No Accident (11 page)

“Good,” Hugh said. “I was afraid I might hear about the Venice Boulevard trolley again.”

Touché
, Alex thought. He had told that story more than once, he admitted, usually after too much wine, about how the oil and car companies bought up Los Angeles’ electric trolley network after World War II in order to shut the trolleys down and replace them with gasoline buses. Hugh was no environmentalist, but apparently he’d been paying attention after all.

Alex didn’t share Hugh’s blithe confidence that the insurance policies were pure and innocent. If the insurance policies were simply tax-planning techniques, like Hugh said, then it was unlikely that someone at Liberty Industries had orchestrated the accident to kill the employees in the van. And that was a setback to Alex’s quest to prove that Howard Cummings wasn’t responsible for the accident that killed him.

Alex’s doubt must have shown on his face, because Hugh asked, “Why so skeptical?”

Alex gave Hugh a quick run-down of how Rampart Insurance had dropped coverage for Roberta Cummings.

“Wow,” Hugh said. “That stinks. If that’s how old Chester Odom runs his insurance company, maybe you’re better off not working there.”

“Exactly. I thought, if the accident was deliberately caused by someone at Liberty to cash out these life insurance policies, then Howard Cummings could no longer be at fault for the accident and his widow might get some compensation.”

“Can I ask you a question, Alex?”

Alex nodded.

“If you don’t work at Rampart anymore, why are you still working on this case?”

“It just got to me, I guess
—the unfairness of it. I want to help my client.”

“You mean, Rampart’s client.”

Hugh gave Alex the kind of benign, condescending smile that middle-aged men give to children who announce that their Christmas wish is for world peace.
Sand in the gearbox
, Alex thought again.

“You can’t help everybody,” Hugh said. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but didn’t.

“You were going to tell me I should start by helping myself,” Alex said.

“I wasn’t.” A moment passed, and Hugh said, “Have you ever thought about just giving up your houses?”

“You mean defaulting on the mortgages?”

“Mortgages are non-recourse in California, so if you defaulted, the banks couldn’t come after you for their losses. You wouldn’t be the first person to make that choice.”

Alex wasn’t cheered by this suggestion. “
Purchase money
mortgages are non-recourse, but refinancings aren’t. And I’ve refinanced the houses several times.”

“You really did put your foot into it, didn’t you?” Hugh said.

“I try hard not to think about how deep.”

Hugh’s eyes filled with a new light, and he moved on to another topic. “Listen, your brother asked me before dinner whether I would let him borrow a car.”

That was a new approach for Del. To date, Del had just straight up asked his family and friends for cash. “He’s been getting around by bus,” Alex said.

“And skateboard, I take it. Does Del have a job?”

“It’s hard for me to get a straight answer on that,” Alex said.

“Me too. I’ve got this pickup truck. It’s old and I don’t use it very much, but before I let Del use it, I wanted to get your opinion on whether he’s responsible enough these days for me to trust him with it.”

No pressure or anything
, Alex thought,
just tell me what you really think of your brother
. Alex was still the older brother. He wouldn’t rat Del out, no matter the circumstances. He wouldn’t return the little disfavor Del had done him at the dinner table. As Alex stalled, an odd idea popped into his mind. In an instant it morphed into a great idea.

“Alex? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s fine,” Alex said slowly, letting the idea come to shape in his mind. “How about this? I talk with Del more regularly than you do. I’ll let him use
my
truck so he doesn’t have to skateboard around like a teenager. And you let me borrow your truck in the meantime—if you’re comfortable with that, I mean.”

Hugh looked very pleased. “I think that’s a fine idea
—a great idea. And you’re OK with lending Del your truck?”

Alex wasn’t really, but this convoluted plan would keep Alex’s truck away from the repo men while giving both Alex and Del their own transportation. “I think it’s a win-win,” Alex said.

Hugh reached out and squeezed Alex’s shoulder. “You’re a good brother to Del.”

They found Beto at the pool hall. Beto knew they would find him somewhere, so he figured, why not have a good time while they tracked him down? If he went into hiding every time someone wanted to take his money from him, he would never have a chance to spend any of it.

The bad thing about bookies was that they never forgot. The good thing about them was that they remembered who kept them in business. Lenny had never killed anybody that Beto had heard of. It would be like a farmer killing a cow out of spite. But this time Lenny came with friends, which was a bad sign.

No reason to get all worked up about it
, Beto thought.

Rather than acting like he had someth
ing to hide, Beto called Lenny over to the pool table and bought him and his friends a beer.

“Good to see you,” Beto said warmly. “Let’s talk after I finish this game?”

Lenny silently assented and sipped his beer as Beto played the game out. Lenny was a little guy who had never made peace with his size. His friends were two big country kids who Beto didn’t know. The skinny one had a mustache and clearly had no sense of humor. The other had a sweet chubby face and looked surprised to be inhabiting such a large, powerful body.

Beto’s dreadful night at the craps table was ancient history. He had borrowed some money since then from a girl he knew. Five hundred dollars of it lay on the side of the pool table, underneath another five hundred laid down by Beto’s opponent. Beto had spent all afternoon setting him up for this game. I
t was actually good that Lenny had come, Beto thought. Lenny could see Beto play this fool.

Beto’s opponent wasn’t very good. Even so, the opponent took the advantage early. He sank one striped ball on the break and had just sunk three more on three well-executed, but not very demanding, shots.

The man’s next shot failed. Too many of Beto’s solid colored balls blocked the way.

There were too many solid balls even for Beto, and he ambled around the table looking for a clean path to one of the holes. There wasn’t one, and Beto studied the table until he saw an approach that could work.

With a tap from his pool cue, he nudged the cue ball down the middle of the table toward one corner. There the cue ball glanced a solid ball, which moved so slowly that every pockmark on its surface stood out as it turned. At the pocket, the first solid ball met a second solid ball in inaudible contact, transferring just enough energy for the second ball to wobble on the pocket rim until gravity reached up and gently drew it down.

“Nice shot,” his opponent said, frowning.

No kidding
, Beto thought. That shot was twice as hard as anything his opponent had even tried and was easily Beto’s best of the day. He looked at Lenny and smiled. The bookie was watching him intently, his dark eyes expressionless.

Beto hit the next shot too hard. Another solid ball fell into a pocket, but the cue ball kept rolling, coming to a halt in the middle of a confused pack of stripes and solids.

Beto made slow circuits around the table, looking for a good line. He looked for a long time. A minute? Longer? He started to sweat when he became aware of how long he was taking.

A low, hoarse whis
tle sounded from nearby. Lenny’s goon with the baby face had gotten bored and was blowing into his empty beer bottle. He set it down with embarrassment when everyone looked up at him.

Beto’s next shot made his opponent smile. It didn’t drop any solid balls into the pockets. Not even close. It just made the jumble of balls slightly less jumbled. The opponent quickly leaned over and sighted his cue behind what looked like a promising angled shot at a striped ball.

Beto winked at Lenny. The shot wasn’t as easy as it looked, and the opponent misjudged the angle. The striped ball rolled toward a corner pocket but went awry and grazed the eight ball, which then rolled slowly, but certainly, into the hole. Beto’s defeated opponent exhaled loudly in disgust. Beto extended his hand to the man.

“An ugly win, but I’ll take it,” Beto said in a respectful tone.

From off to the side, Lenny said quietly, “I sure will.”

Beto looked over to see the bookie holding the thousand-dollar wager and silently counting the bills. The country boys had stationed themselves at either end of the table. Play was over; time for business.

“I’ll buy you and your friends some more beer,” Beto said cheerily to Lenny. Lenny continued counting without acknowledging Beto.

Beto walked purposefully to the bar, where he glanced over his shoulder and saw that
Lenny and his goons were all focused on the cash in Lenny’s hands. Beto took the opportunity to slip into the one-toilet bathroom down the hall.

Beto congratulated himself on his clever plan: when
Lenny noticed Beto was missing, he and his goons would naturally assume that Beto had fled down the hall and out to the back alley—away to safety—rather than into the bathroom. Once the three of them passed the bathroom, Beto would sneak out and leave by the front door. Beto crouched so that he could watch through the crack at the bottom of the door for the men’s feet running past.

Instead, he promptly saw three pairs of feet stop in front of the door. Then the door was pushed open with a force that would have been inexcusably rude under normal circumstances. The door knocked Beto onto his rear end.

“Hey, I’m trying to take a piss in here,” Beto said.

“You always leave your pants on to take a piss?”
Lenny said. He nodded to his two friends
—
Mustache and Babyface, as Beto thought of them—who picked Beto up by the arms and dropped him on the toilet. Lenny squatted on his heels to bring himself to eye level with Beto. Lenny’s eyes seemed like they had X-ray power. Beto was almost afraid to lie. He remembered a story he once heard that Lenny had beaten a debtor unconscious with his own girlfriend’s handbag.

“You’ve got a thousand bucks right there,” Beto said, pointing to
Lenny’s pocket.

“You owe me more. I want all of it.”

“I don’t have it.”

Lenny
locked eyes with Beto and slowly shook his head.

“Right now,” Beto said. “I don’t have it right now
—but I can get it.”

“Tonight.”

“I need a few days.”

“You said that last time. Tonight.”

“Lenny, come on, man, you saw me out there. A thousand bucks for fifteen minutes of work.”

“You were lucky.”

“I was good. I set him up for that last shot. I studied that fool all day. I knew he would go for the easy shot. I’m good, Lenny.”

“Yes, you are,”
Lenny said. “But tonight means tonight.”

Lenny
cast a glance up at his friends. The two men approached Beto from either side. Beto could only imagine what was coming, and everything he imagined was dreadful. He whimpered as the two larger men pressed him down by the shoulders on the toilet seat. One of them wrapped a meaty paw around his wrist and pulled it forward. Beto wailed in protest while Lenny rested stoically on his haunches.

A closed-fisted pounding rocked the hollow door to the men’s room.
Salvation
, Beto thought. The owner ran a family place; he would kick these thugs out.

Babyface stepped forward and jerked the door open half a foot. Beto looked with hope toward the narrow space. He couldn’t see who was outside, but whoever it was looked just as big as Babyface. The two muttered quietly for a few seconds, then Babyface eased the door closed again and locked it. He nodded to
Lenny, who had observed the conversation over his shoulder without standing up.

Babyface returned to his position at Beto’s side and pulled his arm forward again. This time Beto resisted, but it was still no use. God hadn’t built him for this sort of confrontation.

Lenny rose, pushing down on his knees to lever himself up. Without breaking his gaze, he pulled something from his back pocket.

Beto only recognized it when
Lenny held it right in front of his nose—a nutcracker, two ornate metal rods hinged together, the kind people use at Christmas to open walnuts.

“Part of me actually enjoys listening to your bullshit, Beto.”
Lenny tapped the folded instrument lightly on one knuckle of each finger of Beto’s outstretched hand. “But the time for words is over.”

Beto realized with alarm what was coming. “
Lenny, I shoot pool with this hand,” Beto said between gasps for air. “How do you expect me to pay you back with broken fingers?”

“Good point,”
Lenny said to his henchmen. “Other hand.”

Beto curled his body up in fright. The two men slammed him down hard onto the
toilet seat, bruising his tailbone.

“Pinky,”
Lenny said. Beto tried to close his fingers into a fist, but Mr. Mustache unrolled the little finger and presented it to Lenny like he was offering his boss a cigar. The nutcracker wrapped around the finger in an instant, and just as quickly Beto heard the bone snap. He howled like a cat in heat. The goons held him down as he writhed on the toilet seat. Lenny leaned in toward Beto’s ear so that he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. “Next is your thumb.”

“OK,” Beto said. “OK, OK, OK
 . . .” Finally he looked up. “You win.”

“I’m listening,”
Lenny said.

“I know where you can get a lot of money.”

Lenny shook his head. “I’m not interested in a treasure hunt.”

“I know a secret worth ten times what I owe you. Twenty times.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Beto. I’ll break every goddamn finger you’ve got.”

“It’s a little blackmail scheme. No
—a big blackmail scheme. I’ll tell you the secret, and you can keep all the money for yourself.”

Lenny
looked at Mustache and Babyface, neither of whom offered an opinion. “Speak.”

“It’s this company I work for, Liberty Industries. The boss did something awful, and I have proof.”

* * *

Some people golfed on Sundays, others went to church. Luke Hubbard used Sunday mornings to catch up on work. The office was quiet, the phone didn’t ring, and he had time to think.

But first came Friday’s mail. Luke’s secretary knew to open the envelopes for him, and so a closed envelope in the stack of letters caught his eye. The envelope had been addressed to Luke by name, with the instructions “To be opened by Mr. Hubbard only.” That wasn’t so unusual, but in combination with no return address, it was a classic candidate for the circular file. The handwritten address on the envelope looked as if it had been drawn by an illiterate child using a tracing book.

How did this one make it past the asylum censors?
Luke wondered.

The contents were even more strange than he imagined.

It was a single page, heavier than it should have been. Pasted onto it were letters cut from headlines in newspapers and magazines. It looked like a ransom note from a bad movie. Luke couldn’t help chuckling.

But the letter brought bad news and promised much worse. Unless, of course, a hefty fee were paid, instructions to follow. Luke wondered whether they really had proof. He couldn’t imagine what it might be. Calling the police wouldn’t do in a case like this. They were too slow and they would bog the process down with inconvenient questions.

Like whether it’s true
, Luke thought.

Luke needed to make these blackmailers go away, but the only person he trusted to do the job was still in New York trying to make Ray McLean, the hedge fund investor, go away.

Luke dashed off an email to Crash Bailey to tell him to finish with Ray McLean and return to L.A. to attend to an urgent new matter. Then Luke reviewed the rest of his mail. When he was done with that, he checked his email again. Crash hadn’t yet replied. That annoyed Luke. He typed another email: “Waiting . . .”