Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

Keyes said, “That’s what you want? The name of who killed those johns? I thought you wanted me to say I did it. Yo, I want you to get that crazy bitch off the street.”

“Wait,” I said. “A woman killed those johns?”

“You deaf, man?” Keyes asked me. “Yeah, she’s a she, all right. I was banging her while my old lady was in prison. I thought we had something going, but she doesn’t like men, yo. She fuckin’ hates them.

“One night, I was sleeping, she put a coat hanger around my neck. I put my gun in her ear. Told her she had to the count of three to get the hell out of my life. Then I heard one of her tricks died by a wire. See, I picked Candy up from the Seaview the night that trick was killed, yo. She called me up without going through her service. She used me as her wheelman, you hear me? That’s not right.”

“What’s Candy’s full name?” Del Rio said.

“You let me go if I tell you?”

Del Rio lowered his gun.

“Carmelita Gomez. She works at that Cuban club from ten to four, so, like, she can still squeeze in a few tricks on the side—”

Cruz leaned in so that his eyes were only inches from Keyes’s face.

“Where can we find Ms. Gomez now?”

CHAPTER 110

CRUZ AND DEL RIO were in the car in front of me, forcing me to keep to a sane speed as we headed north into the Valley.

I dictated case notes into a recorder as I drove.

I described the scene at the Sun and brought the Poole case file up to date.

The facts, as we knew them, were starting to make sense.

Karen Ricci, the woman in the wheelchair who had tipped Cruz off, was an escort service call booker. She’d told Cruz that a limo driver knew who had killed the hotel johns, and that she’d gotten that information from her friend, a former escort and current coat checker, Carmelita Gomez.

Cruz had interviewed Gomez and she’d given him false information.

Now we had a lead from Ricci’s first husband, Tyson Keyes. Keyes had picked Gomez up from her date with Arthur Valentine, the john who had been killed at the Seaview hotel last year.

If Carmelita Gomez was the hotel john killer, it was clear that she had easy access.

Twenty minutes after leaving Keyes, we found Gomez’s name on a mailbox on Stagg Street, in front of one of the tan-colored stucco houses in a cookie-cutter development of middle-class homes.

Gomez’s house was set back from the street, centered on a small mat of a yard. A driveway curved in from Stagg, coursed along the fence on the west side of the lot, and ended at a garage in the backyard.

Cruz and Del Rio pulled the fleet car into the mouth of the driveway, and I parked across the street.

I got out of my car and joined Cruz at Gomez’s front door, while Del Rio headed toward the back. With our guns drawn, Cruz and I flanked the doorway.

Cruz rang the bell, and in a moment the porch light came on.

Cruz said, “Carmelita, it???s Emilio Cruz. From the other night.”

There was no response, so Cruz tried again. “Look through the peephole, Carmelita. You know I’m not a cop. No seas tonto. Don’t make me kick the door in.”

A car started up at the back of the house. I saw headlights. Everything happened very fast after that.

CHAPTER 111

ONE SECOND, RICK was walking toward the back door.

The next, he’d flattened himself against a stockade fence so he wouldn’t get creamed by an old red Chevy Impala that tore across the lawn and passed the car Cruz had parked in the driveway.