“No kidding,” said Straus.
Dalton watched Straus open the closet doors — and he saw his opportunity to snoop. What did Mr. Cushman wear when he wasn’t naked or in his pajamas?
The closet was empty and so were the dresser drawers.
The bathroom, with its wonderful period black-and-white tiles, was a mess: medicine cabinet open, just a used razor and a bottle of aspirin inside, towels all over the floor.
“Man, looks like he checked out without telling me,” said Parker Dalton.
“Christ,” said the manager, beginning to shake his head. “He didn’t check out. He bolted.”
“Are you calling the police?”
“Be serious. This is the Chateau Marmont.”
Parker Dalton was tweeting before he left the legendary and, some said, haunted hotel. Oh, man, what a tale he had to tell. By the end of the day, twenty thousand nosy people would know that Andy Cushman had stiffed the hotel and scampered away.
Chapter 121
IT WAS LATE afternoon when Del Rio turned off Lobo Canyon and parked his gray Land Rover off Lobo Vista Road.
The sky was as gray as the car, as gray as his clothes, camouflage he didn’t need because this was such a desolate spot.
Del Rio was thinking about Jack as he took his Remington 700, fitted with a ten-power scope, from the rear of the car.
He walked off-road, taking a deer path up an incline through the scrub.
The rise got steeper, and when the trail bore to the right, Del Rio broke a new path through the weeds, grabbing onto grasses and coyote brush and pulling himself up the hillside in places where his shoes slid on the slope.
When he reached the plateau, he took in the view of the farmhouse seventy-five yards below him, with its sun-bleached outbuildings and stretch of terrain that looked like a rumpled and dusty carpet had been tossed over the hills.
Del Rio assumed a prone position with the muzzle of the gun extended over the edge of the bluff.
Forty minutes crawled by before the back door of the farmhouse opened — and the man he was waiting for came out with a dog, a handsome Rhodesian ridgeback.
The guy had a rolling walk, wore a plaid shirt, jeans, a brown brimmed hat. He chained the dog to the porch post, patted its head, then picked up a bridle and saddle from a railing before heading to the paddock.
The guy with the hat saddled up a bay mare and rode it out to a bridle path that led into the hills, where trouble was waiting for him.
Del Rio lined up his shot where two lines of plaid intersected and squeezed the trigger.
The mare’s ears went back, and Del Rio saw the hole appear in the rider’s shirt just as the horse rounded a bend.
Del Rio stood and saw that the rider was still sitting upright, until, as if in slow motion, he tipped to the left and fell to the ground.
The mare stepped off the trail, dragging the rider by one boot until he fell free. Then the horse stopped and grazed on the dry grass.
Del Rio picked up his shell casing, put it in his shirt pocket, and walked down the bluff at a right angle to the trail.
When he reached the hit man’s body, he checked for a pulse. There was none.
He kicked the contract killer a couple times in the side to be sure he was dead, then said, “Hey, Bo Montgomery, you scum. Shelby didn’t see it coming either.”
Del Rio wiped down his gun with his shirttails and tossed it over the cliff, saw it bounce and get lost in the miles of unbroken scrub.
He polished the casing and hurled it after the gun, watched it disappear.
One shot. One kill.
Job done. Very professional. Very Private.
Very personal too, thought Del Rio.
Jack had loved Shelby — and he loved Jack.
Chapter 122
ALL OF OUR major cases were closed at the moment. At least that was true in the Los Angeles office.
London, Frankfurt, Chicago, and New York were busy, and they were fighting a war in Presti’s office in Rome — which was good for the bottom line, though I didn’t much care about that.
Our morning meeting in the war room had turned into an ad hoc, standing-room-only, hip-hip-hooray bash. Mo dished up cheesecake, Sci topped up coffee mugs with a jug-size bottle of Bailey’s, and Cruz stood close enough to Sci’s lab assistant Karen to see down her neckline and into her shoes.
Pressured into saying a few words, Justine took the floor and spoke three syllables: “We got ’em.”
The group broke into whooping applause.
Just then, the door opened, and my new assistant, Cody Dawes, slipped in and made his way toward me.
“A Jeanette Colton showed up without an appointment, Jack. She’s in reception. What should I do?”
“I’ll bring her up to my office,” I said. “Get in here, Cody. Get to know people. That’s the most important part of your job here.”
“Your phones.”
“This is why we have voice mail.”
I left the war room and found Jeanette Colton sitting off to the side of the reception desk. The last time I’d seen her, she was neatly coiffed and contained, telling me how she and her tennis star husband and the couple down the street wanted to swap partners.
I’d referred her to my old friend Haywood Prentiss, thinking it was too bad we couldn’t take the assignment.
As I closed the distance between us, I could see that something was terribly wrong with Jeanette Colton. There was a fresh handprint on her left cheek, and both eyes were swollen and turning black.
Her hand felt like a hook when she grabbed my arm and held on.
“Jack, I have to talk to you. I’m sorry I just showed up like this.”
“Jesus, what the hell happened? Let’s go upstairs to my office.”
Her face twisted, and she started to cry. Suddenly she looked like a little girl.
“I did a bad thing,” Jeanette Colton sputtered as we got into the elevator. “I ran Lars over with his Rolls.”
“You did what?”
“I ran him down, backed over him too.”
“You killed him?”
She shook her head no. “He was swearing at me when I left. I called an ambulance, but I didn’t wait for it to come. I need your help, Jack. I need the best.”
We got out of the elevator and headed toward my office, lickety-split. Scratch that about all our major cases being solved.
“I’ll help you any way I can,” I said, opening my door and stepping aside to let Jeanette walk into my office ahead of me.
The door yawned open, and both Jeanette Colton and I did a double take. My twin was sitting in my chair, moccasins up on my desk, a smirk on his face.
Why was he here?
What new load of garbage was he going to dump on me now?
“How is it going in the hero business?” Tommy said. “No need for tears, fair damsel in distress. Jack will straighten everything out for you.”
Chapter 123
“I JUST NEED a minute, bro,” Tommy said. “And then I’ll get out of your way.”
I asked Jeanette Colton to take a seat next to Cody’s desk and said I’d be right back. Thirty seconds. I closed the door behind me.
“Start talking,” I said.
“It’s more like show-and-tell,” Tommy said, handing me a document from inside a blue folder.
“Get away from my desk,” I said.
Tommy snickered, got up, and took a seat in the side chair as I sat down at my desk and unfolded the legal document. I saw Tommy’s name and my dad’s.