He patted his chest. “Can I get a smoke?”

“No.” Red just smiled. “Keep going.”

“He says we’ll go for the big one, the kind you retire on. I’m not kidnapping some kid, that’s what I say. I mean whoa. But he’s, like, he can get the blonde to set it up. If she balks, we walk. But if she bites, we’re in.

“She bit.” He leaned forward. “It’s, like, I hit Sparks first, and he has to go to her, tell her. We meet up—she wears a wig, for Christ’s sake, big sunglasses. Like anybody gives a rat’s ass. I show the shots, she gets hysterical—‘What’ll it take? You can’t sell these. My career, the press!’ So I get how Sparks had it right. It’s all about her, and that makes it easy. I say, like me and Sparks set up, how I’ll let her know what it’ll take, and it won’t come cheap.”

“You didn’t directly demand the ten million?”

“No. Man, he said it was for two, so I say how I want two. They played me,” he muttered, bitter. “Played me for a mark, went for ten. I figured she could get two, sell some shit or whatever, but he comes to me, says she can’t get it, and how he talked her into using the kid. How she jumped on it.”

He squirmed in his chair. “Look, if I can’t get a smoke, can I get a Mountain Dew or some shit?”

“Finish it out, and we’ll fix you up.”

“Jesus, don’t you see? He set me up. They fucking set me up. I’m not going down for all this. They worked out how to get the kid. He said she had the perfect time and place because they were having the party deal for the old man—the dead one—up in Big Sur. It’ll be easy and slick. She knew about the house where we could keep her, that it was going to be empty. She knew it would be because they’d be out of town and wouldn’t be coming to the party deal, got it?”

“Yeah.” Enjoying himself, Red put his feet up on the table. “We’re following you.”

“I didn’t snatch the kid. Sparks did. The blonde set up where, and he dosed the kid, loaded her up into one of those serving cart deals—with the storage? Into a van—we fixed it up like one of the catering deals—and just freaking drove away with her inside the damn van.”

“How did the blonde set up where?” Michaela asked him.

“How the hell do I know? The two of them huddled about the details, right? I’m just supposed to get the room ready, get it, you know, secure, load in some supplies. I’m just babysitting, get it?”

“Did those supplies include masks?”

He squirmed again. “We don’t want her to see our faces, right? Better all around. And I bought those damn masks out of my own pocket. Same with the food and stuff. I’m supposed to get paid back for it out of the take.”

“Looks like a bad investment for you,” Red commented. “Then again, you did a lousy job at babysitting.”

“Who’s gonna expect the kid to climb out the window? Makes a rope out of frigging sheets. Uses a damn spoon like a crowbar to pull the nails out of the window lock. Who expects that? Sparks beat the shit out of me like it’s my fault.”

He leaned forward. “What I’m saying is Sparks came up with the whole game, he’s the one who brought the blonde in, and got plenty of sex out of it. The two of them worked out the details—and were goddamn cheating me all along. All I did was watch the kid.”

“You were practically an innocent bystander.”

Denby pointed at Michaela as sarcasm sailed over his head like a kite in a summer breeze. “Damn right.”

“Okay, Frank.” Red shoved a notebook and pen across the table. “Write it out, and don’t spare the details. We’ll see about that Mountain Dew.”

By the time they’d finished with Denby—because he didn’t spare the details—Red wanted a beer and a bed, in that order.

But he calculated the timing, and the fact Scarpetti loved playing the media like a fiddle.

He didn’t know Mark Rozwell, the lawyer Sparks pulled in—and who was even now consulting with him. But he had to figure more media playing.

The more they nailed down before the morning news, the better.

Once again he dug into his supply of Cokes when he called Michaela into his office. “You’re racking up the OT, Mic, and I’m going to ask if you’re up for more.”

“I can handle it.”

“I believe you can.” He tossed her the Coke. “We have to figure Scarpetti’s going to call a press conference in the morning, do what he can to put Dupont in the light of a victim. The only reason I give two shits about that is it’ll release the fucking kraken on the Sullivans, that little girl.”

“So we get all we can get from Sparks, like we did from Denby, so he can’t play into that before we do.”

“That’s the way.”

“Do you think Dupont was in on the whole thing?”

“I’m fifty-fifty there. I’ll weigh that again once we talk to Sparks. Right now, I’m going to do a run on his lawyer to give us a sense of what we’ve got here.”

“I already did.”

He sat, tipped back in his chair. “You’re an eager, enterprising soul, Mic.”

“Just a cop. I Googled him, too, just to fill it out. California native, forty-six, married, one kid and one on the way. Did his law thing at Berkeley. He’s worked at Kohash and Milford for ten years, and made full partner three years ago. He’s a high-priced trial lawyer with a solid rep.”

She took a long swallow of Coke. “He’s a good-looking guy, and the camera loves him. He’s not afraid of talking to the press. He’s also written a couple of legal thrillers, but it doesn’t look like John Grisham has to look over his shoulder.

“And Sparks is his personal trainer.”

“There it is.”

“There it is,” she agreed. “No criminal on the run. Has a house in Holmby Hills, a beach house in Oceanside. He drives a Lexus, as does his wife—she’s a freelance script doctor.”

Red waited a beat. “That’s it? You didn’t get his shoe size, his political affiliation?”

“Registered Independent. I’d have to dig a little more for the shoe size.”

He laughed. “Okay, I see we play this cards on the table. The man’s got a rep, doesn’t sound like an idiot, and has a law firm’s rep to uphold. The guy’s his trainer, not his brother, not his best pal. We’ve got him cold.”

“You want to lay groundwork for a plea deal.”

“I want that son of a bitch to live the rest of his life in San fucking Quentin, Mic. That’s my personal want. And I have to hope I don’t get it, because the idea of putting that kid—and the family, but that kid—through a trial just makes me sick.”

Because her thoughts, her wants, ran the same, Michaela nodded. “I hate thinking he’ll walk out one day, that all three of them will. But I feel the same as you do on this. Even so, it’s not up to us.”

“State’s attorney will take twenty to twenty-five. We’ll see if they do. Our job is to lay it out, make sure the lawyer understands the preponderance of evidence, and Sparks knows in his guts he’ll face life, no parole.”