Any other time I might have actually enjoyed it. The street was crowded with people, the sound of music vibrating from within the clubs and the smell of hotdogs wrapped in bacon with grilled onions from street vendors. But tonight I knew there was danger in the air. Like at the beach when there’s a red flag warning for high surf or a shark sighting. Somewhere out there in the darkness there was a great white, swimming silently just off the shore, waiting to grab some innocent beachgoer and disappear into the depths.
KCHC’s tent was set up on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard in front of a nightclub called Déjà Vu Showgirls. Outside the club, a neon sign advertised it as a hot spot for nearly nude, barely-clad dancing young divas. It was situated directly across the street from the W with a perfect view of the hotel’s residential tower and farther down the street, Hemingway’s, the nightclub where Cate had nearly disappeared. And where I also suspected Diamond was setting up his meetings between his girls and his heat-seeking clientele.
I reached the tent, a four-poster with a blue-canopied awning sporting KCHC’s call letters on top. In the dark of night, the station’s logo was almost impossible to see, but beneath it, illuminated by high intensity lanterns, I could see a flurry of activity and Cupid. He was sitting in the center of the tent behind a broadcast table, surrounded by a swarm of ladies wearing their red hats. A group of them were grabbing flyers off the table and pressing them into the hands of anyone who passed by.
In my purple pantsuit and red hat I blended in flawlessly. None of the ladies looked twice at me. I was one of them, a nameless volunteer, from one of the countless groups, responding to Bessie’s urgent request for help. I took one of the flyers off the table and stared at it. Help Us Find Hollywood’s Missing Girls. Beneath the headline were pictures of Leticia and Brandy. Even in the dim light, their smiling faces beamed out from their black and white photos. Beneath their photos were smaller pictures of the other missing girls: Jessie Martin, Marilyn Ann Billings, April Hansen and Gabi Garrison. A brief description and quotes from several of my news reports were included. “Police believe a major sex trafficking ring operating in Hollywood is responsible for the kidnapping and disappearance of these girls, and possibly more.” At the bottom, a warning in bold letters advised women to be on the lookout for predators and asked for anyone with information on the whereabouts of the girls to call LAPD’s missing persons unit.
Outside the tent on the sidewalk, I noticed Detective Browne with Bessie Bixby. The two were talking to a group of leggy young coeds in spiked heels and short dresses. I watched as they listened wide-eyed to Detective Browne, then giggled and shook their heads. Innocents, I thought. A herd of forever young, invincible twenty-somethings. I hoped they were right.
I slipped beneath the awning of the tent, hoping not to be seen, then leaned over and bumped shoulders with Cupid. “May I have your autograph?”
Without looking up, he reached for a black and white glossy of himself, started to sign and then paused. “Name?”
“Carol Childs,” I whispered in his ear. Now he did look up. His eyes blurred with confusion as he studied the dark wig beneath my red hat, then putting two and two together, smiled. Putting my index finger to my lips, I slowly shook my head. “Don’t say anything.”
I pulled up a chair and watched as KCHC’s promotion staff bumped shoulders with the red hatted ladies and their flyers, while they handed out keychains, t-shirts and autographed copies of Cupid’s photo. It was like a fish feeding frenzy with people grabbing for freebies.
“Have you been able to get any time on the air?”
“Very little.” Cupid had to yell above the street noise. “Tyler’s got Kari Rhodes on and she’s doing her thing, going on about Brad Pitt and Angelina’s wedding like she was a guest or something. It’s a big deal, and I can’t get a word in.”
It was exactly what Tyler wanted. Just enough to make it look like the station was following up on its story about Hollywood’s Missing Girls, but not so much that it became the main focus of the broadcast. To anyone listening, including Diamond, it would sound like the station had moved on to other news.
Between the background din of Kari’s broadcast, the activity on the street with KCHC’s promotional staff, the red hatted ladies, the street performers, tourists and those looking to go clubbing, the area in front of Déjà Vu Showgirls was a circus atmosphere. Everywhere there was activity, and not just on the sidewalk, but on the boulevard as well. The street was jammed with everything from bicycles weaving in and out between high-end European imports, to double decker tour buses. We were absolutely blocked in. In front of us it was impossible to see anything but the upper floors of the buildings above us and across the street.
Then suddenly, crash! There were horns and the screech of brakes. A jaywalker had jumped in front of a tour bus, and a long white stretch limo slammed into the back of it. The jaywalker, oblivious to the accident, scurried away, unscathed and unconcerned. But the wreckage, one limo fender locked beneath that of the bus, blocked cars east and west, providing a momentary break in the traffic. The end result was a perfectly unobstructed view, directly in front of me, of the buildings across the street. It was as clear and visible as a big screen at an IMAX theater on a Saturday night.
A group of gathering rubberneckers across the street stood two and three deep straining to see who it was in the long white limo that had been hit. Several people were starting to get out of the car, and from across the street, folks were pointing, thinking they recognized someone.
I didn’t take my eyes off the crowd. Whoever was down the street wasn’t nearly as interesting to me as who I saw directly in front of me. In the center of the group, across the street, was a man. He was taller, by a good four or five inches, than the tallest in the crowd and he was staring directly back at me. His silver hair was slicked back against his head, the collar of his coat jacket turned up slightly, accentuating his broad shoulders, a thin mustache, a rakish smile. I punched Cupid.
“Tell me that’s not Diamond.”
Cupid studied the man across the street. He’d only seen pictures. Saturday morning after my arrest I’d emailed photos to him, side-by-side comparisons of Dr. Diamond and old publicity shots of Clark Gable. I wanted him to see the similarity.
The crowd started to disperse, the fender-bender down the street no longer an issue. But Gable, or Diamond, stayed and stared back at me. Despite my masquerade—my brown hair and red hat—I could feel his eyes penetrate my own. He knew exactly who I was. I could feel it in my bones. Diamond knew I was there.
Then as though he’d been cued by some offstage director, he nodded to us both, turned and walked back towards the W.
“If that’s not Diamond,” Cupid said, “then the ghost of Clark Gable really does haunt the boulevard.”
CHAPTER 29
KCHC’s Hollywood promotion didn’t end until well after midnight and I was too keyed up with the sighting of Diamond to even think about going home. Cupid suggested we grab a bite to eat at Musso and Frank’s, a classic old Hollywood eatery famous as much for their star sightings as their menu. He teased, as we walked down the boulevard, that with a little luck, Mr. Gable might even join us. That didn’t do much to calm my nerves, but the fact that the place probably hadn’t changed much in the almost one hundred years it’d been in Los Angeles, had a nice calming effect. Musso’s is a real old-fashioned New York style steak house with white tablecloths, red leather booths and waiters in tuxes. Cupid ordered their Saturday night classic, braised short ribs with mixed vegetables. I ordered an omelet.
“What you need to find, Carol, is a reason why Diamond would get involved in sex trafficking in the first place. Find that and people may start to see what you see.”
“How about money...or maybe the lack of it?”
“The man owns buildings all over LA. He gives away millions to charity. He’s a billionaire. I don’t think he’s got fina
ncial problems.”
“What if I told you I wasn’t so sure about that? That I think the sex trade was maybe subsidizing his developments?”
“I’m listening.” Cupid picked up his fork and started in on the braised short ribs.
I explained I’d done a little online research that afternoon. After Tanya Day had shared with me that Diamond’s gift to Tanya’s rescue center was really more of a down payment, I pulled up a bunch of old newspaper ads, a dozen in all, announcing his generous donations to various charities.
Tanya was suspicious he had made deposits into various charitable accounts in exchange for publicity, and I wanted to track his record. What I found was that in the last year alone, Diamond had given away nearly a million dollars. That in itself wasn’t out of line for someone like Diamond, whose net worth according to Forbes was well over two billion dollars. But if Diamond had recently suffered a financial loss due to a court case he had before Judge Channing, and he was angry enough to kill the judge’s daughter over the ruling, he might not be as well-heeled as he liked to project. Plus the last couple years had been brutal in real estate.
The idea intrigued me. The market was just now coming out of its huge slump. The Great Recession had resulted in not only the loss of property for many, but jobs as well, and there was hardly anyone in California that hadn’t been affected. My guess was Diamond had been hurt financially and had been looking around for a way to recoup his income, and the sex trade, with its multi-billion dollar tax-free income opportunity, was ideal.
“All this is good, Carol, but uncovering a trail like that takes time. Diamond’s probably got that money laundered six ways to Sunday, and until you tie the money to the girls and to Diamond, you don’t have a smoking gun.” He cut off another piece of meat and stuffed it in his mouth.
“And if I can’t do that?”
He put his knife and fork down.
“I don’t want to scare you, but after what I saw tonight, if you don’t strike first, he just might.”
Cupid’s comment wasn’t the best note to end the night on, and as a result, I decided I’d take a shortcut home, up Laurel Canyon to the valley, rather than the freeway. Even at this hour an accident on the 101 could result in a backup and a lot of rubbernecking, and I wanted to be home. There was nothing more I could do tonight. I wanted to be away from the craziness of the boulevard, the nightclubs, the music, the screaming fans yelling at stars as they got in and out of their limos.
I wanted to go home, back to the quiet sanity of my own life and condo. I was maybe halfway up the narrow canyon when I noticed a set of headlights in my rearview mirror. At night the canyon was dark and the road very twisted, steep against the hillside. At first I thought I might be imagining something. Another lone car on the road headed home, not a big deal. But within minutes of my spotting it, the gap started to close between us. I concentrated on the approaching headlights, my eyes riveted to my rearview mirror.
They were low, square and with their bright-white, halogen glow, unmistakably that of a Rolls Royce. I sped up. I tried to increase the distance between myself and the black Phantom Rolls behind me. Whoever it was, they stayed on my tail, just feet from my bumper.
My heart started to race.
There was nothing I could do. I was alone, it was dark and I couldn’t think of anyone I could call. The police couldn’t get here in time, and even if I called them what would I say? How could I explain seeing Diamond when I had a restraining order preventing me doing just that?
At the top of Laurel Canyon there’s a stoplight at Mulholland. The light turned red and I pulled a hard right onto the shoulder of the road and paused momentarily. I don’t know what possessed me to wait, but I did.
My hands gripping the steering wheel, my foot ready to hit the gas. The black Rolls pulled slowly up beside me. I hit the automatic lock on my door and watched as the darkened window of the car next to me slid slowly down.
Inside sat Diamond, staring straight ahead. Like he didn’t even know I was there. I wanted to yell out, but before I could say anything the light turned green and the black Rolls with its personalized plates—DRM MKR—rolled slowly ahead of me and disappeared into the valley below.
Sunday morning felt like a hangover. Like the low hanging fog I could see from my kitchen window, cloudy and depressing. I had risen early to get the newspaper. Hopeful I might find something in the paper about the Red Hatted Ladies’ vigil and their march down Hollywood Boulevard in their effort to bring awareness to Hollywood’s Missing Girls. If nothing else, I thought it might make for a good photo op: the ladies in their sensible shoes, walking the boulevard, amidst all the glitz and glamor of the short-skirted younger set.
But there was nothing.
Gabi’s trail was beyond cold, and my vision of Diamond, appearing as Clark Gable and staring at me from across Hollywood Boulevard and again at the top of Mulholland, sitting in his car, was there every time I closed my eyes. I felt as though I couldn’t clear my head any more than I could clear the fog from the San Fernando Valley. I was stuck, and I wasn’t about to sit at home.
Trouble was, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Sometimes when I was stumped—like I was now—doing mindless busy work helped to clear my head.
I called Tyler and told him I needed to get out of the house. I was desperate, so much so that I volunteered to clean out the station’s storage closet, a kind of Fibber McGee’s catch-all for old radio paraphernalia. Inside was everything from stacks of old vinyl albums to things the promotional staff no longer used. He told me he’d alert the guard at the front gate that I was there to pick up some boxes, but that I should come through station’s rear emergency exit. He’d leave the door unlocked. Even though it was Sunday, and most of the staff was gone for the weekend, he wanted to reduce the chances of anyone seeing me, thinking I might be back to work. We needed to stick to our story.
I agreed and pulled on a pair of skinny, white jeans and heels—not exactly a work duty outfit—but the closet was more messy than dirty, and the heels were my standbys: comfortable and confidence building. Something I felt I needed right now. I topped it off with old KCHC polo shirt that had a station ID on the breast pocket: a microphone surrounded by the words, “Chick Radio–Something to Cluck About,” and headed out the door.
The station was quiet when I arrived, the hallway like a vacated bowling alley after hours, dim and hollow. I passed the production studio, expecting it to be empty, and glanced at my reflection in the window and stopped. I felt as though I’d just hit a brick wall. There, on the other side of the glass, standing in front of a microphone, was Tony Domingo.
“Tony!” I charged into the studio. Both Tony and Ted, the production assistant, looked up at me as though the Wicked Witch of the West had just entered the room. I must have looked a fright. “What are you doing here?”
Tony looked at me, the deep tan lines around his mouth vanished instantly into a broad, confident smile. He stood up and, pushing the microphone away, approached me.
“Carol.” As he held his hand out, a thick gold bracelet on his wrist, matching a chain on his neck, caught my eye. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
“See me? What are you talking about?” I backed away. Tony was a big man, squarely built, not tall but broad with an extra thirty pounds around the middle. He looked tanned and relaxed. I lowered my voice and stepped forward, my back to Ted. I wanted to keep my conversation with Tony private. “You’re supposed to be missing,” I whispered.
Tony laughed, put his hands on my shoulders and gently shook me. Then raising his voice just enough so that Ted could hear, said, “Oh, Carol, I’ve missed you. I’m sorry to hear you’ve had a difficult time lately. But, really, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Missing? Do I look like I’ve been missing?” He laughed again and stepped back, arms wide, and gestured to his well-fed belly. “I’ve spent the last several days on a
friend’s boat, fishing, while I had my offices moved. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes, you do know what I’m talking about. You know very well what I’m talking about, and even better, you know why.” I blurted it out, like bullets from a machine gun.
I looked at Ted. I wanted to yell at him, too—to tell him I knew what he was thinking, that everything he had read or heard about me wasn’t true. But his eyes were focused on the controls in front of him. He was obviously avoiding eye contact with me.
His fingers traced the knobs of the soundboard. I had no doubt that he’d read Tyler’s memo, announcing to the staff I was taking a temporary leave of absence due to work related stress, or that he’d read the LA Times article. It hadn’t done me any favors. Then there was the fact that I had reported Tony missing. Nobody else had reported that, just me. There was nothing in the paper about his disappearance. I had reported it to Detective Browne and nothing had come of it. And now, here I was, charging into the studio like a crazy person. I was sure Ted thought I really was nuts.
I turned back to Tony.
“You called me. You were worried about Gabi. You set her boyfriend Miles up to work with Dr. Diamond. You knew something had happened to Gabi and wanted to talk. You know where she is. I know you do.”
Tony looked over at Ted and shrugged like he had no idea what I was talking about and then back at me with a look of pity in his eyes.
Beyond a Doubt Page 17