Vigilante

CHAPTER 34

The HMS Bounty was moored beside the big dock in front of Fisherman’s Village in Marina del Rey. Its 215-foot masts towered above the marina. I’d read up on it before driving over. It was an exact copy of the original HMS Bounty, launched in London in 1787. Since then several replicas had been commissioned. This particular ship was built in Nova Scotia in 1960 for the Marlon Brando MGM movie Mutiny on the Bounty.

Green and brown paint glistened brightly on her hull and reflected the morning sunshine bouncing off the water, lapping against her wide beam. The massive vessel was pulling against half a dozen two-inch-thick mooring lines in the brisk breeze, causing the ropes to creak loudly.

I stopped my Acura in front of a red velvet rope cordoning off the gangplank and gave my car to the valet.

Nix Nash was greeting guests, standing in front of a banner that said:

WELCOME TO V-TV SEASON THREE

He was decked out in British yacht attire-white pants and a blue blazer that had an ornate pocket crest of some kind. Under the jacket he wore a crisp white shirt with a three-inch-tall Tony Curtis collar. As I walked up, a warm smile broke wide on Nash’s cherubic face.

“Didn’t figure you’d come,” he said, happily clasping my hand in both of his.

“How could I pass up a swell invite like this?” I replied, matching his phony delight.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw my Acura being pulled off by a valet in a red coat, and I wondered how many bugs would be installed while I was out at sea. I would have to make an appointment at the Scientific Investigations Division to have the car electronically swept when I got back.

“We’re casting off in about ten minutes,” Nash was saying. “Go aboard and get yourself a drink.”

“This is some boat,” I said, admiring the vessel.

“Not a boat, it’s a ship. Actually, as you’ll come to see, the HMS Bounty is sort of a metaphor for my life’s work.” A statement that made no sense to me at all. “I went to a good deal of trouble to get it up here for this party. It usually berths in San Diego. See you aboard.”

He turned to greet other arriving guests as I climbed the gangplank and stepped onto the crowned wooden deck. There was a man standing amidships wearing a period British naval officer’s uniform and giving out information about the Bounty to a crowd of partiers.

I hovered in the back of the group and listened for a minute as he said, “She’s a hundred-twenty-feet long at the waterline and one-eighty at the rail, so you can see there’s a nice overhang, both fore and aft. This vessel has four hundred thousand board feet of lumber and ten miles of rigging on two masts. She weighs slightly more than five hundred displaced tons. There are four carriage cannons, two on each side. Each cannon has been decommissioned, but they once fired four-pound lead balls.”

He went on, but I wasn’t here for a lesson on old sailing ships of the Crown and stepped away to wander the deck and check out my fellow guests. It was a well-dressed, affluent crowd with a definite Hollywood tilt. I recognized the usual smattering of B-list celebrities and reality-show stars. Most of the women were young and dressed to distress. A four-piece string quartet was playing period chamber music on the fantail. Two bars set up on the main deck were doing a brisk business. A sign on a nearby easel announced their specialty was the Bounty mai tai, made with actual grog. Most everybody was trying one. So far, I estimated at least a hundred people were onboard.

I stepped up to the bar and ordered a bottled water. I intended to keep my wits about me for this cruise.

“You’d be in the category of last person on earth I’d expect to see here,” a man’s voice said.

I turned to see Frank Palgrave standing behind me, holding a mai tai, wearing white slacks and an aqua-colored Palm Springs-type shirt. A red sweater was tied jauntily around his neck. Back when I knew him, this kind of screwy Troy Donahue look would have never been a choice. In the intervening years Palgrave obviously had experienced a big emotional refit of some kind. In this glitzy setting, in my beige-on-beige getup I was beginning to feel like a smudge of dirt on polished glass.

“Nash invited me. Some bash. He sure knows a lot of rich, flashy people,” I said, indicating the crowd.

“He practiced here for six years. Hard not to get connected when you have a big, exciting personality like his.”

“And these swells don’t mind that he went to prison for embezzlement,” I said.

“Only makes his star shine brighter,” Palgrave said, smiling. “Fantasies of shower rape-it’s a secret Hollywood turn-on.”

We stood for a moment, neither quite sure how to continue.

“So Frank, what’s really going on here?” I finally said, trying to get something going.

“In what context?”

“Pick the context. You were a good cop once. Let’s start with what you’re doing working for this police saboteur?”

He hesitated, looked around, then pulled me away from the group at the bar and led me over to a vacant spot by the rail. He turned his back to the water so he could keep an eye on the crowd over my shoulder as he spoke.

“I work for him ’cause I got this troublesome little problem I haven’t been able to solve,” he began.

“What’s that?”

“I gotta eat to say alive.”

“You have a pension.”

“My ex-wife has my pension. After the divorce, all I ended up with is a shack so far out in the West Valley even meth cookers won’t go there.”

“So you sold out to this cop hater?”

He took a moment and then leaned in closer. “Listen, once you get past all the obvious bullshit, Nix isn’t such a bad guy.”

I started to speak, but Palgrave held up his hand.

“I know; I know. It looks bad on TV, but honestly, Shane, that Atlanta case was being screwed up. Nix actually performed a service there. Those APD cops were working it like a couple of Alzheimer’s patients. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they missed. That schizoid bum Nix found was crazy as a shit-house rat. He had a yellow sheet full of violent priors and he’d been wandering around in Piedmont Park for six months threatening people. Twice he attacked Atlanta PD patrol officers when they were called to get him to stop sleeping in the public toilet. Cole and Baron walked right past him and he was standing in plain view the whole time.”

“I talked to Cole. He says he’s not sure Fuzzy was the doer.”

“Right. Fuzzy. Those two imbeciles couldn’t even put a real name on him. Nash had to do that too. Before we aired, we did a deep background, found out the guy was named Joffa Hill.” Palgrave smiled. “Just another example of the slipshod fast-food way those two were working the case. God knows how many girls’ lives were saved because of Nix, and all Cole and Baron could do was bitch about it.”

“So, Nix Nash is straight and you’re happy to be working for him.”

“I’d rather be playing golf, but since I shank every other shot, my game won’t support me. As far as private gigs go, this one ain’t half-bad. Give him a chance. You might be surprised.”

Half an hour later, the mooring lines were thrown from the dock up to the deck crew, all of whom wore British navy uniforms, circa 1800. Then with two 375-horsepower John Deere diesel engines chugging stoutly beneath us, the magnificent vessel motored out of Marina del Rey at a stately four knots. We turned south, passing the Coast Guard station, then the UCLA Marine Aquatic Center, before finally clearing the breakwater and heading into open water.

I watched as the crew scaled rope ladders and unfurled the topsails on both masts. With 20 percent of the canvas up, you could feel the wind begin to take the boat, heeling it over slightly as we continued out.

I was here to collect intel, so I went looking for former FBI agent J. J. Blunt, Judge Web Russell, or Marcia Breen.

I found Marcia in the middle of a group of people. She spotted me and winked. A few minutes later she found a way to break free and joined me by the rail.

“You look really great,” she said. “It’s nice to see a little beige cotton mixed in with all these sequins.”

“My sparkle comes from inside.” I smiled and said, “You look pretty great yourself.”

She nodded demurely to accept my compliment. “So how’s the marriage going?” Holding my gaze longer than was necessary. “That working out like you wanted?”

“It’s great. We’re very happy.”

“As an old friend, I guess I should be glad,” she answered. “Unfortunately, I’m not.”

“We had our shot, Marcia. It didn’t gel. We’ve both moved on. Besides, when I was at the studio, I saw the way Nix looked at you.”

“The things some of us are willing to do for what’s left of our careers.” She smiled ruefully, then turned her gaze toward Nash, who was mingling with guests about twenty feet away on the far side of the deck.

“We won’t be able to talk for long because Nix doesn’t quite trust me with you,” she said. “He knows we used to date. He’s afraid I might get all giggly and accidentally let a few show secrets slip. You, on the other hand, know what a hard-ass I can be, so that’s never gonna happen.” She toyed with the plastic swizzle stick in her drink.

“Frank thinks Nash is a good guy,” I prodded.

She was silent for a few seconds. “I guess we all see what we want to.” Then she leaned slightly closer and lowered her voice: “Be very careful, Shane.”

“You want to give me something a little more definitive?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Just can’t. If you knew why, you’d understand. All I can tell you is watch your back, ’cause what’s coming will probably hit you hard.”

“There you are,” Nix Nash enthused as he moved up.

Now that we were at sea, he had added a white captain’s hat with gold braid on the visor. The snazzy lid was taking his already over-the-top costume to the edge of comedy. I would have said it made him look ridiculous, but I’ve learned any committed adversary, even one wearing a tutu, should command your complete undivided attention.

He looked at Marcia and said, “Would you excuse us, honey?”

“Of course,” she said brightly. “I was just on my way to talk to Brad and Larry about the script for next week’s show.” She smiled at me again and left.

“You have scripts?” I asked, in mock surprise.

Nash was shorter now because he was wearing boat shoes, not risking the three-inch Cuban heels on this rolling deck. He laughed good-naturedly and said, “I’m going to view your being here as a hopeful sign, Shane. Come on; I want to introduce you to a new, potentially exciting concept.”

I walked with him across the deck, then followed him down a narrow ladder to the crew quarters below.

I had no idea where we were going or what would happen next.