Private L.A. (Private 6)

“But he can get you the ten-month work visas?”

“This is not a problem, I think,” Jacinta said.

Justine didn’t know what to make of all of this. On its face, the fact that the Harlows were willing to get the women work visas but not green cards seemed lame, and counter to the Harlows’ reputation. But then again, she wasn’t at all well versed in current US immigration laws, quotas and such.

Anita wiped at her eyes, said, “You can help us?”

“Yes, of course,” Justine said. “Anything—” Her phone chimed again. “Hold on a second.”

She dug the phone from her purse and saw that she’d received a photo from Sci. She opened the file, looked at the group picture, read the text that accompanied it: “Do you know who the young woman front row center is?”

Justine frowned, zoomed in on the woman, a girl, really. Gorgeous. But no, she didn’t recognize her at all. She was about to text back “Negative” when she had a different idea.

“Do you know this girl with the Harlows?” she asked, turning the phone to show the three women.

Maria Toro reached out, took the phone, studied the picture, and shook her head. She handed it to Anita, who looked at the photo with great suspicion but then said, “I no know her.”

“Jacinta?” Justine asked.

The young maid took the phone, glanced at it, hesitated, then shook her head. She walked it back to Justine, who said, “For a second there, you thought you knew her?”

“No,” Jacinta said. “I was just thinking that maybe it was the nanny they hire after we leave and before they go for Vietnam.”

Chapter 76

AT ELEVEN MINUTES to noon that day, Johnson Rollerbladed along Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. He wore white-framed, sequined sunglasses with a built-in fiber-optic camera, pink stretch pants, a platinum-blond wig cut à la Marilyn, and, over a heavily padded bra, a white T-shirt that read “Blonde Ambition.” But for a backpack carrying two suppressed pistols, and four pink sweatbands on each forearm that hid spare clips, he could have been any old drag quee

n out for a skate on a fine October day.

“Location?” Cobb asked through the earbud Johnson wore.

“Coming onto Londonderry Place, turning north,” Johnson replied, adding a little butt shake to his skate as he passed the patrons sitting outdoors at the Mexican place on the corner, as if he were listening to some throbbing Latin beat, instead of plotting with his coconspirators to commit mass murder.

Londonderry Place climbs steeply north off the Sunset Strip. Johnson cut diagonally northwest across the narrow street to where the opposite sidewalk met a low chain-link fence. He straddle-vaulted it, landed in thick ground cover atop a retaining wall that had been turned into a planter for five palm trees.

Below him was a parking lot. Johnson took it in at a glance, seeing nine vehicles parked there in all, including one he wasn’t expecting. He lowered himself four feet down the wall behind a blue Toyota sedan.

“LAPD cruiser in lot, empty,” Johnson said. He skated out from behind the car, knelt in the wide open, pretended to retie his skates, but took glances at the cruiser and the entry to Mel’s Drive-In. “Mr. Cobb?”

“Take them first,” Cobb said.

“If they’re not outside?”

“Take them first.”

Johnson had been trained since the age of seventeen not only to follow orders, but also to adapt to evolving orders. He was what Mr. Cobb liked to call mission proficient. Johnson called it getting things done.

The diner’s exterior almost exactly matched the one in the seventies movie American Graffiti. Mel’s was a chain now, but a good one that attracted tourists and locals alike. The initial plan had Johnson getting the guns out at the far end of the parking lot and then skating around toward the front of the diner and its terrace, which faced the Sunset Strip. But he kept the weapons in the pack for now, skated toward Mel’s, eyes everywhere as he went left at the dogleg in the parking lot and back onto the sidewalk along Sunset heading west.

He took in everyone eating on Mel’s terrace before skating on past Drybar into a second entry to the parking lot. He’d seen a Hispanic couple and their kid, three duffers wearing golf jackets, and two moms with teenage daughters having ice cream sundaes. But no cops.

Which meant they were inside. He glanced down at the Rollerblades, which he’d decided to use because they had originally conceived this as an exterior job—swoop in, execute, and leave.

A new strategy evolved in Johnson’s brain almost instantly. He skated back past the people eating outside, and around into the entry to Mel’s. A startled old woman wearing a green sweatshirt that featured a leaping trout and the words “Thief River Falls Is Paradise” opened the door, carrying a pack of Marlboros. She gaped at him as he rolled past her into the diner, where he caught the full whiff of burgers frying, heard Elvis crooning from the jukebox, came face to face with a cheery hostess, who said brightly, “No blades inside, ma’am, uh, sir.”

Johnson had looked deeper into the diner, seen the two cops, male-female partners, sitting at the counter. A waitress had just served them cheeseburgers and fries.

“Ma’am?” the hostess said, a big grin.