And this is the kid who went on to create Familyland, I thought.
“The mother pulls the boy’s hands out of the fire, but the father throws him down in the coal cellar to spend the night. It’s crawling with mice and bugs. Most kids would curl up and cry themselves to sleep. But Deanie, he’s not going to let the old bastard win. He picks up a hunk of coal and he draws this cartoon character on the wall. It’s a rabbit. A big fucking rambunctious rabbit that can stand up to anybody. Years later, my father would turn that rabbit into a money machine, but that night Dean Lamaar created it with a piece of coal on a cellar wall, and I think it gave him just what he needed. Balls.”
Eeg took another noisy sip of coffee for dramatic effect. “A few weeks later, the preacher climbs a ladder up to the roof to fix some shingles that blew off. Now, remember, he’s a drunk and a gimp. Bam, he loses his balance, falls off the roof and lands on an iron rake. Bleeds to death in a couple of minutes.”
“Where’s the murder part?” I asked.
“Who do you think loosened the shingles from the roof? Who do you think toppled the ladder? Who do you think positioned the rake on the ground? Who do you think watched the old man bleed to death?” Eeg said, raising his voice with every question. “Dean Fucking Lamaar!”
“And how do you know about this murder that allegedly happened some seventy years ago?” I asked.
“Klaus Lebrecht was Lamaar’s camera genius and his best friend. Deanie told him one night when they were both shit-faced and swapping stories about their scumbag fathers. Lebrecht swore he’d never repeat it, but how long does anyone in Hollywood keep a secret? Klaus told my father. My father kept it to himself, even after Lamaar dumped him. He finally told me the day before he committed suicide.”
“So it’s like hearsay four times over,” Falco said.
“Good show business gossip always is.”
“Even if this is true,” I said, “it’s irrelevant. It’s not going to help me solve the three murders I’m working on.”
“Maybe not,” Eeg said. “But maybe you’ll stop looking at the Lamaar Company like it’s an innocent victim. They hide behind all those happy horseshit cartoons, but they’ve been a ruthless, heartless, merciless bunch of cutthroats since Day One.”
He reached down and picked up the two books he had set there. “Read these. They’re biographies of the late, great Dean Lamaar. This is the authorized version, available at finer bookstores everywhere.” He handed me a book.
The title was Deanie, Prince of Joy and Laughter. The jacket had a black-and-white photo of Dean Lamaar that must have been taken back in the fifties. He was in his prime, handsome, well-groomed. And just in case you missed the word Prince in the title, an artist had inked a cartoon crown on his head.
“This was written by one of Lamaar’s sycophants,” Eeg said. “Deanie himself came up with the title and the artwork. It’s the image he wanted to portray to the world. Hollywood’s very own Prince Charming. The benevolent storyteller who made the world a better place.”
“And the other book?” I asked.
“Unauthorized. Difficult to find. It will give you a different perspective on the man and the company that might be helpful in your investigation.”
He handed it to me. The title was The Rabbit Factory. The jacket had the same photo of Dean Lamaar, but now there was a red tint over the black-and-white image of his face, and instead of a crown, the artist had drawn devil’s horns. It was a very effective transformation. He looked menacing and evil.
I looked at the author’s name. D. Tinker. “Where would I find this Mr. Tinker?” I said. “I might want to ask him a few questions.”
“Funny thing about that. The book was written in 1991, but nobody’s ever met this Tinker person before or since. It might not even be a man.”
“True. Funny coincidence that your dog is named Tinker.”
He stroked the Yorkie. “Actually, she’s named after the main drag here in town, Tinker Street. She’s smart, but I can assure you, she didn’t write it.”
“Whoever did must have helped you in your case against Lamaar.”
“Not as much as one would hope.”
“Thanks for all your help,” I said, and I meant it. “One last question. Any thoughts on who’s behind this?”
He leaned back in the chair so that his long, white hair fell against the rust-colored fabric. He looked intelligent, paternal, trustworthy. I could understand why people voted for him. He tented his hands under his chin. “These new developments, killing a guest at the park and making ransom demands, that puts a whole new spin on things. Remember what I said before? That it looks like someone’s got an even bigger grudge against the company than I do. I think someone really hates them. And they’re not just holding Lamaar up for money. It’s like they’re punishing them.”
Punishing them. The thought had never crossed my mind. I was looking for a murderer, a blackmailer. But Eeg was right. Whoever was behind these homicides hated Lamaar to the core.
“And of course, I’m sure you’re taking a good hard look at the Leone family in Vegas,” he said.
I wasn’t taking a hard look. Ike Rose had specifically told us not to waste our energy thinking about the Vegas connection.
“This Lamaar-Camelot venture,” I said. “What’s your take on it?”
“It makes sense,” Eeg said. “Lamaar needs to have a serious presence in the adult market. If Ike Rose pulls off this Vegas deal, not only will Lamaar’s profits start heading north, but their stock will become the flavor of the month on Wall Street. Rose’s personal holdings alone will be worth half a billion.”
“But you still think I should be taking a hard look at Leone.”
“Yeah, because no matter how good the Camelot deal looks on paper, people connected to Lamaar have been murdered. The company is being squeezed for money. That all sounds like Cosa Nostra shit to me. And the Leone family has had Mafia blood coursing through their veins for hundreds of years. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t eliminate the mob factor.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We haven’t eliminated them.”
Ike Rose may have wanted me to, but once again I was starting to think that what Ike Rose wanted wasn’t always the best thing for the investigation.
CHAPTER 63
“Sorry for fucking up,” Falco said, as we drove down the mountain road. “First Eeg spots one of my guys tailing him. Then I make that dumb statement about the life you save could be your own. I guess I’m just a country cop.”
“You think city cops don’t fuck up? Last month twenty of L.A.’s finest raided a house in Compton. They lobbed flash grenades at the door and busted in because the C.I. swore there were three guys inside dealing drugs. Ex-cons who were armed to the teeth and had a pack of pitbulls guarding the place.”
“Sounds like fun. What was the fuckup?”
“Wrong house. There were two old ladies inside, sisters, watching a soap opera and drinking tea.”
“Whoa, I bet those old broads shit their britches,” Falco said.
“One did. The other one had a massive heart attack. She was dead before her sister could say, ‘Does anyone know a good personal injury lawyer?’ So don’t apologize for fuckups until you know what a real fuckup is.”
“Thanks. For some twisted reason that makes me feel better.”
“Good. Then the old girl didn’t die in vain.”
“I couldn’t tell if Eeg was trying to help or just jerk us around,” Falco said. “I finally decided it was a little of both. I’ll bet he wrote that book.”
“Damn straight he wrote it, and he’s got such a monumental ego it was probably all he could do not to autograph it.”
When we got to Route 28 my cell service kicked in. I called Terry’s cell. “I’m back at Familyland,” he said. “We got Victim Number Four.”
I pounded my fist on the dashboard. Falco looked over at me. “Another homicide,” I said. I went back to Terry. “Give me the details.”
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“An employee, Rose Eichmann, white, female, forty-four years old. She drove a shuttle bus between the main gate and the parking lots, picking up people when they come in, dropping them off at their cars when they leave. She was found about noon, sitting in the driver’s seat of an empty bus. Her windpipe was crushed. The weapon was another Lamaar souvenir, a red necktie with a dozen happy characters on it. I’m hoping the killer had it around his own neck till he was ready to wrap it around the victim. We’re checking for DNA.”
“Did he leave us a flipbook?”
“Yeah. I thought it would be a hand with four fingers, but this fucker has a better imagination than you and me. It’s four separate hands, and when you flip the pages each one gives you the finger. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and just in case you didn’t get it the first three times, fuck you, copper.”
“Where are we on the rest of the evidence?” I said. “Did the lab come up with anything on the ransom note that was pinned to Judy Kaiser’s chest?”
“If you were hoping for a big thumb print right in the center, no. The paper, envelope, and the plastic bag were all generic. The letter opener was a Lamaar gift shop item just like the other weapons, but none of the searches we’ve done from gift shop receipts have turned up anything. Jessica pulled some DNA from the glue on the envelope. It’s dog saliva. Just what we needed. A psychopath who thinks he’s smarter than the cops.”
“How smart is it to kill a bus driver?” I said. “Ike Rose won’t cough up $266 million just because they killed off one of the little people.”
“It’s not only smart. It’s fucking brilliant. Did you catch the vic’s name? Rose Eichmann. Rose Ike Man.”
It was like a punch in the gut. And if I felt that way, I could only imagine how Ike must feel. “How’d Ike Rose handle it?” I asked.
“Sorry about the dead woman, but sticking with his ‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists’ position. Amy, on the other hand, is on the warpath. She keeps reminding me that other human beings are going to get killed, just in case I forgot. She thinks if she’s in my face twenty-four/seven, I’ll solve it quicker. How did it go with Eeg?”
I gave Terry the highlight reel of my visit with Eeg, ending with the story about Dean Lamaar killing his father.
“Great. Instead of a confession he gives you another homicide. He must love pulling your chain. Bottom line, what’s your take on this guy?”
“Not guilty, with an asterisk. He’s got an ax to grind with the company, and he knows more shit about them than your average not-guilty party.”
“We’ll keep him in our thoughts. Gotta go. I’ve got a lot to do and I’d like to get home for dinner. Marilyn is making lasagna. Speaking of my amazing wife, I told her about that Lamaar security guy, Kenneth Dahl. You called him Ken and he says I prefer Kenneth? I mean who cares if somebody calls you Ken? And she says, ‘He doesn’t want you to call him Ken, because then he’d be Ken Dahl.’” He laughed. “You get it?”
“No,” I said, as Falco swung around the traffic circle and merged into the New York State Thruway tollbooth plaza.
“Ken Doll. Like Barbie Doll’s boyfriend. The Ken Doll. You get it now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not that funny, but leave it to Marilyn to figure out something like that. Maybe tonight she can tell you who killed Rose Eichmann.”
“While I’m at it, I’ll ask her if Dean Lamaar really killed his father,” he said. “On second thought, I won’t. You know why? Because I don’t give a shit. This guy Eeg is mind-fucking us. He’s pissing in our well. You and I don’t care if Dean Lamaar killed his father, his mother, his scoutmaster, and his pet hamster. It’s ancient history and not relevant to the case we’ve got on our plate. Promise me you’ll get it out of your fucking brain before you get back home.”
“Y’know, the partner I worked with today is much nicer to me than you are, Biggs.” I looked over at Falco, who smiled broadly, then tapped out “shave and a haircut” on the car horn.
“Hey, Biggsy,” Falco yelled across the miles, “be nice to Lomax. He’s had a tough day.”
Biggs answered back. Falco couldn’t hear him. But I did.
“Not as tough as Rose Eichmann,” he said.
CHAPTER 64
Air Rambo was waiting with the engines idling, and we were rolling as soon as my butt hit the seat. Sig brought a drink menu. There were six wines and ten beers to choose from, most of which I wouldn’t be caught dead asking for in a cop bar. I ordered a Bud.
I spent the next few hours reading the books Eeg gave me. I started with Deanie, Prince of Joy and Laughter. The writer was obviously paid to paint Lamaar as a rags-to-riches hero, beloved by one and all. It did everything but start with Once upon a time and end with and they lived happily ever after.
The unauthorized biography was more of a horror story than a fairy tale. The author could have called it Deanie Dearest, but he chose The Rabbit Factory because Lamaar was infamous for running a sweatshop. He was a cross between Ebenezer Scrooge and Simon Legree, demanding sixteen-hour days and seven-day weeks when a cartoon was in production. A sign on the wall of the animation studio read If you don’t show up Sunday, don’t show up Monday.
According to D. Tinker, while the public revered Dean Lamaar, the people who worked for him thought he was a real prick. And anyone who looked for a job someplace else might find himself the victim of a sadistic little trick that became known as ‘rabbit baiting.’
An unhappy Lamaar employee would read about a good job in the classifieds. He’d mail his résumé to the address in the ad. The job would be bogus, and the résumé would be delivered to Dean Lamaar. The employee, of course, would be fired immediately.
When people at Lamaar finally learned to stop responding to classified ads, Deanie hired phony headhunters to call them. He was always baiting. Legend has it that over the years Dean Lamaar ambushed as many as a hundred employees, until eventually most of his workers would rather eat shit at Lamaar Studios than risk having no job at all.
While the first book glossed over Lamaar’s personal life, only briefly mentioning his wife and daughter, The Rabbit Factory provided much juicier details. When he first started out, Lamaar hired Olivia Martin, a pretty girl of nineteen. She would type, answer the phone, and handle all of his personal needs from laundry to grocery shopping to car repair, because the business left him no time for a life. He did, however, find time to have sex with Olivia, and when she became pregnant, she continued her daily chores as Mrs. Dean Lamaar.
Their daughter, Gillian, was born with Down Syndrome and was institutionalized until she died at age twenty-seven. The founder of Familyland would never father a normal child of his own, and when Olivia died at fifty-one, Lamaar rededicated himself to bringing joy and laughter to the world and pain and misery to everyone else around him.
The most glaring difference between the two books was on the subject of the break up between Dean Lamaar and Lars Eeg. The first book didn’t even mention it. The other painted a picture of Dean Lamaar as a ruthless tyrant who rode his friend’s talents to success, sucked him dry, then spit him out. The very same words Danny Eeg had used when he told me the story.
I had no doubt that he wrote it. But I wondered why he left out the best part. Nowhere in the book was there even a hint that the untimely death of Dean Lamaar’s father could have been anything but an accident.
A few hours into the flight, Sig brought me a telephone. “It’s Brian Curry.” I knew exactly why he was calling.
“I guess you heard we’re having a bad day here,” Curry said.
“Biggs told me. Has Rose changed his mind about paying the ransom?”
“Not yet, but he realizes how vulnerable we are. Seventy-two percent of our employees make minimum wage. Who’s going to put his life at risk for that? As for the big stars who make millions, they’ll just go to another studio. Even if these bastards don’t kill any more customers, they can scare away enough employees so that we can’t run the railroad.”
“Last night Ike said the company could weather a mass exodus,” I reminded him. “His biggest concern was the stock tanking.”
“It still is. But we have sixty thousand employees around the world plus millions of customers, suppliers, and stockholders. Every one is a potential target. That’s weighing heavily on him. At one point he pounded his fist on the table and said, ‘They could kill some librarian in Omaha just because she rented one of our fucking videos, and it would take days for us to find out.’ That’s a quote.”
“Does that mean he’s leaning toward paying the ransom?” I asked.
“Right now it means more pressure on LAPD to catch the perps.”
“Have you figured out the significance of $266.4 million dollars? It’s not a number out of thin air. It sounds like an amount your company owes this guy.”
“We’re still working on it,” Curry said. “What did you get out of Eeg?”
“He bitched about the company, but I doubt if he’s behind the killings. Brian, do me a favor will you?”
“The bodies are piling up, Mike. Anything I can do to help.”
“From what my partner tells me, Amy is making his life unbearable. Can you call her off?”
“Terry spoke to me; I spoke to Ike. There’s a big conference in Vancouver, and he’s going to send her. She’ll be out of your hair by Wednesday.”
“Good, but I want to talk to her. Tell her to meet me in her Burbank office at eight sharp tomorrow. After that, you can send her to the moon.”
“That’s easy,” he said. “I’m really calling you because I just got a message from the cockpit.”
“I’m sure you did. I’ve been expecting your call.”
“Captain Sheppard tells me you’ve asked him to make an unscheduled stop.”
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