Chapter 83
IT WAS ALMOST midnight before I reached UCLA Medical Center. I got past security by showing my Private ID. We’ve done pro bono work for the hospital in the past, which helps when we want access at odd hours.
I reached the floor of the ICU, my mind whirling with everything that had unfolded during the day, including several things Justine had said to me before I was able to get her back to her apartment, into her bed, under the covers, lights off with a bucket by the nightstand.
In my car on the way there, she’d roused from her stupor.
“Love you, Jack,” she mumbled. “Thanks.”
“I love you, too, Justine, and no problem.”
She shook her head. “Can’t work, though. Us.”
“I know.”
Joy and Luck, her female Jack Russell terriers, kept jumping up on her bed and whining after I’d laid her in bed fully clothed.
Justine’s eyes were glassy and roaming as she soothed the dogs into lying beside her. “Sorry.”
“For what? You had a few too many. I was glad to bring you home.”
Her eyes closed. “Not ’bout that,” she said.
“Go to sleep, Justine. I’ll let the girls out, talk to you in the morning.”
“I had … I had sex with this perfect … no, not-perfect stranger, and … I’m not perfect stranger, and …”
She passed out again, and I walked the dogs and headed for the hospital, feeling oddly hollowed out by her convoluted drunken confession. Justine having sex with not-perfect strangers? Getting drunker than I’d ever seen her?
What the hell was going on?
That question was still bouncing through my brain when I went through the ICU doors and saw Angela, Del Rio’s Filipina guardian angel, glaring at me from inside the nursing station.
“He’s sleeping,” she hissed. “You can’t go in there.”
I held up my fingers in a cross and hurried past her. I could hear her clogs clip-clopping after me all the way to Del Rio’s room. Ducking inside, I found him sitting up, watching Anderson Cooper’s interview with June Wanta.
“You see this?” he asked, laughing. “Crazy old lady.”
I stopped at the foot of his bed, looked to my right, saw Angela coming, said, “Speak of the devil.”
Del Rio laughed again and then said, “Angela, it’s okay. I couldn’t sleep, and this guy’s so boring to listen to he’s better than pills or counting sheep.”
She thought about that, shot me another hostile glance, said, “You cannot sleep here. UCLA Medical Center is no Super Eight.”
“I’ll leave when he conks out,” I promised, and waited until she’d left before taking a chair. “How are you?”
“Lift the sheets,” Del Rio said.
I did and was amazed to see him moving both of his feet ever so slightly.
I said, “Keep this up, you’ll be back dancing with the Bolshoi in no time.”
“The Bolshoi?”
“Twyla Tharp?”
“Better,” he said.
“Riverdance?”
“You better quit while you’re ahead.”
The banter between us felt good. Everything in that room felt good, and I was grateful: despite all the strange and disturbing things I’d faced during the day, Del Rio was on the mend, and my best friend forever was in good enough spirits to crack wise with me.
“What do I need to know?” Del Rio asked. “Get me up to speed.”
I told him everything that had happened during the course of the day from the time I’d left his hospital room until my return. Mo-bot’s discovery of the bank account and shell company in the Caymans feeding millions to Harlow-Quinn Productions; Justine’s chats with the maids and with Cynthia Maines about Adelita Gomez. I gave him all of it except for Justine’s drunken admission that she loved me but couldn’t be with me, and that she’d had sex with a not-perfect stranger, or something to that effect.
When I told Del Rio what Sci and Mo-bot had found when they tried to place the fingerprints of the shooter at Mel’s Drive-In, he said, “Sounds like someone’s expunged the file.”
“Yeah, but why? FBI’s getting nowhere with DOD on this either. They’re saying there are no files. That the system is throwing false positives.”
Del Rio blinked, looked off into memory, said, “There is someone who might be able to tell us if they’re lying or not.”
“You know someone who’d know something like that?”
“You know him too, Jack, or did. Back in Kandahar?”
I thought about that, flashed on a face from our Afghanistan days before the helicopter crash, a big, doughy, cherub-faced man with cold, dark eyes, a fellow I’d once heard accurately described as having the look of an angel and the heart of an assassin.
“Guy Carpenter,” I said.
“The one and only.”
“That was ten years ago. I wouldn’t begin to know where to find someone like him. He’s an ultraspook, for God’s sake.”
“Ultraspook or not,” Del Rio said, “I got his address and phone number.”
“What? How?” I asked, incredulous.
Del Rio shot me a look of pity. “Guess you didn’t make the assassin’s list of friends and loved ones, Jack, but Carpenter sends yours truly a Christmas card each and every year.”