Read Online The Trials of Nikki Hill by Dick Lochte, Christopher Darden - Free Book Online Page A

silk tie—blue with tiny white dots.
    She shrugged, then pointed a green fingernail at a telephone resting on a tiny counter at the rear of the store. “It only works for local calls,” she said.
    “This tie really two hundred and fifty bucks?” he asked.
    “If that’s how it’s marked.”
    “Ring it up for me while I make my call,” he said.
    “Cash or card?”
    “You get a lot of people plunking down two-fifty in cash for a tie?” he asked.
    “You’d be surprised,” she said, taking his card with a practiced boredom.
    Hobie Adler seemed to be awaiting his call. He picked up on the first ring. “Me,” Doyle said. “What’s up?”
    “I have the file,” Adler said. One of his minions had removed the Manila folder containing Dyana Cooper’s secrets from Madeleine Gray’s home. “I don’t suppose you want to see it.”
    “Not in this lifetime,” Doyle said. “You take a peek?”
    “No.”
    “Good. What you don’t know for a fact won’t lead to perjury. Give your shredder a workout.”
    “I gather there were a number of other files,” Adler said.
    “I hope your boy left ’em,” Doyle said. “We want ’em found. We want the world to know the kind of broad she was.”
    Adler cleared his throat. “Ah, Jimmy, we’ve learned that the district attorney is probably going to charge the young man they arrested.”
    “Good source?”
    “Hasn’t failed me yet. So it seems unlikely we’ll need your services. I just got off the phone with John Willins, who wanted me to convey how grateful he is for your help...”
    There was a time when Doyle would have been happy to take the short-end money and head back to D.C. without having to lift a finger. But pickings had been slim for a while, and in truth, he’d been looking forward to the action as much as the cash.
    “Is he thirty grand grateful, you think?” he asked.
    Hobie Adler was silent for a beat, then replied, “That should be acceptable. John is sitting on top of a three-billion-dollar music empire.”
    “Then let’s make it forty grand.”
    “Don’t be greedy. We’ll split the difference. You flying home tonight?”
    Doyle looked at the saleswoman, who was shifting from one foot to the other impatiently. “Tomorrow morning, probably.”
    “Have dinner with me at Morton’s.”
    “I’m a little tied up. Catch you next trip.”
    “You’re not upset, are you, Jimmy?”
    “Not at all,” Doyle lied. “The situation changes, you know where to reach me.”
    He’d barely replaced the phone when the saleswoman was handing him a slip to sign. “Am I keeping you from something?” he wondered.
    “Since you asked, yes.”
    “What?”
    “I’m meeting a friend for drinks.”
    “Male friend or female?”
    “Female.”
    “She as bitchy as you?”
    She eyed him appraisingly. “At least,” she said.
    “What’s your name?” he asked. When she hesitated, he said, “You’ve got mine on the card.”
    “Zorina,” she said.
    “Zorina what?”
    “Just Zorina. You know. Like Madonna.”
    “You’re not a dyke, are you?”
    “A dyke?” She shook her head in mock disbelief at his naïveté. “You old guys are too much. You mean do I go down on women? Sometimes.”
    “But not exclusively?”
    “No. Not exclusively.”
    “Good. Then why don’t you and your friend have dinner with me tonight? At one of those hot new places where we can all smoke illegal Cuban cigars with our coffee.”
    “I don’t eat red meat,” she cautioned.
    “Tell me something I can’t guess,” he said.

T EN
    W hen Nikki returned home that night, Bird was waiting. It had been an exhilarating day, from Nikki’s promotion to Jamal Deschamps’s interrogation to the discovery of Madeleine Gray’s secret cash boxes. All the Bouvier cared about was that it had been a long time since breakfast.
    He yipped in delight at the sight of her, his nubby tail twitching like a pendulum as she bent to embrace him. “Sorry I’m late, baby,” she said. “My hours