Private

I WAS HEADING into the office, stuck in a swamp of traffic on Pico, when Mo-bot called me from the tech center.

“Five minutes ago, our friends at the LAX Marriott made a call to a bottling plant in Reno asking for a donation to the State Troopers’ Widows Fund,” she said, her voice trilling with excitement. “The plant is owned by none other than Anthony Marzullo. Happy, Jack?”

“Good catch, Mo. That’s excellent. But you know what I really want.”

“To hear the sound of coins changing hands?” Mo laughed. “After the call to Nevada, Victor Spano called Kenny Owen on his mobile. They’re meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Bungalow four this afternoon.”

Mo had been tapping into Kenny Owen’s and Lance Richter’s phones since they’d arrived in LA in advance of tomorrow’s game. We already knew that the professional handicappers expected the Titans to crush the Raiders by three touchdowns. And we knew that if the two refs could skew the calls, could make a seventeen-point spread hold up, tens of millions in illegal bets would slide over to the Marzullos’ side of the ledger.

But Uncle Fred and his associates would want more than idle chitchat and suspicion. They’d need proof.

I called Del Rio, met him at the garage, and swapped my car for one of our Honda CR-Vs. The Honda was black with tinted windows, outfitted with cutting-edge wireless electronics.

I drove myself and my wingman to Sunset, pulled the car under the porte cochere at the entrance to the Beverly Hills Hotel, and dropped Del Rio off.

He pulled down the bill of his cap and adjusted his camera bag as he entered the hotel. Once he was inside, I looped around Sunset and parked on Crescent Drive, a hundred yards and a stucco wall away from the pretty white cottage in the lush garden surrounding the hotel.

Del Rio kept me posted through his lapel mic as he planted the pin cams, one at the bungalow’s front door and another at the patio, and stuck three more “spider eyes” on windows facing into the three rooms.

A long twelve minutes later, Del Rio was back in the CR-V, and the microcameras were streaming wireless AV to our laptops.

The only things moving inside the bungalow were dust motes wafting upward in columns of sunlight.

For all of his volatility, Del Rio could sit on a tail for ten hours without having to take a leak. I was still suffering mental whiplash from the earthquake and the devastating memory it had dislodged. After a half hour of staring at sunbeams, I had to say something or I was going to explode.

“Rick. Did you take a look at Danny Young when I brought him out of the helicopter?”

“Huh? Yeah. Why?”

My voice was flat as I told him about my morning. I was a dead man talking, but I got to the point. I didn’t need to add color commentary. Del Rio had been there.

“So let me get this straight,” Del Rio said when I’d finished. “You’re beating yourself up for leaving Jeff Albert in the Phrog and trying to save Danny Young? What about the other guys? We took a missile, Jack. And you landed the goddamn aircraft.”

“Do you remember Albert?”

“Sure. He was a good kid. They were all good kids. Jack, you were just a kid yourself.”

“I think Danny Young was dead when I pulled him out.”

Del Rio stared at me for a few seconds before he said, “Danny’s blood was still pumping out of his chest when I got to you. He died on the ground. The helicopter blew up, Jack. If you’d gone back in, Danny Young, Jeff Albert, and you would have died.

“And nobody could’ve brought you back.”

Del Rio was right. Danny’s blood had been splashing on my shoes. He had been alive. I had brought him out alive.

I almost felt fully alive myself.

Neither of us spoke again until two men came up the bungalow’s front walk.

One was Victor Spano. The other was a short man in a good suit. The guy in the suit put a key card into the slot and opened the door to Bungalow 4.

I put my arms up like a football referee.

“Touchdown!”

Chapter 94

I HAD BIG NEWS, but not necessarily good news, to tell.

It was dark when I pulled up to my uncle’s huge Italianate manse in Oakland. I parked at the top of the circular drive and trotted up the walkway.

Fred’s second wife, Lois, came to the door and was joined by my boisterous eleven-year-old cousin, Brian, who tackled my thighs like the All-American linebacker for Southern Cal he was sure he was going to be one day.

I rolled around and groaned in fake pain as Brian whooped and did a white-boy sack dance in the foyer. My little cousin Jackie stooped down and patted my head as if I were a golden retriever.

“Brian is a big fat brat, Jack. Are you hurt bad?”

I winked at her and told her I was okay, and she pulled my nose.

“Did you eat, Jack?” Uncle Fred asked, giving me a hand up, then throwing an arm across my shoulders.

“I wouldn’t say no to coffee,” I said.

“How about coffee and a slice of banana cream pie?”

“Sold.”

I grabbed a chair at the dining table, and the kids pelted me with questions-about the earthquake, if I’d nailed any bad guys lately, the fastest I’d ever driven my car.