Private L.A. (27 page)

They watched me for a long beat, trying to see if I was bluffing. Then, one by one, and more contritely, they took seats.

Camilla Bronson cleared her throat, said, “What is it you think we’ve lied to you about?”

“All sorts of things,” Justine said.

Sanders scowled.

I said, “But we’ll limit the discussion at present to the Harlows’ finances.”

That got their attention. “What about them?”

“You told us, Dave, that they were on the verge of bankruptcy,” I said. “Nothing could be further from the truth, isn’t that right?”

“No, it’s not right,” he snapped. “They were spending far beyond their means, and they were in danger of personal bankruptcy, Chapter Seven.”

I saw the nuance. “But not corporate bankruptcy, Chapter Eleven?”

He studied me. “They were on more solid ground there.”

“Why?” I asked. “Because Thom got the cash from the mystery investor you told us about?”

“That’s right,” he said, sounding like he was on surer ground himself.

“Or should I say Harlow-Quinn got the money?” I said, looking at Terry Graves. “Is that right?”

The producer hesitated but then nodded. “Yes, it was … a good thing.”

“No doubt,” Justine said agreeably. “So who is Mr. Mysterious Deep Pockets?”

Sanders rolled his palms outward. “As I’m sure you understand, this kind of investor prefers to remain anonymous, and we can’t breach the attorney-client and fiduciary privileges.”

Terry Graves almost smiled. But Camilla Bronson was scratching her right forearm. It was the first unpolished thing I’d ever seen her do.

“Lying again,” I snapped. “You three are pathological. What did that come from? A genetic defect? A rotten childhood? Or did you all study hard to be lying asses?”

As one, their faces reddened and twisted in anger. Sanders struggled to stand. The publicist did too, saying, “I’m not listening to—”

Justine said, “We know that ESH Ltd is the deep pockets.”

“Nicely done, by the way,” I said. “The offshore company. The Panamanian bank. Just enough distance that you could claim the money came from a mysterious investor.”

Sanders’s face had looked ready to explode, but now he sank into his chair. Camilla Bronson followed, scratching at her forearm again.

Terry Graves had paled considerably. “How could you know about ESH?”

“We’re good,” I said. “It’s why you hired us. Breaking the registering agent’s will only cost me twenty grand. Thom and Jennifer own ESH Ltd.”

Sanders said quickly, “So what? We use ESH to receive and hold monies earned overseas. There’s absolutely nothing illegal—”

“Then why lie?” Justine asked.

I made a
tsk-tsk
gesture with my finger. “Let’s just get it out on the table, shall we? No more beating about the whatever. ESH is indeed where the Harlows gather overseas money to be funneled into Harlow-Quinn Productions. But the money is not from foreign film proceeds. Or not so much, anyway.”

Not one of them responded.

I went on, enjoying myself, saying, “That’s what we thought ESH was all about when we first learned of its existence. But earlier today we figured out that ESH really stands for ‘Endowment Sharing Hands,’ the fund boasted about ad nauseam on the so-called charity’s website.”

“So-called charity?” Camilla Bronson said fiercely. “That foundation has saved hundreds, thousands of lives.”

“Probably,” Justine said. “But think how many more kids could have been saved if the twenty-seven million the Harlows siphoned away to fund their for-profit movie business had actually been spent on orphans.”

“Siphoned?” Terry Graves cried. “It’s not like that at all.”

“Sure it is,” I replied. “Did you know that Private has done a lot of work with PayPal the last few years? Lots and lots of goodwill there.”

“PayPal?” the producer said, confused. “So what?”

Justine said, “You jiggered the PayPal account associated with Sharing Hands so that fifty percent of every dollar was diverted and deposited in ESH Ltd’s Panamanian bank account.”

“Brilliantly conceived,” I said. “A secret piggy bank that just keeps filling for little piggies like you, Dave. And you, Camilla and Terry.”

“Not to mention Thom and Jennifer,” Justine said.

“It’s not like that at all,” Sanders protested. “There are promissory notes, and detailed contracts, agreements. Those funds
were
an investment for Sharing Hands. The charity stands to make back its money fivefold when
Saigon Falls
hits.”

Incredulous, I said, “But you’ve got interlocking boards of directors between the charity, an offshore legal entity, and a production company designed to make its owners multimillion-dollar profits? That’s collusion any way you look at it, Counselor. And the way
I
look at it, when this comes to light, you will all be put in prison, punished, and publicly vilified for taking money from orphans to make a goddamned movie, no matter how brilliant it might be.”

THE HARLOW-QUINN TEAM
sat there, looking at us in stunned silence. It was the kind of moment where someone might lose it and go for a weapon. My right hand moved slowly to my pistol.

But instead of running amok, Sanders gave a shudder and his shoulders trembled. His eyes watered. His face twisted in open despair as he choked, “I tried to rein them in.”

Camilla Bronson panicked. “Shut up, Dave.”

“Fuck you, Camilla,” said Terry Graves, then looked at me, trying to project earnestness. “Dave and I both tried to keep Thom from chasing every grandiose dream that came into his unbe-fucking-lievably creative genius brain.” He threw up his hands to an invisible audience. “I couldn’t stand up to Thom when it came to spending.”

“You two are making a monstrous mistake,” the publicist warned.

The attorney ignored her. “And I couldn’t stop Jennifer from spending like a freak in their personal life, a fucking OCD spending freak!”

Terry Graves said, “Thom would come in, all explosive energy, manic with it, and he’d make you see his visions. And then later, in the theater, he’d show you far beyond what he’d caused you to imagine in the first place, right up there thirty feet high on the screen, like he was some kind of supermagician, or god.

“The way he looked at life and his stories, they made you want to laugh, to cheer, and to cry, didn’t they? Thom could make you endure deep tragedy and know the far reaches of love and humanity.” He shook his head, now gazing at Justine in bewilderment. “How do you deal with someone who can do all that?”

I reappraised him but said nothing, leaving Justine to ask, “What really happened to Thom and Jennifer Harlow?”

“We don’t know,” Camilla Bronson said, tears forming in her eyes. “We honestly don’t. And all I can think is that it’s a tragedy that the world might never see
Saigon Falls
, never see their final incredible vision.”

“Save that crap for a retrospective in
Entertainment Weekly
,” I said. “Tell us about Adelita Gomez.”

“Adelita?” Sanders said.

Terry Graves blinked. “What about her?”

“She’s from Guadalajara,” Justine replied. “Which is where a blogger was murdered recently after posting that Jennifer and Thom had been seen in that city after their disappearance, highly intoxicated, or on drugs.”

“I saw that,” the publicist said as if she’d chewed something bitter. “
National Enquirer
nonsense.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “Again, tell us about Adelita.”

“She was the nanny,” the attorney said. “She went to Vietnam with them, which is where I met her briefly twice during my trips over there.”

Terry Graves was studying his hands. “They loved her. Thom and Jennifer gave her a small role in the film.”

“Why?” Camilla Bronson said. “Where is Adelita? What is she saying?”

“We have no idea where she is or what she’s saying,” I replied. “Cynthia Maines told us Adelita left Saigon two days before the Harlows, bound for Mexico on a vacation.”

“There you are, then,” Sanders said.

“Don’t you think it’s strange she hasn’t contacted someone about the Harlows? It’s international news.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said, and I believed him.

“Then tell us about the cameras in the panic room above the Harlows’ bedroom,” Justine said.

All three of them squinted at her. “What?” Terry Graves asked.

She told them what she’d found. They listened, openly confused.

“You didn’t know they had a panic room?” I asked when she finished.

“I had only a vague idea they did,” Sanders said.

The producer said, “I’ve never seen it, but Thom said it was installed when Sandy Shine owned the place. Maybe Sandy put those brackets there. He was a professional degenerate, you know.”

Sandy Shine was a hyper, mercurial actor who’d been nominated for an Oscar at sixteen, only to turn wild in his twenties: drugs, alcohol, and a long series of scandals, rehabs, and tawdry affairs that somehow transformed him into a comedic superstar with his own top-rated television show.

“We’ll check it out,” I said, stood, and motioned to Justine that we were leaving.

“What are you going to do with all this information?” Camilla Bronson asked.

“We haven’t decided yet,” I replied.

The attorney rubbed his hands together and said in a beseeching tone, “What can we do? How can we help you?”

Terry Graves picked up on his angle, said, “That’s right. What can we change so this isn’t made public?”

I thought about that. Justine beat me to it. “How about you start by firing the cook and maid you hired and bringing in the Harlows’ help in their place? The children love them. It will help stabilize them. It’s what I would tell a court.”

“Of course,” Sanders babbled as if he were suddenly our fawning servant. The trio followed us out of the man cave back down the hall toward the screening room. “I should have thought of that before.”

“We should have thought about that,” echoed Terry Graves.

“But none of us ever had children, you know?” said Camilla Bronson.

Why didn’t that surprise me?

In any case, I tuned out their blather, turned the corner, glanced into the screening room, and saw the Harlow children and the Harlow help. Miguel sat in Anita’s lap. The others were on the floor, giving the bulldog a belly rub.

Justine gasped beside me. I startled, looked at her. She was staring into the screening room, watching them, her lips parted in wonder.

“What?” I asked.

Justine tore her attention away, looked at me, deeply puzzled, but then shook her head and said, “Nothing. I just thought I saw something I hadn’t … but it’s nothing, I’m sure.”

JUSTINE WOULD NOT
elaborate on what she’d been thinking back in Sanders’s mansion as she looked at the Harlow children and their beloved servants. Indeed, she didn’t seem to want to talk about anything at all on the ride back to her bungalow. She just stared out at L.A. blipping by as if it were some foreign country she was reluctantly visiting for the first time.

The crime scene investigators were gone when we reached her street, though the chalk mark that had surrounded the assassin’s body was still there, along with the blood that darkened the pavement.

“Talk in the morning?” I asked when Justine reached for the door handle.

She nodded, hesitated, looked at me. “Last night, when you brought me home and I was drunk …”

“I was completely honorable.”

“No, of course, nothing like … Did I say anything … strange? Not me?”

My eyes never left hers as I shook my head. “Justine, I don’t remember anything strange or not you at all. You were tired. You drank a little too much. In our business it happens.”

She softened. “You are a good person, Jack.”

“I try to be,” I said. “Need me to walk you to the door?”

“No,” she said. “The dogs are there. I’ll be fine.”

I watched her until she’d opened her door, the Jack Russells jumping around her. She looked back at me and waved. Putting the Suburban in reverse, I was suddenly exhausted. I’d survived a murder attempt and helped uncover fraud on a massive scale. I deserved a good night’s sleep.

As I drove home, I put in a call to Mo-bot, asked her how the coding party was coming along.

“The money’s going to be transferred from the California general fund account,” she said. “We just got word of that a few minutes ago, and we’re making some last-minute changes so the tick hides deep in the file’s metadata.”

“If you say so,” I replied. “They’re the best, right?”

“The fine ladies of Cal Poly?” Maureen said as if it were heresy to even question their qualifications. “They’ve thought of a ridiculous number of things Sci and I missed.”

“Enough said. We’ll talk in the morning. I’ll explain what ESH Ltd is.”

“Look forward to it,” she said, hung up.

I reached my house. It was cool outside. The sea breeze was building. I went inside, turned on the gas fireplace. I sprawled on the couch, watching the flames. I thought of the last time I’d watched the fire. I thought of Guin Scott-Evans and wondered when the actress was returning from London.

Then Justine elbowed her way back into my thoughts.

Justine had always been the level head in the room. Or at least it had always seemed that way to me. And she’d always been the one to try to get me to open up. Now she seemed to be retreating into herself. Why?

I got a Sam Adams from the fridge, drank it while munching on a bag of microwave popcorn, trying unsuccessfully to figure out what was beating her up so badly. I finally decided she’d tell me in her own time—if that was what she decided. If not, I’d give her the space to try and work it through.

After getting a second Sam, I turned on the television, tried to watch the Lakers-Bulls game. But it was preseason stuff and none of the plays looked crisp, and I quickly got bored. Passing on a perfect chance to catch up on
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
, I instead turned the TV off, listened to the silence of my house, and went back to watching the fake fire in my hearth.

Someone had tried to kill me. Someone had sent an assassin to take me out. Who? Why? Earlier in the day, I’d come up with several likely suspects, and lying there on the couch, I tried to go through them one by one.