his client, keeping a hand on Cole’s shoulder as if to guide or protect him.
Gorman’s second chair, Janet Brown, was short, pudgy, with mouselike looks. A certain eerie resemblance to the victim. And, as such, a strategic member of Gorman’s team. If a woman like Janet Brown could believe in Rob Cole, defend him against charges that he had brutally murdered his wife, could he really be a bad man?
For the right price, Janet Brown would have posed as advocate to Caligula.
And then there was Rob Cole himself. A handsome grin with a whole lot of nothing behind it.
Cole was the kind of guy Parker took one look at and thought:
The difference was, a cute thirty-something jerk could still get a pass for arrogance. There was time for him to evolve into something better. A fifty-something jerk had passed the expiration date for change. Rob Cole would still be wearing fifties bowling shirts when he was seventy-five, and bragging to everyone at the rest home that that was his trademark and his public still loved it. The biggest recurring role of his career: starring as Rob Cole.
Cole played that part every day of his life. Every day was a three-act opera, and he was Camille. He had put on his good-man-wrongly-accused persona for the media. Noble and stoic. The tight-lipped, serious expression, head held high. The salt-and-pepper hair cut military-short. The wraparound ultra-black shades, cool but understated.
Most people didn’t want to search for a deeper level when they looked at the Rob Coles of the world. The facade was a showstopper, and that was as far as they went. The blessing and the curse of being a pretty face. The look was all people wanted to believe in, and because they didn’t really care if there was anything behind it, the face began to believe there wasn’t anything there to care about either. Good thing Rob had the face, or he wouldn’t have anything.
Gorman had dressed him for the potential jury in an impeccably cut conservative charcoal suit, charcoal shirt, and striped tie. A strong but understated look, showing respect for the court and the gravity of the charges against him. No one would see the bowling shirts and the trim-fitting jeans until the verdict was old news. And hopefully not even then.
A lot of powerful people wanted Rob Cole’s next look to be prison chambray. Only, Parker had a bad feeling that although Rob Cole might be an asshole, the one thing he wasn’t—no matter how many people wanted it—was guilty.
Parker’s phone rang as Cole and his group passed him. Andi was up on his shoulders, twisting around, trying to turn him with her knees like he was an Indian elephant. He shifted positions and pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“Parker.”
“Parker, it’s me, Ruiz. Where are you? At a riot?”
“Something like that,” Parker shouted, pressing his other ear closed with one finger. “What do you want? Besides my head on a platter.”
“I was just doing my job.”
“Yeah. I think Dr. Mengele said that too.”
“Your bike messenger called.”
“What?”
“I said, your bike—”
“No, I heard you. How do you know it was him?”
“He said his name was J. C. Damon.”
“And?”
“He said to be at Pershing Square at five twenty-five.”
“Hang on.”
Parker reached up and swatted at Kelly. “Ride’s over!”
She swung a leg around and slid down his back, patted his ass, and trotted over to her photographer. Parker walked away from the crowd.
“J. C. Damon called you and told you to tell me to be at Pershing Square at five twenty-five,” he repeated. “You think I’m a fucking idiot, Ruiz? You think you pulled the big one on me and I fell for it, so I must be stupid?”
“It’s not a setup.”
“Right. And you’re a virgin. Got anything else to sell me?”
“Look, fuck you, Parker,” she said. “Maybe I felt guilty for two seconds and thought I’d do something decent. The guy called and asked for you, said he got your name from Abby Lowell. If you don’t want it, go blow yourself. I’ll call RHD.”
“And you didn’t tell any of this to Bradley Kyle already?”
“You know what? Fine,” she said, disgusted. “You’re not going to believe anything I tell you. Do what you want.”
She hung up on him.
Parker slipped the phone back into his pocket and stood there, watching the last of the black cars drive away. The television news- people had already run back to their spots with the courthouse in the background to do their bits for the five o’clock news.
He would be a fool to trust Ruiz. Robbery-Homicide had taken the case. She had personally handed over whatever scraps he had left behind. She’d given them Davis’s address. She was an IA rat. Nothing she said could be believed. Bradley Kyle had probably been standing right there when she’d called.
Andi broke away from the media pack and walked across the grass to him. “Well, that’s all the fun I can have here,” she said. “Let’s go someplace romantic and you can tell me how one of the most beloved philanthropists in LA is hooked up with a homicidal maniac.”
“I’ve got to take a rain check.”
“Again with the rejection!” she said, rolling her eyes. “Where are you going? Are you seeing another reporter?”
“I’m going to Pershing Square.”
“What’s at Pershing Square besides dope dealers?”
“A circus,” Parker said, starting toward his car. “You should bring a photographer. I think there might even be clowns.”
41
Pershing Square is an oasis of green in the middle of downtown LA, a checkerboard area of the best and the baddest. Across Olive Street stood the grande dame of 1920s luxury: the Millennium Biltmore Hotel, where ladies in sweaters and pearls enjoyed high tea, and debutante balls were not a thing of the past. A block in the other direction, unemployed men with hungry eyes loitered outside of check-cashing places with heavy iron bars over the windows, and Hispanic women who only visited Beverly Hills through service entrances pushed baby carriages and shopped in cheap clothing stores where no one spoke English. Five blocks away, justice was doled out in federal and county courthouses, but here a crazy, homeless guy was taking a dump behind the statue of General Pershing.
The park was drawn out in rectangles of grass divided by strips of concrete and broad steps that transitioned one level to the next. Bright-colored square concrete structures that had a bunkerlike quality to them hid the escalators down into the parking garage. A 120-foot purple concrete campanile jutted up in the middle of it.
During the Christmas season an ice-skating rink was featured at one end of the park. Only in LA: people figure skating in seventy-degree weather with a backdrop of palm trees. The rink had been gone for a month.
Jace had always found the place too planned, the lines too horizontal. There was too much concrete in the middle of it. The sculptures were cool—not so much the traditional statues, but the huge rust-colored spheres that perched here and there on concrete pedestals.
But the best thing about Pershing Square was the openness of it. From his vantage point, Jace could see most of the park. He could see people coming, going, loitering. He could see the security guards who came up out
