Michael Connelly - The Gods of Guilt

“Probably,” I said. “I’ve already got a full-time investigator. He usually handles that stuff.”

“No, then that’s good, because I don’t want your business, Mick. I’ll see you around.”

He headed down the sidewalk and I watched him go.

“Yeah, I’ll see you around, Val.”

I got in the backseat and told Earl to get over to Ventura Boulevard and head toward Studio City. I wanted to drive by Kendall Roberts’s business. There was no reason to do it other than that I was curious about her. I wanted to see what she had built for herself and what she was protecting.

“You did good in there, Earl,” I said. “You saved the day.”

He looked at me in the mirror and nodded.

“I got skills,” he said.

“That you do.”

I pulled my phone and called Lorna to check in. Nothing new had happened since the last call. I told her about the staff meeting I wanted for the next morning and she said Cisco had already informed her. I asked her to make sure she brought enough coffee and doughnuts for five.

“Who’s the fifth?” she asked.

“Earl’s going to join us,” I said.

I looked at him in the mirror. I could see only his eyes but I could tell he was smiling.

After I finished with Lorna I called Cisco. He said he was at a Ferrari dealership on Wilshire Boulevard, about twenty blocks from the Beverly Wilshire. He said the place had multiple security cameras for watching over its expensive fleet at night.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “The man in the hat?”

“That’s right.”

In his spare time Cisco had been pursuing the man in the hat for five months now. It deeply bothered him that he had been unable to find a camera anywhere in the Beverly Wilshire or its immediate surroundings that showed either the man’s face or him getting into a car to follow Gloria Dayton.

But Gloria’s chauffeur that night had been interviewed and he gave Cisco the exact route he had taken while driving her home from the hotel. Cisco spent all of his spare time on those streets checking businesses and residences with security cameras on the off chance that they picked up the car trailing Gloria home. He had even checked with the transportation departments for Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Los Angeles to view traffic cameras along the route. It had become a matter of professional pride to the big man.

I, on the other hand, had long since given up any hope of identifying the man in the hat. To me the trail was dead cold. Most security systems don’t keep video for more than a month. Most of the places where Cisco made inquiries told him they had no video from the night Gloria Dayton was murdered. That he was too late.

“Well, you can drop that,” I said. “I’ve got a name I want you to put at the top of your to-do list. I want to find her as soon as possible.”

I gave him the name Trina Rafferty and filled him in on my conversation with Roberts about her.

“If she’s still a working prostitute she could be anywhere from here to Miami and this might not even be her real name,” he said.

“I think she’s close,” I said. “I think Fulgoni may even have her stashed somewhere. You need to find her.”

“Okay, I’m on it. But why the big hurry? Won’t she say the same thing Roberts just told you?”

“Somebody knew Glory Days was the CI who set up the Moya arrest. That wasn’t Kendall Roberts—at least she says it wasn’t her. I think that leaves Trina Trixxx. I think Fulgoni already got to her and I want to know what she told him.”

“Got it.”

“Good. Let me know.”

I disconnected. Earl told me we were coming up on the address for Flex, the yoga studio owned by Roberts. He slowed the car to a crawl as we passed by the storefront studio. I checked the hours printed on the door and saw the place was open eight to eight every day. I could see people inside, all women and all in downward dog positions on rubber mats on the floor. I knew the position because my ex-wife was a longtime yoga enthusiast.

I wondered if Roberts’s clients minded being on display to the street and passersby on the sidewalk. Many of the positions in yoga have a subtle or overt sexuality to them and it seemed odd to have a studio where one wall was floor-to-ceiling glass. As I pondered the question, a woman inside the studio walked up to the window and held her hands up to her eyes, pantomiming that she was looking at me through binoculars. The point was clear.

“We can go now, Earl,” I said.

He picked up speed.

“Where to?”

“Let’s go down the road a bit to Art’s Deli. We’ll pick up sandwiches and then I’ll go see Legal Siegel for lunch.”

15

At eight-thirty that night I knocked on the door at Kendall Roberts’s home. I had been sitting out in the Lincoln on her street and waiting for her to return.

“Mr. Haller. Is something wrong?”

She was wearing the same outfit from earlier and I assumed she had come from work at the yoga studio.

“No, nothing is wrong. I just came back to tell you that you can forget about that subpoena.”

“What do you mean? Did you take it to a judge like you said?”

“Didn’t need to. I noticed after I left here that there wasn’t a seal on it from the clerk of the U.S. District Court. Moya’s case is in federal court. Gotta have that seal or it’s not legit. I think the lawyer, Fulgoni, was trying to see if he could get you to come in on the sly, so he doctored up what looked like a subpoena and had his man take it out to you.”

“Why would he do that—I mean, want me to come in on the sly?”

I had already been puzzling over this, especially since the subpoena Fulgoni had dropped on me had been legit. Why go through the correct motions on mine and not Kendall’s? So far I hadn’t been able to figure out why.

“Good question,” I said. “If he wanted to keep it quiet, he could have filed the subpoena request under seal. But he didn’t. Instead he tried to bluff you into coming in for an interview. I’m probably going to go see him tomorrow and that’s exactly what I’ll ask.”

“Well, it’s all confusing…but thank you.”

“Confusion aside, we aim to please at Michael Haller and Associates.”

I smiled and then felt dumb about what I had just said.

“You know, you could’ve called me. I gave you my number. You didn’t have to come all the way back out here.”

I frowned and shook my head like her concern was warrantless.

“It was no problem. My daughter lives nearby with my ex and I swung by there for a bit.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. I had indeed driven by my ex-wife’s condo building and stared at the lighted windows of her unit. I imagined my daughter in there in her bedroom, doing her homework or on the computer tweeting or Facebooking with friends. I had then driven over to see Kendall Roberts.

“So that means that next Tuesday I don’t have to go to that lawyer’s office?” she asked.

“No, you’re clear,” I said. “You can forget about it.”

“And I won’t have to go to court or testify about anything?”

That was the big question and I knew I had to stop making promises I was not sure I could keep.

“What I’m going to do is see Fulgoni tomorrow and make it clear to him that you’re out of it. That you have no knowledge that will be useful to him in this matter and he should forget about you. I think that should take care of it.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

I didn’t make a move to leave and she glanced over my shoulder toward the street where my car was parked again in the red zone.

“So, where’s your partner? The mean one.”

I started to laugh.

“Oh, Earl? He’s off now. He’s actually my driver. Sorry again about that today. I didn’t know what I was getting into when we came here.”