Private Vegas (9 page)

Dr. Sci was talking to me on the interoffice network, the picture on my screen so high-def, I could see the individual stitches on the seams of his bowling shirt. He was telling me that there was a new chemical explosive at loose in the world.

“I’m calling it barium trichlormanganate for now,” he said. “I can’t find any reference to its properties.”

“What’s special about it?” I asked.

“It requires extreme heat and contact with gasoline to make it ignite,” he told me. “Works fine on a burning car.”

“Yes, it does.”

Sci explained how the explosive had been packaged and ignited, went on to say that this new compound was novel but not versatile. He said that there were numerous easily obtained explosives that would work as well or better, including a Molotov cocktail tossed through the car window.

“So this doesn’t make a lot of sense,” I said.

“In my humble opinion, this is the kind of thing that a teenager or a gang of teenagers would do, not terrorists or, say, organized-crime types.”

“Cops told me that mine is the sixth car in two months to go boom in the night,” I said.

“That fits with my theory,” Sci said.

I said good-bye to Sci just as I heard a commotion outside my office. My assistant, Valerie Kenney, came through my door in a huff.

Val is five eleven, a striking twenty-five-year-old African American woman who went to BU on scholarship, then got her master’s in criminology, also on scholarship, at the University of Miami. Same time she was going for her master’s, she was working nights as a clerk in the back rooms of the Miami PD and helping her mother with an out-of-control younger brother.

Last year, she learned that I was looking for an assistant and she applied for the job; she accepted the offer with the understanding that she’d get a promotion to investigator in the future if and when I thought she was ready.

In the short time Val had been working for me, I found her to be smart, disciplined, willing to do any kind of work needed and without being asked. She was also very funny. Val didn’t rile easily. But she was riled now.

“It’s your
brother
,” she said. “He showed up downstairs and says he’s coming up here right now. He has no appointment that I know of and no apologies either. You want to see him, Jack? Or you want me to call security?”

My identical twin, Tommy, was named for my miserable father, Tom Morgan. Tommy is older than me by three minutes, arrogant, a bully, and very likely a killer. I’ve never been able to prove that last, but I have good reason to believe it.

“Call security,” I said. “No, I’ll do it.” I went for my phone but never reached it.

Tommy brushed past Val, managing to touch her inappropriately on his way through the door.

“Oh nooo,” he said with a bright, mocking tone. “Bad Tommy’s here.”

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“How’d you like twenty million bucks?” he said. “Got time for me now?”

“DON’T GET COMFORTABLE,” I said to my twin.

Tommy went over to the seating area of my office, threw himself onto the blue couch, put his feet on the coffee table.

He sighed contentedly as he took in the wide view through my windows. Then: “How long does it take you to make twenty million, bro? A few years, at least, right?”

I picked up the phone, called security.

“Charles, I need assistance in my office,” I said. “Right now.” I hung up, said to my brother, “You have ten seconds.”

“What happened to your eyebrows?”

“Maybe you’ll tell me.”

“Me?”

My subconscious had spoken. Yes, Tommy could have done it. Could have blown up cars, set it up the way Detective Ziegler had said. Five cars in my neighborhood, then mine. Made it look like a serial arsonist, but maybe my car was the target all along.

“Oh, are my ten seconds almost over?” he said. “Let me make this fast. I want to buy you out of Private, Jack. Twenty million, cash, before this case against Del Rio drives all your clients away. I’ll combine Private Investigations and Private Security and give you a piece of the whole company.

“I think this could be called equity preservation,” he added.

“Let me think about it. No.”

“It’s win-win for you, Jack. So, okay. How much do you want?”

The security team showed up. I told them that Mr. Morgan needed an escort out. Charles looked at Tom, looked at me, looked back at Tom, both of us with the same sandy-brown hair, the same features—except for my lack of eyebrows.

Tommy laughed, said, “Throw the bum out.”

I said, “It’s your choice, Tom. You can leave by the door or go out through the window.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, grinning, putting up his hands, getting to his feet. “You’re making a mistake.”

In a minute, he was gone, with four security guys behind him to make sure that he didn’t loiter in the hallways.

Tommy had stirred me up. As he always does. And as he has done since we were about seven. My brother hates me enough to set me up to take a murder rap.

He’s done that, and he’s done worse.

I just can’t prove it.

I called Val back into my office.

“Val, I apologize for my brother.”

“I’m okay,” she said. “Thanks, though.”

Val said she’d put together a list of all the high schools within five miles of my house with names and contact numbers, the theory being the list might help Cruz and Scotty find car-bombing teens, if they existed.

Then she said, “It’s none of my business, but…”

“Go ahead.”

“You think Rick is going to be convicted?”

“Could happen.”

If Rick went away for aggravated assault, the raccoons would have a good time picking Private apart. That would be bad for business. Just as Tommy had said.

My brother was sick, but he wasn’t stupid.

THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE at the core of our building is beautiful, like a cross section of a nautilus shell. It rises from the center of our reception area and expands outward as it winds to the top floor. The staircase ends just outside my office, where it is capped by a skylight that brightens the stairs all the way down.

Tommy was being escorted out by way of the elevator, so I left my office, paused at the railing, and looked down through the staircase to the ground floor. Once security had hustled Tommy to the street, I walked down one flight, to the fourth floor, where Justine’s office is right under mine.

I knocked, stepped through the open doorway. Justine’s office is a lot like her: tailored, witty, easy on the eyes. She was putting on her jacket, getting ready to leave for the day.

I said, “I think that Tommy set fire to my car.”

“Ummm. He’s capable of it, but what about all those other cars that were torched in your neighborhood?”

“That was Tommy. He was practicing,” I said.

Justine laughed, straightened her collar, packed up her laptop. She turned off her art-glass desk lamp depicting two fish doing the samba.

She said, “So why did he do it?”

I said, “He needs a special reason?”

My brother’s company, Private Security, provided bodyguards for Hollywood’s entertainment elite. He had a client list that looked like it had been ripped from the pages of
Variety
, and that list was like gold.

Private Security got lucrative, repeat business, and Tommy knew the rich and famous intimately: where they lived, where they were going, where they got their drugs—their weaknesses and vulnerabilities—and where they went when they didn’t want to be seen.

These A-list connections overflowed with perks for Tommy, including insider deals and young women who Velcroed themselves to him when he was attending to his clients in person.

But although he loved himself and the business he was in, what really turned Tommy on was springing traps and perpetrating dirty-dog schemes on his enemies—of which I was enemy number one.

Last year he framed me for murder. He tried to destroy me—and almost did.

Justine said, “I’m not saying you’re paranoid, Jack, but I don’t think Tommy, as low as he is, would stoop to torching your car. It’s too juvenile for him. Too small.”

“Maybe I
am
paranoid. But maybe firebombing my car is Tommy’s idea of lighting a fuse. Could be he’s just getting started.”

“Okay.” She shook her head, laughed, said, “I don’t see it. I’m going to work on Sci’s angle. But if you think it’s Tommy, get a lease car, Jack.”

I said, “Good idea. Want to have dinner?”

“Since I’m the one with the wheels, I guess I get to choose the venue,” she said, shooting me a grin, snapping her briefcase closed.

I talked Justine out of the keys and drove her Jag to one of our favorite places, the Water Grill.

I thought about what she’d said about Tommy.

It was true that Tommy was complex and devious and that a car fire, even a quarter-of-a-million-dollar-car fire, was small spuds. But he’d made his twenty-million-dollar offer just hours after this morning’s explosion.

Maybe I was wrong to connect the two events.

But Tommy and I both love sports cars. The big-bang wake-up call had Tommy’s warped sense of humor all over it.

THE WATER GRILL is appointed in brass and leather, has marble columns and vaulted aquamarine ceilings that give the restaurant an airy feel. I ordered an amaretto sour for Justine and Ellie’s Brown Ale for myself, and by the time the drinks arrived, the aromas from the kitchen had driven me half crazy with hunger.

Our waiter announced the specials and we ran the table, ordering Nantucket bay scallops, line-caught swordfish, and the risotto du jour.

Justine was telling me about one of our clients, a woman who’d been caught stealing from her mother, and she was giving the story a hilarious spin.

“Rita’s mom is ninety-four,” Justine was saying. “Jack, Rita wrote herself a check for two hundred dollars, and her mom hired Krauss and Maber to sue her for damages. I think Sandy Krauss bills his time at twelve hundred dollars an
hour
—”

Justine’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it, said, “Sorry, I need a second, Jack.”

Justine typed a text, received one, typed a reply, and by then, my thoughts had gone to Bobby Petino.

Bobby looked like a tough guy from Central Casting; he was handsome, smooth, and had been LA’s district attorney for about a decade. A while ago, Petino hired Private to work a particularly gruesome series of killings. A dozen high-school girls had been murdered by assorted methods, baffling the cops, leaving them frustrated and clueless for two years.

Justine had asked to be Private’s lead investigator on the case. I called her Princess Do-Good and said, “Don’t get emotionally involved.” She said, “Shut up, Jack,” then did nothing but work the case until she nailed it shut. It was heroic. It was historic.

Justine and I were going through one of our off-seasons at the time, and she was dating Bobby Petino. Bobby used the closed-schoolgirl case as a political springboard to run for governor and tried to mend his broken marriage at the same time.