Vigilante

Alexa left before I did the next morning. I hadn’t slept well. When I awoke at eight, my head felt so fuzzy I was mainlining coffee trying to develop some focus and a heartbeat.

By nine o’clock I was struggling with what the hell you’re supposed to wear on an ocean cruise. Should I take my fancy nickel-plated 9mm Kimber automatic with the white bone handle or go unpacked? What should my nautical look be, or should I even try for one? I finally opted for a beige Brioni sport shirt, khaki slacks, and a pair of canvas deck shoes. For bling I added my small ten-ounce Airlight.38 in an ankle holster.

I got in the Acura and was backing out of the driveway when I noticed a gray Navigator with smoked windows parked at the curb at the end of the alley. I figured it was another V-TV mobile unit.

Then the door to the SUV opened and a gaunt six-foot-five giant with a silver-headed cane got out.

Lester Madrid.

He leaned against his front fender and crooked his index finger in my direction, beckoning me over like I was some crack whore on Main Street. I could see no way past him, so I opened the door and reluctantly walked over.

Lester had aged some in the last five years. He still looked nasty enough to eat your children and still didn’t carry an ounce of fat, but now his hair had begun to thin and go gray.

As I got closer, I said, “I don’t want to get into a dustup with you, Lester.”

“I came to deliver a message,” he growled in the ruptured, gravelly whisper that served as his normal speaking voice. “Stop trying to put your fucking Mendez homicide on my wife. If you don’t pay attention to this warning, you’ll be dealing with some critical issues.”

I was assuming he didn’t know yet that his name had become a part of the investigation in the Hannah Trumbull case. But with V-TV covering it, that probably wasn’t going to last long. I was trying to decide whether to lay it on him now to gain some tactical advantage or let it just come out naturally.

As I was pondering this, he said, “When did you turn into such a pussy? The Shane Scully I remember didn’t try and fuck up brother cops. He used to go to the asshole.”

“Go to the asshole” was an old department reference to cops who were so committed to catching criminals they would risk their own lives in the breakneck pursuit of any bad guy. Lester Madrid always went to the asshole. Trouble was, he killed most of them when he got there.

“Lester, this is a mistake,” I told him. “You don’t want to threaten me.”

“I’m not above a mistake,” he rasped. “How you recover is all that matters.”

“I’m sure Captain Madrid told you about the cell-phone video with her and Lita fighting.”

“Lita Mendez was a bleeding hemorrhoid. Somebody finally put that bitch at room temperature, which is exactly what needed to happen. We oughta throw the doer a parade. But either way, my wife isn’t the one who dropped her. You and your bullshit movie-producer partner are gonna get played by Nash like the douche bags you are. I’m here to tell you that will be the mistake you can’t recover from. My wife didn’t kill that chola.”

“Racial slurs?”

“I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t have the faggot PC police telling me what I can and can’t say. I call people exactly what they are now.”

I tried to evaluate this. Lester Madrid was six feet, five inches of gristle and bone, leaning on a cane, glaring, eyes cold and sharp as a box of tacks. He was no less dangerous today than he was ten years ago. This was a cop who had chilled almost a dozen bad guys and then gone home and slept without conscience. Had killing people just become too damn easy? Was that now Lester’s preferred way of solving his problems?

It was certainly conceivable that he or his wife could have been involved in Hannah’s death. I could easily see a chain of events where Stephanie confronted Nurse Trumbull in that hospital ER, threatening her over the affair with her husband, and then, when they didn’t break it off, killing her.

It was also possible that an argument had developed between Nurse Trumbull and Lester over his refusal to leave his wife. He could have been the one who killed Hannah. Both scenarios tracked. I decided this was probably the right moment to confront him after all. I took my shot.

“You used to date an open homicide named Hannah Trumbull back in 2006,” I said. “You and Stephanie were married when Hannah was murdered. That puts you on a very short list of suspects, along with your wife. Nash knows about it. He’s going to be using this stuff on his show. My suggestion is you should tell me what went down with Hannah. You’ll get a better hearing with me than with him.”

Lester didn’t even flinch.

“Just remember who you’re fucking with,” he said in that menacing whispery growl. Then he turned, got back inside the Navigator, started the engine, and sped away.

The morning was getting off to a bad start.

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