Page 53

CHAPTER 53

BABY STEPPED OUT OF the Uber, flipped her sunglasses down over her eyes, and smoothed the front of her skirt. In heels, she was well over six feet tall, and the blazer she wore was sharp-shouldered and nipped in at the waist. When she reached the automatic doors at the front of the Enorme offices, she drew the attention of all three security guards, but she walked right past them to the black marble reception desk in the foyer. Behind it, a huge LED screen was showing an Enorme promotional trailer.

Business-expansion solutions that harness nature-taught growth. I thrive with Enorme!

The receptionist was on a call when Baby arrived, but Baby spoke anyway. “Barbara Bird for Su Lim Marshall.”

Hearing Marshall’s name galvanized the receptionist. She tore out her Bluetooth earpiece and hit a button on her computer. To be surprised, to be caught off guard, was to be vulnerable, and the company couldn’t afford that. Ever. Baby bet that hearing Marshall’s name gave people around here the twitches.

“Ms. Bird! Of course. This is, uh, this is regarding ... ”

“Regarding a contract for the sale of Arthur Laurier’s property.”

That got things rolling. The receptionist asked for ID, and Baby handed over one of her best. Then she stood back and pretended to fire off a batch of communications on her phone. The receptionist, still smiling, made a call, maintaining the facade that she’d been expecting Baby. Only forty-five seconds passed before she popped up from her seat and showed Baby to the elevators.

Su Lim Marshall’s office was on the third floor, down a long, empty hall from the elevators. Baby’s first impression of Marshall was a small, insectile woman. She came around her desk with the same calm, poised charm the receptionist had exhibited. Completely unfazed by her unexpected visitor. Ready for any obstacle. That’s what we do here. We refocus, adapt, neutralize. Baby didn’t return the smile.

“It’s a real pleasure to meet you,” Marshall said smoothly, showing Baby to a seat in front of her almost comically large and bare desk. The thing commanded the room like an altar, yet it was empty save for a cell phone and an iPad. “I’m so glad that Mr. Laurier has decided to accept our offer on Waterway Street.”

“Oh, he hasn’t,” Baby said.

Marshall stiffened microscopically. Baby saw a tendon in her throat go taut, then instantly soften again. The iPad gave a light musical note. Baby assumed it was announcing the arrival of a brief workup on herself, whatever the receptionist had been able to scramble together as Baby rode up on the elevator.

Baby placed her phone on the edge of the black glass sea that was the surface of Marshall’s desk. She pulled up a video, put the phone on speaker, and hit play. The sound of Chris Tutti’s voice fluttered around in the big room like a moth in a jar:

“Su Lim Marshall! She’s head of — of land acquisitions or some shit!”

“Put a shirt on. You’re gonna sit here and tell me everything she asked you to do. We’re gonna get it on camera.”

“Fuck that shit! I ain’t coppin’ to no murder rap!”

Marshall lifted her eyes from the phone to Baby. One of her thin brows rose slowly. “What was that?” the small woman asked with a tight smile. “A clip from a movie?”

“That was one of your Enorme employees, Chris Tutti, admitting you paid him to murder Carol and Arthur Laurier,” Baby said. “Took about thirty seconds for him to give you up. And I didn’t even have a gun on him. All I had was a dog on a leash. Imagine what police detectives in an interrogation room would do.”

“I don’t know who — ” Marshall went for the iPad.

Baby held a hand up. “Don’t go through the motions of pretending you don’t know who Tutti is. He worked security in the staff parking lot here for a year, then got bumped up to corporate valet. I assume that’s when you met him. I bet you saw the tattoos on his knuckles, ordered a background check, and decided he might be useful in solving a little problem you were having over at Waterway Street. You saw him as the kind of lifelong bottom dweller who could use the extra cash.”

Marshall’s hand was still on the iPad.

“If you want to read the brief on me that your receptionist just sent you, go ahead,” Baby said. “You’ll find all it says is that I work for a private detective agency based in Koreatown.”

“Wow.” Marshall took a minute, shook her head. “Wow.”

Another minute passed. Baby waited. Su Lim Marshall looked through the huge windows out at the LA skyline. At the brown smudge of afternoon heat haze.

Baby had been expecting more denials, for which she had responses prepared. She’d tell Marshall that hiring an idiot like Tutti to rub out Arthur had been a grave mistake. That a solid connection between Marshall and Tutti existed somewhere, whether it was in an internal email, a message between burner phones, a handwritten address on a napkin, a slice of the two of them conversing on security camera footage. So if Baby’s security cam footage of Tutti vandalizing Arthur’s house wasn’t enough, and Tutti having been employed by Enorme wasn’t enough, and Tutti admitting that Marshall had hired him for the murders wasn’t enough — something would be enough. And Baby would find that thing, whatever it was. That witness. That bank deposit. That overheard clue.

She would find it.

She would connect Marshall to Tutti.

But none of her responses were needed. Marshall simply looked at Baby and smiled.

“Okay, Ms. Bird,” she said brightly. “You wanna play? Let’s play.”