Baca

by Billy Kring

  We got the license number to go with the description of the paint job.

  As we left Mickey and drove out the gate I said, “Looks like she’s in love with her boss.”

  Hondo nodded, “Yep.”

  “So, Landman was having an affair with Bond and Mickey.”

  “This is LA,” Hondo said, “Happens all the time. But maybe it’s just infatuation on Mickey’s part. Maybe there’s nothing going on.”

  “She does lean toward melodrama, I noticed that.”

  “Did you notice the other thing?”

  “What other thing?”

  “Mickey is a man.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I looked at him.

  Hondo held his thumb against his throat and made a half-inch space between it and his forefinger. “Adam’s apple.”

  I was silent for a moment before saying, “I didn’t catch that.”

  Hondo glanced at me as he turned on Sunset. “I figured all you could see was the top of her hair. Between that and worrying about all that mascara getting on your windbreaker, you were a little preoccupied. By the way, your jacket looks like one of those tee-shirts that kids wore years ago, the ones that had big black and red splotches on them and below that it said ‘I ran into Tammye Faye at the mall’, you remember.”

  I tried to clean the windbreaker with my handkerchief, but it only smeared. I gave up and said, “At least Mickey seemed capable, and with the cell numbers it’ll be easy to check since we know the time and date of the call.”

  “Mucho simple since all those phones are with the same company.”

  “He does their commercials and gets them for free.”

  Hondo slipped around a red Ferrari and got us to the office in record time.

  **

  It was an hour before my friend at the Sheriff’s office called back. He said there was no record of any of the phone numbers I’d given him making a call at that time. I hung up and looked at Hondo, who was sharpening his Black Ops folding knife, the same one he’d carried when we were in Afghanistan.

  “No record of any calls.”

  Hondo tested the blade by running it across his forearm. Hair rolled up like a military barber working the heads of new recruits. He folded it and put it in his pocket. “We need to double check the office phone. Maybe for some reason, Mickey’s light to that line didn’t work.”

  “Yeah or maybe she’s lying.”

  “Or maybe Bob was arguing with ghosts.”

  I got back on the phone and said to Hondo while I re-dialed my friend at the Sheriff’s office, “Let’s check the office phone first, see if he used it. If that doesn’t work, then we’ll call a medium.”

  “And if that doesn’t work, we need to go back to square one.”

  I nodded as I asked my friend for another favor and Hondo grinned as he heard the tinny yell come out of the receiver and into my ear.

  **

  After getting nowhere again, Hondo said he was hungry for Moroccan, so we left the office and drove in my truck to Tagine on Robertson Boulevard. It’s in Beverly Hills, and as usual, we got a few stares at Shamu. We finished lunch and Hondo was working on dessert when he said, “We can check the credit cards, see if there’s been any activity.”

  “Yeah, maybe check the bank for ATM withdrawals or checks written.”

  “I can do those. You going to check with the Meadows woman again?”

  “I think so.” I thought for a moment, “There’s something about her I can’t quite place. I’ve seen her somewhere before, or heard her name, but can’t pin it down.”

  Hondo chewed, swallowed and said, “Was her maiden name Savitch?”

  It clicked. Bond Savitch. That was her, all right. Maybe five, six years ago. She had been a blond then, and wore dark sunglasses everywhere except the courtroom. The trial lasted six months, with extensive coverage a la OJ. In the end, she was found not guilty in the killing of her lover, but the public perception was not as clear-cut. There were vague circumstances and evidence not adequately explained, forensics experts spoke with eloquence for both sides, and the jury deliberated two days before reaching the verdict. Many people thought she got off with murder, but being LA and the fact that she was so beautiful, others said, “What do you expect?”

  I hadn’t followed the case and didn’t know how he’d died, but with courtroom scenes on the news every hour of the day, it was impossible not to know of the trial.

  I said, “So, that’s her.”

  “I think so.” Hondo said. “Be aware of that, uh? She killed him with a bottle of Cristal.”

  “She forced him to drink a bottle of champagne and it killed him?”

  He stopped chewing and looked at me.

  “Nooo. She hit him with it. Knocked him down and shattered the bottle. While he was on his hands and knees, she jabbed the broken half at the side of his face and cut his jugular. Guy bled to death in about ten seconds.”

  He took another bite, then pointed with his chin to indicate something over my shoulder. “You’re going to have to move Shamu again.”

  I turned to look and Ryan Gosling walked into the restaurant, smiling and talking to everyone but looking around.

  “Oops,” I said.

  “I told you not to park in his space.”

  “It’s not like there aren’t other places he can park, jeez.”

  “He’s one of the owners.”

  Gosling spotted us and put his hands on his hips. I waved at him and he didn’t smile, just jerked his head to the side. I can read head-language, so I said to Hondo, “I’ll just go move the truck, be waiting for you outside.”

  Hondo grinned as he forked up the last bites. “Oh yeah.”

  **

  I ran some errands in Hollywood and called Bond’s cell phone from the truck. She said she would be waiting for me at home. I asked which home and after a second’s silence, she said the one in Beverly.

  Driving from Hollywood into Beverly Hills is the American statement to everyone where the line between the haves and have-nots begins. On the one side are shops, small homes, old cars, lots of pickups and lowriders, Mexicans, blacks, derelicts and winos, with a smattering of tourists and gawkers, out of work actors. Lots of unkempt lawns are around, as are children and young people.

  The moment you cross into Beverly Hills, it’s like black and white Dorothy opening the door and seeing Technicolor Oz. Emerald green lawns and hedges manicured and worried to perfection, large trees and exquisite landscapes showcasing huge, beautiful homes that cost more than a thousand of the have-nots combined would make in a hundred years.

  There were no old cars, no trash, no dusty streets, and only occasional glimpses of children. It was stunning and remote, an urban Eden, showing the drive by gawkers with every passing block how far apart their worlds were from those who lived behind the ornate doors and gates.

  As I pulled up to the Meadows’ gate and punched in the numbers Bond had written down, a five-year old station wagon with Oklahoma plates and what must have been a husband and wife and forty kids, judging from all the arms and legs I saw sticking out of the windows, slowed to a stop and stared at me open-mouthed.

  I guess I have that celebrity look. As the gate opened, I waved at them and started my pickup forward. One of the kids yelled something that I couldn’t make out, so I stopped and put my head out the window so they could go back and tell their neighbors they visited with a famous star at his home.

  “You the gardener?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Are you the gardener? Which star lives here?”

  “What makes you think I’m not the star?”

  The kid, maybe fifteen and wearing a red Sooners ball cap, took a long look at my black pickup and said, “We figured, with that truck...”

  “What’s wrong with my truck?”

  There was some conversation in the station wagon I couldn’t hear, and the wagon started to pull away. The kid in the Sooners cap stuck his head out of the window and said
, “Your truck looks like that fish at Sea World!”

  “It’s not a fish, it’s a mammal!”

  The station wagon drove out of sight and I went through the gate. Tourists.

  Bond opened the door and let me in. She was wearing a white Turkish robe and her hair was wet. The inside of the house was spacious, elegant, with a winding stairway leading to the second floor. I followed her through the house for what seemed like the length of a football field before we emerged in the back yard beside an Olympic-sized pool complete with ten-meter diving platform. Surrounding the pool and lounge area was a manicured garden that went all the way to the rock wall surrounding the three-acre yard.

  Huge topiary figures shaped from the shrubs and bushes bordered the pool area. The closest ones were of a rhino that was ten feet high, rearing on its hind legs like a stallion, and a twelve-foot high kangaroo with a joey’s head sticking out of the pouch. Completing the lineup were elephants, lions, bears, a pod of three porpoises surfing on green leafy waves, and what looked like a cross between a ten-foot vulture and a smiling pterodactyl. Creepy things like these had haunted my childhood dreams and I kept picking them up from of the corner of my eye as if they had moved.

  Bond led us to a shaded table and we sat in patio chairs that were more comfortable than anything I had in my apartment, including the bed. There was a magnum of champagne iced in a bucket and two glasses on the table beside us. It was Cristal.

  Bond shook her wet hair and the drops caught the sun like sparkling lights. The white Turkish bathrobe had somehow come undone during our walk and revealed large glimpses of tanned, taut skin and rounded breasts.

  Bond asked, “Would you like some champagne?”

  “No thank you.” She poured herself a glass and I watched to make sure she didn’t flip the bottle and grab it by the neck. As she poured, the robe opened like a coin purse, revealing a tight, perfect stomach as golden as the rest of her. I felt the urge to flex but held off. I didn’t want her to swoon before we talked.

  “We talked to Mickey at Landman’s home. She seems stressed about his disappearance. I was wondering, did you tell her not to notify the police?”

  “Yes. We talked it over and both agreed it would serve nothing at this point.”

  “Okay, at what point do you think it would serve something?”

  She sat up, “You can get that tone out of your voice. Mickey and I made the decision together and I felt that hiring you would be the best thing to do. It seemed a hell of a lot better than calling the police before we even know if anything’s wrong. What’s the matter, aren’t I paying you enough?” She shifted and a lot more sleek skin showed.

  “The pay’s fine. Looking at your body is very fine. But there may come a time when the police will need to be notified. You understand?”

  She said, “My, aren’t you forceful?”

  If she knew how strong her pheromones were affecting me, she wouldn’t have mentioned forceful. I was ready to bellow and attack matadors with my horns. But I controlled it and said, “Look, you hired me to find him, and I will. But if I discover things that make me worry about his well being, I will contact the police.”

  “Without me authorizing it?” She leaned forward as if to make a point and her breasts pushed further out of the robe, revealing two brown crescents.

  I reached forward and pulled her robe together. “Keep it that way while we talk.”

  She sat back, and then tied the robe together. Her eyes held a look I couldn’t make out.

  I said, “You’re a beautiful woman, but this is business. If I feel Landman’s in danger, I won’t wait for you to tell me to wag my tail or to fetch. There’s no negotiation on this.”

  We sat there for several minutes. She looked at the water in the pool for most of the time, then watched me before saying, “I can live with that. You’ll keep me informed of everything you find out. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” With most of her body covered, my pulse slowed down. My heart had been banging so hard I was worried about my pocket pen springing a leak. I asked, “Where’s your husband? I’ll need to talk to him.”

  “He’s at his office on the lot.” She bit at her lip after she spoke.

  I nodded. “I’ll try and catch him there. I won’t say who hired me.”

  “If he’s not at Americas, you might try Siberia on the Sunset Strip. He’s there a great deal lately. Usually with his personal assistant, Carl Rakes.”

  “What about this Rakes?”

  “He’s a Russian that Frank met about three years ago. Frank hired Carl and doesn’t go anywhere without him.”

  I got up and said, “I’ll keep in touch.”

  **

  Hondo called me on my cell as I drove down Sunset. He said, “I struck out on this end. You do any good?”

  “Nope. Frank wasn’t at the studio, so I’m headed to some place called Siberia on Sunset to talk to him, see if I can dig up anything that way.”

  “Try the Tunguska Blast while you’re there.”

  “The what?”

  “The Tunguska Blast, named after the comet that hit Tunguska.”

  “I know about the comet, what’s the drink?”

  “They make it with vodka that’s chilled to somewhere around minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit and mixed with some kind of mint and their special secret ingredients that are imported from the Tunguska area in Siberia, and something else that I think is Sprite, then they shoot compressed pure oxygen into it until it foams, and then you drink it.”

  “And you want me to try that?”

  “Sure. It’s not like anything else you’ve ever tasted. They say the oxygen aeration also keeps you from having a hangover.”

  I thought about asking him how swallowing bubbles of oxygenated vodka into my stomach would keep me from a hangover since the oxygen wouldn’t be in my lungs, but wasn’t sure I was ready for his explanation.

  Hondo said, “Well, I’ve got something else I want to check. I’ll go back to the house and do a little looking.”

  I knew he meant Landman’s mansion. “Do you have a key?”

  “Oh sure, I can get in. Later.”

  I put away the cell phone and rubbed my forehead. With Hondo, sometimes it is best not to ask.

  **

  Siberia was located in one of those buildings on the Sunset Strip that have had a hundred different club names since the sixties. I parked and got out of my truck to look it over and watch people going in. Siberia looked like a place for the rougher element and not the usual choice of entertainment executives, although I recognized some of the younger acting crowd going inside. I went in and let my eyes adjust.

  The decor was something out of a B movie. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with blow-ups of photographs of the actual Tunguska blast site. It showed a forest of conifer trees blown flat, stripped of branches, and extending as far as the eye could see over the rises in the distance. Complete devastation, with the trunks laid out like thousands of dominoes knocked flat. The photos had been color tinted and looked as good as Ted Turner’s techniques on old black and white movies.

  Half of the tables and chair backs were made of pine logs laid out to flow in the same direction as the wall photographs of felled trees. I guess that was to give the customer a feel of being in the center of the blast. There was another area consisting of sofas, love seats and armchairs that commanded the space between the dance floor and the pool tables.

  The bar was thirty feet long, with comfortable looking stools and a brass foot-rail. Behind it in the corner was a two-tiered table with a large barrel the size of a whiskey keg on top. Below it were racks of what must have been a dozen silver cylinders that looked like quarter-sized aqua-lungs, complete with regulators and small black tubes running from them. The tanks had shoulder straps and it looked like the cylinders would ride high, not reaching lower than mid back. As I watched, a cute waitress went to the stack, got one and put it on. She checked the nozzle and I heard it hiss. Must be the compress
ed oxygen Hondo mentioned.

  Siberia was doing pretty good for an afternoon crowd. Eight guys in leather jackets with cut-off sleeves were in the corner shooting pool, and another twenty or thirty people were arranged around the room and standing at the bar. The young acting crowd was standing together on the dance floor, deciding where to sit. The smell of cigarette smoke was faint, and I could hear multiple exhaust fans working overtime to keep the air clean. They were powerful, too. I walked under one and felt the upward breeze ruffle my hair. The Red Hot Chili Peppers played on the sound system, but not loud enough to make the patrons yell to be heard by each other. The ratio was five to one men-to-women, but a couple of the women looked like they could hold their own.

  A young waitress dressed in silver hot pants and matching sports bra and wearing one of the silver aqua lungs stopped and asked what I’d like. Might as well be reckless, I thought. “I’ll have a Tunguska Blast.”

  She smiled, “Very good, sir.” and left. I watched her walk away and thought the silver aqua-lung thingee went well with the view of her rounded silver behind.

  I spotted Frank Meadows sitting on one of the love seats, talking to a massive black bodybuilder. The bodybuilder was shirtless; wearing suspenders with his Levi’s and work boots. Five feet behind Frank was a big, rawboned man leaning against the wall. I took this to be Carl Rakes. His hair was long and dirty-blond, hanging to his shoulders. He wore a white, long-sleeved shirt and jeans. He had his thumbs hooked in the jeans pockets. I could make out the dark edges of tattoos peeking beyond the cuffs.

  The waitress came back with my drink and balanced it on the tray while she fished a pencil-thin black hose from over her shoulder and shot a noisy blast of air into the tall drink. It bubbled and fizzed and, I swear, changed colors as I watched.