“That’s a lot of money,” Davie said, stating the obvious.
“Actually, it’s a modest amount compared to many of my clients, but a good nest egg nonetheless. The bank sends me Pomme’s monthly statements. Let me check the current balance.” A couple of keystrokes later he stared at the screen. “It appears there’ve been periodic withdrawals, one as recently as two weeks ago. Nonetheless, I’ll contact his wife with instructions about making her the sole owner.”
Davie was stunned. If Lacy Gillen was withdrawing cash from the account, it meant she likely knew about the money-laundering scheme.
“We just put Lacy Gillen on a plane back to Florida,” she told him.
Purcell looked up from the screen. “Lacy? I don’t recognize that name. His wife is a co-owner on the account, but her name is Karen. Karen Nord.”
50
It took Davie a moment to remember where she’d heard that name before. Karen Nord was a waitress at the Seaglass Cafe and the person seen making out with Nate Gillen in the backseat of his car. Karen Nord was most definitely not Nate Gillen’s wife, but she was co-owner of his secret bank account, possibly established for their life together after he divorced his real wife, Lacy.
After she and Striker walked out of Purcell’s office, they caught a cab to the ferry terminal. They couldn’t debrief in the taxi for fear the driver would overhear the conversation. When they arrived in St. Thomas, they hailed another taxi to Cyril E. King International Airport in the outskirts of Charlotte Amalie.
The airport was teeming with tanned tourists of all ages heading home with their tube-like “noodle” floating devices stuffed into beach bags already overflowing with rumpled towels and soggy swimsuits. She and Striker passed through security and found seats in the small lobby. As they waited to board the flight she noticed Striker staring through the grimy windowpanes onto the tarmac. He waited until two Gen-X parents wrangled three small children into nearby plastic chairs before glancing her way.
He kept his voice low, using the noise level in the room as cover. “I’m sorry about what happened last night. It was unprofessional of me to do anything that might jeopardize this investigation.”
For a moment Davie couldn’t breathe. The other shoe just dropped. The room felt stuffy. Her mind roiled with confusion. Davie focused on a small bird trapped inside the airport lobby, darting from window to window looking for an exit.
She swallowed hard to clear a path for words. “You said that before—several times. It didn’t seem to matter to you last night.”
“I got carried away. I should have known better.”
Her facial muscles felt slack. “Okay, I get it. It never happened.”
He caught her gaze and held it, evaluating the damage. “It happened, Davie, but if our relationship turns personal, Quintero has to know, the lieutenant, too. In that case, I’m guessing they won’t let us work this case together.”
She straightened her back to make it easier to breathe. He was right, of course. Department regulations were clear on coworker romances. They were taboo if you worked in the same unit, especially if one party outranked the other, and for obvious reasons—breakups, arguments, inappropriate touching while buying Cheez-its at the vending machine.
Their conversation was interrupted when the Gen-X’s toddler staggered over to Striker, holding out a plastic sand bucket for inspection. A moment later, the kid’s mom grabbed her son’s arm and mumbled sorry. The distraction gave Davie some time to process her feelings, but not enough time to ease the knot in her stomach. It was painful to think of Striker as a one-night stand, but it wasn’t her first and it probably wouldn’t be her last. The sad part was she genuinely cared for him; having to pretend last night didn’t happen, even temporarily, made her feel empty inside.
“Maybe working together is already too complicated,” she said, following the flight path of the little bird. “Maybe I should ask Lieutenant Repetto to drop you from the case and give me a new partner.”
Striker’s tone was firm, almost paternal. “That’s not going to happen.”
She wanted to shout you’re not the boss of me but for obvious reasons—it would be childish and ultimately ineffective—she tempered her tone. “You seem overly confident about how much power you have over me.”
He leaned into her personal space to emphasize his point. “I do have power over you, Davie. That’s the problem. If people find out we’re dating, they’ll be watching us and judging our work in a different light. Is that what you want?”
“I’m going to stretch my legs,” she said, rising from the chair.
The little bird was still looking for a way out. Davie circumnavigated the small lobby, glancing at a gift shop full of cosmetics and booze until she found a ticket agent who was willing to prop open a door. The bird circled the room a half dozen times until it sensed fresh air and flew to freedom. Davie should have felt better but she didn’t. Maybe freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Once she boarded the airplane, she feigned interest in the money-laundering book to avoid engaging with Striker. Her emotions felt raw and she didn’t want to say anything to heighten the tension.
It was 5:30 p.m. local time when the plane landed at LAX. Davie mumbled a quick goodbye to Striker before they parted ways. She’d called Vaughn as soon as the plane hit the tarmac. He was waiting at the LAPD’s airport substation to take her to Pacific, where she’d left her car.
Her partner accelerated as he maneuvered onto Sepulveda Boulevard. “Your skin is the color of winter in Antarctica. Where’s your tan?”
“I wasn’t on vacation. I was working.” Davie’s words sounded harsh even to her.
“Whoa. You sound pissed. What’s going on?”
There was no benefit in unloading on Vaughn, so she softened her tone. “I’m just tired.”
He slammed his palm on the steering wheel. “It was Striker, right? What did that asshole do to you?”
“Nothing. Let’s drop it, okay?”
“Fine, but I’m not buying it.” He waited a beat and when she didn’t respond, he changed the subject. “I’ve got something that might perk you up.”
“Coffee?”
“Something way better. Remember when I told you I was going to look a little deeper into Gerda Pittman’s PI, Natalie Salinas? I did a sweep of social media and she’s everywhere, including on one of those employment sites.”
Davie leaned her forehead against the cool window as Vaughn veered left onto Lincoln Boulevard. “Is she trolling for clients, or looking for a job?”
“Maybe a little of both. I found something interesting on one of the sites. She’s selling photographs online to anybody with a PayPal account, including a couple of tabloids.”
“Are private investigators allowed to do that?”
“They have a code of ethics that reads like the Boy Scout pledge, but I doubt Salinas has read it. Anyway, I went to talk to her again.”
“That must have made her day.”
Vaughn turned right on Culver Boulevard and headed toward the station. “Yeah, she wasn’t happy, but she finally copped to selling pictures from her surveillance jobs. I asked if she shot any at Blasdel’s gunstore. At first she said no, but I used my super powers and she finally admitted staking out the store and taking pictures in the area. Some of them she sold to an online photo service. She gave me copies.”
“See anything of value?”
“Hard to say. I don’t know all the details of the case. Some pics were of people going in and out of the store. Others were arty shots, the mean streets of L.A. and all that. They’re on a disc on your desk. You can look when we get back to the station.”
Davie retrieved her travel bag from the back seat as Vaughn pulled up to the station’s gate. “How’s the cooking class?”
Vaughn swept his ID over the sensor and waited for the gate to open. �
��I’m studying for the midterm—pesce per sico alla comasca. My first attempt was a disaster. Had to dump the whole thing in the garbage.” He paused before continuing. “So, tell me about your trip. Did Lacy Gillen tie up the loose ends with a tidy little bow?”
“Assume nothing, Jason. That’s my new motto. This case is way more convoluted than I imagined. Every time I peel off a layer I find another and another.”
“Just like Italian cooking.”
After they’d parked, she stowed her overnight bag in the trunk of her Camaro and went into the station to look at the Natalie Salinas photos. It was Saturday evening and the squad room was quiet except for a night detective reading through warrant packages and an officer from Long Beach PD using the Robbery coordinator’s computer. A Juvenile-Car P-2 sat at a desk behind her, taking a telephonic report. From what she could tell from his side of the conversation, a school security guard had discovered basketballs missing from a storage unit.
Her partner stood at his desk looking at her over the partition wall. “When do you report to RHD?”
“Not sure. I have to talk to Giordano first.”
Her partner’s expression looked strained as he walked around the workstation to her desk. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Maybe later. After I look at these photos.”
“Okay,” he said, stretching out the word. “You might want to check your email, too. Van Nuys Homicide dicks emailed you a report and copied me. The fire at Blasdel’s place was definitely arson. They found a crude igniting device near the electrical outlet.”
Davie slipped the disc into the side of her computer monitor. “Have they done the autopsy yet?”
“The morgue is backed up, but the arson investigator agrees with you. Blasdel was alive when the fire started, possibly unconscious. He won’t know for sure until he gets the toxicology report and that won’t be available for weeks.”
“Do me a favor,” Davie said. “Forward the Van Nuys email to Detective Striker.”
Vaughn placed his palms on her desk and lowered his face to within inches of hers. “Why can’t you do it yourself?”
She put her index finger on his forehead and pushed him away. “Because you’re my partner and I asked you to do it for me.”
“I get it now,” he said, his voice low. “Look, Davie, I’ve got your back. If you have a problem with Striker, just let me know. I’ll straighten him out.”
She smiled, genuinely heartened by his show of support. “Thanks, but I can handle him myself. What’s happening with the fires?”
“Malibu is partially contained, but Santa Paula keeps growing. It’s already eaten thousands of acres and a bunch of houses. Hundreds more people had to be evacuated. Before I picked you up I heard a new fire just broke out near the Skirball Center. They think it started in a homeless encampment.”
Davie massaged her temples to relieve the stress. While she’d been drinking champagne on the beach in Tortola, wildfires had been destroying lives and real estate in Southern California. She opened an online news site and learned that the Getty Museum had closed to protect the art from smoke billowing over the hills above Brentwood. The fire hadn’t shifted toward Bel Air, but it was too close to ignore.
Davie did her best to tune out the noise in her head as she clicked on Natalie Salinas’s photos. They were all date stamped, so she zeroed in on those taken in the days before Sabine Ponti’s death. Most appeared to be establishing shots worthy of a magazine spread or a blog post, arty shots of utility lines crisscrossing above the street, and pictures of strip malls. There was one shot of a homeless man slumped against a graffiti-covered wall that would have made a good cover for a noir novel. Salinas had told her she didn’t sit in her car surveilling Black Jack Guns & Ammo with a pair of binoculars. That part was true. She’d used a camera.
There were random pictures taken from different angles of an old Toyota parked in an alley next to a beat-up garbage bin. The name on the license plate holder advertised a low-budget rental agency. Davie recognized the location because of the faded sign on the wall of Nazarian’s upholstery shop. She checked the date stamp and felt a chill along her spine. The picture had been taken at 10:08 a.m., an hour before Sabine Ponti had entered the gunstore.
There was one more shot of the Toyota taken around that same time. It was from a distance, possibly with a telephoto lens. It included a bulked-up man leaning against the car. Wide-set eyes squinted against the smoke of his cigarette. His hair was cut close to the scalp exposing small ears that resembled sliced mushrooms glued to the side of his head. It was clear from his furtive gaze that he was unaware he was being photographed. Davie zoomed in on the man’s face and thought she saw an earring in his right ear.
She dug out the photo of the two men standing on that Florida street corner with Nate Gillen. Pulling a magnifying glass from her desk drawer, she focused on the man whose back was to the camera. He had the same close-cropped hair and unusually small ears. Her eyes drew closer as they focused on his right ear to confirm what she’d noticed when she first saw the picture: a hoop earring hanging from his earlobe. It appeared to be the same man.
Davie clenched her fists. She printed out the photo and called the car agency to find out the name of the customer who’d rented the car, using the license plate number and the date the picture was taken. She waited on the line listening to the guy clicking away on the computer keyboard.
“Here it is,” he said a moment later. “He rented the car a year ago under the name John W. Booth.”
Davie noted the name’s similarity to John Wilkes Booth, the actor and assassin who killed President Abraham Lincoln in Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C. Either John W. Booth was the guy’s real name or it was his idea of a joke. If it was the latter, he’d gone to a lot of work and expense to forge his driver’s license.
“How did he pay?” Davie asked.
“Cash.”
The agent hadn’t kept a copy of Booth’s ID, and claimed he hadn’t seen the guy before or since, but he gave Davie the man’s cell number. She asked him to fax the rental agreement and ended the call. When she called Booth’s cell, his number was no longer in service.
She ran the name through department databases and found many John Booths, but only a handful with that middle initial. She made a list, but locating and interviewing each one of them seemed fruitless, because she believed the name was an alias.
She studied the photo again, focusing on the cigarette in the man’s hand. She thought back to the smell of cigarette smoke in her house a few days ago and felt a chill.
51
Davie studied both photos she had of Mushroom Ears. Salinas’s picture had been taken a year ago, but if Ears was back in L.A., he might have rented other cars. Striker already had a copy of the street corner picture. She would scan Natalie Salinas’s shot near the Toyota and email it to Striker, as well.
She made a list of budget rental agencies on the Westside. First, she would map out the addresses to allow as little backtracking as possible and then visit the places on the list, hoping for a lucky break.
Before leaving the station, she picked up the car rental agreement from the fax machine. They might want to have a handwriting examiner look at the signatures if she could find a comparison. Then she picked up the keys to the Jetta and headed out.
An hour later she’d met with zero success. She sat in the car outside the fifth and last budget agency on her list and crossed her fingers before going inside. If this didn’t pan out, she’d have to start checking with big-name agencies.
The man at the counter wore a company sports jacket that was two sizes too large for his slight frame. His complexion had the ghostly pallor of a recently paroled convict. She identified herself and held up Salinas’s photo of the man standing by the Toyota. “Has this guy ever rented a vehicle from you? He may have used the name John W. Booth or possibly just
John Booth.”
The man studied the photo and shook his head. “Nope.”
Davie slipped the picture back inside her notebook. “Thanks for your time.”
“No, I mean he rented a car from me, but that’s not the name he used. Can’t remember what it was, but I’ll look it up for you. The guy paid cash and he was a total jerk. I told him not to smoke in the car but it reeked of cigarettes when he brought it back. It was also a mess—empty Oreo bags and crumbs everywhere. The guy copped an attitude when I called him on it. After he left, I flagged his file as DNR—do not rent. He called me again a few days ago, but I told him I didn’t have any cars available.”
The desk agent disappeared into the back room and returned a moment later with a piece of paper with a name written on it in blocky capitals—miles standish.
“Miles Standish?” she said. “That name didn’t ring any alarm bells?”
“Why should it? Who is he?”
“He’s … ” Davie paused. The name was pretty obscure. She couldn’t expect a desk agent to also be a student of Mayflower history. “Never mind.”
“Since you refused to do business with Mr. Standish, do you know any other agencies who might rent a car to a jerk for cash?”
His expression turned suspicious. “I know all kinds of people. Some of them wouldn’t appreciate me giving their names to the cops.”
“Even if those people never found out how I got the information?”
He hesitated. “You expect me to take your word?”
“That’s exactly what I expect.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“The satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing.”
He let out a nervous laugh. “Okay. The guy’s name is Raoul. I gave his number to Standish. Can’t confirm they ever did business, but Raoul has a fleet of cars that belong to owners who need quick cash and renters who need cars, no questions asked.”
The Second Goodbye Page 23