Private L.A. (Private 6)

She frowned. “Nothing at all to do with Saigon Falls?”

“Nothing.”

Justine ran the facts as she knew them through her head. The shaft connected the Harlows’ bedroom suite to the panic room and the editing room.

The children had said that their father had spent much of their first days home down here in the editing room, working on the film, which was what Thom had told Sanders he was going to do when they got back.

Was the film behind their disappearance? Had Thom’s cameras happened upon something politically explosive while they were in Vietnam? Or something that implicated …

McCormick, the FBI forensics tech, entered the editing room, looked surprised to see Justine, glanced at the open door to the shaft, frowned, but said, “Thought you should know, Sci. Cadaver-sniffing dogs just hit. We’re digging for a body.”

Chapter 68

I POINTED A finger toward my office door. “Private’s not for sale and you two were just leaving.”

“Heh,” Tommy said. “That’s not how this is—”

“It’s exactly how this is ending,” I said, then gazed over at the mobster. “Carmine, I respect you, so I’ve got to level with you. I told a fib earlier.”

“Gee, that’s a fucking surprise. Gonna come clean now? Tell me you did tip the Feds and you’re sorry? Sorry, no—”

“This place is bugged,” I said firmly, staring him right in the eye. “Audio, video, multiple angles. I’ve got every bit of your little extortion scheme on record, including your admission that you sought contraband narcotics and participated in a conspiracy to rig my brother’s trial with me as the fall guy.”

Carmine’s rat seemed to be giving him sudden indigestion. “That’s bullshit. You show me.”

“No, I think I’ll show FBI Special Agent in Charge Christine Townsend, a personal friend, and take my chances in court, where I will testify against my brother,” I said, and folded my hands across my chest, not looking at Tommy at all. “Anything else to say? Or are we done?”

Carmine licked his lips, looked around the office, trying to spot the bugs. Then he smiled. “You think you can outmaneuver me?”

“I just did.”

That pissed him off completely. He stared bullets at me, muttered, “You fucked me. And Carmine Noccia is like an elephant when it comes to that sort of thing.”

“So you’re having tusks implanted to go along with your phony Harvard MBA? Is that what you’re telling me?” I asked.

“You’re a dead man, Jack,” Carmine said, stood, nodded to Tommy.

“A pleasure, Carmine, Tommy,” I said. “As always.”

I waited until they slammed the door behind them, then held off another minute before collapsing into my chair. Sweat pooled at my lower back. They’d had me and I’d bluffed my way out. There were no bugs in the room. No audio. No video.

But there sure as hell were going to be by the end of the day.

Chapter 69

SCI AND MCCORMICK used soft brushes to whisk away the last of the soil covering the corpse’s face. The victim’s chest and denim shirt were already exposed, revealing a bloom of dried blood and the exit hole of a bullet wound. He’d been shot through the heart from behind. He’d been in the ground at least five days and the smell on the downwind side of the grave was worse than the odor in Leona Casa Madre’s bathroom.

Justine crouched upwind, listening as the barking cadaver dogs were loaded back into a kennel truck and watching Kloppenberg and the FBI tech work, uncovering the dead man’s bloated features. For reasons she did not fully grasp, these things only served to throw her mind back to the attack in the jail cell. She saw Carla coming for her with that knife, that shiv.

Justine’s breath began to speed and so did her heart. Spots appeared before her eyes. Suddenly she wanted to be anywhere but by a grave.

Then she heard Sci say, “It’s Héctor, Héctor Ramón, the groundskeeper.”

The spots faded and she looked down at the grotesque mask the decomposition had crafted. “How can you know that?”

Kloppenberg gestured to a silver bolo tie around the victim’s neck. “I saw a picture of him in his quarters. He was wearing it.”

“We’ll run dental records to confirm,” McCormick said.