The Pallbearers

Chapter 24

We got off the Hollywood Freeway at Santa Monica Boulevard and parked near Paramount Studios. Sabas kept the motor running. I was slumped in the passenger seat, dripping blood, looking down at a bunch of spaghetti wires hanging out from under my dash.

"What'd you do to my car?" I asked as blood drops continued to land sporadically in my lap.

"You had the keys. I needed to hot-wire the starter," he said. "Back in the day, I used to steal cars for my set, but those old ignition boxes were a lot easier to open."

"Why didn't you tell me you were such an animal? That was awesome," I said, looking over at him with new respect.

He smiled at me and started massaging his scarred knuckles, kneeding them as his entire right hand began to puff up.

"My punch has lost nothing, homes," he said, sounding like the vato g-ster he'd been fifty years ago. "My first agg-assault in two decades. I forgot how much fun it is, clocking guys."

"And you say I'm the one who runs stop signs and makes legal messes."

"I looked in the front window. I could see it was going bad. It was the best I could come up with." He grinned.

"It was great, Sabas. Perfect. I'm definitely takin' you on my next beat-down."

He kept smiling, pumped by his adrenaline rush, while my blood continued to run down the side of my face, ruining my trousers.

"You're making a mess. You better stop that bleeding. Looks like it might need stitches," he said.

I reached into the glove box, got some tissues, and pressed them hard onto the open cut 011 my forehead. After a few minutes, I stemmed the flow.

"Let's see what we got here." I pulled the two wallets out of my pocket with my free hand, handed one to Vargas, and took the other myself.

I had Baldv s ID. It turned out Chris was somebody named Christian Calabro. According to his DL, he was thirty-two, six three, and weighed two-sixty, so I'd definitely been fighting out of my weight class. He had four hundred in cash and half a dozen credit cards, including a Visa that was issued to him from some outfit called the Mesa Investment Group.

I went through the glassine section. Mostly business cards from personal trainers, nutritionists, and sports doctors. I found several business cards that said:

CHRIS "CLUBBER" CALABRO

MMA CHAMPION, TRAINER

"What's the Mesa Investment Group?" Sabas asked.

I looked over and saw that he had removed a similar Visa card from Rick O'Sheas wallet.

"Don't know."

He turned on his BlackBerry, went to the Internet, and accessed some Web site. Then he started typing in information. After a moment, he looked over.

"It's some kind of a money-management corporation with an address on Wilshire," he said. "Wanta go look?"

"Might as well go bleed on them for a while," I said.

We headed out on Santa Monica Boulevard, took a left on Highland to Wilshire, then drove another ten blocks or so to the edge of the Miracle Mile.

Sabas pulled the Acura up to the curb across the street from the address.

It was a huge steel and glass building with twenty-foot-high letters on the roof that said:

MESA INVESTMENT GROUP

There was a logo at the end of the name that looked like a desert mesa with a circle around it. The sign took up the whole east face of the building roof.

"I think we need to back off and think this over," I said.

"Don't want me driving your car through another lobby window?"

"One a day is plenty."

Forty minutes later Sabas parked behind his yellow '53 pickup truck next to my driveway in Venice. He didn't turn off the engine. There was a new easiness between us. We'd definitely bonded with our little fistfight, even though I hadn't hit anybody yet.

"I wouldn't turn off the engine," he said. "I think I ruined the coil getting it started. You might not be able to get it running again. Sorry."

"Small price to pay for saving my life."

He was still massaging his swelling, almost clown-sized right hand.

"I think we should all meet again, right away," he said. "Like even as early as this evening. Ill have some people in my office do a run on the Mesa Investment Group, see what they're all about.

"I can promise you, those two dump trucks we clocked aren't moonlighting as corporate investment managers. We need to find out how all this affects Creative Solutions and Huntington House."

I didn't want to tell him what I really had planned and how after the new autopsy tomorrow, he and the rest of the pallbearers were no longer going to be dealing with this anymore. Instead, I said, "I don't feel too hot. My head is still ringing. Let's put that meeting off and talk in the morning. I'll call you and set it up."

He nodded, said good-bye, and got out of my car, leaving me there. After he drove off, I made a U-turn and headed to the freeway, then took the 10 back toward Parker Center.

I parked in my assigned space in the underground garage, said the AAA prayer, then turned off the Acura. When I tried to start it up again, the ignition clicked at me. I had to make arrangements to get my car towed and check out a slick-back detective car from the motor pool.

I used my cell and set that up, then went to the men's room and cleaned up the blood as best I could. I took the elevator to Financial Crimes, which was on three, and looked up a civilian employee I knew who was assigned there. Her name is Trina Marks and she is one of those people who, if you give her any opening, will fill your ear with endless streams of personal and professional gossip. But she had a big heart, was always willing to do favors, and was a wiz on the computer. In the past she'd discovered things in the system that nobody else had found.

After I told her I'd cut my head in a traffic accident, I sat down beside her. I had my list ready and put it down on her console.

"You got a case number for this?" she asked.

"Use my badge," I said, laying it down in front of her. "I'm getting a fresh H-number tomorrow. I'll phone it down."

She punched in my badge number, then opened her LexisNexis file and started doing both civil as well as legal searches on the list of names I'd just given her.

While she worked, I heard about her nine-year-old nephew's All-Star game, her husband's hemorrhoids, her sister's breast reduction, and the juicy details on two messy cop divorces.

At six o'clock I left with some fairly provocative questions and a ringing left ear, which was the one closest to her keyboard.

When I got home, I couldn't find a place to park. Alexa's car was in the drive, taking that space. The narrow alley, which usually had open spots, was packed. Somebody must have been having a party.

I put the department slick-back in the only spot I could find, half a block away. As I was walking back to our house, I started paying closer attention and spotted Jack's red and black Harley, Vicki's blue Camry, and Sabas's yellow '53 pickup.

When I walked inside my living room, I found out that I was the one having the party.

The entire Pallbearers' Murder Club was in the backyard, drinking beer with Alexa.