The Devil's Necktie (10 page)

21

Jack stared at the open face of the handsome priest sitting in one corner of the Vatican, hearing confessions, and he questioned his motives for standing in the slow-moving line. He was caught up in the moment, he decided, intoxicated by Rome, awed by the majesty and opulence of the basilica, as simple as that.

The young man of God wore an unadorned black robe and sat facing a long line of supplicants. Not hiding behind a veiled burgundy curtain—acting as the conduit of heaven and earth—like the great Wizard of Oz.

When it was Jack's turn to be absolved of his sins, he knelt stiffly in front of the priest, feeling very exposed, and in a hushed tone stammered, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been twenty years since my last confession.”

“Two years, son?” the priest said, leaning forward, not sure if he had heard correctly.

“No, Father, twenty years,” he said a little too loud this time.

The priest's brow furrowed for a fleeting moment. Then his laughter, like a set of tuned bells, pealed and echoed off the marble floor, the stone walls, and the exquisite objects of religious art in the cavernous room. In a thick Italian accent he forgave Jack and welcomed him back into the fold.

Jack woke up from his dream feeling surprisingly warm and comfortable.

Then he got his bearings and remembered that his own Catholic experience hadn't been as warm and fuzzy.

Jack had known too many Mafia chiefs and drug kingpins and dirty politicians who paid for stained-glass windows and pipe organs and Thanksgiving turkeys to gain a place at the head table—sitting shoulder to shoulder with cardinals and bishops and priests for holiday feasts. Drug money and the death it delivered was casually traded for the forgiveness of mortal sins and entrance to heaven's gates.

Jack sat up unsteadily, ran his fingers through hair that was sweat-plastered to his forehead, and reached for the ever present Excedrin bottle. He stumbled into the bathroom, and drank hungrily from the sink before tossing a few aspirin into the mix. He cocked his head back and swallowed, looking for the relief that he knew would be short lived if it came at all.

He scrubbed his face with a fury of hot soapy water and, knowing what the day entailed, decided against shaving. Jack was pulling a clean black T-shirt over his head when he was startled by a loud pounding on his front door. He clumsily stepped into a pair of jeans and fought to keep his balance as he shouted, “I'll be right there,” knowing full well that whoever was banging on the thick metal door couldn't hear a damn thing he was saying.

That knowledge didn't stop Jack from yelling out a few more times as he crossed the concrete floor, in his bare feet, with a bad attitude, and yanked the door open, startling Cruz Feinberg, who stood there holding two cups of hot coffee. One cup was jostled as the door flew open, burning his hand.

“Dude, my hands are my meal ticket,” he said, scowling. “Chill, you called me.”

“How'd you get in?” Jack said, by way of apology.

Cruz's father was no joy to work with, so attitude didn't faze him. He walked past Jack into the loft.

“I'd tell you, but then you'd have to arrest me. Oh yeah, you're not a cop anymore,” he deadpanned.

Jack grabbed a dish towel and traded it for one of the coffees.

Cruz flipped the dish towel back onto the counter and wiped his hand on his pants.

Jack had left an early morning message on Bundy Lock and Key's voice mail while he was yellow-padding in the wee hours, and it had totally slipped his mind. He wanted Cruz to secure the loft and check for bugs.

Cruz went downstairs into the garage to inspect the Mustang while Jack finished dressing and his haphazard grooming.

The kid already had the front door lock broken into pieces by the time Jack stepped out of the bedroom area, dressed and ready to face the day.

“Here's the deal,” Cruz said. “First of all, nice ride.”

Jack nodded. Cruz continued. “There's a bug secreted under the front-right panel of the car and another device attached to the left-rear wheel well that even Stevie Wonder could have found. That being the point, I think. They're generic devices, untraceable. Anyone could pull this equipment off the Internet. I can disengage them, you can go at them with a hammer, or you might be better off knowing that they know where you are. Might give you more control.”

Smart kid, Jack thought. “I like the notion. Delgado wants to play chess . . . but then he'd be able to keep tabs on everyone I visited. I wouldn't want to endanger anyone and pull them unwittingly into his game. I'll still need a clean car he can't ID.”

Chess was the way Jack had approached his career as a narcotics detective and a philosophy he had shared with his men—to always play chess and not checkers when building a case, always be thinking three moves ahead.

“Can't help you there, but I'll kill the bugs,” Cruz said while inspecting the lock's cylinder.

“How long would it have taken for
you
to breach the door?”

“Three minutes max. But I'm special.”

“Is that what your mother told you?” Jack asked, not happy with the number. If these men were specialists, nobody in the building across the way would have noticed anything out of the ordinary. With people moving in and out of the building, workmen were coming and going on a regular basis. He'd still canvas the building across from his on the off chance that someone had seen something meaningful.

“I was born with the knowledge. It's a Guatemalan thing,” Cruz said without the slightest trace of irony. “I'm adding a second dead bolt that should slow down a professional.”

“Slow them down?”

“If they're good, and they want to get in . . .”

“I'll need a few extra sets of keys. I want my son to have a set.” Jack made a mental note to stick a key in an envelope for the afternoon mail.

“Done.”

Cruz handed Jack the old lock cylinder and a jeweler's loupe. “Almost invisible unless you know what you're looking for.”

Jack could see microscopic scratches near the tumblers. He felt his blood pressure rising. He made a mental note to copy Lieutenant Gallina on the evidence.

“I'll set you up with a camera,” Cruz added. “If they break in again, at least you'll know who you're dealing with. You'll be able to access the loft from your computer when you're off-site. Speaking of which, I have a friend who works on the Geek Squad. He'll stop by in about an hour to check out your computer. And I called the security company that monitors the surveillance cameras in the lobby and garage area. They did the installation a month ago, but the HOA dragged its feet with the paperwork and it won't be activated until next week.”

At least Jack knew where he stood on the home front. He also knew why Delgado had made his cameo appearance. Now he just had to find more pieces of the puzzle.

—

Jack pulled Tommy's rental car—a silver Lexus GS 460—to a stop in the front of the Vista Haven house just as two Hispanic men were off-loading a king-size mattress from a Sit 'n Sleep delivery truck. “I hope they didn't take the old one!” Jack said, jumping out of the car before Tommy and striding through the open doorway and into the house. He raced down the hall—and relaxed a bit when he saw that the bloodstained mattress was still propped up against the wall.

Mayor led Tommy into the room as Jack wheeled around, about to nail him for not giving him a heads-up for altering the crime scene. Mayor stopped him with, ”I called you on your cell phone. I didn't get an answer. I left you a message.”

Jack glanced down at his cell and saw that there was a message pending. Mayor continued. “The police released the crime scene, and I promised Michael I'd oversee the cleanup. It's a depressed real estate market in L.A. and Michael does a lot of staging. He contacted his regular crew from the ship, and luckily another job had just fallen out, so here they are, happy to have the work.” He pointed in various places. “The rug is coming up after the wall is painted and the bed is removed. Then the cleaning company will work their way through the master suite and bathroom, and then the new rug will be installed.”

Jack could see a crew of four men sitting on lawn chairs next to the pool and eating an early lunch.

“I told them to wait until we had a chance to talk.”

Jack nodded his thanks.

“Michael arrives the end of next week. Things will be back to normal. No reason he should have to suffer through any of this. He was just doing that poor woman a nice turn.”

“Back to normal,” Jack said, leaving an uncomfortable silence hanging in the room. The stained rug and the blood-spattered wall were all that was left of the violence, all that was left of Mia. Now they were inconveniences.

“Thanks for the call,” Jack managed. ”You didn't have to do that.”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“Have Lieutenant Gallina or Tompkins been around?”

“First thing this morning. I tagged along as they did a cursory walk-through of the house. They didn't seem to find anything of interest and gave me the go-ahead.”

Jack picked over the mattress, checking the seams for any cuts or openings. He knew the LAPD techs had already been over every square inch of the bedroom, but this was his last shot.

Jack said to Tommy, “Let's start in the kitchen and work our way back. Mayor, will you let me know when the men are about to pull up the rug?”

Mayor nodded.

The delivery guys had propped the new mattress against the wall in the hallway and as Jack and Tommy searched the kitchen, they moved the bloodstained mattress out the front door and up the ramp into the truck, away from prying eyes.

Jack could hear Mayor directing the cleaning crew as he started searching the freezer while Tommy combed the silverware drawer. He knew from years in the narcotics business that the freezer was a drug dealer's go-to place to hide their stash. But there was nothing.

“What exactly are we looking for?” Tommy asked.

“Mia knew she was being hunted. I don't know what's in the P.O. box, but there's no way she wouldn't have her passport close at hand in case she had to bolt.”

Tommy watched Jack work for a beat, then, “My wife wanted me to buy her a Sub-Zero fridge.”

“Yeah? Did you?”

“Oh yeah. I spent ten grand on a refrigerator to keep a two-dollar head of lettuce from wilting. And I'm not a big salad guy.”

“But Elizabeth was happy?”

“She likes her lettuce.”

Jack came up empty in the fridge and started on the upper cabinets while Tommy rifled through catalogs, warranties, and instruction manuals he found for kitchen appliances that were gathering dust on the lower shelves.

The two men were careful to put things back where they found them, and after going through every drawer, cabinet, and nook, they started in the living room. Again, nothing. Jack worked to control his frustration as they made their way back into the guest bedroom.

The room sat empty now. The bed had been stripped; Mia's belongings had been taken into police custody for storage until family members could be found and notified.

Jack eyed the private garden just beyond the sliding glass door and tried to visualize it from Mia's point of view. It was Zenlike and well manicured, with a nice combination of annuals for color and perennials to keep order. A two-foot-tall, fat metal Buddha with a green patina sat serenely on a stone pedestal in the center of the garden. It probably made her happy, he thought. It made his heart ache.

Tommy searched inside the closet while Jack felt underneath the closet's overhang, and on the top, finding nothing of interest. Jack got on his hands and knees and moved slowly around the perimeter of the rug, looking to see if it had been tampered with in any way, creating a space to hide Mia's papers.

All of a sudden Mayor called out from the bedroom.

The workers had finished putting a fresh coat of paint on the bloodstained wall—another piece of Mia gone—and had started to rip back the brown Berber carpet, exposing the foam-rubber padding underneath. They pulled it back in sections, cutting the rug into smaller pieces as they went.

The men moved expertly from the sliding glass door over to the custom-built closet, and when they pulled back the piece of rug, from under the overhang, Jack felt his pulse quicken. A small blue plastic packet had been hidden from view under that corner section of rug. Jack grabbed up the packet and carefully pulled back the Scotch-taped edge. He pulled out the enclosed papers.

Cleaning instructions.

The instructions for the care and maintenance of the Berber carpet, which had probably been left behind by the installer. Jack, Tommy, and Mayor exhaled in disappointment. Unfazed, the workers used their utility knives to cut the remaining carpet.

Tommy saw something in Jack's expression that gave him pause.

“What?” he asked.

But Jack was in a zone. He turned on his heel and walked out of the bedroom, followed by Tommy and then Mayor. But instead of walking to the front door, he made a right turn into the guest bedroom, pulled the sliding glass door open, and stepped out into the private garden.

Jack, being careful not to damage any of the delicate flowers and exotic plants, lifted the fat Buddha off its stone base. The statue was light in his hands, and when he spun it upside down, he saw that the stained Buddha was hollow, an inexpensive replica.

Jack reached in with two fingers and pulled out a waterproof Ziploc freezer bag. Inside the clear plastic bag were three passports. He flipped open the passports and let out an excited breath. Three passports, three different pictures, three different names. All the same woman. All Mia.

God, she was good, he thought. This was the break he'd been waiting for. Jack had names, aliases, disguises, passport stamps, and travel dates. He could now start tracking the movements that had led to Mia's brutal death.