The Detective & The Pipe Girl: A Mystery

by Michael Craven

  Right now? Four-thirty on a Wednesday. The sun starting to set. The air starting to cool. That orange glow starting to appear above the ocean. That purplish-pink look to the sand.

  The beachside parking lot I pulled into was pretty empty. A few surfers in the break gliding around on waves, a few surfers in the lot changing into board shorts or back into street clothes.

  And me sitting in my Cobalt trying to figure out what to make of all this stuff.

  I thought: Maybe it would ease my mind to get out in the ocean. From inside the Cobalt, it looked so refreshing, rejuvenating, cleansing. There was a surfboard rental shack in front of me and to the left. And I had a bathing suit in my trunk. I got out, got the suit, got back in my car. Then I took my pants, shoes, socks, and underwear off, about to put my bathing suit on. For a few seconds I was the guy in the public beach parking lot with a shirt on and no pants, sitting in his car looking down at his dick. Yep, to anyone else I was a twisted pervert sitting in a shitty little car half naked. I thought: Jeez. I should start furiously masturbating just to fully complete the story. Don’t worry, I didn’t do it. Instead, I quickly put my suit on, got out, walked over to the surfboard rental shack. Then rented what the tan, probably high guy told me was a “fun shape” board. Paid, went back to my car, hid my keys, removed my shirt, walked down to the break.

  I had surfed a couple times in my days in L.A., could paddle the board, could sit on it out in the water like you see people do. Could I actually ride a wave? Not really. I waited for a lull in the waves and plunged in. Man, cold. But I was right. After a minute, it felt amazing. It really did. I paddled out to where some of the other surfers were.

  A few waves came rolling in. Excitement shot through me as they moved toward me. I turned the board toward the shore and paddled as hard as I possibly could. The waves just seemed to rise and fall underneath me and then go away toward shore. Usually with a surfer on them making it look so annoyingly easy.

  And then: A big one. I was going to catch this if it killed me. Now, right now, it was on top of me. I didn’t really have to paddle this time. This one just took me. I was now going what felt like a million miles an hour down the face of a moving monster. For a second, for one second, I felt a freedom I’ve never felt before. Okay, Darvelle, time to hop up on your feet. I sprang up. And then I defied, I think, the laws of physics. I was instantly thrown forward. The board went one way, I went the other. Then I started half somersaulting, half cartwheeling across the face of this wave. I was a disaster in a bathing suit. And then, whoaaaaaaa. I went way up, then way down. Thump. On the ocean floor. I literally didn’t know which way was up. I’d been under for a few seconds, it felt like a few years, when I started spastically writhing and struggling to get to the surface, to get some air. Finally, finally, finally, through no actions of my own I popped up out of the water.

  “Huuuuuuuuuhh,” I gasped, filling my lungs. Holy shit. I was almost at the beach, way in from where I had fallen. I was looking toward the shore, when I instinctively jerked around to look out to sea. My fun shape board was coming at me. Fast. Right for my face. Which it hit. Right above my left eye. I thought I’d known pain in my life. I was wrong.

  Less than ten minutes after I had paddled out I was back in the Cobalt. I had a golf ball on my head now. It was big and I could already see it turning black and purple.

  But something had happened out there. Despite my total inability to ride a wave, something, yes, something was now occurring to me.

  I pulled out my phone and opened the picture of the pyramid on Suzanne Neal’s ankle. And I looked at it. Again, this is it:

  I turned it ninety degrees to the right. Like this:

  And then I began to deconstruct it. And instead of seeing it as one shape, I began to see it as two shapes within one shape. The first one was this:

  It was a P. An abstract P.

  And the second shape was indeed the whole figure, but it was in my mind one part of two. It was still this:

  Only now I realized that the top right line, the one that goes from the very top of the figure down and to the right to connect with the horizontal line, doesn’t actually connect with the horizontal line. It almost does, but it doesn’t. And so this figure was a G. An abstract G.

  PG.

  Pipe Girl. I thought: Oh man, really? Was that crazy story Marlon the Marlin told me true? Or am I making this up, am I seeing this P and this G because I want it to be true? Am I turning this stupid pyramid into something that’s not really there?

  And that’s when I realized my surfing injury had rattled loose something else, another thought that had been in my head waiting, I think, for me to find it.

  I cranked up the Cobalt and drove up the 5 to the 405 to the Mulholland exit to Neese’s house. And I sat there looking at his horrible gate. The one I’d looked at so many times. With the crisscrossy metal copper design. And in that design, hidden amid all the other horizontal and vertical lines, was the same pyramid a dead Suzanne Neal had on her ankle.

  24

  So the pyramid was in Neese’s fence, right in plain sight—if you looked really closely. But, right now, it wasn’t Neese who I wanted to talk to. I needed someone weaker. So it was back over to the Sades, to Jimmy Yates’s place. Without much waiting at all, Jimmy’s SUV pulled out of his gate. He wasn’t in the same SUV as the last time I tailed him. Now he was in one of those boxy, silver, war-style Mercedes SUVs.

  What a joke.

  He started heading down Sunset, toward Hollywood. I figured, here we go, back to go get another goddamn smoothie. But nope. It wasn’t smoothie time. It looked like he was going to Riviera Country Club. A really beautiful and challenging golf course spread out right in the Sades. A private club, but also the location of the L.A. Open.

  Yep, Riviera. He pulled onto the property. I did too. The lot was pretty full—good. Jimmy maneuvered the top-heavy, boxy Merc into a spot between two cars—a tight squeeze. I quickly grabbed an end spot in a different row, away from him.

  Out of the Cobalt and over to Jimmy’s spot, fast. He was awkwardly getting out of his ridiculous SUV, pinned in a bit by the Lexus next to him. He slid out, then shut the door and turned around.

  Turned around to face me. Right in his face.

  “Hi, Jimmy, remember me?”

  It was tight between the two cars. We were stuck in a little claustrophobic alley. And his tall, boxy car blocked us from the activity of the club. Perfect. And, shit, I just remembered, I had a big black bump on my head so I probably looked really crazy. Perfect-er.

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “Get out of my way.”

  “You’re going to talk to me, Jimmy. Right now. And you’re going to tell me more than you did last time.”

  “Actually right now I’m going to call the cops.”

  He produced his iPhone. You know, those phones that you can’t type on or make calls on? I snatched it away.

  “Give that back to me.”

  “Suzanne Neal was a Pipe Girl. You know that term? I think you do.”

  “I told you this the last time you stalked me, bud. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Next up, I’m going to Neese. The modern-day pimp. We’ll see what Neese has to say about me knowing about you using his service.”

  “Do whatever you want, whoever that is.”

  And then he started screaming. It was actually a smart move.

  He screamed, “Hey! This asshole . . .”

  I grabbed his arm, yanked him toward me, twisted it, twisted his body around, and put him on the ground. Put his face in the cement. He had a good view of the undercarriage of his horrible SUV. I was wrenching his arm in a very painful way. I was just about to break it. This poor fuck was in agony.

  “Stop screaming,” I said.

  He did. He was absolutely silent.

  “You need to help me out, Jimmy. Suzanne was a pro, I know that. Neese was her pimp, I know that too. And you were using her. Right?”

  I re
leased some pressure. He looked back at me wild-eyed, hysterical.

  “I could have you fucking killed,” he whisper-screamed.

  “Really,” I said. “I could kill you right now.”

  I tweaked his arm and I could see tears sprout in his eyes.

  He didn’t say anything. This asshole was starting to impress me. Or maybe it was just Neese had told all these guys exactly how to behave. And they were terrified to disobey him. But I had a Plan B. Now, pressuring, bullying, kicking the shit out of someone to tell you something doesn’t always work. That is for sure. But the times it does work is when you can really zero in what it is that person has to lose. Usually, that’s family, friends, money. But I had a special case on my hands here. I had a star. This guy had the world kissing his ass day and night. He was on top. And, ask anybody, these guys will do anything, literally anything, to protect that. They’ll protect it more viscerally than they’d protect their own family. Sad, but was I pretty sure of it.

  “Jimmy. I have a friend named Jose Villareal. Works for the rags. I’m giving him this story right now. I’m telling him that you used Richard Neese’s service to hire a prostitute and now she’s dead. I don’t even know the whole story yet, but I’m going to give it to him prematurely, because I know you’re involved. I know for sure. It’s going to ruin my case, but you know what else it’s going to ruin? Your life. But it’s worth it to me because Suzanne Neal is a corpse, and you don’t give a shit. So, say good-bye to your perfect image.”

  It took him less than a second to say, “Don’t do that.”

  “Then give me some information.”

  He took a deep breath. I released the pressure on his arm a little bit.

  Jimmy Yates said, “I have never spoken about this to anyone. Yes, I used Richard’s service. Okay. But that’s all I know. Okay, I swear. Suzanne was who I got. That’s who Richard gave me. She was really special actually.”

  Time to test him. “So you used a pro. Weren’t you worried that she would talk? Or bribe you somehow?”

  “That’s the deal with Richard. The girls don’t talk. And I’ll tell you this: She never did. Never. Suzanne never said a word about it to anyone. Truth is, the only reason you even know about all this is because I got careless that day you caught me. I . . . I . . . I couldn’t . . . I got . . . I got careless.”

  I looked at him, with half his face stuck to the cement. He hated, hated me having him in this position. I could see the disgust in his face. That some random P.I., that some civilian, was forcing him to say something he didn’t want to say. He thought he was so special. His face simply betrayed it. He disgusted me.

  “How did Neese make sure the girls didn’t talk?”

  With just the slightest letup on his arm he was already getting cocky again. “Dude. I don’t know. Paid them well? Who the fuck knows? He just said, ‘Trust me.’ And he was right.”

  I grabbed the short hairs of his head, right above the back of his neck, and gave them a quick, hard twist. He shrieked.

  “You were there the day she got killed, Jimmy. I don’t know what you told the cops when they contacted you. I guess you lied to them and told them you didn’t even know her. But you were there the day she got killed. So you know something about why she got killed. Either that or you killed her.”

  I yanked his arm.

  “I didn’t kill her. Jesus, how is this happening? Look, man, she told me she was going to quit. Does that help you?”

  I just looked at him. And I thought: Hmm. Maybe that does help me. I let up on his arm a bit.

  “How did you meet Richard Neese?”

  Jimmy looked back at me, but I could see he was looking sort of behind me. I turned around to see a security guard looking at us, angling his head to see us better, approaching from about twenty feet away.

  “Everything all right back here? Jimmy, that you?”

  I let go of Jimmy’s arm, then helped him up. We both stood looking at the guard, who was now just beyond Jimmy’s SUV and the Lexus.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “This gentleman, well, let’s be honest, Jimmy Yates, tripped getting out of his car. And I came over to help.”

  The security guard grabbed his walkie and said, “Backup. South parking lot. Silver Mercedes SUV. Just beyond the sidewalk to the pro shop.”

  Guess Mr. Security Guard read the situation right. Not bad. Or maybe he saw in Jimmy’s eyes that he was in pain, and wanted to kill me.

  But Jimmy didn’t say anything. He was frozen. Still paralyzed over whether or not I was going to the rags.

  I said, “Well, while the backup comes I think I’m going to leave. Excuse me.”

  I began walking out of the little alley. The security guard stepped forward and got in my way, trapping me. This was not good. I had just gotten some info, I wanted out of there. Jimmy was frozen. Not sure whether to help me or say nothing.

  This is what’s known as a jam.

  So: I made a move for the security guy’s throat. He went to block me with both hands. Bad move. Rookie move. I grabbed his gun out of its holster, cocked it, and pointed it at his face. He got really, really scared.

  “Get out of my way.”

  He backed up. His heart in his throat. I walked out. Walked over and got in the Cobalt. Then pulled it around to Jimmy’s car, where he and the security guard now stood. I got back out of the Cobalt, walked over, and handed the security guy his gun back. Then I looked at Jimmy and said, “I know you’re a good actor, but you better not be lying.”

  Back in the Cobalt and out of there.

  25

  Folks, I now knew some stuff. But I also didn’t know some stuff. I was pretty convinced that Neese ran a prostitution ring with a high-concept twist, but I didn’t have anything on the murder. Neese popped Suzanne because she broke the rule and talked? Maybe. But maybe not. There was also Jimmy Yates. And the dude on her balcony the night she got killed. And the information that Jimmy had passed on—that Suzanne had told him she was going to quit.

  There was more to know, plain and simple. There were more possibilities. And if I wasn’t careful here, it could all go away. Like Marlon the Marlin said. I go to the cops, the cops go to Neese, then everyone lawyers up and shuts up. And maybe we get Neese on some pimp charges, but Suzanne is still dead, and no one goes down.

  I needed to examine some possibilities. I needed to think hard.

  I thought: A hike. In the mountains. Clear my head. Walk and talk. Talk to myself, that is.

  Another real bonus about L.A. You had the beach and the weather and the Hollywood scene if that was your thing. But there were also mountains right there on the coast. And I’m not talking about the various hills where people lived. I’m talking real mountains that were uninhabited and beautiful. With long, steep trails, with real nature, with beautiful trees and—true story—mountain lions. Mountain lions, walking around the hills of Los Angeles. No, not walking. Slinking, poking, sliding around the hills of Los Angeles. Deftly. Mysteriously. Gracefully. I love the big cats.

  I headed toward the range that sat right on the coast. The Santa Monica Mountains. I was already pretty close; they bordered the freaking Sades, for chrissakes.

  I was now entering a more difficult, delicate, and potentially violent section of the case, so I want to tell you about somebody that’s very important in my life. Just a quick aside; it won’t take too long. I want to tell you now, because I was thinking about him at this moment in the story. I think about him, his influence, when the heat gets turned up.

  I grew up in the San Fernando Valley. The Valley, as most people know it. The part of L.A. that gets made fun of. And not because superficial movie stars are walking around bathed in attention and vanity. No. The opposite. Because it’s considered lame. Ordinary. Suburban. Tacky. The stepchild of Los Angeles.

  Truthfully, an unfair stereotype. The Valley has beautiful sections. And I’ll tell you this: It’s grounded in a reality that the rest of L.A. isn’t. It is really, really hot in th
e summer though. Whatever shit it gets for that it deserves.

  My family was normal, from the outside. Mom, Dad, brother. When we were kids, my mom stayed home and took care of me and my brother, and my dad was an accountant for a tire company. A good man. A guy who sat in his chair at night and watched TV and said things to me and my brother, with a vacant but sweet look, like: “Everything okay at school?”

  I loved him. He’s dead now. He had a heart attack. He never seemed particularly stressed or unhealthy but he had a heart attack anyway. As a dad, he was who he was and I got that. And so did my brother. My mother? She was more of the firecracker type. Tough. Downright ruthless sometimes. She had to be, I suppose. To make sure my bro and I turned out okay. I never saw her fight with my father, but I never saw her really connect with him either. But let’s get back to my father. Did we connect? Well, not really. I respected him. So did my brother. He went to work and did what he had to do to make life okay for the rest of us. But, truthfully, he seemed a little paralyzed. Sweet, always sweet and nice. But just a little sad. And not quite there with the rest of us. I don’t know if he wanted to be out there doing other things, pursuing other dreams, or another life altogether. I really don’t know. But if I had to guess I’d say no. It was more like he was just stuck in the wrong universe.