Private L.A. (Private 6)
“Better,” he said.
“Riverdance?”
“You better quit while you’re ahead.”
The banter between us felt good. Everything in that room felt good, and I was grateful: despite all the strange and disturbing things I’d faced during the day, Del Rio was on the mend, and my best friend forever was in good enough spirits to crack wise with me.
“What do I need to know?” Del Rio asked. “Get me up to speed.”
I told him everything that had happened during the course of the day from the time I’d left his hospital room until my return. Mo-bot’s discovery of the bank account and shell company in the Caymans feeding millions to Harlow-Quinn Productions; Justine’s chats with the maids and with Cynthia Maines about Adelita Gomez. I gave him all of it except for Justine’s drunken admission that she loved me but couldn’t be with me, and that she’d had sex with a not-perfect stranger, or something to that effect.
When I told Del Rio what Sci and Mo-bot had found when they tried to place the fingerprints of the shooter at Mel’s Drive-In, he said, “Sounds like someone’s expunged the file.”
“Yeah, but why? FBI’s getting nowhere with DOD on this either. They’re saying there are no files. That the system is throwing false positives.”
Del Rio blinked, looked off into memory, said, “There is someone who might be able to tell us if they’re lying or not.”
“You know someone who’d know something like that?”
“You know him too, Jack, or did. Back in Kandahar?”
I thought about that, flashed on a face from our Afghanistan days before the helicopter crash, a big, doughy, cherub-faced man with cold, dark eyes, a fellow I’d once heard accurately described as having the look of an angel and the heart of an assassin.
“Guy Carpenter,” I said.
“The one and only.”
“That was ten years ago. I wouldn’t begin to know where to find someone like him. He’s an ultraspook, for God’s sake.”
“Ultraspook or not,” Del Rio said, “I got his address and phone number.”
“What? How?” I asked, incredulous.
Del Rio shot me a look of pity. “Guess you didn’t make the assassin’s list of friends and loved ones, Jack, but Carpenter sends yours truly a Christmas card each and every year.”
Chapter 84
JUSTINE WOKE AT a quarter past five the next morning with a colossal hangover dominated by a meat cleaver of a headache and a mouth that tasted of Very Rare Irish Whiskey and dried Elmer’s Glue.
How in God’s name did I get …?
She remembered being in Jack’s office on an empty stomach, whiskey that tasted oh so incredibly good and made her feel even better; and then it all went whirly on her, and then dark. She reached out, felt the dogs. One of them licked her hand.
Why did I …? How did I …?
Justine flashed on Jack bringing her into the apartment in a fireman’s carry and vaguely recalled saying something about …
“Oh, God,” she groaned into her pillow. “Please don’t let that be true.”
But was it? Had she confessed to Jack something about having perfect sex with a stranger, or something like that?
“Oh, God,” she groaned again. “Why? What am I going to …?”
And then she knew. Hangover or not, world-class headache or not, she was getting up. She was going to Crossfit. She was confronting what she’d done, and what it meant, and she was doing it now, not later. This was the kind of thing the old Justine would have done without hesitation. But why did she feel like this could be worse than returning to that jail cell in Guadalajara?
Twenty minutes later, after chugging a quart of water and swallowing a banana walnut muffin, two shots of espresso, and an Aleve, she pulled up to the Crossfit box, still unable to answer that question. She absolutely did not want to go inside. She knew the workout might force her to her knees, make her retch her insides out. But in a way, that kind of suffering felt fitting, a penance for her shitty choices of late, whatever their root cause.
Justine got out of the car, feeling only slightly less queasy than she had upon waking. Her ears rang. Her eyes felt swollen. Was that possible?