Piper?”
“Oh, no. We had a wonderful day. We partied until we both passed out in bed. I woke up-maybe something woke me up. Piper wasn’t there.”
“Then what happened?”
Danny dried his face with the sleeve of his gown and went on.
“I went out to look for Piper. It was totally dark outside, but I saw a car parked next to the Ferrari. It was right in the flower bed. No car should have been there. Then I saw a flashlight moving through the trees, and I started walking up the trail and calling Piper.
“All of a sudden, the light disappeared. I heard the car start up behind me, and I thought maybe Piper was having regrets, that she had called for someone to pick her up. But then…I found her shoe at the edge of the drop. I thought, ‘No, she can’t be down there,’ but when I looked over the edge…I knew there was nothing I could do for her. I called you. I called everyone.”
The guard came toward Danny’s bed and said, “Time’s up.”
Danny looked directly into Justine’s eyes. “I swear to you, Dr. Smith, I didn’t do that to Piper. You have to believe me. Someone is doing something to me. I don’t know what it is and I don’t know who’s doing it. But that car I saw at my cabin? Whoever owns it is the one who killed Piper.”
CHAPTER 82
Carmine Noccia’s Father was a thug; so was mine. Carmine and I had both gone to Ivy League schools, we’d both served in the Corps, and both our fathers had given us the keys to the family business.
Beyond that, Carmine Noccia and I had nothing in common.
Carmine was a third-generation killer, never caught, never even charged. The FBI had him on their watch list, but they had no evidence to support their certain knowledge that he’d had three people murdered.
There’d been no fingerprints. No smoking guns. No surveillance tape.
Snitches had been killed before testifying.
Carmine’s father, the don, was ready to retire, and Carmine was rumored to be stepping into his job-and more. According to the stories, the Noccia family was expanding east in the coming year, from their Vegas hub to Chicago.
It was unprecedented in Mob history for a satellite organization to return to its roots, but Noccia had brass and his father had raised him to accomplish big things.
The hijacked van stuffed with thirty million in pharmaceuticals had been the first major move in Carmine’s expansion plan, and now that same van was standing in his way. And because six months ago I’d reached out to Carmine to protect my brother from a lesson he might not have lived to regret, I was in bed with a mobster. On a first-name basis.
Noccia called me at around three in the morning. He didn’t say hello. He said that his distributors, having paid for the drugs, were very unhappy.
He’d made this point to me before.
I said, “We’re on the job, Carmine. I didn’t need the wake-up call.”
“We don’t have clocks around here,” he said.
Another way of saying that my time was his time.
I brought Noccia up to date on the plan going forward, and he hung up without saying good-bye.
I fell back to sleep.
I was running after Colleen, trying to tell her that I was sorry, but she wouldn’t stop running away from me. The phone rang again.
This time my caller was my good friend Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.
“I’m in the neighborhood, Jack. I’d be happy to stop by if there’s anything you’d like to tell me.”
“I told you, Mitch. I didn’t do it.”
Tandy laughed pleasantly and hung up.
By the time Justine phoned to report on Danny Whitman’s arrest on suspicion of murder, I was wide awake.
CHAPTER 83
I checked out of the Sun and drove to work, keeping the car to ten miles below the speed limit. Tandy tailed me to Figueroa Street, gave me a two-blast salute from his horn when I turned into the underground garage below my office building.
Mitchell Tandy was a hyena.
I walked into my office at half past seven, caught Justine’s second call that morning. She told me that Danny Whitman was in the hospital at TTCF.
I cringed just thinking about that place. It was like an ice-cold hand gripping the back of my neck: a bad feeling, and it was impossible to shake off.
“What do you think, Jack?” Justine said. “Should we cut Danny loose? Or should I work with him and his cast of sidekicks until I know whether or not he killed Piper Winnick?”
“Sounds to me like you think he’s innocent.”
“I’m leaning that way. He thinks someone is screwing with his head. Gaslighting him. Who would do that? What would they get out of it?”
Justine was the heroine of lost causes. When she got it wrong, she’d say, “Princess Do-Good strikes again.” But her instincts were good. The worst you could say about Justine was that she put in too much time on her cases and got too emotionally involved.
That said, if she could prove Whitman innocent, that would be a point for Private. A point we needed.
“It’s your call,” I said.
I got into Cruz’s report on his interviews at a Cuban club in Hollywood, and when Val Kenney came in at eight, I asked her to break down the report and flag items for follow-up.
While Cody and Val worked outside my office, I put some time in on California v. Jack Morgan, found out a couple of things about Colleen Molloy that she hadn’t told me. I was digging into that when Val came in. “I’ve got something on the woman Cruz met with last night,” she said.
“Carmelita Gomez?”
“Karen Ricci. The woman in the wheelchair.”
“Go on.”
“Before she was Karen Ricci, she was Karen Keyes. She did a five-year stretch at the women’s jail for extortion. There was a riot and she got clubbed. That’s how she ended up in the wheelchair. She’s out early for good behavior.”
Val was putting her time with the Miami PD to good use. I was about to tell her to follow up on Ricci, but she wasn’t done yet.
“I’ve got something else, Jack. The story Carmelita Gomez told Cruz isn’t right. She said that a driver named Billy Moufan tipped her off.”
“He was Gomez’s driver, right?”
“That’s what she said. She told Cruz that after her john was killed at the Seaview, her driver, Billy Moufan, told her that a limo driver might have done it, that this same limo driver may have killed the john at the Moon.
“But no one named Billy or William Moufan has ever been issued a chauffeur’s license in California. I can’t find that name in any database, no matter how I spell it.”
“So you’re saying she lied to Cruz.”
Val said, “At best, she was concealing the name of the driver who tipped her off.”
I asked Val to brief Cruz, then Cody buzzed me, saying Jinx Poole was on line one.
