The Gods of Guilt(45)

“No, then that’s good, because I don’t want your business, Mick. I’ll see you around.”

He headed down the sidewalk and I watched him go.

“Yeah, I’ll see you around, Val.”

I got in the backseat and told Earl to get over to Ventura Boulevard and head toward Studio City. I wanted to drive by Kendall Roberts’s business. There was no reason to do it other than that I was curious about her. I wanted to see what she had built for herself and what she was protecting.

“You did good in there, Earl,” I said. “You saved the day.”

He looked at me in the mirror and nodded.

“I got skills,” he said.

“That you do.”

I pulled my phone and called Lorna to check in. Nothing new had happened since the last call. I told her about the staff meeting I wanted for the next morning and she said Cisco had already informed her. I asked her to make sure she brought enough coffee and doughnuts for five.

“Who’s the fifth?” she asked.

“Earl’s going to join us,” I said.

I looked at him in the mirror. I could see only his eyes but I could tell he was smiling.

After I finished with Lorna I called Cisco. He said he was at a Ferrari dealership on Wilshire Boulevard, about twenty blocks from the Beverly Wilshire. He said the place had multiple security cameras for watching over its expensive fleet at night.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “The man in the hat?”

“That’s right.”

In his spare time Cisco had been pursuing the man in the hat for five months now. It deeply bothered him that he had been unable to find a camera anywhere in the Beverly Wilshire or its immediate surroundings that showed either the man’s face or him getting into a car to follow Gloria Dayton.

But Gloria’s chauffeur that night had been interviewed and he gave Cisco the exact route he had taken while driving her home from the hotel. Cisco spent all of his spare time on those streets checking businesses and residences with security cameras on the off chance that they picked up the car trailing Gloria home. He had even checked with the transportation departments for Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Los Angeles to view traffic cameras along the route. It had become a matter of professional pride to the big man.

I, on the other hand, had long since given up any hope of identifying the man in the hat. To me the trail was dead cold. Most security systems don’t keep video for more than a month. Most of the places where Cisco made inquiries told him they had no video from the night Gloria Dayton was murdered. That he was too late.

“Well, you can drop that,” I said. “I’ve got a name I want you to put at the top of your to-do list. I want to find her as soon as possible.”

I gave him the name Trina Rafferty and filled him in on my conversation with Roberts about her.

“If she’s still a working prostitute she could be anywhere from here to Miami and this might not even be her real name,” he said.

“I think she’s close,” I said. “I think Fulgoni may even have her stashed somewhere. You need to find her.”

“Okay, I’m on it. But why the big hurry? Won’t she say the same thing Roberts just told you?”

“Somebody knew Glory Days was the CI who set up the Moya arrest. That wasn’t Kendall Roberts—at least she says it wasn’t her. I think that leaves Trina Trixxx. I think Fulgoni already got to her and I want to know what she told him.”

“Got it.”

“Good. Let me know.”

I disconnected. Earl told me we were coming up on the address for Flex, the yoga studio owned by Roberts. He slowed the car to a crawl as we passed by the storefront studio. I checked the hours printed on the door and saw the place was open eight to eight every day. I could see people inside, all women and all in downward dog positions on rubber mats on the floor. I knew the position because my ex-wife was a longtime yoga enthusiast.

I wondered if Roberts’s clients minded being on display to the street and passersby on the sidewalk. Many of the positions in yoga have a subtle or overt sexuality to them and it seemed odd to have a studio where one wall was floor-to-ceiling glass. As I pondered the question, a woman inside the studio walked up to the window and held her hands up to her eyes, pantomiming that she was looking at me through binoculars. The point was clear.

“We can go now, Earl,” I said.

He picked up speed.

“Where to?”

“Let’s go down the road a bit to Art’s Deli. We’ll pick up sandwiches and then I’ll go see Legal Siegel for lunch.”





15





At eight-thirty that night I knocked on the door at Kendall Roberts’s home. I had been sitting out in the Lincoln on her street and waiting for her to return.