The Trials of Nikki Hill (44 page)

“Isn’t Lee-O the one who—”

“Yeah,” Morales cut him off. “And he got fried in a fire twenty years ago.”

“Maybe another Lee-O?” Goodman said, looking at Rupert.

“You gonna find out the hard way, assholes,” Rupert said.

“What was Lee-O’s real name?” Goodman asked Morales.

“Leonardo Broches.”

Goodman turned to Fupdup. “That your Lee-O?”

Tears glistened in the boy’s eyes. His head moved up and down. “Ninja Turtle. Leonardo. Yeah.”

“What’s he look like? Old? Young?”

“I never see him. Rupert’s the only one sees him.”

“You’re dead, Fup,” Rupert told his brother.

“That’s it,” Morales roared. Apparently out of control, he pushed Leander aside and grabbed the chainsaw. He gave a yank to its starter. The loud rattling engine filled the small room, nearly deafening Goodman.

Rupert’s eyes widened. He tried to climb up the workbench on his back. “Call him off,” he shouted at Goodman. “Fucker’s mental.”

Leander grabbed Morales’s arm. “That’s enough.”

Morales hesitated, then killed the chainsaw’s motor. Leander grabbed it from him and took it to the other side of the room, holding it protectively.

“Can’t be the same fuckin’ Lee-O,” Morales said. “I know for a fact he’s dead. Like I told you, after what happened to... after what happened, the cops were looking for him, so he left town to stay with relatives. Their place caught fire and they all burned.”

Goodman took his partner’s arm and led him away from the two boys. He showed him the printout of Sandoval’s file. “Look under Willins’s entry, ‘J.W. ’ ”

Morales’s eyes opened wide as he read the words: “Carver, CA. Parents’ death by fire; accident?”

“Suppose, when their place burned,” Goodman said, “John Willins and his parents had a relative staying with them, a young thug from L.A. who suddenly dropped in? They all die but one. That boy leaves Carver, comes back to Los Angeles, gets in the music business. He claims to be the Willinses’ son, but maybe he was really their nephew or something, a gangbanger who found a way to get the police off his back and start clean again.”

Morales nodded, seeing it. “So he set fire to their place.”

“Let’s find out for sure.”

“Any idea where Carver, California, is?” Morales asked Leander.

The old man strolled over to his radio station and pulled down a book. They waited while he slowly turned pages. Finally, he said, “About a hundred fifty miles to the east. Just this side of Joshua Tree. Past Desert Hot Springs. I could print out a map—”

“Thanks, Leander, for all your help,” Goodman said.

“What you gonna do with them?” Leander asked, pointing to the brothers.

“We can throw the little one back,” Morales said. Fupdup licked his lips nervously, afraid to believe it. “The other one we turn in, ’cause I’m pretty sure he used that big-ass knife of his to cut up Arthur Lydon.”

“You’ll never prove it,” Rupert said. “I’ll be out in an hour.”

“You might want to stay in, Rupe,” Goodman said. “If your pal Lee-O is as strong as you think, when he hears how you gave him up, he might be real mad at you.”

“He knows me better than that.” But the boy looked shaken.

“You’d be wise to let us deal with him.”

“Fuck you,” Rupert said.

“You really lettin’ me go?” Fupdup asked.

“Why not?” Morales said. “We ain’t doin’ the Crazies no favor, leavin’ an asshole like you on their team.”

E
IGHTY-TWO

J
oe Walden was at the podium, in the middle of his acceptance speech, when Nikki’s cellular phone chirped. She grabbed her noisy purse and made a quick, and she hoped unobserved, exit from the ballroom.

She was actually annoyed at missing the speech. She’d never heard Joe address a crowd before and had been tremendously impressed by his eloquence. Here was a man who actually believed that racial parity could be achieved without social disorder or revolutionary tactics. Moreover, he was capable of making his beliefs clearly understood.

Just as impressive, he’d apparently been able to ignore the totally improper presence of Dyana Cooper and John Will-ins, whom the organizers of the dinner at least had had the intelligence to seat on the opposite side of the room from the county tables. She found it impossible to even look in Willins’s direction, knowing that he was not only a murderer, but a coward willing to let his wife pay for his crime.

Walden’s eyes had opened wide at the news about the Sanctum.

As the others had filed into the ballroom for dinner, Nikki had managed to have a few moments alone with him in an alcove past the kitchen. Worried that a waiter would interrupt them at any moment, she’d rapidly paraphrased Goodman’s phone message and its implication—that Willins had murdered Madeleine Gray. “I can’t wait to get that smart-ass manager of the place, Simon Bayliss, back on the stand,” Nikki had said.

“He’ll just deny it,” Walden told her. “We need concrete evidence. Let’s meet tonight at the office, when we’re finished here.”

“I’ll tell Ray.”

“No,” he’d said. “I learned something about Ray today that’s almost as disquieting as the news you’ve brought me. I think we’d better keep Ray in the dark about this, until I can figure out precisely where we’re headed with the Will-ins trial.”

“What’s up with Ray?” she asked.

“We’ll talk about it tonight.”

Without another word, he’d led her into the ballroom and to their table, where they were greeted by Ray, Meg Fisher, and an assortment of familiar office faces. She’d purposely taken a seat several places away from Ray, even though it meant listening to Meg rant on about the importance of the award.

Standing in the now nearly unoccupied cocktail area, she answered the phone warily, hoping it was Goodman and not another threat. Hoping also that it would not be Virgil. She hadn’t figured out what to do about him. About them.

It was Ed Goodman, speaking fast with lots of background noise. “What?” she said, “I can’t—”

“Sorry,” he said. “We’re at the lockup. Dumping the gangsta who killed Arthur Lydon. But that’s not why I called.”

He told her an amazing theory that he and Morales had conceived, the gist of which was that John Willins was living a lie. He was, in fact, one of the founders of the Crazy Eights and was still very much connected to them. He had probably murdered members of his own family to escape prison and establish a new life for himself. When Maddie Gray discovered his secret, he’d killed her.

As incredulous as Nikki was, she understood that it was possible. L.A. was like a Hindu heaven. People arrived from all over the country to begin life anew. Con men were transformed overnight into respected business tycoons. Vegas hookers became actresses with off-Broadway experience. Hospital orderlies automatically graduated to the ranks of prominent physicians. She herself had discovered that several L.A. lawyers boasting Harvard degrees had never even visited that august university. Names were changed, histories manufactured. In the city’s rarefied laid-back atmosphere, résumés were rarely checked and when they were, so what? One merely moved on to apply somewhere less uptight.

That a ruthless South Central gangbanger would emerge as John Willins, multimillionaire music impresario, was not beyond belief. Hell, he probably bought the company with profits from crack cocaine peddled by the Crazy Eights.

“This is starting to sound like a litany, but do you have any proof, detective?” she asked.

“I’m hoping to find some in the town where Willins’s family burned to death,” Goodman said. “There should be records, people who knew them, photographs of the real John Willins. Carlos and I are driving there tonight. We’ll be a hundred miles or so out of our jurisdiction, so we’ll need some sort of paper to flash. Can you put together documentation for us?”

“I’ll do better than that,” Nikki said. “I’ll come with you.”

Sensing his hesitation, she added, “Otherwise, it’ll be tomorrow before I can get the paperwork started.”

“We’re nearly through here,” he said. “We’ll swing by the hotel for you in about twenty minutes.”

She looked down at her cocktail dress, her high heels. “I’ll be waiting.”

She returned in time to hear Joe Walden end his speech on a high note. “Over a century ago, abolitionist Frederick Douglass declared, ‘The destiny of the colored American...is the destiny of America.’ Three decades ago, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., elaborated on that thought when he wrote, ‘Because the goal of America is freedom, abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny.’ I stand before you tonight, brothers and sisters, to reiterate what both of these great patriots have stated so eloquently, and to add my own heartfelt belief that we alone are responsible for the fate of ourselves, our families, our cities, our country. We alone are masters of our own destiny and the destiny of all Americans.”

Applause and exuberant cries of approval rang from the crowd, and Nikki cheered as loudly as anyone. So stirring had been the district attorney’s words that even Dyana Cooper and John Willins were standing and clapping.

Walden, clasping his award, a carved wooden statue of a tribal warrior, descended from the stage and walked back to his table, shaking hands along the way. Meg Fisher was ecstatic, exhorting her two photographers to “Keep clicking, boys.”

Nikki waited as long as she felt she could, then waded through the crowd to the D.A. Over the congratulations and well-wishings, she shouted, “We have to talk now.”

He nodded and continued pressing the flesh for another few minutes, then gestured with his award toward a door beside the stage. It led to a dimly lighted unused portion of the ballroom. Chairs were piled atop tables. Everything was powdered with dust.

“Is this the reason you left in the middle of my speech?” Joe Walden asked.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “What I heard of it was wonderful.”

He smiled. “I think I even got through to the Willins table.”

“It’s John Willins we have to talk about.”

“As I said, we can talk later at the office.”

“This can’t wait,” she said. She told him Goodman’s theory.

His reaction dismayed her. “It’s too bizarre,” he said. “Willins may have murdered Madeleine Gray. But the rest of it. Escaping from a fire. Assuming the identity of one of its victims. It’s like a Robert Ludlum thriller.”

“I’ll let you know if there’s any truth to it,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“The detectives should be here for me any minute. We’re driving to Carver, California, tonight to check out the story.”

“I’m surprised Lieutenant Corben permitted them to notify our office.”

“I got the impression they’re hoping to get something more solid before they try any of this out on Lieutenant Corben.”

“Yet Detective Goodman tried it out on you.”

“I... we’ve had a good working relationship,” she said. “He trusts me.”

“Excellent,” Walden said. “Maybe this time we can stay in step with the LAPD. If not slightly ahead of them. Are you scheduled for court tomorrow?”

“Ray was going to do the cross on the Willinses’ security guards.”

“Ray, yes. Well—”

“You said there was a problem about Ray?”

“Nothing for us to get into now.”

“We should ask for a continuance,” Nikki said. “At least until we know the status of our case against Dyana Cooper.”

Walden nodded. “All right. I just hope this doesn’t turn out to be yet one more fiasco to blow up in our faces.” He smiled and shook his wooden warrior at her. “I trust you won’t let that happen. Keep me informed.”

They reentered the ballroom together, just in time to have a flashbulb explode in their faces. When Nikki regained her sight, she saw that John Willins had been standing just to their right, near the door. Had he been eavesdropping on their conversation?

Walden saw him, too, scowled, and strode past him. Nikki’s eyes met Willins’s for a brief moment, but she could read nothing there. He turned and walked away in the direction of his table.

Members of the NAAL and their guests were impatiently awaiting their cars and limos in front of the hotel. When Nikki got through the crowd, she saw no sign of Goodman and Morales.

Abruptly, a beige Mercedes limousine swung in to the curb, cutting off a departing vehicle. The chauffeur rushed to open the rear door, just as Dyana Cooper exited from the hotel, followed by her husband.

Willins ducked into the limo after Dyana and slammed the door shut himself. The chauffeur quickly returned to his seat. Nikki watched the sleek vehicle disappear from sight.

When the detectives arrived, Goodman said, “Hope we didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

“I hope so, too,” she told them as she got into the rear of their sedan, “because Willins may know what we’re up to, and he tore out of here ten minutes ago.”

E
IGHTY-THREE

G
oodman had been hesitant about the scrupulous deputy D.A. joining their hunt for truth since he wasn’t sure how fast or how loose they’d have to play it in Carver. The one-hundred-seventy-five-mile trip was not easing his mind on that score. While Morales sped them through San Bernardino and Victorville and Barstow, Nikki decided to use the time to ask questions. Some they answered truthfully, some not so truthfully, and some they couldn’t answer at all.

She began by taking Goodman through the business of Dyana Cooper’s stolen file once more. Like a dentist probing a particularly sensitive spot, she asked again how he’d come by his information. He still refused to identify his source.

She moved on to the Sanctum. Were they sure that the information about it being the crime scene was reliable? Who was his source?

Goodman looked at Morales. “Les’ sorta simplify the story,” his partner said, meaning that he should leave Fupdup out of it and put his information into Rupert’s mouth. “It was a member of the Crazy Eights, the one we arrested for the murder of Arthur Lydon.”

“You said you were booking him just before you picked me up. You left word about the Sanctum hours ago.”

“These things take time,” Goodman said. “The boy gave up the info about the Sanctum right off the bat. He didn’t personally kill Maddie Gray. He and his pals merely cleaned up the murder scene and removed the body.”