“I’m just going to do an audio slate,” the voice said. “Dean Lamaar, Vision Statement, May 19, 2002, Take One. In five, four, three, two.”
There was a pause, then Lamaar began to speak. And now, once again, Amy and I were subjected to the avuncular Mr. Lamaar droning on about how he had shaped the values of America by giving it a cartoon rabbit.
My eyelids started to droop. About ten minutes into Lamaar’s self-tribute, the picture started to shake violently. Lamaar screamed, “What the fuck was that?” which I distinctly recalled was not in the final edit.
The off-camera voice yelled, “Earthquake! Deanie, get under the desk, get under the fucking desk!” The old man took direction well. The camera captured Lamaar as he scrambled under the desk and disappeared from the picture.
According to the time code at the bottom of the screen, the earth shook for twenty-two seconds. Then it settled. The camera recorded it all. Finally, the off-camera voice said. “It’s over. Deanie are you all right?”
Lamaar surfaced from under the desk. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” he said. “That was some fucking jolt. What do you think—5.6? 5.7? Definitely under six.” He sat back down behind the desk.
After he settled back in, the off-camera voice said, “You want to take it from the top?”
“Hell, no,” Lamaar said. “You got everything but the last two pages. Find a place where you can pick it up.”
The off-camera guy didn’t say anything for about twenty seconds. Finally, he said, “Why don’t you back up a paragraph and pick it up from the phrase, ‘Our history makes us strong, but our vision makes us stronger.’ I’ll start in close and pull back so that it won’t jump cut from where we left off.”
Lamaar grunted his approval. The camera pulled in tight. Then the off-camera voice gave the countdown. “In five, four, three, two,” and Lamaar picked up his speech. About a minute later he finished.
“And cut,” the voice said. “Excellent. Anything more you want to do?”
“I want to get the fuck out from under these lights before the aftershock shakes them loose and kills me,” Lamaar said. I heard the beginning of a laugh from the man off camera and then the tape went dark. The time code on the bottom said eighteen minutes, forty-two seconds.
Amy was speechless. Finally she found just the right words. “Holy shit.”
“There you have it folks,” I said. “A direct quote from the Director of Lamaar’s Corporate Communications.”
“I’ve seen the edited tape before,” she said, “but I never saw the source. I’m surprised they didn’t erase the part with Mr. Lamaar saying ‘fuck.’”
“They were in the middle of an earthquake,” I said. “They probably didn’t even hear themselves cursing. Who was the guy off-camera?”
“At first I thought it was just some random studio director they pulled off the lot. But nobody called him Deanie unless they knew him well. So I listened a little more carefully and I think it may be Klaus Lebrecht. He was real close to Mr. Lamaar.”
“How close?”
“Did you ever hear of The Cartoon Corps?”
“Yeah, Lamaar’s old cronies from his Army days.”
“Klaus Lebrecht, Mitch Barber, and Kevin Kennedy were the last of The Cartoon Corps. A few weeks after Mr. Lamaar died, all three of them retired on the same day.”
“That’s weird.”
“It didn’t seem that weird at the time,” she said. “They were old, their Lord and Master died, and they didn’t much like the new Lamaar.”
“They didn’t much like the new Lamaar?” I repeated. “I don’t remember seeing their names on any of the grudge lists.”
“I doubt if they had a grudge. They had a great life here. I think they just decided to cash in their chips. They worked as a team, they left as a team.”
“Where are they now?”
“Probably living in Palm Springs with trophy wives and more money than they can spend. Fortune Magazine did an article on them when they left. The end of an era. I can get you a reprint if you want to read about them.”
“Get me their addresses too. I’d also like to talk to them. And I’ll need to borrow the tapes.”
She handed me the videotapes. “I’ll be back from Vancouver Friday night. No late fees if you drop them off at my apartment Saturday around 8:00.”
I had no intention of showing up, but I had already turned her down once. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll drop them off.”
“Don’t forget. If you don’t bring them back, Maxine will kill me.”
Maxine wouldn’t kill her. But somebody would.
CHAPTER 69
I took Amy back to Burbank, picked up two copies of the Fortune article, and drove to my office. Terry was at his desk. “I’ve got great news,” he said.
“Did Forensics come up with something?”
“No, but I just saved a load of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico. I heard you hijacked an airplane last night.”
“Yeah, I’m also working with the mob. I’ll do anything to fight crime.”
I tossed him a copy of the Fortune article and sat down to read it myself. It was written a few months after Lamaar died. Kennedy, Barber, and Lebrecht gave their own sugarcoated version of the company’s golden days. But according to Fortune, the Lamaar balloon officially burst on October 19, 1987, the day the go-go eighties came to a crashing halt. After that the company’s balance sheets were dripping with red ink.
To complicate matters, Dean had no heirs to pass the company to, and because he kept the power all to himself, there were no likely candidates who could fill his shoes.
By the early nineties Dean Lamaar started to make big mistakes. Clinging to the tried and true, he spent a fortune on hand-drawn animated features that were expensive to produce and weren’t right for the times. The movie division lost money three years in a row. His TV shows did better, but the up-front costs were high and the paybacks from syndication wouldn’t happen for five years.
Lamaar stock kept dropping, and by the late nineties Wall Street had lost faith in the company, which was still being managed with an iron hand by its aging founder. In 1999, shortly after Dean’s seventy-fifth birthday, Nakamachi, a Japanese electronics company, made a hostile takeover bid to buy Lamaar Enterprises.
Dean tried to block the sale, but he didn’t have enough votes. Nakamachi bought the company for the bargain price of $22 billion. They promised Deanie a lifetime contract and total creative freedom. Everything would be the same, they said, except they would assume the financial burden that was draining him dry.
Ike Rose came on board as CEO. His immediate goal was to drive the stock up. With ten million options of his own, he had plenty of incentive.
Ike brought in new blood to fill the executive suites. Long-range plans were made, new business units were formed, new areas in the world of entertainment were researched and developed. It quickly became clear to Dean Lamaar that creative freedom did not translate to corporate power.
He still played a key role in the company. He was the patriarch, the icon, the symbol that America trusted. So they trotted him out at parades and let him make boring videos for an attraction that nobody wanted to visit. He was a Minister without Portfolio, and, while his remaining years were miserable, he refused to leave the company he founded. So Kennedy, Barber, and Lebrecht stuck with him. The day after his funeral the three of them resigned.
I had wondered why they all left at the same time. The last few paragraphs of the article put their decision in perspective.
There’s no question that these are three talented men who made enormous contributions to the entertainment industry. But they were followers. And when their leader passed from the scene there was no place for them at the new Lamaar Company.
Klaus Lebrecht summed it all up with these words. “We could have given notice and slowly phased out of our jobs, but we all knew our time was up. We left the company the same way we came to it and the same way we worked at it fo
r half a century. As a team. We’re sure Dean Lamaar would approve.”
Terry was reading the article in the men’s room when Brian called me. “If I tell the FBI something, do they pass it on to you?” he said.
“No. They keep the best clues to themselves, and then all of a sudden the Special Agent in Charge calls a press conference and says Colonel Mustard did it in the Conservatory with the Candlestick, and we’re all dumbfounded because we never got that clue. What did you tell them that might help us?”
“We’ve been working on the significance of the $266.4 four million, and I think we hit on something. We had a movie that was released five years ago. Home for the Holidays. It grossed $266.4 million. It doesn’t feel like a random coincidence.”
“My wife and I saw it,” I said. “Is that the one where the family reunites for Christmas and somebody kills the father?”
“Right. And then you find out that he had sexually abused his daughter and now he was doing it to the granddaughter.”
“A Christmas classic. I never realized it was a Lamaar movie.”
“It was and it wasn’t. Ike Rose read the script and knew it had the potential to be a hit. But it was too ugly to put the Lamaar name on it, so he created a new division, Freeze Frame Films. Now all of our R-rated movies come from Freeze Frame. It’s very profitable, but some of the old-timers at Lamaar think it hurts our image. They call it Sleaze Frame.”
“Was there any bad blood when you made Home for the Holidays?” I asked. “Actors getting fired? Writers screwed out of royalties? There’s got to be a good reason why someone would ask for every penny the movie grossed.”
“No, it came out on time and on budget. Things went smooth. People got along. It was a hit at the box office and got nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, but none of them won.”
“What did the FBI guys say when you gave them this?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s exactly what they passed on to us. Nothing.” I thanked him and put in a call to Garet Church, the senior FBI Agent on the Lamaar investigation. I had worked with Garet before and I liked him. He was less of a jerk than most of the Feds I had dealt with.
“Hello, Lomax,” he said. “You got any information to deposit in the FBI bank or are you calling me to make a withdrawal?”
“I’m calling to give you a possible a lead. The Cartoon Corps.”
“The three old men? Old news. We questioned them already.”
“And you didn’t share your findings with LAPD?”
“We talked to them yesterday when you were in New York chatting with Eeg. Nice of you to share those findings.”
“Shit. I hate being caught not cooperating. You should have a copy of my report in the morning.”
“Save the paper,” he said. “We sent our own team out to see Eeg today.”
“Well, then,” I said, “in the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation, what did you get from Kennedy, Barber, and Lebrecht?”
“Zip. They’re three old farts with prostate problems. We didn’t tell them all the gory details, but we did tell them about the extortion plot. None of them can imagine anyone wanting to hurt the company except Eeg.”
“And you’re satisfied that their noses are all clean?”
“They’re all over eighty years old and barely spry enough to organize a lawn party. Besides where’s the motive?”
“I’m not sure, but it could be the same motive as Eeg. Dean Lamaar might have fucked them out of money. Like, I don’t know, 266.4 million bucks.”
“Actually that was the box office gross on one of Lamaar’s movies.”
“Gracious of you to finally share that little tidbit with LAPD.”
“The difference between you and me, Lomax, is that I love being caught not cooperating. I don’t have any fucking idea if the 266 million is something Lamaar held out on with the three old geezers. But if you smell a motive, why don’t you go talk to them and see what you come up with? Maybe you’re right. Whoever hired these professional assassins doesn’t have to be spry.”
“Professional assassins? It sounds like you know something.”
“Actually, we know exactly who murdered Eddie Elkins. Those Familyland surveillance DVDs from the day he got killed panned out.”
“I thought LAPD was working on that.”
“You were a little understaffed, so we pitched in. We have a name and lots of pictures. We also have strong leads on two of the other hits.”
“Would you care to share some of the details with your local police?”
“There’s a Joint Task Force Meeting tomorrow morning at nine. And you, my friend, are cordially invited. I was just about to call you.”
“Thanks for keeping us in the loop. See you tomorrow.”
I told Terry about the meeting.
“You know what a Joint Task Force Meeting is, don’t you?” he said. “A bunch of cops getting together to see who has the biggest dick.”
“Biggs, nobody likes a dick-measuring contest better than you,” I said.
“But I got class. I only take out enough to win.”
CHAPTER 70
Terry and I met for an early breakfast at the Denny’s on Sunset. The plan was to go to the Joint Task Force Meeting, then see what we could learn from the three old men who had spent fifty years working with Dean Lamaar. We were just mopping up the last of our Grand Slam breakfasts when my cell rang.
“This is Ike Rose. The motherfuckers broke into my daughter’s bedroom.”
“Where are you now?” I said, throwing money on the table and heading out the door. Terry didn’t wait for an explanation. He was right behind me.
“I’m at my house. We’re okay. I mean we’re physically okay. How fast can you get here?”
“We’re on our way.”
“Don’t send for backup. I don’t want fifty fucking squad cars parked outside with their lights flashing.” He hung up.
We took two cars. When we got to the house on Mapleton Drive, Mr. Lu was standing inside the front gates. As soon as he recognized us, the gates swung open. He jumped into my car. “What happened?” I said.
“Mr. Rose will explain,” he said. “Just drive fast please.”
I drove fast. Terry was right behind me. We came to a screeching cop-movie stop on the cobblestone and raced up the marble steps. Rose was standing in front of the double doors.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Motherfuckers.”
I assumed those were two separate thoughts.
“Look at this,” he said, sprinting up the Y-shaped mahogany stairway. We followed him and stopped at the second room on the left. The door was closed. “This is Hannah’s room. Lu was up here this morning and noticed that the door was shut, which it never is. So he opened it.” With that, Rose swung open the bedroom door and we saw what had sent him over the edge.
The room was a Hollywood designer’s vision of a rich girl’s dream bedroom. Large and predominantly pink, it had pricey white furniture, plush pink carpeting, a mural of hundreds of Lamaar characters covering one wall, shelf after shelf of toys, dolls, and stuffed animals, and a massive canopy bed.
The bedding was saturated in what appeared to be blood. There was no body, but there was a white outline of one on the spattered red sheet. It was child-sized. In the center was a pink teddy bear that had been slit from its neck to its crotch. White stuffing spilled out, some of which had soaked up the red.
“Oh Jesus,” Terry said. “Where’s your little girl?”
“I sent Hannah and my wife out of town Sunday night. They’re safe.”
Terry sniffed the sheet. “I don’t think this is real blood,” he said, “but this is Hollywood, so you can probably buy prop blood at Wal-Mart. It’s damp, but it’s been drying for a while. They probably got in while you were asleep.”
“We have a pretty decent alarm system,” Rose said.
“So does Bank of America,” Terry said, “but it doesn’t keep
everybody out. We’re probably dealing with pros.”
“They left a note on her night table.” Rose picked up a plastic bag that looked like the one that had been jammed into Judy Kaiser’s chest.
“If that’s evidence,” Terry said, “please don’t handle it.”
“Way too late. I opened it. I wanted to make sure they weren’t holding her hostage. This was inside the bag.”
It was a 5-by-7 photograph. Rose held it up by the edges so Terry and I could see it. It was a picture of an open hand. The killers were now up to five fingers. In the center of the hand it said, You can’t hide your family forever. Are you really sure you want to save Lamaar $266.4 million?
“Direct and to the point,” Terry said, sliding the picture back into the bag.
“Thank God I sent Hannah away. If she had been here…”
“Whoever did this knew she wasn’t here,” Terry said. “The fake blood, the chalk outline, even the note says they know she’s in hiding. They came to give you a message. This is what could happen.”
“Are you sure Hannah is in a safe place?” I asked him.
“I just called. My wife and daughter are both…” He held back. But only for a second. “They’re both fine. Arabella Leone’s people are guarding them.”
“Good choice,” Terry said. “The Leones have been in the protection business almost as long as LAPD.”
“I know the history of the Leone family. But I’ve also worked with Arabella for four years. I trust her. After you were here last week I went to Vegas and I told her what was going on. She told me straight up and down that whatever might be happening to Lamaar was our own dirty laundry. She offered me her help. I said yes.” He pointed a finger at me. “I understand you paid her a visit as well, Detective.”
“She offered me her help, too,” I said. “I said no.”
“She’s got resources at her disposal that LAPD doesn’t have.” Ike said.
“True,” Terry said. “Her people have a much better view of the bottom of the barrel than we do.”
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