“Same father?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you guys get along?”
“Yeah, to a point. We never knew about each other until a few years ago. So consequently I guess we’re not that close.”
“Isn’t it funny that you didn’t know about each other and you became a defense lawyer and he became a cop?”
“Yeah, I guess. Funny.”
I was desperate to get off the path we were on but couldn’t think of a topic that would do it. Kendall rescued me with a question that broke new ground but was equally painful to answer.
“You mentioned your ex. So you’re not married?”
“No. I was. Twice, actually, but the second one I don’t really count. It was quick and painless. We both knew it was a mistake and we’re still friends. In fact, she works for me.”
“But the first one?”
“We have the daughter.”
She nodded, seemingly understanding the lifelong complications and connections a broken marriage with a child produces.
“And your daughter’s mother, are you on good terms?”
I sadly shook my head.
“No, not anymore. Actually, I’m not on good terms with either of them at the moment.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
I took another drink of wine and studied her.
“What about you?” I asked.
“People like me don’t have long relationships. I got married when I was twenty. It lasted a year. No kids, thank god.”
“Do you know where he is? Your ex? I mean, do you keep track of each other? My ex and me, we’re in the same business. The law, so I see her in the courthouse every now and then. If she sees me coming in the hall, she usually goes the other way.”
She nodded but I didn’t detect any sympathy.
“Last time I heard from my ex he wrote me a letter from a prison in Pennsylvania,” she said. “He wanted me to sell my car so I could send him money each month. I didn’t reply and that was about ten years ago. He’s still there for all I know.”
“Wow, and here I was all ‘woe is me’ because my ex-wife turns away from me in the courthouse. I think you win.”
I hoisted my glass to toast her and she nodded in acceptance of the win.
“So, why are you really here?” she asked. “Are you hoping that I can tell you more about Glory?”
I looked down at my glass, which was now almost empty. This was either going to be the end of things or the start.
“You’d tell me, right, if there was something I needed to know about her?”
She frowned.
“I told you all I know.”
“Then I believe you.”
I finished my wine and put the glass on the table.
“Thanks for the wine, Kendall. I should probably go now.”
She walked me to the front door and held it open for me. I touched her arm as I passed by. I tried to think of something to say that would leave us with the possibility of another meeting. She beat me to it.
“Maybe next time you come back, you’ll be more interested in me than the dead girl.”
I looked back at her as she closed the door. I nodded but she was gone.
16
I was trying to talk a final shot of Patrón out of Randy after last call at Four Green Fields, when my phone screen lit up on the bar top. It was Cisco and he was working late.
“Cisco?”
“Sorry if I woke you, Mick, but I thought you’d want me to.”
“No worries. What’s up?”
Randy hit the bright lights and started blasting “Closing Time” on the sound system, hoping to chase the lingering drinkers out.
I hit the mute button late and slid off the stool to head to the door.
“What the hell was that?” Cisco asked. “Mick, you there?”
Once I was out the door I took the phone off mute.
“Sorry, iPhone malfunction. Where are you and what’s going on?”
“I’m outside the Standard downtown. Trina Trixxx is inside doing what she does. But that’s not why I called. That could’ve waited.”
I wanted to ask how he had found Trina but noted the urgency in his voice.
“Okay, so then what couldn’t wait?”
I muted the phone again and got in my car, pulling the door closed behind me. It had been a stupid move chasing the wine I had shared with Kendall with tequila. But I had felt bad after leaving her place, as though I had fumbled the ball somehow, and I wanted to burn away the thoughts with Patrón.
“I just got a call from a guy who does me favors every now and then,” Cisco said. “You know the Ferrari dealership I told you about before?”
“Yeah, the one on Wilshire.”
“Right, well, I hit the gold mine there. A lot of video. They keep digital film for a year on the cloud. So we got double lucky.”
“Did you see the man in the hat’s face?”
“No, not that lucky. Still no face. But we went through the video on the night in question and I picked up Gloria and her driver going by. Then four cars back comes a Mustang and it looks like our guy. He’s still wearing the hat, so I’m ninety percent sure he’s our guy.”
“Okay.”
“One of their perimeter cameras shoots east along the front of the lot. I switch to that video and check out the Mustang.”
“You got a plate.”
“Damn right, I got a plate. So I gave it to this friend of mine and he just called me back after going into work tonight.”
By “friend” I knew he meant that he had a source in the cop shop who ran plates for him. A source who obviously worked the midnight shift. This practice of sharing information from the computer with an outsider was against the law in California. So I didn’t ask Cisco for any clarification on who provided the information that he was about to share. I just waited for him to tell me the name.
“All right, so the ’stang comes back to a guy named Lee Lankford. And get this, Mick, he’s law enforcement. My friend can tell because his address is not on the computer. They protect cops that way. They can put a law enforcement block on the registration of a personal vehicle. But he’s LE, and now we have to find out who he works for and why he was tailing Gloria. I already know this, he’s not LAPD. My friend checked. Bottom line, Mick, is I’m beginning to think there might be something to our client’s claiming he was set up.”
I didn’t hear most of what Cisco had said after he mentioned the Mustang owner’s name. I was off to the races, running with the name Lankford. Cisco hadn’t recognized it because he wasn’t working for me eight years before when I made the deal whereby Gloria Dayton gave up Hector Moya to the DA’s Office, which turned around and gave him up to the feds. Of course, back then Lankford had nothing to do with that deal, but he was skirting around that case like a vulture.
“Lankford is Glendale PD retired,” I said. “He’s currently working for the DA as an investigator.”
“You know him?”
“Sort of. He worked the murder of Raul Levin. In fact, he’s the guy who tried at first to pin it on me. And I saw him on this case at La Cosse’s first appearance. He’s the DA investigator assigned to the case.”
I heard Cisco whistle as I started the car.
“So let’s talk this out,” he said. “We have Lankford following Gloria Dayton on the night she was murdered. He presumably follows her home and about an hour later she is murdered in her apartment.”