“He’d lost his focus. He needed to know that I was there.”
“You ever do that kind of thing before?”
“No.”
“Then why did you do it tonight? Give me the real reason, Gamble. No bullshit. I’ve got X-ray vision. I’ll see through it.”
Lena moved to the window. She could see their new building. Tonight it was all lit up and looked like a work of art.
“Why’d you do it, Gamble?” Ramsey repeated. “Higgins is the district attorney.”
“Because I was angry,” she said, looking him in the eye. “Because they took Jacob Gant to trial for no reason. Because they didn’t have the brass to back out and say they were wrong. Because I could see Gant’s dead body on that bathroom floor with two bullets in his head. Because the guy who murdered Lily Hight is still out there. I was thinking about a lot of things, Chief.”
Ramsey took another deep pull on the cigarette. “Let me see your piece,” he said.
Lena drew her gun from its holster, gave it a quick check and passed it over. Ramsey ejected the mag and examined the weapon.
“Why do you carry a.45?” he asked.
“I like it.”
“Higgins told me that you fired a shot into the fence just above their heads.”
“I didn’t know who they were at that point.”
“I understand that. But when you figured it out … when you saw Higgins and Spadell standing in front of you with their hands raised … when you were thinking about what they did to Gant and you had all that shit in your head-I want to know whether or not you thought about shooting them. Did you, Gamble? Did you think about putting them down?”
She hesitated, guessing that Ramsey was hoping to trap her. When she finally nodded, something bloomed across his ruined face. Confirmation of some kind. She wondered when he would get to the part where he asked for her badge. It felt close.
“What stopped you?” he said.
“I’m a police officer. I took an oath.”
Ramsey jammed the mag into her gun and passed it back to her. She wasn’t sure what was happening anymore. She walked back to the window, steadying herself against the sill.
“Okay,” he said. “So they went to trial knowing that they were prosecuting the wrong man. Now they’re doing their best to cover everything up. But why do you think Higgins was at Bosco’s house? What’s he looking for that a security camera could pick up?”
She had asked Escabar the same question. Stray thoughts surfaced like how the mob had been able to keep J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, in their pocket for so many years. As it turned out, they’d managed to take a photograph of Hoover performing oral sex on another man-his assistant at the FBI and his longtime companion. The more she’d thought about it, the more sense it made. Johnny Bosco wasn’t a mob figure, but would have had similar needs. He ran Club 3 AM, a place where on any given night, a VIP could be driven to excess, get into trouble and need a free pass. Higgins already had a reputation for keeping celebrities, even trust fund babies, out of jail. It had come up during Lena’s last case when a TV actor driving drunk crashed his Land Rover, killing his friend in the passenger seat. It had come up even more recently when countless actresses charged with possession walked away free and clear.
“What do you think, Gamble? What’s Higgins looking for?”
“I can’t say with any certainty, Chief. But he’s been keyed up about that pile of coke we found from the very beginning.”
“And about Bosco’s reputation with drugs,” Ramsey said.
“He worked on you, and he tried the same thing with the medical examiner during the autopsy.”
“What’s Higgins doing at an autopsy?”
“That’s what I mean,” she said. “It’s unusual.”
Ramsey flashed a wicked smile. “He’s using,” he said. “And Bosco recorded it. He wanted something on Higgins just in case he ever needed to force the issue.”
“It’s possible,” she said. “Escabar told me that Higgins shows up just short of once a week.”
“He’s a casual user. And Bosco was his provider. Bosco would’ve given him the shit for free to get that kind of an insurance policy.” Ramsey crushed the head of his smoke inside the trash can. “What about Tim Hight? How close are you to putting him in the murder room at the club?”
“SID found blood on his shoe. Enough to work with. We should have the results soon.”
“But you’ve got nothing on him for killing his daughter.”
“Not yet.”
“Other than the fact that the sky’s falling and you’re the one holding the bag, you got any other issues, Gamble? Anything I should know about?”
“Dan Cobb,” she said. “He’s in this thing with Bennett. They’ve got a history. They go way back.”
“Vaughan told us about it before you got here. I know Cobb. I remember when he used to work here.”
Ramsey pulled another cigarette from Lena’s pack and lit up. When he noticed the light on the phone, he stared at it for a long time, then switched it off. Several moments passed in silence. As he joined her by the window, she could see him taking in the breadth of the city and thinking it all over. More time passed before he finally spoke, his voice low and raspy and shot for the night.
“There comes a point in every decent cop’s life when they’ve gotta do what they’ve gotta do,” he said. “That point started for you tonight. It started in Malibu when you stood up to an asshole like Higgins. I only wish I’d been there to fucking see it. I hope I dream about it tonight. I hope I see it in color. You get my drift, Gamble?”
“I think so,” she said quietly.
“I want you and Vaughan to keep going. I want you to take it as far as it goes.”
She met his eyes. Her head was spinning.
“Let the chips fall?” she said.
Ramsey nodded. “Let ’em fall, Gamble. We don’t need to advertise what we’re doing. The arrests will speak for themselves.”
“How’s Higgins gonna take the news that I’m still around?”
Ramsey glanced over his shoulder at the roll of hundred dollar bills on his desk. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “He didn’t mention the five grand, and you did. I’ll make sure he knows that I sent the bills over to SID for prints. If Bosco’s turn up on the money, Jimmy J. Higgins is dead.”
36
Green lights work both ways, she thought. They open the road ahead. At the same time, they force you to move forward-perhaps entering territory that you’re unfamiliar with, territory that comes with a price and no guarantee that you’ll make it back.
She found Vaughan waiting for her in the lobby. As they exited the building together and she walked him to his car in the visitor lot, he seemed jazzed that Ramsey had cut the strings and that they were finally free to work the case wherever the evidence took them.
“I need you in the morning,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Tim Hight’s producer is a guy named Pete London. He’s agreed to talk to us. They’ve worked together on and off for the last twenty years.”
“How did you get him to agree?”
“He called me this afternoon. It sounds like he wants to get something off his chest. He’s producing a reality TV show for one of the music channels. Hight directed the show for about a year, then stopped sometime after his daughter’s murder.”
“Did he fire Hight?”
