Kill the Messenger (25 page)

“What other detective came here first?” Kyle asked.

“Detective Parker,” she said. “The car is gone. Perhaps you should talk to him as to its whereabouts.”

Kyle went down the narrow hall and out the side door. There was no sign of a Mini Cooper.

“Detective Parker seems like a very nice man,” Madame Chen commented. “Courteous, thorough, very well-dressed. I was angry with him for taking my car, but he was only doing his job. I have nothing to hide,” she said, pulling Tyler closer to her side, an arm around his shoulders.

Kyle ignored her. The muscles in his face flexed and tightened. He wasn’t a happy man.

“Do you happen to know a young man named J. C. Damon?”

Madame Chen didn’t blink. “Why would I know this person?”

“Maybe you’ve seen him in the vicinity. Early twenties, blond hair, blue eyes. He works as a bike messenger.”

“I am a busy woman, in my office most of the time.”

None of what she was saying was exactly a lie, nor was it exactly the truth. Tyler stood by her side looking as innocent as a lamb.

“How about you, son?” Kyle asked.

“You really shouldn’t talk down to me, sir,” Tyler said politely. “You might be embarrassed to find out I have an IQ of one sixty-eight.”

The cops looked at each other again.

“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Kyle said. “We may call on you again once your car has been processed for evidence.”

He took one long look at Tyler, at the blue eyes and the blond hair. Tyler held his breath. The detectives started toward the door.

Boo Zhu hurried from inside the warehouse to the edge of the loading dock. He looked like Humpty Dumpty, Tyler had always thought. The bright sun made him squint like a mole. He turned one way and then the other.

“I know! I know!” he said excitedly, his thick tongue sticking out of his mouth. “I know JayCee!”

                        
      35

Parker left the Sebring in a red zone in front of the restaurant and went inside. The place was so dimly lit, for an instant he thought he’d gone blind. Then his eyes adjusted and he saw Diane, looking at her watch as she sat in a corner booth. The restaurant was at the front end of a nightclub that had been a swinging place in the days of the Rat Pack. It had never been redecorated. Most of the clientele in the main room had blue hair.

Once a month or so Diane met him there for lunch. The food was decent, it was quiet, and no one from either of their professions ever came there. They both preferred to keep their private lives private. Their monthly lunches were like little oases amid the chaos of their daily lives. Nice respites.

Parker kissed her cheek and apologized for keeping her waiting.

“I went ahead and ordered,” she said, gesturing to the chopped salad on his side of the table. “Your usual.”

“Perfect. Thanks.” He slid into the booth, heaved a big sigh, and tried to idle the motor down. He was revving into high gear now. Things were happening. Time was short.

“It’s been a hell of a day so far,” he said, and proceeded to fill her in on the latest troop movements of the Evil Empire: Robbery-Homicide.

“They’ll never give you a break, Kev,” she said, picking at her salad.

“No, they never will. And you know what? Fuck ’em. I’ll make my own breaks. If I can just stay ahead of them for a day or so . . .”

“You think you’re that close to solving it?” she asked. Her elbows rested on the tabletop. She propped her head in one hand, looking drained.

Parker leaned across the table. “Are you all right?”

She rallied and brightened as if she’d just increased the volume on her energy level. Her mouth curved up at one corner. “I’m tired. All that social carousing and skulduggery I did for you last night. And I didn’t even get a thank-you orgasm for my trouble.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . That’s what you all say,” she said with a wry smile.

“Yeah, but I’ve got the goods to back it up, baby,” Parker said in his sexiest voice. One of the blue-haired ladies in the booth behind Diane leaned over to get a better angle for her eavesdropping. Parker caught her eye and winked at her.

Diane shook her head. “You’re shameless.”

Parker grinned. “Yes, I am. Aren’t you glad?”

“I am.” She poked the tines of her fork at a piece of shredded chicken. “So have you figured out who a guy like Lenny Lowell could possibly know who would be worth blackmailing?”

“Not yet, but I’m this close,” he said, pinching a thumb and forefinger together. “And I ran off with the murder book, so it’ll take Kyle and Roddick a while to catch up.”

“This really must tie in to something big, for them to go to all this trouble with you.”

“Their captain told my captain it relates to something they have ongoing. I can’t connect the dots yet, but there’s only one name that keeps coming to mind. Tricia Crowne-Cole.”

Diane straightened in her seat. “What? Rob Cole killed his wife,” she said firmly. “How could this possibly have anything to do with that? Are you delusional?”

“Somebody has been paying somebody else a lot of money to keep a secret.”

“You don’t even know that for certain.”

“Actually, I do know that for certain.”

“Rob Cole killed his wife,” she said again. “You weren’t there, Kevin. You didn’t see what he did to her. It was personal, vicious—”

“She had other people in her life. The daughter, who might have been fucking her husband. The brother, who had to live in the shadow of perfect sister Tricia—”

Diane ticked her points off on her fingers. “Rob Cole is the one who’s been indicted, the one going on trial, the one with no alibi and plenty of motive—”

“Tony Giradello could have a Pop-Tart indicted if he wanted—”

“Give me a break, Parker! There’s no way Giradello goes forward with a trial this high-profile if he can’t make it stick. He’s still got egg on his face from the last time. The jury will be seated in a week. He’s crossed every
t
and dotted every
i
, run every test, lined up every expert witness.”

“Well, he’s getting plenty of help with that, courtesy of Norman Crowne, isn’t he?”

“And now you’re a conspiracy nut! What have you been smoking?”

“Come on, Diane. You’ve said it yourself: It looks like Norman Crowne is buying justice. Who’s to say he isn’t buying silence too?”

“Tricia was the apple of his eye,” she said. “He couldn’t have loved her more. There’s no way he would pay to protect someone involved with her death.”

“Even if that someone was his own granddaughter?” Parker asked. “You know as well as I do, people will do incredible things in the name of love.”

“I know that. I know that. But you are so off the mark here. You’re seeing zebras. Rob Cole killed his wife.”

“Well, we’ll know for certain by tonight,” Parker said. “I stole a negative out of Lowell’s safe-deposit box, where he also had a whole lot of cash stashed. It’s being developed as we speak. I don’t think it’s a baby picture of his daughter.” He checked his watch and grimaced. He hadn’t taken three bites of his salad, but hunger meant nothing to him now. Physical hunger had been swallowed up by the hunger to finish the hunt. The satisfaction would carry him for days.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, digging bills out of his wallet. “As much as I love to see you get your back up, we’ll have to finish this argument later.”

Diane shoved her salad away and sat back, pouting.

“My God, you’re gorgeous when you’re pissed off,” Parker said, sliding out of the booth. He bent and kissed her cheek. “Look, maybe I am way off the mark—”

“You are.”

“I know Robbie is the guy you love to hate, doll, but you know what they say at the racetrack: Only suckers bet the favorite.”

She just stared at him, brows lowered.

“I’m not rooting against you,” Parker said. “I’m rooting for me. If this plays out, I win. Do you hate Rob Cole more than you love me?”

Her face softened then, and she gave him a grudging smile. “I’ll put a few bucks on you, long shot.”

“You won’t be sorry.”

“We’ll see.”

“Are you scheduled to work later?” he asked. “Maybe you should call in. Take the day, get some rest.”

“I’m off,” she said. “Just doing some errands. The bank, the store . . .”

“I’ll call you.” Parker turned to go.

“Kev?”

Diane slid out of the booth as he turned toward her. She gave him a hug and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

He stood back and smiled. “You’re passionate. That’s nothing to be sorry for.”

The gorgeous winter-blue eyes glazed with a very uncharacteristic sheen of tears. “I do love you, you know.”

The old ladies in the next booth were staring openly, as enthralled as if they were at a dinner theater.

Parker couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d hit him with a hammer. The
L
word. He grinned and made a joke because he was so stunned, he didn’t know what else to do. “Why, Ms. Nicholson,” he said, batting his eyelashes, “you’ve made me giddy.”

She smiled and shook her head and waved him off. “Get out of here, you idiot.”

Diane Nicholson loved him. He wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to take that. She loved him as a friend? He knew that. She loved him as in
loved
him? Hell of a time to have that sprung on him, Parker thought, though not with any rancor. Maybe his karma was turning around after all.

If he could close this case, make a big splash, he’d have the world by the tail.

He called Joanie at Latent and left a message asking her to look for Eddie Davis’s name and address in the Rolodex that had been taken from Lowell’s office and sent to Latent to be examined for fingerprints, to do it ASAP and then call him on his cell phone.

He had told Ruiz to check Davis out, but Parker didn’t see himself calling her to ask if she had the info yet. Kyle and Roddick were sure to have been there by now. The hornet’s nest had been well stirred, and he had no doubt she would be crawling all over Bradley Kyle.

Parker pulled the car over into the patch of dirt that served as a parking lot for a tiny Mexican joint in a weedy, dusty, semi-industrial part of town near the Los Angeles River. Dan Metheny had eaten lunch at this place every day Parker worked with him. Clearly Metheny had seen no reason to change that habit over the years.

He sat at one of the picnic tables beneath the corrugated tin overhang, a plate of fat and cholesterol in front of him. He watched Parker through silver-mirrored shades. In all the time Parker had known him, he had seen Metheny’s eyes maybe twice.

“Hey,
GQ,
” the old man said. “You here to show us common folk how to dress?”

Metheny had been on the job for about a hundred and twelve years, or so it seemed. A big, barrel-chested black (Metheny’s own choice of words) man who ate too much red meat, drank too much bourbon, and smoked two packs a day. The stress of working South Central should have killed him, but he kept marching on. Too mean to die.

“I
am
the common folk,” Parker said, taking the seat opposite.

“Kid, there’s never been anything common about you. That’s why everybody hates you.”

“Well, that’s good to know.”

“Fuck ’em,” Metheny growled. “It’s lonely at the top.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve been spending all my time a few rungs down the ladder, getting shit on by the monkeys above me.”

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Giradello would’ve had you working parking meters if he could have. But you’re still a detective. You’re still on the job. And you look like a goddam movie star. You’ve got nothing to whine about.”

“Robbery-Homicide just yanked my murder away from me, and I have a trainee who would sooner stab me in the back with a stiletto heel than look at me.”

“This chick Ruiz?” Metheny said around a mouthful of enchilada.

“Yeah.”

“I asked a couple of guys I know working Latin gangs, and they never heard of her. I guess they could have forgot.”

Parker shook his head. “Believe me, this one doesn’t go unnoticed. They would have remembered.”

“Have you seen her personnel jacket?”

“It looks fine. I tried to call her last supervisor, but I was told the guy died. She probably cut out his heart and ate it as he bled to death at her feet.”

Metheny was silent for a moment, thinking, all the lines of his bulldog face bending downward, accentuated by his thick salt-and-pepper Fu Manchu mustache.

“Dude, I don’t like this,” he said at last. “You know Alex Navarro? Alex knows every damn thing that goes on with the Latin gangs. If he doesn’t know this chick, she wasn’t there.”

“So who the hell is she?” Parker asked. “And why is she riding around with me?”

Now he felt even more like he was being backed into a corner. Robbery-Homicide taking his case, Ruiz suddenly not who he thought she was.

“Could be she used a different name then,” Metheny said. “You know how those undercover spooks are. They ‘immerse’ themselves in their roles,” he said with a certain amount of disdain.

Metheny was an old-time cop from the kick-ass-and-take- names school. Everything was black or white for him. There were good guys and there were bad guys. He hit the streets armed with the law and about nine concealed weapons not approved of by the ACLU. A warrior for justice.

“Maybe,” Parker conceded grudgingly, but he didn’t believe it.

“Flush her out and call her bluff, man.”

“Yeah.”

There was nothing else to do. Parker knew he couldn’t trust Ruiz. He might as well find out why. Find out how many enemies he really had.

He was already questioning the timing of it all. Ruiz had come on just days before the Lowell murder, and now she was selling him out to Robbery-Homicide, and Robbery-Homicide was taking the case for themselves. But how—even with the inside scoop on the blackmail—could anyone have known Lenny Lowell was going to be murdered?

He didn’t like any of the possible explanations. He tried to tell himself he was being paranoid and building conspiracies where none existed. Only the killer could have predicted Lowell’s death, and no one could have predicted who would be up on the board to take the case.

Metheny was watching him, watching the thought process and the subtle changes in his face that went along with it.

“There’s no such thing as coincidence, man,” Metheny said. “Not with Robbery-Homicide. Those dudes don’t saddle up for no reason.”

“It doesn’t make sense that Ruiz is connected to them,” Parker said. “What would they need her for when they could take the case anytime they wanted?”

“Then what does make sense?” Metheny asked. “I once knew a guy who did giant chain-saw wood carvings from tree trunks. They were pretty damn good. He had this one of a moose. Looked just like a damn moose. You could practically smell it. I asked him how he did that, and he said to me, ‘I start with a big hunk of tree trunk, and I carve away everything that doesn’t look like a moose.’

“Chip away everything this mess couldn’t be, and you’re left with the truth. If Ruiz isn’t who she says she is, then who is she? If she’s not some kind of RHD spy, what’s left?”

A sick, watery feeling trickled through Parker’s body. He’d only ridden with Ruiz for a matter of days. She irritated him so badly, he hadn’t paid much attention to what she was all about besides being a pain in the ass. But she’d known about his Jag, and she’d known about his loft, and she had commented more than once on the price of his wardrobe, and how easily he parted with money.

“What’s left?” Metheny asked.

The words were sour in Parker’s mouth. “Internal Affairs.”