By the time I reached my office, twelve minutes later, the day had taken a very bad turn.
Chapter 46
MY PHONE WAS buzzing as I took the stairs to my office. I looked at the screen and saw that Hal Archer wasn’t taking I’ll call you later for an answer.
I let the phone buzz, went to my desk, opened my in-box, and put the surveillance on Tommy’s house on fast forward. Then I double-checked where he had been by looking at the cell-tower logs recording signals from Tommy’s phone.
Tommy hadn’t blown up the Aston Martin, so it stood to reason he hadn’t torched my Lambo either. My paranoia hit a wall. Justine was right about Tommy—this time. But it’s hard to say that I was relieved. My twin was up to something.
As long as he breathed, Tommy would be trying to get me.
In order to understand our ceaseless antagonism, you’d have to know about my father, Tom Morgan Sr.
My dad was a big man, expansive, loud, danced with my mother through the house, and spent lavishly on friends and family.
He also had a mean streak, what he called “toughening us up,” and he pitted his sons against each other in competitions where the winner took all, and the loser was shamed.
I usually won. I went to Brown. My brother did two years at UCLA, then dropped out. I played college ball. My brother played the horses, ran numbers, did a little work for my father, who did undercover investigation for West Coast crime boss Ray Noccia. That much I knew. But did Dad grease cops? I thought so. He may have done more. He may have fingered some of Noccia’s enemies who’d ended up in the desert or in the ocean.
In return, Noccia steered high-roller clientele to my father, probably pressured some of them. He definitely helped my father build Private up from a grimy storefront into the number-one PI firm in California.
Clients signed up who weren’t gifts from the Mob. Celebrities. Corporate CEOs. The 1 percent.
The money poured in, and my father became very powerful.
My brother stayed close to my father by joining the family business, first working for Dad, then opening Private Security, a satellite company that contracted personal-security personnel to Dad’s clients.
I joined the U.S. Marine Corps, shipped out to Afghanistan, and flew transport missions for three years. After the crash-and-burn of the CH-46 and the loss of all those good men, I left the Corps. Returned to LA.
By then, my father had been tried and convicted of extortion and murder and was incarcerated in a California state prison for life.
One day, two years after I got back to the States, my father summoned me to Corcoran. He said he had something to tell me, that it was a matter of life and death.
I went to see Tom Sr. in a room with a bank of telephones behind a Plexiglas wall. My father gave me a gappy smile, showed off some of his tattoos, and told me the “good news.” Tommy was out. I was in. And my father made me an offer that was hard to refuse.
He said he wanted me to take over Private, that Tommy was a degenerate gambler and was running the business Dad had backed into the ground. My father wanted me to restore Private to its former glory, but to do it clean and to do it big.
He sent me the keys and a bankbook for an offshore account worth more than eleven million dollars. He had bonds and equities worth another four, and that was mine too, along with a storage locker filled with old furniture, Dad’s client list, and all the dirt he’d collected on his paying customers.
He was quite a sweetheart, my dad.
I turned down his offer, and three days later, he was dead, shanked in the liver over some insignificant dispute.
His will was read. I was my father’s heir and I took over what remained of Private Investigations. I built it back up, and I did it clean and big. I bought the building downtown, staffed and equipped it with the best that Dad’s money could buy. I brought in a mostly first-class clientele and opened offices overseas. Private is in the black big-time.
As a result, my brother hates me more than ever. And there isn’t a day when I don’t think about what he’s likely to do to me out of revenge. I’ll bet he doesn’t trust me either.
PART THREE
TILL DEATH DO US PART
Chapter 47
THREE HUNDRED E-MAILS had collected in my in-box since court recessed for lunch. I responded to a third of them: the ones from clients, heads of three overseas offices, Eric Caine, Justine, and Cruz.
There was an e-mail from Hal Archer too, and I thought about how I had grown up calling him Mr. Archer, that he was loyal enough to stay with Private after my father was imprisoned, even after Tom Sr. turned the remains of his client list over to me.
I inherited Hal Archer.