Montecito Heights

by Colin Campbell

  “I don’t think this girl needs food on the table.”

  “Family got money?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Film guys using her to get to them?”

  “They don’t know who her family is.”

  “Well, then. Like I said. They’re probably legitimate. Budget for an average porn movie is maybe fifty grand, tops. Sell that around the world on DVD and then satellite, they’ll make going on a million profit. Easy money.”

  Grant whistled. Tanburro continued.

  “Safer bet than going mainstream. Small-scale movie would cost twenty to fifty million. Distribution and advertising, another twenty. To make a profit you’ve got to do double that in business on theatrical release and video sales, then pay the taxman. Anything big. Hundred million’s entry level for a blockbuster these days. Do the math.”

  “Jesus Christ on the cross.”

  “Mind blowing, ain’t it? Somebody once said that the most lucrative form of writing was ransom notes. Well, around here, the best way to make money is robbing banks. Less risk than making a movie.”

  “You don’t get shot making a movie.”

  “Bank robbers don’t get shot. There’re five thousand bank robberies a year in LA. We’ve got more banks than security guards. More freeways than England. I bet one in a hundred gets shot. Even if they get caught, it’s minimal jail time because the jails are full. Judges are falling over themselves trying to keep guys out of jail.”

  “Easy money.”

  “Bank robbery and porn movies. Like minting your own.”

  The crew began to filter back to the set. Hurry up and wait. The lighting crew adjusted the arc lamps, the camera operator adjusted the angle, the actors had their makeup touched up, and the director coordinated them all. A stunt driver tapped on the window, and Tanburro gave him a thumbs up. Grant got out the passenger side and joined Tanburro around the back. He finished his coffee as he watched the traffic cops directing the afternoon rush. Angry faces glared through their windshields at the disruption but didn’t argue with the armed cops.

  Grant shook his head. “They let those guys carry their weapons even though they’re off duty?”

  “They’re not off duty. They’re retired. Cheaper than using off- duty cops.”

  “Retired? They’ve still got their uniforms and everything.”

  “Guns and badges too.”

  “You can still carry your gun and badge after you’ve retired?”

  “For certain jobs. Police union are up in arms about it, no pun intended. Movie companies always used to employ off-duty cops. Single guys could double their salary. Now it’s mainly retirees.”

  “Christ. Back in Yorkshire, they don’t even let you keep your socks.”

  “Welcome to Hollywood.”

  Grant dumped his empty cup in a bin beside the monitors. Tanburro did the same, then jerked a thumb toward the director. “Back in the saddle.”

  Grant indicated it was time for him to leave. “I’d better be getting off. Thanks for your time.”

  “You’re welcome. If there’s anything else I can help you with…”

  Grant thought about that, then nodded. “You still got contacts in the department?”

  “A few. Yes.”

  “Think you could run down the porn fella’s record?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. What’s his name?”

  “Stuart Ziff of Zed Productions. Don’t have a date of birth.”

  “Can’t imagine there’s going to be too many with that name. Give me your number. I’ll get back to you.”

  Grant gave Tanburro his cell number, and Tanburro programmed it into a phone more complicated than most people’s laptops. He dialed the number, then cut the call when Grant’s cell began to ring.

  “There. You’ve got mine too. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thanks.”

  Half an hour and a brisk walk later, he was back at the Mayfair. The first thing he checked was if the black car was parked opposite. It wasn’t. There was no sign of the two Hawaiians who weren’t Hawaiians either. Grant walked through the front door but only made it halfway across the lobby before the concierge dashed over, flapping his hands. It wasn’t until the hands stopped flapping and pointed toward the middle of the lobby that he understood.

  Maura Richards was sitting in a threadbare chair with her legs crossed.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Mrs. Richards. How the devil are you?”

  Mrs. Richards didn’t stand up as Grant approached but simply indicated for him to sit down in the chair opposite. “Is that your approximation of an English accent?”

  He pulled the chair closer to hers and sat down. “That is an English accent. I’m from England.”

  “You are from Yorkshire. That hardly qualifies.”

  “That’s what I keep telling everyone. You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “This is my daughter we’re talking about. Naturally I wanted to learn everything about the man my husband entrusted with protecting her.”

  “What else did you learn?”

  Mrs. Richards shifted in her seat and laid both arms along the rests, palms down, fingers splayed. She looked Grant in the eyes as if trying to divine the truth from what she saw. She would have made an effective Gypsy Rose Lee, reading tarot cards and telling the future.

  “You are an only child. Your mother died in childbirth, so your father, who was a naval commander, brought you up. You enlisted in the Army, probably to spite your father, and later joined the West Yorkshire Police, where you served for twelve years. While on assignment in Boston you prevented a suicide bomb attack on a US senator and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. You are now employed by the Boston Police Department.”

  Grant was impressed. “They tell you my inside leg measurement and that I dress to the left?”

  “I can see that you dress to the left.”

  Her eyes never left Grant’s face. If she could see he was hung to the left, it was with peripheral vision. The husky voice made everything sound suggestive.

  “You could have earned more money working for the Crown Prince.”

  “I’ve been there before. Didn’t work out. I prefer America. I’m a cop, not a bodyguard.”

  “You’re protecting a US senator.”

  “It’s more of an investigative role. Detective work, not close order protection.”

  “But this is about my daughter.”

  “It is. So why not tell me why you’re here?”

  She shifted in her seat again. Uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way. She laid her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. When she’d composed herself, she opened them again and let out a deep sigh. “I want her to stop all this nonsense and come home.”

  “So does your husband.”

  “My husband wants her to stop jeopardizing his career.”

  “Is she jeopardizing his career?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I told your husband what I think. This is only a political disaster if he hides the truth. As a concerned father trying to protect his daughter from the porn industry, he could end up looking better rather than worse.”

  “What if he were the reason she started in the porn industry?”

  “Then he’d have a problem.”

  “A problem that would require your kind of help to keep things quiet.”

  Grant didn’t answer straight away. He sat back in the chair and drummed his fingers on the armrests. He didn’t like the sound of where this was going. Senator Richards was only a secondary consideration. The fallout of any scandal would more than likely destabilize the chief of police, and that would have a knock-on effect for the LAPD. That was who he was really here to protect. Protecting Dick Richards to achieve that was beginning to leave a bad taste in Grant’s mouth.


  “Did he start her in the porn industry?”

  “I can only go on my female intuition. A mother’s intuition.”

  “What does your mother’s intuition tell you?”

  She tilted her head back to stretch her neck. Bones cracked in the quiet of the hotel lobby. The tall square pillars surrounding them were clean and white. Ornate carvings around the top were touched up with gold paint. Maura Richards appeared to be examining the gold fretwork. When she looked back at Grant, her eyes held more than a hint of sadness.

  “I think he may have driven her to it, yes.”

  Grant softened his tone. Put a touch of friendship and compassion in his voice. “What makes you think that?”

  Mrs. Richards was having trouble remaining calm and clear-headed. Her voice was strong, but there was a quiver in the lip and hesitation in the words that betrayed her.

  “In recent years—the last three or four, perhaps—there has been tension between them that was never there before.”

  Grant made rapid calculations. Angelina Richards was nineteen years old. That would make her fifteen or sixteen when the trouble started. A dangerous age for a young girl. Ripe and ready for the plucking, any predatory males might think. The age when your cute little girl becomes a voluptuous Lolita with all the accompanying complications that entailed.

  He lowered his voice. This was a very delicate matter and not his field of expertise. He’d dealt with a couple of rape victims and a few child-abuse cases, but they were usually taken over by specialist interviewers. Since most abusers were men, it was better to have someone smaller and less intimidating than Jim Grant ask all the intimate questions.

  “Did she ever tell you why?”

  “No. But I could sense the division. The hostility.”

  There was no way around this next question, so he tackled it head-on. “Do you think he was abusing her?”

  Mrs. Richards appeared shocked. Her eyes flew open and her nostrils flared. She shook her head but screwed her hands up into clenched fists.

  “No. I saw nothing to suggest that. They displayed no…closeness. Intimacy. Anything like that. Quite the opposite, in fact. She began to draw away from him.”

  “That can sometimes be the first sign.”

  She shook her head more vigorously. “No. No. I do not accept that. I would have known. She would have told me.”

  Grant didn’t belabor the point. The only saving grace was that while some abused children grew up to be abusers themselves, none ever started having sex with strange men. Avoiding sex was the norm.

  “So you think she might have gone into this to spite him?”

  “At the moment she would do anything to spite him. She has too much of me in her. Too free spirited.”

  She stopped shaking her head and lowered her eyes. This is where the sadness was coming from. Not because she hadn’t noticed what her husband may or may not have been doing with their daughter but the fact that the daughter might have inherited the mother’s sexual behavior.

  Grant resisted the urge to pat Mrs. Richards on the knee. “Leave it with me. I’ll pop in and talk to her tomorrow.”

  “You have her address?”

  “Yes. Up the canyon, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Don’t suppose there’s a bus runs up there.”

  “No.”

  “Never mind. I’ll take a cab.”

  “I could have Jeeves run you up there.”

  This time it was Grant’s turn to shake his head. “Me and Jeeves don’t see eye to eye. Besides, having a familiar car pull up might spook her. A cab’ll be best.”

  They both stood up. For the first time, Mrs. Richards appeared less than strong. She wavered slightly, and Grant put a hand on her shoulder and one on her waist. She froze, and her eyes flashed something that wasn’t anger. He’d last seen that look in Geneva Espinoza’s eyes when Grant had disabled the three thugs at Zed’s. Angelina could well have inherited the sexuality from her mother.

  Once Mrs. Richards was stable, he let her go. “Can I call you a cab?”

  “You can. But I won’t answer to the name.”

  She had recovered her confidence as well as her balance. Grant was glad. He didn’t like to see the mighty fallen. She said her driver was outside, and they walked to the front doors together.

  She turned to face him. “Thank you. For understanding.”

  “Understanding is my middle name.”

  “I thought that was discretion?”

  He smiled and waved her off. “You have a safe journey now.”

  The car took her away, and Grant was glad to be alone again. The beautiful woman with the damaged mind depressed him. It was sad to see. He went up to twelve in the elevator, his mind still pondering the conundrum that was the Richards family. He was about to slide the keycard through the lock when he noticed the light beneath the door and stepped back.

  Voices sounded through the door. Some ambient noise and a little night music. Not very loud. Whoever was waiting for him in there wasn’t hiding in the dark. If it was the two Hawaiians, they were even worse at surprising somebody than they were at tailing them.

  Grant had to make a decision. Going through a door where you knew somebody was waiting was a dangerous proposition, especially now that the Dominguez cartel had come into play. A single shotgun pointed at the door and Grant would be splattered all over the hallway. Two men waiting with handguns would have him pinned in a murderous crossfire.

  He had two choices. Go in and face the music or find another way and surprise his attackers. He could drop down from the balcony of the room above, but climbing through the window would be the danger point. He would be vulnerable to attack and/or a long drop to his death. That didn’t feel like a good idea.

  The first option appealed to his sense of tackling things head-on. Simply open the door and walk right in. Feign surprise if he needed a delaying tactic or anger if he needed to counterattack. He wasn’t getting that tingling up the back of his neck that signaled danger. This was something else. He weighed the odds and came down in favor of option one.

  He slid the keycard through the reader and heard the electronic click of the lock. Then he opened the door and went in.

  EIGHTEEN

  Downtown Los Angeles stood out against the early evening sky through the windows. Blinking lights and mirrored glass painted a picture of tranquility in the background. The ambient noise and voices came from the TV on the corner of the dresser. The music had been the opening jingle to the evening news. It wasn’t long before the outstretched arms and orange jacket signaled a rerun of the bank robbery folded into a follow-up on the location shoot fracas behind Hollywood Boulevard. It must have been a slow news day.

  “They’ll be checking you for stigmata next.”

  Robin Citrin was sitting in the chair next to the bedside cabinet. She smiled at Grant as he closed the door behind him, the brilliant white teeth complementing the twinkle in her eyes. The black hair looked even blacker and more unruly in the dull light from the wall lamps.

  Grant dropped his keycard and wallet on the chest of drawers. “Well, Miss Citrin, you are a forward wench. Waiting in a gentleman’s room.”

  “If I was a forward wench, I’d be sitting on the bed.”

  “Good point.”

  “And I am relying on you being a gentleman.”

  “Then your honor is safe with me.”

  He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. There had been too many women making eyes at him today. As irresistible as Geneva Espinoza had been and as beautiful as Maura Richards was, he found Robin Citrin more attractive than both of them put together. He felt a connection with her he didn’t feel with the others. She flicked her head to get the hair out of her eyes.

  “Did you find the CSI guys?”

  “I did. Thank you.”<
br />
  “It helped you out, then, me giving you their location?”

  “It did.”

  Grant could feel a proposition coming. He switched the TV off with the remote because he could never find the off button on American sets and went to the open window. He preferred fresh air to the recycled stuff they always pumped into hotel rooms. A siren sounded in the distance, forcing a smile. In every city he’d ever visited, sirens always started up after dark. LA added helicopters throbbing around the sky instead of distant railway noises, the other staple of city nightlife.

  He looked down twelve floors to the street. He could see West Seventh all the way into town, but he concentrated on the chunk of sidewalk opposite the front of the hotel. The favored spot for the Dominguez cartel’s spotters to park. There was still no black car parked across the street. He turned to face Citrin and leaned against the wall, legs crossed at the ankles and arms folded across his chest.

  Casual. Relaxed.

  His heart rate was slow and even, but he could feel the effect of having a beautiful woman sitting next to his bed. He hoped that dressing to the left wasn’t as obvious to Robin Citrin as it had been to Mrs. Richards. If Citrin smiled at him much more, he feared it probably would be.

  She spoke quietly. “So, if I helped you out, you should help me out, right? That’s the way it works, isn’t it?”

  “Not exactly. You see, that implies an agreement made at the time to share information, like swapping. Not you doing me a favor, which is more of a helping-out-a-friend kind of deal.”

  “We’re friends now?”

  “I think we are, yes.”

  “But you don’t owe me a favor.”

  “Favors are bestowed, not owed. It’s like if I give you a present, then ask for something in return, I’d be an Indian giver. See what I mean?”

  “An Indian giver’s somebody who asks for the same gift back, not something in return. I’m not asking for the same favor.”

  “You want a favor? I’ll give you a favor. Just not because you did me a favor.”