Private (Private 1)

I’d been expecting him to say anything, anything but that. The words Noccia had just spoken were what the Marines say about themselves.

No better friend. No worse enemy.

Like Del Rio and me, Carmine Noccia had been in the Corps.

“Can I get you boys something to drink?” he said. “Or maybe you’ll be my guests for dinner? We can talk while we eat.”

“Thanks very much for the offer, but it’s late. And I’m flying.”

Noccia nodded, got up from his chair, and asked me and Del Rio to follow him into the billiards room. He said to the men around the table, “Go outside, guys. Take a break.”

The room emptied quickly. There was a score counter over the billiards table, but Noccia walked past it to the chalkboard that hung on the wall. It appeared to be the long-running tally of winning games.

Noccia picked up an eraser from the tray below the board and wiped out some phone numbers that had been written in the corner.

His back was to me as he spoke. “We have a partner in a number of construction projects: a hotel in Nevada, a couple of malls in LA and San Diego. This partner came to us with a request,” said Noccia. “We had no choice except to honor it.”

I was mesmerized as he began to write his partner’s name with a square of blue pool chalk. At first I didn’t get it. I thought maybe he was going to draw a diagram from the partner to the man who had hired the hit.

But that’s not what happened.

Carmine Noccia scratched letters onto the slate and said, “This is who contracted the hit on your friend Shelby Cushman.”

When he was sure that I had seen what he’d written, he spat on the eraser and rubbed the name out.

He put the eraser down and walked me and Del Rio to the door, where he said good night.

And he shook my hand.

Chapter 104

IT WAS PAST midnight again, and I was back in LA. I had told Del Rio I’d see him in the morning, and he looked at me like he was a dad who’d just put his small son on a school bus for the first time.

“I’ll be okay,” I said.

But would I? Rick was still watching me as I got into my Lambo and strapped myself in. I got on the 10 East and then took the exit toward Sunset.

If I’d been driving a Volkswagen, I could’ve gone faster. It was the downside of owning a fast car. It alerted every cop in the state and every good-doin’ citizen with a cell phone.

My mind was flying out in front of my hood, and still I stayed within the speed limits, finally slowing down and stopping at the entrance to the Chateau Marmont Hotel.

I took the elevator from the parking garage without seeing anyone, and pressed the button for Andy’s floor. I stood outside his door and used my cell phone to call him.

The phone rang and rang and rang. Finally, he answered.

“Jack? What’s wrong? It’s one in the morning.”

“Everything’s wrong. I’m right outside your door. Open up.”

Andy was wearing the same pajamas he’d worn the last time I saw him. Crumpled silk, wide maroon stripes interspersed with thin black lines.

The room smelled like flatulence and the garlic bread sitting on the coffee table.

“You don’t look so good,” Andy said.

“I just flew in from Vegas,” I told him. “Then I drove here.”

“Sit down, Jack.”