Michael Connelly - The Gods of Guilt

She frowned.

“I told you all I know.”

“Then I believe you.”

I finished my wine and put the glass on the table.

“Thanks for the wine, Kendall. I should probably go now.”

She walked me to the front door and held it open for me. I touched her arm as I passed by. I tried to think of something to say that would leave us with the possibility of another meeting. She beat me to it.

“Maybe next time you come back, you’ll be more interested in me than the dead girl.”

I looked back at her as she closed the door. I nodded but she was gone.

16

I was trying to talk a final shot of Patrón out of Randy after last call at Four Green Fields, when my phone screen lit up on the bar top. It was Cisco and he was working late.

“Cisco?”

“Sorry if I woke you, Mick, but I thought you’d want me to.”

“No worries. What’s up?”

Randy hit the bright lights and started blasting “Closing Time” on the sound system, hoping to chase the lingering drinkers out.

I hit the mute button late and slid off the stool to head to the door.

“What the hell was that?” Cisco asked. “Mick, you there?”

Once I was out the door I took the phone off mute.

“Sorry, iPhone malfunction. Where are you and what’s going on?”

“I’m outside the Standard downtown. Trina Trixxx is inside doing what she does. But that’s not why I called. That could’ve waited.”

I wanted to ask how he had found Trina but noted the urgency in his voice.

“Okay, so then what couldn’t wait?”

I muted the phone again and got in my car, pulling the door closed behind me. It had been a stupid move chasing the wine I had shared with Kendall with tequila. But I had felt bad after leaving her place, as though I had fumbled the ball somehow, and I wanted to burn away the thoughts with Patrón.

“I just got a call from a guy who does me favors every now and then,” Cisco said. “You know the Ferrari dealership I told you about before?”

“Yeah, the one on Wilshire.”

“Right, well, I hit the gold mine there. A lot of video. They keep digital film for a year on the cloud. So we got double lucky.”

“Did you see the man in the hat’s face?”

“No, not that lucky. Still no face. But we went through the video on the night in question and I picked up Gloria and her driver going by. Then four cars back comes a Mustang and it looks like our guy. He’s still wearing the hat, so I’m ninety percent sure he’s our guy.”

“Okay.”

“One of their perimeter cameras shoots east along the front of the lot. I switch to that video and check out the Mustang.”

“You got a plate.”

“Damn right, I got a plate. So I gave it to this friend of mine and he just called me back after going into work tonight.”

By “friend” I knew he meant that he had a source in the cop shop who ran plates for him. A source who obviously worked the midnight shift. This practice of sharing information from the computer with an outsider was against the law in California. So I didn’t ask Cisco for any clarification on who provided the information that he was about to share. I just waited for him to tell me the name.

“All right, so the ’stang comes back to a guy named Lee Lankford. And get this, Mick, he’s law enforcement. My friend can tell because his address is not on the computer. They protect cops that way. They can put a law enforcement block on the registration of a personal vehicle. But he’s LE, and now we have to find out who he works for and why he was tailing Gloria. I already know this, he’s not LAPD. My friend checked. Bottom line, Mick, is I’m beginning to think there might be something to our client’s claiming he was set up.”

I didn’t hear most of what Cisco had said after he mentioned the Mustang owner’s name. I was off to the races, running with the name Lankford. Cisco hadn’t recognized it because he wasn’t working for me eight years before when I made the deal whereby Gloria Dayton gave up Hector Moya to the DA’s Office, which turned around and gave him up to the feds. Of course, back then Lankford had nothing to do with that deal, but he was skirting around that case like a vulture.

“Lankford is Glendale PD retired,” I said. “He’s currently working for the DA as an investigator.”

“You know him?”

“Sort of. He worked the murder of Raul Levin. In fact, he’s the guy who tried at first to pin it on me. And I saw him on this case at La Cosse’s first appearance. He’s the DA investigator assigned to the case.”

I heard Cisco whistle as I started the car.

“So let’s talk this out,” he said. “We have Lankford following Gloria Dayton on the night she was murdered. He presumably follows her home and about an hour later she is murdered in her apartment.”

“And then a couple days later at first appearance, he’s there,” I said. “He’s assigned to the Dayton murder case.”

“That’s not a coincidence, Mick. There are no coincidences like that.”

I nodded, even though I was alone in the car.

“It’s a setup,” I said. “Andre’s been telling the truth.”

I needed to get to my Gloria Dayton files but Jennifer Aronson still had them. It would have to wait until the morning staff meeting. In the meantime, I was trying to remember those days eight years ago when I first met Detective Lankford and became his prime suspect in the murder of my own investigator.

I suddenly remembered what Cisco had said at the top of the conversation.

“You’re tailing Trina Trixxx right now?”

“Yeah, she wasn’t hard to find. I drove by her place to get a feel for it and out she came. I followed her here. Same setup that Gloria had. The driver, the whole bit. She’s been inside the hotel for about forty minutes now.”

“Okay, I’m heading your way. I want to talk to her. Tonight.”

“I’ll make that happen. You okay to drive? You sound like you had a few.”

“I’m fine. I’ll grab coffee on the way. You just hold her until I get there.”

17

Before I got to the Standard downtown I got a text from Cisco redirecting me to an address and apartment number on Spring Street. Then I got another text, this one advising me to hit an ATM on the way—Trina wanted to be paid to talk. When I finally got to the address, it turned out it was one of the rehabbed lofts right behind the Police Administration Building. The lobby door was locked, and when I buzzed apartment 12C, it was my own investigator who answered and buzzed me up.

On the twelfth floor I stepped out of the elevator to find Cisco waiting in the open doorway of 12C.

“I followed her home from the Standard and waited until she was dropped off,” he explained. “Figured it’d be easier if we took her driver out of the equation.”

I nodded and looked through the open door but didn’t enter.

“Is she going to talk to us?”

“Depends on how much cash you brought. She’s a businesswoman through and through.”

“I got enough.”

I walked past him and into a loft with views over the PAB and the civic center, the city hall tower lit up and on center display. The apartment was a nice place, though sparely furnished. Trina Rafferty had either recently moved in or was in the process of moving out. She was sitting on a white leather couch with chrome feet. She wore a short black cocktail dress, had her legs crossed in a stab at modesty, and was smoking a cigarette.

“Are you going to pay me?” she asked.

I walked fully into the room and looked down at her. She was pushing forty and she looked tired. Her hair was slightly disheveled, her lipstick was smeared, and her eyeliner was caking at the corners. One more long night in another year of long nights. She had just come from having sex with someone she didn’t know before and would probably never see again.