Private L.A. (Private 6)

Cobb knew that about himself, and he’d suffered for it in the past. He wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. He laid out the pieces of the disguise on a third folding table before looking to a wiry African-American man holding another iPad connected to a set of earphones hung around his neck.

“Where are we, Mr. Johnson?” Cobb asked.

Johnson stabbed a finger at the iPad. “From the traffic we’ve been monitoring, L.A. sheriff’s got their big guns on the beach.”

“Better than we hoped for,” Cobb remarked before glancing to the fifth man, the largest of them all, curly red hair, ice-blue eyes, and a rust-colored, out-of-control beard that made him look like some crazed Viking. “Mr. Kelleher?”

Kelleher nodded. “Associated Press brief ran fifteen minutes ago, four dead males on Malibu Beach shot gangland style and set afire.” He looked up. Puzzled. “That wasn’t the plan, Mr. Cobb.”

Cobb regarded him evenly. “Burning them amplifies things, moves events along quicker, Mr. Kelleher. Other coverage?”

Kelleher took that in stride, said, “All-news radio picked up the AP story.”

“Outstanding,” Cobb said. “Start the social media component.”

The big man nodded and went to sit next to Watson, who stroked his goat’s beard and looked at Cobb, smiling. “You caught just about everything. I edited it down to the pertinent sequence. Got sporty there, didn’t it?”

Watson was by far the smartest man in the room, a genius as far as Cobb was concerned. He’d never known anyone like Watson: a man who could handle tasks of extreme physical endurance while digesting vast amounts of data and information at a baffling rate. When Watson worked with computers, it was like he was attached to them, his own brain melding with the processors, able to analyze, compute, and code with the same mind-boggling speed.

“Let me see,” Cobb said, moved behind Watson. So did the other men.

Watson gave his iPad a command and the slayings from Cobb’s perspective played out on the screen. Hernandez chuckled when Grinder, the barrel-chested surfer, pleaded for his life.

“It’s like he’s saying ‘Don’t Tase me, bro,’” Hernandez said.

The others weren’t listening. They were engrossed in the blinding-quick move Cobb had used to avoid being tackled by the final man to die.

“Damn brilliant, Mr. Cobb,” said Nickerson. “You lost none of it.”

Johnson scowled. “I still say you should have sent one of us. We’re expendable.”

Cobb sti

ffened, felt angry. “No one here is expendable. Ever. Besides, why would I ask you to do something I wouldn’t do myself?”

“You wouldn’t,” Kelleher said admiringly. “First in.”

“Last out,” Cobb said. “We are in this together.”

Watson said, “Upload to YouTube now, Mr. Cobb?”

Cobb shook his head. “Let’s wait, let them make the connection to the letter before we hit them with total shock and awe.”

Chapter 5

THE KID MET me up on Wilkerson’s rain-soaked terrace around one thirty that morning, about the same time the first news of the killings was reaching the Los Angeles airwaves.

“You get it all?” I asked.

“Everything you shot,” the Kid replied, tugging his hood down over hair he slicked back crooner style. “I didn’t get squat from my perspective. Smell bad?”

“Horrible. Have Sci review the footage, then attach the files to Wilkerson’s personal stuff.”

“Reason?”

“Case someone says he did it and we need to prove he didn’t,” I replied, headed toward the Touareg, suddenly tired and wanting to sleep.

On the drive home, as my headlights reflected off the water sheeting Highway 1, I considered calling Guin, but knew she had to be up in five hours, getting ready to head to London. Then, for reasons I can’t explain, my thoughts slipped to the only person I know who has never minded me calling at odd hours.