by Ace Atkins
“God,” he said. “What a fucking mess. These people.”
“What people, Eric?”
“Whoever did this,” he said. “I don’t know who. I guess who took her.”
I ran my hand over the back of my neck as I stretched my hands high overhead. My back and legs ached from the flight. I watched as he disappeared into a bedroom and returned a few moments later. I stooped down, looking through some scattered papers.
“I’d really rather you not do that.”
“Do what?”
“Snoop.”
“I’m a detective,” I said. “Not a psychic. Snooping is my business.”
“I don’t know if the cops have been here yet.”
“They have.”
“Was the apartment like this?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if it wasn’t, they damn well need to know about it,” he said. “I don’t want to be responsible for anything you might mess up.”
“I may look like a bull in a china shop,” I said. “But I’m stealthier than a Sumatran tiger.”
Eric Collinson rolled his eyes and shifted his weight in his stylish lace-up boots. He looked both bored and annoyed. I’d only just met him, but I wasn’t a fan.
“If you know anything . . .”
“I don’t,” he said.
“But if you find out something.”
“I will,” he said. “Can I please go? I need to go.”
“For her personal agent, you don’t seem to be of much use.”
He shook his head and tried to pass me through the narrow hallway. I took up a lot of space and kept my boots firmly planted.
“Why don’t you just talk to KiKi?” he said. “She knows more than me. She knows all about Gabby’s new beautiful life and new beautiful friends. I warned her. I warned her something like this would happen.”
“And how do I find KiKi?”
“I don’t know.”
“Phone number or address works.”
“All I know is she used to hostess at the Mirabeau,” he said. “She provides bottle service for rich douchebags.”
“Fantastic.”
“Do you even know what the Mirabeau is?”
“I told you I’m a pro,” I said. “I just mastered Google.”
“They have a guest list,” he said. “They have a huge wait to get in. It’s pretty much the kind of place that you have to know someone.”
“I know many people,” I said. “And I just purchased a blazer that promises to be wrinkle-free.”
Eric Collinson looked as if he doubted me. “It’s a hangout for industry people. Beautiful people.”
“I’m the definition of beautiful,” I said. “Inside and out.”
He handed me the key and said he was done with the whole thing.
“If you had to guess where Gabby went . . .”
“I can’t.”
“But if you did, where might she go?”
“It’s Mr. Spenser?”
“Just Spenser,” I said. “With an S, like the English poet.”
“I know how to spell it,” he said. “I went to Princeton.”
“Of course you did.”
He kept looking at me, as if appraising my trustworthiness, and then finally nodded. “If I had to guess what got her?”
I nodded.
“Ambition.”
“Ambition?”
“Welcome to L.A., Mr. Spenser,” he said, turning away. “What else is there? Gabby was a wonderful girl. I wish I knew what the hell changed her.”
“Will you answer next time when I call?”
“Gabby’s mother knows where to find me,” Collinson said. “I hope you find her. But I’m done with all of this mess.”
2
Ispent the next hour going through Gabby Leggett’s apartment with Z. It was hard, as most of her belongings had been tossed on the floor, but we made slow, deliberate work. She didn’t have a lot of personal items other than clothes. And there were a lot of clothes, more than most boutiques on Newbury Street, and enough shoes to outfit an army of Kardashians. The interior seemed to have been recently renovated with a new manufactured bamboo floor and sleek gray cabinets in a Scandinavian style. Her furniture was basic and utilitarian, classic IKEA. In the drawers, there were no letters or personal photos. No suicide notices, hidden diaries, or maps to One-Eyed Willy’s secret treasure. The only sense that Gabby Leggett had lived here was a MacBook computer slid halfway under her bed.
I pulled it out and showed it to Z. “Almost as if someone wanted us to find it.”
“What did Collinson say?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I think we made him feel a tad uncomfortable.”
“Or inadequate,” Z said as he upturned a massive framed black-and-white poster of Gabby Leggett from a modeling shoot. The glass had spiderwebbed across the image but the print was otherwise undamaged. “This girl would break that boy like a toothpick.”
Gabby was posed in the corner of a shuttered business. The rolling metal grate covering the entrance had been painted with the faces of Tupac and Charlie Chaplin. She had on black jeans and a T-shirt generously cut out from the armholes. Her lean flank and the side of her breast were on prominent display. She looked right into the camera with her sleepy eyes, full lips parted as she touched the upper part of her chest as if holding back a terrific secret. Shh.
“I hate to say it,” Z said. “But she’s pretty average for this town.”
“Tough critic.”
“She could’ve gone anywhere,” he said. “For all we know she could’ve skipped out on her rent and gone down to Baja for a few weeks.”
“Then we go to Baja.”
“I wish,” Z said, hands on hips, looking over the mess. “We’ll end up watching Motel 6 in Van Nuys.”
On the way out, I tried to find the super, without any luck. I spotted two security cameras in the lobby and one out by the gated entry. I made a mental note of their placement as Z and I got back into his Mustang and drove back toward his office. I set her laptop in the backseat.
“Can you hack it?” I said.
“Hack it?” Z said. He zipped down Hollywood Boulevard, slowing at a red light. “You mean unlock the laptop without the password?”
“Hacking sounds more tricky and professional,” I said. “Good for billing.”
“I know just the girl,” he said. “Works in K-town.”
“Good to have friends.”
“She knows a guy in Canada who can track Gabby’s movements from her cell phone.”
“I used to pull phone books at the Boston public library for addresses,” I said. “That almost feels like cheating.”
“Almost,” Z said.
The office of Zebulon Sixkill, licensed California investigator, was at the corner of Highland and Franklin. Z had the corner space on the second floor of a double-decker strip mall. The other tenants included a Thai massage parlor, a vape shop, a movie-star tour bus service, a twenty-four-hour liquor store, and a nail salon. His office was twice as large as mine, with half the furniture and a secretary, a pleasant Latina named Delores. Delores was a little older than me but lacked my stellar charisma. She barely glanced up from her National Enquirer as we passed her desk. Rob Lowe Reveals His Sex Tape Regrets!
“I’d offer you coffee,” Z said, “but I haven’t bought a coffeemaker yet.”
“I started out with just a jar of Sanka and a chipped coffee mug.”
“Do you think someone tossed her apartment after the cops?”
“Probably.”
“Why don’t you think the cops took the laptop?”
“It wasn’t there,” I said. “Someone left it later.”
“Collinson?”
I nodded. It felt odd sitting on the opposite si
de of the desk. I wasn’t used to being the one in the client’s chair and missed my accessibility to a bottle of Bushmills and a .357. Although I suspected Z’s gun was handy. The Bushmills, not so much. Z had quit drinking almost five years ago.
“I have a list of friends from Gabby’s mother,” I said. “And the name and address of her current employer and acting school.”
“What about her Instagram?” he said. “Friends in the photos?”
“I made a list,” I said. “But most of her pics only feature herself. Gabby seemed mainly into promoting Gabby.”
“You want me to hit up the friends and you stick with the acting coach and her boss?”
“Do I detect a hint of ageism?”
Z grinned. He stood up and hung his leather biker jacket on a hook on the back of a bathroom door and sat back down. Some pictures of him from his playing days at Cal Wesleyan lined the walls, along with a photo of him and Henry Cimoli when he worked at the Harbor Health Club. A few scars remained on Z’s face from a nasty incident a while back at an old dog track in Revere.
“I am closer to their peer group.”
“Maybe the woman she worked for is older than Maureen O’Hara and will take a shine to me.”
The office had a lone window that looked into a narrow alley where some homeless people had made a small tarp city. An all-night diner pumped smoke and grease into the wide-open space over a dumpster. Rain tapped against the small window and pinged the puddles along the alley.
“Where’s the glitz and glamour?” I said.
“Use your imagination,” Z said. “It’s all around us.”
“I was thinking maybe I’d get a martini at the Cocoanut Grove,” I said.
“I’d take you there,” Z said. “But they razed it twenty years ago.”
“Maybe have dinner at the Brown Derby?”
“Burned.”
“Chasen’s?”
“Gone.”
“Clark Gable?”
“Dead.”
“Damn,” I said. I made a few notes on a pocket-sized spiral notebook I kept in my jacket.
“What’s the girl’s mother say?” Z said. He had on a gray T-shirt that said Rocky Boy North Stars. The short sleeves looked as if they might burst at any moment.
“I met her at Harvest with Susan the other night,” I said. “She didn’t know much about Gabby’s life in L.A. Sounded like they were estranged. On the positive front, she hated Eric Collinson. Said he’d made a mess of her career.”
“Maybe Collinson was jealous of Gabby’s new friends?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe we should’ve appealed to his better nature.”
“You mean shaken the ever-living truth from him?” I said.
“Sure,” Z said. “That.”
“Sometimes I forget you’ve learned as much from Hawk as from me.”
“What can I say?” Z said. “Boston was one hell of an education. Without you guys, I could never have come back to California as a professional.”
“Professor Spenser?”
“Hawk called his class the school of hard knocks.”
“At Harvard it would’ve been called ‘A History of Violence Through the African American Prism.’”
Z laid his hand on the small silver MacBook. “I’ll take this to K-town and see what I can find. Then I’ll try and round up some of Gabby’s friends, see what I can find out about where she’s been and what she’s been up to.”
“Try and use some of that Native American charm.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “Girls love stoicism.”
“And I’ll try that acting coach,” I said. “Maybe he’ll see some untapped potential in me. Maybe I could be the next Nat Pendleton or Ward Bond.”
“Maybe,” Z said. “And who the hell are they?”
“So young,” I said. “So much to learn.”
3
Gabby Leggett took acting classes twice a week at an old movie theater right across from a Ralphs in Studio City. I parked at a nearby Starbucks on Ventura for some much-needed caffeine, left a voicemail with Susan, and walked over to the studio. The rain had let up, but it was still dark and overcast, with a slight chill in the air. I hadn’t expected Los Angeles to be chilly. The only clothing I’d packed with long sleeves was an authentic Pats sweatshirt I’d gotten as a gift from Kinjo Heywood.
I lifted the collar on my leather jacket, stepped under the aging marquee, and let myself into the lobby, searching for Jeffrey Bloom. Bloom was supposed to be an industry legend, according to his own website, featured in dozens of iconic film roles. After a quick viewing of IMDb, I found out he’d been in two space horror movies in the early eighties and had a reccurring role as a cop on Matlock in the early nineties. He offered something called the Bloom Method for several hundred dollars a month.
Testimonials on the site proclaimed the price a true bargain. His method nothing short of genius. I suspected Bloom wrote much of his own copy.
I found an empty office and wandered into the dimly lit theater. A man I assumed to be Bloom sat at the edge of the stage, leafing through a binder. He didn’t look up as I entered and walked down the aisle, nor when I sat in the front row, perhaps three feet from him.
I hadn’t been furtive in my movements. I crossed my legs and leaned back into the chair, curious as to how long it would take him to acknowledge my presence. He was a short, somewhat rotund man, somewhere in his mid-sixties, bearded and balding, with the rest of his curly salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a ponytail. His maroon guayabera shirt was unbuttoned to his chest and he wore tortoiseshell half-glasses down on his nose.
After a few minutes, he simply said, “I’m not payin’.”
“Is that from Twelfth Night or Merchant of Venice?”
“Ha,” he said. “You guys did shitty work. The lights still flicker on and off. Like I said, if your people in El Segundo have a problem, talk to my lawyer. I grew up in Brooklyn. I don’t answer to shakedowns.”
“Is it the size of my neck or my casual clothes?”
“Excuse me?”
“What made you think I’m an electrician?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No,” I said. “And I’ve never been to El Segundo. Not on purpose, anyway.”
“What do you want, then?” he said. He had yet to look up, seemingly transfixed by what he saw in the binder. From where I sat, they appeared to be black-and-white head shots. “You’re too old to be an actor.”
“Be nice to people on the way up,” I said. “You might meet them on the way down.”
“I’ve been on both trips on that elevator, friend,” Jeffrey Bloom said. He finally looked up and removed his glasses, letting them hang from a cord around his neck. “Would it be too much to inquire who you are and what it is exactly that you want?”
“I’m a blogger,” I said. “I wanted to come to talk to you about Horror at Party Beach Part Two. How exactly did the Bloom Method serve you during the production?”
“Christ Almighty.”
“Just Spenser,” I said, offering my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nobody gives two shits about that rotten picture,” he said, not accepting my hand nor moving from the stage. “It was a joke when it was being filmed and it was a joke in its minor release. How it’s become a cult classic is beyond my understanding, but I’ll take it. I took that part for the money. It allowed me to do summer stock for two years. I took an even worse picture that I won’t name five years ago to do a one-man Faulkner play. Like I tell the kids, you do what you need to do to practice the craft.”
“I can relate.”
“And again, is it too much to ask what you do, Mr. Spenser, or are we playing some kind of game?”
“I’m a detective,” I said. “I’m from Boston and have just arrived in California to find a m
issing girl. In my craft, it’s called a Wandering Daughter Job.”
Bloom sat for a moment, face impassive, before he pushed away the binder and broke out into a loud, obnoxious laugh. I’d heard a better laugh from Francis the Talking Mule. “Oh, yeah?” he said. “And I’m Sam Spade. Or better yet, Philo Vance. Do you know Philo Vance, Mr. Spenser?”
“Sure,” I said. “Years ago, I worked the Canary Murder Case with him.”
He laughed again, but this time it sounded more genuine and real, coming from somewhere down in his protruding gut. He stood up on the stage, hands on his hips, and for a moment I wondered if I had time to get some popcorn and a Coke. I felt that a one-man play might be about to begin. But alas . . .
“Who’s the girl?”
“Gabrielle Leggett.”
He nodded. He looked down at me, solemn, and nodded some more. His beard had been trimmed into a somewhat devilish point, and as he talked he pulled at it, in what the acting folks called “giving their character some business.”
“Gabby’s missing?” he said. “I thought she’d just dropped out of the class. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you more, but I really don’t know much about my students’ personal lives.”
“How long was she here?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I’d have to check my records. Maybe a year or two? Too short of time to make any real progress. But she had a very interesting look about her, something feline in those eyes. When she didn’t show up for the last few classes, I almost called her to say she had something really special to give the world.”
“From my experience, that can be a curse.”
Bloom found the stairs at the edge of the stage, walking down the first aisle toward me. The chairs were covered in thick red upholstery and had not aged well. Several had been sealed with duct tape, others showing exposed foam spilling from the seats. Ceiling tiles bulged and hung loose. Somewhere down there were vintage Jujubes stuck to the floor.
“Do you drink, Mr. Spenser?”
I showed him my Starbucks cup. “Pike Place Roast.”