Dead West

by Matt Goldman

“Maybe,” said Montanio, “and we found tire marks right beside Ebben’s car and no more drops of blood after that spot.”

  Hall said, “And the tire marks indicate the same exact wheelbase as Vasily Zaytzev’s vehicle.”

  I shook my head. “I should have shot the son of a bitch.”

  My phone buzzed. A text from Ellegaard. Ebben Mayer has been kidnapped. His parents just received a ransom call. Call me ASAP.

  “Now,” said Detective Hall, “where are these private places you and your friends visited tonight?”

  I said, “I’m not going to withhold any information pertinent to LAPD’s investigation of Thom Burke’s murder.”

  “How wise of you,” said Montanio.

  “Thom Burke was involved with a movie titled Veins of Gold. The budget was $15 million, which is the amount found in his safe-deposit box.”

  “Yeah. We know all this,” said Hall.

  “Good. You’re doing your job. What kind of condition was Vasily’s house in when you searched it?”

  “That’s our business. Not yours.”

  “Fair enough. But I’m going to take a guess. The moment you learned Thom Burke was dead you went to Vasily’s. He wasn’t home. You got a search warrant and rammed your way through the back door.”

  Detectives Hall and Montanio shared a quick glance.

  “You didn’t find much in the house. Maybe some weapons. Maybe some drugs for personal use. The only thing you found of significance was a script or a budget to Veins of Gold, the same project you found evidence of in Thom Burke’s house.”

  The detectives were smart enough not to make eye contact that time, but their individual looks gave them away.

  Hall said, “Where you getting this?”

  “We can talk about that in a minute. Now, I’m sure you finding the connection to Veins of Gold could be a coincidence in an industry town like Los Angeles. But a coincidence is unlikely. Especially when the budget is exactly 15 million.”

  Hall folded his arms. Montanio scratched behind her ear.

  “That pretty much eliminates the possibility of a coincidence. And what you may or may not know is someone else went through Vasily’s house after you were there. Ripped the place apart searching for something. And something of size. Envelopes weren’t torn open. But whoever was in there took vents off ducts and tipped over furniture. Anyway, it didn’t seem like the results of a police search to me. There was something less methodical and more violent about it.”

  Montanio said, “You were inside Vasily’s house?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m saying this is the information I’ve learned. We’ll talk about how in a minute. So my theory is Vasily either borrowed the 15 million or fronted it for someone else. Either way, the source of the 15 million changed their minds, maybe because Thom was killed, maybe for some other reason, and wanted the money back. Vasily didn’t have it. Thom did. Vasily couldn’t get it, and that explains why he’s behaving under duress lately.”

  “Wow. Big theory. Kind of a leap, don’t you think?”

  “There’s more. A man’s been staking out Vasily’s house. I had a little chat with him and persuaded him to be forthcoming enough to tell me Vasily owes a lot of money to someone. I couldn’t persuade him to tell me who, but it backs my theory.”

  “All right,” said Hall. “Now tell us how you know this.”

  “No, no,” said Montanio. “First tell us why you know this.”

  I said, “That’s the better question.” Hall rolled his eyes. “The reason I know this is because you leaned on Ebben Mayer. Hard. I felt the need to protect him so I started digging around to learn where else the 15 million in Thom’s safe-deposit box might have come from.”

  “Uh huh,” said Hall. “Now how do you know about the inside of Vasily’s house and that we may or may not have found a document pertaining to Veins of Gold at Thom Burke’s house?”

  A lie is best preceded by something true. Especially if that truth shames the person you’re lying to. I said, “You asked me if I knew anything about a movie called Veins of Gold. Ebben and Brit told me you asked them the same thing. You’ll talk to anyone about that movie. No discretion whatsoever. So I knew Thom Burke was somehow connected to Veins of Gold.” Hall and Montanio couldn’t deny they’d shared that information and displayed the shame I was looking for in slight head shakes and shifting bodies. “My new friend outside Vasily’s house told me the rest. Just a guess, but he’s the person who ripped apart Vasily’s place. He described it in detail. You can ask him if you find him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go look for my friend Ebben.”

  Detectives Hall and Montanio had a silent conversation with their eyes. Another helicopter made the rounds overhead. Maybe the spotlight on that one was in search of Ebben Mayer. Hall said, “Keep your friend Brit company. We need a minute.”

  I stepped into the living room and called Ellegaard. I filled him in on what had happened in Los Angeles, and he told me the ransom demand for Ebben Mayer was $20 million. And if he didn’t get it soon, he’d put a bullet in Ebben’s head. Ebben’s parents had been in contact with the FBI and were awaiting further instructions. We talked more about the logistics of our communication, which boiled down to I should respond more quickly to Ellegaard’s texts and calls. But I drifted from the conversation because something about $20 million pinged the unreachable part of my brain.

  We hung up and I turned to Bunion Brit who cried like a child on the couch. That, too, pinged the unreachable part of my brain. She was behaving far differently than the suave, fast-talking, artsy woman I’d met at the celebration of Juliana Marquez’s life. It made perfect sense that she’d be upset by Ebben’s kidnapping and Thom’s death, but Brit seemed disproportionately devastated and it didn’t feel right, especially regarding Thom. She’d been emphatic in her downplaying of their relationship.

  Detective Hall poked his head in from the den. “Shapiro, get in here.”

  I left the sobbing Brit and returned to my two favorite LAPD detectives. Montanio said, “We got to go meet with the FBI. Let us know if you hear anything, all right?” They started toward the living room.

  I said, “That’s it?”

  Hall said, “We appreciate how forthcoming you have been.”

  Montanio said, “And watch your back. Be safe out there.”

  I’d seen that before. The “non-ask ask” for help. Kind of a you scratch our back and you’ll scratch our back agreement. The only thing I got in return was a little room to work. No threats to get out of their way. No reminders of penalties for me working without a California private investigator’s license. Just have a nice night and feed us what you learn. Oh, and don’t get caught by good guys or bad guys because either way we will not have your back.

  I said, “Thank you, Detectives. I’ll let you know if anything comes my way.”

  They nodded and headed for the front door.

  36

  I gave Brit a choice. She could stay at Ebben’s alone or go to Sebastiano’s party with me. She said there was no way she was staying alone, but asked if I could drive because her foot was hurting. She just needed a second to pull herself together. An hour later, Brit played navigator while I drove to Brentwood, home to the Getty museum, movie stars, and Sebastiano.

  Brit exhaled hard a few times, either trying to calm herself down or to let me know she just used mouthwash. She said, “Wait until you see Sebastiano’s house. Total party pad.”

  “So crepe paper and confetti everywhere?”

  She looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “It’s got an infinity pool overlooking the city and coast. And one wall of the pool is glass. There’s this long bar at the sublevel.”

  “You mean basement?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Son of a bitch. People do have basements.”

  “Only a few. Anyway, it doesn’t feel like a basement. It’s this huge room with a huge bar and behind the bar is the other side of the pool’s glass wall. So you can si
t at the bar and enjoy an underwater view of people swimming and half the time they’re naked and about ten percent of the time they’re screwing.”

  “What kind of party are we going to?”

  “You never know with Sebastiano. It’ll be an inner circle party or an outer circle party. I’ve seen some shit. Shit I can’t unsee.”

  “Is Ebben in the inner circle?”

  Brit said, “I don’t know. Sebastiano invited him tonight, so I guess we’ll find out when we get there depending on what kind of party it is. That’s the way it is with Sebastiano, you eventually find out more about him. He’s one of the thousands of open secrets in this town.”

  “Kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it? Open secret.”

  “That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Plenty of people knew Harvey Weinstein was a predatory creep and that a certain comedian exposed himself to women backstage at comedy clubs and which closeted romantic leads hit on young men.”

  We passed the clump of high-end furniture stores. A window display featured a Lucite toilet. My God. There aren’t enough scrubbing bubbles in the world. I said, “Are Sebastiano’s open secrets of a sexual nature?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Brit. “Kind of the opposite. For one, his real name isn’t Sebastiano. It’s Doug Adams.”

  “What? Like Douglas Adams as in Hitchhiker’s Guide Douglas Adams?”

  “Yep. Guess he thought there couldn’t be two famous Douglas Adamses and being famous was and is at the top of Sebastiano’s list. He doesn’t have any creative talent so he has to do it on the business side, which is just as effective.”

  “Wow. Douglas Adams from Danville, Illinois.”

  “No. He’s not from Danville, Illinois. Who told you that?”

  “He did. In his office. Told me a big story about being from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  Brit shook her head. “All bullshit. Sebastiano, aka Doug Adams, is from Covina, California, about thirty miles east of here. Total suburban kid. His dad was an assistant manager at a May Company department store, and his mom was a dental hygienist. He grew up in the middle of the middle class. Went to boring old Covina High and then the University of Illinois because his grandparents lived in Danville and he was somehow able to use their address to get in-state tuition. That’s where that bullshit comes from.”

  We turned left onto Santa Monica Boulevard. I said, “How do you know all this?”

  “Once you know Sebastiano’s real name and where he’s from, you just Google him. You can see old yearbook photos. All sorts of stuff. But it never seems to get out there in the world. It’s just the way Hollywood works. Open secrets stay open secrets. A few were busted open by MeToo, but most are still open secrets.”

  “So how did Doug Adams, University of Illinois student, become Sebastiano, agent at ACI?”

  “No one knows for sure. I mean, someone knows, but even people in Sebastiano’s inner circle aren’t sure. The rumor is Doug got really buff in college. And he’s a handsome dude. Tall. Angular features. He was in Chicago with friends and got spotted by a modeling agent. Even twenty years ago, everyone was looking for diverse models. He did a lot of print work. And there was another Doug Adams who modeled in Chicago because of course there was—there’s a million Doug Adamses. They asked if he had a middle name he wanted to use and he said Sebastiano, which is no way his real middle name. Who knows where that name came from?

  “So the newly dubbed Sebastiano starts modeling and soon realizes gay men love him. They hit on him all the time.”

  “Now how do you know this?”

  “He told me. This is the story he tells his inner circle, and I think it’s true because unlike the name Sebastiano, it actually makes sense. So Doug Adams starts modeling and making money for the first time. He’s not on the cover of magazines or anything but Chicago’s a big market and he does some national campaigns and he’s making a hell of a lot more money than he did selling shoes at Kinney’s. He wants to keep the job, and a lot of the gay men flirting with him have something to say about that. Photographers and designers and ad execs and retail CMOs and basically just everyone. So Doug Adams, now known as Sebastiano in his modeling career, learns how to play that game.”

  “What do you mean? Is he gay?”

  “No. But he’s not homophobic either. So he responded to the flirtations in a kind and non-sexual way. Basically, he acted like a good friend. When the advances got specific, he politely declined and said he was in a relationship. He did not say whether it was with a man or a woman. And in the process of modeling and managing those one-sided relationships of sexual desire, Sebastiano discovered what he’s really good at.”

  “Playing people.”

  “He’s so good at playing people! Yes. If you can make a dozen men, all at the same time and in the same space, think they might have a shot at you and still want to work with you when that shot never materializes, you can make production companies think they might have a shot at casting an actor from your roster of A-list stars and still want to be in business with you when the actor goes to work for someone else.”

  We turned right onto Wilshire in the direction of August’s high-rise. I said, “I’m surprised he didn’t want to keep modeling. He could have done it for decades.”

  “I said that to him once. He said modeling is way harder than it looks. Long hours and brutal travel and all that. And Sebastiano wanted more control. He wanted to be at the center of things. Then one day his modeling agent pulled him aside. She saw what he was doing, how he played the game, and said if he ever wanted a shot at the agenting end of the business, he had an open invitation. And Sebastiano was like fuck that. I’m going to Hollywood. So the minute he graduates Illinois he comes out here and infiltrates the gay mafia.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s just a saying. It’s the clique of powerful gay people in Hollywood. There are a bunch of those mafias. The Harvard mafia. The Second City mafia. The New York mafia. The USC Film School mafia. The playwright mafia. The Upright Citizens Brigade mafia. It’s a long list. He introduces himself as Sebastiano. No last name. And legally changed his name to Sebastiano with no last name.”

  “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Well, he did. Or at least says he did. He gets hired to work the mail room at ACI. Twenty years ago hard copies of all contracts went through the mail room. Sebastiano made photocopies of them, took them home, and studied them. So when he got promoted to work as an agent’s assistant, he knew about all the components that go into making a deal.”

  “What do you mean ‘components’? You mean like salary and term of employment?”

  “Way more than that. Where does the talent’s name appear in the credits? Are they billed above the title or below? How big is their trailer on set? Is it in the contract that no one can have a bigger trailer? Do they have a personal driver? Does the driver drive a limo? Or does it have to be an electric car? How much are they compensated if production runs beyond the scheduled shoot dates? If the actor wears a toupee, who pays for it? If the actor does promotional work, who dresses them to appear on Colbert? It goes on and on.”

  “So Sebastiano was ready when the time came.”

  “Everyone thinks this business is about luck and getting your break. In a way it is, but you have to be ready for your lucky break when it comes. You have to put in the hard work. Otherwise you fall flat on your face in a very visible way. And Sebastiano was ready.”

  When we arrived at Sebastiano’s, cars lined both sides of the residential street. My rental Land Rover was the most proletariat car of the bunch. The first parking spot I found was five hundred feet away. I told Brit I’d turn around and drop her off so she wouldn’t have to trek so far in her boot.

  “Thank you.”

  “Your foot seemed okay a few days ago. When did it start hurting?”

  “Today. I’ve been overdoing it. My walk from the police station to the coffee shop didn’t help. I really got to go easy on it for the next
three weeks.”

  “Not the worst thing in the world for a writer, is it?”

  “You’d think.”

  Sebastian lived above Sunset Boulevard in a two-story modern box with each tree and shrub lit for its close-up. I dropped Brit in front of the gate and drove off to park. She said she’d wait for me—she hated to go into parties alone.

  I returned to Brit and checked my phone for news of Ebben. There was none, then we stepped into a foyer decorated with a huge canvas of abstract art. The house was open and modern and inviting. People were everywhere. In the kitchen area. In the living room area. In the dining area. I say area because they weren’t rooms—there were no walls. The party reminded me of those we had in high school when someone’s parents were out of town. There was an urgency to it, an urgency that obliterated form and function and yielded to chaos. Marijuana smoke hung in the air heavy and pungent. We stepped into the living area. I recognized several famous people and probably would have recognized more if I paid attention to that sort of thing. Servers carried trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres and drugs—joints and gummy candies, cookies, and caramels. Lines of cocaine and candy dishes of ecstasy. I saw a lot of these drugs in my early days as a private investigator when I chased down runaways and missing persons. Drugs can be magnets for souls in search of a family.

  The servers wore nothing but paint. Sebastiano had hired naked servers and an airbrush artist. They were painted in traditional caterer garb: white shirts with black pants.

  I said, “Lucky us. Looks like Sebastiano’s throwing an inner circle party tonight.”

  “No, Nils,” said Brit. “That’s what you don’t get about Sebastiano. This is an outer circle party. This is the image he wants to portray. His inner circle parties are a total snooze.”

  37

  “X, thank God,” said Brit. She took a purple pill from a naked server and washed it down with a paper cup of water. “Nils, your turn.”

  “I assume you’re familiar with the effects of X.”

  “Give me a break, Dad. I’ve had a hard week. I need to take the edge off. You know they use ecstasy in psychotherapy now? Soldiers with PTSD, X just makes it go away.”