Private L.A. (Private 6)

Hernandez turned, surging on adrenaline. He began to hum a favorite tune. It never got old, this feeling, better than any video game ever. Nothing came close to the real thing. Difference between porn and …

Ten feet away, an anxious Latina woman in a blue business skirt and pink blouse and her thumb-sucking toddler in the seat of her shopping cart were staring at him, frozen with terror.

“No,” Sheila Vicente sobbed. “Please, I’m just here for the Xanax.”

Every nerve fiber, every cell in Hernandez told him to wax her, right now. The kid too. It would make a statement. No quarter would be given.

He took two steps toward the young mother as she wrenched her child to her breast and sank to her knees, begging incoherently. He stood over her, the guns aimed at her crying eyes and the back of her little boy’s head, savoring the power, smelling the torrents of fear pouring off her. His fingers sought the triggers.

“Stop,” Cobb said, and then told Hernandez exactly what to do. Hernandez didn’t like it, but for once he followed orders to a T.

“Cell phone,” Hernandez barked at her. “Give it to me.”

Shaking, crying, Sheila Vicente got her cell and threw it down. Hernandez crushed it with his heel, slid the guns into his hoodie. He crouched before her, handed her a Baggie with a lime-green card in it, said, “I want you to personally give the mayor this. Don’t show the cops. Just tell them that you have a personal message for the mayor from me. Tell that bitch that unless she complies with my demands there will be no mercy after this. None.”

Then Hernandez stood, turned, chuckled, and walked out the door of the pharmacy, humming that favorite melody of his, as if he had not a care in this world.

PART TWO

SQUEEZE PLAY

Chapter 17

STELLA THE BULLDOG sprawled on her side, panting hard, as if she had run for miles in a torrid heat. Justine lay on the veranda floor, stroking the poor beast’s head and laying wet towels over her body. Justine has a thing for dogs. And they have a thing for her. She owns two, spoils them silly.

“She’s been getting progressively worse,” said Justine when I exited the main house with Sanders and Del Rio. “We’re going to have to take her to a vet.”

“No vets,” Camilla Bronson snapped. “I know for a fact that Thom and Jennifer put a chip under her skin. They’ll ask questions.”

“So what? The dog’s sick,” Justine said firmly.

“She probably got into some bad meat and now she’s suffering for it,” Sanders said.

“Yes, just keep her out here so she doesn’t dump or puke in the house,” Terry Graves said.

Justine set her eyes on the attorney, the publicist, and the producer in a way I’d seen before. She no longer liked the Harlow team. They were clients. She’d do the work, but she wouldn’t like them. She stated flatly, “This pup gets any sicker, I’m taking one of the Suburbans and going to—”

Trying to defuse the situation, I said, “Tell me about the house staff.”

“What about them?” Sanders asked.

“I need to know their story.”

“I just spent two hours with them, Jack,” Justine said, then looked at Sanders, Camilla Bronson, and Terry Graves. “Correct me if I’m wrong.”

Anita Fontana, thirty-four, the head housekeeper, had been with the Harlows for twelve years, ever since the actors bought the ranch. She appeared the most upset, kept looking at a picture of the family she had by her bed and weeping. She said she loved the Harlows, especially Miguel. The Harlows were demanding but fair, generous at times, surprisingly cheap at others, and somewhat aloof from their children.

“Aloof!” Camilla Bronson cried. “That goes nowhere. Do you understand?”

“How couldn’t they be aloof at some level?” Justine shot back. “Busy careers and philanthropic work chew up vast amounts of time.”

“Jen and Thom are excellent parents,” the publicist retorted. “Anyone who says otherwise is either a fool or a liar.”

“Then all three of them must be fools or liars,” Justine replied.

The cook—Maria Toro—agreed in large part with the housekeeper’s take on their bosses. She’d been with the Harlows eight years; said Jennifer was always trying to keep Thom on a vegan diet, but that he loved meat. Jacinta Feliz, the maid, had been at the ranch two years before the furlough they’d been given during the Harlows’ sojourn in Vietnam.

“She said Malia suffered nightmares and was a lonely girl,” Justine said.