CHAPTER 82
Carmine Noccia’s Father was a thug; so was mine. Carmine and I had both gone to Ivy League schools, we’d both served in the Corps, and both our fathers had given us the keys to the family business.
Beyond that, Carmine Noccia and I had nothing in common.
Carmine was a third-generation killer, never caught, never even charged. The FBI had him on their watch list, but they had no evidence to support their certain knowledge that he’d had three people murdered.
There’d been no fingerprints. No smoking guns. No surveillance tape.
Snitches had been killed before testifying.
Carmine’s father, the don, was ready to retire, and Carmine was rumored to be stepping into his job-and more. According to the stories, the Noccia family was expanding east in the coming year, from their Vegas hub to Chicago.
It was unprecedented in Mob history for a satellite organization to return to its roots, but Noccia had brass and his father had raised him to accomplish big things.
The hijacked van stuffed with thirty million in pharmaceuticals had been the first major move in Carmine’s expansion plan, and now that same van was standing in his way. And because six months ago I’d reached out to Carmine to protect my brother from a lesson he might not have lived to regret, I was in bed with a mobster. On a first-name basis.
Noccia called me at around three in the morning. He didn’t say hello. He said that his distributors, having paid for the drugs, were very unhappy.
He’d made this point to me before.
I said, “We’re on the job, Carmine. I didn’t need the wake-up call.”
“We don’t have clocks around here,” he said.
Another way of saying that my time was his time.
I brought Noccia up to date on the plan going forward, and he hung up without saying good-bye.
I fell back to sleep.
I was running after Colleen, trying to tell her that I was sorry, but she wouldn’t stop running away from me. The phone rang again.
This time my caller was my good friend Lieutenant Mitchell Tandy.
“I’m in the neighborhood, Jack. I’d be happy to stop by if there’s anything you’d like to tell me.”
“I told you, Mitch. I didn’t do it.”
Tandy laughed pleasantly and hung up.
By the time Justine phoned to report on Danny Whitman’s arrest on suspicion of murder, I was wide awake.
CHAPTER 83
I checked out of the Sun and drove to work, keeping the car to ten miles below the speed limit. Tandy tailed me to Figueroa Street, gave me a two-blast salute from his horn when I turned into the underground garage below my office building.
Mitchell Tandy was a hyena.
I walked into my office at half past seven, caught Justine’s second call that morning. She told me that Danny Whitman was in the hospital at TTCF.
I cringed just thinking about that place. It was like an ice-cold hand gripping the back of my neck: a bad feeling, and it was impossible to shake off.
“What do you think, Jack?” Justine said. “Should we cut Danny loose? Or should I work with him and his cast of sidekicks until I know whether or not he killed Piper Winnick?”
“Sounds to me like you think he’s innocent.”
“I’m leaning that way. He thinks someone is screwing with his head. Gaslighting him. Who would do that? What would they get out of it?”
Justine was the heroine of lost causes. When she got it wrong, she’d say, “Princess Do-Good strikes again.” But her instincts were good. The worst you could say about Justine was that she put in too much time on her cases and got too emotionally involved.
That said, if she could prove Whitman innocent, that would be a point for Private. A point we needed.
“It’s your call,” I said.
I got into Cruz’s report on his interviews at a Cuban club in Hollywood, and when Val Kenney came in at eight, I asked her to break down the report and flag items for follow-up.
While Cody and Val worked outside my office, I put some time in on California v. Jack Morgan, found out a couple of things about Colleen Molloy that she hadn’t told me. I was digging into that when Val came in. “I’ve got something on the woman Cruz met with last night,” she said.
“Carmelita Gomez?”
“Karen Ricci. The woman in the wheelchair.”
“Go on.”
“Before she was Karen Ricci, she was Karen Keyes. She did a five-year stretch at the women’s jail for extortion. There was a riot and she got clubbed. That’s how she ended up in the wheelchair. She’s out early for good behavior.”
Val was putting her time with the Miami PD to good use. I was about to tell her to follow up on Ricci, but she wasn’t done yet.
“I’ve got something else, Jack. The story Carmelita Gomez told Cruz isn’t right. She said that a driver named Billy Moufan tipped her off.”
“He was Gomez’s driver, right?”
“That’s what she said. She told Cruz that after her john was killed at the Seaview, her driver, Billy Moufan, told her that a limo driver might have done it, that this same limo driver may have killed the john at the Moon.
“But no one named Billy or William Moufan has ever been issued a chauffeur’s license in California. I can’t find that name in any database, no matter how I spell it.”
“So you’re saying she lied to Cruz.”
Val said, “At best, she was concealing the name of the driver who tipped her off.”
I asked Val to brief Cruz, then Cody buzzed me, saying Jinx Poole was on line one.
I took the call.
Jinx said, “Can you have dinner with me, tonight, Jack? It’s important.”
CHAPTER 84
At one-fifteen in the afternoon, Del Rio and Cruz were parked inside the big lot under the shadow of the 96th Street bridge. The lot was a mile and a half from LAX, bounded by the eight-lane Sepulveda Boulevard and a loop of the Sky Way. Limos, taxis, and other commercial transport continually streamed in and queued up under alphabetical signs, waiting to enter the airport.
They were watching one guy in particular, Paul Ricci, a bouncer from Havana, married to the tipster in the wheelchair. Ricci was shooting the bull with three other drivers.
Ricci glanced at the Private fleet car, then opened the door to his own car and got a sandwich out of a cooler. He called out to one of the other drivers, “Baxter. You got any Grey Poupon?”
Baxter laughed, said, “I’ll give you a little brown poop-on. How’s that?”
Watching this from inside the Mercedes, Cruz said to Del Rio, “That’s him. Ricci is the one in the cheap suit and the chauffeur’s hat.”
Del Rio put on his jacket, said to Cruz, “Can you see my gun under this?”
Cruz said, “You look like you’re packing even when you’re sleeping.”
Del Rio said, “That’s good, because I want Ricci to freeze in place. I don’t want to chase the guy. I kinda twisted my foot when I was rock climbing.”
Cruz said, “Aww. Face it, Rick, you’re getting old.”
Del Rio told Cruz that he wasn’t old and that he could still beat the crap outta anyone his size.
“You don’t have to do that, Rick. I’ll protect you,” said Cruz.
Del Rio gave Cruz an evil look.
Cruz laughed, tightened the band on his ponytail. When it was the way he liked it, he said, “Ready, pardner?”
Together, Cruz and Del Rio walked over to where the four men were standing under the D sign.
Two of them, including Paul Ricci, were limo drivers. The other two wore uniforms of “The Air Shuttle Guys.” The shuttle guys were fat, no problem. But the limo driver standing next to Ricci was ripped and young. Looked like he’d done some time.
Cruz said, “Paul Ricci?”