“Give me a few minutes to find a pay phone.” I hung up.
“What’s going on?” Terry said.
“Family shit,” I said. “I need to call my father from a secure phone.”
Terry gunned the Lexus, pulled into the left lane and smoked past traffic with the dashboard gumball strobing red. Three minutes later, we barreled up an off-ramp and came screeching to a stop at a sleepy little Mobil station like it was the final pit stop at the Indy 500.
“I love that I can get away with doing that,” Terry said. “There’s a phone. I’ll go piss.”
I dialed Big Jim. “Thank you for using Golden State Communications,” the automated voice said, after I had punched in my AT&T Calling Card number.
Fuck. It was one of those anonymous long-distance carriers that charge you whatever-the-hell-they-can-get-away-with per minute. I knew I could bypass it, but I didn’t have the patience to dial thirty-two more digits, so I bit the bullet. Another reason to be pissed at my kid brother.
Jim picked up on the first ring. “Thanks for calling back.”
“Talk fast, because I’m calling from 1-800-RIPOFF.”
“As you know, your brother has been trying to get his gambling problem under control. He went to some of those twelve-step meetings, and he hasn’t been to the track or bet on sports for six months.”
“That’s old news. Drop the other shoe.”
“He’s taken up investing in the stock market,” Jim said.
“Yeah, I noticed he switched from the Racing Form to the Wall Street Journal. It’s an expensive habit, but at least it’s legal.”
“It is, unless you’re using OPM.”
More initials. But this one everybody knows. Other People’s Money. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said. “But isn’t one supposed to be licensed to use OPM when you buy and sell stocks?”
“Theoretically,” Jim said.
There was knock on the phone booth door. It was Terry with two cans of Pepsi. He popped the top on one, passed it inside, and walked off. I took a swig. It was cold and sweet and felt good. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Frankie is investing other people’s money without a license.”
“I’m not at liberty to corroborate that,” he said.
“Don’t bother, I’m a detective. And I assume if he were making money hand over fist for his clients, he would look and smell prosperous, which is not how he looked or smelled last night.”
“I’m not at liberty to corroborate that, either,” he said.
“And knowing him, if he were losing OPM, he would want to make it all back in one night. So he fell down the entire flight of twelve steps, drove to Vegas, and came home in deeper shit than when he left. And please don’t say corroborate again. Talk like a truck driver.”
“Okay, I’d say he smelled like deep shit last night.”
“That stupid fuck,” I said.
“That I can corroborate,” Jim said.
“Listen, I hate doing this on a pay phone,” I said, taking three long swallows of the Pepsi, “but as pissed off as I am personally, I need to ask a professional question. Did someone really put out a contract on him?”
“The boy has a tendency to be overly dramatic,” Jim said. “But yeah, this time I think he’s not kidding.”
“Who?”
“He won’t say.”
“Why not? Because maybe you and I could help? How about if I come over and beat it out of him,” I said, draining the last of the Pepsi.
“For now, I don’t want you doing anything,” Jim said. “If you replay this conversation in your mind, you’ll note that I told you nothing of substance except that our friend plays the market and is indeed a stupid fuck. Everything else is conjecture on your part.”
“So that if I had to testify about what I know for sure, I could do it without perjuring myself.”
“That’s every father’s dream for his son,” he said.
“Dad, I gotta go. Terry and I are up to our nuts in dead rabbit. By the way, thanks again for last night. You were very helpful.”
“You’re welcome. Speaking of which, is there a reward for the kind of insight and detailed information I provided you with?”
“Not for blood relatives of a cop on the case. Why do you ask? Last night, the information was free.”
“I suddenly find myself faced with some unexpected expenses.”
“How much do you suddenly find yourself needing?” I asked.
“More than I got. More than I spent to save his ass a year ago, and ten times as much as I spent two years before that. Your brother’s getting to be an expensive habit.”
“I don’t have time to talk about it now. I’ll swing by the house tonight.”
“Don’t come,” he said.
“Why the hell not?” I asked.
“Because I’m still basking in the glow of your presence from last night.”
“Bullshit.”
“I don’t want you here. You’re busy trying to solve a homicide.”
“Dad, that is not a factor. I’m coming.”
“James Michael Lomax, Jr.,” he said, calling me by my real name, the one I never used. Most kids are proud to share their father’s name. Growing up, a lot of my friends were Juniors. But when your Dad is called Big Jim, they don’t call you Jim, Jr. They call you Little Jim. That I couldn’t handle. So on my eighth birthday, I announced that I had given up my given name, and from that day forward I would only respond to my middle name.
Big Jim was furious. He didn’t show up for my birthday party, and he didn’t talk to me for what seemed like months. Finally, he blinked. One day at breakfast he simply said, “Morning, Mike.” I’ve been Mike Lomax ever since. The only person who ever used my real name was my mother. She would save it for those rare occasions when she was really pissed at me. This was the first time Big Jim had used it on me. I answered him. “Yes, Mother,” I said.
“I’m telling you, don’t come. Because if you see what I do to your fucking kid brother, you’ll be forced to arrest me for child abuse.”
“Fine, I won’t come,” I said, crushing the soda can in defeat.
“I knew you’d see it my way. Goodbye.”
I hung up, flung the empty Pepsi can at a trash basket and missed. I walked over to Terry’s car. He was sitting behind the wheel reading a book.
“Sorry,” I said. “Ever since my Mom died, Dad’s been having a rough time raising young Frankie.”
He nodded his head with a father’s wisdom. “Shoulda taken him to Familyland a couple of times when he was a kid.“
CHAPTER 26
I would have lost the bet. Amy was there when we arrived. We met in Curry’s office on the second floor of what Terry now referred to as The Fucking Duck Building. The furniture was functional, without a hint of Hollywood chic, and the room itself was neat, sparse actually.
On his desk was a silver picture frame, hinged in the middle. On one side was an older couple, obviously his parents. Mom held a cane in her right hand, while her left hand interlaced fingers with her husband, who was the spitting image of Curry. Side two was a picture of Curry on a ski slope with an attractive woman and two young kids. “That was taken a few years ago,” he said. when he caught me looking at it. “The kids are ten and twelve now.”
The one other personal item was an aging football with faded autographs. It sat on a bookshelf filled with three-ring binders, security videocassettes and other official Lamaar business. The room was a far cry from Kilcullen’s Tribute-to-Myself Office. Curry was either a very private person or too modest to bombard strangers with a photomontage of his career.
“I hope this visit means you have good news,” Curry said. as he grabbed four bottles of Perrier from a small black refrigerator and passed them around.
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “Eddie Elkins is a convicted pedophile. He has a sex offender record as long as your arm. It goes back twenty years.”
Amy almost spit out her designer water. “Oh G
od! We hired a pedophile?” She smashed her Perrier down on an end table. Sparkling water erupted, but the bottle itself remained intact, as if the French had designed it for a nation of hot-blooded bottle-bangers. “Who else knows about this?”
“The cops working on the case and you two,” I said.
“Brian, how could this happen?” Amy barked at her Head of Security.
“I don’t know, but it’s a damn good question to be asking Steve.” He turned to me and Terry. “Steve Darien is Head of HR. His department does a thorough background check on every single job applicant. I don’t know how Elkins could have slipped through.”
“Well, you better find out,” Amy said. “Because that’s the first question Ike Rose is going to ask you. The second question will be how many other perverts have we hired to wander around the park stalking children.”
Curry took the high road. He ignored her. “If Elkins was a pedophile,” he said to me and Terry, “maybe somebody from his past killed him.”
“We’re looking into that,” Terry said. “But it’s still possible that the real target is Lamaar. We have a theory that the finger in the flipbook may not mean ‘up yours.’ It could mean ‘This is Number One. More killings to follow.’ We think you should beef up security and warn your people to be on the lookout for…”
“We are not warning our people to be on the lookout for anything,” Amy said springing up from the sofa. “If you want to see widespread panic, just tell those wannabe actors that someone wants to strangle them with a jump rope. They will exit Stage Right faster than you can say Rambunctious Rabbit.”
“It’s your call, Ms. Cheever,” Terry said.
“It’s my call, Detective,” Brian said, turning back to Amy to see if she had a problem with that. “I’ll beef up security, but I’ll do it quietly. I’m not sending a memo to the troops about a killer running around loose. Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Terry said. “We heard you’re going into business with the Leone family in Las Vegas. How did a company that wants to protect the children from the details of Eddie Elkins’s murder get mixed up with a bunch of scumbags who are four generations deep into organized crime?”
If Terry was hoping to throw Amy into another rant, he missed by a mile. She just waved her hand at him and sat back down on the sofa. “Oh, please, Detective, don’t be so naïve. It’s okay for Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, American Airlines and the rest of the Fortune 500 to do business with the Vegas casinos, but Lamaar can’t? And the people who run the casinos are organized criminals, but the people who run the oil companies, the pharmaceutical firms, or the tobacco industry are what? Saints? Lamaar is a publicly held company. Las Vegas is a major profit opportunity. We owe it to our stockholders to be there.”
“Nicely put, Ms. Cheever. Although it sounds like you’ve delivered that little speech before,” Terry said.
“I’ve been asked the same dumb question before.”
“I may be dumb, but I know the difference between white-collar crooks at Enron and the Mafia. The Fortune 500 tends to resolve their business conflicts with lawsuits, not homicide.”
She stood up again, ready to square off. “Detective, we don’t have any business conflicts with the Camelot organization or any of its principals. And if we did, I can assure you they would not sneak down into a tunnel and strangle one of our employees to resolve it. You’re fishing in a dry hole, so unless you have something of substance to ask, this area of questioning is closed.”
“We’d like to take another look around the park,” Terry said. “We’ll need an all-access pass so we can roam around at will.”
“What do you mean roam around?” Amy asked. “Where?”
I expected Terry to come back with, “Anywhere we fucking please, bitch.” But Brian stood up first. “Amy,” he said, “they’re investigating a murder. And whether we like it or not, we cooperate. Anything short of that is an obstruction of justice. Detectives, I’ll be glad to give you access, but it will have to be with an escort from my department.”
“No problem,” Terry said.
“I’ll escort them,” Amy said.
Terry smiled at her. “That’s very generous, Ms. Cheever, but you’re a busy executive. We don’t want to interrupt whatever you have planned.”
“Detective, our CEO Ike Rose called me from Singapore last night. From now until the time we—you—find this killer, whatever I have planned doesn’t matter. This is my first priority.”
“Then we finally have something in common,” Terry said.
“One more thing,” Curry said. “Did you track down Elkins’s sister?”
“We ran that Baltimore number you gave me,” I said. “It’s a pay phone at the airport.”
“You’re telling me the victim didn’t have a family?” Curry said.
“No,” I said. “The victim mostly had victims.”
Curry picked up the phone and dialed a four-digit number. “Lily,” he said, “tell Darien I need to see him right away. No, it can’t wait. Interrupt the meeting and tell him Buddy Longo is on the phone.”
Curry looked up at us. “Buddy Longo is company code for ‘Serious Problem.’ Sort of like yelling ‘Hey Rube’ in the…” He went back to the phone. “Steve, how fast can you clear out your office? Great, I’ll be there in a minute.”
He turned to us. “Gentlemen, Amy will now give you the VIP tour.”
“Should we walk?” she asked. “It’s a lot less conspicuous than riding around on a golf cart.”
“Good idea,” Terry said. “Two guys wearing jackets, ties and shoulder holsters…We’ll blend right in.”
We opted to lose the ties and walk.
If you have to investigate a homicide, there’s no more pleasant place to do it than Familyland. The sun was shining, bouncy music was emanating from invisible speakers, and the air was filled with the sweet smell of cotton candy and other midway junk food.
I remember the first time Joanie and I went there together. “I like it better than Disneyland,” she said. “I don’t know why. They both have rides and cartoon characters running around, but there’s something about Familyland I just love.”
“Shorter lines,” I said. “It’s not as popular.”
“Maybe it’s the soft colors,” she said. “Lamaar uses a lot of pastels.”
She never did figure it out.
“There’s a difference between Familyland and Disneyland,” I said to Amy, as we retraced Elkins’s final tour of the park, “but I’m not sure what it is.”
“Thank you for noticing that there is one,” she said. “Not everyone does. It’s all about intent. Disney built a place for people to escape to. Dean Lamaar wanted to create a place for people to come home to. A family place. The differences are all over the park, but they’re subtle.”
“Like the pastel colors,” I said.
“Very perceptive,” she said. “I guess that’s why you’re a detective.”
We started at the main gate and walked along Fantasy Avenue. Gift shops dominated the front of the park, but they were relatively empty.
“People don’t buy much early in the day,” Amy said. “But they can’t get out of the park without going past these stores again. That’s when the Mommy-Buy-Me madness begins.”
When we got to Friendship Square a fat man stopped Amy and asked if she would take a picture. “Me and my wife by the statue,” he said.
The man, who had a hot dog in one hand and a mammoth soft drink in the other, shoveled the entire frank into his moonface so he could free up one hand and pull out his disposable Kodak.
Chomping noisily and dribbling brown juices down his chin, he edged Amy over to a bronze statue of Dean Lamaar and Rambunctious Rabbit. The plaque at the base said, Dean Lamaar, October 15, 1924—May 21, 2002. He Lives On in the Hearts of Children Everywhere.
Amy took the picture of the man and his even fatter wife and we moved on to The Rock Quarry. The RQ was a huge amphitheater that looked from the outside like a prehistoric c
ave dwelling. But inside were laser light shows, virtual reality rides, and loud, obnoxious hip-hop that could melt your fillings.
“The characters don’t like this place,” Amy said. “It’s where a lot of teenagers gravitate. At that age they no longer think the characters are cute and cuddly. So they harass them.”
We moved through the Quarry and hopped a ride on the Easy Street Trolley. Ten minutes later we arrived at the Tyke Town Arch.
“This is where the little kids are,” Amy said.
The overriding sounds were the squeals and happy hollers of kids who were six, five, four, and younger. About fifty feet from where we stood was a character, some sort of frog or green lizard, holding a small child in his arms and posing for a picture that the Dad was taking.
“And I’ll bet this is where Elkins liked to hang out,” Terry said.
“Anyone who knew Elkins was a sex offender might have been stalking him here,” I said. “How many surveillance cameras do you have in the park?”
“Close to a thousand, and our insurance carriers want us to add more,” Amy said. “The good news is that almost everything that happens in Familyland is recorded and burned onto a DVD. The bad news is it would take one person about two years to screen one day’s worth of DVDs.”
“We’ll put more than one person on it and they’ll be watching it at high speed. Let’s get everything that was shot on Elkins’s last stroll through the park in this area on Sunday,” I said. “Especially anything shot here in Tyke Town.”
“I’ll talk to Brian. We’ll get them for you.” She shook her head. “How did a man like Elkins…” She bit her lip. “Excuse me, I need a ladies room.”
We walked to a rest area and Terry and I went into the men’s room. Half a dozen guys were staring at the white wall, taking care of business.
Wherever you go in Familyland you’re greeted by an automated voice. “Welcome to Fantasy World; Welcome to Global Village.” Then it gives you the dos and don’ts of the attraction. It’s supposed to be friendly, but it’s pretty damn cold and annoying.
Terry and I stepped up to a pair of urinals. Then, in his best pre-recorded robotic voice, he said out loud, “Welcome to Urinal World. Please remove your dick from its holster. Please keep your hands inside your pants at all times. If you have any difficulty, an attendant will be glad to assist you. Thank you for urinating at Familyland. Don’t forget to flush. Have a nice day.”
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