The Trials of Nikki Hill (43 page)

“What’s the deal, Jimmy?” Goodman asked. “Who’d you piss off, besides me?”

“Fuck if I know, Goodman. As you heard, young blood over there wasn’t in a name-dropping mood.”

“You do anything to annoy your client?”

“Dyana? She and I are solid.”

“I meant her husband.”

Doyle paused and gave it some thought. Then he shrugged and went back to his packing. “Who knows?” he said.

“Him,” Goodman said, pointing to Rupert.

“Yeah, well...”

“Let’s load up and vamoose, huh?” Morales said.

Goodman nodded. He spotted an empty cleaner’s shirt box on the floor and began dumping the weapons, beepers, money, and drugs into it.

“Nice little haul, boys,” Doyle said with a smirk. “Drugs, cash. A useful little throw-down. Cop’s delight.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Lattimer,” Goodman said.

Morales grabbed the back of Rupert’s orange jacket and jerked him upright. The boy looked wobbly. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he said.

“Like you got a choice,” Morales said, cackling. He pushed him toward the stairs.

“You guys can’t just leave,” Doyle said. “There are bodies all over this place.”

“Let your cop take care of it,” Goodman said. He took one of Doyle’s neatly folded handkerchiefs and used it to pick up the case containing Rupert’s long knife.

“Hey,” Lattimer shouted. “Catch ’em.”

Goodman watched as the two unguarded bangers raced out onto the balcony and clambered down over the rail. “That’ll simplify your cleanup, Lattimer,” he said.

“Some fucking city,” Doyle said. “Get ready for Armageddon, boys. It’s on your back doorstep.” He followed them to the top of the stairs and shouted down. “Think of me when the revolution begins. I’ll be three thousand miles away, watching you fuckers burn and die out here, courtesy of CNN.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” Morales grumbled, dragging Rupert past one of his unconscious gang brothers. “That fucking Doyle’s got diarrhea of the mouth.”

E
IGHTY

T
he elevator at the end goes directly to the Grand Ballroom, Ms. Hill,” the concierge at the Hotel Balmoral said.

She thanked him, thinking not for the first time that celebrity might turn out to be a mixed blessing. On one hand, it was nice to be recognized. On the other, having everyone suddenly know your name was creepy.

Her fellow passengers on the elevator—the men in tuxes, the women elaborately gowned—greeted her with smiles of recognition. Though she assumed half of them despised her for what they considered to be the wrongful persecution of Dyana Cooper, she smiled back. After all, she thought, she probably
had
been wrongfully persecuting the woman.

The elevator opened to a noisy, milling crowd in the midst of a cocktail party. To the right were the closed doors of the Grand Ballroom, where the dinner would be held shortly. To the left were floor-to-ceiling windows offering a view of the moodily purple evening sky and the Pacific coastline to Malibu and beyond. In between were several hundred people in evening wear, networking, wheeling, dealing, and, in some rare instances, merely talking trash and enjoying themselves.

Nikki moved into the fray, searching for Joe Walden. She couldn’t believe there were so many tall black men in one place. She began to think that height might be a requirement of the National Association of African-American Leadership when she spotted a woman no taller than five feet wearing the multicolored badge (red, white, blue, green, yellow, and black) that indicated she was a member rather than just a guest. She had Ray Wise backed against the wall and was shaking a finger in his face.

Sadistically, Nikki decided not to interrupt, continuing the search for her boss. She found him at a far corner of the room, talking animatedly with the mayor, the assistant police chief, and a few others. She stood on the periphery of the group and tried to catch his eye.

The crowd hushed suddenly. Nikki saw the people around her staring in the direction of the elevator. Joe, the mayor, and the others were staring, too. The assistant police chief’s mouth was hanging open in surprise.

She turned to find out what could possibly provoke such a reaction.

The elevator had just disgorged a group of newcomers. In their midst, looking like they had just stepped from the cover of
Entertainment Weekly,
were Mr. and Mrs. John Willins.

E
IGHTY-ONE

A
lvin Leander had taken to smoking a pipe in retirement. Its acrid fumes filled the clean little room attached to his garage. Other than the smoke, it was, Goodman thought, the ideal place to piddle away your declining years. One side of the small, well-insulated, windowless space was devoted to an elaborate ham radio setup where he assumed the ex-cop spent many a happy hour talking with other old men with too much time on their hands.

Across from that was Leander’s remarkably well outfitted tool and woodworking station. Its main element was a solid hardwood workbench that, thanks to Goodman and Morales, now had the Crazy Eights siblings, Rupert and Fupdup, firmly tied to its opposite ends.

Leander, whom Goodman guessed to be no more than five years older than he, had put on a little weight around his middle, and his dark brown skull was showing through a cap of wiry gray hair. But he was still the same deliberate and cautious Leander who had driven several partners batshit during his long career on the LAPD.

“Carlos,” he said, his forehead wrinkled in genuine concern, “you’re not going to mistreat these boys, I hope.”

“Naw, Leander,” Morales said, paying particular interest to a chainsaw hanging from a wall hook. “Jus’ gonna have a talk with ’em. Maybe you and Eddie can work on that computer thing.”

Leander looked at the floppy disk in Goodman’s hand. “Computer’s in the house.”

“Go. I can handle things out here,” Morales said.

Leander wasn’t certain he wanted Morales to handle things, but he reluctantly led Goodman into the house. His wife, who was sipping coffee in the kitchen, stopped him with a steely glance and pointed to the pipe. “Sorry, sweet pea,” he replied and retraced his steps to the backyard. Goodman, who remained in the kitchen being glared at by the wife, heard him beating the pipe against his heel.

An eternity later he returned, showed his wife the now empty pipe bowl, winked at Goodman, and led him to another room that bore his unique touches.

Like his workspace behind the garage, his computer room was spotlessly clean. The machine itself rested atop a Formica table, alongside two printers, a scanner, a fax, and various little connected gadgets the purposes for which Goodman couldn’t imagine. “What do you do with all this stuff, Leander?” he asked.

“Keep up my presence on the Web,” Leander said seriously. “I’m the list manager of the L.A. Crime Beat News-group.”

Goodman didn’t have any idea what that was and he didn’t want to. So he just said, “Mmmm,” and handed over the disk he’d taken from Lattimer.

Leander took his place at the computer. Goodman grabbed a chair and placed it beside Leander’s.

“You’re looking at a five hundred megahertz, Pentium II processor with a six-point-four-gigabyte hard drive, Eddie,” Leander said proudly as he booted up.

“Hell of a thing,” Goodman said. He was of two minds— curious to see what was on the floppy, but also wanting to occupy Leander long enough for Carlos to get Rupert to start singing. He hoped that the boy would open up quickly. He didn’t really think his partner would seriously hurt either of the gangstas, regardless of the debt he felt he owed the gang. At the same time, he wasn’t sure what Carlos might do if push came to shove.

“Could be a little tricky,” Leander said, looking at a message on the screen that read “Access Denied.” “What we’d better do is copy this disk right away, in case there’s some sort of cleanwipe that goes into effect after a few access tries.”

“If you say so,” Goodman said.

Leander copied the disk, then took a few more runs at unlocking its secret.

“You going to be able to do anything with that?” Goodman asked.

“It’s just a matter of elimination,” Leander said. “You don’t know much about computers, do you, Eddie?”

“Not much.”

“They can keep you going once you’re retired,” Leander said. “Activate your mind. Keep you plugged into the world.”

“I thought that’s why you had the ham radio.”

“Whatever gets you through the day. I like to keep busy.”

While Leander nattered on about his cures for retirement, Goodman tuned out. He tried to reconstruct the events of the Madeleine Gray murder using the new crime scene.
Maddie and Willins are at the spa, screwing around,
he thought.
She pisses him off. Why, I’m not...No, she pisses him off by telling him she’s ditching him for some ...No, that’s probably wrong, too. She pisses him off
by telling him she knows his secret.
Sure. She’s a blackmailer. Just because she’s banging the guy doesn’t mean she’s giving him a free pass on the blackmail. She knows his secret.

The secret. He’s... what? He uses gangstas in his record business? Who doesn’t? He...
Goodman felt he was on the verge of some great understanding, but it just wouldn’t come.
Okay. Move on. He gets the Crazy Eights to clean up the place and take care of Maddie’s body. What is the connection with the Crazies? They sell drugs and rob banks. Willins probably wouldn’t be involved in robbery. But drugs? In the music business?

Anyway, they take the body disposal and cleanup off his hands. Willins drives to Maddie’s house (Using her key? Was her key among her effects?) and looks for his file.

No, let me backtrack a bit. He tells Rupert or whoever to stay with the body until he gives the go-ahead. That way, he has all the time he needs to find the blackmail stash. He breaks open the cabinet, grabs his file. Because Maddie used nicknames, he has no reason to know his wife’s got a file there, too, labeled “Soul Sister.”

He gets away clean. Wait! His wife’s car was seen at the house around that time. Okay, he was using the Jag that night. Yeah. That works. Then he—

“Sandoval?” Leander’s voice interrupted his mental meandering. “I know that name.”

“What about Sandoval?” Goodman asked.

“It’s all here,” Leander said. “He was using Word for Windows and a simple encryption.”

On the monitor screen, Goodman read:

Sandoval Agency Case 427; Report #3

Client: James Doyle

Billing Address: 2912 Dumbarton Street NW Washington, D.C. 20007

Background Check (BC)—addendum to original

Subject: various

Below that was a list of people Peter Sandoval had been investigating for Doyle. An addendum to his original reports, it also included notes to himself and avenues left not pursued (due to his flight from the police). Lattimer was probably going to try to complete the job.

The security-conscious private detective had identified his subjects by initials only. Topping the alphabetized list was “J.D.,” whom Goodman identified from Sandoval’s notes (“flaky...eager to sue...cabin fever in hotel...can’t keep it in pants”) as Jamal Deschamps. “E.G.” (“possible burnout... check med. record”) was his own listing. “N.H.” (“lives alone... check papa...killer dog... Compton why?”) was Nikki Hill.

“Let’s see more,” he said.

Leander began a screen scroll and initials drifted by. Some the detective recognized, some not. “Coming near the end of the file,” Leander told him.

Goodman blinked. “Back up a notch.”

There, below “R.W. ” (“check old trials for improprieties”) were the initials he was looking for. “J.W. ” John “I Love My Wife” Willins. That paranoid sleazebag Doyle! Investigating his own client. How had he put it: “Your only friends are the people you’ve got the goods on.”

Sandoval’s notes on “J.W. ” were intriguing. “Deep-check early bio. Carver, CA. Parents’ death by fire; accident?...See Emory at Eternal Light re: #1232.” There was a telephone number.

“Got a pencil and paper?” Goodman asked. “I need to make some notes.”

Leander gave him a pitying look and pressed a button on his keyboard. One of the printers came alive with a laser copy of the file in under ten seconds. He handed it to Goodman and said solemnly, “You know, Eddie, computers aren’t for everybody.”

Goodman folded the sheet and put it in his pocket. “Why don’t you erase that copy you made, Leander? Then we ought to look in on Carlos and the boys.”

As they passed back through the kitchen, Leander’s wife asked, “Who’s in the workroom using the chainsaw?”

Instead of answering her, Leander headed from the house faster than Goodman had ever seen him move.

They found Morales sitting on a chair in front of the workbench, looking even more pissed off than usual. He’d moved both Fupdup and Rupert. The two boys were seated on top of the workbench. Ropes connected to their bound wrists had been tossed over a rafter and tightened until their arms were raised above their heads. More rope had been used to secure their ankles to the front legs of the bench, forcing their legs to spread.

Sawdust marred Leander’s immaculate floor directly under each of them. Ridges were cut in the bench beginning at its lip and continuing until they almost kissed the V of their open legs. More sawdust had been spun up the boys’ pants. Goodman saw that the crotch of Rupert’s black silk trousers had been ripped.

Leander’s main concern was his chainsaw, which Morales had replaced on the wall. The ex-cop ran a knobby black hand over it as if it were his child. “Baby needs oil.”

“All I get from ’em is bullshit,” Morales said, glaring at the brothers. “This one,” he said, indicating Rupert, “doan say nuthin’. I threaten to saw off his brother’s dick, he doan care. I threaten to saw off his dick. He still doan care.”

Rupert glared at Morales venomously. Fupdup was crying. Goodman wondered if the boy might be in shock. “You okay?” he asked.

“I tole him all I know,” Fupdup said hysterically. “I remembered the name.”

“Shut up,” Rupert ordered.

“The little creep tries to tell me the Crazies have been run by the same guy for as long as he can remember. That guy’s known as Lee-O. Lee-O killed Maddie Gray. Lee-O calls all the shots for the Crazies.”