by James Lincoln Warren

In addition to being a short-story writer of repute, James Lincoln Warren is the founder and editor of “Criminal Brief: The Mystery Short Story Web Log Project” at criminalbrief.com. Regular contributors to the blog, which is becoming one of the most-referenced sites in the online mystery community, include EQMM writers Melodie Johnson Howe, L. Leigh, and Steve Steinbock.

* * * *

The details didn’t make the news at first—too sensational for TV, too lurid for the Los Angeles Times, and anyway, who the hell cares about another nameless dead hooker?

She lay in a WeHo motel, sleazier even than its reputation, a run-down rent-by-the-hour fleabag off Sunset that had not yet succumbed to the neighborhood’s inexorably encroaching gentrification. Her nude corpse was discovered by a preop twink there attempting to turn a long trick. The john, some middle-aged suit, split long before the sheriffs arrived, but the hysterical boy-girl stayed long enough to provide the law with a statement. Not that it helped.

Either the dead woman or her killer had pulled down the shower curtain and spread it out on the floor for a peanut-oil party. The victim’s body, spread-eagled on the cheap plastic sheet, glistened with the stuff. It was everywhere, soaking her hair, between her toes, filling her ear canals, seeping from her nostrils. At first the investigators thought maybe she’d drowned in it. There were bruises all over her swollen body, particularly on her lower face and on her arms, some of them clearly defensive wounds. Obviously a homicide, by all appearances a specialty liaison dangereuse gone horribly awry.

She was bagged and stacked in the hallway of the overcrowded Los Angeles County Morgue like a log on a cord of wood, where after several days an autopsy revealed she had almost a quart of peanut oil in her stomach. Although the toxicology screen came back pegging the meter for cocaine, the cause of death was determined to be anaphylactic shock: She’d been allergic to legumes.

Her fingerprints were not on file anywhere. Somehow, she’d managed to escape being busted, surprising given that she was in her mid thirties and had all the appearances of having been in the game for a long time. Nor was she recognized by any of the vice detectives as a known or suspected pro.

That would have been the end of it. But then an M.E. who just happened to be an audiophile, with a record collection large enough to make the Smithsonian salivate, recalled seeing her face above an expensive and revealing outfit in a music-industry trade magazine photo. There she stood, frozen in time, laughing like she didn’t have a worry in all the world, hanging on to the left arm of a famous pop music maven at a Hollywood launch party. Jane Doe no more, she had a real name: Jenna Wells, left, enjoying a joke with boyfriend Zeno Duke.

Duke had never bothered to report her missing. Furthermore, he had been observed near the scene on the night she died by several of the Boulevard regulars. He was arrested, charged, and booked. That’s when the details made the news.

Zeno Duke, one-time wonder boy of the record industry, a combination of cutthroat venture capitalist, sound-groove guru, and slick carny barker. He had specialized in turning small indie labels into major ones and then selling them to media conglomerates for millions. True, his star had dimmed in the last decade, but the Hollywood press loves nothing as much as a has-been on hard times.

They say that L.A. is the Entertainment Capital of the World, and that every other person you meet on the Boulevard is in movies or TV. This may be true, but trust me: After live televised freeway chases, celebrity trials are our number-one pastime.

* * * *

We never would have gotten the case if Zeno Duke hadn’t played with Jackie Jett in a high school jazz combo. Somewhere along the line, Zeno remembered that Jett had become a detective and called him, begging for help. Even then, it was several weeks after the press had their field day.

“When Z was sixteen, he took up astrology because he found out it was a great way to impress gullible girls,” Jett said. He’s got a deep voice that makes you think you’re listening to the rumbling of a distant volcano. He sat at our table at Jezebel’s House of Juke, the Culver City jazz club on Jefferson, relaxing between sets, his Wayfarers folded in one massive hand resting on the table. “It was always about the skirts with him. I can’t say I was surprised he wound up in jail because of a woman.”

Custer Malone casually sipped his beer and I leaned back, watching the door to the club’s entrance.

“He figured out real fast that janes dig musicians, too,” Jett continued. “I don’t think he was ever very interested in the sounds for their own sake. Z just had the knack of knowing what would sell. That’s what made it so easy for him to slide over from jazz to rock ‘n’ roll in the eighties. Scuttlebutt is he’s experimenting with Latin music these days, looking for another big score.”

I don’t know much about jazz, except that my man Frank cut a couple of albums with Basie and Ellington, but I don’t mind listening to it when not immersed in Turandot or La Boheme. Jett, on the other hand, is one of those people who can read the liner notes on ancient bebop LPs and understand every word, making him not all that different from Jesuits and nuclear physicists, at least from where I’m standing. But then, when he’s not working for our agency, California Operatives, Inc., he plays string bass with the Jett Quartet at places with names like the Jazz Bakery and the Blue Beet Cafe, not to mention Jezebel’s, something he’s done all his life, even when he wore a six-pointed star for the old L.A. sheriff.

“Was he ever abusive to his girlfriends?” Malone asked in his slow drawl.

“That’s the big question, isn’t it?” Jett replied. “I don’t know. He never hit them or anything, not that I ever heard of. But there are other kinds of abuse, aren’t there? Less obvious kinds. And he always went through females faster’n gas through a Cadillac.”

I sat up. “Here he is.”

For a man who was trying to avoid the public eye, you’d never know it from the way Zeno Duke was dressed. He wore a white rough-silk suit over a vivid scarlet-and-purple aloha shirt, and his long hair, dirty gray as Chicago slush, flowed out from his little head onto his shoulders like he thought he was some shampoo model. There were earphone buds in his ears leading to an iPod in his breast pocket.

We knew he was the same age as Jett, but whereas Jett looks twenty years younger than he is, Z looked a good twenty years older. Yeah, I know that white guys rarely age as well as blacks do, but there was much more than that to the contrast between the two old acquaintances. Z’s face was lined like a corner cobweb in a derelict attic. It was the face of an old hedonist.

He noticed Jett, and slowly walked over, keeping his back to the bandstand.

“Hey, J,” he said, smiling nervously. He pulled the buds out of his ears and removed the iPod from his pocket

They didn’t shake hands.

“How do you turn this damn thing off?” Duke muttered. Jett leaned over and tapped the credit card—sized device once and it died.

“These are my bosses,” Jett said, indicating us. “Custer Malone, senior partner, formerly of the Texas Rangers, and Carmine Ferrari, junior partner, late of NYPD.”

“Am I glad to meet you,” he said with forced enthusiasm. He lighted on the chair across from Jett. “These past several weeks have been absolute torture. I really need your help.”

“We’ve seen the news accounts,” I said. “I’m only wondering why it took you so long to hire an investigator.”

“Oh, I hired one, all right,” he said, “or rather my lawyer did. But he’s in jail. The investigator, I mean, not the lawyer.”

Malone nearly spat up his beer. “In jail—you don’t mean you hired Tomasso Carlucci?”

“Tommy’s arrest had nothing to do with my case,” Duke said defensively, “at least, I don’t think so. Who else was I going to hire? I’ve got Champagne tastes, and Tommy is—or was, anyway—the best. Everybody said he was, at least everybody in the business. Show business, I mean. How was I to know about the illegal wiretapping? I’m just a record producer.”

Like Lance Armstrong is just a bicyclist.

“I think you need a new lawyer, amigo,” Malone said in his most Southern Senatorial style. “You say you have Champagne tastes, but let me tell you, Tom Carlucci ain’t worth a pop-top can of warm pee.”

Malone doesn’t usually disparage the competition like that, thinks it’s unprofessional, but we’d crossed paths with Tommy Terrific more than once, so I forgave him.

“You got that right,” Duke said. “About needing a new lawyer. I fired mine. He wanted me to cop a plea.”

“So you don’t have an attorney right now? That’s not good,” I said. “It means we can’t invoke confidentiality.”

“Listen, Pancho—why else do you think I need you? Nobody will touch the case. Nobody good, I mean. You’ve got to find some kind of evidence proving I didn’t do it. After that, trust me, the shysters will line up like groupies at Lollapalooza.”

“My name isn’t Pancho,” I said calmly, “it’s Carmine. Maybe you didn’t catch it. I understand that loud music destroys the hearing.”

“Sorry. Carmine.”

“What’s with you, anyway, Z?” Jett asked. “ ‘Pancho’? This Latin gig has gone to your head. Hell, you don’t even speak Spanish.”

“You don’t need to talk to those stacked Mexican babes to know what they want, Jack,” Duke said, smirking.

“You know, Mr. Duke, it’s never a good policy to lie to your investigators,” said Malone. “Everybody knows that prominent defense attorneys don’t give a rodent’s rump if you’re guilty as a Hun in a nunnery. The press alone on a case like yours is cash in the bank. Player mouthpieces only care that you can pay them the big bucks. Right?”

Duke fidgeted. “Yeah, well, maybe I do have some cash-flow problems at the moment.”

“So how do you figure on paying our firm?” Jett asked. “It’s not like I owe you any favors, Z.”

“Hold on. There’s money, it’s just that I can’t get to it all, not right now. I posted my bail in cash.”

“Cash? Five million dollars—in cash?” I blurted. This guy was full of surprises. Of course, that wasn’t all he was full of.

“Yeah,” he said, smiling crookedly. “A five and six zeroes. Get me off the hook, Carmine, and it’s all yours, every red cent. Well—no, it’s not—I prevaricate. Tell you what. I’m thinking two hundred and fifty grand. That enough for you?” He was sweating, although the club was as freezing as only an air-conditioned L.A. night spot in August can be. “I can’t go to prison. I can’t. All right, yes, I did her, I mean I did have lots of sex with her. After all, you’ve seen her and she was damn hot, and I admit that things might’ve gotten a little kinky now and then. But not that kinky, not like murder kinky. I didn’t kill Jenna, guys. I swear I didn’t kill her.”

“Break’s over,” Jett said woodenly, standing and immediately filling the room with all six-foot-four of him. “I got a set to play.”

* * * *

We sent Jackie Jett to talk with the sheriffs who made the arrest, since he’d been one of their own for most of his sixteen years there. Custer’s job was to get as much as he could from the D.A.’s office. He enjoys access there more because Brenda, his wife, produces a cable forensics show that makes prosecutors look like heroes than because of his famous Senator shtick. Brenda’s very active in the Crime Lab Project, an advocacy group that’s trying to correct the abysmal funding for forensics labs in the U.S., so agencies will bend over backwards for her. Most people think forensics labs and coroner’s offices are rolling in cash, and they’re dead wrong—that’s one reason why Jenna’s body had been stacked with the other stiffs in the hall. The other reason is that too many people get murdered in L.A.

Our other three Cal Ops investigators, Stan Stowicz, Nora Moon, and Jessie Zavala, were working other cases. That left me to run down to Orange County, where Tommy Terrific was staying in a rent-free room with vertical steel bars down one side instead of a wall. Plus, I was the only one who wasn’t likely to try to choke the crap out of him at first sight.

Carlucci is Italian, like me. A lowlife turd of an Italian who thinks Puccini is a shoe designer and makes the Gotti clan look like they got class, but an Italian nevertheless. We know how to talk to each other, even without our hands.

I got in to see him through the offices of his lawyer, Jacob Burroughs, a standup guy I’ve known for years—Carlucci needed an attorney with an un-sullied rep, given the trouble he was in with the Feds—who thought that demonstrating cooperation with a criminal investigation might cut Carlucci some slack with the U.S. Attorney. Jake came with me to the interview and busied himself with paperwork while Tommy and I talked.

You’d think a guy who used to charge five thousand dollars a day plus expenses (of the six-bill-lunch at Ginza Sushiko variety, no less) might be reluctant to share his hard-earned information. Not Tommy. Tommy listened to Burroughs, as he should, given Burroughs’s own pretty hefty rates. And he liked to talk.

“Nice suit, Carmine. Armani knockoff, right?” he said.

“No. It’s genuine.”

“Sure it is,” he said, snorting an irritating little laugh. “How do you like mine? The latest look.”

He was in an orange jumpsuit.

“So ask your questions. Anything to keep me out of that stinking cell. I share it with this big affectionate brute, Thumper, he’s called, got this big red heart tattoo right on his—well, hey, he’s sweet, just not my type.”

“I hope you’re very happy together,” I replied. “Tommy, I’m here on behalf of Zeno Duke.”

“A surprise. What do you know, Z himself. Il impresario.”

“Producer and promoter.”

“Same thing. Did you know his real name is Zayden Herzog? Changed it, thought it was too Jewish.”

“So what? I knew that already. Jackie Jett has known him for more than thirty years and mentioned it.”

“Then let me tell you what you don’t know. The little piscione is guilty. Jenna Wells had been feeding off him for five years. He wanted rid of her.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Jenna Wells was a professional girlfriend.”

“There’s no evidence she was actually a prostitute, even if that’s what the sheriffs thought when they found the body.”

“I didn’t say prostitute, Carmine. I said professional girlfriend, as in gigolette. Coming down in the world, too, hooking up with a burnt-out old rocker like Z and sticking with him for so long. Before him, it was a succession of stupid pretty-boy actors with six-pack abs, either that or skinny big-haired rockers smeared with tattoos. None of them ever amounted to much, although they all somehow managed to keep her in style. At least until they were out of money, and then she’d move on. Eventually, though, fast times—not to mention real time—started to catch up with her, and everybody could see she wasn’t twenty anymore, and she couldn’t really compete with all the promiscuous and ambitious young babes pouring into Los Angeles from Peoria and Pascagoula and God knows where else. Suitable guys got harder to find. And then, as they say, there were none.”

Carlucci’s wide evil grin made him look like a happy sidewinder. He continued with relish. “Poor, sweet Jenna. She worked hard at it, I’ll give her that. She went under the cosmetic surgeon’s knife so many times that her nickname was Beverly Hills.”

“Cute. You really are one unequivocal figlio di puttana, Tommy.”

He shrugged. “You want to hear what I have to say or not?”

“Go on.”

“Right. Enter Zeno Duke, record guru. Z was on the slide, too, of course, ever since the hip-hop gangstas managed to kick his pasty metal white boys off the charts, but at least he’d been something back in the day, and of course he was in the middle of reinventing himself by moving into salsa or whatever that spic crap is called. She must have thought, better a has-been in the hand than take a gamble on another never-will-be, even if she could get one. Big mistake.”

“You said they were together five years. Longer than a lot of marriages, especially in L.A.”

“You kidding? Z couldn’t keep his pants up if they were fireproof and he was farting blue flames. I keep telling you, Jenna Wells wasn’t some indiscriminate service-sector sex laborer looking for her next trick and open wallet. She was a professional girlfriend, she lived to be admired, to be photographed next to her current conquest, preferably at some post-awards show party, or at an ultra-hip Melrose club, or maybe dining at some chic celebrity chef’s bistro. When she landed a guy, Carmine, she meant him to be exclusively hers. No competition tolerated. You can imagine how well that sat with a cheap Casanova like Zeno.”

“So?”

“So she was making his life a living hell. He began to hate everything about her. He wanted her out of his life. But she wasn’t budging, not this time. She had nowhere to go.”

“So how do you know he killed her?”

Carlucci shook his head, frowning. “You Sicilians are all idioti.”

“Only half Sicilian, on Mama’s side. Pop’s half is Piedmontese. But at least I’m not some sleazy reject from the Camorra. Neapolitans are all bastardi. Like you. Answer the question.”

He laughed. “On the advice of my attorney, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.”

“This interview is over,” said Jake, slamming his attaché case shut. I guess he’d been listening after all. “We’re leaving. Now.”

* * * *

I debriefed Malone in my office because our IT guy, Benny Bergsman, was installing a new computer in Malone’s. We have to have an IT guy because we use a lot of tech, and what Custer and I know about computers wouldn’t fill the backside of a gnat.

“Then the little stronzo clammed up,” I told him. “Jake wouldn’t let him say another word. Now here’s an idea. I’m a professional detective. So let me see if I can work this out. Tommy’s under indictment for illegal wiretaps. He claims to have certain knowledge that Zeno Duke is guilty of murder. He pleads his right not to incriminate himself when asked about it. So, what do we got? Illegal wiretap, certain knowledge, Fifth Amendment—gee, Senator, you think maybe Tommy Terrific was surveilling his own client? He practically shoved it down my throat.”

“Slow down, Red,” said Malone. “We can’t prove it, even if Carlucci was telling the truth, which we both know comes real hard to him. He can’t help it if he’s a big fat lying rat bastard who would sell his own sister to a waterfront whorehouse for pocket change. Show a little sympathy.”

“There’s got to be a tape somewhere.”

“If there is, the D.A. sure hasn’t found it. Frankly, son, I think ol’ Tom was just winding you up.”

“Nah. Why would he lie?”

“Maybe Tommy has his own reasons for wanting Duke put down,” replied Malone. “I haven’t told you about my own recent adventures in the exciting and glamorous world of private investigations yet.”

“I’m all ears. Fire away.”

“There wasn’t much to learn at the morgue that we didn’t already know,” Malone said, “but on my way out, I ran into an old friend of ours. Candy Carrasco.”

Cal Ops is a private detective agency, not a police department, but we’d encountered Candélio Carrasco more than once in the course of dealing with drug-addled celebrity clients between stints in rehab.

The word was that Candy was the point man for the Sinaloa cartel in Southern California—a sort of Executive VP of Operations for one of the Mexican syndicates that controls most of the South American cocaine traffic on the West Coast. Along with the Felix (Tijuana) and Fuentes (Juarez) cartels, the Sinaloa gang has largely supplanted the old Caribbean smuggling routes used by the Colombians in favor of moving dope to the U.S. through Mexico. That makes California the new Florida, as far as crack is concerned, as if we didn’t already have our hands full with crystal meth labs every twenty feet.

Carrasco’s visa was perfectly legal—he represented a company that imported authentic jalapeños, serranos, guajillos, and other peppers for sale to gourmets, chefs, and restaurants. But on the side, like every gangster who ever lived, he was into the Business, as it is called in L.A. Associate producer of this or that direct-to-DVD film featuring one of his nose-candy clients. That was legit, too, as far as it goes. Nevertheless, his name was on a DEA watch list, and although he had so far managed to escape criminal conviction despite numerous arrests, he was someone you didn’t really want to tangle with.

“Our favorite agricultural commodities broker. Surely he wasn’t alone.”

“Oh, he had some boys with him, cute little niños they were, too, each of ‘em about as tiny as your basic well-fed rhino. Truth to tell, I didn’t so much run into him as into them, seeing as they were standing like the Great Wall of China between me and my Ford.”

“Now that’s just rude, keeping a cowboy from his pickup truck.”

“You’da thunk so. But come down to it, he seemed friendly enough.”

“That doesn’t quite sound like the Candélio Carrasco I know and love.”

“Friendly,” insisted Malone. “Real friendly. That is, until he suggested I could either lose the Zeno Duke account or maybe both my kneecaps.”

“Only your kneecaps? Again, that doesn’t sound like Candy. Not the Candy more likely to cut your heart out of your chest with a machete than floss his teeth.”

“Now, Red, don’t be that way. I reckon oral hygiene is his life. Them big pearly whites of his are as purty as money can buy, the better to eat you with. And he’d never use a machete himself, not with some soldier to do it for him while he watched. But heck, I don’t know. Maybe he found Jesus or Paramahansa Yogananda or L. Ron Hubbard or something and is trying to avoid the tempting byways of sin for a change.”

“Washed in the blood of the lamb, you mean? You can bet he’s up to his neck in somebody’s blood. And I didn’t know you could even pronounce Paramedic Yogi Berra.”

“I can also say ‘nuclear,’ which, as you know, is a very troublesome word for us Texans. Back to Candy, though: I know what you’re thinking. One, he’s a cocaine king. Two, lately Zeno Duke has been promoting Latino recording artists, which could very easily have put him in touch with Carrasco’s entertainment ventures. Three, before her untimely demise, Jenna Wells smoked enough crack to make the whole L.A. basin fog up like San Francisco in the summertime. So you’re asking yourself if there could somehow be a connection here.”

“The psychic cowboy strikes again.”

“But that ain’t the interesting part, Red.”

“Sounds plenty interesting to me, Senator.”

“No, son—the interesting part is that Candy says to me, he says, ‘I told Tomas, and now I’m telling you, vaquero. Lay off or else.’ “

“Tomas? As in Carlucci? That is interesting.”

“Yeppir. I see that little light burning behind your eyes. I agree that it’s a good setup, but—there’s something I don’t like about it.”

“What’s not to like? It explains everything. Jenna builds up a drug tab longer than her shapely left leg, but as long as Z can do his musical magic for Candy, Candy lets it slide. Z kills his girlfriend in a coke-induced rage and Candy protects him to keep the music deal safe. When Carlucci stumbles on the scene, Candy warns him off, and now he does the same thing to us.”

“It’s too obvious.” Malone furrowed his brow in thought. “Look, I don’t like Zeno Duke any better’n you do, and sure as Shinola, he’s lying to us about something. But why’d he hire us if he’s got Carrasco in his corner? Makes more sense if Candy wants Z to go down.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Maybe Candy’s behind the murder. Maybe he’s the one who set Duke up in the first place.” He lifted a manila file out of his in-basket. “This is Jackie’s report on his coffee klatch with the local posse. It seems that when pressed to explain why he was in the neighborhood when Jenna Wells was killed, Z claimed he was with an A&R rep from his new label, Wirld Records—spelled W-I-R-L-D, for some reason—checking out a new Rock en Español band’s gig at a club on the Strip.”

“What’s ‘A&R’?”

“Stands for ‘artist and repertoire.’ They’re the guys who sign and develop new acts.”

“And I’m guessing that the alibi didn’t work out for him.”

“No, indeedy. Turns out that particular scout was on a business trip to Grand Cayman that weekend with Duke’s partner in the venture, Kenneth Keller—and the club in question that night was featuring a Goth girl group about as Latin as chicken-fried steak.”

“Stupid of Z to lie about something so easy to disprove,” I said, shaking my head.

“Exactly, Red—well, we know he’s one jelly doughnut shy of a dozen, but that’s too stupid even for him. He must have said the first thing that came to his mind. He’s hiding something all right.”

“Any angle on this Keller character?”

“Clean, so far as any rainmaker can be called clean. He’s the investment side of the house.” Malone stood up from behind his desk and stretched. “I’m going to take Jessie Zavala off that workers’ comp case, and have her do a little snooping to find out exactly how Candy’s been meddling in the music biz.”

* * * *

Los Angeles is not only the Mecca of the cult of celebrity, it’s the Mecca, Jerusalem, Rome, Lhasa, and Salt Lake City all wrapped up into one. My girlfriend Andie says it’s a sign of the unwholesome American veneration of the entertainment industry that we apply such words as “idol,” “icon,” and “diva” more often to movie stars, TV personalities, and pop singers than we do to idols, icons, and goddesses.

Organized religion is itself steeped in celebrity. The Church of Scientology, notorious for its recruitment of film actors, is headquartered in an old hospital building that looms over Hollywood like a haunted hotel in an old Universal monster movie. Aimee Semple McPherson built her Church of the Foursquare Gospel right here in L.A., the first religious organization to operate a radio station, and so became the godmother of today’s slick Bible Belt televangelists.

More traditional religions are hardly immune, either. Our new multimillion- dollar Roman Catholic cathedral, looking like a hip college campus cross-pollinated with a hip movie studio office building, is cynically referred to as either the Roger Mahal or the Taj Mahony after the camera-ready cardinal who built it. The glass and steel nondenominational Crystal Cathedral, an institution firmly based on mainstream American Protestantism, which, like Disneyland, is located in urban Orange County rather than L.A. proper—everybody knows that “the O.C.” is really nothing more than the south L.A. ‘burbs, try as its denizens might to deny it—anyway, the Crystal Cathedral actually advertises all the stars who show up to participate in its nationally televised services.

But the real old-time religion, the one true creed in sunny SoCal, is not, as you might expect, Fame. It is certainly not God. It is Greed.

The recording industry is, or was, a big part of the mighty entertainment money machine. In the last decade, though, it has gone through a meltdown. The reasons for this are many, not the least of which is internet piracy, but one side effect has been a wholesale scramble to exploit new markets.

The fastest growing ethnic demographic in the U.S. is Latin American. They are already the largest minority in the country, and it is estimated that one in four U.S. citizens will share Latino descent in fifty years. And that, my friends, means that the Latino sector of the music business is not exactly playing with chump change. It is the one vital branch of an otherwise moribund industry.

Organized criminals are attracted to fast money like vampires to virgins. Gangland glam is not exactly new in the music game, either. I keep a picture of my man Frank Sinatra mugging with Carlo Gambino on my desk to remind me not all that glitters is gold. The connection between violent street gangs and hiphop, a la Death Row Records, is another case in point. The Senator’s suspicion that Candélio Carrasco was somehow mixed up with the career side of Zeno Duke’s life only made sense.

As did his choice to investigate the matter. Jessica Zavala is our only homegrown op—her pop Enrico (“Hank” to Malone) had been Malone’s partner in the Texas DPS during his patrol days, and with teachers like Moon, Stowicz, Jett, Malone, and myself, she’s had about the best investigative training you can imagine. Plus, not to be sexist or anything, she wouldn’t look out of place clad in a bikini on the cover of Lowrider magazine. Let’s face it: Appearance counts in the P.I. racket, and though we usually try to keep it low key so as not to stick out, it’s a simple fact that lots of men will tell a beautiful girl things they’d never dream of spilling to anybody else.

Zavala’s brain could light up the Rand Corporation, and she’s one hell of an actress who knows exactly how to play the wide-eyed less-than-brilliant kitten, hanging on a man’s every word like he’s the most important dude this side of Christ Jesus. Finally, any inquiry requiring fluent Spanish is either her beat or Malone’s, and the Senator realized he’d look just slightly out of place in a salsa palace.

I should mention, too, that Jessica had no strong objection to clubbing in a city famous for clubbing on an expense account. She’s young and attractive, after all.

But not lazy. Four days after getting this plum assignment, she glided into our Pico Boulevard office bearing a CD in her well-manicured hand. The cover depicted a colorful skeletal figure, like something from el Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead, but sporting a lit joint between its grinning teeth and brandishing a Mack 10 submachine gun in its bony hands while dancing on the hood of a tricked-out Hummer in front of a background of oversized marijuana and coca leaves. I noticed it was on the Wirld Records label, the same company Duke had mentioned in his alibi.

“This is what Zeno Duke has been up to,” she said, popping the disc into the DVD drive on Malone’s fancy new computer.

It sounded like nothing I’d ever heard, or rather, it was a strange yet arresting combination of many things I’d heard before. Try to imagine a mariachi band with an urban edge. The main track vocals sounded like your usual husky, vibrato-filled Mexican folk singing. But there was a lot of what they call sampling—multiple overlaid tracks of heavily processed instrumentals and voices, repetitions of catchy phrases in unexpected syncopations, all spread over a bouncy waltz or polka rhythm. Nothing I’d ever buy myself, of course, but something I could easily imagine thumping out of a mega sound system in a metal-flake green cruise machine, rattling the neighborhood windows as it slid by on its way to nowhere.

“Are you catching the lyrics?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” I confessed. “Maybe if they were singing in Italian—”

“They’re singing about drugs and guns,” Malone said.

At that moment, Jackie Jett entered Cus’s office, consternation glowing from his face.

“What the hell are you guys listening to?”

He was used to Asleep at the Wheel or Hank Thompson issuing forth from Malone’s office, and Puccini or Sinatra from mine.

“Narcocorridas,” said Malone, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s right,” Zavala said, and she hit the pause button. “Look at the title.”

The record was called Los Contrabanditos.

I frowned. “And that means what, exactly?”

“Trouble,” Jett said.

“It’s a kind of music. Narcocorridas are about the most popular songs in México these days,”—Jessica always pronounces the name of her ancestral land in Spanish—”so it can be very lucrative to play and record them. But they’re usually very old-school, not like this. You know, lots of trumpets, fiddles, and accordions—you can almost imagine Donald Duck, Joe Carioca, and Panchito singing along.”

“I love that picture,” I said. “ ‘The Three Caballeros,’ right?”

Jessica arched an eyebrow. I guess she’s not into cartoons. “Narcocorridas are ballads, and I don’t mean love songs—I mean the old-fashioned kind that tell stories. Only these ballads are about drug smugglers. Lots of poor people look up to them like they were Robin Hoods, if you know what I mean, the same way Americans admire Jesse James or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But this—this is like Pete Seeger meets 50 Cent. Weird but brilliant.”

“Weird is right,” Jett said. “I don’t know about brilliant. Did you know that when Duke Ellington broadcast from the Cotton Club in the twenties, the radio announcer called it ‘jungle music’? Now this is what I call jungle music.”

“Not really. Jungle’s a kind of dance music. You might hear it at a big rave,” Jessie said casually, but after catching the look on Jett’s face, she hastily added, “but I can see what you mean.”

“So Zeno Duke has found an updated sound, aiming for the urban gangbanger hawking the goods in the dark alleys behind Main Street, U.S.A.,” Malone said. “No wonder Candy was interested. It’s a masterpiece of public relations for the cartel.”

“I told you Z didn’t give a damn about the music,” Jett said.

“You won’t find this record at Wal-Mart, though,” she said. “I got it at a club where Los Contrabanditos were playing a set.”

“What does the name mean?” I asked.

“It’s a pun,” Malone replied. “The Spanish word for smuggler is contrabandista. You already know what a bandito is. Very witty.” He didn’t sound like he thought it was witty.

“Right. Anyway, after the show, I got to talking with the front man,” Jessica continued. “His name is Julio Jurado. Kinda cute, in a bad-boy sort of way. Think Ricky Martin with a buzz cut and tats. He’s from Culiacan.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s the capital city of one of the Mexican states, Red,” Malone explained. “In fact, it’s the capital of Sinaloa. What a coincidence.”

“Well, hell, he must be guilty as snot,” I said. “I mean, I’m an Italian from New York, so that must make me a Mafia wiseguy.”

“Chill, boss,” said Jessica. “Julio’s not here on a work visa. He’s visiting his uncle.”

“Wait. Don’t tell me.”

“His Uncle Candy.” She smirked and her face lit up like an imp’s. “Mamacita’s brother. Candélio Carrasco.”

I let her have her moment of triumph before speaking again. “All right. So it’s not such a coincidence. But one thing I don’t get. What’s a high-end player like Z, who’s brought in millions to every major record label that ever pressed vinyl, doing producing a disc that’s only for sale at a bar?”

At that moment, the computer’s speakers erupted with a sound like a robot tomcat having rough sex with an elephant cow.

“Damn!” Malone reached down and pulled out the plug from its surge protector under the desk. “I hate these things.”

“Must be that Windows Vista,” Jessie said.

“Get Benny to fix it, whatever it is. Getting back to the matter at hand, kids, maybe Z owed Candy a favor,” said Malone.

“Or maybe—” Jett started to say something then shut his mouth.

“Or maybe what?”

“Well, maybe Zeno Duke wasn’t given a choice.”

* * * *

That same afternoon I got a phone call from Jake Burroughs.

Tommy Terrific had been shanked in the right kidney in the O.C. jail’s exercise yard by a member of MS 13. You’ve heard of them, no doubt: Mara Salvatrucha, the Salvadoran Army Ants, the most brutal gang in the world. They got a lot of press a few years ago for nearly decapitating a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl in Virginia. The FBI has arrested almost 700 of their members all over the U.S. for a whole catalog of crimes ranging from murdering witnesses to drug and human trafficking.

But they’re Los Angeles homies. The gang was formed in Pacoima back in the seventies by a group of Salvadoran criminals eager to protect themselves from Mexican criminals.

I love L.A.

Tommy had dropped like a steel barbell slipping from the hands of an Olympic weightlifter, dead before he could blink. Considering MS 13’s penchant for inflicting pain, he’d been lucky.

“Tommy wanted me to give you something in case he didn’t make it out of jail,” Jake said.

“Sounds like he knew he was in danger.”

“I just can’t understand it. Why would a gangbanger knock off a celebrity private investigator? It makes no sense,” Jake said. “Anyway, Tommy wanted you to have his keys—I don’t have a clue why. I’ll drop by later and leave them with your receptionist.”

He hung up.

“Poor ol’ scuzz bucket,” Malone said. “I knew he’d get it in the back someday.” He paused, and then lowed like a steer getting branded. It took me a moment to realize he was attempting to sing. “Oh, beat the drum slow-lee, and play the fife low-lee . . . “

I stared at him.

“It’s from ‘The Streets of Laredo,’ Red. That’s a song about a murdered cowboy.”

“I know what it is,” I retorted. “I just don’t know why you’re trying to sing it.”

“I was reminded of Laredo, Red. Or more precisely, Nuevo Laredo.”

“More like Tijuana in this case.”

“TJ, too,” he said mysteriously. “You know, for the first time, I get the impression that Zeno Duke really is innocent.”

“I thought we liked Candy Carrasco for it.”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I think we’d better find out if young Julio Jurado was getting it on with Jenna Wells. Ask Zavala about it, why don’t you.”

“Right.” There was no point in quizzing the Senator about what he was thinking. When he got like this, he was more inscrutable than a poker champ shuffling his chips. But I did it anyway.

“If it’s not too much trouble, maybe you can tell me how that could possibly help. If true, wouldn’t it give Z a motive?”

“A motive to keep his mouth shut, sure.”

That was as much as I was going to get out of him. “All right, I’m on it. And since you seem to know so much, maybe you can tell me why Tommy left his keys to me.”

“I’d say he wanted you to unlock something, wouldn’t you?”

“There is a recording somewhere.”

* * * *

Jett was in his office arguing with Zeno Duke over the phone when Burroughs dropped off the keys. The ring contained the keys to Carlucci’s red Porsche Cayenne Turbo—leave it to him to drive an expensive Porsche SUV, a flashier car I can’t imagine. (At Cal Ops, in keeping with our low-profile philosophy, the company cars are silver-grey Toyota sedans, except for Malone and his monster truck.) There were also keys to Tommy’s Century City office, keys to his Newport Beach waterfront house, and a little red plastic fob with an enamel Porsche logo glued to it.

I headed to his home address in Orange County first. I figured law enforcement had already done a pretty thorough job on his office looking for evidence, so my hunch was that whatever I was looking for would be in his car.

Traffic on the 405 is at a crawl at the best of times and it was late afternoon by the time I got there.

I was only going to look around a little. I don’t usually go armed—there’s no reason unless you’re expecting trouble, so I’d left the Beretta at the office.

Turns out that was a mistake.

The garage was a detached building dating from the twenties with room for three limos big enough to tootle Norma Desmond around in, and even had chauffeur’s quarters above the coach house. I looked on the key ring for the electronic remote that would open the doors, not imagining for a moment that Carlucci would ever condescend to manually swing them open, but there wasn’t anything there that worked. I though maybe the little fob might be it, but there wasn’t any kind of button on it at all.

So I let myself in through the side door intended for people, taking just long enough to figure out which key fit in the doorknob. I walked in, leaving the door open behind me because it was dark inside and I didn’t see a light switch on the wall.

There was only the one car and a home weightlifting gym featuring both free weights and a couple of expensive machines.

A shadow moved across the floor, cast from the open door behind me. I turned and looked.

At first I thought he was probably a cop. He was dressed in black parachute pants and a black tee that stretched across pecs the size of hubcaps. There was a pistol—I found out later it was a Heckler & Koch USP Tactical .45, a gun designed for Special Forces—strapped to his thigh in a nylon holster. He was just removing silvered aviator shades from his eyes. I didn’t like his face. His black hair was cropped short, high and tight, but not like a cholo’s skinhead shave. It was a military cut.

“Hey, you got somethin’ for me?” he asked, coldly smiling. His voice was high and hoarse and he spoke with a Spanish accent.

“Who are you?”

“El muerte.” And then he landed a stiff one right in my solar plexus.

I dropped hard on my face and the keys flew out of my hand, jingling as they hit the concrete floor. I couldn’t breathe. I heard him kick the door shut, and then he flicked the lights on. My eyes felt like they were being bleached, whether from having the wind knocked out of me or because of the sudden brightness I can’t say. But I remember thinking, He’s been waiting here long enough to know where the lights are.

“You should work out, pendejo. Pump iron, you know?”

I heard the slither of metal against metal as he pulled something from the rack of weights behind him. I tried reaching for the keys. They were too far away. My fingers clenched around nothing but dust.

He shoved a toe under my stomach and flipped me over like a flapjack. He stood above me, holding a 45-pound round plate in his hands three feet over my head.

He smirked and said, “Adios, cabron.” He raised the plate another six inches and aimed it at my head.

I tensed against the fatal impact, and my right hand landed right on top of Tommy’s keys—when the assassin had turned me over, he’d accidentally pushed me closer to where they had fallen. I wasn’t thinking at all when my fingers clenched around them. I was just waiting for death.

The Cayenne chirped and revved up. I’d unintentionally activated the keyless ignition.

It distracted him for a split second, just enough time for me to roll, catching his ankles with my legs, sending him crashing to the concrete next to me. On the way down, he smacked his head on the weight. It bounced twice with gong-like clangs, then lazily rolled away before spinning flat. By that time we were both struggling to get on our feet.

It was lucky for me he’d been clipped so hard on his way down. It evened the odds.

His eyes were glazed and a trickle of blood dripped from his left temple, but he had enough presence of mind, or maybe instinct, to go for his pistol.

He would have been smarter to get in the next punch.

We both went down with my haymaker, but he also went out.

I found a couple of bungee cords in the back of the Porsche and trussed him up tighter than shrink-wrap. Then I called 911.

* * * *

“I should have seen this coming,” Malone said. “Sorry about that.”

He leaned back in his office chair, his Lucchese boots propped one over the other on the corner of his desk.

“Didn’t your mama teach you manners?” I said, pushing his feet off the edge. “I hope you don’t eat lunch here. Unsanitary.”

“Hey, easy, Red. These are six-hundred-dollar boots,” he said. “That hombre you tangled with is obviously a Zeta.”

“More like a Klingon.”

“The Zetas are the private army of the Gulf Cartel, Red. They were originally Mexican commandos, from the Grupo Aeromovil de Fuertes Especiales, the Special Air Mobile Force Group. Lately I’ve heard the Zetas have also recruited some bad-ass Guatemalan special forces, too, former Kaibiles. I say I should have seen this coming, because it was Carlucci’s murder that put me on the scent.”

“He was killed by a gang member.”

“He was killed by a member of MS 13, an ally of the cartel. Since Tommy was obviously not engaged in a street-level turf war, it occurred to me that he might have been taken out on orders from on high. That means the cartel. We already had a connection in this case to the Sinaloa Cartel through Candy, so it made sense to me that the Gulf Cartel might be involved, too.”

“I thought that the cartels were bitter enemies,” I said. “Why would they both be muddying the waters?”

“We’ll find out when we know what they were looking for.”

“Well, my guess is some kind of recording left by Carlucci. Evidence of something.” I put the keychain on the desk. “I thought these would help, but Tommy’s car was clean.”

He took a moment and then shook his head. “You remember objecting to my cowboy song?”

I was briefly disoriented by the quick change of subject.

“Oh, that. Not the song. Only your singing.”

“You know that the town of Nuevo Laredo is on the front line of the war between the Mexican cartels, I suppose.”

“Now how would I know that?”

At that moment, Benny stuck his ginger head and wiry frame inside the door.

“Heard you had computer probs, boss,” he said to Malone. “Here I come to save the day.”

“Damn straight. What do I pay you for?”

“I’ll just take a look.” He knelt and plugged the power cord back into the socket. “Shouldn’t do that, you know, boss. Could seriously damage the hard drive.” He saw the keys. “Hey, cool flash drive, Carmine.”

“Not my car. It belonged to the late Tommy Carlucci.”

“Car? What are you talking about?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your thumb drive. Here, on your keychain.” He picked up the Porsche fob. “This critter, here.”

He pulled it apart. Half of it was just a plastic cap, and the other half had a little metal rectangle sticking out. “You just plug this puppy into a USB port and whammo, you’ve just doubled your storage. A lot more convenient than lugging a disc around.”

Malone and I stared at each other.

“Benny, you mean to tell me that this trinket is a digital medium?” Malone asked.

“Well, duh.”

“What’s on it?”

“Let’s have a look.” By that time the computer had finished booting up, and Benny plugged the little drive into a slot on the computer’s front panel.

He did some rapid navigation with the mouse and we were looking at an open window on the screen.

“There ya go. Files.”

“What kind of files?” Malone asked.

“The extension is dot SD2—I don’t know what that is off the top of my head, but that’s why God gave us Google.” He opened the browser and tapped a few keys.

“Here it is. ‘Sound Designer 2,’ audio file format used by Digidesign Pro Tools. It’s digital music. High-end stuff, professional.”

“Like in a recording studio?”

Benny laughed. “Sure, but not just in a studio. All you really need is a good microphone and a computer these days. The Pro Tools system has revolutionized the recording industry.”

“Can we listen to them?” I asked.

Benny shook his head. “Not without the software. We’re talking mucho dinero. A lot more expensive than your basic office suite.”

“Thanks, Benny,” said Malone.

Benny thumped the computer and pronounced it cured.

Then Malone gave me one of those patented dazzling Senator-on-the-stump smiles of his. “By the way, Red, Zavala got back to me concerning the question of Jenna Wells doing the dirty with young Julio Jurado. He went all moody on her and didn’t want to talk about it. So our next move is to haul in Zeno for a chat about some things that he don’t want to talk about.”

* * * *

Zeno Duke sat at one end of our conference table. He appeared nervous.

“I swear to God I don’t know squat about these files,” he said. “Hell, I don’t even use Pro Tools. And I know even less about how Carlucci got his hands on them.”

“Oh, I think I can guess how Tommy got them,” said Malone. “He probably implanted a sophisticated spyware program on the computer that was used to record them. He needed evidence to blackmail you with, and that was the easiest way to go about it.”

“Blackmail me? That’s absurd. I haven’t done anything.”

“Now that’s the first about-true thing you’ve told us,” Malone said with a lopsided grin. He held up the little flash drive. “I’ve got a strong hunch that what’s on this drive is going to change your life forever, Mr. Duke. But first, let’s get some things straight.”

“I’ve been str—”

“No, you haven’t. First, you told us you simply had cash-flow problems,” I said. “But the truth of the matter is you’re stone broke, isn’t it?”

He actually blushed. “Every cent I have went to make bail.”

I snorted. “It wasn’t your money. You didn’t have five cents, let alone five mil. If you had, you’d have posted a bond so you’d have some cash left over for your defense. The money came from someone else. Somebody with a business that deals with lots of liquid assets.”

He pursed his lips.

“Carrasco put up your bail, didn’t he?”

“Carrasco? That maniac? Are you nuts?” His indignation was unmistakable.

“No, it wasn’t Carrasco,” said Malone. “I think it was your partner, Keller, right?”

He stared at Malone with clear hostility. “All right. Yes. He wasn’t happy about it, but he stands to lose a lot more than that if I go down. Without me, there is no Wirld Records.”

Malone nodded. “You mean without your name there’s no Wirld Records. You haven’t actually done a damn thing in terms of producing any records, have you?”

“I guess you haven’t heard about Los Contrabanditos.”

“There you’re wrong. Fact is, I heard their record, that’s what convinced me you had nothing to do with it.”

“You must be high.”

“Come on, Mr. Duke. Whoever produced that record was fresh, cutting edge. Not only have you not had a hit in ten years, why hell—you don’t even know how to operate an iPod. How cutting edge is that? Whoever produced that record was obviously a youngster.”

“Yeah, go ahead and sneer—but that record has my name on it.”

“Exactly. Because your name’s the only thing you have left you can parlay into cash, just like I said. So let me tell you how it was. You’re a legend in the recording business, all right, but you’re a legend whose time has come and gone. Still, your reputation is plenty strong enough that I’ll bet kids trying to break into the industry sidle up alongside you all the time. I’ll bet they’re usually a nuisance.

“I reckon you were at a party, a loud, wild party, maybe a rave or something. Jenna came with you, but she was already getting restive, looking for the next score. And then she meets a good-looking Mexican kid onto something big. She introduces him to you, with the intention of using her influence with you to give the kid a leg up.”

“That bitch.” Duke frowned and looked like he was about to burst into tears. “But it wasn’t her who introduced me to Jurado. It was Candy. The kid was his nephew, and Candy was calling in a favor.”

“You owed him money for your nose candy,” I said.

“Never mind about that. Anyway, he brings the kid over and introduces us, making it clear he wants me to help him out.”

“You heard his music and realized there was money in it.”

“So did Jenna. She’s got a nose for money that would make a Swiss banker proud. Soon she’s draped all over the little spic like a fur coat. I didn’t say a thing. I’d been waiting for a chance like that for a long time. I knew I could make it work. It’s what I’m good at.”

“So you encouraged Jenna—or at any rate, you didn’t discourage her. You’re as old a hand at using people as she was, after all.”

He shrugged. “I needed Jenna to keep the kid on the line. Then I took the recording to someone I knew connected to Keller, told her it was my latest project, and pitched the idea of Wirld Records. I knew if she got behind it, Keller would bite, too.”

“She?” I asked.

“A friend,” he said stubbornly.

“Jackie says your weakness is women. Who is she?”

“I don’t see how that matters.”

Malone laughed. “Don’t tell me—damn, Zeno, don’t you know you ain’t supposed to crap where you eat?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll bet Keller’s missus is one of them proverbial trophy wives, isn’t she?”

“Leave her out of this!”

I suddenly realized what was going on. “That’s why you lied about your alibi. You weren’t out with an A&R rep—you were out with Keller’s wife. He was out of town and you were using the opportunity to jump over the fence, so to speak.”

“If Benny finds out about me and Mira, it’ll blow the deal,” he said. “None of us can afford that. If Wirld Records doesn’t take off, I might just as well be in prison, because I’ll be ruined.”

“You know, life would have been a lot easier for all of us if you’d simply told us the truth.”

“What for? I had nothing to do with Jenna’s death. I’m innocent. Innocent, damn it. You think I’d have hired you guys if getting clear was as simple as saying I was sleeping with my partner’s wife? You were supposed to find out who did kill Jenna. That’s the only sure way I have out of this mess.”

“Well, bud, you’re off the hook right now,” Malone said, “that is, if Mira Keller backs up your story to the sheriff’s department after we let them know you really do have an alibi.”

“You can’t do that,” Duke said, standing.

“We have no choice, Mr. Duke. Mr. Ferrari already told you that there is no such thing as client-investigator confidentiality. If we don’t tell the sheriffs what we know, we’ll be guilty of withholding evidence.”

“Well, thanks a lot, you bastards.”

“Before you go, there’s one thing I’d like to know, though.”

“What do you mean, before I go? Aren’t you going to play that audio file for me?”

“Not necessary,” I said.

“Then you can kiss my skinny white—”

“Who all knew about Jenna Wells’s allergy to peanuts?” Malone asked.

“Who didn’t? She practically announced it every time she went out. You’d be surprised how much peanut oil is used in restaurants. It wasn’t exactly a secret.”

“I get it. That’s all for now.”

“Did I mention that you’re fired, asshole? And you can forget about the quarter mil while we’re at it.”

“In that case, I guess we’ll see you in court after all. Civil court, when we sue you for fees.”

“You just try it.” And he stormed out.

We sat there for several seconds before I cleared my throat. “So, Cus, we going to listen to that recording, or what?”

* * * *

Finding a computer with Pro Tools installed was as simple as placing a call to Brenda, who sent us to one of the guys who does the music track for her TV show, Ross Epstein. Several of us crammed into his studio, really a tiny office in a Santa Monica office building stuffed from the floor to the ceiling with computers, speakers, and a soundboard, to listen to the recording.

There were Malone and me, of course, and Jackie Jett with an LASD homicide detective buddy of his, Assistant D.A. Linda Park, and Special Agent Salvador Figueroa of the DEA. Park was a small, pretty Asian lady in her early thirties. I’d met Sal Figueroa before, but like always I was struck by the fact that he dresses almost as well as I do. More along the lines of Savile Row in London than Corso Buenos Aires in Milan, but still, he looks sharp.

“I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve asked you here tonight,” Malone began, but the gag fell flat. “Never mind. Roll ‘em, Ross.”

“Right,” Epstein said. “For what it’s worth, the date on this file is May eighteenth of this year.”

“Two days after the murder,” Park observed.

Epstein touched a button on his keyboard and the show started.

What we heard was a band (obviously Los Contrabanditos to anybody who’d listened to their CD) making music, or what passes for it, being interrupted by angry shouting. What followed were at least three voices in passionate argument rattling away like castanets.

In Spanish. A language I don’t speak. “Wh—”

“Shh!” said Figueroa, a look of feral concentration on his face.

It went on for almost ten minutes.

When it was over, Figueroa looked over the assembled multitude as if to gauge our reactions.

“Anybody got a problem if I take charge of the flash drive?”

The sheriff’s deputy shook his head, and Park muttered something about wanting a certified copy and a record of chain of custody.

Epstein removed the little red Porsche fob from the USB port and placed it in Figueroa’s open palm.

Everybody stood.

“Thanks for listenin’, folks,” said Malone, and then we all shuffled out.

* * * *

I climbed in the passenger side of Malone’s massive F-350 to drive back to Cal Ops.

He plopped down beside me, buckled his seatbelt, and turned the key.

“You want to tell me what was on the recording, Senator?”

We pulled into traffic eastbound on Olympic. He didn’t say a word until we got to the office. I followed him to his desk, where he surprised me by going directly to the bar he keeps for clients and pouring us each a jigger of añejo tequila. I don’t drink spirits, usually, and wine only at dinner, and maybe a beer when watching football. But it seemed important to him, so I followed his lead.

“Jenna Wells was a casualty of war,” he said at length. “Poor little bint.”

I refused a second shot and he poured himself another.

“What was on that recording, Red, was a member of the Gulf Cartel admitting to the murder, complete with descriptive details of how it went down, by way of threatening Julio Jurado to pack up his guitar and give up the life of a drug balladeer. That recording was made when Wells’s body was still in the morgue, before anybody even knew who she was, and contained enough detail to leave absolutely no doubt that the speaker knew exactly what happened. It completely clears Zeno Duke.”

“But—you mean to tell me that Jenna Wells was tortured and murdered just because some macho thugs didn’t like the songs her new boyfriend was singing?”

“I thought it might be something like that as soon as Zavala played that record for us. Drug cartels murdering narcocorrida singers is nothing new, Red. The cartels adopt some of the songs as anthems and then eliminate the singers who ally themselves with their competitors. There have been over a dozen such murders in the last couple of years, but to my knowledge, this is the first one outside of Mexico.”

“But in that case, why not go directly after Jurado himself?”

“Because Jurado is Candy Carrasco’s nephew. If they’d taken him down directly, it would have elevated the war to a blood feud. So they stopped just shy of it by killing his new squeeze instead. After all, as far as they were all concerned, she was only a gringa puta.”

I felt sick.

“But what really pisses me off is that Julio Jurado laughed it off. He told them, so you killed that old lady, so what? More where she came from. You don’t dare come after me, because Uncle Candélio will rip out your guts and feed them to the buzzards if you do. And so the little scumbird kept on strumming, a big hero, like nothing had ever happened.”

* * * *

They were waiting for me when I got back to my apartment. As soon as I was through the front door I was grabbed by two of Candy’s goombas, frisked, had my coat pulled down over my arms, and forced to sit down hard on my own living room floor.

“I told your partner to stay clear of the Duke case,” Carrasco said. He sat in my leather recliner, smoking a cigarette. “Now I hear that you got a recording that belongs to my nephew.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “It’s in the hands of the DEA. What’s it to you? You’re not incriminated by it. Although it doesn’t show your nephew in the best of lights. How’d you find out about the recording, anyway?”

“Shut up.” He took a drag and then punched his cigarette out on the arm of the chair. “All right. I knew about the recording because Tommy Carlucci told me he had it. He was trying to use it for leverage. Then he got himself killed in jail, and what do you know, you wind up taking out a Zeta at his house. Coincidence? Ain’t no such thing. That means you must have the recording, because that’s why the Zeta went to Carlucci’s house in the first place, to get it.”

I laughed. It was too surreal.

I got smacked across the face for my trouble.

“You’re right,” Carrasco said. “It probably don’t make any difference any more. I sent Julio back home. I wanted the recording because having it around is bad for business. Having it would have been sweet, especially since the Gulf Cartel wants it so bad. They don’t need the heat either. It would have been better just to let Zeno Duke take the fall, but that ain’t going to happen—but the DEA getting it, I guess that’s better than nothing.”

He stood up and looked down at me.

“But you—you ain’t worth the trouble. Let’s go, vatos.”

They slipped out the door and shut it behind them, leaving me where I was. I struggled to my feet, went to the window, and pulled back the curtains to watch them drive away.

They climbed into a black Mercedes S600 parked at the curb.

WHOOMP! The limo erupted in an actinic sphere of fire and my front window shattered, showering me with fragments of jagged glass. I passed out.

* * * *

The last time Custer Malone had visited me in the hospital, he’d brought me a recording of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. This time I wasn’t in the mood for music.

“Figueroa figures that the Gulf goons assumed that Candy got his hands on the recording when he went to call on you,” Malone said. “He says the car must have been wired for some time—the bomb was detonated by cell phone—and when he walked out of your place, they decided it was time to get rid of the evidence.”

“I thought you said they were trying to keep things to a low sizzle,” I replied. “Isn’t that why they killed Jenna instead of the boy?”

“I guess something changed their minds,” Malone said. “Maybe they were afraid of looking like they were going soft.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Hey, have you seen today’s Calendar section?”

On the entertainment pages of the Los Angeles Times, there was a photo of a smiling couple at a party. The woman was a raven-haired beauty.

Mira Keller, left, enjoying a joke with boyfriend Zeno Duke.