Private: #1 Suspect (3 page)

AMELIA POOLE WAS just getting home when she got the phone call from Jared Knowles, her night manager at the Sun. She asked him to hang on until she got out of the garage, closed the door, and stood in her yard overlooking Laurel Canyon.

“It happened again,” Jared said. He was speaking in a hoarse whisper, and she could hardly make out what he was saying.

“What are you talking about?”

“It happened again. A guest in the Bergman Suite. His name is Maurice Bingham. He’s dead. He’s been killed. Just like—I can’t remember his name, but you know who I mean. At the Constellation. I’m scared because I’m a link, Ms. Poole. The police are going to think I could have done it.”

“Did you?”

“Hell, no, Ms. Poole.
Believe me
. I would
never
.”

“How do you know Mr. Bingham is dead?”

“His face is blue. His tongue is out. There’s still a wire around his neck. He’s not breathing. Anything I’ve forgotten? Because I didn’t learn anything in hotel management school that covered things like this.”

He was screeching now.

And Amelia Poole was suitably frightened.

This killing made five—and it was the third in one of her hotels. The cops had come up with nothing. She hadn’t heard from them in weeks. And this murder struck her as personal. Maybe some kind of warning. Any of her guests could be killed. It was too sick.

“Jared. Listen to me,” she said. “I’ll try to keep you out of it. Flip on the ‘Do Not Disturb’ light. Can you do that? Use your elbow, not your fingers.”

“Housekeeping called me to say that Mr. Bingham had ordered an extra blanket and pillows. That he didn’t open the door.”

“Did you bring bedding into the room?”

“No.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“No.” Jared was crying now. This was too much.

“Jared. Flip on the light and go back down to the desk.”

“Isn’t that breaking the law?”

“I’ll take responsibility, Jared. Just go down to the desk. Do not call the cops. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“If you can’t do your job, say you’re getting sick and take the night off. Ask Waleed to take over.”

“Okay, Ms. Poole.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Amelia Poole disconnected the line and thought again about a private investigation agency she’d heard about. The head guy was Jack Morgan, former CIA and US Marines. His agency promised “maximum force and maximum discretion.” It was called Private.

It was late, but she’d call Private anyway. Leave a message for Jack Morgan to call her as soon as possible.

I CALLED MY friend chief of police Mickey Fescoe at home. He got on the line, said, “My dinner is on the table. Make this good, Jack.”

“I can’t make it good, Mick. Colleen Molloy, my ex-girlfriend—she was killed in my house. I didn’t do it.”

I was looking at Colleen’s body as I answered Mickey’s questions in monosyllables. He said he would send someone over, and after hanging up I sat down in a chair at an angle to the bed, keeping Colleen company as I waited for the cops to arrive.

I thought about how close Colleen and I had been, that I had loved her but not enough.

With a jolt, I remembered what Mo-bot had told me to do before she left the house. I went to the living room, booted up my computer, and drummed my fingers as the key entry program loaded.

A long list of times, dates, and names appeared on the screen, and I scrolled to the last entries. Colleen’s key had been used thirty minutes before I had walked in the front door.

I was starting to get a piece of the picture. That this whole ugly deal had gone down as I was on my way home from the airport meant that someone was keeping tabs on me, knew my schedule to the minute. But dozens of people knew my movements—coworkers, clients, friends. Anyone with a computer would have known when my plane was landing.

I got to my feet as a siren screamed up the highway. I hit the button that opened the gates, stood in the doorway, and shielded my eyes against the headlights pulling into my drive.

Two cops got out of a squad car. I focused on the closest one: Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.

Mickey Fescoe hadn’t done me any favors. Tandy was a smart-enough cop, but he had a crappy take-no-prisoners attitude.

Tandy had arrested my father, who had owned Private before me. Dad was tried and convicted of extortion and murder. He had been doing his lifetime stretch at Corcoran when he was shanked in the showers five years ago.

Tandy didn’t like me because I was Tom Morgan’s son. Guilt by association. He didn’t like me because Private closed a higher percentage of cases than the LAPD. It wasn’t even close.

And then there was the most obvious irritant of all. I made a lot of money.

I watched and waited as the two cops came up the walk.

TANDY WAS FORTY, tanned, a gym rat. His shoulder holster bulged under the tight fit of his shiny blue jacket.

Tandy said, “You know Detective Ziegler.”

“We’ve met,” I said.

Ziegler had a swimmer’s build: broad shoulders, a long torso. He wore a copper bracelet on his right wrist. Gun on his hip. I remembered him now. We’d mixed it up once when he was harassing one of my clients. I’d won. His hair had gone gray since I’d seen him last.

Tandy said, “Where’s the victim?”

I told him and he told me to stay where I was.

Ziegler smiled, said, “Sit tight, Jack.”

I stared out the windows toward the beach. All I could see was foam on the dark waves. My head pounded and I wanted to be sick, but I held everything down as Tandy and Ziegler went to my bedroom.

I heard Tandy’s voice on the phone but not what he said. And then he and Ziegler were back.

Tandy said, “I called the ME and the lab. Why don’t you tell us what happened while we wait for them to come?”

We all sat down, and I told Tandy that I didn’t know who could have killed Colleen or why.

“I haven’t slept in more than twenty-four hours,” I said. “I was a zombie. I started taking off my clothes the minute I walked in. I used the hallway entrance to the bathroom.”

I told him about walking into my bedroom after my shower, expecting to fall into bed. Finding Colleen.

“Very convenient, you taking a shower,” Tandy said. “I suppose you did a load of wash too.”

“My jacket is on that chair. My shirt is on the hallway floor. I threw my pants over the door. My shorts are outside the stall.”

I gave Ziegler the names of Colleen’s next of kin in Dublin and told the cops that the entry log showed that Colleen’s code had been used a half hour before I came home.

“Colleen had the access key to the gate. But it’s not here,” I said. “Someone had to have coerced her, used her key, pressed her finger to the pad at the front door.”

Ziegler said, “Uh-huh,” then asked me to talk about my relationship with Colleen.

“We used to go out,” I said. “And Colleen worked for me. I was very fond of her. After we broke up, she went home to Ireland. She came back a couple of weeks ago to visit friends in LA. I don’t know who. I had lunch with her last Wednesday.”

Tandy didn’t read me my rights and I didn’t ask for a lawyer. I hoped he would have a breakthrough, find something I had missed, but when he asked me to tell him if Colleen and I had had a fight, I excused myself, went to the bathroom, and threw up.

I washed my face and returned to my interrogation.

Tandy asked again, “You have a fight with the girl, Jack?”

“No.”

“You shouldn’t have taken a goddamn shower. That was either insulting or a mistake. We
will
take your clothes and we
will
take your drains apart. We’ll check the airport surveillance tapes and dump your phones. That’s just tonight. Tomorrow we’ll do background on the victim. I’m thinking her body will tell us something interesting.”

“Do your best, Tandy. But even you and Ziegler have to know that I wouldn’t kill my ex-girlfriend in my house and then call the cops. It’s a setup.”

“I only want one thing. To find that girl’s killer.”

“I want the same thing.”

I gave Tandy my boarding pass and Aldo’s contact information. I said I wouldn’t leave town. I said I wouldn’t take a piss without asking him first.

The ME came and the CSIs arrived after that. I gave the lab techs my prints, some fresh cheek cells, and my dirty clothes.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked Tandy.

“Not yet,” he said. “You have a friend in high places, Jack. But you can’t stay here.”

I called Rick Del Rio.

Twenty minutes later, I got into his car.

“What the hell happened?” he asked me.

I told the story again.

RICK DEL RIO lived in a one-bedroom house on the Sherman Canal, one of four parallel canals bounded by two others at the ends, a whimsical interpretation of Venice, Italy.

The houses were small but expensive, built close together, fronting the canal, backed by little alleys. Rick drove down one of those alleys, lined with garbage cans, telephone poles, garage doors, and the occasional row of shrubs along a back fence.

Del Rio’s garage door was painted green. He pointed the remote, the door opened, and he drove in.

“I don’t have much in the fridge,” he said.

“That’s okay.”

“Half a chicken. Some beer.”

“Thanks anyway.”

We went up a few steps, through the door in the garage that led to the kitchen.

Del Rio said, “No one knows you’re here. Go into the living room. Try to relax.”

I’d been here before. The three-room, cabin-style house was pristine inside. White walls, dark beams, every chair and sofa down filled. Centered amid the furnishings was a coffee table made from a wooden boat hatch, polyurethane-protected against beer and scuff marks.

I collapsed into a chair wide enough for two, put my feet up on the table, and hoped to hell the world would stop spinning.

I heard Del Rio puttering in the kitchen and just closed my eyes. But I didn’t sleep.

I thought about a night seven years before. I’d been flying a CH-46 transport helicopter to Kandahar, fourteen marines in the cargo bay, Rick Del Rio in the seat beside me, my copilot.

It had been a bad night.

A rocket-propelled grenade fired from the back of a 4x4 hit our aircraft, taking out the tail rotor section, dropping the Phrog into a downward spiral through hell. I landed the craft upright, but the bomb had done its work.

Men died horribly. A lot of them. I knew them all.

I was carrying one of the barely living out of the cargo bay when a chunk of flying metal hit me in the back.

It stopped my heart—and I died.

Del Rio found me not far from the burning wreck and beat on my chest, brought me back to life.

I was out of the war after that, worked for a small PI firm out in Century City. Then my crooked, manipulative bastard of a father sent for me.

He grinned at me through a Plexiglas wall at Corcoran, still giving me the business, but this time literally. He handed me the keys to Private and told me that fifteen million dollars was waiting for me in an offshore account.

“Make Private better than it was when it was mine,” he said.

A week later, having been shanked in the shower, he died.

Rick didn’t have a rich father. He was fearless and knew how to use a gun. After his tour, he came back to LA. He did an armed robbery, got arrested, convicted, thrown into jail. When he was released early for good behavior, he came to work at Private and I bought him this house.

I knew everything about Rick. I owed my life to him, and he said he owed his to me.

My friend came into the room, saying my name. I looked up, saw the face only a bulldog’s mother could love. He’s five foot eight inches in his bare feet, an ex-con and a highly trained former US Marine. He was carrying a tray—a
tray
. Like he was a nurse, or maybe a waiter.

He kicked my feet off the table and put the tray down. He’d made sandwiches out of that leftover half chicken, spread some tapenade and honey mustard between the long slices of a baguette, thrown in a few leaves of romaine. And he’d brought two bottles of beer and a church key.

“Eat, Jack,” my wingman said. “You take the room upstairs. Don’t fight me on this. It’s dark up there, and if you try, you can sleep for nine hours.”

“I can’t take your room.”

“Look,” he said. He opened the lid of an ottoman. It folded out into a bed. “Take the bedroom. You’ve got a full day tomorrow.”

“Colleen.”

“Colleen for sure. And you got my text? You’ve got an appointment first thing. Carmine Noccia is coming to see you.”

MY ASSISTANT, CODY Dawes, stopped me at his desk, said, “Morning, Jack. We need to go over some things—”

“Just the red flags, Cody. I’m still dragging my tailpipe.”

“Sure, okay, uh. I’m giving you my notice.”

“What? What’s the problem? I thought you were happy here.”

“I got a speaking part in a Ridley Scott film. I’ve got
lines
.”

He grinned broadly, clasped his hands together, and maybe jumped off the ground. I stuck out my hand, shook his, and said, “Good for you, Cody. Congratulations.”

“I’m not leaving you in the lurch. I’ve lined up people for you to see. I screened them all myself.”

I sighed. “Okay. What’s next?” It was half past eight a.m. in Los Angeles, meaning it was half past five p.m. in Stockholm. My circadian rhythms were still on Central European time.

“Mr. Noccia is here. I had to put him in your office.”

“I thought I’d have a little time before he got here.”

“He was waiting at the curb, Jack. Inside a Mercedes with three other guys you wouldn’t want to marry your sister. I opened the front door. He said he wanted to come in, so I brought him upstairs. Judgment call.”

“Do you still do coffee?”

“Yes, I do,” Cody said with a grin.

I went into my office.

It’s got two sections; my work space at one end, a seating and meeting space at the other. Carmine Noccia was sitting in a chair by my desk.

“Carmine,” I said. I shook his hand, went around my desk, took my seat. All the phone lines were flashing. A three-inch-high pile of paper was stacked to my right. My schedule was up on my computer monitor, just waiting for me.

“You’re looking good, Jack. Like you spent the night in a gym locker.”

“Jet lag,” I said, “feels just like that.”

Noccia smiled. He was a handsome guy, midforties, perfect teeth, salt-and-pepper hair, wearing a custom-made suit and hand-stitched Italian loafers.

Carmine was what a modern-day Mafia rock star looked like. You looked at him and saw the Ivy League–educated businessman, not the son of a sitting don, the Mafia capo and killer.

Cody brought in a large silver thermos of coffee and a plate of biscuits, and when he left, I said, “Del Rio told me you had to see me urgently.”

I tried to keep it out of my voice, but what I was saying was, What the eff do you want?