The pose-off was supposed to last a full two minutes, but the excitement was undercut several seconds early in a close throng of contestants that built up when Frank decided to fight it out with Brad Holt, matching each other muscle for muscle. What few people noticed was Holt raising his arms into a double-biceps shot and stopping in mid-movement. The dazed look on his face suggested he might not have known where he was or why exactly he was engaged in this strange enterprise. He lowered his arms, and his head swayed forward until his chin touched the top of his cavernous chest. There he seemed to come back into focus, but only long enough to grab at his chest, wipe his forehead with draining effort, then sway forward as his right leg buckled. He came down on one knee, then crumpled to the floor face down.
“What the…?” Gunnar whispered.
As one of the bodybuilders turned a limp Brad Holt face up, three WBBF officials rushed on stage to assess the situation.
“Oh God!” was almost inaudible to the entire crowd as one of the WBBF people gasped upon looking for Holt’s pulse. But “Get the paramedics!” wailed over the ever-growing cacophony of confused noise with unmistakable clarity.
After Frank Jankowsky and Christy Gilmore took the Mr. and Ms. Sun State titles, the spectators’ ongoing disagreement over the mass and definition issue had taken a darker edge.
# # #
But by the time Laura Preston was driving north to the Fleming Institute, a news radio station had announced a strange dehydration death in the cult sport of bodybuilding. Laura guessed they needed some last moment filler material.
CHAPTER 13
Gunnar reached toward the nightstand on the right side of his bed. He was careful to move only his arm and avoid any of the stabbing bolts of pain that tended to rake his nerves in times like these. He lay flat on his back and guessed he had been in the same position for over an hour. His back had stiffened by now, and the maddening pain was a prerequisite for getting it to move again.
His hand passed over the television’s remote control and approached his cordless phone’s receiver as another one of the machine’s obstinate, warbling bellows fluttered through the stillness of his room.
“Marino,” he greeted whoever was on the other end as he blinked his sleepy eyes, trying to regain focus.
“There’s a lady here, Gunnar, interested in hiring your services. She’s inquiring if you would be good enough to see her since your office hours do say you should be open for business now.” Alexandra Rinaldi’s syrupy sarcasm came over the line and helped him regain the focus he needed.
His eyelids peeling wide open, he noted the sharp, bright streaks of sunlight projected onto the wall through the slits in the blinds. It indeed was late morning, and he was willing to buy his secretary’s contention that it must have been past the time his office hours advertised as opening. But in that case, he was in trouble. It meant he hadn’t reset his alarm clock. It also meant the new client was in the offices of Gunnar Marino Investigations, up the stairs from the Foundry Gym.
“Alex, I can’t move!” Gunnar exclaimed, hoping she wouldn’t say a word to indicate where he was and what he was doing.
Aside from having overslept by two hours, his major problem was the fact that the Foundry Gym was in Venice while his condo was in Burbank. Usually, it wasn’t a bad setup having the detective agency over the gym. He had learned that detectives for hire were wise to keep their offices discrete, even hidden within the confines of more respectable establishments. People didn’t like being seen walking into a private investigator’s office. Walking into something like a gym didn’t arouse anyone’s suspicion.
“I see,” Alex said flatly.
“Listen!” Gunnar said and wanted to jump upright, but the ravaging pain that threatened to come alive in the small of his back prevented him. “Don’t tell this person what’s going on! My back is sore, and I’m stiff!”
“I’ve already said as much, but I told her you’re on your way here.”
“I’ve been sidetracked to an emergency, you understand?”
“Well…,” Alex said slowly, stalling.
“Just say that, okay! Say, ‘Oh! You’re in Culver City already, Gunnar, and on your way?’ Now!”
“Oh, so you’re just wrapping up that embezzlement case, Mr. Marino? Oh, silly me, I should have known office hours mean so little to a businessman as driven as you, sir.”
“Just tell her to meet me…uh, out on the beach in about an hour. Down by the Cat in the Bag.”
“You got it,” Alex said. “By the way, she says her name is Diane Holt and that you’re old friends.”
For a second, Gunnar no longer felt the pain in his back. “What was that?”
“Diane Holt. She says you know each other.”
“Yeah,” Gunnar muttered. “Yeah, actually, we did at one time. Just tell her I’ll be there soon.”
Gunnar hung up. He put the phone down and thought about what he should do next. He had to get out of bed, and now he had to resort to the most desperate measure. Struggling to endure the pain, he swung his body to the right and let himself roll off the edge of the bed. After impacting face down against the carpet, he began laboring to crawl toward the bathroom. There he released some steaming water into the bathtub, climbed inside, and laid still in his boxer shorts as the water rose around him and soothed his throbbing body.
“Diane Holt,” he said out loud, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t believe this.”
Yet another blast from the past, he mused. For over a week, he had been on the verge of going to Bayside General Hospital to look for Erika Lindstad. And now this.
CHAPTER 14
“I followed your career in Body and Power and Muscle Quest, you know,” Diane Holt said as they treaded through the sand and away from the Venice Beach Boardwalk, just past the skatepark and Muscle Beach Gym. “I remember running across those stories of you. You know, the ones about ‘ex-bodybuilder private eye should be a TV action hero’ and all that.”
She shifted her white high heels from one hand to another as she walked barefoot.
Gunnar had met up with Diane at the Cat in the Bag Bar and Grill, the enterprise of a Hungarian bodybuilder named Geza Nagy and a meeting place for the Venice gym crowd.
“Anything a bodybuilder does is news to the WBBF publications,” Gunnar said as he studied Diane.
Brad Holt just refused to get out of his life, Gunnar mused without a word, studying the lovely features of the woman beside him. His acquaintance with the departed WBBF pro had been brief, yet Diane was a reminder of how solid it had once been.
Well, solid, but nevertheless brief, Gunnar insisted to himself. While they had been gym partners in the Corps, Gunnar had dated Holt’s sister. Now he found it remarkable how neutral he felt about her, even as they moved within inches of each other. They had been over years ago, and he found it impossible to reconnect with any of the old feelings he’d had for her. He wondered if this was because he couldn’t quite overlook one crucial fact of their relationship. They had broken up just after Holt got his WBBF pro card, and the federation started grooming him as an up-and-coming new star.
And that was not entirely so, Gunnar tried to be accurate in his recollections. They hadn’t broken up. Diane broke up with him.
Gunnar couldn’t help but believe the rising tides lifted all boats in the Holt family. With Brad’s WBBF professional status and entry into the fast-lane world of endorsements, gym franchise deals, fitness publishing, and modeling, Diane suddenly had a better class of friends to socialize with.
Well, let’s not be so insecure, a voice that seemed to be tinged with deadpan sarcasm rang in Gunnar’s ear. Diane did explain that she needed to travel for weeks and months on end with Brad, managing his career and all after he turned pro. Now the voice attempted to mimic Diane’s farewell line. It just wouldn’t be fair to you if we have to be apart so long. You’re a rea
lly great guy, and I think you deserve better than that. Do you understand what I’m saying? I think we’ll always have a friendship that will be incredibly special.
Gunnar never thought you could fall out of a woman’s proverbial league while you were dating her.
“Well, I thought what you do outside the sport and the gym was the most colorful stuff those magazines could cover,” Diane Holt said and brushed aside the silky locks of her long brown hair that tended to drape over the left side of her face. It made her look more than a bit like an enigmatic femme fatale in some hazy noir movie thriller. When she said, “and the reason I need to turn to you now,” the irony thrilled Gunnar.
“Why is that?” he asked.
“You saw Brad die,” Diane said and looked off into the distance. “You also saw him before the contest.”
“Yes, briefly. I saw how he’d pushed himself too far with his diet and dehydration.”
“I know. That’s what the coroner’s office put in their report, too. But you didn’t hear something Brad told me just a little over a month ago.”
“What’s that?” Gunnar asked. He felt a hell of a punchline coming. It would be something that would make it worthwhile having come out here.
“He called me in Florida and said he didn’t even feel comfortable talking over a new cell line, by the way.”
Gunnar couldn’t resist raising his eyebrows in a quizzical reflex reaction. He wondered if it made him look too incredulous.
“He said he needed to tell me some bad things, Gunnar. Of course, in the end, he didn’t really tell me the most important details. But he said he was more afraid for his life every day. He had information that could hurt him. There were people who could hurt him because of what he knew.”
Diane paused, seeming to study Gunnar’s reaction.
“Yes, that would definitely get my attention,” he said with an emphatic nod. He didn’t add anything about how melodramatic all this sounded. “But did he say who? Did he say anything about this information? Just who exactly was he afraid of?”
“I don’t know, Gunnar,” Diane said painfully. “It’s why the police won’t give this any serious consideration. They have their expert opinion, and that closed the case. They didn’t even do a complete autopsy because Brad died while the EMS people tried to revive him on the way to the hospital.
“Brad told me that he had information on—quote—powerful people. He said they were wealthy people he dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Again, it’s so infuriating how secretive, how cryptic he was, how he refused to give me anything besides clues and suggestions….” Diane paused for a frustrated breath. “And the fact that he was scared for his life. Someone had threatened to hurt him because of information he came across…God knows how! By what accident, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know…financial information? Crimes someone committed? Whatever it was, Brad knew details that could hurt people, and they threatened to come after him.”
“Any hints as to who these powerful people were?” Gunnar asked. “People in his film business? Someone else he did business with?”
“I need you to find out, Gunnar,” Diane said. “I need to know what happened. I don’t think what happened to him at the Sun State was an accident. You saw how ill he was. All he needed was a push. If someone wanted to hurt him, his condition would have been the perfect cover.”
“What do you think they did?”
Diane shook her head. “Whatever it was, they knew that an examination would show how messed up his body was because of that damned contest and those insane judging standards. Whatever they did to him, there was a perfectly good explanation for all the abnormalities in his system.”
“Yeah, and a perfect cover for murder,” Gunnar said at length. “Poisoning, maybe? By whoever he was afraid of?”
“I want you to find out what happened, Gunnar. What was Brad into? Who was after him? What was this whole thing about?”
Gunnar nodded. “All right.”
“You know, the police wouldn’t budge on this because some supposedly infallible expert consulted with the coroner,” Diane added. “That’s what closed the case.”
“What expert?”
“Some expert who used to be a bodybuilder. Can you believe that? A woman named Erika Lindstad.”
CHAPTER 15
Gunnar could never possibly be as neutral in his feelings toward Erika Lindstad as he had been toward Diane Holt. Then again, he had never loved Diane the way he had once loved Erika. Although they had broken up five years ago, since attending the Sun State Classic contest, Gunnar had been struck by another of his usual bouts of reflection on everything Erika had meant to him.
His thoughts still drifted off to the past even now, sitting behind the wheel of his Dodge Charger, in traffic and on his way to start the day by sitting surveillance on a case for Kelly Vaughn in Lomita. After having been hired by Diane, Gunnar still worked on grasping the significance of the startling turn of luck that was about to force a reunion with Erika rather than concentrating on the facts of the Brad Holt case.
Erika had been on Gunnar’s mind as he sat through the Sun State. He had known she was back in L.A. Watching the women flexing on stage, especially some of the largest heavyweights, made him think of Erika. The curves of their bodies, the flexing of dense, steely, lush feminine muscles, were all reminders of the woman Gunnar had loved.
Gunnar had met Erika in the legendary Muscle Beach Gym “muscle pit” on the Boardwalk. It was the place only the most hardcore of the bodybuilders frequented. This was the place where legends like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno worked out in the seventies. The patrons were the professional musclemen and women, or the ones who had some serious regional titles under their belts and were trying to turn pro.
Erika had asked Gunnar to spot her on a 250-pound set of bench presses. Then they finished working out together because she said she thought he was putting in the most intense, crazed, wild-eyed workout session among all the ‘builders in the pit that day. She was looking for a guy to work out with, she’d told him, because none of the other women, not even the pros, could keep up with her.
Gunnar was a god in the pit that day.
Erika, in fact, had been the best thing that happened to his workouts because of her selection system for gym partners. He had to keep pushing himself to outdo everyone else in the pit. At one point, it almost made him tear a rotator cuff.
Shortly after that incident, though, he didn’t have to keep competing for her attention. After a night’s marathon session of lovemaking, creaking and straining his bed under their combined weight of some 420 pounds while the “Terminator Love Theme” quietly serenaded them from his stereo, they had become an item.
From that point on, Gunnar had been the permanent god at Gold’s.
Erika Lindstad had been what they called a total package in bodybuilding competition. She was immensely muscular and beautiful. Not only did she have a gorgeous face, but she was all-out determined to get as freakishly muscular as she possibly could. She wanted to walk down a street and make everyone gasp and whisper, “Why would an attractive woman want to do that to herself?” In the gyms, she made the other athletes whisper, “Turning pro for sure.” She personified the sport’s double standard perfectly; she definitely had the ultra muscular body, but she had the facial attractiveness the WBBF was looking for in women. Her smile could one day make her marketable in magazines. Her looks made it worthwhile for WBBF judges to hand her titles.
Erika was the Christy Gilmore of her time, brawn and model-perfect beauty. Except Erika had really been a model for years before turning to iron. Her mother, the “socialite”—Erika always talked about her mother’s socialite status while rolling her eyes and wiggling her fingers to indicate quotation marks before adding “glorified rich housewife who did no housework”—wife of a Santa Barbara stock analyst, pushed Erika into modeling when she
was fifteen. Katrina Lindstad had called in favors with show business friends and got Erika started on a career in front of the cameras.
Erika hadn’t quite been a supermodel. She hadn’t done the catwalks in Milan or even in New York. But she did have steady magazine and catalog work. She had even appeared in a background shot of a commercial for an antiperspirant stick.
Except within the scenario of that commercial lay the beginning of the end of her modeling career. Or, rather, the road was being paved toward the Venice Beach muscle pit.
The commercial took place in a women’s locker room in a health club. Erika had the job secured by her agent with the admonishment that unless she “got her act together,” her image would only appear in background crowd shots. Photographers, Erika had been told, were looking for girls, not tanks.
Erika never really had the physique for modeling. While her face was strikingly beautiful, her body was that of an athlete. She was never naturally willowy and couldn’t be slender no matter how hard she tried or how much she dieted. She could, instead, rise on the tips of her toes to get a can off of a high shelf in the kitchen, and her calf muscles would thicken. Erika had wide shoulders, a broad back, and thick, muscular legs. Just snatching up and carrying a heavy suitcase seemed to pump up her biceps. However, she could never be a wispy, skinny slip of a waif, no matter how determined she was.
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