Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

CHAPTER 83

I CHECKED OUT of the Sun and drove to work, keeping the car to ten miles below the speed limit. Tandy tailed me to Figueroa Street, gave me a two-blast salute from his horn when I turned into the underground garage below my office building.

Mitchell Tandy was a hyena.

I walked into my office at half past seven, caught Justine’s second call that morning. She told me that Danny Whitman was in the hospital at TTCF.

I cringed just thinking about that place. It was like an ice-cold hand gripping the back of my neck: a bad feeling, and it was impossible to shake off.

“What do you think, Jack?” Justine said. “Should we cut Danny loose? Or should I work with him and his cast of sidekicks until I know whether or not he killed Piper Winnick?”

“Sounds to me like you think he’s innocent.”

“I’m leaning that way. He thinks someone is screwing with his head. Gaslighting him. Who would do that? What would they get out of it?”

Justine was the heroine of lost causes. When she got it wrong, she’d say, “Princess Do-Good strikes again.” But her instincts were good. The worst you could say about Justine was that she put in too much time on her cases and got too emotionally involved.

That said, if she could prove Whitman innocent, that would be a point for Private. A point we needed.

“It’s your call,” I said.

I got into Cruz’s report on his interviews at a Cuban club in Hollywood, and when Val Kenney came in at eight, I asked her to break down the report and flag items for follow-up.

While Cody and Val worked outside my office, I put some time in on California v. Jack Morgan, found out a couple of things about Colleen Molloy that she hadn’t told me. I was digging into that when Val came in. “I’ve got something on the woman Cruz met with last night,” she said.

“Carmelita Gomez?”

“Karen Ricci. The woman in the wheelchair.”

“Go on.”

“Before she was Karen Ricci, she was Karen Keyes. She did a five-year stretch at the women’s jail for extortion. There was a riot and she got clubbed. That’s how she ended up in the wheelchair. She’s out early for good behavior.”

Val was putting her time with the Miami PD to good use. I was about to tell her to follow up on Ricci, but she wasn’t done yet.

“I’ve got something else, Jack. The story Carmelita Gomez told Cruz isn’t right. She said that a driver named Billy Moufan tipped her off.”

“He was Gomez’s driver, right?”

“That’s what she said. She told Cruz that after her john was killed at the Seaview, her driver, Billy Moufan, told her that a limo driver might have done it, that this same limo driver may have killed the john at the Moon.

“But no one named Billy or William Moufan has ever been issued a chauffeur’s license in California. I can’t find that name in any database, no matter how I spell it.”

“So you’re saying she lied to Cruz.”

Val said, “At best, she was concealing the name of the driver who tipped her off.”

I asked Val to brief Cruz, then Cody buzzed me, saying Jinx Poole was on line one.

I took the call.

Jinx said, “Can you have dinner with me, tonight, Jack? It’s important.”

CHAPTER 84

AT ONE-FIFTEEN in the afternoon, Del Rio and Cruz were parked inside the big lot under the shadow of the 96th Street bridge. The lot was a mile and a half from LAX, bounded by the eight-lane Sepulveda Boulevard and a loop of the Sky Way. Limos, taxis, and other commercial transport continually streamed in and queued up under alphabetical signs, waiting to enter the airport.

They were watching one guy in particular, Paul Ricci, a bouncer from Havana, married to the tipster in the wheelchair. Ricci was shooting the bull with three other drivers.