Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "Good night, Mike."

  • • •

  No sooner had she hung up than Gary Brice from the Orange County Journal called. Brice covered the crime beat. She trusted him as much as she could trust any reporter—he had never printed something she had asked him to hold back. He'd always trade a favor for a favor.

  Sometimes he reminded her of herself, except that the uglier something got, the funnier Brice thought it was. She understood his view of things but didn't see how he turned it to humor.

  Maybe it had something to do with the way memories are storied, which is what Dr. Joan Cash told her about her own critical incident stress. Cash said that Merci's memories of the murder of her partner and lover, and her subsequent shooting of the predator Colesceau were "disfunctional" memories. Dr. Cash wanted to fix them with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a new technique with which she had had some success.

  But Merci thought of her memories as fully functional, their function being to torment her with guilt. Over what she should have done. Could have done. Might have done. She had analyzed the sequence of those last days a thousand times, stopping the action for hours to vet every millisecond, every decision, every misjudgment.

  Yes, she believed she had found some things she could have done better....

  Then there were the nightmares, terrifying and shameful, far beyound any words she could use to describe them for Cash or anybody else. They left her short of breath, stewing in the gamy scent of her own fear and sweat, trembling in hard, regretful silence.

  She wondered briefly if Brice's way might be better: convert all to dark comedy, add a giggle, sleep tight.

  No. Not everything in life was amusing. Unless you were talking to certain psychopaths.

  "Got some interesting men on your wish list," Brice said.

  "Shoot."

  "What's it all about?"

  "You'll have to tell me."

  "I think it's Aubrey Whittaker's little black book. She was a prostitute, I know that."

  "Can't confirm or deny that one, Gary. Give me something good.”

  "Okay. There's the owner of Del Viggio Construction—they’re big in north county. There's an assistant pastor at Newport Maranatha Church. There's the defensive line coach at a local junior college. There's an Irvine millionaire who owns a bio-tech pharmaceutical company—they're working on an herbal, low-cost version of Viagra for women. There's a pro basketball player who's got a second home in Laguna Beach. Some married, some with families, some with neither."

  She was more than a little surprised. "All that with twenty names. I should have given you fifty. In fact, I think I might."

  "High-line girl," said Brice. "What amazes me is these guys'll give an outcall service a real name and a good credit-card number."

  She wouldn't comment on that, although it amazed her, too.

  She took down the names as he matched them to their occupations and marital status.

  Then she gave him twenty more, all of which she'd copied from Aubrey Whittaker's address book. Some of the names had corresponding credit-card numbers, some were without. Merci wondered if Aubrey's private clients might be her big boys, her regulars, the ones who might be lucky and rich enough to get a home-cooked dinner.

  Preposterous. Call girls just don't cook for clients.

  Merci looked over at Tim, who was using a large orange pipe wrench to clean the panda's mouth.

  "Is that all?" asked Brice, a touch of mock irritation in his voice.

  "Yes."

  "I've got another question for you then."

  "Shoot."

  "Would you go on a date with me next Friday night?"

  "No. How old are you?"

  "Twenty-six."

  "I got you by ten."

  "You're the most beautiful homicide cop I've ever seen. I like your wiseass personality, too. Something easy. I'll meet you for a drink, we'll see one of those action movies, then go drink more and talk about it. When you can't resist me anymore, you can do whatever you want with me, then discard me."

  "Thanks for the names. I need the others tomorrow."

  "How about just coffee then?"

  "How about just names?"

  "I guess you're tight with the bloodhound man."

  "Pretty tight."

  "You'll regret this," said Brice, in a theatrical tone.

  "I'll learn to live with it."

  "You can learn to live with warts, too."

  "No warts. No date. But thanks for asking anyway. I'm very slightly flattered."

  "An age thing," he said. "Cool."

  She hung up and wondered at men. There was Mike who saw no humor in anything. There was Gary who saw no seriousness in anything.

  And there was Tim, Jr., asleep on his blanket in the corner with one hand on his orange pipe wrench and the other on his panda.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mr. Moladan will see you now."

  Merci glared at the receptionist on her way past. The woman was blond, young, unreasonably beautiful. She smelled like free sample day at Macy's. Merci noted that Paul Zamorra looked at her and got a smile back.

  They'd agreed to lean a little on Moladan even though he wasn't a suspect. Yet. But if a john had killed Aubrey, it might have been one of Epicure's, not one of her own. Moladan would have his name. Merci volunteered to do the leaning because it would come naturally to her: She thought pimps and panderers who beat up their girls were even more disgusting than the spineless clowns who leased their bodies.

  The office building was in Dana Point, overlooking the harbor. Epicure Services was in suite 12, upstairs. Behind the receptionist's desk was a hallway that led past two small offices. Each office had two women in it, and all four of them had phones to their ears and pens in their hands.

  At the end of the hall were fake wood double doors meant to look impressive. Holding one open was a powerful looking, middle-aged man with dark curly hair, a big mustache and a big smile.

  "I am Goren," he said. "Please come in and be seated."

  Zamorra sat and Merci stood. Merci watched Moladan move behind his desk and sit down with his back to the gray December sky. He was wearing a tight black polo shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He moved lightly for a thick man in boots.

  There were framed travel posters of Italy on the walls. A sign photograph of the Italian soccer team for 1997. A string of black and white shots of race cars going down a track. The featured car in each was an Alfa Romeo.

  Moladan pushed aside a computer monitor. "Police usually like coffee," he said.

  "I don't," said Merci.

  Zamorra shook his head no.

  "Then how can I help you?"

  He smiled in a practiced way, teeth showing behind the mustache, his eyes were hard and alert. His accent was thick but his diction was good.

  "Tell me about Aubrey Whittaker," said Merci.

  "Aubrey, she is one of my contractors."

  He pronounced her name Obrey.

  "One of your girls."

  "I do not use that term. No. Women, perhaps. Never girls."

  "She's nineteen."

  "Yes, an adult American woman. Something has happened?"

  "The cards your receptionist gave you said Homicide Detail. What do you think?"

  "Then I think yes."

  "You've got a bright future."

  Moladan sighed and sat back. Merci watched him hard. He crossed his thick arms over his thick chest. He had a vertical scar on the left of his forehead.

  She stared straight at him and said nothing.

  He said, "What am I to do, read your minds?"

  "She was murdered Tuesday night. Surprised?"

  In a first interview Merci liked to crowd the facts and the questions get the guy answering with his emotions.

  "I am ... I am absolutely surprised, yes."

  Merci nodded and pulled out her notebook. Zamorra set his recorder on the desk.

  "This helps us keep things straight. You don't mind, do you?"


  "Why ... no. Not at all. I will join you."

  Moladan produced a black mini recorder, turned it on and set it on the desk.

  "You make a lot of tapes, Mr. Moladan?"

  "When detectives accuse me of murder, I tape."

  "If we were accusing you of murder you'd be downtown right now. In fact, that's where we're going if you don't turn that thing off and put it back."

  She could see the anger in his eyes. Without the smile, his face looked worn and hard.

  Moladan clicked off the recorder, then set it back in his desk drawer.

  "We know she worked for you," Merci said. "We know she was visited Tuesday night by someone she knew and trusted. We know he was a big man, thick and strong. We know he was a man with some manners and some means—not a transient, not a burglar, not a psycho. And we know from two of the neighbors that this man spoke with an Eastern European accent. We put all that together and guess what—we thought of you."

  "I did not see her Tuesday night. I was at home. In the lounge. Listening to the band."

  "What, you've got your own lounge musicians at home?"

  "Where I live, I mean to say. I live at the Lido Bay Club in Newport Beach."

  Moladan was proud of his address. Merci knew it as a rich man's hangout in Newport. Yachts, booze and fun. Nixon hid there when the Watergate heat was on. The decades had seen it go from young and glamorous to aged. Now it had Goren Moladan. It struck Merci as the perfect place for a guy in his line of work because it was full of rich old men.

  "Selling girls must pay you pretty good."

  "I sell companionship. Of the highest morals and quality. It is expensive. I make an honest profit."

  "How expensive?"

  "One thousand for the consultation, introduction and first hour and two hundred per hour after this. These are minimums. There are travel and overnight premiums. There are increased premiums for exotic activities or destinations. It is written into the agreement that no escort is to be touched or spoken to in a suggestive manner. It is written in the agreement that she is to be treated according to her wishes at all times. It is understood by my clients that fine dining, fine wine and liquors, fine automobiles are expected by my escorts. They may accept or reject any offers whatsoever, from alcohol to body contact beyond arm-walking."

  "Quaint," said Merci. "How do you find such gentlemen?"

  "They are screened carefully."

  "By the airheads on the phones out there?"

  "The women place advertising and they interview potential clients and escorts. There is much preliminary work to be done."

  "How many girls do you have?"

  "Many women. All ages, all cultures, all personalities. But no girls, I'm sorry."

  "What I asked was how many."

  "On call to me at any time, approximately eighty."

  Merci thought about this. Eighty Aubreys out there, plying the night in their big quiet cars. Tending to the lonely rich of Orange County. Dispatched by one Goren Moladan, Italianate pimp and entrepreneur

  "So you were in the Lido Bay Club lounge Tuesday night. What hours, exactly?"

  "Nine o'clock until two. The employees and my companions will prove me innocent. I will give you names and numbers."

  "I'll get those myself. What I need from you are the names and numbers of all your clients who used Aubrey Whittaker."

  "Oh, Sergeant Rayborn. This I cannot do. The heart of my business is confidentiality. Without it I am nothing."

  He sat back and raised his hands like a man fresh out of options.

  "Without confidentiality, Sergeant Ray—"

  "Even with it you're still nothing. Nothing but a fake Italian with a lot of rich johns."

  "This is absolutely not true. I am Serbian, and proud of it. From now on, Sergeant, I will require my attorney. You have taken this conversation beyond civilized limits."

  "Listen carefully to me, meatball. We know about you and del Vigio. We know about you and Assistant Pastor Spartas. We know about you and Collins, the defensive line coach at the J.C. We know about you and the drug whiz making cheap Viagra tea for the ladies, you and the slam dunker from Laguna."

  "Fucka you. Fuck you police."

  Moladan was up in an instant.

  Zamorra was, too. His sport coat slid off him and onto the seat of his chair, though Merci never really saw his hands move.

  Moladan glared at her, then at Zamorra. Something there brought him up short, got him thinking.

  "Sit down, loser," Merci said. "And don't spit on that nice shirt. The little guy on the horse will have to be dry-cleaned."

  Moladan slammed his body back into the chair. His face was red and his dark eyes had turned brighter with anger.

  Zamorra was sitting again, coat folded across his lap.

  Merci leaned forward. "This is what you're going to do. You're going to call up Aubrey's guys on the computer and print them out on the printer. When I interview them I'll say I got their names from Aubrey's little black book. I'll keep my newspaper and television friends out of here, when they want to know what the victim did for a living. I won't whisper Epicure Services in anyone's ear. You'll lose Aubrey's business for a few weeks, because her guys might become a little shy. But then, she's dead, so you've lost her business anyway. When her friends get hungry again, you'll have someone else tall, young and eager for all the hot crap their money can buy. Right?"

  Moladan looked at Zamorra again, then back to Merci.

  "Things can be looked at in this way." "Philosophize later, creep. Print now."

  CHAPTER SIX

  James Gilliam, Director of Forensic Services, had left an emphatic message on the While-You-Were-Out pad on Merci Rayborn's desk: See me immediately, bring Zamorra. He had left the same message on her voice and E-mail.

  Gilliam, excitable as a stone, had something hot.

  Zamorra apparently got the same message. On their way down to the lab he told Merci that he might have to leave the powwow early. Janine was undergoing a procedure the next morning and he needed to arrange some things. He'd have time after to hit the Bay Club and check Moladan's story.

  "I hope it goes well," Merci said. Lame, she thought. But Zarmorra was vague about everything so you had to be vague right back. It was only through the constant department buzz that Merci had learned Janine's diagnosis: brain tumor. Zamorra had never actually said those words to her.

  "It's an experiment," he said.

  She waited for elaboration and got none. The word "experiment” sent a little shiver up her spine. This was the most forthcoming her partner had ever been, so there was no use pressing it.

  "Let me know, Paul, if there's anything I can do."

  "There isn't."

  She wanted to tell him about Hess and Hess's cancer, how he had been beating it even though the stats had said it would kill him. Back then—two years, three months and twenty-four days ago—she had believed that her hope and will could change things. Now she didn't. But she believed you needed to hope and will anyway, just in case. Although just in case wasn't going to do Paul or Janine Zamorra any good at all right now.

  They took the stairway down. She listened to the sound of Paul's hard-soled brogues on the steps, comparing the noise to the cushioned thump of her duty boots. She wore the boots with almost everything except a skirt because they were stable and comfortable and looked badass. Three pair. Man Friend Number Two could have been wearing duty boots, she thought.

  The December wind whipped up through the stairwell and she felt the cold air on her face. The naked black sycamores by the courthouse shivered. Merci buttoned up her windbreaker and jammed her hands in the side pockets.

  "I liked the way you handled Moladan back there," she said. Something to cheer Paul up, get his mind off things. "Whatever look you had on your face when he went rabid, it worked."

  "I was thinking about Janine."

  What do you say to that? She imagined what Moladan must have seen in Paul: a dark, slender, hate-fa
ced man who'd just slipped off his coat to more easily draw down or thrash the living shit out of him. Zamorra had transferred in from Santa Ana P.D. a few years back. Santa Ana was a tough city. He had arrived with an aura of danger about him—rumors about punching out homeboys three at a time, something about the Golden Gloves gym up in Westminster, about a temper you didn't want to see. His dad was a junior state something-or-other weight champ.

  When Merci first met Paul she thought his quiet manners and physical stillness were some kind of shtick. After a while it came to seem authentic. He was just quiet and didn't move around a lot and if that made people uncomfortable, it was fine with her. When he opened doors for women he made it look cool. So when Sheriff Brighton asked her what she thought of partnering up with Zamorra she said okay. He was dark and solitary, but that was better than being a macho windbag like some cops tended to be. In the three months she'd been working him, Merci felt as if she knew Paul Zamorra only a tiny bit better than when she'd first met him. She knew he had nice trim suits but not of them.

  The mystery was good, though, because she believed most people were more interesting with their secrets intact.

  "Nice call on the Eastern European accent," said Paul. "It had him thinking."

  • • •

  Gilliam let them into his office and shut the door. This was new. Usually he walked them through the lab, showed them hair and fiber samples under the scopes; the print cards on an overhead projector; the bullets and casings; the sketches for bullet-path reconstruction; the tape lifts for gunshot residue; the dummies and samples for bullet impact reconstruction; the knives and blunt instruments; and the autopsied body if wanted to see it. Gilliam wanted them to see everything.

  He sat behind his desk in a fresh white lab coat. He had a close file in front of him and a doleful expression on his face.

  "Thanks for coming," he said. "I'll go through the early lab stuff and the medical autopsy right here in the office. After that, we've got a problem to discuss. I think it's a problem."

  Merci said nothing. She'd never seen Gilliam so glum. He always avoided meeting her eyes with his own because he thought she was attractive, something that had taken her five years to understand. She didn't know what to do about that, except to ignore the problem and respect the man. She could live with secrets; words were what threw her.