“Stop,” he said. “Or I’ll fucking shoot.”
34
Lena rolled past the gate at Club 3 AM and pulled around the building. The place was closed tonight with only two cars in the lot. It was a safe bet that the Toyota pickup belonged to the guard she’d just passed, and that Dante Escabar drove the Ferrari.
As she parked and walked up the steps around the fountain, it felt like she was on a timer.
Once the sheriff’s deputies had cooled down, she identified herself and told them that she had walked in on a robbery. She left most of their questions blank, claimed that she didn’t see the intruders but thought that the DVDs in the living room might be related to her own investigation. It wouldn’t help though. Because the Sheriff’s Department serviced the address, getting the DVDs into Henry Rollins’s hands at SID would not be seamless. It could take time. And it could become complicated. Because celebrities were involved, privacy issues could surface and attorneys representing the club could slow things down. But even more, at a certain point in the very short term, Deputy Chief Ramsey would be calling her. Given the story Higgins was probably telling him, there was the chance that Ramsey might become aggressive and have her picked up.
She reached the top step and found Escabar holding the door for her. After she entered, he pulled the door closed and locked the place up. Then he led her into the bar and offered her a stool.
“How’s your night going?” he said. “How’s business?”
She could hear the sarcasm in his voice, and watched him step behind the bar and pour a bourbon over ice. He was wearing black leather pants, and his hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Even in the dim candlelight, his face seemed paler than the other night and it looked like he wasn’t getting much sleep.
Lena grabbed a stool and sat down. “I just caught the district attorney of Los Angeles burglarizing your dead partner’s home in Malibu.”
Escabar smiled at the thought. “What was he looking for?”
“You tell me.”
“Could have been anything.”
He reached for his pack of cigarettes. Beside the pack Lena noticed a 9-mm Glock with the safety switched off. She watched him light up, then return the pack to its place beside the gun.
“You staying?” he asked. “You want something to drink?”
“No thanks. I’m on a short leash tonight.”
He met her eyes and pursed his lips. For a brief moment he seemed amused.
“Does Higgins spend a lot of time here?” she said.
“He isn’t a regular, if that’s what you mean. Once or twice a month. Sometimes more.”
Lena gave Escabar a long look. “They weren’t really friends, were they?”
He took a drag on the cigarette and shrugged.
“Come on, Dante. Bosco and Higgins weren’t friends.”
Those pursed lips were back. “I guess you could call it a matter of convenience.”
“But that’s all over now,” she said. “That’s why you left the cocaine upstairs. You hate Higgins. Anything you can do to embarrass him, you’ll do.”
She had been thinking about it on the drive over. Higgins breaking into Bosco’s house could only mean one thing. Escabar’s gun on the bar felt like verification.
“Let’s just say that we come from different worlds,” Escabar said. “I don’t need Higgins the way Johnny did.”
“It’s obvious that your partner had something on him. And now Higgins is searching for it. He was going through video taken from your security cameras here at the club. DVDs that your partner kept at home. Did Higgins use drugs? Is that what Johnny had on him? Video of Higgins doing coke?”
“I can’t answer that because I don’t know.”
“Why are you holding back?”
Escabar glanced at his gun and lowered his voice. “Because the world is a scary place, Detective Gamble. Because crime is what the powerful say it is. You could be a Wall Street motherfucker who stole fifty billion dollars-but that’s okay because the government says it is. Shit, they’ll do everything they can to bail you out. But try stealing a frozen dinner from a market on Pico Boulevard because you’re starving to death. If it’s strike three on a three strike count those fucking assholes will put you away for twenty years and use it as a cheap talking point to get into politics. So don’t ask me about holding back. Crime is what the man says it is. Nothing more and nothing less-and I don’t have Johnny’s clout. Things are different now.”
Escabar’s voice faded into silence. There was a certain sadness to it.
“Are you afraid of Higgins?” she asked. “Has he threatened you in some way?”
“Not at all. I just don’t want to get chewed up in the grind.”
“If you’re not worried, why is that gun on the bar?”
He shrugged without an answer, then took a bigger pull on that glass of bourbon.
“Why did Bosco keep security videos at his house?” she said.
“You sure ask a lot of questions, Lena Gamble.”
She coaxed him on with a look.
“Because of our clients,” he said finally. “Because they’re celebrities. We need a record of what happens in the public areas of the club. It’s like an insurance policy. Johnny had backups made and moved them to a second location, just in case something happened here like a fire or another earthquake. He probably should have put them in a vault somewhere, but he didn’t.”
“Higgins was searching through the last eighteen months.”
Escabar gave her a look like he didn’t know or couldn’t guess what that meant.
“Are the DVDs at Bosco’s house a complete backup?” she said.
“Johnny handled that, not me.”
“But everything’s here, right?”
“Sure,” he said. “What are you getting at?”
“Just two questions,” she said. “Two loose ends. You respected your partner. You admired him. Your life changed when you met him and he gave you a job. Johnny Bosco was bigger than life. An L.A. success story. The front man for a club that catered to everybody who’s anybody in the business. An exclusive club where people with clout met other people with clout. So, why would he have risked any part of his world and agreed to help Jacob Gant when everyone in the city thought Gant murdered Lily Hight and got away with it? Why would Johnny Bosco have agreed to help Gant when the result would have embarrassed the district attorney and everyone connected with the trial? Like you said, their relationship may have been only one of convenience. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary. Because Gant was involved, because a teenage girl is dead, Higgins would have been embarrassed publicly with no way back. So tell me, why was your partner willing to put everything on the line?”
Escabar remained silent, his wheels turning. “Are you trying to say that Gant didn’t kill the girl?” he said finally. “That Johnny knew?”
Lena nodded slowly. From the look on his face, she could tell that he was hearing it for the first time. Something shocking enough to deaden nerves. But she could also see him putting it together. The next logical step.
If Johnny Bosco knew that Jacob Gant was innocent, so did the district attorney.
“How can I help?” he said.
“The security videos we found tonight are probably gonna be tied up for a while. I need to know what’s on them. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s a lot more than that. But you’re here every night. You know everyone involved better than anyone else. I’d like you to go through your footage and let me know what you find. I’m gonna guess that you’ll know what it is when you see it.”
“You want me to start eighteen months back?”
“I’m more concerned about the month leading up to Lily Hight’s murder. After that, sure, make a pass
