The Lost Witness (44 page)

Lena didn’t move, her Smith & Wesson up and ready. “Where are you going, West?”

“Paradise,” he said. “Now, hand over the gun. There’s no sense dying tonight.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled. After a long stretch, she passed the gun over and felt her body shudder. The senator grinned, but took a deep breath, too.

“That’s better,” he said. “Much better.”

The driver returned to the Suburban and climbed in behind the wheel. “Everything’s ready,” he said. “You’re all set, sir.”

West offered the kid Lena’s .45. “Thanks, Juan. Thanks for everything. You’ll need to keep this until we take off. Maybe we’ll see each other again sometime.”

The kid stared at the weapon and was clearly nervous. But when West handed him the gun, he looked at Lena and pointed it at her.

She sat back in the seat, watching the two bodyguards file out ahead of West. When the senator turned back and shot her a parting glance, she remembered the card in her pocket and dug it
out.

“You forgot this,” she said.

West didn’t seem to understand, but stepped closer as she extended her hand.

“Your business card,” she said. “I won’t be needing your help anymore.”

He glanced at the card, then slipped it into his pocket and smiled at her.

“You never know,” he said.

And that was it. Lena sat in the van keeping one eye on the nervous kid with the loaded .45 in his hand, and the other on the jet taxiing down the runway en route to paradise. After about five
minutes she heard the roar of the engines and looked out the window as the jet rocketed down the short runway and strained to make the steep climb out over Hollywood Hills. It sounded a lot like
thunder. A lot like a passing storm. When it was over, when the jet carrying West and his bodyguards finally faded into the heavens, the kid tossed her the .45 and asked if she wanted a lift
home.

S
he had spent the last four days thinking it over
and couldn’t decide who was worse. Both Tremell and West were
responsible for the murders. Both had been motivated by greed and had a hand in the deaths that resulted from the marketing and use of Formula D. The only real difference between the two was that
West sold out everybody. That Tremell was in a jail cell on suicide watch, while West was free and clear and probably living large.

It was Christmas Eve. A cold, grim afternoon in Hollywood Hills.

Tracking West’s escape over the past few days had proved fruitless. The jet flew directly to the Cayman Islands. According to the pilot, who returned to Burbank the following morning, West
and his companions boarded another plane waiting for them on the tarmac. No flight plan was available—the plane never returned—and the FBI had taken over the case.

Lena closed the tray on her CD player and adjusted the volume. She had loaded it up with some of her favorites. Nat King Cole because it was Christmas Eve. Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, and
Stephen Stills’s
Super Session
for reasons she couldn’t explain, Gerry Mulligan and Astor Piazzolla because she was thinking that West probably made a run for South America and
the music might trigger something in her imagination that would help, and that import CD she had heard Cava listening to.
Hope Radio
by Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters. She had ordered the
album on the Internet three days ago and had been listening to it ever since it arrived.

She sat down on the couch and looked at the Christmas tree on the porch outside the slider. The tree was alive. Although she didn’t have any ornaments, she had spent the afternoon
stringing white lights through its branches. The tree was a rental from a company in Hollywood who delivered it to her door and would pick it up after the new year. The rental fee covered their
expenses for planting the tree in the hills that had been destroyed by the wildfires last spring.

But her mind wasn’t really on the holiday right now. There were still too many things to remember. Too many things that she could learn from. And too many images she wanted to forget.

Rhodes was with his sister in Oxnard, so she didn’t really have anyone to talk to. Jennifer Bloom had been released from the hospital and was with her brother in Vegas. The family of Beth
Gillman, the girl Cava had abducted from the Cock-a-doodle-do and murdered in the garage on Barton Avenue, had been located in Portland and notified of their daughter’s death. And Vinny Bing
the Cadillac King had been found hanging from the garage at his dealership, his cable TV show still running because network executives thought that they might get a ratings boost.

It might add up, Lena thought. But it played havoc with the soul.

Someone knocked on her front door. She walked over and pulled it open, then gazed at her visitor for a long time.

It was Chief Logan, dressed casually in a sweater and a pair of slacks. And he was holding a bottle of Pinot Noir in his hand.

“A friend of mine lives just west of Pasadena,” he said. “He’s got a great wine cellar. He said that he knows you and thought you might like this. I guess you ate dinner
together in the kitchen at Patina once. He was celebrating the birth of his grandkids. I was hoping we might share it.”

She looked at the label trying to buy time. It was a bottle of Williams Selyem—out of her price range and hard to find. And she could remember the man the chief was talking about. It had
been an evening of great food and conversation with someone who had changed the face of the city. Lena hadn’t been aware that the two men were friends. When she finally spoke, her voice
cracked.

“Come in,” she said. “Please.”

A warm smile spread across the chief’s face as he entered the house. She didn’t know what to make of it, and switched over to automatic pilot. She managed to set two wine glasses on
the counter without breaking the stems. Then she watched the chief pull the cork and marveled at the rich color of the grapes as he made the pour. They clinked glasses and took their first sips. It
may have been the best first sip she had ever tasted.

“Would you mind if we drank this outside?” he said. “I’d like to sit by your tree and enjoy the view.”

Lena shook her head. “Not at all,” she managed.

The chief opened the slider and set the bottle on the table. As he grabbed a chair, Lena pulled the grill over, loaded it up with charcoal, and lit a fire to keep them warm. She took another sip
of wine and opened the pack of cigarettes. There was only one left, and she remembered the night she had bought them. The night she ran into Dobbs and Ragetti in the parking lot. The last time she
saw Denny Ramira alive. She knew that it would be her last cigarette for a long time.

“You watch much television, Lena?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

“Me either,” he said. “How ’bout movies?”

“I like them a lot.”

“How many times have you seen
The Godfather
?
”

“More than ten.”

“Then maybe you’ll understand why the first thing I did was make Ken Klinger my adjutant.”

He turned and looked at her with those dark eyes of his. And for the first time since they had met, she got a decent read off them, caught the spark, and everything clicked like a crystal
ball.

“Keep your friends close,” she said. “But keep your enemies closer.”

The chief raised his glass as if making a toast to her.

“I knew that Klinger was a piece of shit the moment I met him,” he said. “I’d been waiting for something to happen. I never thought that it would break this big. That so
many lives would be lost. But that’s the way it is, I guess. When he told me that he thought you should be assigned to this homicide case, I knew that something was up. But most of all, I
knew that Klinger was a moron. He wanted you because he, and the DA, and his lousy friends at Internal Affairs all thought you were incompetent. I agreed to give you the case and called Barrera
because we knew that you weren’t. After the way you handled yourself last year, I knew that I could trust you. That I could count on you. That once you got started, you’d put yourself
on the line and see it through. That you could take the bullshit I had to deal out for what it really was. A high-stakes gamble by a new chief to clean up our house. That’s why I gave you all
those Officer Involved Shooting cases. It wasn’t punishment. I needed to know who was who. And that’s why I had to be so hard on you in my office. Klinger was listening. I needed his
confidence, and he needed to hear me knock you down. All I can offer is my apology. By the way, you’ll be receiving the Medal of Valor for this, Lena. No chief has ever been more
proud.”

She heard his voice break and felt something deep inside her give way. She tried to hang tough. Tried to keep her game face on. But none of it was working this afternoon. She jammed the
unlighted cigarette into the pack and turned her face away.

“Cava’s a cop killer,” she said. “And West’s a former senator. The water’s cloudy, Chief. Both of them got away.”

“For now, at least. But we’ve started to clean house. And sleeping with one eye open every night takes its toll. The world isn’t as big as it used to be, Lena. Sooner or later
they’ll run out of road.”

She took a sip of wine, then sat back and finally lit her last cigarette. She looked at the chief’s chiseled face, his gray hair, the intelligence in his eyes, and felt herself begin to
relax.

“What about the DA?”

The chief set down his glass. “He’s friends with Tremell. The press can already smell blood in the water. I don’t think he’ll survive. And even if he does, I doubt
he’ll be reelected. Before I came over, I checked on Tremell. He’s off suicide watch.”

“That was quick.”

The chief grinned at the thought. “He’s hired one of those consultants to the stars to help him cope with prison life. You know, learn to blend, don’t ask for favors, and
don’t make friends with the guards.”

His voice suddenly faded and Lena followed his gaze off the porch to the city below the hills. Something was falling out of the sky At first she thought that it might be ash from another
wildfire. But when it seemed to pick up, she realized that it was snow.

She watched the flakes touch the ground and melt away. She looked at it with amazement and thought about Jennifer Bloom’s keepsake from her husband who died in the war.

It was snowing in Los Angeles. Anything could happen here.

“I love this city,” the chief whispered. “Maybe it’s because I wasn’t born here. Maybe that’s why I can’t take it for granted.”

Lena’s cell began vibrating. After checking the display, she turned the phone so that the chief could read the name.

VINNY BING THE CADILLAC KING.

The chief gave her a look. “When a dead man’s on the other end of the line, I guess you’ve gotta take the call.”

Lena flipped the cell open and switched on the speaker phone, then listened as Nathan G. Cava said hello.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter because I won’t be here for very long.”

“Then why did you call?”

Cava laughed. “To let you know that I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?”

“I know how you found me.”

“I thought you said that you weren’t hiding.”

“I wasn’t. But I needed to know and now I do. Someone gave you my name. And I found out who.”

Lena glanced at the chief, then leaned closer to the phone. “Do you know where he is?”

Cava laughed again. “In a small bungalow on a hill facing the beach. He thinks he’s found paradise. In a few minutes he’ll probably change his mind, though.”

“This isn’t the way to handle it, Cava. You need to turn yourself in.”

“A guy like me needs to do a lot of things,” he said. “And you were wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Killing,” he said. “When we met, you said I liked it. Maybe we’ll talk about it someday.”

The phone clicked off. Lena stared at the snowflakes drifting down onto Hollywood, then turned to the chief as he filled her glass.

“You were right,” she said. “The world isn’t as big as it used to be.”

C
ava slipped Vinny Bing’s cell into his pocket
and glanced at the two bodyguards. They were sitting on the floor in
West’s bedroom, their oversized bodies propped up against the wall on either side of the bathroom door. Their head wounds had stopped bleeding while he was on the phone. Still, the wall would
need to be wiped down before he left. And something would have to be done about the stain on the carpet.

Only Alan West would think that paradise came with wall-to-wall carpeting.

Cava looked at the clothes laid out on the bed as he listened through the door to West taking a shower. He had forgotten to pop a Flomax this morning and needed to take a leak. The sound of the
senator soaping it up in all that water wasn’t helping much. At the same time, life had its rewards. Within the next few minutes all business would be concluded. In another day, Cava would be
a thousand miles away picking out his chaise longue in Coronaville.

In another day he would be invisible.

The two bodyguards had gone down as easy as a couple of dead trees, and this surprised Cava. When he saw them in LA. they looked so rough and tough in their black suits. Each one of them had to
weigh in at over two-hundred and fifty pounds. Maybe it was the change to Tommy Bahama sportswear that weakened them. Maybe the flowers on their shirts lowered their guard. Or maybe it had
something to do with the suntan lotion on their meaty white legs and their big red noses.

Cava didn’t really give a shit what it was. He had been watching the house for a day and a half and the only thing that mattered was that it had been easy. One round each from a .22 pistol
stuffed inside an empty half-gallon Pepsi bottle to dampen the noise. They never did see the gun. Just the Pepsi bottle. Just Cava’s friendly smile and wave.

But even better, Cava was certain that West didn’t remember that he had actually talked about this place six months ago when they discussed what might happen if things went wrong. West had
talked it up and even pointed it out on a map. An oasis, he called it. A safe haven with maid service, satellite TV, access to the Internet, and all of the amenities a U.S. senator in hiding might
require.