through all eighteen months. I need you to work quickly though.”
“I understand,” he said. “I’ll do it for Johnny.”
He killed his drink, and Lena could tell that he was still tossing something over in his mind. As she studied his face, she wasn’t sure that she could trust him. And when it came to Higgins, she still thought that he was holding out on her. But she didn’t have much choice. Not with her cell phone vibrating in her pocket. It was after 11:00 p.m. and she could see her supervisor’s name flashing on the touch screen. Somehow she doubted that Barrera was calling just to check in.
“You cool?” Barrera asked.
His voice was stuck in neutral. She couldn’t get a read on him.
“I’m good,” she said.
“You need to come in, Lena. We’re burning the midnight oil down here. Sixth floor, Deputy Chief Ramsey’s office.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Good,” he said. “Sooner is better than later.”
35
Ramsey’s door was open, the overhead lights switched off, his office illuminated by a couple of table lamps spread about the room. Lena tried not to show any surprise when she saw Vaughan sitting at a small meeting table. Ramsey was behind his desk watching Barrera type something into a notebook computer. She had expected to see Higgins, but he wasn’t here.
Ramsey pointed to a chair without saying anything, his steel blue eyes pinned on her. The silence was overwhelming. The weight of the air made it hard to breathe. She glanced over at Vaughan, who nodded at her almost imperceptibly. As his eyes moved slowly but deliberately across the room, Lena followed them to the phone on the credenza behind Ramsey’s back. The line light was burning. Someone was listening over the speaker phone. She didn’t think that it would be Higgins. And while it might have been Chief Logan, still on the East Coast recruiting students for SID, it could easily have been something much darker. She took a quick look around the office, wondering if Internal Affairs had hidden a camera somewhere.
Ramsey leaned over his desk. “Mr. Vaughan has already informed us that Jacob Gant passed a polygraph six weeks before the trial. Did Paladino use one of his people?”
“No,” she said. “One of ours.”
“Who?”
“Cesar Rodriguez.”
Ramsey grimaced like he’d just eaten bad food, then rubbed his hand over his shaved head. As Lena gazed at his rough face, he seemed both worried and amped up-a combination that on any other night would have made him all the more frightening. But not now-not with so much on the line.
“Well, let’s have it,” he said. “What happened in Malibu, Gamble?”
She decided not to dwell on the consequences and just get it out of her system. Tell them what happened and worry about defending herself later. She got out of the chair and started emptying her pockets on Ramsey’s desk. Her voice was low and scratchy, but didn’t crack.
“The district attorney broke into Johnny Bosco’s house with the help of a man named Jerry Spadell,” she said. “They used this set of lock picks to get past the front door. I wasn’t there long enough to see how they beat the alarm system. But Spadell looked like the kind of guy who could handle the job. I found this.38 on him and I don’t think that it’s registered. I found five grand in Higgins’s pocket. I think it’s Bosco’s money, and that the district attorney stole it from the house.”
Ramsey traded looks with Barrera. “Higgins didn’t mention the money.”
“I didn’t think he would,” Lena said. “When I identified myself as a police officer through the front door, both he and Spadell tried to make a run for it.”
“He didn’t mention that either,” Ramsey said.
Lena sat down at the table with Vaughan. She couldn’t get a sense of where things were going. She had expected her termination to be quick and decisive. Expected to hear Ramsey’s smoked-out voice raging in her ear. No matter what the circumstances, she had fired her weapon at the district attorney. Most politicians have a thing about being shot at. It’s not just a matter of form.
Ramsey got to his feet, glancing at Lena and Vaughan as he moved to the window. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s my take. The city is in fucking strife over the murder of a teenage girl. Not only did we blow the fucking trial, we got the wrong fucking guy. And now the wrong fucking guy and another guy with clout are both fucking dead. Aside from what’s happening with Higgins and his bullshit band of clowns, that pretty much sums up where we’re at, right?”
Lena glanced at Vaughan and they nodded.
Ramsey turned to Barrera. “You ready?”
Barrera gave him a look, then spun his computer around. “You’re being followed, Lena. Dick Harvey’s been on your back all day. And he’s shooting video. It’s on the Web, and it’s on TV. Every part of your day until tonight when you lost him on the Pacific Coast Highway.”
She remembered seeing a white van, but not the driver’s face. Something about the van had made her feel uneasy, so she’d decided to give the new car a run once she found enough road.
Barrera pointed to the monitor. The
“How did he know Lena was talking to me?” Vaughan said.
Ramsey waved his hand through the air, indicating that he wanted the computer shut down. “Harvey knew it was you because he hired a lip reader. Gamble used your name.”
Vaughan traded looks with Lena, then turned back to Ramsey.
“How much of what we said did he get?”
“Not enough to reveal what you two were up to,” Ramsey said. “Most of the time Gamble’s mouth was below the dashboard. But I heard enough to know that this shithead is a real problem. And it’s been my experience that guys like this don’t stop. They just keep coming. Harvey wants to think that he’s been wronged. He spent that night in jail convincing himself that he was wronged. He’s itching for a lawsuit and the publicity that would come with that. So both of you guys are on notice, okay?”
Vaughan nodded again. Ramsey pushed Spadell’s revolver aside and sat on the edge of his desk.
“Now I want to talk to Gamble alone,” he said. “If you guys would excuse us.”
Lena watched Vaughan and Barrera get up and head for the door. Vaughan turned back to her and shot a look of support her way, but Barrera closed the door. And then she was alone with Deputy Chief Albert Ramsey. Alone and waiting for him to deliver the blow. He was still seated on his desk, still staring at her with those hard eyes of his.
“I saw you smoking a cigarette on Harvey’s Web site,” he said finally. “Where’s the pack?”
She patted down her jacket and found the pack in her pocket. Ramsey tapped a cigarette out and lit up with a lighter he kept in his top desk drawer. He took a hard first pull on the thing, then paused a moment before he blew out the smoke.
“You gonna have one?” he said to her.
Lena shook her head. “No thanks.”
Ramsey sat down at his desk and pulled the trash can closer. After tapping the ash into the can, he turned and gave Lena another long look.
“Higgins said that you hit him in the balls with your gun tonight.”
Lena felt the pull in her chest and struggled to find her voice. “I just gave him a tap,” she said finally.
“Why?”
