Chapter 33
I HAD BEEN following Tommy’s car since the end of the business day. He left his office alone, drove to his house in Hancock Park by the shortest route, and not long after that, he got back into his car and headed west.
Sure, I might be wasting time and energy, but while my eyelashes grew back, and before something else blew up in my front yard, I really couldn’t have too much information about what my brother was up to.
I was driving my loaner car, a black Mercedes like a hundred thousand identical cars in LA, and Tommy didn’t know that I had it. I was sure that he hadn’t noticed me weaving in traffic behind him, staying on his tail, but suddenly, I lost him. Tommy had made a red Ferrari disappear.
With luck, I’d be able to put a GPS tracker on his car, save me tailing him in the future.
The sun was going down as I headed east on Beverly Boulevard, passing the Wilshire Country Club on my left, looking for the Ferrari in all directions at once. That’s when I got the call from Captain Warren saying that Khezir Mazul had almost killed a couple of salesclerks on Rodeo Drive and he and Gozan Remari were planning to take two women tourists out for dinner that evening.
“Drug them, you mean. No dinner.”
“Jack, I don’t know where to look for them. I can’t even put out a BOLO, since as far as the chief is concerned, these guys are off-limits.”
“I’ll get back to you,” I said.
I was passing through estate country, an area of expensive homes and grounds manicured to the quick. I called my hotelier friend Amelia Poole, known to her friends as Jinx. She made a few calls to her inner circle and then let me know that two men had checked into Shutters, in Santa Monica, under the name Remari.
I called Cruz and then I got back to Captain Warren, told him what I was doing. I was saying I’d check in later when Tommy’s car suddenly appeared. It took a right onto Melrose, then, a short distance later, another right onto the 101 South to LA. Then the car crossed the 110.
I was three cars back, and then I was right on Tommy’s tail. I thought for a second that the Ferrari had slowed so that he could check me out, but I was wrong. Tommy was taking the Broadway exit. Then he made a sharp right. And I stayed behind him.
Tommy’s brake lights flashed and I saw the club up ahead.
Was that Tommy’s destination?
A club?
Tommy pulled into a parking spot and I drove past him, watched him get out of his car. If he’d seen me, he’d have given me the finger. I kept him in my rearview mirror, and when he crossed the street on foot, I parked.
A minute or two later, I stuck a tracker under his bumper. Then I went toward the entrance of the homely cement block building that had once been a lightbulb factory and was now a club called the Socket.