Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  “Too bad about the painting,” says Gloria. “I wonder if they ever got the bloodstains out.”

  Some cops just don’t get it. “Why would they want to? A good story just jacks up the price. Dotted Babe, now in red.”

  “You don’t think like a cop anymore,” she says.

  Under the harsh light of the ancient fluorescent fixtures, Gloria’s red mane looks amber, like my eyes, though she says they’re hazel.

  “Ever find the gun?” I ask.

  “No.”

  I lay the eight-by-ten like a priceless papyrus on her desk and lean my six-foot-one frame back in the rigid chair. I feel a bump where it hits my back. Someone must have kicked a dent in the steel. Gloria can have that effect on people.

  “I loved her voice,” I say. “Reminded me of Janis Joplin, only Lana Strain was better built.”

  “They both died drunk.”

  “They both lived drunk. What do you expect?”

  During my high school years I had the famous swimming pool poster on my wall where I could see it from bed, the one where Lana’s arms and legs covered just enough of her body to make the poster legal to sell to minors. Her piercing, carnivorous eyes haunted my dreams. Now I have a new image to haunt me.

  My gaze drifts back to the photo, again curled into a scroll. Twenty years later and I still can’t believe Lana’s dead. In every city she toured, she’d go to blues bars in parts of town the cops were scared to drive through. She’d get drunk and start brawls. She should have been shot in one of those. That would have been a death in character, a death with flare. Getting shot in her Laurel Canyon bedroom wearing dotted swiss was too suburban middle-class for Lana Strain, too mundane. It just wasn’t her style. I find it hard to swallow, as if someone covered up the truth about how she died.

  “I know you’ve been slobbering over her since you were old enough to jerk off, Nob, so happy birthday.”

  Gloria uncurls the photo, slips it back into the several hundred pages of file, and pushes the engorged folder toward me.

  “You don’t use three-ring binders for murder books anymore?”

  She shrugs. “I took it apart so it wouldn’t be so obvious. Keep it organized.”

  “You’re letting me take it home?”

  “Like I said, you’re looking depressed. With the twentieth anniversary coming up, maybe you can sell a retrospective. Maybe a gig will perk you up. I worry about you.”

  I can’t help but smile, amused. “You worry about me?”

  “Go ahead and laugh. But no one knows you like I do. Not even Holly. I know when you’re in trouble. And that worries me. You know I love you.”

  “You must if you’re willing to put your badge on the line.”

  “It’s my good deed for the decade so don’t make me regret it. I can only check the book out for seven days so I want it back in six. And don’t use any direct quotes or descriptions. Background only. You never saw this file.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. And I mean that literally.”

  “I’ll have to tell Mel.”

  “No one else.” Gloria knew my assistant Melody before I did and knows she can trust her. “I’m counting on you to not be your usual fuckup.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I reach for the yellowed file, half-expecting it to sear my hand. The overstuffed folder looks almost bronze, like it was baked in an oven, the edges so well thumbed they feel soft to the touch. It may be two decades old, but it’s still the hottest unsolved murder of the twentieth century.

  For a Lana Strain worshiper who makes his living as a true crime writer, this is gold bullion, a guaranteed magazine piece, if not a book and maybe even a movie. I can’t help but savor the irony that the first love of my life has returned from the grave to save me from the financial divorce havoc wreaked by the second.

  Gloria pulls a plastic shopping bag from her garbage can and hands it to me so I have something to hide the file in. I wrap it and tuck it under my arm.

  “I owe you one.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let you forget it.”

  As I leave the station I pass from conditioned comfort into one of those unforgiving LA days where the summer sun makes you feel like an ant that some kid is broiling with a magnifying glass.

  I head down the street, hugging the building to catch its small skirt of shade, savoring the heat of Lana Strain’s file on my forearm. It occurs to me, for the first time since Holly dumped me, that I’ve got something to look forward to.

  THREE

  I walk into the house carrying Lana’s file and a pound of fresh-roasted Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans, still warm from the roaster in the coffee store half a mile down the road. I’m almost high from the aroma, and my gait is syncopated by the Lana Strain tune in my head. Then I spot Melody Elvinstar, deep in meditation, sitting in the lotus position on the oak desk that used to be my father’s. At four foot six, maybe seven, eighty-five pounds, she’s small enough to fit on my blotter. My head music stops hard like someone scratching the tone arm across an old LP.

  “I’m not paying you to contemplate your eyelids.”

  She opens her eyes, russet and annoyed. “Do you mind?”

  My gaze drifts from her knobby knees to a Post-it on my monitor. “What’s that?”

  “Shhhhhhhhh.” She closes her eyes.

  I drop Lana’s file on the desk with a resounding thud.

  Her eyes snap open. “Was that really necessary?” She swivels off the desk.

  “It’s my next story. It’s heavy.” I peel the Post-it from the screen and read it. “I phoned in for messages. You forgot to tell me my agent called?”

  “I’m sorry, okay?” She says it impatiently, like it’s my fault. “Your ex-wife called, too.”

  “I wonder who has worse news.”

  My agent hasn’t called with good news since the day he offered to represent me. And I’m not sure that news was so good.

  Melody drops her head to stretch her neck, and her straight dyed-black hair falls across the left side of her face, a curtain shaped like a shark fin. She cuts the right side shorter. She cuts it herself. I know she’s hovering somewhere near thirty, but her skin could be a teenager’s if you overlook the death’s-head tattoo on her left bicep.

  I pick up the phone and punch my agent’s button. Since the advent of speed dialing, I’ve managed to forget every phone number I ever knew.

  I’m pretty stoked about the Lana Strain piece. It could have a shot beyond the National Enquirer, maybe landing in Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone, with extras in Salon or the Huffington Post. Especially if I can uncover something new. Like her killer. The thought makes me yearn for those adrenaline rushes I used to love when I was a cop.

  There’s the brass ring of a movie deal, or at least a cable movie to rejuvenate the career of some forgotten star. Maybe one of the Olsen twins, probably the anorexic one.

  “Berger Bergen Agency.” I don’t recognize the voice. Charles runs through receptionists like six-packs at a Super Bowl party.

  “Nob Brown for Chuckles.”

  “There’s no one here by that name.”

  “Charles.”

  “Oh. Hold on.” I guess brains weren’t high on the job requirement list. Chuckles has his priorities.

  I wait, tapping the drum solo to “Wipe Out” on my desk. She comes back. “He’s on another line. He’ll get back to you.” Click. I wonder why I bother to call.

  My eyes drift back to Melody. She’s just sitting there, cross-legged on the office chair like a pipe-cleaner Buddha. “You’re supposed to be doing research.”

  “I’m clocked out,” she says, irritated by my insinuation.

  I don’t have a whole lot of moral authority here since I’ve never paid her. I deduct her paltry salary from the nineteen and some odd thousand dollars she still owes me for finding her brother George. He’d wandered off from rehab in a delirious state, and it took me two months to track him down to a Venezuelan pris
on where he’d been locked up by the government on a trumped-up charge of espionage. More than half of what she owes me went to bribe a rummy army captain who was greedy enough to betray the revolution for one night. Once back in the States, George managed to stay on the street for about two months before landing back in jail, this time in Tehachapi, for dealing crank. Thus I have a part-time assistant.

  “You old enough to remember Lana Strain?”

  “Sort of. I was about seven or eight when she was killed. My folks used to love that song she wrote about the chick who was obsessed with her own stalker.”

  “Some Asshole’s Watching Me Tonight.” The title takes me back to 1991, the first time I saw Lana live. She debuted the song that night. The performance replays in my head, a pristine recording:

  There’s someone loves me more than you,

  He shows me love more than you do.

  He cares for me the way you should

  He’d die for me, I know he would

  Love’s in his eyes, they shine so bright

  Some asshole’s watching me tonight.

  I’ve glimpsed him passing by my door.

  I’ve seen his shadow on the floor.

  I’ve seen his eye glint through the wall,

  Just where the vent holes show it all.

  Love’s in his eye, it caught the light

  Some asshole’s watching me tonight.

  Melody pulls me back to the present. “Wasn’t there some connection between that song and her murder?”

  “No one knows. In the song, she entices him to have sex, then when he climaxes, she sticks an ice pick through his gleaming eye.”

  “Très romantique,” she says.

  “No one even knows if he was real. She could have made him up for the song. She never said. This would be a huge story if I could find that out.”

  “What about the case of the fatal compass?”

  “I’ll get to it.”

  I pick up the phone and call Danny Samo, my editor at Playboy. At least he was my editor for the one story I’ve managed to sell them so far. It was about a neurosurgeon who had to drink to keep his hands from shaking.

  After wading through Playboy’s voice-mail system I finally get Samo on the phone. He doesn’t recognize my name. Not a good start. I remind him I’m the ex-cop who wrote the alcoholic brain surgeon story. Luckily, he remembers the story and apparently liked it, so he’s open to a verbal pitch. I tell him I have access to hundreds of pages of unreleased information about Lana Strain’s murder, including the murder scene photos, which I can describe but not release. Since the twentieth anniversary of her death is coming up, Playboy should reopen the case and send intrepid reporter Nob Brown out to review the record and solve the crime. Even if I fail, it’s still got sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. He likes the idea. Not only was his father a big Lana Strain fan, but Playboy once offered Lana Strain ten grand to pose nude. She declined, but only because of a scheduling problem.

  “I’ll tell you what,” says Samo. “I’ll pay you twenty large if you nail the bastard who did it.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “I’ll pay you three.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s the same amount of work either way.”

  “You’re welcome to take it to Hustler.”

  “Come on, Danny. Make it five, at least.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  I take it. It’s a buyer’s market. He says he’ll send me a contract and cover expenses. I hang up and turn to Melody.

  “Decongestant junkie?” She sounds like a corrupted download or, as they used to say, a broken record.

  “I’ll get to it. In the meantime, why don’t you start on the Strain piece. Cruise around, see what you find. I’ll need contact info for her family, band members, friends, whatever names you can get from the case file.”

  “Contact info might be hard to come by. The celebrity thing.” She climbs off the desk and stretches by pulling one leg up next to her ear while balancing on the other. She does this all the time, but it never fails to amaze me.

  “Do the best you can. And see if you can find any media reports on who stood to gain from her will and how much. Her lawyer was some guy named…” I check a scratch pad on my desk. “Gary Cogswell at Benchley Nugent. See if he’s still there. If not, track him down.”

  “Don’t you have a friend who works there?” She switches legs. I think “ambidextrous.” I try to come up with the analogous leg word. I used to know it.

  “Not anymore, but he used to. Swims in my lane at the Westwood Pool.”

  To stay fit I’m a masters swimmer, which sounds highfalutin but just means you have to be older than nineteen to join. That’s how I met Jack Angel.

  “I’ll give him a call,” I say. “We’re overdue for a dog day anyway.”

  “A dog day?”

  “Lunch at Pink’s.” The very thought makes my mouth water.

  “Do you have any idea what they put in those dogs?”

  “Yeah. Flavor.”

  She switches legs again. What the hell is the word for that?

  “And rat shit,” she says with her characteristic disdain for any food that’s cooked faster than wheat grass can think.

  She finally finishes her balancing act. It’s not until she has both legs on the floor that I realize I’ve been tense, as if I’ve been watching a trapeze artist without a net. I let my breath out and the word comes to me: ambicrural! My dad would be proud.

  “I’ll worry about my diet; you worry about tracking down Lana Strain’s family. She had a couple daughters, Ginger and Sophia. They were thirteen and fourteen when she died. Father was Billy Kidd. I guess he still is.”

  “That name rings a bell.” She opens a file on her laptop and starts a to-do list.

  “Guitar legend. Big heartthrob at the time. Still tours.”

  Melody furrows her brow. “I think my mother was really into him,” she says.

  “And I seem to remember there was some issue with the inheritance. Maybe ten years ago. I don’t remember the details, but there was a lot of money turned up missing. There could be a motive for murder in there somewhere that the police didn’t know about at the time of the investigation.”

  She writes it down.

  “There was some kind of investigation, too. Lana’s father was accused of something. Maybe plundering the estate? Let’s try to track him down, too.”

  “I gotta pee.”

  I give her a wave of dismissal and she heads to the john. I figure I’ll make a quick call while she’s gone. No sense wasting the time. Of all the people I want to speak to for sixty seconds or less, my ex-wife tops the list. I punch her speed dial on my cell. After four rings, she picks up.

  “Holly, it’s me.”

  “Oh.” I’ve only said three words and she’s already disappointed. “I just stepped out of the shower. Can I call you right back?”

  “No. I gotta run.” I’m not sure why I say it. I guess I like the idea of making her drip. Not that I have any interest in talking to her naked, though with her miniature Barbie body, that is her best look. More like I’m hoping she’ll catch a chill. I’m not a vengeful guy; I wouldn’t want to hurt her. But I wouldn’t mind giving her a little sniffle for old times’ sake.

  “Mel said you called. What do you want?” I ask.

  “What do you think?” she says.

  “I’m shocked.”

  “You’re overdue, Nob. I’ve got a mortgage to pay.”

  “I’m waiting on some payments. It’s not like I get a regular paycheck.”

  “Why do you make me do this? You know I hate to be like this. Neither one of us wants to get Jerry involved.”

  The thought of her scum-sucking lawyer gives me a gas pain. She’s a deputy DA. Why can’t she be her own lawyer?

  “I’m expecting a check from the Daily Mirror any day now. Hustler owes me, too.”

  “Oh, Nob.” She sighs. I imagine her ivory skin covered in goose bumps,
the sparse hairs of her arms sticking up like cactus spines, her brows furrowed beneath her natural-blond bowl-cut bangs. “I’m going to have to call Jerry. You’re not giving me any choice.”

  “Go ahead. He’ll come over, I’ll hit him, he’ll sue me, then he’ll have your money.”

  “You’re never going to grow up, are you?”

  The good thing about these conversations is they reinforce the thought that splitting up wasn’t all bad. I hear Melody flush the toilet, and it reminds me that the flapper needs replacing again. Rubber parts don’t last long in LA. The smog eats them up. I make a mental note to pick up a new one. One more errand to put off.

  I promise to do what I can and hang up. I feel like shit not being able to pay my debts on time, as punitive as they may be, but all I can do is try.

  Melody walks back into the office and settles in front of the monitor, oblivious to the view through the window behind her. It’s one of those rare LA days where the sky is blue, not brown, and punctuated by a few puffs of white clouds. From my bungalow in the hills of Sherman Oaks, the view across the San Fernando Valley is often filled with smog so thick that you can’t see the Santa Susana Mountains, fifteen miles away. But at the moment, the air is crystal clear, and I can see not only the Santa Susanas, but the Santa Ynez Mountains another fifteen miles beyond. It’s glorious. No wonder so many people want to live here.

  “Lana Strain and the Brothers of Libation,” says Melody. “Six gold records, two platinum.”

  I look back at the monitor to see an interminable search-engine list slowly loading.

  “Rockin’ band,” I say. “Lana on vocals and rhythm guitar, Billy Kidd on lead, Don or Dan something on bass, and a black chick drummer named Boom-Boom Laphroig.” God only knows from what dark mudhole of my rat-eaten memory that little tidbit erupted.

  “See? You do have some recall left.” As if I need Melody to rub my nose in my own mortality. Lana Strain’s killer did that for me years ago. It’s about time I returned the favor.