fathers refereeing, and none of the fouls under the basket were getting called. At halftime, our dejected Huntington House team was sitting on benches in the guest locker room of this expensive private school gym, complaining about how unfair it was and how we'd never win with them cheating like that. Our coach was a tough old duck, and he used to scream a lot when the team was losing. But that afternoon he taught me a great lesson.
'All you guys are doing is bitching about stuff you can't change,' our crusty old coach said. 'Bitching how this guy's fouling you, or how the refs aren't making the calls. Well, welcome to the real world, boys. If you fret about stuff you can't control, I guarantee you'll always lose.'
Then he'd told us that we could only play our game, not the other guy's. It was such a simple concept that it was often overlooked. We went out in the second half and played our game on their court and won.
Alexa was who she was, and whatever choices in her life led her to this, they were hers, not mine. It was out of my hands. It wasn't my game. Despite the overpowering evidence to the contrary, some part of me still prayed it was wrong. Some inkling deep inside still told me that it was. All of it the murder, the attempted suicide, the answering machine confession, and now the e-mails with the damning blackmail note. But it really didn't matter, because I knew I still loved her. The thought that she was lying in a coma and might never recover still devastated me. I knew in that instant that whatever the reasons for all of this, I couldn't let them beat me. I was getting fouled, but if I didn't want to lose, I had to ignore the bad calls and play my own game.
I sat up and looked at the computer. The damning e-mails were still up on the screen. David Slade was dead. Alexa was in a desperate fight for her life. She might have had an affair with him, but I just couldn't believe she would put him in her cuffs and execute him gangland style. Not Alexa. Not the woman who turned my life around and taught me how to love. In accounting, they teach if your balance is off by only a few cents, those few cents might be hiding a much larger error. This balance was off, and that's what I was hoping for.
Broken-hearted, I packed up Alexa's computer. I took one last look back at the faded decor before closing the door. I knew I would carry this ugliness to my grave. I walked out of the hotel and back to the parking lot. As I unlocked my car door, I was sure of only one thing.
This wasn't over.
Chapter 29
Here was my predicament:
It was five o'clock and the grace period Mike Ramsey had given me was almost over. I had Alexa's computer, but given the content, there was no way I was turning it over. Going to UCLA at seven-thirty would be risky because if Deputy Chief Ramsey made good on his promise, the PSB dicks could be there waiting for me. That meant I should stay away from that hospital at all costs. At least that was my excuse. But I suspected the real reason I didn't go was because, deep down, I wanted to run from this. I couldn't face Alexa, even in a coma.
Instead, I decided to fall back on police work and see if I could run a surveillance on the white sister. I tried to convince myself that right now that was more important; but it was just cowardice.
At ten to six, I parked a few hundred yards up the road from Stacy Maluga's Malibu estate. I got out of the Acura and walked slowly back to a spot where I could see the hedge-lined, wrought-iron fence that framed the property. I was close enough to the front gate to see the manicured gardens through the big, gold-scripted M, but at the same time was out of range of the driveway cameras. I was pretty sure that KZ and Insane Wayne weren't in the security lounge looking at a wall of video monitors. Those two ace-cool busters were probably drinking Mai-Tais out by the pool with Stacy. But why take a chance?
I found a protected place out of the late afternoon sun and sat on the ground. From this vantage point, I could just barely see the driveway. I opened the little package from ESD and removed Stacy's pager and a small hand-held monitor. There was a short memo attached from the ESD technician who had installed the bug. It contained an inventory list and brief instructions, which I read carefully.
This two-way listening device is a VXT voice-activated room transmitter and is inside a Motorola pager with the number (800) 765-3333. The device has an output power of 20 MW at 100–120 MHz. Range is 1,000 meters. Batt life is approximately twenty-five hours. Inventory List:
1 Motorola Pager (VXT device installed) 1 VXT Radio Receiver with earplug 1 extra 9 V battery pack FOR QUESTIONS: Call Earl Fellows ESD (310) 555-5770
I turned on the receiver unit and set it to the correct frequency, then clipped it on my belt and put the earplug in my jacket pocket.
Since the pager had been stolen off Stacy's home bar, my problem was how to get it back into her purse without causing suspicion. I had a plan for that, which I thought might work.
It entailed following her when she left the mansion. But since I had no idea what her social plans for the evening were, all I could do was sit here and wait.
I tried to keep my mind off what had just happened with Alexa by concentrating on Stacy and Lou Maluga, looking for a possible motive. I began examining Stacy's relationship with David Slade and her estranged marriage with Lou. That, of course, put me right back on Alexa's relationship with Slade and my own marriage. I finally forced myself to stop thinking about it because in the end, my thoughts all came painfully back to Alexa.
At six-fifteen I heard a loud squeaking sound followed by a rattling of metal chain as the huge wrought-iron gate was cranked wide.
I ran back to the Acura and put on a baseball cap and some dark glasses I keep in my glove box. Then I started the engine. I needed to time this just right. I didn't know if the gate had been opened from the house or with a remote while the vehicle was heading down the long drive. I didn't know if it was Stacy or just one of the steroid twins leaving the mansion. That meant I had to get a passing look inside the car as it was leaving the estate. I sort of played the timing by ear and after what seemed like the right span, put the Acura in drive, and pulled away from my parking spot. The idea was to pass the gate just as the car was coming out of the drive and the occupants were looking for cross-traffic. If they were concerned about oncoming cars, hopefully they wouldn't recognize me.
But I blew the timing. I got there thirty seconds too early. A tan Rolls-Royce Phantom with personalized plates that said wht sugr was parked in the drive with the engine idling. Had to be her. I couldn't see the drive because the low afternoon sun had blown out the windshield with reflected light. I had no choice but to keep driving right on past.
About a quarter mile down the road, I spotted a switchback driveway and hung a right, pulling off the road to a spot where I was out of sight of cars passing on Oceanridge Drive. I shifted into park and took my foot off the brake to douse my taillights and waited. If the Rolls was headed to Malibu, it would quickly pass the place where I was waiting. If it was going to L. A. via the Ventura Freeway, it was already headed down the other side of the mountain, away from me.
I waited for three minutes. The car didn't pass. I'd guessed wrong.
'Damn,' I muttered, then backed down the drive onto Oceanridge, right into the path of the oncoming Rolls. Whoever was driving honked the horn angrily, swerved out of my way, and continued on toward Malibu. It was low comedy. I couldn't have screwed it up worse if I'd been wearing clown makeup and a rubber nose.
My car had been spotted, but I was out of time and options, so I hung a U and followed. One of the good things about running a tail in a silver Acura is that the car looks like half the iron on the road. It blends in. A Rolls- Royce Phantom, on the other hand, is so wide and tall, it's hard to lose. You can tail one of those parade floats from three or four cars back and still keep visual contact.
The big, elegant car hummed out of Malibu down the Coast Highway. It turned left on Sunset Boulevard, and twenty minutes later I was six car-lengths back, negotiating the twisting turns near Mandeville Canyon. We continued on Sunset past UCLA, into Westwood. Expensive real estate slipped by on both sides of my windows; long rolling lawns fronted big Colonial and French Regency houses. Everybody had a nice gold initial on their wrought-iron gate.
The Rolls turned right off Sunset at Doheny and went down the hill to Santa Monica Boulevard where it pulled into a valet stand in front of a famous L. A. nightclub and old-time music biz watering hole called The Troubadour. The front of the club was painted completely black. It had been a trendy spot for new bands to perform in the eighties but recently the place had gone retro. However, over the last two decades a lot of music acts had been
