Private Vegas (8 page)

BY 11:20 A.M., two of Private’s top investigators, Emilio Cruz and Christian Scott, had rung fifteen doorbells on both sides of PCH, had talked to as many housekeepers and homeowners, had collected surveillance footage from security cameras, and were now reviewing the footage on their fleet-car computer.

Scotty was blond, lithe, had been a ballet dancer until he ruined his knees. He became a motorcycle cop with CHiPs and was eventually promoted to deputy sheriff. He was bright and motivated, and a very agile athlete.

Jack had brought him in as an investigator last year and was still floating him, pairing him with other investigators until he found him a partner.

Cruz was senior to Scotty.

First thing most people noticed about Cruz was his good looks: the black hair he wore pulled back in a ponytail, and his muscular build. Cruz was a former light-middleweight professional boxer, born and raised in the ’hood, and had highly developed street smarts. At age twenty-eight, after he retired from the ring with his brains intact, Cruz went to work as an investigator for LA’s district attorney, Bobby Petino.

Petino and Cruz were second cousins, and Petino had told Jack about this smart young investigator, saying that he thought Cruz had a dynamite future. Jack thought so too. He hired Cruz and teamed him up with Del Rio.

The partnership had stuck.

Cruz had wanted to be in court for his partner this morning, but he had to get a handle on who had firebombed Jack’s car.

Scotty downloaded the video to their hard drive, opened the file, said, “This is from the house across PCH. Camera one. Faces the road.”

“Roll it,” Cruz said to Scotty.

Scotty pressed Play. The camera was pointed across the highway, right at Jack’s house, and the angle took in the wall and the Lamborghini that Jack had parked outside his gate.

As they watched, cars flashed past on the road. Then, on the screen, a sedan with its high beams on came toward Jack’s house. And stopped.

Scotty reversed the clip, then forwarded it in slow motion.

“Whoa,” said Cruz. “Freeze that.”

It was too dark to see anything about the color or make of the car beyond the fact that it was a dark sedan, probably a Chevy. The time stamp read 4:27 a.m.

“I can’t read the plates at all,” Cruz said. “Not a single number.”

“Going to forward it now,” Scotty said.

The car in the center of the frame didn’t move, but a few other cars passed in the background, both directions. When the road was clear, a figure got out of the backseat and ran toward Jack’s Lambo.

“Here we go,” said Cruz.

Scotty tried to refine the image, but no amount of fine-tuning brought up the shadowy figure’s face. Still, they could see what he was doing: making chiseling motions on the rear flank of the car.

“He’s doing something with the gas tank,” said Scotty.

“I see that. And now where is he?” Cruz said.

Scotty reversed the clip, played it forward, saw the guy linger near the tank, then duck behind the car and disappear; he was out of sight for four seconds.

“I think he’s putting a charge under the chassis. This was planned,” Scotty said. “Well planned.”

“So was this a plan to torch
a
car?” Cruz mused. “Or a plan to torch
Jack’
s car?”

“Look here, Emilio. There’s your fire,” Scotty said as flames flashed from beneath the car.

The dark figure fled from the Lambo and ran to the car waiting for him on the shoulder, which started up before he’d closed the rear door. A moment later, the sedan was gone, and the fire was lapping over the fenders of Jack’s quarter-million-dollar car.

“Shit,” said Cruz. “There’s Jack.”

The two men stared, mesmerized, as Jack came out of his house and watched his car burn. He just stood there until, moments later, the car went up and Jack was blown off his feet.

“Some kind of timing device. What do you think?” Scotty said, stabbing the Stop button.

Cruz said, “I think if there’s any evidence on the remains of that Lamborghini, it’s going to be a miracle.”

DR. SCI ARRIVED at Private’s underground lot at just after two in the afternoon. He nosed his 1967 Spider into his spot, then extracted his silver Halliburton case from the passenger seat and went to the back door to Private’s forensic lab that ran underneath half of the building.

Standing at the entrance, Sci reached up, touched the mezuzah in the doorframe, then pressed his hand to the biometric plate. The doors opened, admitting him to the airlock, and closed with a whisper behind him.

The metal and explosives detectors scanned him, and after Sci had spent twenty seconds under the UV light, the second set of doors opened and he stepped into the clean, cool, well-lit lab.

He paused inside the entrance, did a quick check of the various stations around the perimeter of the large room. Criminologists wearing lab coats worked in their bays, which were equipped with the best forensic tools in the world.

Sci waved to Mo-bot, who was crossing the room with a sound tech, then entered his glass-walled office at the hub. His computer recognized him and flashed on. He set his briefcase on a tabletop, removed the flask he was transporting, and read his e-mail.

About ten years earlier, when Dr. Sci, whose given name was Seymour Kloppenberg, was twenty, he had graduated from MIT with a PhD.

LA County, still recovering from the humiliation of the O.J. Simpson trial, had refurbished its forensic lab to the tune of a hundred million dollars, and Dr. Sci was hired right out of school.

Sci was rotated around the numerous forensic disciplines—DNA, trace analysis, toxicology, ballistics—so he could find his niche. But during this training program, Jack Morgan heard about Sci and offered him a job as chief forensic scientist and head of Private’s lab. He told Sci that he wanted the lab to become a profit center.

Sci had been dubious. No independent lab could match the county’s facilities.

Jack said, “It’s yours to outfit, Sci. I want only the best of everything. And I’ll make you an equity partner.”

Sci was sold on this rare and terrific opportunity. He equipped and staffed Private’s new lab one division at a time. He cut no corners. And soon, law enforcement departments from all over the country hired Private’s lab when they required impeccable work done fast.

Of course, Private’s clients came first.

Sci had just returned from the LA County lab with a sample from the gas tank of Jack’s impounded car. He also had a digital chip loaded with 3-D images from all angles of the remains of the Lambo, as well as a preliminary report from the head of the LA Regional Crime Lab, a man Sci had worked with for years.

Sci put the disk into his computer, then made a slide of the gunk from Jack’s car. He loaded the slide into the new Olympia 9000 gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer and watched it start its run.

As the machine worked, Sci called psychologist and senior investigator Dr. Justine Smith on the interoffice line.

Her image came up on the screen. She was wearing a tailored black-and-white-checked jacket, a silk blouse, and a strand of rough-cut rubies around her throat. Her hair was twisted up and held loosely in a few combs, making her look like a figure in a painting by Botticelli.

Dr. Sci had a crush on Justine, but it was safe to say that he was only one of many men who were crazy about her.

He said, “Justine, you were there. What happened this morning?”

“I wish I had some neat observation, but all I saw was the fire, Sci. That’s it.”

“Let’s go over it anyway.”

“Whatever I can do to help,” she said.

JUSTINE’S OFFICE WAS on the fourth floor, fifteen seconds by elevator above Sci’s lab. Sci could have gone upstairs or asked Justine to come down, but generally speaking, Sci found virtual contact as informative and satisfying as meeting IRL. And it was usually faster.

He said to Justine’s image, “What’s the first thing you remember?”

“Well, I was asleep, when suddenly Jack bolted up in bed. It was an abrupt movement. He gets nightmares, you know.”

“Yes. He’s told me.”

“Anyway, I thought he was dreaming, but then I saw light on the wall. And I smelled smoke. Something was burning.”

“Did you hear an explosion?”

“Not then. Jack told me to get dressed and he ran out to where he’d parked the car. I ran after him. It took me a moment to realize that the fireball was Jack’s car.

“And then, there was a blast,” Justine said, “and that knocked Jack off his feet. He’s not hurt, Sci, but I worry about what this means. If it was personal, was blowing up the car the whole point? Or was it a warning? You know, at any given moment, a lot of people are pissed off at him.”

The machine at Sci’s right blinked to show that the analysis was complete, but it also flashed the words
No match.

“This is odd,” Sci said, turning the screen so that Justine could see the display. “See, the gas tank was BLEVE’d. Blown out, so the explosive was in the tank. However, our spectrometer is calling the explosive ‘unknown.’”

“An unknown chemical? That has to be a first.”

“I’m going to have to research this compound, but I can tell you what it was packaged in. Latex.”

“Like a glove?”

“Or like a condom. Yep. The machine is telling me we’ve got some spermicidal lubricant here.”

“Let me get this right. Someone put explosives in a condom? Then put the condom in the gas tank?”

“Correct. A charge was set under the car to start the fire, and when the fire got hot enough, it melted the latex. That put this chemical in contact with the gas, and boom. That’s my theory, anyway. That’s why there was delay on the explosion. The latex was a delay device.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“This is the kind of thing a teenager would think up. A teenager with access to a car and a total disregard for life.”

MY OFFICE OVERLOOKS downtown LA, and the late-afternoon sun was high and hot, glancing off the glassy skyscrapers across the street, blazing over the fast-moving traffic below.