The Detective & The Pipe Girl: A Mystery

by Michael Craven

  Ott stared at me. His face was totally still, like a statue of a guy with a creased face and really good hair. He was trying to read me.

  He finally said, “I think you’re looking into the Suzanne Neal case. And I think you should tell me something.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you something. You need to moisturize. Your skin is incredibly dry.”

  He looked at me. He looked through me. I thought he was going to shoot me.

  19

  Four hours later I was sitting outside Richard Neese’s house again, same spot I had while waiting for Rebecca Heath to exit. Waiting. Waiting again. My cell rang. Didn’t startle me this time. Linda Robbie.

  “Hey Linda.”

  “So I couldn’t stay out of your business. This Richard Neese guy is a house flipper. But unlike most of them he doesn’t appear to be a charlatan. He actually makes sales. Most people say they flip, but they don’t actually flip. Like ever. Neese does. He makes sales. Makes money. Buys big, sought-after mansions, and other properties, corporate properties too, and either fixes them up or finds people who are willing to buy. He’s made a lot of money over the past few years. A friend of mine sold a property for him.”

  “What else does he do? You have any idea?”

  “My girlfriend didn’t know anything. She did say he was attractive. In sort of an eighties way.”

  “Thanks, Linda. I gotta hop.”

  “I know where I’d like you to hop.”

  “Hey, you know, what? That actually sort of makes sense. I’m impressed.”

  “Are you going to reward me for it?”

  Linda is nothing if not persistent.

  I laughed. “I’ve gotta go.”

  We hung up. I sat there thinking about what to do. Now, I told you why being a private cop is sometimes advantageous. Because you can, you know, break the law on occasion to find out what you need to find out. But sometimes it leaves you without a move. I can’t surf the police databases at will. I can’t always get the information that already exists because I can’t always get a cop to give me a favor. That’s why I do a lot of waiting. I put on some Shane McGowan, The Snake. I listened to “Victoria” seven times in a row, then let the CD play.

  I didn’t have to wait too long for my next move to come to me. A car, a fat, black Merc four-door, as Clay Blevins might describe it, pulled out of the hideous crisscrossy steel gates.

  I picked it up.

  He drove east on Mulholland, stayed up top, cresting the canyon, then went right onto Nichols Canyon and headed down toward Hollywood. In a very hip part of the Hills now. Mansions and bungalows glued onto the side of Mount Groovy. The black Merc twisted down through the Hills. I stayed on the car pretty close. No need to hide the tail too much. I was just heading down the mountain, just like him. The Merc and I came up on a line of cars parked on one side of the tight canyon road. After twenty, thirty cars, there was a temporary valet stand in front of the entrance to a house. Were we going to a party? I love parties.

  Neese pulled the Merc up to the valet and stopped. I zoomed on by, passing more parked cars, nice cars, on the other side of the stand. I slowed way down and watched him in my rearview getting out. Jeans and a T-shirt and that horrible, long, thick, flowing blond hair. I called Linda. Pick up, babe. I just talked to you. Pick up. She did.

  “Is this my reward call?”

  “I need something quick. Who lives at 6483 Nichols Canyon. As quick as you can.”

  We hung up. I parked way, way down the street, beyond where the valets were putting cars. Then: Cell. Linda.

  “You got it?”

  “Someone named Nick Blankenship.”

  “Shit, really?”

  “Yep. Who is he?”

  Nick Blankenship was a big rock star. And a good one. Lead singer of the band the Slobs. Good, inventive records. I really liked them. Had a record of theirs in the Cobalt as we spoke.

  I told Linda who he was and then, “Thanks for such quick help. I may just drive over after this and have sex with you.”

  I hung up before she could accept my offer.

  I looked in my trunk and pulled out a shirt that I had bought, believe it or not, at Fred Segal a few years earlier. I had found one in my size and spent a chunk of a case payment on it. It was the shirt I wore to stuff like this, made by a company called Scotch and Soda. It was black, a nice cut of black, and all over it were skulls and crossbones of different sizes and colors. It was a party shirt and, now that I had it on, I was ready for a Hollywood Fucking Party.

  I walked back up to the valet stand and the entrance to the party. The valets were busy parking people’s expensive cars, and there was a beefy doorman standing in front of a little stone alcove and, surprise surprise, another gate. This one was modest and little and only stood two, maybe three feet tall. Something that anyone, anywhere would have as the official entrance to a yard or courtyard area outside a front door. It was painted black and looked to be made of steel, but it was Nick Blankenship’s version of a white picket fence. I already liked him, now I liked him more.

  He had a reasonable freaking gate.

  I barely looked at the doorman, just began walking right by him. He got in my way and said, “Excuse me. Are you on the list?”

  “Do I need to be?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m in the band.”

  “Nick’s band?”

  “No, my band, that Nick’s in.”

  The guy looked at me like: Maybe.

  “I’m Freddy Wheeler. Dude. Move.”

  He slowly stepped aside. I pulled a fifty out of my wallet and handed it to him and laughed. “You’re just doing your job, I get it.”

  I walked in. Amazing how easy it is. If you’re ever in L.A. and you need to get into a party, try it. You can say almost anything. I’ve said I was Peter Fonda, Alexander Payne, Thom Yorke. Occasionally I get caught. Mostly I don’t. By the way, Thom with an H. Not great.

  I walked through the courtyard, through the front door, then into the party. Another amazing house in the Hills. There are so many of them. It was decorated in an unfortunate style. Minimalist, Philippe Starck–type junk. A rock star who knew how to write music but didn’t know what to do with a house. All white and black. Leather and chrome everywhere. Some bad, expensive art. You know? You know.

  Good party though. Attractive people everywhere, loud music, a wild feel. I walked out back. Big, well-manicured yard with a view into a deeper section of the canyon. Pretty trees and flowers. And, of course, a big old pool. At this level, you had to have a big old pool. Blankenship had hired some beautiful women, beautiful topless women, to swim around the pool dressed as mermaids. They would get out, sit on the edge, dive back in, frolic around. I watched them for a long, long time. I just couldn’t help it. I like mermaids. I really do.

  As I watched the mermaids, I was popping back and forth to the bar. Yes, they had Bud and Coors Light. Rock stars know how to drink. They don’t know how to decorate their houses sometimes, but they know how to drink. I was starting to catch a buzz. I was starting to feel like I’d really been invited to this party. Shit, I was starting to have fun.

  Then: I saw Neese appear at the outside bar that I’d been hitting. I peeled myself away from the mermaids and walked over.

  “How’s it going?”

  He looked at me. “Good, man, you?”

  “Good. Just looking at the mermaids. I’m going to go back to looking at the mermaids after I get another drink.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” he said, on autopilot.

  “I’m John,” I said.

  “Richard.”

  “So, you know Nick?”

  “Yeah. Old friend.”

  “Cool.” Long, awkward pause. “So what do you do?”

  He looked at me. A little suspicion, a little disgust. “I smoke grass at Hollywood parties.”

  “Yeah? It would be nice to do that, then look at the mermaids some more.”

  No reaction. “Well, why don’t
you come with me, John.”

  I grabbed another Coors Light and followed Richard through the party. We weaved around past the pool, then went into the pool house, which sat directly across the pool from the main house. Then: Down some stairs into a basement that had been designed, it appeared to me, specifically for one purpose. TO SMOKE A TON OF WEED IN.

  This room Nick Blankenship could handle. There were beads hanging. Big leather chairs. Big colorful carpets. A massive wall-sized black and white photograph of Led Zepp performing live. And the acoustics. The acoustics. The room had been created to blast loud music in. I loved it down here. The music playing now, the music blasting now: The Guess Who. “Laughing.” Nick was a modern rocker with an appreciation for good songwriting.

  Nick wasn’t around, but there were a few other grass smokers in the room, some musician types. Skinny jeans. Skinny bodies. Dyed black hair. And, of course, some attractive ladies fluttering about.

  We stood in a circle in the middle of the room. Five of us. Me, Neese, two other guys, one girl. Neese produced a joint and fired it up. We all started taking hits, making random small talk.

  A guy said: “I needed this.”

  Another guy said: “See you all tomorrow.”

  Laughter from the crowd.

  The girl said to me, “Are you a musician?”

  I said, “No. I’m a karate instructor.”

  Everyone seemed to think that was funny. Except for Neese. His smile was big, but it was totally full of suspicion.

  Let me tell you something: The weed that’s out there these days is strong. With all these dispensaries and people racing to get your business legally, it has made the weed potent. Potent. I was really high. I was on another planet. I mean, it looked like the guy next to me was wearing a black mesh tank top and blue eyeliner. Wait, that was actually true. But I was having a tough time remembering my act, remembering why I was there. What my plans were to get more information. Instead I was just smiling and saying to the new beautiful waif next to me: “This song is fucking great.”

  And it was. But, you know, keep your eye on the prize, Darvelle. Somebody in our ever-shifting circle produced a fresh, just-cracked half gallon of Jack Daniel’s and passed it around. I know, I know, the case, but it looked good. I took a big, burning swig and then out of nowhere, surprising myself, I yelled: “Yeeeeeees!”

  I positioned myself next to Neese and focused. Focused hard. Brought myself back down, which, with practice, you can do. “So what do you do besides smoking weed at Hollywood parties?”

  With that suspicious smile: “Why are you so curious about what I do?”

  With a confident frown I said, “Aren’t you curious about what people do? Let me tell you, I don’t care if you’re a big Hollywood producer or a carpenter or a karate instructor like me, I just like talking to people about what they do. It’s interesting to me how someone decides to spend their time on the planet.”

  “Yeah,” Neese said, buying it. “That makes sense.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “Mostly real estate. That’s how I made most of my money. Flipping houses at first, then building them and selling them. Nowadays, I invest my money in places I think it’ll grow.”

  “Cool,” was all I could come up with.

  Then a kind of intensity fell over him. I looked at him. And the weed in my brain made his inner person, his inner person that he tried to hide, appear before my eyes. This man was bad. I could see it in his black eyes.

  He took a big hit off the joint and said, “You’re not a karate instructor.”

  “Oh, but I am,” I said. And then I screamed, screamed, “Hi-ya!”

  The room looked over and gave me a round of applause. It was getting nutty down here. Wild. Trippy.

  Neese said, “So if I took a swing at you out of nowhere you’d be able to deal with it?”

  I looked right at him. “Yes. For sure.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I think I was as high as I’d ever been. The weed was adding to, was twisting into a new shape, my picture of Neese. This man had black eyes, yes, but he had a black heart too. I could see it. I could see it through his chest. A black heart pumping in his body sending purple-black blood to his veins. He couldn’t hide it from me in this moment. He was a bad guy and I was going to find out just exactly how bad.

  Richard Neese was my story.

  I thought he might go for it, take his shot, but instead he gave me his shitty smile and turned away from me, offering the joint to one of the girls, and offering me his back. He then drifted farther into the room, mixing in with the smoke and the loud music and the wild-eyed, whacked-out crowd.

  I said to no one in particular, “I’m going to go look at the mermaids.”

  I left the basement. I went back upstairs. I went to the bar and did another shot of Jack, and drank a Coors Light. I took a breath. Calmed down. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do now. And not just because I was unbelievably high and now pretty damn drunk.

  So I just started to enjoy the party.

  I don’t get invited to these things much, occasionally with Gary Delmore, so why not, right? I checked out the mermaids again. This time, I sat in a poolside lounge chair and quietly observed them, my eyes opening and closing slowly, on the verge of some kind of dope-induced sleep. In my dreamlike, bent state of mind, they appeared, for flashes, to be actual mermaids. I watched them slithering in and out of the water, gliding through the pool, sitting on the edge, the water dripping down their naked bodies. One of them, posing and pensive, looked over at me, held me for a moment with her eyes, then gracefully reentered the water and vanished. I said out loud, involuntarily, “Come back.”

  All right, it was time to move on. I got up, drank a couple more beers. Chatted with some partygoers.

  And let the time start to slide by.

  I made my way to a dance room inside the house. I looked at my watch. Shit, it was midnight now. In the room, it was dark with flashing strobe lights. And the music was loud, and no more Guess Who. It was deejayed techno, dance, pop, hip-hop, whatever. One of the rockers from downstairs in the Weed Room appeared in front of me holding up the Jack bottle and smiling maniacally. One of the skinny guys in the skinny jeans. I hit it again, then hit it again, then hit the dance floor. Moved my way into a throng of Hollywood Hipsters. I was feeling good. I was feeling great. The case was lingering in my head, but really I was loose, lanky, free, feeling it. I was dancing with a beautiful girl, a sexy blonde.

  She said to me, “I like your shirt.”

  But I didn’t answer. I just kept busting out moves. Moves I didn’t know I had. And I’m not talking about the Robot and the Lawn Mover. I’m talking way, way more advanced. I was popping my head back and forth to the beat. I was moving my shoulders. I was moving my hands around in front of my face in intricate, nonsensical patterns. I shook. I jived. I shived. I stood on one leg and just shook the other one as hard as I could. I caught a glimpse of the blonde looking at me with an almost concerned expression.

  Then: I found myself in a corner, I’d lost the blonde, and I was simply doing deep knee bends over and over facing the wall.

  I had lost my mind.

  I spun around and the blonde appeared again, right in front of me. She was right up in my face. I grabbed the back of her head and kissed her. Softly. For a long, long time. Her mouth tasted like Jack Daniel’s. Her mouth tasted like heaven.

  She looked at me. Then she came at me and put her face right in my face, ready for more. I kissed her again.

  Then, over the music, she kind of screamed, “Who do you know here?”

  What a terrible question. I didn’t answer. I just moved back to the center of the dance floor, leaving her in the flashing, strobing darkness. My moves turned more hippy-dippy. I had my eyes closed and was rolling my head around in circles. I had crazy thoughts ramming around in my mind. Visions from the case I was pursuing. I tracked it in my head from beginning to now. Every step of the way as my
head went round and round. It calmed me down, brought me back to the planet.

  I was ready to leave the dance floor. So I did that thing where you head off a dance floor, and at first you’re still dancing, and then you move into kind of a half dance as you get closer to the edge of the dance floor. Then, when you get to the edge you’re kind of barely dancing, but you still are pulling moves just a little bit. You’re doing like a dance walk. And then suddenly you are just walking. It’s an odd thing, that move. It’s a really horrible thing to witness someone do.

  I was thinking about it, now just off the dance floor, now just walking like a normal person. When a large man in a black suit appeared in front of me. I tried to squeeze by him, but he intentionally moved in front of me.

  I felt something coming.

  That something was his fist. He took a big, but quick, swing at me. I blocked it, twisted his arm around, struck him once in the kidney, then tripped him and slammed his face into the hard wood of the floor. I put my knee in the middle of his back. Hard. Some of the dancers noticed and looked over. Some didn’t. I looked around, one way, then another. And I caught Neese in the next room by himself, looking right at me.

  I was looking at Neese when a fist popped me in the side of the head.

  “Owwww,” I said, as I went down. I tried to hang on to the position I had on the first guy but just couldn’t.

  The guy who hit me, Black Suit Number Two, helped the first guy up. Through the haze of the booze, weed, and the fist to my head, I recognized Black Suit Number Two as the guy I’d initially bullshitted to get in. I pointed at him nonsensically. And then a third dude in a black suit appeared. I stood up. Now guys One, Two, and Three were standing in front of me.

  The first guy, the one I had taken down, looked at me, furious. The two other guys stared at me. They wanted me to come at them. And I wanted to. I really did.

  But this wasn’t the time to put all my chips in. To go for it.

  Black Suit Number Two said to me, “You need to leave. You weren’t invited to this party.”