The Pallbearers

Chapter 25

They were all staring at me as I stood in the open sliding-glass door that leads to the backyard.

As soon as she saw me, Alexa got up and crossed the yard. "Sabas said you two got in a fight, but he didn't say you got injured," she said. She raised her hand and touched the nasty-looking cut on my forehead.

I had checked my reflection in the rearview mirror before getting out of my borrowed D-ride. The cut had an ugly Frankenstein quality-jagged, crusted, filled with dried blood.

"Sometimes to get difficult facts, 111 punch my head through things," I said, smiling. "It s how I investigate."

"That needs stitches," my wife said, frowning.

Til pull it together with a butterfly bandage. The scar will go nice with all the others."

I turned to the rest of the group. Diamond was seated at the garden table. Her shoulders were sagging, and she looked used up. Seriana was beside the barbecue, sitting ramrod straight. Vicki and Sabas were facing me, their backs to the canal. Jack, as usual, was tipped back arrogantly in one of our cast-iron patio chairs, feet up on a bench, studying me with his usual fuck-you smile.

Sabas had already filled them in, explaining how we'd followed Rick O'Shea to the NHB Gym and how it had ended up.

"Mr. O'Shea recognized you? What am I supposed to tell him when he asks?" Diamond seemed mortified.

"Shortly this is going to be a full-fledged homicide investigation. If O'Shea gets frisky, I'll pull him in as a material witness and hold him," I said. Diamond frowned. She didn't like it.

"Sabas says that you told him as soon as this becomes a police case, we can't be part of it anymore," Seriana said.

"I have bosses and LAPD protocol," I replied. "The department won't tolerate an unauthorized vigilante investigation."

Seriana said, "Shane, I have to redeploy soon and I don't want to leave the country not knowing what happened here."

Vargas crossed to the cooler that Alexa had pulled out of our hall closet and filled with ice. He reached inside with his swollen right hand and gingerly pulled out a beer, passing it over to me.

"I ran the Mesa Investment Group through a legal search program I use in my office," he said. "They're a pretty big deal. The founder and CEO is a guy named Eugene Charles Mesa. People call him E. C. He's only fifty and already close to a billionaire. Mesa Group mostly does acquisitions. They're turnaround experts who buy distressed companies, fix the problems, and then either run them for profit or sell them."

I already knew all that from Trina's computer run.

Vargas continued, "I also did a deep financial search and found out that Mesa owns that entire block where the NHB Gym is located downtown. It's scheduled for redevelopment next year. There's been a bunch of stories in the L. A. Times. The city is very excited about it. He's gonna put in two high-rise office towers."

All stuff I'd also learned an hour ago from Trina. As Sabas indicated, Eugene Mesa had a lot of political juice in L. A., with tentacles deep into city government. That meant he also probably had some pretty good leverage with my sixth-floor bosses at the LAPD. E. C. Mesa would need to be handled very carefully.

"I'm now working with Diamond," Vicki Lavicki announced, changing the subject. "You're looking at the new secretary-treasurer of Huntington House. I'm taking some sick days off from Kinney and Glass so I can devote myself full time to helping us get ready for that state audit."

"And not a moment too soon, girl. I was dying over there," Diamond said.

"Starting tomorrow, I'm gonna begin building old records going back two or three years to sec if I can find out why there was never enough money to run that place."

"You're wasting time on that fucking audit," Jack said, suddenly taking his muddy feet down from my bench and sitting up straight. "This isn't even complicated. We need to hoist this Eugene Mesa guy up by his heels and start looking for wet spots."

"That's a bad idea," I said quickly. "We need to move very slow with those guys over at Mesa Group."

"Why?" Jack sneered. "We supposed to be afraid of a buncha guys with Princeton MBAs?"

"Shane's right," Alexa confirmed. "If we're not careful, Mesa could put us in a dangerous political situation."

From Jack's body language, it was obvious he didn't agree.

"I don't mean to throw you guys out," I said, "but I have a blinding headache. I think I might have sustained a minor concussion."

Everyone quickly finished their beers, and we agreed to meet at an IHOP pancake house up the street at 9:00 A. M. tomorrow.

After they left, Alexa wanted to call a doctor.

"I don't have a headache," I told her. "My head s been rated to break stone." I settled back into my chair and fished a fresh beer out of the ice chest. "I just wanted them out of here. I couldn't listen to any more of that. Fucking jack thinks because he breaks the law, he understands it. Sabas thinks he should run the case because he's a lawyer. Vicki is an adrenaline junkie who packs a.44 Bulldog in her purse, and Seriana wants to rush a result just so she'll know what happened to Pop before she goes back to Iraq."

"They just want to help, Shane. I don't think you're being fair."

"So far all we've done is alert those muscle heads at the gym that we're onto them. I'm the one who screwed that up. Bad as that is, now Jack wants to brace Eugene Mesa. This case is moving in the wrong direction."

Then I asked, "How you doing with the ME? He gonna issue a new finding tomorrow? We need this case to become official fast so I can stop dealing with these people."

"That's going to be a little harder than we thought," she said.

"Why?"

"Rico from Pico wants to make the next cut." She was talking about our Chief Medical Examiner, Rico Comancho, who rose up from a ghetto in Pico Rivera, put himself through UCLA med school, and now headed the Medical Examiner's office for the city of L. A. "He took the case away from Ray Tsu," she concluded.

"Rico hasn't made a cut since he got promoted to Chief," I said. "What's with that?"

"Somebody leaked the whole thing about Walt to the L. A. Times. They're doing a major story on him and Huntington House for the Sunday 'Calendar' section, making this a high-profile deal. You know how Rico is. He feels he has to personally protect the integrity of his office. He was at an ME's convention in Vegas, but he's flying back over the weekend. The new autopsy is scheduled for next Monday. Sorry."

A few minutes later, Alexa went inside to get disinfectant and the butterfly bandages. Then, while I sat still, she stood over me and pulled the wound on my forehead together, taping the edges closed.

While she worked, I was thinking I could sure use some karmic intervention.

Come on, Walt, I pleaded silently to the heavens. I'm doing this for you. Get busy and change my luck up there. Make something happen.