Ramsey traded looks with Barrera. “Higgins didn’t mention the money.”
“I didn’t think he would,” Lena said. “When I identified myself as a police officer through the front door, both he and Spadell tried to make a run for it.”
“He didn’t mention that either,” Ramsey said.
Lena sat down at the table with Vaughan. She couldn’t get a sense of where things were going. She had expected her termination to be quick and decisive. Expected to hear Ramsey’s smoked-out voice raging in her ear. No matter what the circumstances, she had fired her weapon at the district attorney. Most politicians have a thing about being shot at. It’s not just a matter of form.
Ramsey got to his feet, glancing at Lena and Vaughan as he moved to the window. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s my take. The city is in fucking strife over the murder of a teenage girl. Not only did we blow the fucking trial, we got the wrong fucking guy. And now the wrong fucking guy and another guy with clout are both fucking dead. Aside from what’s happening with Higgins and his bullshit band of clowns, that pretty much sums up where we’re at, right?”
Lena glanced at Vaughan and they nodded.
Ramsey turned to Barrera. “You ready?”
Barrera gave him a look, then spun his computer around. “You’re being followed, Lena. Dick Harvey’s been on your back all day. And he’s shooting video. It’s on the Web, and it’s on TV. Every part of your day until tonight when you lost him on the Pacific Coast Highway.”
She remembered seeing a white van, but not the driver’s face. Something about the van had made her feel uneasy, so she’d decided to give the new car a run once she found enough road.
Barrera pointed to the monitor. The Blanket Hollywood Web site was broadcasting her day with commentary by Harvey. The shot of Lena entering Buddy Paladino’s office seemed to be playing over and over again with pictures of Lena and Paladino matted in graphic boxes over the building. Harvey’s wild speculation was just as endless. When the Web site cut to a shot of Lena talking to Vaughan on the phone from her car, Vaughan’s picture faded up beside Lena’s.
“How did he know Lena was talking to me?” Vaughan said.
Ramsey waved his hand through the air, indicating that he wanted the computer shut down. “Harvey knew it was you because he hired a lip reader. Gamble used your name.”
Vaughan traded looks with Lena, then turned back to Ramsey.
“How much of what we said did he get?”
“Not enough to reveal what you two were up to,” Ramsey said. “Most of the time Gamble’s mouth was below the dashboard. But I heard enough to know that this shithead is a real problem. And it’s been my experience that guys like this don’t stop. They just keep coming. Harvey wants to think that he’s been wronged. He spent that night in jail convincing himself that he was wronged. He’s itching for a lawsuit and the publicity that would come with that. So both of you guys are on notice, okay?”
Vaughan nodded again. Ramsey pushed Spadell’s revolver aside and sat on the edge of his desk.
“Now I want to talk to Gamble alone,” he said. “If you guys would excuse us.”
Lena watched Vaughan and Barrera get up and head for the door. Vaughan turned back to her and shot a look of support her way, but Barrera closed the door. And then she was alone with Deputy Chief Albert Ramsey. Alone and waiting for him to deliver the blow. He was still seated on his desk, still staring at her with those hard eyes of his.
“I saw you smoking a cigarette on Harvey’s Web site,” he said finally. “Where’s the pack?”
She patted down her jacket and found the pack in her pocket. Ramsey tapped a cigarette out and lit up with a lighter he kept in his top desk drawer. He took a hard first pull on the thing, then paused a moment before he blew out the smoke.
“You gonna have one?” he said to her.
Lena shook her head. “No thanks.”
Ramsey sat down at his desk and pulled the trash can closer. After tapping the ash into the can, he turned and gave Lena another long look.
“Higgins said that you hit him in the balls with your gun tonight.”
Lena felt the pull in her chest and struggled to find her voice. “I just gave him a tap,” she said finally.
“Why?”
“He’d lost his focus. He needed to know that I was there.”
“You ever do that kind of thing before?”
“No.”
“Then why did you do it tonight? Give me the real reason, Gamble. No bullshit. I’ve got X-ray vision. I’ll see through it.”
Lena moved to the window. She could see their new building. Tonight it was all lit up and looked like a work of art.
“Why’d you do it, Gamble?” Ramsey repeated. “Higgins is the district attorney.”
“Because I was angry,” she said, looking him in the eye. “Because they took Jacob Gant to trial for no reason. Because they didn’t have the brass to back out and say they were wrong. Because I could see Gant’s dead body on that bathroom floor with two bullets in his head. Because the guy who murdered Lily Hight is still out there. I was thinking about a lot of things, Chief.”
Ramsey took another deep pull on the cigarette. “Let me see your piece,” he said.
Lena drew her gun from its holster, gave it a quick check and passed it over. Ramsey ejected the mag and examined the weapon.
“Why do you carry a.45?” he asked.
“I like it.”
“Higgins told me that you fired a shot into the fence just above their heads.”
“I didn’t know who they were at that point.”
“I understand that. But when you figured it out … when you saw Higgins and Spadell standing in front of you with their hands raised … when you were thinking about what they did to Gant and you had all that shit in your head-I want to know whether or not you thought about shooting them. Did you, Gamble? Did you think about putting them down?”
She hesitated, guessing that Ramsey was hoping to trap her. When she finally nodded, something bloomed across his ruined face. Confirmation of some kind. She wondered when he would get to the part where he asked for her badge. It felt close.
“What stopped you?” he said.
“I’m a police officer. I took an oath.”
Ramsey jammed the mag into her gun and passed it back to her. She wasn’t sure what was happening anymore. She walked back to the window, steadying herself against the sill.
“Okay,” he said. “So they went to trial knowing that they were prosecuting the wrong man. Now they’re doing their best to cover everything up. But why do you think Higgins was at Bosco’s house? What’s he looking for that a security camera could pick up?”
She had asked Escabar the same question. Stray thoughts surfaced like how the mob had been able to keep J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, in their pocket for so many years. As it turned out, they’d managed to take a photograph of Hoover performing oral sex on another man-his assistant at the FBI and his longtime companion. The more she’d thought about it, the more sense it made. Johnny Bosco wasn’t a mob figure, but would have had similar needs. He ran Club 3 AM, a place where on any given night, a VIP could be driven to excess, get into trouble and need a free pass. Higgins already had a reputation for keeping celebrities, even trust fund babies, out of jail. It had come up during Lena’s last case when a TV actor driving drunk crashed his Land Rover, killing his friend in the passenger seat. It had come up even more recently when countless actresses charged with possession walked away free and clear.
“What do you think, Gamble? What’s Higgins looking for?”
“I can’t say with any certainty, Chief. But he’s been keyed up about that pile of coke we found from the very beginning.”