Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller (12 page)

Chapter 23

Friday Morning

I got back to Alex's office a
little before nine Friday morning. I told him about Frank’s call on my way home
last night. We decided to go see Nick
Jarman
before
we tackled Esposito.

According to the file on
Jarman
, he lived out in Lake Elsinore, about an hour and a
half southeast of L.A. It had been years since I’d been to Lake Elsinore. As I
remembered it, property around Lake Elsinore would not have interested most
people looking for lake front property. The area had never developed into the
exclusive weekend getaway developers had hoped it would. Most of the properties
were run down. Most of the people who lived around the lake were either working
class or the working poor. A number of the residents did not appear to have a
job or a visible means of income. Drugs were readily available to those who
could afford them. Lake Elsinore had become a place that people with money did
not want to go.

Nick
Jarman
lived in a small house on the lake. It needed paint. The dirt yard was littered
with junk and trash. A rusted old blue Ford pickup sat next to the house.

Alex parked off the paved
road. There were no curbs, and since there was no grass either, it was hard to
tell where shoulder ended and the yard began. As we approached the front door,
we heard the distinctive sound of a shell being jacked into the chamber of a
shotgun.

“That's far enough,” a voice
said from inside the house. It was a woman's voice.

We stopped.

“Hands up,” the voice said.

We raised our hands.

“Who are you and what do you
want?”

“FBI,” Alex said. “I'm going
to reach slowly into my inside coat pocket and get my ID.”

He moved his left hand slowly
to the lapel of the left side of his suit coat, pulled it open and with his
right hand took his ID wallet out. He opened it and said. “Like I said, FBI. We
need to talk to Nick
Jarman
.”

After a couple of seconds,
she said, “Nick doesn't want to talk to the FBI.”

I said, “Tell Nick that Jake
Badger's out here.”

In a moment, the voice said, “Okay,
you can come in. But keep you hands where I can see them. This is a twelve
gauge loaded with double 00 buck.”

We put our hands down and
kept them where she could them. Alex opened the door and we went in. Half way
across the room was a woman who could have been thirty-five or forty-five. She was
skinny, pasty white, about five three, maybe a hundred and ten pounds. Her
black hair was stringy with oil. Beyond her, in a recliner was an emaciated
bald man who looked like death warmed over. It was Nick
Jarman
.
The last time I'd seen him he weighted probably two twenty-five. Now he might
have weighed as much as the woman who had the twelve
gauge
pointed at us. His eyes were sunken and dark. He looked like a wounded animal
who
'd been cornered.

He said, “You got a lot of
nerve coming here Badger.”

“AIDs?” I asked.

He coughed and nodded.

“Before you went in or while
you were there?”

“Doctors don't know. All they
know is I'm gonna die soon.”

“Treatment?”

“Tried everything. Nothing
works.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Shit happens.”

I nodded again. “Last Monday
morning,” I said, “a woman I know, name Monica Nolan, was taken from her
apartment. You have anything to do with that?”

His sunken, drowsy eyes held
mine for a moment, as a small smile crept across his ashen face. The smile
faded and he said, “No.”

“He's dying,” the woman said.
“
Can't hardly get up to go to the toilet.
He hasn't
been outside this house in two months.”

Breathing was an effort for
Nick.

“You could have asked some of
your brothers to take her,” I said.

“Why would I do that?”

“To get even with me.”

He smiled again, then shook
his head and coughed again.

“Two of them died inside. Two
of them are still there.”

“Plenty of Brothers in Arms
still on the outside,” I said.

He shook his head again. “None
that would do anything I told them to do.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Not the same club it used to
be.
A real service club now.
Bunch a weekend warriors.
Respectable. No more drugs. No more brawling. They sponsor BBQs, children’s
zoos. Go to schools and do programs on motorcycle safety. Raise money for Saint
Jude's Children's Hospital ... crap like that. You can check with the local
cops.” He coughed again.

“How long you got?”

“Three, maybe four months.”

I nodded again. There wasn’t
much else to say.

“How come you gave up
fighting?” he asked. “No one could beat you. You would have been champ.”

It really wasn't any of his
business. It wasn't anybody's business. But people asked all the time anyway.

“Gomez,” I said.

He nodded. He knew what had
happened.

“He got in the cage with you.
He knew the risks.”

“I got mad,” I said. “Lost
control. Didn't like that feeling.”

“So you just walked away.”

I nodded.

He thought about that.

“Probably harder to walk
away,” Nick said, “than to keep fighting.”

In a way, it had been easy.
But it had also been hard. Fighting had been an outlet for my pent up rage over
Elaine. I didn’t respond to his comment.

He closed his eyes and let
his head lay back on the chair. Just talking was wearing him out. I actually
felt sorry for him.

I looked at his girlfriend. “You
need anything?” I asked.

Her eyes were confused,
suspicious,
angry
. “Need anything? NEED anything? I
need everything,” she said, scornfully. “In a few months, the only thing I got
will be gone. And you want to know if I need anything. Only thing I need right
now is for you to leave.”

We turned and went out the
door. As we pulled away from the rundown little death house, Alex said, “Kind
of sad, isn't it.”

“Death is better quick,” I
said. “Always sad to see someone suffer like that.”

We drove in silence for a
while as we headed back toward the freeway. Finally, Alex said, “Esposito?”

“Esposito.”

Chapter 24

Friday Afternoon

It was a little over a
hundred miles from Lake Elsinore to Esposito's Malibu home. We stopped on the
way to eat lunch. It was just before one when Esposito's big gate swung open,
granting us entry to the estate.

The same gorgeous Latina
answered the door, this time wearing a little red dress. The day was clear and
warm and she led us out to the patio again, where Esposito sat, flanked by the
same two nude sunbathers as last time. As we came out, he put aside his laptop.

“Agent Watson, Mr. Badger,”
Esposito said. “Care for some form of liquid refreshment?”

His two security guards
stepped out onto the patio standing just where they had stood a few days earlier.

“No, thanks,” Alex said. “We
need to ask you some follow-up questions.”

“Of course you do. Why else
would you be here? I'm wondering, though, Mr. Badger, have you found your
friend yet? What was her name? Ms. Nolan?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“That's too bad. I’m sorry.”
He smiled, rather perfunctorily. “So, what are these additional questions you
have?”

“What's your relationship
with Rachel Pipestone?” I asked.

I expected him to deny
knowing Rachel Pipestone. Instead, he said, “That's confidential. Attorney-client
privilege.”

I said, “We know that a
couple of years ago you set up an off-shore corporation for the Pipestones in
the Caymans, an import-export business.”

“Do you?” Esposito said. “You've
been busy.”

“Probably a convenient way to
launder money from your drug business,” I said.

Esposito tried to look
offended. “Drug business?” He shook his head. “I'm an attorney. I run a
legitimate legal practice. One of my specialties is setting up
off-shore
corporations, like I did for the Pipestones.
Because I set up a corporation for them does not mean I participate with them
in their business.”

“What about your father's
business?” I asked. “You participate in that?”

“Do you participate in your
father's business, Mr. Badger? As I understand it, you do not share your
father's enthusiasm for the law. Thus, you are not an attorney in his firm.
When your father passes and is no longer running his law firm, will you then
step in and run it in his place? You will not, will you?”

He waited for me to answer. I
didn't.

He smiled and shook his head.
“My father was in the drug business. I am not.”

“I think you are,” I said, “with
Rachel. I also think you, or she, or both of you sent two sets of shooters
after me.”

“Now that is an ugly
accusation, Mr. Badger. I know nothing of any shooters, as you call them, being
dispatched to dispatch you.”

His eyes held mine for a
moment. He took a sip of his drink. One of the girls sunbathing next to him got
up and slid into the pool.

He said, “Tell me about these
teams of shooters you say I sent.”

“Why? Do you want to know how
and why your people failed?”

“I'm merely curious,” he
said, with a shrug.

“The first team was made up
of three Latino men. Pulled up alongside us in a black Escalade. Opened up with
an Uzi. They weren't good enough. They died. The driver was named Jorge
Betancourt. Used to work for Pipestone.”

“Really?” Esposito said,
trying to look surprised. “And you deduce from this that Mrs. Pipestone sent
these men to kill you because you killed her husband?”

“The thought had occurred to
me,” I said.

“And because you imagine some
kind of a relationship between Mrs. Pipestone and me, you also imagine that I
had something to do with the sending of these men.”

“That thought also occurred
to me.”

“Well, you are wrong. I had
nothing to do with sending those men after you.”

“What about the Asian guys?”
I asked.

His eyebrows went up. “Asian
guys?” He frowned. “Mr. Badger, Agent Watson, though I have no personal
experience whatsoever in the operation of an illegal enterprise where the
services of assassins is sometimes required, I am given to understand that such
organizations usually maintain what we might refer to as ethnic homogeneity.”

“That's what we hear,” Alex
said.

I said, “Doesn't mean you
couldn't have outsourced the hit to a more competent team than your Hispanic
peons.” I was trying to piss him off.

His faced hardened.

“Like your father and his
team,” I said. “The whole
bunch of them were
killed by
one woman.”

“Get out of my house,” he
growled.

“No,” I said, defiantly. It
startled him. He was used to being obeyed. “I think you, or Rachel, or both of
you sent the shooters and I think you have Monica. The thing I can't figure is
why you're farting around sending notes to me.”

“I don't know anything about
any notes,” Benito insisted. “And I don't have Ms. Nolan. And there's no way
I'd spend the kind of money it would take to send two teams of shooters after
you. Now, you've insulted me enough and taken enough of my time. I want you to
leave my house. If you don't leave voluntarily, I will have my men remove you.”

“It'll take more than those
two ninnies standing over there,” I said.

“Mr. Badger, you are
intentionally trying to provoke me using insults.” Benito looked at Alex. “Is
this the way the FBI conducts its investigations now?”

“In this case,” Alex said, “the
FBI is here merely in a support capacity.”

“Then you need to support
your asses out of here,” he said, his eyes coming back to mine. “Because I'm
not going to give you what you want. There's not going to be any violence.
Regardless of how much you insult me, my father, or the Mexican people.”

He was angry, but I could see
that he wasn't going for it. I was wasting my time. I turned and walked away.

As he pulled out onto Highway
1, heading back toward Santa Monica, Alex said, “You really think that's the
best way to get Monica back?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “That
was unprofessional and self-indulgent.”

“It was,” Alex said. “But it
was also fun. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have to go change his
shorts.”

That made me laugh. “It was
fun,” I said. “But it was also stupid.” I took a deep breath and let it out,
shaking my head as I did. “I
gotta
have better
control than that.”

“You will have. Where to
next?”

“Evelyn Darwin.”