Private Vegas (36 page)

There was no getting to see Val.

I stalked Dr. Steven Ornstein, the attending physician, until I cornered him. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. He told me he was sorry, but only family members could see Val.

“I’m her father,” I said.

He gave me a tired smile, said, “Yes, I see the resemblance. What’s your name again?”

He found my name on Val’s admissions forms, then took me into a niche in the hallway and summarized her situation.

“She nearly drowned,” he said. “That’s not a figure of speech. She was half dead when she was brought in. Right now, she’s undergoing tests of all kinds. That means chest x-rays and CT scans as well as a neurological assessment. If her brain was deprived of oxygen for too long, she could have seizures or permanent damage.”

I said, “You’re saying she almost drowned in Las Vegas? In what? The Bellagio fountain?”

“She was found semiconscious on the bank of a pond, her hands bound behind her back with plastic ties. She had lacerations from the ligatures,” the doctor said, indicating his wrists. “There were abrasions on her thighs, and she’s got a pretty good contusion on her forehead. She could still die. It happens. But she fought like hell.”

I said, “Are you saying she was dumped in this pond?”

“There’s a car in there. I understand divers are going in when it gets light,” the doctor said.

I wanted to curse the paint off the wall, bang my head against it. I thought of Val, terrified, bound inside a car trunk, the water coming up around her face. Christ. I wanted to kill whoever had done this to her.

I thanked the doctor, then Justine and I took up a vigil in the waiting room outside the ICU.

During the following hours, we put down several quarts of coffee. At around four, I went to shake down the snack machine, and when I returned with Bugles and Doritos, Justine was laughing.

She said into her phone, “Three against one? Are you some kind of ninja? I’ll tell him. Yes, I’ll call Caine. Get some sleep.”

Justine hung up, still smiling.

“You okay, princess?”

She said, “You bet,” and filled me in.

“Lester Olsen and Barbie Cooper were about to kill Bryce Cooper with an injection of potassium chloride. That would have been fatal in a couple of seconds, but Scotty was waiting for them. He shot Olsen twice. Not fatally.”

“Damn. That’s a damned shame,” I said. “How did Scotty miss?”

“Jack.” She laughed some more. “Anyway, Olsen is hospitalized under guard. Barbie is in lockup. Scotty was released after the APD questioned him. He said—” Justine cracked up again. She was a little manic, but still, she was enjoying herself.

“Scotty said to me, ‘I don’t know if Bryce Cooper is going to press charges against me for breaking and entering or if he’s going to throw me a parade.’”

I laughed with her, then shared my salty snacks as we talked about Olsen, that psycho with the twenty-four-karat-gold balls. Scotty hadn’t known about Val’s encounters with Olsen, but we were sure that before Olsen flew to Aspen, he had tried to kill her.

He’d almost done it.

How had Val survived?

I desperately wanted to know.

BY EIGHT IN the morning, Val had a room of her own, and Justine and I had seats on either side of her bed. Val looked like she’d done time inside a cement mixer.

The left side of her face was bruised and she had a line of stitches and sutures over her left eyebrow. Both of her wrists were bandaged, and leads went from her body to an array of beeping machines around her.

She looked small and very frail.

It broke my fucking heart.

I touched her arm above the bandages, and Val opened her eyes and looked at me. Recognition spread across her face and she lit up with such happiness, my feelings of remorse and guilt almost dropped me to the floor.

I said, “Val. How are you? How do you feel?”

“I feel like the world’s biggest jerk, since you ask.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. I was so relieved that she knew me, that she was lucid, speaking in complete sentences, for God’s sake. It was as if sunshine had flooded the hospital room. I squeezed her arm and said, “I’m so glad you’re back.”

“I really blew it,” she said, squinting her bloodshot eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

Justine said, “Val, you were heroic. That’s the truth.”

Val turned and saw Justine gripping the bed rail, looking like she was going to bawl. Val reached out with both arms and Justine hugged her. I found a box of tissues, handed them around, took some for myself.

There was some crying, and then Val collected herself and got very serious. “We have to find Lester Olsen,” she said. “He tried to kill me.”

Justine quickly sketched in the story of Scotty’s night in Aspen, then said, “Olsen and Barbie are guests of the Aspen PD, and Scotty is in a first-class hotel without a scratch on him.”

“That’s the best news I’ve ever heard,” Val said.

I said, “If you’re up to it, Val, what the hell happened?”

“Oh God.” Val sighed. “Yesterday, I think it was yesterday, I went to Lester’s office to pick out my so-called future husband.”

Val told us about the error that gave her away, about Olsen’s stuffing her into his trunk at gunpoint, about the car going into the water, and about the moment when she realized she was going down.

“I couldn’t get my hands free of the zip ties.”

Her voice broke. She looked at her bandaged wrists.

“I kicked through the divider, and then I kind of rolled into the backseat.

“The driver’s-side window was down,” Val said. “Water was flooding in like a dam had broken, and it was pinning me inside the car. But there was a bubble of air at the ceiling, and when the car was underwater, I took a deep breath and swam for the window. I’m a Miami girl, remember. I can
swim
.”

Val eked out a brave smile, then I asked her to go on.

“I remember cracking my head on the doorframe, Jack. I lost some air when I did that, but I pushed off from the car and got onto my back and just kicked until I surfaced. And that’s the last thing I remember until I woke up here.”

“You’re amazing, Val. No other word for it,” I told her. “I’m sorry this happened. You took a mic and a recorder to a gunfight, and that’s my fault. I should have sent someone to back you up.”

“It wasn’t
supposed
to be a gunfight, Jack. Or any kind of fight. I was just trying to get the guy to incriminate himself. And now I don’t even have the recorder.”

I said, “You have your life. And we have you. You’re going to be a great investigator, Val. In fact, you should take my job. You’ll do fine.”

“It’s a deal. You heard him, Justine.”

Val had a great smile and a very decent handshake.

I hugged her. “I’m very proud of you,” I said. “You’ve got a gigantic future at Private.”

JUSTINE AND I had just arrived at the Atlantic Terminal for our flight back to LA when I got a phone call from a man I’d hoped I would never hear from again. I was wrung out from my night at Mountain View Hospital, but it was either speak with the head of the Noccia crime family or wonder what Ray Noccia wanted until he showed up at my door.

I chose the find-out-now option.

I stabbed the Answer button on my phone and said my name, then listened as Ray Noccia said, “It’s been a long time, Jack. A couple of years, right?”

“What can I do for you, Ray?”

Rain was starting to come down. Justine and I ducked into the closest hangar as the downpour began in earnest.

Noccia said, “I’ve got some business to discuss with you.”

“You know that’s not going to happen, Ray. I’m not interested in your business. I thought we’d been over this.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Jack. I want a conversation. That’s all.”

I told him I was working, that I’d call him after I checked my schedule.

“And, listen, Ray, I’ll pick the time and the place.”

I hung up, and, standing under a dripping overhang, I said to Justine, “Want to grab something to eat when we get to LA?”

She looked drained, but then, we were about to get into a plane again.

“What does Ray Noccia want with you?” she asked me.

I shrugged.

“Like always with the Noccia family. It will be what I least expect, when I least expect it.”

IT WAS SUNNY in LA when I dropped Justine off at her house and then called DA Bobby Petino from my car. I left him a message saying that I had to speak with him urgently.

Then I drove home, took a shower, and was dressing for work when Bobby returned my call.

I said, “Bob”—and he cut me off.

“Jack, you’re on my call list. I heard about Lester Olsen and what he did to your assistant and the rest of it, but the Love for Life racket is a job for the Vegas DA, not me.”

“I was calling you about something else,” I said. I put Petino on speakerphone, sat on the edge of my bed, and pulled on my shoes.

“As I said,” Petino went on, “you’re on my call list. I need a minute and I’ve only got a second.”

The man is an attack dog, all the way. I know Justine likes him and might even be dating him. I don’t understand how she can stand him.

“Go ahead,” I said. “Talk to me.”

“It’s about Hal Archer.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your client, right?”

“Yep. He’s mine.”

“Well, FYI, even though he may have been a Love for Life target, it doesn’t matter. Even if Archer was set up, manipulated, whatever, there’s no case for self-defense. Archer outweighed his little wife by a hundred pounds and she was unarmed.”

I went to my closet, picked out a tie, looped it around my neck.

Petino said, “I’ve got enough evidence to indict him a hundred times over. So I’m going forward.”

“I never doubted you were going to prosecute, Bobby,” I said. “Meanwhile, I need a favor. And I need it right away.”

“I’m listening, Jack. What do you need?”

TWIN TOWERS CORRECTIONAL Facility is a deceptively modern-looking prison system on ten acres. The main entrance at 450 Bauchet opens into a clean, well-lit, and tiled lobby called the Inmate Reception Center, as if the IRC were a hospitality suite at a convention center rather than central booking for the two thousand inmates who are bused in daily and warehoused in this cesspool until their arraignments and trials.