Racing the Light (Elvis Cole #19; Joe Pike #8)(50)

“Damn. You must be having a bad day.”

“Nothing eight or nine beers won’t fix.”

“Maybe this will help. You have these other firms on your list, Dieder-Scotti, Mendez-Warren, Block Sixteen, these other developers.”

I had listed them, but only a few of the articles focused on them and their projects.

“Are they paying the Sandman, too?”

Eddie made the heh-heh laugh.

“Nah, but maybe they should. They all had projects killed in committee by the Sandman or his friends. What I’m hearing is, if a developer won’t play ball, his project doesn’t get approved.”

“Hang on. Are you saying Richter shakes down developers?”

“Do the math. Which brings us back to Crystal Future’s partner, LWL. A guy named Horton Tarly owns LWL. Ever heard of him before now?”

Tarly was mentioned in several of the articles, but otherwise I’d never heard of him.

“No.”

“Me neither, and I hear everything.”

“Is this important?”

Eddie made the snide heh.

“Tarly started out building car washes over in San Gabriel and worked his way up to low-rent strip malls. So ask yourself, here’s this international hotel chain from China, got all the money in the world, they wanna build hundred-million-dollar projects here in L.A., why in hell would they partner with a car wash guy from San Gabriel?”

“Should I break out the Ouija board or guess?”

“Horton Tarly is married to Grady Locke’s sister.”

And just like that, I saw it. Rachel and Grady Locke, Grady Locke and Richter, Richter and Chow Wan Li. Rachel and Josh.

I said, “Chow Wan Li used Tarly to get in bed with Locke and Richter. They’re partners by marriage.”

Eddie cackled.

“See? You’re not stupid.”

“Neither are they.”

“It’s a smart play. Tarly’s local, which looks good to members who don’t like all this foreign money buying up the city. Tarly and his little car wash business plays the front. Chow’s the wizard behind the curtain, paying off Richter. Richter green-lights their projects and—I promise you—he does not work cheap. We just gotta find it.”

Eddie was so pleased with himself he cackled with glee, but the cackling erupted into the wet, hacking cough.

“Eddie, c’mon. Quit the smokes.”

“Lemme get lit up.”

I heard him light up.

“Eddie, c’mon.”

He inhaled between coughs and the coughing settled.

“Now listen, I’m waiting to hear on a couple of things. I’ll get back to you.”

“Quit smoking. I’m begging you.”

“Beg some woman for a piece of ass.”

Eddie hung up.

If Rachel Bohlen had learned about shady dealings from Grady Locke, she might have told Josh. Josh wanted to go mainstream, so maybe he began researching the rest of it and Locke found out. This part of it bothered me. Even if Locke told Richter a kid with a podcast was onto them, and even if Crystal Future was a PRC Intelligence front, their reaction seemed over the top. Josh was an unknown with almost no audience. The smart play would’ve been to deny Josh’s charges, write off his allegations as coincidence or misunderstanding, and dismiss him as a crank. Yet they had ripped apart Rachel Bohlen’s apartment, murdered her, and were hunting for Josh. None of this made sense unless Josh and Rachel had come by evidence they couldn’t dismiss. Maybe some physical thing Rachel had taken from Grady Locke, so they’d brought in professional operators to get it back. Maybe Josh had it now, which was why they were hunting him hard.

My job was simple.

Find him first.





33





I let myself in through the carport and found Lucy in the kitchen. She was at the counter near the sink, chopping. A large pot on the stove smelled terrific.

She said, “I’m making jambalaya.”

Her back was ramrod straight and her jaw was tight. I knew something was wrong the moment I saw her.

“Where’s Ben?”

“Went for a run. He’ll be back soon.”

I joined her at the counter. Neat mounds of chopped onions and bell pepper were pushed to the side. A small mound of skillet-fried andouille sausage was draining on paper towels.

“How’d it go today?”

“Tense.”

I wanted to eat a piece of the sausage but didn’t.

“He didn’t like it?”

She stopped chopping and sighed with a soul-deep exhaustion.

“I don’t know, I think it was me.”

“You pushed.”

Her eyes closed. She nodded.

“I tried to be encouraging. I was enthusiastic and positive and I don’t know what I was thinking. He loved it. He’s excited about it, he wants to do it, but I kept pushing.”

“Cut yourself some slack, Lucille. He’ll be fine.”

She opened her eyes but didn’t look at me.

“He told me if I wanted to get rid of him so badly I should bury him in a box like his father.”

We stood there silently for a time and I put my arms around her.

“I’m sorry.”