Unlucky 13 (Women's Murder Club 13)

“Yeah, good guess. Get dressed so we can talk in private.”

I took a quick shower, dressed PDQ, and met Jacobi in the lobby of the health club. We went out onto Folsom Street and leaned up against the building.

Jacobi said, “There was a fatality in LA about an hour ago. A guy was having a breakfast burger in his car in the parking lot of a fast-food joint when his stomach exploded. He was killed instantly. The glass blew out, blinding a pedestrian. There were other injuries, but only the one fatality.”

“This happened at a Chuck’s?”

“Correct. Chuck’s, Marina del Rey. Here’s the phone number of the FBI agent who called me. Jay Beskin. We’ll get along with them better if we play nice. You want to work this case right, okay, Boxer?”

I told Jacobi that motherhood had brought out the sweetheart in me. He smirked, like yeah, right. We said good-bye and I called my current partner.

“Saddle up,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the Harriet Street lot, ASAP.”

CHAPTER 31

CONKLIN AND I took seats opposite Michael Jansing in his office/Chuck’s Prime museum of ads and artifacts.

Jansing, Chuck’s chief executive officer with the hay-colored hair and narrow blue eyes, glared at us over engraved plexiglass cubes, slabs, and obelisks on his desk, all trophies awarded for fast-food advertising.

I said, “Do you understand me, Mr. Jansing? The FBI is investigating another death by Chuck’s as we speak. Do you want to help your company and cooperate with us, or should we just back off and let the Feds take you in and treat you to enhanced interrogation?”

Jansing got up from behind his desk and went to the doorway.

He said to his assistant, “Caroline, get Louis, would you?”

Jansing returned to his desk.

“My lawyer.”

“That’s fine,” said Conklin. “If that makes you more comfortable.”

“Listen, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I asked.

“I’m sorry. Our head of legal has something to tell you,” Jansing said.

A stooped man came through the doorway. He wore a corporate gray suit and a comb-over with a dark metallic sheen, and he had nicotine stains on the fingers of his right hand. I recognized him as one of the players at the executive Ping Pong meeting we’d attended.

He came toward us and introduced himself again.

“Louis Frye,” he said and shook our hands before taking the chair next to Conklin.

Jansing said, “Lou, please tell these officers about the text messages.”

What was this? We hadn’t heard about any texts relating to the belly bombs. If Jansing had withheld information, he’d better have a damned fine reason or he was going to be charged with obstruction.

“This text came from a prepaid boost phone,” Frye said. “I printed it out for you.”

He passed over a plain sheet of copy paper with a smattering of words: “Time to pay up.”

“When did you get this?” I asked.

“After the bridge bombs. It came to me,” said Lansing. “I thought it was spam. It meant nothing to me. We didn’t know that the bridge incident was related to us,” said the lawyer, “until the FBI descended on our Hayes Valley store.”

Frye said, “Then Michael got another text. Identical message, but they followed up the text with a phone call naming the amount. We decided to pay.”

Of course they paid. Chuck’s Prime only cared about keeping the company name off the record and out of the news.