Vigilante (12 page)

I decided to get out of the Acura and stood in the fully lit parking lot, watching the preshow activity. A camera truck was being off-loaded a few feet away and lighting equipment was being pulled off the lift tailgate.

I sensed someone approaching on my right and turned to find Marcia Breen walking slowly toward me. She still had that sexy model’s walk I remembered, placing one foot directly in front of the other, causing a decent amount of hip sway. She was dressed in a tailored blue suit with a skirt cut just above the knee, like the ones she used to wear during trials to distract all the drooling railbirds at the courthouse. Tonight, she also wore a sad, almost apologetic expression.

She put out a hand and said, “Hi. I was hoping to have a chance to try and explain myself to you before this got so far along.”

“Some setup,” I replied, shaking hands but not following her lead because I was still a little uncomfortable with our reunion and didn’t need to hear an excuse for her betrayal.

“I’m sorry this case happened to land on you,” she said.

“I’m a big boy.”

I was wondering how much I could say to her. We’d been friends once. Lovers. Of course, now that she was on Nash’s staff, I knew she had to be viewed as an enemy.

“Please don’t hate me for what’s coming,” she said unexpectedly.

I didn’t like the sound of that.

Then Laura Burke was back, full of kinetic energy. “Come on. Nix is in Makeup, but he wanted to see you before the taping.” She shot a look at Marcia. “They want you in show prep.”

“See you later, Shane,” Marcia said, then turned and walked off.

Laura led me past the control truck and into the main warehouse. As I entered Stage One, I saw a large, ornate courtroom set off to my right. It included a raised judge’s bench, jury panel, and large public seating area. We passed that and walked through another set that looked like a detective squad room, with big glass windows and a backdrop depicting the L.A. skyline. The room was full of computers and cubicles and looked a lot like our new space downtown.

I saw a retired homicide detective I knew named Frank Palgrave. He’d worked Metro but had pulled the pin two years earlier. It shocked me to see him there, sitting on the edge of a desk reading a newspaper.

“Hey, Shane,” he said, putting the paper aside.

“What’s going on here, Frank?”

“Life after death on the LAPD.”

Then I saw a retired FBI profiler from the 11000 Wilshire building in L.A. Like a lot of Feds, he was nondescript. A blond vanilla sundae with a comb-over and blue eyes. I couldn’t remember his name, but he stepped up and supplied it.

“Jimmy James Blunt. We did that Union Bank thing in Diamond Bar together.”

“Right, I remember. J.J., right?”

He nodded.

“Come on, Shane; you can meet the rest of the cast later,” Laura interrupted. “Nix has a preshow meeting in ten minutes. It’s now or never.”

I followed Laura out of the police squad room set, through a mock judge’s chambers, and into the large makeup room, which was located on the far side of the warehouse.

Nix Nash was sitting in a swivel chair in front of a built-in vinyl table that ran the length of the chair-lined room under an expanse of lit mirrors. He was wearing a blue velour running suit and, as we entered, he was chewing out his bone-thin, heavily tattooed makeup man.

“Come on, Greg,” Nix said sharply. “How many times do I have to go through this? You don’t line it; you dot it. Otherwise the top edge fades into my skin tone. You gotta use the number nine brown pencil, not the seven. Fill in the upper lip, starting right here.”

He was talking about his bullshit moustache. The makeup man leaned in with a fresh number 9 pencil and started making little brown dots along the top ridge of Nix’s moustache, filling it in, creating a fuller look. Then he saw Laura and me in the mirror behind him and swung his swivel chair around, brushing the makeup guy’s hand rudely away as he turned to face us.

“Hey, you made it. Gee, that’s terrific,” he said happily. “Just be a minute, Shane. Makeup’s already on. Just gotta let Greg finish the pencil work; then we can chat.”

I watched while the moustache achieved its lush TV makeover. Then Nix checked it carefully, holding up a hand mirror.

“Much better, Greg. You see what a difference it makes when you do it the right way?”

“Unbelievable,” Greg replied, and then went wildly over the top as he added, “Twenty years in makeup and that’s a new one on me. Great tip, Nix. It definitely goes in the book, man.”

Nix got out of his chair and looked at me. “I have a dressing room right onstage here. Come on.”

We exited the makeup area, leaving Laura in our wake, and walked about fifty feet to a walnut door that said: STAR on a brass plaque. Nothing too subtle about that.

Nix opened up and led me into a plush living room with wall-to-wall carpet, antique furniture, and a full mirrored bar. He went to the fridge, opened it, and poured himself a soft drink.

“I never booze before a show, but let me fix you something. Beer, wine, shooter? What’ll it be?”

“I’m fine,” I said, and waited to hear what he really wanted.

Nix took a moment to examine two beautiful tailored suits that were on a hanging rack near the bar. One was brown, the other blue. He pulled both off, turned, and extended them toward me, one in each hand.

“Can’t make up my mind. Blue is good for our set, but the brown goes better with my coloring. Which do you like?”

“I’m not a wardrobe consultant. How ’bout we get to what it was you had in mind.”

“To the point then.” He smiled as he hung the suits back on the rack. “What I’m about to say is just between us. No witnesses, so don’t make the mistake of thinking you can gain leverage by trying to use it against me.”

“Don’t worry, Nix. I know about uncorroborated statements.”

“Good.” He sat on the sofa, but I remained standing. “Lita’s murder is a bag of snakes,” he began. “But you already know that.”

“Is it?”

“You know it is. You went to see Captain Madrid today. She’s had it in for Lita for years. Her husband is a sociopathic killer. Les Madrid has ten notches on his gun.”

“Nine,” I corrected. “One of those guys didn’t make it all the way onto the ark and ended up camping out in an oxygen tent.”

“But you get the point. Besides him, I’ve got a list of half a dozen cops who had contentious arguments with Lita, some in public with witnesses present. You, my unfortunate friend, are holding an ever-expanding bag of runny doo. When it explodes you’re going to wish you’d worn your rain slicker.”

“Really?”

“Yep. But I can help you. We can find a way to make this, if not easy, at least livable.”

“How we gonna do that?”

“I’ve got more evidence coming on Lita’s murder. Stuff you don’t even know about yet. It’s substantial and it’s going to make you and your partner look very stupid because you should have turned it and it points right at the killer.”

“You mean at Carla Sanchez,” I said, holding his gaze.

“I don’t think Carla did it,” he said unexpectedly.

“Except that was your lead.”

“No, it was your lead. I just turned it. As cops, we know sometimes leads go nowhere.”

“So where’s this going, Nix?”

“I’ve got a proposition.” He stood and set his soft drink down, then faced me. He seemed slightly taller. Then I noticed he was wearing boots with three-inch stacked Cuban heels.

“You already know a lot of my people. Marcia, Detective Palgrave, J. J. Blunt, Judge Web Russell.”

“I’m surprised to hear Webster Russell is working for you. I thought he was retired and living in Tahoe.”

“He’s back. He’s a great jurist. The point is, all my people know their stuff. Agree?”

“They’re good.”

“And before they retired they were all destroyed by a corrupt legal system here in L.A. and put out to pasture. I don’t want to see you end up like that.”

“Me neither.”

“So let’s you and me keep it from happening. How’d you like to be on my team? Get off the firing line and step up for a little piece of what we’re doing here. Join Marcia, Frank, and the others?”

“I always try not to crap where I eat.”

“Gee … Good one.” He smiled, but I could tell I was frustrating him. “Here’s the choice as I see it, Shane. You can make a deal with me right now. Join my team, work this case with me, or you face the consequences like those poor cops in Atlanta. We’ll talk money later, but I promise you it’s gonna beat the heck out of your detective’s salary.”

“If I work for you, do I have to retire from the LAPD first?”

“For the time being, to be effective, our arrangement will have to be extremely confidential. You’d have to stay on the job. Later, after I leave L.A., you can pull the pin and if you’ve clicked with my audience, you might even be asked to join the permanent cast of
V-TV.
Become a famous talking head like Mark Fuhrman, maybe even write a few books.”

“What would my job entail?”

“You’d feed me case facts. There’s a five-thousand-dollar bonus for every fact you give me that I decide to run with on the air.”

“Sell out my case.”

“Let’s not call it that. I’d rather say you’re commercializing it.”

“And what if I say no?”

“You won’t say no.”

“But if I do?”

“If you do, I will hang this stinking fish around your neck and pound you through the concrete right in front of that fancy new Police Administration Building you guys just built downtown.”

“Think you’re up to that?”

“Yeah.” He smiled warmly at me. “Justice will be served whether you like it or not. We’re not doing the devil’s work here, Shane. Far from it. The perp who killed Lita was the one doing that. I’m gonna get him or her. The unsub will swing for this and if you join me we can do it together. Seems to me your choice is pretty simple. Be the agent of this killer’s destruction or become the agent of your own.”

“I don’t think you’ve got what it takes to make good on that threat,” I said.

“Let me give you a preview then. Why don’t you watch the taping of show one in the green room or, if you want a different experience, you can look at it in the control truck. Laura’s husband, Drew, is our director. Watch him work. Watch me spin it. Watch this thrashing machine come roaring down the road and see if you think you’re fast enough to get out of the way.”

CHAPTER

18

“Roll the main title! Cue the music! Camera Three, you’ll be first to the conference room after the break. Stand by; we’re coming out of main title tape in
five, four, three, two, one.
Slow fade on the music! Cue Camera One! Cue Nix!”

I was sitting in a three-tiered darkened control room inside the sixteen-wheel TV truck. The main title of
V-TV
had just unfurled on a center monitor marked: PREVIEW ONLINE.

Drew Burke, the director, was thin, cranial, and kinetic, just like his skinny red-haired wife. They obviously ingested way too much coffee and not enough food. I was alone in the top-tier row of the truck. About ten other people were in the darkened control room below me, all of them busily adjusting video and volume pots or running huge consoles. A bank of smaller monitors faced the director and showed what each of the five cameras was shooting. The temperature inside the truck was held at a chilly sixty-five degrees to keep the equipment cool.

Nix Nash was standing in the center of the
V-TV
main set, which resembled a glitzy cobalt blue newsroom with scrolling tickers. About ten background actors in shirtsleeves were seated at metal desks, busy miming work in front of computer monitors. Nix had chosen the blue suit, which looked very good on his high-tech blue set. He was pumped up on adrenaline, his face round, his moustache full, bouncing happily in his hand-tooled boots as he leaned toward the camera and began to speak.

“A dangerous idea is not responsible for the people who choose to believe in it. And ordinary men become extraordinary performing remarkable feats under impossible circumstances.” Now Nix started to stroll his elaborate set. Camera One tracked him.

“Dangerous ideas can provide big opportunities, but they often get thrust on us when we can least afford it, so the call goes unanswered. We’ve got a whole generation now that was born in an age of extravagant semi-equality. They don’t know what it was like before, so they think, ‘This isn’t so bad. We have our video games, our flat-screen TVs, our SUVs.’ This dumbed-down generation sits lulled by excess completely unaware that all this luxury they take for granted is on the verge of being snatched away by corrupt government officials.”

Drew instructed Camera One to tighten into a close-up.

“You probably think, ‘Come on, Nix. Not in America.’” He stood there, his face lightly flushed, burning with this terrible concern. “Have you guys heard about this thing called the goal gradient phenomenon?” He paused and let that mouthful sink in. “It states that the farther we get away from our goals in life, the less interested we become in attaining them. When you put this in a political or a law enforcement context, the goal gradient phenomenon can become really dangerous, because it suggests that at the midpoint in a politician’s or a police officer’s career, when he or she is stuck in middle management, inevitably they begin to experience boredom, malaise, and yes, even cynicism. These three emotions just happen to be the major precursors to corruption.”

“Camera Two, when Nix moves go with him,” Drew instructed the crew through his headset.

Nix started strolling his set again, with Camera Two tracking. They passed half a dozen extras working on computers.

“I love the concept of freedom, truth, and justice. Who doesn’t?” Nix enthused. “But there’s a catch. You see, in order to have a safe, free, and just society we have to first engage in a huge act of trust. We have to give some of our sacred, constitutionally guaranteed rights over to the people we have chosen to protect us.”

He now stopped next to a large whiteboard, still looking directly into Camera Two.