Kill the Messenger

32

Parker turned in at the gates to the Paramount Studio lot and waved to the security guard.

“Good to see you, Mr. Parker.”

“You too, Bill.”

“You here to see Mr. Conners?”

“Not today. I need to see Chuck Ito. He’s expecting me.”

The guard made a note on his clipboard and waved Parker through.

Chuck Ito’s office was a building toward the back of the lot. He worked as a film editor, but his hobby was still photography, and he had collected all the latest gizmos in his studio and had declared them as business expenses on his tax forms.

“Look what the cat dragged in.” Ito’s greeting. Parker had known him going on five years, and this was always his opening line.

“My suit takes offense at the implications of that remark,” Parker said.

“So? It only speaks Italian,” Ito said. “It doesn’t know if I’m insulting it or not.”

He checked his watch and grimaced. “We have to make this quick, Kev. I’ve got a meeting in ten with someone much more important than you.”

Parker looked perturbed. “Who’s more important than me?”

“Just about everyone.”

“That’s harsh.”

Parker dropped into a chair and tossed the envelope from Lenny Lowell’s safe-deposit box onto the desk.

Ito reached for it. “What have you got for me, Kev? Something I’ll get arrested for?” He plucked the negative out and held it up to a light. “Who’s in it?”

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“So it’s got something to do with your secret life as a woman?”

“I’m letting that slide in the interest of time,” Parker said. “I’ll knock you on your ass later. I need this developed ASAP.”

Ito looked at him like he was stupid. “Go to the mall. They can do it in an hour.”

“Or some kid making minimum wage will accidentally run it through a shredder. This is evidence in a homicide.”

“Then why aren’t you taking it to the LAPD lab if it’s evidence?”

“You’re kidding, right? I’d be lucky to get it back by Christmas, if ever. I think they have one person and he’s only up to date on equipment through the tintype machine.”

A mixture of truth and exaggeration. The general public has been led to believe that every crime lab in every city in the nation is just like the one on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, when in truth none of them are. The great majority are understaffed, underfunded, and overloaded. In LA County, famous for making DNA evidence the talk of the world during the O. J. Simpson trial, there are three people who deal with DNA evidence. Most of the time their findings aren’t even in until well after a trial is over.

Besides, Parker couldn’t tell Ito he wasn’t exactly supposed to have this piece of evidence. If he could get the thing developed, he could see who he was dealing with and have a bigger jump ahead of Robbery-Homicide. That was why he hadn’t bagged and tagged the negative at the bank. He figured to get the thing developed, then seal it in the bag to be taken in as evidence, and no one would be the wiser.

“I need it ASAP.”

“ASAP for me today is going to be more like late in the day. Dinnertime. I can have one of my assistants—”

“No. I can’t have a lot of people handling this thing.”

“I could go to prison for this, couldn’t I?” Ito said.

Parker made a face. “Prison? Nah . . . the work farm, maybe. You don’t have a record of prior convictions, do you?”

“Some friend you are,” Ito said, pretending to be upset.

Parker got up and started toward the door. “It’s fine,” he said with a casual wave of the hand. “Just don’t tell anyone you have it. If you get caught with it, I don’t know you.”

Blackmail. Parker stirred the word around in his mind as he drove back toward downtown. If Eddie Davis turned out to be one of the people in the photograph, then that gave Davis a strong motive to kill Lowell. If the two of them had been in on something together, one might have turned on the other out of greed. Another good motive.

Whichever way it went, Davis was after the negative. That was why he had ransacked Lenny’s office, busted out the windows of his car. He would have done the same to Lowell’s condo if not for the fact that it was in a secure building. It was probably Davis who had tossed Abby Lowell’s place. The missing negative probably explained the implication in the note he had scrawled in lipstick on her bathroom mirror. Next You Die . . . If you don’t give up the negative.

But there had to be more than one. Parker figured the one in the safe-deposit box would have been insurance, something Lenny could hold on to, just in case. And Parker had a hunch that the person holding them was J. C. Damon. He wondered if the kid had any idea what he had.

Parker’s phone rang, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Parker.”

“Well, since you don’t have any friends, I called one of mine.” Andi Kelly. “There is no one named Davis in Robbery-Homicide.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?” She sounded offended not to have the scoop.

“Because I’m better than you are, doll.”

Kelly laughed. “What bullshit.”

“I know it because a witness identified Davis in a mug book this morning.”

“He killed that woman last night?”

“Not my case,” Parker said. “You’ll have to talk to Ruiz.”

“I don’t like her.”

“Nobody likes her,” Parker said. “She’s rude and abrasive and bratty. And she’s not a woman’s woman.”

“How do you know about that? Men never get that.”

“I’m in touch with my feminine side,” Parker said.

“She’ll sell you out for a dime and give back change,” Kelly said.

“Well, there’s definitely some truth in that,” Parker muttered, wondering if Ruiz wasn’t even at that very moment selling him out to Bradley Kyle, describing in detail every piece of paper Parker had taken with him when he’d gone.

“You’re her training officer,” Kelly said. “Usurp her power. Grab the case for yourself. What do you care if she hates you?”

“She already hates me.”

“See?”

“Okay,” Parker said with resignation. Kelly was like a Jack Russell terrier. If she wanted something, she was relentless in her pursuit. She would bite into a story and hang on, no matter what. “Yes, I like Davis for the murder last night.”

“Why? What’s his motive?”

“I’m still working on that,” he hedged. “But it’s a good bet that he went to Speed Couriers to get a line on the bike messenger.”

“The bike messenger. Wasn’t he a ‘person of interest’ last night?”

“He’s still a person of interest. I just don’t consider him to be a suspect. I need to get with him, talk to him, before RHD barges in and blows everything. They’re taking the Lowell case.”

“You’re kidding. Why would they be interested?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

“And you’ll let me know when you do?”

“You’re the only pal I’ve got in this, Andi,” Parker said seriously. “I’ve got bogies all around me. Don’t make me think you’re just using me like a cheap gigolo.”

“I think you should know better, Kev,” she said. “Nothing about you is cheap. I’d say I have your back, but I’d rather have your front. And I do like the idea of you playing the gigolo.”

“You shameless tart.”

“Yes. You know I’m pushing forty. I don’t have time to mess around. Anyway, have I ever let you down?”

Parker ignored the opportunity to keep the innuendo going. “No. You haven’t,” he said on a sigh. “The head of Robbery-Homicide told my captain they feel the Lowell murder might relate to something they have ongoing.”

Kelly was silent for long enough that Parker thought she might have lost the connection.

“And we’re back to Bradley Kyle and Moose Roddick talking with Tony Giradello, your name coming up in the conversation,” she said at last.

“That’s right,” Parker said. “I’m looking at a blackmail scheme here, Andi.”

“Who versus who for what?”

“I don’t know yet, but two people are already dead. And there’s only one case Bradley Kyle has ongoing with stakes that high.”

“Tricia Crowne-Cole.”