‘What did I do to her? I asked her to take off her dress. Like Anne, you see, Charlotte liked to be dominated. She was happy to comply. Eager, even.’ He salivated at the memory. ‘I can picture her now, raising her arms, pulling the thin cotton over her head. She had these lovely, high, round, apple breasts and a flat, taut stomach above a tiny pair of lace underwear. Oh, she was perfect, Dr Roberts! She really was. I asked her to dance for me, but she was shy, and she didn’t want to, not at all. So I had to give her a little helping hand. Have you ever seen the human body under machine-gun fire?’
He let out a sadistic high-pitched giggle. ‘I don’t suppose you have. They’re dead long before they fall to the ground, but before that they all do this amusing sort of jerky, jumpy little dance to the rhythm of the bullets, legs and arms flying everywhere. It’s a bit of a mess by the end, but it’s well worth watching, if you’ve never seen it before.
‘Carter Berkeley was one of my bankers. I liked him, but my God he was uptight! Anyway, I’d hoped he would enjoy the little show I put on for him with Charlotte. He’d introduced us in the first place, so he deserved a little thank you, and I’d promised him a surprise, you see. He came along and watched from the car. But he was boringly squeamish about the whole thing, shaking and crying like a little girl. I think he thought I was going to let him sleep with her.’
He laughed again, looking back up at Nikki.
‘I mean, can you imagine? Why would I allow that? What’s mine is mine, Dr Roberts. And always will be.’
It took Nikki a few seconds fully to process everything he was saying, and to square it with what Williams had told her before he died. When she spoke it was as much to herself as to Rodriguez.
‘So Carter was the American banker. The man with the green Jaguar. But he was never Charlotte’s boyfriend. You were.’
‘I’m not sure I was her boyfriend,’ Luis clarified amiably, as if they weren’t talking about a cold-blooded murder.
‘Does Carter still work for you?’
Luis’s expression darkened. ‘My organization isn’t like a bank. People don’t come and go. Once you’re in, you’re in. We’re like a family.’
The word sounded horribly chilling on Luis’s lips.
‘Unfortunately, over the years Carter Berkeley became one of our more dysfunctional members. Hence his visits to you.’
‘And by “organization” you mean your drug cartel?’ asked Nikki.
‘I wouldn’t call it that. Narcotics is a part of our business. So is real estate. We have broad-based interests.’
‘Bullshit,’ Nikki said boldly. If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to do it on this man’s terms. ‘Your property empire’s nothing but a giant laundromat for your drug-trade profits. Same as your so-called philanthropy. You push Krok for a living, Mr Rodriguez. You’re just another low-life drug dealer, no more, no less.’
Luis cocked his head curiously to one side, but didn’t seem angry. If anything, he appeared to enjoy being challenged.
‘Firstly, I don’t have to “push” Krokodil, Dr Roberts, any more than I had to “push” cocaine. Demand is high. I don’t create it. I simply meet it.’
Nikki’s eyes narrowed in disgust. ‘You know what that stuff does to people.’
‘Yes, I do. And so do they. I’m not responsible for my customers’ choices,’ Luis shot back, unapologetic. ‘Nor was Carter Berkeley. He’s been my finance guy on the West Coast for years. He was a damn good one too, until he started getting cold feet. There’s truly nothing more irksome than a late-developing conscience, don’t you agree? Like Lisa Flannagan’s.’
Nikki’s ears pricked up at the mention of Lisa. What did Rodriguez know about her, or her conscience?
‘Anyway, all of a sudden Berkeley’s heart started to bleed for these poor, pathetic junkies,’ Rodriguez went on, bringing the conversation back to Carter. ‘Needless to say, that was after he’d taken his cut. He felt bad enough to spill his guts to a therapist, but never to give back any of the millions of dollars he made from me. He became greedy and weak. Just like Mr Baden over there. Never a good combination.’
Carter was part of this ‘ring’ Williams was trying to warn me about, thought Nikki. He must have been the ‘crooked banker’. And Baden had obviously been part of it too, although where he would have fit in, Nikki still wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered now. Her mind raced. Who else had Derek said was involved? A politician, possibly the Mayor himself. A cop. And someone in the charity world, all taking their slices of Rodriguez’s Krokodil pie.
‘I’ve made many mistakes here in LA, Dr Roberts,’ said Rodriguez, glancing down at the gun in his hand. ‘I admit it. My first was relying on Berkeley. Carter’s a smart guy but he had no balls, as it turned out, and you need those in our business. My second was letting Valentina Baden talk me into working with her husband. Valentina’s a professional. She comes from the same world that I do and she understands the way things work. But her old man was a liability. And then there was my biggest mistake of all, hiring that wrecked boy Grolsch to get rid of you. What a goddamned mess he made of everything.’
Nikki winced. She still found it hard to believe that Brandon would hurt anybody, never mind murder and torture. But the idea that he would agree to kill her, the one person who’d helped him, or tried to help him, more than anyone? That was mind-boggling. What had Rodriguez’s drugs done to him?
‘I should have known the kid was too far gone, too deep in his addiction to do a decent job. But Valentina was obsessed with him and she lobbied for him so persuasively. She and Brandon had been lovers, you see. Back when he still had his looks, before the drugs ravaged him.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Nikki. ‘Brandon’s nineteen. Valentina Baden’s old enough to be his grandmother.’
Rodriguez shrugged. ‘In addiction, as in love, there are no barriers, Dr Roberts, no boundaries. Your husband understood that. I’m surprised you don’t. In any event, I think it excited the old bitch, the idea of lover-boy killing somebody for her. ‘Brandon knows Dr Roberts,’ she told me. ‘He knows her habits, her movements. He can do this, Luis. Give him a chance.’ Stupidly, I let her have her way. It was in the early days of my association with Willie, and I thought it made sense to keep both the Badens sweet.’ Luis shook his head bitterly. ‘My God, what a fiasco. All Grolsch had to do was wait for you outside your office and stick a knife in your heart. I mean, how hard is that? But the whole thing became a comedy of errors. Lisa Flannagan comes out wearing your raincoat, and oops! The moron goes and kills her instead. I mean, he literally cut that poor girl to ribbons.’
Nikki thought about this. It was Goodman’s ‘mistaken identity’ theory. That the killer had mistaken Lisa for Nikki, because it was dark and she was wearing Nikki’s coat. On the one hand, she supposed it was technically possible that Brandon could have been high enough and so amped-up to kill that he would make that sort of ‘mistake’. But surely it was more likely that Valentina Baden had instructed him to kill Lisa, her husband’s mistress, instead of Nikki?
She assumed this possibility must have occurred to Rodriguez too. Although he seemed to have a bizarre trust in Valen
tina Baden’s word and judgment that ran counter to everything else Nikki knew about him. It struck her that Luis Rodriguez would make a fascinating psychological case study, if only he weren’t about to blow her brains out.