As Lena watched West squirm, she realized why she had never looked to politicians for the answers in her life. Without a script to follow, politicians couldn’t quiet find the right words. Without a lift across the water, most of them would probably drown.
“What happened to your nine-eleven pin, Senator?”
West rubbed his finger over his lapel. “It’s in a safe place, Detective.”
“I agree with you. Your pin is in a very safe place.”
“How would you know?”
“Because I saw it less than an hour ago.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“That’s right. You lost it.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Denny Ramira’s house. You lost it when you murdered him, Senator. Denny hid it before he died. That’s why Klinger was there, right? The file I took was a bonus. He let me walk out with it because it made you look good. Nothing inside pointed to you. But the pin would, and you needed to cover your tracks. You sent Klinger over to Ramira’s house to find your pin.”
A long moment passed. Tight, and heavy, and dark as midnight. Everyone in the SUV was making lots of eye contact and trading secret messages. Lena noticed the driver’s gaze riveted on her in the rearview mirror. The kid looked scared.
West didn’t say anything right away, staring out the window as they reached the top of the hill and started down the winding road into the Valley. There was absolutely no reason for the senator to hide anymore. The pin that he had received for his support of the rescue workers after 9/11 had been handmade by an artist living in South Pasadena. The three-dimensional work of art depicting an LAFD fire engine set at ground zero was one of a kind. And there could be only one explanation for how the gold pin wound up in Denny Ramira’s hand.
West cocked his head and looked at her. “Do you have it with you?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s still in Denny’s hiding place.”
“And where’s that?”
Lena met the senator’s eyes. “You might say he palmed it.”
West grinned at her, then spoke slowly as he thought it through. “Denny Ramira was a great reporter. He didn’t care much for politics, though, and he was glad when the chance came his way to move on. He always used to say that we didn’t get it. That the world couldn’t be divvied up into left or right. That you couldn’t distinguish people by their god, their tribe, their size or shape. You couldn’t even break them down by the things they liked to eat. Something was either right or it was wrong, he’d say. A person was either decent or indecent. And that was the key to his work. That was his secret. If you had to pick a side, you better make sure there was more right to it than wrong.”
“Which side did you pick, Senator?”
He shrugged, still gazing into the past. “I can tell you this, Detective. I gave as much as I got. And if some say that I got more than I gave, well-I did better than most.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I talk to the families who lost their children because they thought Formula D was safe. The people who put their trust in you, Senator-you and Tremell and the FDA. Thanks for making sure the clinical trials were straight and true.”
He held the glance but didn’t say anything. Lena pressed forward, still trying to understand.
“When Jennifer Bloom first came to your office and told you what happened to her son, it didn’t move you?”
“She didn’t use her real name, Detective.”
“What kind of a response is that? When she told you how her son died, that it had been a deliberate act on the part of Tremell, a pharmaceutical company, and a handful of government lowlifes who were bought and paid for, you weren’t moved by her story?”
“Of course I was. Who wouldn’t be?”
“When she walked out, how long did it take before you called Tremell? A day? An hour? Or was she still on her way out the door? You’re the one who called him. You told Tremell who Jennifer Bloom really was. You’re the one who told him that she played him for a fool.”
She could see his soiled mind working behind his eyes. The gears inside his head spinning round and round even though they were warped and bent and out of alignment.
“He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants,” West said. “Ten percent of my stock portfolio was wrapped up in his lousy company. The share price had already nose-dived because of all the rumors. If Bloom’s story had been made public, it would’ve taken years for the price to bounce back.”
Lena stared at him in disbelief. “That’s why you ratted her out? Because of your stock portfolio?”
“That’s right, Detective. For the money. For my money. She didn’t trust me to see it through. A former member of the United States Senate. She walked out of my office, met Ramira, and told him everything. And I mean everything. And so I made Denny Ramira my new best friend. It was the only way I could keep an eye on him. He had this thing for you, you know. He felt guilty about what happened to you last year. That story you gave him about your brother’s murder. He felt guilty that he won so many awards and you nearly lost your career. He wasn’t holding out on you because of the book or anything he was doing for the paper. He wanted to hand you this one on a plate. Everything wrapped up and ready to go. He thought he owed you that. But as you can see, timing is everything in life. Denny waited a day too long.”
The SUV made a right turn onto Sherman Way. They were less than two miles off, approaching the airport from the rear. Lena glanced at the patrol cars. West’s bodyguards didn’t seem concerned that they were surrounded and she turned back to the senator.
“Denny was ready to talk,” she said. “So you went over to his place. What clinched it for him? And don’t tell me that it was because he ID’d Cava. Denny didn’t ID Cava. You fingered him to cover yourself.”
West smiled at the memory. “The lost witness,” he said after a moment. “Denny thought he’d figured it out last Sunday. That the witness was really the target. That the witness was Jennifer all along.”
“But it took until Wednesday before he confirmed it,” she said.
“That’s right. It took three days to find her. She was living at a friend’s house, the one that Cava murdered. She made a mistake and answered the phone. Denny heard her voice.”
“And you called Tremell again. You sold her out twice.”
“That’s right. I let everybody know. Then I went over to Denny’s and tried to convince him to wait. I told him that we needed to find her and talk to her. But he wouldn’t listen and he got angry. When he reached for the phone to call you, things got out of hand. Then I cleaned out his office, and drove home. Obviously, I missed a single file. The one Klinger found. But you’re right, the pin was more important to me than the file. And that’s why I sent him there.”
Lena shook her head, silently counting the number of people who had lost their lives because this man was worried about the price of a share of stock. This man who had served three consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate representing the State of California. This man who had been appointed to the police commission by the mayor of Los Angeles and approved in a unanimous vote by the City Council in an attempt to restore public trust in the department.
This horrible man sitting right in front of her. Somehow he had managed to rat out Jennifer Bloom twice. And he’d ratted out Cava, too.
“What about Cava,” she said. “How did you make contact?”
“I was a senator at the time. I spent a few days in Iraq, then toured a facility in Eastern Europe. Cava was there and we met.”
“What facility? Are you talking about the secret prisons? The Black Sites?”
West eyed her face, choosing his words carefully. “It was a facility,” he said. “Cava had been transferred there as a medical officer. His role changed over time, but he didn’t have the temperament for it.”
“You fucked him up is what you’re saying.”