Then he tried to make it look like a robbery and ran away. He hit the wall and blew.”

“I agree, but it won’t play that way. It’s still poison for us. Sugarcoated poison. Leave it to the LAPD to set the bad guys free and send the good guys to jail.”

Lena remained quiet because she knew that what Rhodes had just said was true. Barrera and Deputy Chief Ramsey knew how it would play as well.

She started to reach for that pack of cigarettes after all, but stopped when she heard movement in the foyer behind her. It was a group of about ten people walking toward the front entrance as if on autopilot. She recognized the mayor’s chief of staff, a city councilwoman from Hollywood, and the LAPD chief’s new adjutant, Abraham Hernandez. It seemed like a good guess that this was the group who had been whispering in the darkness from the balcony outside Bosco’s office. When she saw Steven Bennett and Debi Watson, she reached out for Rhodes and gave him a nudge.

Bennett and Watson were the deputy district attorneys who had brought the case against Jacob Gant to trial. Until Buddy Paladino humiliated them in front of a courtroom wired for TV and the electronic universe beyond, they were considered to be two of the best and brightest deputy DAs in Los Angeles. Particularly Steven Bennett, whom the district attorney had taken to and was grooming to replace him if he won reelection for his third term in office. Tonight, it looked like Bennett and Watson were anything but the best and brightest. Tonight, they were shuffling their feet and keeping their heads down. Tonight, they were passing the investigator from the coroner’s office at the door—mere shadows of their former selves—and leaving another crime scene in shame.

 

5

She found Dante Escabar in the courtyard at a table by the pool. Although it seemed clear that he wanted to be alone, she pulled a chair out and sat down. Several moments passed before he even acknowledged her presence. He was deep within himself, sipping bourbon and brooding on automatic, with sheets of sharp blue light from the water ricocheting off his dark eyes.

“I’ve already told you people everything I know,” he said finally.

He hadn’t looked up, but was still staring at his drink. The ice was melting away.

“Sometimes in the heat of the moment details get left behind,” she said.

“Heat of the moment? Is that what the LAPD calls it?”

She could hear the fury in his voice. The venom. Escabar was younger than his partner by at least ten years. He was a handsome man with clear brown skin, a strong frame, and black hair as fine as silk cut just above the shoulders. Lena knew very little about him because Bosco had been the front man for Club 3 AM. She thought that she could remember reading somewhere that Escabar had spent his childhood on the street. That it had been a long climb that began at a taco stand on San Fernando Boulevard. That he met Bosco, who gave him a job and eventually took him under his wing. A few months back The Times photographed Escabar’s home on Mulholland Drive and the actress he was living with. The climb was part of his history, but Lena wondered about his temperament. She watched him take a long pull on the glass, his eyes settling somewhere over by the pool.

“How much will you benefit from Johnny Bosco’s death?” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How much will you make?”

Escabar finally turned to her. “You’re right, Officer.