Strange Bedfellows

6

Hell in Heels

It wasn’t until I was at the wheel, steering us deeper behind the Orange Curtain, that I felt I could talk to Thor freely. “Mrs. McIntyre was so full up, she was about to burst.” I filled Thor in on the son’s background history with the company, and the initial impressions I had of his expectations about the job, which McIntyre had confirmed. “But Gabriella’s mother went to bat for her baby girl when the board brought her in as the interim chair. She convinced them Gabriella would be better suited to serve as interim CEO than Mario. McIntire said they literally had to remove the son from his father’s office, he was so sure he was getting the job.”

“That’s pretty ugly,” Thor said as he started writing in his notebook. “What’s the mother’s full name?”

“Renata Lippincott.”

“Remarried, you said?”

“To some big-time venture capitalist down in Newport Beach.”

Thor grunted. “Why would the board of directors let Zuccari’s ex-wife chair and his daughter run the company when he intended his son to get the nod? You see how that lawyer and Mario keep information from Gabriella? They can’t respect her!”

“Not to mention how Merritt was tiptoeing around explaining the change in leadership to us. The board was probably afraid to stand up to the family’s block of voting stock.”

Thor shook his head, still unsatisfied. “But getting the ex-wife outta there if the poor guy ever comes to could be messier than the divorce!”

“No joke. But McIntyre said Renata was a major factor in growing the business for some thirty-odd years. She was the senior vice president of new product development up until the divorce. CZ Toys is as much her company as Zuccari’s.”

“Then why would she side with Gabriella over Mario as CEO, if that’s what her ex-husband thought was in the best interest of the company?”

“Maybe because Mario was the one who introduced his father to Alma at that toy convention, according to Mrs. McIntyre.”

“Ouch!” Thor grimaced. “That’s a little messy.”

“It gets worse. A couple of months after Mario introduced them, Chuck decided to leave his wife of thirty years without so much as a thank-you note for raising his children. He forced her to step down from the board and then invoked some ancient prenup agreement when it came time for the divorce settlement. If she hadn’t had her own separate stock in the company, she’d have been up shit creek. Mrs. Lippincott’s wanted nothing to do with either of them since.”

Thor grunted. “Hell hath no fury. When did all this happen?”

“Four years ago now. Even Mrs. McIntyre is sympathetic to the ex-wife’s cause, which I can’t blame her for. For all Merritt’s talk about Zuccari caring about appearances, he could cut them low when he wanted to.”

“But then again,” Thor pointed out, “McIntyre and the ex are probably close to the same age.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Thor turn to face me. “Why didn’t any of this come out in your initial investigation? You were the one who interviewed the son and the other company execs, right?”

It was a legitimate question. “When Chuck Zuccari was shot, all signs pointed to a drive-by. Then we were chasing down background on the father’s Nazi connections and after that the Nation of Islam lead. By the time we got back around to CZ Toys, Engalla’s disappearance was our top priority, not what was going on in the executive suite.”

“But Chuck’s messy divorce-”

“Not a breath of any of it in our interviews. All we knew was that wife number two was with her new husband and daughter in Europe when Chuck was shot. And they were in the Hamptons when Engalla went missing over the summer, so there seemed no reason to interview her on either matter.”

“You should always talk to the exes, regardless of their whereabouts at the time of the crime,” Thor chided. “You never know what kind of grudges they could be carrying.”

He was right, of course, and I started to tell him that the decision for how far we’d ultimately gone in digging into the family’s business had been dictated by his boy Firestone, who had us running around in circles after Nazi haters and Muslim baiters. But what would be the point? He’d never think Steve Firestone did anything other than walk on water and talk to God.

“So when do you want to interview Lippincott?” I fished a card out of my pocket and handed it over. “Courtesy of Mrs. McIntyre.”

Thor wrote down the information. “Today, if we can. Did McIntyre give up anything else about the daughter?”

“Only that Gabriella’s job as EVP of European marketing was little more than an opportunity for her to get a front-row seat at all of the major designers’ spring and fall shows. That’s not exactly how Mrs. McIntyre put it, but the inference was clear enough.”

Thor shook his head in disgust.

“And check this out-the reason I never talked to Gabriella during our initial investigation was because she and her mother were buying up everything at the Versace show in Paris when her father got shot. At the time, all the family said was that she was in Europe, but this time McIntyre spilled the beans.”

“That’s because McIntyre’s got no loyalty to her now.”

“Told me Gabriella didn’t come back to the States until a week after the shooting, reportedly delayed by negotiations with Versace to design an exclusive designer collection for one of their fashion dolls. She claimed her father would have wanted her to carry on, but I could tell McIntyre wasn’t buying it.”

“That Gabriella’s hell on heels. Did McIntyre say how Mario’s taking all of this?”

“Understandably disappointed about not getting the interim CEO job, but she says Mario’s ultimately going to do what’s best for the company.”

“Not to mention what’s best for that stock he’s holding.”

“You want me to come back down and help with the interviews?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I’ve put in a call to Financial Crimes to get one of their people down here. Let them talk cash and cash equivalents with the bean counters.”

It was a good call on Thor’s part to involve the department’s Financial Crimes unit, something that had not occurred to me. If I could get past his attitude, maybe I could learn something new from Thor on this case, too.

Rush hour traffic delayed us almost an hour in getting to South Orange County and the hospital where Chuck Zuccari was being treated. Maybe being warehoused was a better word, because the second-floor nursing unit on which he was being kept seemed deserted, save for two thick-necked security guards stationed at the entrance to Two South.

“Sorry sir; no visitors allowed,” said the larger one, a white male about six-one with a chestnut-brown buzz cut and massive arms, which he crossed over his broad, navy blazer-clad chest.

Which had zero effect on me or Thor, who stepped within inches of those bulging biceps. “This is police business, son,” he explained, showing his badge.

“Not unless you gots some ID,” said Mr. Universe’s sidekick, a sawed-off piece of work who was about five feet tall by five feet wide with a tear tattooed in the corner of one eye.

“What’s your name, son?” Thor asked.

“I ain’t telling you shit unless I see that ID, old man!” Five by Five snapped, his singsong voice betraying his cholo roots.

“We’re sorta new at this,” Mr. Universe explained.

“New to polite society,” Thor scoffed, taking in Five by Five’s ill-fitting black suit jacket and scuffed shoes.

“Sorry, sir.” Mr. Universe’s smile was apologetic even as he stood his ground. “But we got our instructions.”

They checked our IDs, grudgingly told us their names-Jeff Leykis and Luis Ybarra-and let us pass onto the unit. “I see what Merritt meant,” I whispered to Thor. “What’s a company like CZ Toys doing with a couple of roughnecks like them?”

“Good question. I’ll have to run them through our databases, see what comes back.”

At the nursing unit sat a redheaded nurse, one eye on the green squiggles of a makeshift telemetry monitor while she wrote in a chart and talked to another white woman, this one silver-haired and wearing a conservative navy pantsuit. Who saw us approach and stepped forward to greet us. “I’m Avis Gipson, chief nursing officer for the hospital.” She took our cards and shook our hands. “We were told to expect you.”

“Too bad everyone didn’t get the memo,” I muttered as I turned to watch Chuck Zuccari’s sorry excuse for a security team resume their positions.

“There was no memo,” she replied briskly. “Mrs. McIntyre called.”

“She checks up on Mr. Zuccari regularly,” the younger nurse added.

Gipson agreed. “The company has been very involved, and very helpful, in Mr. Zuccari’s care.”

“What’s going on with the setup here?” Thor wondered aloud.

“There was some concern about another possible attack on Mr. Zuccari,” Gipson explained. “So when he was discharged from critical care in August, it was arranged for him to be transferred here, where his private security team can better monitor the situation.”

It was an odd move to protect a man shot some seventy miles away. Did someone really think the shooter would risk coming to South Orange County to finish off a comatose witness in his hospital bed, or was this just a case of special treatment for one of the rich and famous?

As if he had read my mind, Thor asked: “Who made the arrangements?”

“Administration, at the family’s request.”

The walls were covered in a happy floral print in pinks and blues. “Place looks like an OB unit.”

“It is,” Gipson replied, “or was. We lost a major OB group to another hospital last fall, so Administration mothballed this unit until the demand can catch up.”

“Plus, this unit is closest to the elevator,” the nurse piped up from behind her station. Her ID badge read Michaela O’Farrell, and you could hear the lilt of the Irish in her voice. “So Mrs. Zuccari can scoot upstairs and see their baby whenever she wants.”

“The baby’s still here?”

Nurse O’Farrell nodded. “In and out twelve times since she was transferred from Children’s up in L.A.”

In response to our awkward reaction, the older woman smiled. “She’s quite special. Been on the brink so many times, the nurses call her Nine Lives.”

“Twelve hospitalizations for the baby and how long in the hospital for Mr. Zuccari?” I made a quick calculation. “Seven months?”

Thor gave a low whistle. “I want the name of this guy’s insurance company. I’m gonna have to change my coverage!”

O’Farrell chuckled, but the other woman raised an eyebrow. “No insurance, Detective Thorfinsen. CZ Toys is picking up the bill. Reopening and staffing the unit, the private security, everything.”

I bet if I checked the donor wall in the lobby, I’d find CZ Toys or the Zuccari family’s name on it somewhere. I couldn’t imagine a hospital going to these lengths without a powerful-read monetary-inducement.

A housekeeper emerged from a utility room, mop in hand, and started swabbing the sparkling clean floor a few feet away. “Did Mr. Zuccari ever come out of that coma?” I asked.

O’Farrell shook her head. “He’s deteriorated into what we call a persistent vegetative state.”

Thor said, “Is that like being brain dead?”

O’Farrell shook her head, the corners of her mouth weighed down with disapproval. “That’s a pejorative term for PVS. Mr. Zuccari’s condition is not that severe.”

“Is he awake?” Thor pressed.

“Not really. He opens his eyelids and maintains sleep-wake cycles, but his higher cerebral functioning is absent.”

“So he can’t talk or eat?” Thor said.

“Exactly,” O’Farrell nodded. “Other than the simplest motor functions, he’s not aware of anything going on around him.”

I wondered aloud whether Mr. Zuccari would be better off in a nursing home, to which Gipson pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Not everyone would agree with you on that.”

Not if everyone was being paid big bucks to keep him in this setup. “Any chance he’ll pull out of it?”

“Hard to say,” O’Farrell admitted. “The chances diminish every day he’s in that condition. But we’re hopeful he’ll improve. Miracles have been known to happen.”

I asked about how Mrs. Zuccari was faring and watched the nurse’s expression soften. “Alma’s totally devoted to Chuck and the baby. When the baby was up in L.A., she spent mornings there, and nights down here with her husband. She still splits her time between the two of them. I don’t know if the woman ever sleeps, ’cause she’s never missed a day, not one.”

“We understand she’s here now.”

O’Farrell nodded and indicated a room the housekeeper had just entered. “But they’ve got company.”

“That’s okay,” Thor assured her, “she’s expecting us.”

Or maybe not, because we were stopped at the door by a heated discussion between Alma Zuccari and her visitor, an older version of Chuck’s daughter, who stood at the head of Zuccari’s bed on the far side of the room. How much older was hard to tell because her face and figure had that frozen-in-time look achieved only with careful plastic surgery, and her wardrobe was more Valentino than Versace, but the overall effect was like looking at Gabriella Zuccari fast-forwarded twenty-odd years. And if this was Gabriella’s mother, she was giving no quarter-not to the hospital staff, not to Chuck Zuccari’s wheelchair-bound young wife, and especially not to her ex-husband, who was elevated to a sitting position in his hospital bed, a waxen motionless prize save for his staring blue eyes and the bizarre grimace pulling at his face.

“Outrageous!” she shouted in a tone that sent the housekeeper scurrying past us into the hallway. “Do you have any idea how much all of this is costing? We’re up to eight hundred thousand for that little abomination of yours and another fifteen thousand dollars a day for Chuck. My husband would not want to live like this!”

“H-h-how dare you!” The younger woman spoke hesitantly and with a whispered effort; whether from rage, deference to her husband’s weakened condition, or the insult to her status as his wife I couldn’t tell.

Renata Lippincott didn’t hear the warning in the other woman’s voice, or didn’t care. “This is monstrous!” she thundered, brown eyes flashing. “How long do you intend to let him suffer like this?”

“The doctors say he’s not in any pain.”

“How can they say that?” the former Mrs. Zuccari shouted. “Look at him!”

“I do,” came the weary reply. “Every day.”

“You have no idea of the cost!” Mrs. Lippincott repeated. “Since Chuck got out of the ICU, the company’s been paying another four hundred and fifty thousand a month on top of what we’ve already paid.”

“I-I can m-multiply just fine, Renata.”

“Like a rabbit.” The older woman snorted and moved to the foot of the bed. “But be that as it may, one thing is for sure-you people have no sense of the value of a dollar!”

Alma Zuccari squared off her wheelchair to face her adversary. It was startling to see how much she’d changed since I’d first interviewed her months earlier. Her blond hair had grown out at the roots, revealing a wavy ridge of sandy-colored new growth, while her makeup looked as if it had been applied by a child. But even heavy foundation and concealer couldn’t hide the dark blotches on her cheeks and the dark circles of exhaustion rimming her blue eyes. She looked more like fifty-eight than thirty-eight.

“Look who’s talking! CZ Toys spent three times more last year on that little boondoggle retreat in Montecito than they did to care for Chuck and the baby.” Was Alma’s tone conveying her contempt for the other woman, or her pain? “And I know about that jet they keep in Europe for that Madison Avenue Barbie-”

“You deceitful little bitch!” Lippincott spat. “Stay the hell out of the company’s business, or you’ll be sorry!”

“If CZ Toys… can support you,” Alma gasped, “they can support us in a time like this.”

The argument sent the younger woman into a coughing fit, but Lippincott kept right on talking. “Not if I have anything to do with it. Gabby and I are running the company now, Alma, so the gravy train you’ve been riding is about to come to an abrupt halt!”

Chuck Zuccari suddenly stirred in his bed. His legs flailed underneath the light covers, and his wrists twisted against the restraints, even though his blue eyes were completely blank and his face was still frozen in that grotesque grin. “Evil bitch!” Alma rasped, and turned to her husband. “We’ve been trying to keep him calm since he developed an infection. Now you’ve upset him!”

Lippincott backed away from the bed, a stricken look on her face. “I-I thought… that nurse said he couldn’t hear me!”

Thor stepped into the room, positioning himself between the women. “I’m sorry to interrupt you ladies,” he said, facing the current wife and motioning for me to handle the ex, “but would you be Alma Zuccari?”

Alma coughed and nodded her head furiously. Releasing her husband’s rigid hand, she tried to reach beyond a photograph and several greeting cards for a cup on the bed stand.

While Thor assisted her, I offered my card to the Valentino-clad shrew. “And you must be Renata Lippincott.”

“Who are you?” Lippincott stared at my outstretched hand as if it were leprous.

Thor handed her his card as well. “There’s been a development since last summer’s shooting, and we need to speak with Mrs. Zuccari.”

Chuck Zuccari’s bizarre movements had subsided, allowing Alma to recover her own breath. “If you’ll excuse us, Renata.”

Zuccari’s ex-wife read our cards, her eyebrows inching up as high as her face-lift would allow. “If you’ve found out who shot Chuck, I need to know.”

“If you could wait in the lobby downstairs, ma’am, we’ll be right with you,” Thor replied.

“Evidently you don’t know who I am,” she said, pulling her jacket together and standing a little straighter.

Hell on heels, Senior? I wanted to say, reminded of her daughter.

“As the chair of CZ Toys’ board of directors, I have a right to know who shot the CEO of our company!”

“We’ll meet you in the lobby.” I grabbed Madame Chair by the elbow, not caring if I was a little rough. “Or, if the lobby isn’t grand enough, perhaps you’d prefer our offices downtown.”

“You expect me to come to downtown Los Angeles?” I figured the mere thought of leaving Orange County would be enough to get her moving, but Lippincott couldn’t resist a parting shot at her marital successor. “This bedside vigil you’re keeping is quite touching, honey, but I’m onto your game. You’ve bled poor Chuck and our company dry enough.”

“You and your narrow-ass daughter beat me to the trough on that one!” the younger woman snapped. Then she took a deep breath as if counting to ten. “Just go, Renata. Talk to Chuck’s lawyer if you’ve got any other complaints. I’m sure you have the number.”

Lippincott looked as if she wanted to slap the taste out Alma’s mouth. I tightened my grip on her arm. “I’ll be waiting in my car, Detective,” she said to Thor, intentionally ignoring me. “It’s the black Bentley parked near the emergency entrance.”

“I’m sure we won’t miss it.”

I hustled Lippincott to the elevator and made sure she was on her way down before rejoining Thor and Alma. Standing near the door, I wished I had some sage to burn out the nasty vibe left in the room.

“I doubt if I’ll be able to help you, Detective Thorfinsen,” Alma was saying. “Although I was facing south, Chuck and Malik were blocking my view of the street, so I never saw the car coming. The last thing I remember was Chuck turning around pushing me as we were waiting for the valet to bring our car.”

“Which way did he push you?” Thor asked. “Toward the building or the street?”

“I don’t remember,” she said, her voice snappish. “I told Detective Justice before: that’s about when my memory of that night runs out. Does it matter?”

Thor ignored the question and made a note. “And you remember nothing after that?”

“Not until I woke up in the hospital a couple of days later.”

“And since then?”

Frustration clouded her face. “Nothing! The doctors call it post-traumatic stress disorder.”

So far, her statement was consistent with my earlier interviews, but Thor was undeterred. He murmured sympathetically as he pulled out his notebook and started making a sketch. “If the Oviatt Building is here, where were you standing, Mrs. Zuccari?”

Alma shot me an irritable glance. “D-didn’t we cover this when you talked to me last year?”

Curious why she was growing so agitated, I had pulled out my notebook as well and had started making quick notes. “Yes, ma’am, we did, but Detective Thorfinsen-”

“We’ve put fresh eyes on the case, Mrs. Zuccari,” he interrupted, “to see if we can uncover anything new that will help us nail these lowlifes who shot your husband.”

“And my daughter.” Alma’s shoulders began to tremble as her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t forget my daughter. She didn’t deserve what they did to her.”

Chuck Zuccari stirred again, his head lolling toward us, his fixed smile in mute agreement. I averted my eyes from the disturbing sight, and my gaze fell on the bedside table. Get-well cards from friends and well-wishers were crowded around a color photograph of a relaxed and smiling Chuck Zuccari, posing with Alma and his son at what I assumed was a toy convention, given the colorful outfit Alma was wearing and the display in the background. Zuccari looked radically different from the portrait I’d seen in the company’s offices or in magazines when we were doing background on the family. In the portrait and the photos, he was somber, almost morose. Here Zuccari was happy, almost giddy. Had Alma Gordone, with her flashing eyes and ready smile, really transformed her stiff, navy-suited husband? Could the fierce love and devotion she displayed now bring him back to life?

Wondering why the photo was here, I realized that it was all Alma Zuccari had left of her life before. In the photo, surrounded by dolls and a giant mock-up of a handheld gaming device, the unlikely couple looked as if they had a limitless future ahead of them, like the photo of Keith and me at that long-ago Fourth of July barbecue.

Before and After was the way I had come to measure my life, the space between them an abyss I’d struggled for years to cross. I knew firsthand how happiness could be destroyed and our souls sent to hell in an instant by a loved one taking the wrong flight, driving a different route to work, or getting caught standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Through my career in law enforcement I’d managed to climb out of my personal hell and, in the process, find meaning in my life. And while I couldn’t get Alma Zuccari a job in the LAPD, maybe I could give her a glimpse of a better After.

“We’ll catch who did this to your family,” I promised her.

“Tell that to my husband and child.”

Chuck Zuccari’s face still bore that senseless smile. Maybe it was a change of light in the room, or a cloud moving by the window outside, but for just an instant I could have sworn I saw a flicker of something in his staring blue eyes.

As Thor and I exited the nursing unit we were intercepted by a third security guard, this one better dressed and more polished than Leykis and Ybarra. “I’m Pete Collins.” He smiled, revealing a set of orthodontist-perfect teeth as he handed each of us a card. “Head of security for CZ Toys. Mrs. McIntyre called to say you were down here.”

With his sun-streaked hair, even tan, and muscles rippling beneath his jacket, I could imagine Pete Collins catching waves in Newport or Huntington Beach faster than running a security operation for a corporation. Maybe he had driven from one of those beaches to meet us. My little voice told me to check his shoes for sand, but I knew that would be tacky.

“I see you’ve got pretty tight security on your boss,” Thor was saying.

Collins flicked an unreadable glance at his colleagues, then turned that dazzling smile back on us. “Mario Zuccari thought we should bring in outside reinforcements as long as whoever did this is on the loose.”

I voiced the doubts I’d had earlier about the likelihood of a repeat attack on Mr. Zuccari or his family. But my challenge didn’t seem to ruffle Collins’s professional feathers in the least. “I admit it may seem extreme, Detective, but I’d rather we err on the side of caution when it comes to something like this. Mr. Zuccari and his family are much beloved by the company and the toy industry. So we’ve got to take every precaution to protect them, even if it seems to outsiders like we’re going overboard.”

From what I’d seen and heard today, it was debatable how “much beloved” Chuck Zuccari really was.

Collins asked whether we needed assistance on the interviews Mrs. McIntyre was scheduling for tomorrow morning. “Robert Merritt, your legal counsel, has offered as well, but we don’t think we’re going to need any help right now,” Thor replied.

“But we’ll call you if something comes up,” I added.

Mrs. McIntyre had also told Collins about Nilo Engalla’s reappearance. “Has he said anything about why he took off like that?”

“Not yet.” Thor pulled out his cell phone. “Which reminds me-”

“Can’t use no cell phones in the hospital,” Ybarra warned, stubby fingers pointing.

“Interferes with the equipment,” Leykis added, his smile a sharky version of his associate’s.

“The hospital’s given us an office on the unit,” Collins said, “if you’d like to use the phone in there.”

Instead of joining them, I told Thor I needed to make a pit stop. “If I’m not in the lobby by the time you’re done, go ahead without me.”

Behind Collins’s retreating back, Thor made a face and mouthed: You owe me for this.

Once Thor had rounded the corner with Collins, I told Leykis and Ybarra where I was headed and was directed to the fifth floor. I walked along the corridor, pausing at the first window on the left. Inside lay half a dozen babies in cute knitted blue and pink caps. Family and friends were clustered in front of various bassinettes, fingers pressed eagerly against the windows or filming the momentous occasion with video cameras. I could imagine Alma Zuccari passing this happy fishbowl every day, each trip adding darker and darker circles under her once-bright blue eyes.

I passed a windowed door and paused to count twelve domed Plexiglas incubators arranged in precise rows, some covered with fanciful baby quilts, others open as nurses hovered, checking monitors, conferring in tight circles with doctors, or encouraging a reluctant mother and father to stroke their baby. I saw an IV taped to one baby’s kicking foot. Another baby jerked spasmodically, a tiny hand hitting a little Beanie Baby bear positioned near its head. A pink-clad angel with a tube snaking down her tiny throat made me want to retch on her behalf. How many times had Alma Zuccari crossed this strange threshold to visit her precious child.

Finally I tore myself away and found the pediatric wing. A white-coated young doctor looked my way and, with a frown that told me he knew I didn’t belong, demanded to know my business. When I produced ID and told him who I wanted to see, he led me to a room close to the nurses’ station. To enter it, I had to squeeze by a couple of monitors stationed outside the door like Chuck Zuccari’s security guards. Inside, even with the light on over the bed, it was hard to find the baby among the welter of tubes and contraptions, all working to keep heart and lungs and other organs functioning.

After a while, my eyes adjusted to the chaos. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Right now she’s having some gastric problems related to her last surgery.”

I could feel my throat closing and the walls moving in. “Will she make it?”

“She might get over the gastric problems, but she had some bleeding in her brain early on,” the resident conceded. “It’s a common problem in these micropreemies.”

“So…”

“Brain damage is a distinct possibility.”

My vision wavering a bit, I stepped back and examined the label at the foot of the bed. CARLA ISABELLA ZUCCARI, it read. I repeated the promise I’d made to her mother that I’d get whoever was responsible for this.

Her tiny chest fluttered and fell in an unfathomable response.