Cronin. Homicide. She needs to speak with you, urgently.”
Koulos scowled. The buzzing of conversation rose up from the tables. Koulos spoke into the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. and Mrs. Winnick, I’m very sorry for the interruption. This is some kind of prank, and it’s in very poor taste. Will someone please call security?”
Nora crossed the stage. She had her badge in her hand and three uniformed officers following her as she came toward Koulos. She said, “Mr. Koulos, please put your hands behind your back.”
“Are you crazy?” Koulos peered out into the audience. “I need help here. Alan? Give me a hand, will you?”
All conversation died-then Koulos panicked.
He broke away from the podium, knocking the microphone to the floor. He ran toward the stage door, but the cops were quicker and they brought him down, pulling back his arms for Nora, who clapped on the handcuffs.
The fallen microphone carried Koulos’s desperate cries for help and Nora Cronin’s response.
“Mervin Koulos, you’re under arrest for the murder of Piper Winnick.”
Now the audience panicked too. Women screamed. Chairs went over.
Koulos yelled at Nora over the recitation of the Miranda warnings. “So much hell is going to rain down on you. You’ll be a meter maid by the time I’m done with you. If you’re that lucky.”
Justine watched the cops drag Koulos to his feet. Then she turned away and walked down the stage steps, her job done.
As she moved toward the exit, she thought about greed: how Koulos had lived too large, had borrowed too much, had put every penny into this film starring Danny Whitman, a guy too damaged to bring it off.
But Koulos had an insurance policy on the film in the form of a completion bond worth a hundred million dollars.
He wouldn’t be collecting that money now.
Jack was waiting for her near the door. He put his hand to her waist and walked her out.
“Well played,” Jack said to Justine. “Well played and well done.”
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 98
It was eight P.M.
I was standing just inside Private’s front entrance, saying good night to my friend and attorney Eric Caine. He hadn’t said so directly, but he had let me know that without new evidence, my defense in the case of California v. Jack Morgan was looking bad.
As I closed the door, a storm came up out of the blue. Rain slashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows of the building and haloed the headlights of the traffic streaming along Figueroa.
Caine ran to his car, and I headed up the winding staircase to my office, where I planned to put in another four or five hours of work on my own behalf.
As I climbed the quarter-turn span between the third and fourth floors, I saw Justine coming down.
She was still wearing the black dress she had worn to Piper Winnick’s memorial service, and seeing her sent a jolt to my heart, as it did every time.
I said, “Hey.”
Justine returned the hey and kept going down the stairs. I stopped and said, “Justine, did you eat? Let’s go out and celebrate your Koulos bust-”
“No, thanks anyway, Jack. I’m wiped out. I can’t wait to get home.”
“Are you sure linguini marinara and some good wine wouldn’t beat being home alone? I need to talk to you.”
“Not tonight, Jack. Ask Cody to fit me into your schedule tomorrow.”
She started to pass me on the stairs, and I didn’t like it. She wasn’t tired so much as she didn’t want to deal with me. As though I were a guy standing behind her in line at Starbucks, breathing down her neck and yakking into his phone at the same time.
I said, “Then spare me a couple of minutes now. Are you going to take that job offer? I have to know.”
Justine sighed, shifted her weight, adjusted the strap on her shoulder bag.
“They’re matching my compensation plus fifteen percent.”
“So you’ve made your decision?”
“I like Private. I like my job.”
“Stay, Justine. I’ll match their offer and more.”
“Thanks. Let me think about it overnight.”
“You’re mad at me, Justine. I understand. But will you please talk to me? I want to talk about…us.”
Justine gave me the subzero look that I remembered well from fights we’d had when we lived together.
“There is no ‘us,’” Jack,” she snapped, “and I’m not sure there ever was. But I still give a damn. So as your friend, I want to say don’t ever take your eyes off Tommy.”
After the memorial service, I’d tailed Tommy’s car from his office to his house, watched him tinker with a sprinkler and then go inside for his home-cooked meal.
His phone was tapped, his car was bugged, and right now, Mo-bot was monitoring the live feed from the “spy eyes” I’d personally trained on his home.
I said, “Short of implanting a device in his skull, there’s not much more I can do.”
“Tommy hit on me again, Jack. I don’t take him seriously, but you should.”
Again?
Tommy had hit on Justine again?
I felt a knife slide into my gut. Not just because Tommy was still trying to beat me at girls, but because Justine had filed the edge of this news so that it would really cut deep.
I said, “Did you go out with him?”
“When you were in prison. Strictly business. At least it was for me.”
“Nice one, Justine. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”
Justine said, “See you tomorrow,” then she took the outside rail and walked past me.
I stood on the staircase until I could no longer hear the sound of her heels striking metal treads.
Point taken, Justine.
Parting shot duly noted.
CHAPTER 99
I drank down a Red Bull in the break room while I waited for coffee to brew. I thought of a few comebacks for Justine-mostly why she should forgive my completely unpremeditated good-bye tryst with Colleen.
I’m human. I’m sorry. I couldn’t possibly be more sorry.
Why couldn’t she forgive me?
I went to my office, booted up my laptop, opened files in the “Colleen” folder, and revisited facts that Colleen had never told me.
Item: Right out of high school, Colleen had married a man named Kevin Molloy. The marriage was annulled six months later, but Colleen had kept her married name. In the year that Colleen and I had dated, she’d never mentioned an ex-husband, not once.
