Thread of Hope

SIXTY-EIGHT

I was halfway back to Coronado when my cell chirped.

“I checked with vice here,” Mike Lorenzo told me. “Nothing on Olivia Jordan. She runs clean.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

I wasn’t. “I just finished talking to her. She’s screwed up, but she gave it up awhile ago. Pretty sure about that.”

“Gotcha. I did get something else, though” he said. “Not sure if it matters or not.”

“Alright.”

“I called my buddy Tully over in Vegas again, just asked him to poke around her name, see if anything shook out,” he said. “He dug up one thing.”

I pulled over to the side of the road. I kept forgetting that California was a hands-free state and I didn’t want to get stopped while I was paying attention to Mike’s call.

“He tried to track back to her, see if any of her old connections were still live,” he explained. “Turned up the name of the piece of crap who was supposedly her pimp. Tommy Lutton.”

Her manager, Olivia had called him. Thomas. She’d even tried to dress up his name.

“But his ticket was punched awhile back,” Mike said. “Found dead in an alley behind a Denny’s.”

A dull flash fired inside my head. “Oh yeah?”

“Couple of bullets in his face,” he said. “Shooter never found.”

My stomach clenched. “When was this?”

More pages flipped. “Awhile back, actually. Maybe sixteen years? Can’t find the date on here.”

I didn’t need the date. Olivia had been adamant that he would never bother her again. Now I knew why.

“Joe?” Mike asked. “Joe?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

He paused. “That do anything for you?”

I watched cars fly by on the highway, a knot in my stomach. I wasn’t a cop anymore, but the instinct to act like a cop was always with me and influenced everything that I did. I was certain that Tommy Lutton’s death was not a coincidence and that Olivia Jordan had, at the very least, played a part in it. Maybe she hadn’t pulled the trigger, but she was involved. But I wasn’t sure what was to be gained, either, by exposing her. It wouldn’t help Chuck and it wouldn’t help me locate Meredith.

“No,” I finally said. “That doesn’t do anything for me.”