“Great,” I said. “I guess all four of us missed it and our client didn’t bother to tell us. So the bunch of us, I guess we’re all fired.”
I paused for effect.
“Now, what about this name you came up with? This Don Driscoll, where did that come from and do we know anything more? Freeman could’ve unwittingly dropped the key to the whole case in our laps this morning, people. What’ve we got?”
Bullocks looked at Cisco, deferring.
“As you know,” he said, “ALOFT was sold in February to the LeMure Fund with Opparizio still in place to run it. Because LeMure is a publicly traded company, everything about the deal was monitored by the Federal Trade Commission and made public to shareholders. Including a list of employees that would remain at ALOFT following the transition. I have the list, dated December fifteenth.”
“So we started cross-referencing the ALOFT employees to the list of Lisa’s Facebook friends,” Bullocks said. “Luckily Donald Driscoll was early in the alphabet. We came up with him pretty quickly.”
I nodded, impressed.
“So who is Driscoll?”
“In the FTC docs his name was in a group listed under information technology,” Cisco said. “So what the hell, I called IT at ALOFT and asked for him. I was told that Donald Driscoll used to work there but his employment contract expired on February first and it wasn’t extended. He’s gone.”
“You’ve started the trace?” I asked.
“We have. But it’s a common name and that’s slowing us down. As soon as we have something, you’ll be the first to know.”
Running names from the private sector always took time. It wasn’t as easy as being a cop and simply typing a name into one of the many law enforcement databases.
“Don’t let up,” I said. “This could be the whole game right here.”
“Don’t worry, Boss,” Cisco said. “Nobody’s letting up.”
Forty-four
Donald Driscoll, thirty-one, formerly employed by ALOFT, lived in the Belmont Shore area of Long Beach. On Sunday morning I rode down with Cisco to tag Driscoll with a subpoena, the hope being that he would talk to me before I had to put him on the witness stand blind.
Rojas agreed to work on his day off to help make up for his misdeeds. He drove the Lincoln and we sat in the back, Cisco updating me on his conclusions regarding his latest investigations of the Bondurant murder. There was no doubt that the defense case was coming together and Driscoll just might be the witness who could cap it all off.
“You know,” I said, “we could actually win this thing if Driscoll cooperates and says what I think he’s going to say.”
“That’s a big if,” Cisco replied. “And look, we have to be prepared for anything with this guy. For all we know, he could be the guy. Do you know how tall he is? Six four. Has it on his driver’s license.”
I looked over at him.
“Which I wasn’t supposed to see but happened to get access to,” he said.
“Don’t tell me about any crimes, Cisco.”
“I’m just saying I saw the info on his license, that’s all.”
“Fine. Leave it at that. So what do you suggest we do when we get down there? I thought we were just going to knock on the door.”
“We are. But you still have to be careful.”
“I’ll be standing behind you.”
“Yeah, you’re a true friend.”
“I am. And by the way, if I put you on the stand tomorrow you’re going to have to come up with a shirt that has sleeves and a collar. Make yourself presentable, man. I don’t know how Lorna puts up with your shit.”
“So far she’s put up with it longer than she ever put up with yours.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”
I turned and looked out the window. I had two ex-wives who were probably also my two best friends. But it didn’t go past that. I’d had them but couldn’t hold them. What did that say about me? I lived in a daydream that one day Maggie, my daughter and I would live together again as a family. The reality was, it was never going to happen.
“You all right, Boss?”
I turned back to Cisco.
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know. You’re looking a little shaky there. Why don’t you let me go knock on the door and if he’ll talk I’ll give you a bump on the cell and you come in.”
“No, we do it together.”
“You’re the boss.”
“Yeah, I’m the boss.”
But I felt like the loser. I decided right at that moment that I was going to change things and find a way to redeem myself. Right after the trial.
Belmont Shore had the feel of a rustic beach town even though it was part of Long Beach. Driscoll’s residence was a two-story, 1950s-style apartment building of aqua blue and white off Bayshore near the pier.
Driscoll’s place was on the second floor where an exterior walkway ran along the front of the building. Apartment 24 was halfway down. Cisco knocked and then took a position to the side of the door, leaving me standing there.
“Are you kidding?” I asked.
He just looked at me. He wasn’t.
I took a step to the side. We waited but nobody answered even though it was before ten on a Sunday morning. Cisco looked at me and raised his eyes as if to ask What do you want to do?
I didn’t answer. I turned to the railing and looked down at the parking lot in front. I saw some empty spaces and they were numbered. I pointed.
“Let’s find twenty-four and see if his car is here.”
“You go,” Cisco said. “I’ll check around up here.”
“What?”
I didn’t see anything to check around for. We were on a five-foot-wide walkway that ran in front of every second-floor apartment. No furniture, no bikes, just concrete.
“Just go check the parking lot.”
I headed back downstairs. After ducking to look under the front of three cars to get the number painted on the curb, I realized that the parking slot numbers did not correspond to the apartment numbers. It was a twelve-unit building, apartments 1 through 6 on the bottom and 21 through 26 up top. But the parking lot spaces were numbered 1 through 16. I took a guess that under that number scheme Driscoll had number 10 if each apartment got one space, which stood to reason since there were only sixteen spots and I saw that two were labeled as guest parking and two were marked for handicapped parking.
I was in the middle of turning these numbers in my head and looking at the ten-year-old BMW parked in slot 10 when Cisco called my name from the walkway above. I looked and he waved me up.
When I got back up there he was standing in the open door of apartment 24. He waved me in.
“He was asleep but he finally answered.”
I walked in and saw a disheveled man sitting on a couch in a sparsely furnished living room. His hair was sticking up in frozen curls and knots on the right side. He huddled with a blanket around his shoulders. Even so, I could tell he matched a photo Cisco had pulled off Donald Driscoll’s own Facebook account.
“That’s a lie,” he said. “I didn’t invite him in. He broke in.”
“No, you invited me,” Cisco said. “I have a witness.”
He pointed to me. The bleary-eyed man followed the finger and looked at me for the first time. I could see recognition in his eyes. I knew then that it was Driscoll and that we were on to something here.
“Hey, look, I don’t know what this-”
“Are you Donald Driscoll?” I asked.
“I’m not telling you shit, man. You can’t just break-”
“Hey!” Cisco yelled loudly.
The man jumped in his seat. Even I startled, not having expected Cisco’s new interviewing tactic.
“Just answer the question,” Cisco continued in a calmer voice. “Are you Donald Driscoll?”
“Who wants to know?”
“You know who wants to know,” I said. “You recognized me the moment you looked at me. And you know why we’re here, Donald, don’t you?”