Vigilante (20 page)

“I’m tempted,” I said. “But my gut tells me it’s a trap.”

“Unless he pushes you overboard, which I doubt, you’ll get back safely, and then you and I will debrief. We can use whatever intel you get to find a way to net this tuna. While you’re on that cruise, you can also try and pump those other sellouts—Marcia Breen, Frank Palgrave, and J. J. Blunt. See what they have to contribute.”

“Okay,” I finally said. “I guess I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER

33

Alexa left before I did the next morning. I hadn’t slept well. When I awoke at eight, my head felt so fuzzy I was mainlining coffee trying to develop some focus and a heartbeat.

By nine o’clock I was struggling with what the hell you’re supposed to wear on an ocean cruise. Should I take my fancy nickel-plated 9mm Kimber automatic with the white bone handle or go unpacked? What should my nautical look be, or should I even try for one? I finally opted for a beige Brioni sport shirt, khaki slacks, and a pair of canvas deck shoes. For bling I added my small ten-ounce Airlight .38 in an ankle holster.

I got in the Acura and was backing out of the driveway when I noticed a gray Navigator with smoked windows parked at the curb at the end of the alley. I figured it was another
V-TV
mobile unit.

Then the door to the SUV opened and a gaunt six-foot-five giant with a silver-headed cane got out.

Lester Madrid.

He leaned against his front fender and crooked his index finger in my direction, beckoning me over like I was some crack whore on Main Street. I could see no way past him, so I opened the door and reluctantly walked over.

Lester had aged some in the last five years. He still looked nasty enough to eat your children and still didn’t carry an ounce of fat, but now his hair had begun to thin and go gray.

As I got closer, I said, “I don’t want to get into a dustup with you, Lester.”

“I came to deliver a message,” he growled in the ruptured, gravelly whisper that served as his normal speaking voice. “Stop trying to put your fucking Mendez homicide on my wife. If you don’t pay attention to this warning, you’ll be dealing with some critical issues.”

I was assuming he didn’t know yet that his name had become a part of the investigation in the Hannah Trumbull case. But with
V-TV
covering it, that probably wasn’t going to last long. I was trying to decide whether to lay it on him now to gain some tactical advantage or let it just come out naturally.

As I was pondering this, he said, “When did you turn into such a pussy? The Shane Scully I remember didn’t try and fuck up brother cops. He used to go to the asshole.”

“Go to the asshole” was an old department reference to cops who were so committed to catching criminals they would risk their own lives in the breakneck pursuit of any bad guy. Lester Madrid always went to the asshole. Trouble was, he killed most of them when he got there.

“Lester, this is a mistake,” I told him. “You don’t want to threaten me.”

“I’m not above a mistake,” he rasped. “How you recover is all that matters.”

“I’m sure Captain Madrid told you about the cell-phone video with her and Lita fighting.”

“Lita Mendez was a bleeding hemorrhoid. Somebody finally put that bitch at room temperature, which is exactly what needed to happen. We oughta throw the doer a parade. But either way, my wife isn’t the one who dropped her. You and your bullshit movie-producer partner are gonna get played by Nash like the douche bags you are. I’m here to tell you that will be the mistake you can’t recover from. My wife didn’t kill that
chola.
”

“Racial slurs?”

“I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t have the faggot PC police telling me what I can and can’t say. I call people exactly what they are now.”

I tried to evaluate this. Lester Madrid was six feet, five inches of gristle and bone, leaning on a cane, glaring, eyes cold and sharp as a box of tacks. He was no less dangerous today than he was ten years ago. This was a cop who had chilled almost a dozen bad guys and then gone home and slept without conscience. Had killing people just become too damn easy? Was that now Lester’s preferred way of solving his problems?

It was certainly conceivable that he or his wife could have been involved in Hannah’s death. I could easily see a chain of events where Stephanie confronted Nurse Trumbull in that hospital ER, threatening her over the affair with her husband, and then, when they didn’t break it off, killing her.

It was also possible that an argument had developed between Nurse Trumbull and Lester over his refusal to leave his wife. He could have been the one who killed Hannah. Both scenarios tracked. I decided this was probably the right moment to confront him after all. I took my shot.

“You used to date an open homicide named Hannah Trumbull back in 2006,” I said. “You and Stephanie were married when Hannah was murdered. That puts you on a very short list of suspects, along with your wife. Nash knows about it. He’s going to be using this stuff on his show. My suggestion is you should tell me what went down with Hannah. You’ll get a better hearing with me than with him.”

Lester didn’t even flinch.

“Just remember who you’re fucking with,” he said in that menacing whispery growl. Then he turned, got back inside the Navigator, started the engine, and sped away.

The morning was getting off to a bad start.

CHAPTER

34

The HMS
Bounty
was moored beside the big dock in front of Fisherman’s Village in Marina del Rey. Its 215-foot masts towered above the marina. I’d read up on it before driving over. It was an exact copy of the original HMS
Bounty,
launched in London in 1787. Since then several replicas had been commissioned. This particular ship was built in Nova Scotia in 1960 for the Marlon Brando MGM movie
Mutiny on the Bounty.

Green and brown paint glistened brightly on her hull and reflected the morning sunshine bouncing off the water, lapping against her wide beam. The massive vessel was pulling against half a dozen two-inch-thick mooring lines in the brisk breeze, causing the ropes to creak loudly.

I stopped my Acura in front of a red velvet rope cordoning off the gangplank and gave my car to the valet.

Nix Nash was greeting guests, standing in front of a banner that said:

WELCOME TO V-TV SEASON THREE

He was decked out in British yacht attire—white pants and a blue blazer that had an ornate pocket crest of some kind. Under the jacket he wore a crisp white shirt with a three-inch-tall Tony Curtis collar. As I walked up, a warm smile broke wide on Nash’s cherubic face.

“Didn’t figure you’d come,” he said, happily clasping my hand in both of his.

“How could I pass up a swell invite like this?” I replied, matching his phony delight.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw my Acura being pulled off by a valet in a red coat, and I wondered how many bugs would be installed while I was out at sea. I would have to make an appointment at the Scientific Investigations Division to have the car electronically swept when I got back.

“We’re casting off in about ten minutes,” Nash was saying. “Go aboard and get yourself a drink.”

“This is some boat,” I said, admiring the vessel.

“Not a boat, it’s a ship. Actually, as you’ll come to see, the HMS
Bounty
is sort of a metaphor for my life’s work.” A statement that made no sense to me at all. “I went to a good deal of trouble to get it up here for this party. It usually berths in San Diego. See you aboard.”

He turned to greet other arriving guests as I climbed the gangplank and stepped onto the crowned wooden deck. There was a man standing amidships wearing a period British naval officer’s uniform and giving out information about the
Bounty
to a crowd of partiers.

I hovered in the back of the group and listened for a minute as he said, “She’s a hundred-twenty-feet long at the waterline and one-eighty at the rail, so you can see there’s a nice overhang, both fore and aft. This vessel has four hundred thousand board feet of lumber and ten miles of rigging on two masts. She weighs slightly more than five hundred displaced tons. There are four carriage cannons, two on each side. Each cannon has been decommissioned, but they once fired four-pound lead balls.”

He went on, but I wasn’t here for a lesson on old sailing ships of the Crown and stepped away to wander the deck and check out my fellow guests. It was a well-dressed, affluent crowd with a definite Hollywood tilt. I recognized the usual smattering of B-list celebrities and reality-show stars. Most of the women were young and dressed to distress. A four-piece string quartet was playing period chamber music on the fantail. Two bars set up on the main deck were doing a brisk business. A sign on a nearby easel announced their specialty was the
Bounty
mai tai, made with actual grog. Most everybody was trying one. So far, I estimated at least a hundred people were onboard.

I stepped up to the bar and ordered a bottled water. I intended to keep my wits about me for this cruise.

“You’d be in the category of last person on earth I’d expect to see here,” a man’s voice said.

I turned to see Frank Palgrave standing behind me, holding a mai tai, wearing white slacks and an aqua-colored Palm Springs–type shirt. A red sweater was tied jauntily around his neck. Back when I knew him, this kind of screwy Troy Donahue look would have never been a choice. In the intervening years Palgrave obviously had experienced a big emotional refit of some kind. In this glitzy setting, in my beige-on-beige getup I was beginning to feel like a smudge of dirt on polished glass.

“Nash invited me. Some bash. He sure knows a lot of rich, flashy people,” I said, indicating the crowd.

“He practiced here for six years. Hard not to get connected when you have a big, exciting personality like his.”

“And these swells don’t mind that he went to prison for embezzlement,” I said.

“Only makes his star shine brighter,” Palgrave said, smiling. “Fantasies of shower rape—it’s a secret Hollywood turn-on.”

We stood for a moment, neither quite sure how to continue.

“So Frank, what’s really going on here?” I finally said, trying to get something going.

“In what context?”

“Pick the context. You were a good cop once. Let’s start with what you’re doing working for this police saboteur?”

He hesitated, looked around, then pulled me away from the group at the bar and led me over to a vacant spot by the rail. He turned his back to the water so he could keep an eye on the crowd over my shoulder as he spoke.

“I work for him ’cause I got this troublesome little problem I haven’t been able to solve,” he began.

“What’s that?”

“I gotta eat to say alive.”

“You have a pension.”

“My ex-wife has my pension. After the divorce, all I ended up with is a shack so far out in the West Valley even meth cookers won’t go there.”

“So you sold out to this cop hater?”

He took a moment and then leaned in closer. “Listen, once you get past all the obvious bullshit, Nix isn’t such a bad guy.”

I started to speak, but Palgrave held up his hand.

“I know; I know. It looks bad on TV, but honestly, Shane, that Atlanta case was being screwed up. Nix actually performed a service there. Those APD cops were working it like a couple of Alzheimer’s patients. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they missed. That schizoid bum Nix found was crazy as a shit-house rat. He had a yellow sheet full of violent priors and he’d been wandering around in Piedmont Park for six months threatening people. Twice he attacked Atlanta PD patrol officers when they were called to get him to stop sleeping in the public toilet. Cole and Baron walked right past him and he was standing in plain view the whole time.”

“I talked to Cole. He says he’s not sure Fuzzy was the doer.”

“Right. Fuzzy. Those two imbeciles couldn’t even put a real name on him. Nash had to do that too. Before we aired, we did a deep background, found out the guy was named Joffa Hill.” Palgrave smiled. “Just another example of the slipshod fast-food way those two were working the case. God knows how many girls’ lives were saved because of Nix, and all Cole and Baron could do was bitch about it.”

“So, Nix Nash is straight and you’re happy to be working for him.”

“I’d rather be playing golf, but since I shank every other shot, my game won’t support me. As far as private gigs go, this one ain’t half-bad. Give him a chance. You might be surprised.”

Half an hour later, the mooring lines were thrown from the dock up to the deck crew, all of whom wore British navy uniforms, circa 1800. Then with two 375-horsepower John Deere diesel engines chugging stoutly beneath us, the magnificent vessel motored out of Marina del Rey at a stately four knots. We turned south, passing the Coast Guard station, then the UCLA Marine Aquatic Center, before finally clearing the breakwater and heading into open water.

I watched as the crew scaled rope ladders and unfurled the topsails on both masts. With 20 percent of the canvas up, you could feel the wind begin to take the boat, heeling it over slightly as we continued out.

I was here to collect intel, so I went looking for former FBI agent J. J. Blunt, Judge Web Russell, or Marcia Breen.

I found Marcia in the middle of a group of people. She spotted me and winked. A few minutes later she found a way to break free and joined me by the rail.

“You look really great,” she said. “It’s nice to see a little beige cotton mixed in with all these sequins.”

“My sparkle comes from inside.” I smiled and said, “You look pretty great yourself.”

She nodded demurely to accept my compliment. “So how’s the marriage going?” Holding my gaze longer than was necessary. “That working out like you wanted?”