Private L.A. (Private 6)

He gestured angrily back toward shore. “The other end of this pier is lousy with media. They’re everywhere overhead. They’re going to find out what happened and …” He looked like he wanted to throttle me. I understood why.

Cammarata was up for reelection in less than week. And Fescoe worked at the whim of the mayor. The chief was studying me as if trying to decide whether I was somebody to be saved or tossed to the wolves.

Struggling to keep my own anger under control, I said, “I don’t have immunity from the fact that I lost a man and may have seen the crippling of another. But no one, including you, Sheriff, or you, Chief, anticipated a bomb. Why would we have? This was supposed to be an extortion pickup, and No Prisoners turned it into an attack. Up front, he decided that the money was not going to be in those bags. Up front, he planned to kill as many as he could.”

“How the hell do you know that, Jack?” Fescoe demanded.

Chapter 46

“ONE OF THE kiteboarders stayed conscious aboard the Baywatch boat that brought us in,” I said. “I questioned him until he was put in an ambulance.”

“What’s the story?” the sheriff demanded.

I told them what I knew. Danny Stern and Willis Allen were boyhood friends, originally from Hood River, Oregon, and now lived on the Big Island of Hawaii. They’d each won major kiteboarding competitions in the past two years and had appeared in several extreme-sport films.

Two months ago a man named Richard North had called Stern. North said he was a producer of action films who’d seen footage of Stern and Allen kiteboarding off Oahu. He said he wanted them to perform a stunt for a movie he was making. The fee was fifty thousand dollars apiece.

“North directed them to a website that seemed legit, so they accepted,” I told Fescoe and Cammarata. “Stern said North bought airline tickets, flew them over five days ago, met them at LAX. He described North as a big man with long blond hair, beard, and sunglasses.”

“No Prisoners,” Fescoe said.

I nodded. “He was driving a late-model BMW. He brought them here and gave them three pages of a script for a film called Take No Prisoners. In the script, dry bags containing money are dropped off the pier as part of a ransom deal. Then there’s a diversionary explosion. In come the two kiteboarders. North told them to snag the bags and then improvise from there.”

Cammarata’s scowl deepened. “What do you mean, improvise?”

“North said he wanted their moves to unfold instinctively and raw after the pickup, like on a reality-television show,” I replied. “Stern said he and Allen both knew they’d be chased after grabbing the bags. Their job was to evade capture as long as possible.”

“Which means you’re right, Jack,” Fescoe said. “No Prisoners, or North, or whatever he calls himself, had no intention of accepting the extortion payment.”

“I suspect he thought you’d do just what you did: pack the bags with a lot more newspaper than hundred-dollar bills.”

“But he couldn’t have known that,” Cammarata protested.

“Does it matter? He obviously believed it and acted accordingly.”

Both men fell silent, brooding on what I’d told them.

“In any case, it’s all out of our hands now. FBI and ATF agents will be taking control,” I said. “The scenario has gone beyond what any of us could be expected to handle.”

“Bullshit,” Cammarata said. “The Feds may come in. They may offer expertise. But this is my county.”

“And my city,” Fescoe said. “Yours too, Jack.”

“I’ll think on that,” I said. “Right now, I’m heading to UCLA Medical Center to find out if my best friend will ever walk again.”

As I left the men, I felt disoriented by the events of the evening, especially the loss. Had it been worth it? No, it hadn’t. Rankin and Del Rio were not officers sworn to uphold the law. They worked for me. They did my bidding, and they had suffered for it.

Satellite television vans surrounded the police barriers at the east end of the pier, up against Highway 1. Reporters were badgering anyone who moved their way. I thought I’d jump the railing and avoid them, but several of them recognized me and started shouting.

“Jack Morgan? What’s your role in this investigation? What’s Private got to do with the explosion?”

One of them, to my surprise, was Bobbie Newton, a particularly vicious gossip columnist and television reporter who lived up the beach from me.

“Jack!” she called. “Jack, it’s Bobbie!”

I ignored her and all of them, tried to move on. But then klieg lights blazed in my face. I looked at the cameras dead-on and said, “I’m a consultant here, nothing more.”

“Consultant to whom?” Bobbie and ten others shouted.