Private L.A. (Private 6)

I hesitated but then nodded, got the Suburban, and drove toward the east entrance to the railyard, listening to my phone messages. There were several from our overseas offices. Mattie Engel had nailed the embezzler in Berlin, caught him red-handed on tape. Good news, I thought as I cut across Telegraph Road onto Atlantic Boulevard and drove north. The light-industrial area was to my immediate west now. A few blocks away, members of No Prisoners were being hunted, and there wasn’t a thing I could do to help.

The next phone message was from Peter Knight in London. He’d managed to extricate a very important client from the sex scandal sweeping through Parliament. Our client had nothing to do with it, only a tangential link at best. But she was young and a royal of some note. While the British tabloids are notoriously carnivorous when it comes to political sex scandals, even the whiff of a royal political sex scandal would have provoked a feeding frenzy that would likely have tainted her reputation for life.

“Well done, Peter,” I said, leaving a message on his phone at work. Knight was also the man who’d stopped the maniac who’d stalked the summer Olympics in London last year.

I crossed Whittier Boulevard thinking that Knight deserved another pay raise, and so did Mattie Engel. I also wondered if I might be able to convince Knight to transfer to our New York or Los Angeles offices. The widowed father of two was carrying on a long-distance relationship with Hunter Pierce, the American doctor and diver who’d so dramatically won the ten-meter platform gold medal at the …

I passed the Robby Eden Café, the first decent restaurant I’d seen since leaving the railyard. I’d eaten there several times and fondly remembered the “Bobby’s Best” sandwich, a hot pastrami and melted provolone cheese on toasted pumpernickel rye that came with a side order of perfectly crisp onion rings. My stomach growled loudly in approval of a repeat visit, and I parallel parked a block to the north of the strip mall that Bobby’s called home.

It was pushing noon by that point, and not surprisingly the café’s booths were jammed. But I spotted an open stool at the counter, and the hostess said by all means. I took a seat, my eyes burning and my ears buzzing from fatigue.

A waitress named Alice came over, and I gave her my order along with a request for a bottomless cup of coffee. She said it all would be right up and walked away.

I yawned again, pulled out my phone, checked for text messages, found one from Justine alerting me to the fact she had a doctor’s appointment and would be unavailable between four and five that afternoon. At first I was annoyed. Why did I need to know …

?

Wait, was Justine sick? Was that why she’d been acting so strange lately?

A handful of horrible diagnoses tumbled through my brain, and the hunger gnawing in my stomach disappeared, replaced by a sickening feeling. What could she have …?

“Thanks, Alice,” a man said somewhere behind me and well to my left. His voice was hoarse and hinted at a midwestern accent.

“You be in tomorrow, boys?” the waitress asked.

“Nope,” the man said. “Got a job in Phoenix to take care of.”

For some reason, I glanced across the counter at the mirror on the wall facing me. Three men in green work clothes were paying up in the second-farthest booth by the window. Two of them I could see only from behind, a burly Hispanic fellow and a taller Caucasian with wild red hair.

The third man was quartering to my position, however, offering me a look at the right side of his face and chest. Gaunt, with iron-gray hair, he was busy putting cash on the table and laughing at something the other men had said. I almost looked away, but then one of them, the Latino, began to hum that old Doors tune “Peace Frog.”

The guy sitting opposite him swung his attention away from the table, looking directly to his right, looking for the waitress, who’d gone into the kitchen.

There was something wrong with the left side of his face. Unnatural. As if he were wearing a skin prosthesis or heavy makeup, or both. I stared into the mirror at the patch on the chest of the green jacket he was wearing: “N-O-I-T-I-L-O-M-E-D.”

I flipped the letters in my mind. DEMOLITION.

Chapter 107

MY HEART BEGAN to slam in my chest.

Cobb and two of his cold-blooded killers, whom I now recognized as Hernandez and Kelleher, were not twenty feet from me, eating at the restaurant closest to the garage. Wearing urban camouflage. Hiding in the wide, wide open.

I looked away. For a moment I was unsure what to do. Robby Eden’s was crowded and they had to be armed. Any shooting in here could easily kill an innocent bystander, like the young mom and two kids sitting in the booth right behind the killers.

I’d have to wait until they left, call Townsend to warn—

The decision was made for me.

Cobb began to slide from the booth. Hernandez beat him to it, getting to his feet, blocking my view of Cobb for a second and then stepping left to allow Kelleher to exit.

When he did, I could see Cobb clearly. He was staring in the mirror, locked on my reflection, and then broke his attention away fast and in alarm. He’d recognized me somehow.

It all went instinctual at that point, no choice of action but one.

I went for the Glock in my shoulder holster, got it in one motion, spinning on the counter stool toward the No Prisoners conspirators, meaning to shout and threaten the killers onto the floor, fingers laced behind their heads.

But Hernandez and Kelleher must have seen the warning in Cobb’s eyes. They ducked and twisted toward me, hands clawing for weapons.