides involved high-profile individuals or special circumstances, even if the crime had happened within the jurisdiction of another bureau. Ned’s home was within the physical boundaries of the West bureau, which made the West L.A. station the occurrence division. So, fortunately for Rick, even if Robbery-Homicide was running the case, the West L.A. people would have been first at the scene, which meant Mimi may have had a near-virgin look at the crime scene.
“If I was working with them, that would be all the more reason I couldn’t help you. Sorry.”
“Who said I wanted help? Maybe I have some things to tell you.”
“Yeah? Like?”
“Like Ned may have joined a private-concierge service just before he died. And like several other high-profile clients of that service have been accused of criminal acts. Big names, major shit, and all of it recent, like within the last month.”
She glanced at the tabloid, which she so clearly preferred over his company. “What kind of criminal acts?”
“International drug smuggling and child pornography, for starters. Mimi, it may not be a coincidence that they all belong to the same service. It could be the link that connects them.”
“Connects them to what, a serial killer? Are they all dead?”
“Not dead. Caught. Snared. They’re all embroiled in career-ending scandals and most are looking at significant prison time if they’re convicted. Maybe Ned wasn’t supposed to die. Maybe he was supposed to have his career ended, too, and something went wrong. Someone should follow up on that. You, for example.”
This was the moment when Rick would have handed her the TPC card with the word Extortion? on the back in Ned’s handwriting, but he didn’t want to have to lie to her about where he got it. And he wasn’t quite ready to talk about the missing package, either.
“Where did you come up with this information? Do you know all these people personally?”
“Ned? Personally? I’ve known him since he was five, and he isn’t into whips and chains. He’s not a killer, and he wasn’t suicidal. He had everything to live for, as the cliché goes.”
“Did Ned tell you about this service? Did he have suspicions?”
Lie, Bayless. She’s never going to get the significance otherwise.
He drew Lane Chandler’s card out of his jacket pocket. “Ned was using this as a marker in a book he loaned me. Take a look at what he wrote on the back.”
She glanced at the question Ned had scribbled on the back, her lips pursing as she turned the card over and continued to scrutinize it. “Not much to go on, Sherlock.”
“Right, but Ned also paid me a visit at my cabin the night before he and his girlfriend were found dead. He said he was in trouble, that someone was trying to blackmail him. I had other things on my mind and sent him away. The next day, well, you know what happened.”
She closed one eye, squinting at him. “So, this is about your guilt?”
“It’s about follow-up, Mimi. Your specialty. You need to check this out—or get one of those RHD hotshots to do it.”
Her expression said gimme a fricking break, but he knew Mimi, and she wouldn’t have cleaned it up that much. “You know how they are, Rick. They’re gods. The stink of the O.J. case will never go away, but they still walk on water. What do you think my chances are of getting them to go along with this? They’ll laugh me off the case and loan me out to Palos Verdes.”
It was a credit to Rick’s years of practice that he didn’t smile.
She held out the card, which he pointedly ignored.
“It ain’t happening, Bayless,” she insisted. “From what I hear, the case is being written up as a murder-suicide, and the lab results aren’t even in yet. That’s how sure they are.”
Rick’s jaw clenched so tightly he could hear a click in his ears. “How sure they are? How could they be sure of anything at this point? Maybe it’s how anxious they are to be rid of this case. Did you ever think to ask yourself why, Mimi? Did it even occur to you that something else might be going on here?”
Mimi sighed. “I know cover-up is a buzz phrase these days, but it’s a little early for that, don’t you think? I was at the crime scene, and it sure as hell looked like a murder-suicide to me.”
That’s what Rick had been waiting to hear from her, but he didn’t want to look too eager. Better to continue his rant a little longer. “And isn’t that convenient for everyone concerned. They’re not even going to bother with the lab reports? Either that came down from above, which raises more questions, or these guys are lazy.”
Mimi shrugged, as if to say probably both. She peered at Rick. “If it were me, I’d write it off as a coincidence. Do you think it might be your history, not to mention animosity, toward the department that’s causing you to look for conspiracies where there are none?”
“My history is exactly why I can’t write it off.” With that, he changed the subject. “Take another look at that card. Do you recognize the name?”
“Lane Chandler?” She shook her head. “Should I?”
“We booked her for prostitution when she was a juvenile living on the streets—fifteen years old, to be exact. She was calling herself Lane Chandler, but her real name was Lucy Cox.”
Mimi rolled back in her chair, stunned. She stared at the card. “Holy shit, this is the kid that set off the firestorm. You might still be working in vice if not for her. Me, too, for that matter.”
“I never shed a tear about leaving vice. The point is, Lane Chandler has a criminal past, even if she was a juvenile at the time—and we need to know what she’s been doing since. Does she have an adult record, anything at all? I’d love to know how she ended up with clients like the CEO of TopCo and a hot commodity like Simon Shan.”
“She represents Simon Shan?”
Mimi’s eyes widened. Apparently Shan was a hot commodity. Rick didn’t keep up with celebrity gossip, but he’d seen enough of it on Gotcha.com to know that Lane’s service had become a lightning rod. The coincidence of so many clients in trouble at one company had not slipped Seth Black’s attention, either. Of the bunch, Shan had been cited as the one with the most to lose.
That was before Ned Talbert died under gruesome circumstances, but Ned wasn’t mentioned as a client of TPC, which meant the list had probably been made up before he joined—and Black had noticed the pattern even before Ned’s death.
Rick added some more names. “U.S. congressman Burton Carr and Priscilla Brandt, who’s hawking a book about manners. It’s quite a list.”
“Ms. Pris?” Mimi seemed impressed. “Still, the case is all but closed, and they’re not going to open it up again because Ned joined a concierge service whose clients are having a string of bad luck. So, what do you think is going on?”
“I don’t know, but I sure as hell wish I’d listened to what Ned was trying to tell me.”
She scribbled down a note on her desk blotter, which was unlikely ever to be found again, given all the doodling already there. “Maybe I could do some checking on Lane Chandler or Lucy Cox, just for old time’s sake and because I’m kind of curious myself. Not that I owe you any favors. Because I sure as hell don’t.”
“Thanks,” he said, deadpan. Better not to let her know that he was breathing easier. He lingered, wondering how to segue to his next concern.
She ripped open a bag of chips, about to wedge a few too many into her open mouth, when she realized he was still intent on something—her. “What? You hungry?”
“I was just wondering about the evidence from the crime scene. No big deal, but I left a package over at Ned’s. I thought one of the techs might have picked it up.”
“Rick, you’re not really asking me to mess with the evidence, are you? Tell me you’re not.”
He shrugged, tilting just enough to grab a couple chips from her bag. He was taking a chance by tying himself with the package, but what the hell. Getting caught with his hand in a fifteen-year-old cookie jar was the least of his worries these days, especially with his gut telling him the package had been lifted before the police ever got there. Mimi might be able to confirm that for him.
“You could tell me if it’s there, couldn’t you?” he coaxed. “It’s an old brown bubble pack, eight by eleven, unmarked but pretty beaten up. I’d like to have it back when the investigation’s over.”
“What’s inside?”
“Personal stuff,” he said, wondering if he could still blush. “It’s a little embarrassing.”
She heaved a sigh and picked up her sandwich, poking a bubble of red jelly back between soggy crusts. “Don’t push it, Rick.”
He nodded. “Right, I’ll leave you to your lunch.” He had a feeling she would check. Yeah, definitely, Mimi was going to check. It was that Peeping Tom thing. Whether she’d tell him was another question.
10
Rumor had it that the King of Rumors was agoraphobic. Seth Black of Gotcha.com had been outed as housebound by rival gossip Web sites. That’s what had given Rick the idea of staking out the man’s surprisingly modest apartment in the Hollywood Hills area. Either online gossip didn’t pay well—which wasn’t likely since the gossip sites were now scooping the mainstream media and forcing the big guys to go to them for entertainment news—or Black was a frugal man. Possibly he was too housebound to relocate. Regardless, he’d broken Ned’s murder-suicide story hours before the mainstream press had, and Rick was curious how the thirty-two-year-old agoraphobic got his information.
Rick bowed his head for a moment and dug his fingers into the aching muscles of his temples. He could feel the fatigue of his nonstop day. He’d been parked down the street from Black’s place for going on two hours, but so far he’d seen no one except a telephone repairman, who got no answer when he knocked on the door of Black’s ground-floor apartment. Rick had tried Black’s number before he drove over, but the phone went right to voice mail. He was beginning to wonder if Black was home, and if this surveillance idea was a good one.
That morning, after Rick had the epiphany about Lane Chandler, he’d tracked down the address of Jenny Shu, Ned’s housekeeper, and he’d gone over to pay her a visit. It didn’t surprise Rick to find Jenny upset, but he hadn’t expected a complete collapse. She’d been with Ned for years and Rick knew her well, so of course, he’d knelt down to hug the tiny Asian woman, and of course, they’d cried. Her sobs had ripped right through him, and Rick, who had been stoic until now, broke. Grief had washed through him until he shook, and Jenny had tried her best to comfort him. Maybe it was as simple as seeing someone else who knew and loved Ned.
Rick was sure his meeting with Jenny was a large part of what had exhausted him so completely. When they’d regained their composure, she’d patted his face and told him how sorry she was. She invited him in for tea, but he’d known he couldn’t take her up on that. Reminiscing about Ned would have killed him. The pain she’d already touched into had almost killed him. He did manage to ask her about the package, but she’d seen nothing that matched his description, and he was satisfied with that. He couldn’t ask her about what she’d witnessed when she arrived at the scene. Neither one of them could have handled that conversation. Maybe another time. Maybe.
After that, Rick had gone home to eat and get some rest. Good intentions, but somehow he’d found himself at the computer for another look at Seth Black’s site. That’s where he’d discovered that Black, with the help of Jack the Giant Killer, was routinely scooping not only the mainstream press, but all the other online sites, and that Black had been the first one to break the news on virtually every TPC client. From there Rick had gone to see Mimi, knowing in the back of his mind that a meeting with Black was inevitable.
Rick figured Black relied on the local paparazzi for pictures and salacious tidbits, but he had to be getting the more personal details from an inside source. A family member, friend or employee were the obvious ways, but given the nature of a concierge service, it only made sense that considerable client information was stored away somewhere, which had Rick wondering if TPC had a mole, someone intent on extortion as Ned’s card had suggested. If clients confided in their private concierges the way they did in their hairstylists, there should be plenty of blackmail material to go around.
Still, drug busts? Child porn? That wasn’t info you confided to anyone.
TPC had branch offices in San Francisco and Las Vegas, and according to the Web site they would soon be expanding across the country, but Rick was only interested in their corporate offices here in L.A. He’d found an employee tree with the names of some of the company’s key players, but rather than run a background check on each of them, which would probably yield nothing, he’d decided to stake out Black’s place to see who showed up. Even if the inside source wasn’t a TPC employee, he was curious, especially about the mysterious Giant Killer. And Rick was betting that some of the really juicy stuff was hand-carried to Black since everyone knew that e-mail was no longer secure for anyone, including the country’s chief executive.
Rick took a swig from a can of Coke that had gone flat. His last serious attempt at eating had been the Chinese takeout that morning, and he hadn’t thought to bring any food with him. Maybe that’s why he was perspiring and dizzy. It was warm outside, and hotter in the car.
He patted the front pocket of his jeans and realized he’d left something behind this morning, a bottle of prescription pills. They were probably sitting on the nightstand at his place. He forgot them half the time anyway, and when he did take them, he felt like shit, worse than before. He ought to flush them down the fricking toilet, but he couldn’t. He was dead without them. Well, dead sooner.
He shook off the morbid thought and focused on Black’s place. There were still no signs of life, so to speak, but Rick had planned for that. He’d brought a five-by-seven envelope, addressed to Black, in case he needed a reason to go to the door himself.
He grabbed it and let himself out of the car.
Whoa, something was wrong. The cracks in the sidewalk appeared to slide back and forth as he approached the four-story apartment building, causing him to weave like a drunk. He stopped to get his bearings, and as he glanced up, he saw the mail slot open on Black’s door. Someone was peeking through it from the other side, Rick realized. The slot was nearly at eye level and large enough to get a glimpse of a man’s face.
Rick rushed over to the stoop. “Mr. Black! Seth! I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.” The slot banged shut and Rick heard the scrape of a sliding bolt, which meant there must be some way to lock it. He pounded on the door, hoping if he made enough noise Black would be forced to answer. He might not want his neighbors calling the cops, especially if he was trying to keep his work location a secret. There were also zoning laws.
Finally, the slot popped open and a gun barrel poked through. “Shut up, you fucking loony, or I’ll shoot you!” Black hissed.
Interesting approach, Rick thought, moving out of Black’s line of fire, which was severely limited, as was his intelligence, apparently. Rick decided to appeal directly to the man’s entrepreneurial instincts, otherwise known as greed.
“I’m willing to pay for information,” Rick said. “Any price you want.”
“Yeah?” The gun barrel disappeared, replaced by eyes as black and beady as the suicidal mouse who’d taken over Rick’s kitchen. “What kind of information?”
“Are you Seth Black? Can I see proof?”
“You aren’t seeing anything until I know who you are and what you want.”
Rick slipped a fake business card through the slot. It identified him as an IRS agent. There was a cell-phone number and an e-mail address, both of which were accounts in the fake name on the card.
“What do you want to know?” Black asked after he’d looked at the card.
“I want whatever information you can get me on a Century City company called The Private Concierge, and I’m particularly interested in its president, Lane Chandler.”
“Is she in some kind of tax trouble?”
“I want to know about Lane Chandler’s dark side and what’s really going on in that concierge service. You call me with that kind of information, and I’ll tell you what kind of trouble she’s in. Share and share alike.”
“You’re crazy, man,” Black grumbled.
“Maybe,” Rick said, “but I pay well.” He drew a hundred-dollar bill from the envelope he carried, which had four more of the same denomination inside. He slipped the bill and the envelope through the slot. It was all part of the cost of doing business.
“Geez,” Black whispered, but with far less irritation in his voice. “Yeah, maybe. We’ll see. If I get something on her, maybe I’ll call.”
“You call, I pay. No maybes.”
The slot closed and locked. Rick smiled. No one wanted trouble with the IRS. It was always easier to cooperate, just in case.
As Rick took a shortcut across the lawn and started back to his SUV, a flicker of movement caught his eye. Through a gate that led to the back of the building, he saw a shrouded figure flit out of his line of sight and disappear down an alley. Rick guessed it was a male by the height, and he’d just come out of the apartment building.
The rusty latch was jammed. Rick forced the gate, butting it hard with his shoulder. It flew open, and he broke into a sprint. When he hit the alley behind the building, he was already laboring. He stopped to scope the area out and catch his breath. Whoever he’d seen had a good head start. If he couldn’t catch him, he might be able to ID his car, get the license-plate number. It was worth a try.
The block had several apartments, and the alley was covered parking with mostly empty stalls. Broken-down cars filled the remaining spaces, and debris from the Dumpsters stuck to Rick’s feet as he ran, searching the shadowy crevices at the same time. A couple of tenants, trying to jump-start a car, turned to see who was coming by this time, and what the rush was.
Tenants or car thieves? Rick didn’t stop to find out. Nor did he ask for directions. He’d learned from his years as a cop that they would almost certainly point him the wrong way.
The alley emptied into a quiet backstreet. Rick had no clue which way to go, and his vision was playing tricks again. He could see a small pack of dogs, probably trailing a female in heat, and some skateboarders on the opposite sidewalk, but there was no sign of a fleeing man in a hooded tunic and dark colors head to toe. Could it be Jack the Giant Killer he was after?
He headed east on a hunch and heard the roar of an engine. As he turned, a gleaming black car careened from out of nowhere and roared straight at him. It jumped the curb and grazed him, knocking him over the bumper before it tossed him to the ground. He hit, tucked and rolled, going with the momentum of the impact. He flipped at least three times, still doubled up to protect his head and his vitals. Jesus, what a day.
He forced himself to get up the second he stopped rolling, but the car was gone. No license number. He wasn’t quick enough for that, but from the chassis it had looked like one of those expensive new luxury hybrid cars. Jack the Giant Killer was environmentally aware? A Jolly Green Giant killer? And wealthy at that.
Ah, life in southern California, Rick thought, groaning as he bent to dust himself off. He would have some bruises, but otherwise, he was okay, relatively speaking.
Lane glanced at her watch. It was 9:00 p.m., and she’d had a carnival ride of a day. Her triumphant walk on the Avenue of the Stars was over the moment she got back to the office. The police were waiting for her in the reception area, and they’d wanted to talk about Simon Shan, specifically his whereabouts at various times. Lane had insisted that TPC’s client information was confidential. They’d finally gone, but she had a horrible feeling they would be back with a court order. Worse, she’d been accosted in front of prospective clients. A husband and wife real-estate-development team had arrived for their appointment while the police were still there, trying to intimidate client information out of Lane.
Little chance she’d see the couple again.
What she really wanted to do now was assume the fetal position and maybe suck her thumb. But she didn’t have time. She had one last task, and it had become a religious ritual, possibly because it gave her a feeling of control, however illusory. Every night before closing up shop she used her cell phone’s voice-activated recorder to review the important events of the day and update her to-do list.
Somehow, she would get through that ritual tonight, but first, she needed to breathe. She found the universal remote hiding under a stack of papers on her desk. The remote coordinated most of the electronic equipment in her office, and she used it to turn up the mood music playing on her sound system. The bluesy songs of heartbreak and loss soothed her for some reason, especially when she was stressed and overworked. But their magic wasn’t working at the moment.
She scooped up her cell, left her desk and fell into the room’s upholstered chaise, exhausted. No matter what she did to block out the whispering voices of doom in her head, she couldn’t escape the fear that her company was under siege. And if it was, who was going next?
There were people who might want to harm her, enemies from her past, but she wasn’t a threat to them now. If she’d meant to name names, she would have done it years ago. Surely they knew that. Now she had too much to lose herself. But the real question was why. If they did want to hurt her, why would they do it this way?
The Priscilla Brandt situation had deteriorated even further this afternoon. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised Lane that an advice expert wouldn’t take advice from anyone. Lane had urged her to consult an attorney, which had infuriated her. Apparently all of Pris’s advisers had suggested the same thing, and now she wasn’t taking anyone’s calls, including Lane’s. Lane had been trying to reach her all evening.
Some people created their own problems, and Pris might be one of them. Lane heaved a sigh and pressed the microphone icon on her cell phone’s digital display, activating the system. Maybe she’d feel better once the record keeping had been taken care of.
She began to dictate: “Priscilla Brandt wigged out today and attacked a homeless man on her property. I did some short-term damage control by canceling her interview with the morning-show anchor. Long-term, the woman needs anger management, medical intervention and possibly a straitjacket.”
Lane smiled at the thought. She spent so much time stroking egos and smoothing feathers that it actually felt good to say what she really thought. Also libelous, probably. Certainly, contract-breaching.
