Cicero's Dead Read online

  Cicero’s Dead

  Patrick H. Moore

  © 2014, Patrick H. Moore

  www.usindiebooks.com

  Library Of Congress Control Number: 2014945141

  ISBN: 978-1-941740-06-4

  All rights reserved and owned by Patrick H. Moore. No part of this book may be used, reprinted, copied, sold, borrowed, bartered or loaned without the express permission of the author. You have been warned. Ignore at your peril. Remember, Mr. Moore is a Los Angeles based private investigator.

  This is a work of fiction. None of it is real. Names, characters, businesses places, events and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination, or used in a fictitious manner based on his real life experiences. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental, unless otherwise stated.

  In this edgy detective thriller, Southern California heiress Jade Lamont is desperate to find her beloved brother Richard, who has vanished without a trace. To make matters worse, her father, Cicero Lamont, has just died under mysterious circumstances and her mother has committed suicide. In desperation, Jade turns to Nick Crane—an intense old school private detective with a big heart and a crack team of deputies. But even Nick doesn’t anticipate the dense web of evil and intrigue that has swallowed up Richard and threatens to claim him and Jade as its next victims.

  Cicero's Dead is as hard boiled as it is compassionate. Read it, and take a walk on the wild side.

  Praise for Cicero’s Dead

  “Moore peoples his novel with interesting and thoroughly developed characters, and presents a complex and imaginative story.” Reviewed by Sanford Perliss.

  “Moore has a way with words and a strong grasp on how to tell a story with captivating images and details. I would encourage other readers to under no circumstances miss Cicero's Dead.” Reviewed by Antonio Rodriguez.

  “I give particularly high marks for the well-developed characters, and the exceptionally authoritative rendering of the Los Angeles environment.” Reviewed by Michael D. Sellers.

  “…the trail leads Crane to doctors on the take, crooked lawyers, fake cops, murderous bad guys and one of the most evil characters in the annals of detective fiction.” Reviewed by JimBo.

  “Cicero's Dead could get marketed as Silence of the Lambs meets True Romance, as much for its tone as its plotline.” Reviewed by Anthony Agresti.

  “Detective Nick Crane assembles a well-oiled machine and takes on the streets to find Cicero's killer.. and the bullets start flying.” Reviewed by Doug Barisone.

  “… a spellbinding crime novel in which the characters are vivid and the action fast-paced.” Reviewed by Michael S. Axt.

  “The characters are well rounded, and quirky in a way that make you want more.” Reviewed by Tucker Kahuna “John”

  “He paints a vivid picture of Los Angeles which he then rolls back to display the horrors that lie beneath.” Reviewed by Daisy.

  About Patrick H. Moore

  Patrick H. Moore is a Los Angeles based Private Investigator and crime writer. He has been working in this field since 2003 and has experience in virtually all areas of crime including drug trafficking, sex crimes, crimes of violence, and white-collar fraud.

  Acknowledgements

  For Warren Larry Foster, Vietnam veteran, American hero and friend unto death. May he find the peace that every Vietnam veteran longs for.

  To Patricia Wong, smooth, true, brown.

  And to Max Myers, publisher, friend and inspiration.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Part Two

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Part Three

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Part One

  Chapter I – Jade, Los Angeles, October 24, 2003

  Jade Lamont met me in the lobby of her Wilshire Boulevard high-rise. She was striking, on the petite side, with enough cleavage showing to make things interesting. She had purple and gold butterflies tattooed above each breast, and wore her hair blunt cut in back and long on the sides. Her navy blue designer shorts gripped her thighs like eager friends. Her legs were long and brown and seemed to glisten as she led me to the elevator and we rode up together to her 23rd floor condo. I assumed she did her shopping on Rodeo Drive.

  We sat across from one another at a glass-topped breakfast table, sipping tea, which she served with heavy cream and sugar. She had clear green eyes, a café con leche complexion and lovely sculpted lips. I had the impression we were alone, or maybe that was wishful thinking. Not wanting to stare, I cut right to the chase.

  “I’m sure I’m not here just to keep you company.”

  “I wish you were.” A brief smile washed across her features. “You come highly recommended. They say you’re persistent and are the soul of discretion.”

  I smiled. “They are correct. Whoever they are.”

  She took a sip of tea and shook her head sadly. “It’s my brother, Richard. He’s disappeared.” She paused and I waited. “His cell phone is disconnected and I haven’t heard from him. That’s not like him. He usually calls me every few days. We’re very close.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Did you see it coming?”

  She shook her head, her eyes turning inward as if the answer lay somewhere behind her retinas. Her chest heaved slightly and the smooth tops of her breasts seemed almost plaintive. She stood up, crossed to a black lacquered sideboard and took out a photo album. She sat down, and pushed it toward me across the table.

  Richard Lamont had brown eyes under his dark curly hair, and looked comfortable in front of a camera. There were pictures of him and Jade, his arms wrapped around her while she gazed up at him. In one photo he stood on a diving board, hair tousled by the breeze. His youthful physique was powerful, with broad shoulders and a deep chest. In another picture, he wore a top hat and held a knife in either hand like some demented circus impresario.

  “Handsome kid.”

  “He was,” said Jade. “He’s much thinner now.”

  I turned the page and came to a family photo. Father wore a dark pinstriped suit. Well-barbered with swarthy features, he appeared pleased with his family. Mother was maybe five four and wore designer clothes, voluptuous with good features and the same green eyes as her daughter. Jade stood next to her father. Oddly, in this picture, Richard looked worried, lacking the camera-ready confidence that was so pronounced in the other shots.

  “Everybody’s gone,” said Jade. “One right after the other.”

  “What do you mean, ‘everybody’?”

  Her composure cracked slightly, and she looked down at her hands, fingers long and slim like a pianist’s. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible.

  “Daddy, Cicero, was killed in a hit-and-run in the Valley, on August 16th. Two months before that he and Mother separated. She moved to San Francisco to be close to her boyfriend. She died twelve days after Daddy.”

  “Died? How?”

  “It was ruled a suicide.”

  “What d’you think?”

  “Mother wasn’t the type to kill herself. She was always steady even when things were rough. And she adored Richard. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “How old are you and Richard?”

  “I’m 22, he’s 20.”

  “How old was your mother?”

  “She would have been 39 in two months, on December 1
2th. Daddy was 10 years older. Her maiden name was Dominique Dominguez, from the Virgin Islands.”

  “You’ve been through a lot.”

  Sadness reshaped her mouth, and she nodded matter-of-factly. “It hasn’t been easy. Losing Richard would be the final blow. I love my brother.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  Although there was a hint of liquid in her eyes, she kept her poise. “He’s a good kid but he’s messed up. He was never that close to Daddy, which makes it even worse.”

  I thought it over. “Why do you think he’s disconnected his cell?”

  “I dunno. Why do people do that?”

  “Lots of reasons. They wanna shake someone, or don’t wanna be found. Drug traffickers change burners, phones, all the time. Sometimes people just want a new number to shake off people they don’t want calling ‘em anymore. That’s probably not the case here. Richard would have let you know.” I thought for a moment. “Anything in particular I should know about your brother?”

  “I know he was messing around with drugs but I don’t know the details. It’s hard to know for sure with him. He could be pretty secretive.”

  We paused for a moment and looked at one another. “And?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t think he’s an addict or anything. More tea?”

  “Sure.”

  She rose and glided over to her stainless steel stove. Her body moving made me uneasy. She poured us each another cup and sat back down.

  I hoped she hadn’t noticed me staring, but women like her don’t usually miss a trick. I cleared my throat. “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I work for one of the downtown law firms.”

  “Are you an attorney?”

  “Hardly. I do paralegal stuff. Daddy got me in. He knew a lot of attorneys.”

  “Which firm?”

  “Waldrop & Hemsley.”

  “What do they think about what happened to your father?”

  She shrugged, a smooth up and down motion of her shoulders. “We don’t talk about it. But what is there to think? Unsolved hit-and-run.”

  “Unsolved?”

  “Aren’t they usually?”

  “Actually a lot of them are solved. Were there any witnesses?”

  “Sure. They got a description of the vehicle, a silver late model Honda Accord. Someone even got a license plate, but they never found the car. I’ve heard that more Accords are stolen than any other vehicle.”

  “That’s true. Is there any reason anybody would want to hurt your father?”

  She looked at me quizzically. “Of course. Cicero Lamont was a baller. He called the shots and too bad for anyone who didn’t go along with the program.”

  “What was his business?”

  “Daddy was in refrigeration. Produce. But he did other things too.”

  “Dope?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe.”

  “You said he was a baller. That implies that he was involved in some type of criminal enterprise.”

  “Cicero had a way about him. Exactly what he was into, I dunno.”

  She was avoiding the issue, so I let it go. “What about his friends? What were they like?”

  “Just like you’d imagine. Some were young guys in Hugo Boss suits, Gucci shoes, expensive sunglasses and Beamers. Others were older guys who looked like they ate metal for breakfast.”

  “They sound like a fun crew.”

  “As far as I know, Cicero sold most of his warehouses in 2005.”

  I nodded. “What about Richard? Did he associate with your father’s friends?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. My brother usually went his own way. My father was frustrated with him.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not that he wanted Richard to learn the business necessarily; my father just wanted to be acknowledged, while Richard just wanted to be acknowledged for being Richard. You know how fathers and sons can be. Competitive. Not unlike mothers and daughters except--” She fell silent and her eyes searched the room.

  “Except what?”

  “Oh, it’s just something Cicero used to say, ‘the big difference between men and women, is that women don’t have hair on their chests.’ He had a way of summing up the world in a single phrase.”

  I laughed and was damn sure this girl didn’t have hair on her chest. “Were you close to your father?”

  She nodded. “Daddy doted on me. I was his little could-do-no-wrong princess. When I started to date, he watched me like a hawk.”

  “What about your mom? Why did she move out?”

  “Mother was very strong-willed. That’s why it’s hard to believe she killed herself. She was just a kid when they met, but over the years she wised up and grew tired of being invisible to Cicero. Money can only go so far when you’ve got no one to share it with.”

  “Did your father mess around?”

  Jade frowned. “I’m sure he did, although I don’t believe that was his thing. He was a man’s man and women weren’t that important to him.”

  “But you were.”

  “It’s different with daughters. Fathers and daughters go together like wine and roses.”

  I sat back for a moment and chewed this over. “It sounds to me like we’ve got three mysteries; your brother’s disappearance and the deaths under questionable circumstances of your parents.” I met her eyes and she nodded slowly. “Why would anyone wanna kill your mother?”

  “Why not? Mother was no dummy. She knew far more than Daddy ever wanted her to.”

  “But he was already dead when she died.”

  “I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”

  I shook my head. “These things usually don’t until you’ve had time to put the pieces together.”

  Jade took a sip of her tea. “Find my brother and if you discover anything about my parents’ deaths, so much the better. I just wanna know he’s okay.”

  “I understand.”

  She extracted a manila envelope from the back of the photo album and pushed it across the table. “I’m counting on you. This should help you get started.”

  It’s always a heady feeling to start a new case and I felt a peculiar exhilaration. We shook hands at the door; her grip was warm and firm and I felt the electricity roll right up my arm.

  “You might start by talking with one of Richard’s friends, the actor Ron Cera,” she said softly. “His address is in the packet.”

  “Thanks.”

  On the way down in the elevator I opened the envelope. It was a cashier’s check for $10,000 made out to Nick Crane.

  Outside, the wind was blowing in off the desert. Already the weathermen had warned of fire danger. In 24 hours, the Santa Anas would be shrieking in the canyons.

  Before going home, I stopped in at Philippe’s to have a beer with Tony Bott. He works narcotics for LAPD. We’ve been pals for 20 years, maybe because we’re both originally from the Midwest and both like guns and basketball. Tony has a magnificent weapon collection: swords from medieval France, scimitars from the days of the sultans, blow guns from South America, and, of course, the obligatory Kalashnikov AK-47. In the dark world of law enforcement, he may be a little crazier than most.

  “Hey, bro,” grinned Tony, hugging me as he gripped my hand.

  “What’s new? Still beating up on the homeless?”

  “Only if they force my hand.”

  We laughed and grabbed beer and coleslaw, planting ourselves in a booth on the lower level. Philippe’s is a L.A. landmark, just down the street from the Federal Detention Center and a few blocks from the downtown courthouses. D.A.’s, lawyers and cops come here for French Dip sandwiches and beer.

  Tony grinned. “Dude, I’m getting ready to arrest 10,000 meth dealers.”

  “Better be careful. You don’t want to work your way right out of a job.”

  We have this running gag. The basic notion is drug dealers are interchangeable; you take out three or four and five or six new ones spring up like wee
ds.

  “Nick, I’m confident that there will always be plenty of dealers. The lure of easy money never goes away.”

  “I wish some of that easy money would come my way.”

  “That’s what my new girlfriend says.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At this sushi bar. She’s Japanese.”

  “I love sushi.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Where’s she work?”

  “At this aerospace firm. She’s some kind of manager. Gets her very stressed, so we fuck like bunnies to relieve it.”

  “Sounds like a match made in heaven.”

  “She wants kids, though. Not sure that’s for me.”

  “Why not? You’d be a great dad.”

  “I know, but I’ve made it this far without any serious entanglements. Why ruin a perfect record?”

  “The time comes for all men.”

  “Not all.”

  We ordered a second brew and I asked, “Ever heard of a guy named Cicero Lamont?”

  He took a long pull on his beer. “Let me just take a second to flash through the memory bank.” He placed both hands on his temples, his usual mannerism when thinking. Then he swallowed more beer. “That’s a name you don’t forget. You don’t run into many Cicero Lamont’s. Why would I have heard of him?”

  “He might’ve been dealing weight, and he got clipped in a hit-and-run last August.”

  “Dealing what?”

  “Dunno. Skag, probably. I don’t think it was meth.”

  “I’ll check on it.”

  The next morning the Santa Anas were blowing at near gale force and the fire danger was off the charts. When I got to the office, I jotted down a few notes concerning my meeting with Jade. Cicero Lamont getting popped was a hazard of the drug trade. I knew Tony would jump on it and might be able to steer me in the right direction as to whom, and why. What was much harder to figure was the death of Mrs. Lamont. Why off her with Cicero already worm food? Jade had given me the check for ten large as casually as if she was loaning me a Jackson. Was there a fortune in the picture? And with Cicero and her mom out of the way, Richard and Jade could be next in line. I decided to send one of my investigators, Audrey, to talk to Jade to get a handle on the cash situation. She mostly takes care of our adultery cases, and she was glad to get into something new.