The Pallbearers

Chapter 32

I found a copy of the Thomas Guide in Vargas's truck and planned a route that would allow us to hit all of the group homes efficiently. We decided to stick with Vicki s scam of pretending to represent an entity interested in making donations to foster care.

Our first stop was a foster-care facility named Lincoln House, a collection of bungalows in the South Bay near Torrance. It was in bad need of a paint job and had no athletic field. There were twenty children living there. We got a quick tour from a bored employee who kept looking at his watch and talking about his coffee break.

The others seemed pretty much the same and were depressing reminders of my youth. By three o'clock, we'd hit them all. The last home was the Challenge House in La Mirada, owned by a foundation called Hopeful Journey. A young social worker named Barbosa Polverini showed us around.

"You got twenty-five children?" I asked, looking at the fact sheet she had given me in the office.

"Yeah, and it isn't easy, believe me." She sighed. "Like trying to keep a bunch of feral cats in a bathtub. This is a gang area. Half the time they're going out windows after lights-out to hook up with their homies."

"What's your ratio of staff to clients?" I asked. By then, Vargas and I had picked up some of the terms. A client we had learned was a child in foster care.

"Four to one," she replied.

Then Vargas said, "So your RCL is what, about five thousand per child?" We were smokin' with the lingo.

"Yeah. But it barely gets us there." Barbosa shook her head.

We thanked her and got back into Vargas's yellow pickup. We had collected half a dozen brochures from the group homes. None of the others had pictures of MMA fighters inside.

Both of us sat for a moment in the parking lot behind the Challenge House nursing our thoughts, realizing we'd learned very little.

"Wasted day," Vargas finally said.

"Not completely. These places are all struggling, and beyond that, staff morale sucks."

"So?"

"Perfect environment for an embezzler. I don't know how many of these places are missing money, but I'll bet a comprehensive audit on each one would be very illuminating."

I asked Vargas to take me to pick up my Acura, which was being fixed in Venice, two blocks from my house. I'd received a text message from Larry, my mechanic, that it was ready.

As I was getting out of the truck in front of the garage, Vargas stopped me. He had a frown on his face. "When it looked like Pop killed himself, it was somehow easier. This murder thing is really wearing on me."

"Yeah."

"I'm having a hard time with your idea that Pop stole the money; then got killed for it."

"Me too," I agreed.

"But I thought that was your whole theory. You said somebody beat him to death to find the million-five."

"He was beaten before he died, so it certainly could have happened that way."

"But it didn't?"

"Listen, Sabas. You keep telling me the law is your beat, so answer me this. In a criminal defense when you don't know who's bullshitting, how do you find the truth?"

"You evaluate motive."

"Exactly." "So?"

"Pop had no motive to steal that cash. It was already where he wanted it. It was in the Huntington House bank account."

"You're saying he was set up?"

"Yeah, maybe. State audit coming, lotta money missing. Frame Pop, kill him, make it look like a suicide, case closed."

He sat behind that oversized fifties steering wheel and just stared at me. Then he said, "You think Rick O'Shea?"

"I'm not putting the hat on anybody just yet, but he's certainly got a reserved spot near the top of my list. He could have easily got Pop to sign stuff without reading it. You know how Pop was. He was no businessman. Tell him he's signing a contract to repaint the gym and he wouldn't bother to read it, he'd just sign."

Vargas began to nod his head. "I like this a fuck of a lot better, homes."

"Good. But don't marry it, 'cause it could turn out to be dead wrong. It's just a theory. Like the missing money idea, we log it but keep moving." I hesitated, then said, "As long as we're on this, what's your take on Diamond Peterson?"

He thought carefully for a minute before he spoke. "Funny you should ask that. I've been worried about her a bit myself. She seems kinda half in and half out. Not really involved, sorta going through the motions."

"Yeah, that's been my take too." I went ahead and told him what I'd been thinking. "She worked in the office. She was with Pop all the time. She could have shoved those phony loan documents under his nose and got him to sign as easily as O'Shea."

"You think she's in on it?"

"In my job, it pays to be a skeptic, look at everyone. It's just a feeling. Could be nothing. Don't tell the others, but let's both watch her a little closer for a while and be careful about what we confide in her."

"Okay."

We bumped knuckles. I got out of the truck and Vargas drove off. I paid Larry the mechanic for the repaired ignition, got in the MDX, and headed for home.

Alexa's car wasn't in the driveway. She wasn't back yet. On my way into the house, I decided to pick up our mail. I opened the mailbox and saw a shoe box-sized package that barely fit inside. I pulled it out carefully and examined it. The box was wrapped in brown paper and had no address, which meant it had been hand delivered.

I'm a cop, and I don't like getting hand-delivered, paper-wrapped packages with no postal marks. I was thinking about calling the bomb squad when I noticed a small /. Straw written in ink on the top left corner where the return address should have been.

I took the package inside and set it down on the kitchen table.

"What are you up to now, Jack?" I said softly to the little wrapped box.

I took out a knife and opened it. Inside I found an old-style brown plastic Rolodex. It was from the NHB Gym. Jack had told me last night, when he'd been dangling from the teeter-totter, that he'd stolen it. I rolled the tumbler. It had about fifty names, numbers, and addresses inside. I saw Raymond "Stingray" Jackson. I also saw an address for Kimbo Sledge, who I remembered was on the Fall Brawl fight poster with O'Shea. The address for both Jackson and Sledge was identical: 1386 Avalon Terrace in Wilmington. Roommates?

There was also an SD memory card inside. No note.

"Not again,' I muttered as I took it into the den, put it into my computer, and waited for it to load. I was expecting it to contain more stolen accounting information, but this one contained a video.

The camera was set up on a hillside and was pointed down at a huge mansion in the Hollywood Hills. The house was sitting right on the edge of a land cut that overlooked all of West L. A. It was one of those big expensive Cliffside deals that dot Mulholland Drive. From the cool light and medium-length shadows, I estimated it to be mid-morning.

I watched a Rolls Royce pull into the drive and park. I could hear somebody near the camera mic breathing, but nobody spoke. Then the camera shut off.

It came on again a second later, recording from a different place. This time, from the short length of the shadows underneath a line of poplar trees bordering the stone drive. It looked like it was shortly before or after noon. I could hear birds singing.

In the next shot the camera position was now inside the compound of the same lush estate. The shot panned the grounds, showed the layout, then clicked off again. When it came back on, we were actually inside the house.

I groaned as I watched a moving point of view coming out of the kitchen into the living room. I could hear more quiet breathing and light footsteps on the marble floor. Jack was actually hot prowling this place in broad daylight. He panned the camera, taking in the rich decor.

Outside on the expansive pool deck, I caught sight of a short man sitting under a canopy, having lunch with a trophy blonde. The camera zoomed in. The two were chatting, laughing, drinking wine. The man was middle-aged with dark hair and a stocky build. He had an olive complexion and could have been Mediterranean. His hairline looked like it had been filled in with plugs. Then the camera went dark.

The next shot was inside a garage. Six or eight expensive cars-a Ferrari, a Porsche Boxster, a new Lamborghini. Off on the far end I saw four or five classic Indian motorcycles like the one Vargas hit coming out of the NHB Gym. The Rolls that I'd seen pulling into the drive in the first shot was parked in the foreground.

As the camera panned, I was able to read the rear license plate and wrote it down to run later. I wanted to confirm my suspicions, but I was already pretty sure this place belonged to E. C. Mesa.

The next shots were inside a sports-equipment room. From the similar walls and windows, I guessed it was probably off the garage. There were tennis rackets and golf clubs, as well as several ten-speed and mountain bikes hanging three or four feet off the floor on wall pegs.

Then the camera panned to show a door that had a brass plate that read The Boardroom. A gloved hand reached out, grabbed the knob, and turned it. Then the door was kicked open.

The room was full of surfboards. Most were standing in racks. Wet suits were hanging on plastic hangers. There were several short boards with their colorful, artistic gel coats, along with a few tri-fin thrusters with pin tails and some old light balsas from the fifties.

The camera panned to the far side of the room, and there it was, in a rack all by itself. Tail down, it stood alone in a place of honor. A big, old, classic cigar-box model.

The long, heavy antique was almost nine feet tall and pointed at both ends for maximum rail contact. It was the only board heavy enough to actually hang ten on, but nobody ever rode them anymore because they were a bitch to stay up on. Only Walt was willing to fight with one of those bastards, shuffling forward in his strange, hunched-over Quasimodo stance to finally grip his toes on the nose as he rode the wall of glass inside the curl.

I hadn't even seen a cigar-box board since Pop rode his during sunrise patrol years ago. So what was this one doing here? jack must have had the same question, because he zoomed in on it and held the shot for several long moments before the camera suddenly went dark.