by Kurt Douglas
The woman trailed off.
“This is Cheryl,” Rhonda said, pointing to the small Chatty Cathy beside her.
Rhonda and Cheryl standing side by side only exaggerated the difference in heights, making Rhonda look like a giant compared to the child-sized Cheryl beside her. Cheryl hung on Rhonda’s arm like a shy child hiding behind her parent’s leg.
Frank plugged both their names into his phone and said, “Thanks.”
Then, looking up at Rhonda, he asked, “When was the last time you saw her?”
Rhonda didn’t have to think twice.
“May first,” she replied.
Cheryl jumped forward, adding, “She was complaining about that guy again that morning. I bet it was him.”
“What guy?” Frank pried.
“The guy that was following her around the gym. Duh!” Cheryl exclaimed as if she’d already explained this several times.
Rhonda clarified, “A few times a week some gangster jock and his super-young girlfriend—too young, if you ask me—would stand around in here. Seemed like they weren’t doing much more than watching us.”
“He probably was watching her in the shower, that creep,” Cheryl gushed as she curled her lip in disgust. “Some people.”
“Mm-hmm. Some people, indeed,” Frank consoled. “I need a name.”
“I don’t know his name,” Ronda said.
Cheryl shrugged in agreement.
“All right. Thank you, ladies,” Frank said as he tipped an imaginary hat and made his way toward the lobby.
Emerging from the swinging door, he announced, “Bill, I need to see your security footage.”
Bill had since composed himself and now only the red stains on his cheeks remained. He got to his feet and motioned for Frank to follow.
Bill opened a door on the side wall marked Employees Only.
Inside, the small room was decorated with various pictures and posters of a much younger Bill flexing on stage in nothing but a Speedo; remnants of a long-lost Mr. Universe dream. Pressed against the wall was a plain white desk with an old-model computer perched on top. Bill walked around the desk and took a seat in the leather office chair.
While plugging at the keyboard with his sausage fingers, he asked, “When?”
“May first. Start in the a.m.,” Frank said, then he asked, “Do you have cameras in the showers?”
“No way, man!” Bill answered. “That would be insanely illegal.”
“You have no idea how few people agree with that,” Frank replied.
Bill moved the mouse around on the pad, clicking and clacking the keyboard, then said, “Here you go. May first.”
He stood up and pushed the chair out, saying, “Look up whatever you need. I gotta watch the front desk.”
Frank plopped down in the chair and put his hand on the mouse.
Bill leaned forward, pointing at the screen and said, “This one here, you click that to fast forward. This one rewinds and this one pauses. These here, these are the different cameras. There’s one in each main room.”
He stood back and stepped toward the door.
“Except the showers,” he reminded Frank. “Or the locker rooms.”
Then Bill left Frank alone in the small office.
Frank started with the camera in the lobby. The first frames showed Bill unlocking the front doors and disabling the alarms. After a moment, Rhonda, Ed, Cheryl, Pedro and Judge Johnson paraded through the doors. Frank fast forwarded ’til he saw the doors open again. This time it was a group of young girls in sports bras and bike shorts, then a hulk-sized muscle-head with a young girl, then two men. Then another group of girls. Each flooding through the lobby, past Bill at the front desk and into the gym. Frank continued moving through the frames, watching the various patrons entering and exiting the gym until finally, he saw Mary-Beth Johnson exit through the front doors.
He marked the time in his phone and moved to the camera situated in the main gym. Having taken note of the people who had left before Johnson, the two men leaving separately, five of the eight girls from the first group and three of the six girls from the second, Frank had a better idea of what and who he was looking for.
He waited for Johnson to appear on the screen, then he froze the frame and inspected the crowd. He moved through the frames slowly, watching for anyone with an unnatural interest in the old ex-judge.
It wasn’t long before Frank saw the hulk-sized muscle-head, a big, black man with dreadlocks, peering sideways at the old lady. He kept his eyes on Johnson as he moved across the gym. Whichever machine the guy was using, his gaze always seemed to fall on her.
Frank continued watching the cameras, moving through the morning of May first in a matter of moments. Frank watched as the muscle-head openly stared at Judge Johnson. At times, he even threw up his middle finger in her direction. Then, Johnson left the main gym area toward the front lobby and he followed.
Frank switched cameras to the bicycle area. Johnson past through and into the lobby, but the muscle-head remained, watching across the room as he stood beside a young blonde girl on an exercise bike. Then he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her off, hugging and kissing her. He said something to her that Frank couldn’t make out and then left through the front lobby.
Switching cameras, Frank watched the black hulk as he headed out of the building after Mary-Beth Johnson. In that final moment before exiting the building, the man looked over his shoulder. With his suspect’s face clear and prominent on the screen, Frank pulled out his phone and snapped a photo.
Frank had what he needed. He left the small office and approached Bill at the front desk.
“I need to know his name and address,” Frank announced as he held the photo on his phone up to Bill’s face.
“That’s Chad Campbell. He just started coming here a couple months back. He can pump some mean iron.”
“That’s great,” Frank feigned.
“Yeah. It is,” Bill said. “What do you want with Chad? He left just before you got here.”
“Well, Bill, that’s between me and Chad.”
Frank smiled as he held out his hand, saying, “Write his address down for me.”
Chapter 7
“Hey, Ed!” Frank shouted into the mouthpiece of his phone, speaking over the wind flowing in through his window. “I need you to go into my apartment. I’ve got a name for you to run. Goddammit, Ed! The computer!”
“What?”
Frank threw his cigarette out. Rolling up the window, he put the old man on speaker and tossed the phone in the bucket seat beside him.
“I’m getting in your place now, Frank,” Ed’s voice creaked across the line.
The stress was wearing Ed out. He’d been looking over his shoulder all day as if someone was going to get him. No one was coming for Ed, but Frank could hear the anxiety in the man’s voice.
“W-what’s the name boss?” Ed asked.
“Chad Campbell,” Frank announced into his windshield as he cruised Ventura Boulevard, draping one hand across the steering wheel and resting the other on the door.
“Who would do that to a kid?” mocked Ed from the passenger seat.
“Just run the name.”
He turned right onto Laurel Canyon. This is where the houses got bigger, the yards smaller and the road tight and winding. Right here in the Valley, this was one of the quickest ways over the hill and into Hollywood. Flooded each morning and night with two lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, connecting America’s Great Suburb with the greater Los Angeles area—and it’s no bigger than a mountain pass in Colorado.
“Oh Frank, you’ve got a live one here,” Ed squealed.
Frank turned to the empty seat and asked, “What are you talking about?”
The phone’s screen flashed, 10% of battery remaining.
“Spit it out, Ed. Phone’s about to die,” Frank pushed.
“Chaddy boy just got out on parole for—”
The phone died.
“What? Ed
?”
Looking at the lightless device in his passenger seat, Frank swatted the phone to the floorboard.
“Dammit. Damn it all to...piece of shit never has battery when I need it,” Frank grumbled.
He huffed and puffed as he pulled his Pall Malls out and lit one. Rolling down his window, he tuned into 88.1 and let the morning jazz set replace the smoke billowing out his window. It’s not like he was going anywhere. No one was moving and there wasn’t a place for a U-turn ’til Sunset. He was already on the other side of the hill, more than halfway to Hollywood, but Frank still had another thirty minutes of gridlock ahead of him. He bit down on the cigarette.
Taking fifteen minutes to travel less than a mile, Frank finally made a left onto Santa Monica. Ten minutes later and a bit over a mile farther, he made a right onto La Brea. He turned off the boulevard and onto a street lined with palms. Halfway down the block, he pulled to a stop in front of a lone brick building standing out like a sore thumb amongst the single-story Spanish-style homes that lined the rest of the street. Other than the bars on each and every window and the abundance of old-model Hondas and minivans, it was a nice neighborhood. The wind was blowing east and with it came the tinge of ocean saltwater, fishiness and all. Frank locked his doors and tossed his dead phone under the seat; nice neighborhood or not, this was still Los Angeles.
Pressing the single button on the front gate directory, Frank noticed a humming sounded above him. Looking up, Frank watched as a small security camera turned its attention away from the street and swiveled toward him. A moment passed and the gate buzzed. Frank walked inside.
He didn’t make it more than four steps into the courtyard before a pig-faced, burly man in an orange Hawaiian shirt plastered with magenta flowers stepped into the hall before him. A too-small, blue Dodgers cap hugged his overgrown cloud of black and gray hair. The mustard at the corners of his mouth matched the yellow stains on his cargo shorts—incidentally, the only coordinating factor to the man’s dress. He held up the uneaten half of a club sandwich.
“Well, if it isn’t Frank Black,” greeted the sloppy man as he wiped the yellow from his lips. “What brings you to this side of the hill?”
“If it isn’t Dicky Stromwell,” Frank matched through a haze of cigarette smoke as he bent himself toward the concrete and patted out his butt.
The gate slammed shut behind him.
“It’s Rick,” corrected the man over the clanging metal. “I didn’t know you were back in town.”
“I didn’t know you were running shit-brick halfway houses, Dick,” Frank replied as he looked over the building.
“Rick,” the man repeated stubbornly as he leaned against his open apartment door.
Frank nodded and waved, but he wasn’t listening. His eyes were scanning the building that stood before him. Forty feet of gray stucco and red bricks. There were three levels in all. Each one with a row of six wire-reinforced windows that ended in a column of brick on either side. The mortar was rough and sloppy. The stucco was lazy and already chipping. A cluster of plastic tables and lawn chairs congregated near a row of stone ashtrays in the corner, but otherwise the courtyard was empty. No shrubbery hid the building from the street, from the neighbors. No bushes. No hedges. The planters held nothing but dirt and though the paved ground was cut away to earth in patches for trees, there were none.
Rick groaned, “I take it this isn’t a social call.”
Waving his hand toward the opening, he added with a sigh, “Come inside.”
Frank obliged and the two men entered Rick’s living room. Rick took better care of his small one-bedroom, but not by much. In every corner there were little patches of dusty cobwebs. The gray walls had a dark grime on them that fanned down from the central air duct above the desk across the room. It sat in front of a bank of windows, but the blinds were shut and only the faint glowing lines around the edges and a dim desk lamp lit the room. It was quite cold, a welcome relief from the summer heat, but it was musty and smelled of wet newspaper and cheap coffee.
Frank dropped himself into a recliner and lifted off his shades.
Turning to Frank, Rick offered, “Coffee?”
“Anything stronger?” Frank asked as he sank deeper into the seat.
His bloodshot eyes gave him away.
“You look like shit, Frank,” Rick retorted as he disappeared behind the plaster wall that separated the rest of the apartment from his kitchen.
Frank felt like shit. He sat still, his palms flat on his thighs and his legs deep in the cushions, as he waited for Rick and his coffee.
“Rough night?” Rick called over clanking porcelain.
“You could say that,” Frank agreed.
Emerging from behind the wall with two mugs in hand and no sandwich, Rick said, “I noticed you still aren’t carrying a gun.”
“You know me,” Frank replied flatly, “I like to work with my hands.”
Rick handed him a mug and flipped his hand into a two-fingered gun aimed at Frank. He clicked back his finger and said, “A trigger needs a hand too.”
“It’s too easy,” Frank breathed, rolling his eyes. “I like a challenge.”
Rick moved toward the bay of windows and snorted, “Eh, you always did like to hold yourself back.”
Frank grunted.
“So, when’d you move back?” Rick asked as he squeezed himself into the chair behind the desk.
Frank took a deep sip, feigned a smile and nodded, hoping it would somehow suffice as an answer. It did.
Rick chattered, “Couldn’t stay away, could you? Beautiful city of the stars. It’s a tough place to avoid. It’s like it’s got its own forces. Its own gravity. No matter how far away you go, the gravity always brings you back. Hell, I barely managed to stay in Chicago for more than a year. A family and kids couldn’t keep me.”
“No,” Frank muttered into his mug. “Dad got sick.”
“You takin’ care of the old man. That’s a hard one to swallow,” Rick jested. He swatted his knee with his free hand, laughing so hard a good portion of his coffee spilled across the papers on his desk.
Frank wasn’t laughing.
“No,” he said.
His disdain for Rick was obvious.
“He’s got people for that.”
But somehow Rick didn’t sense it.
“You didn’t have to move back, then,” Rick snorted as he wiped the spill with his shirttail. “See? Gravity, buddy.”
Rick didn’t hear it. He didn’t see it.
“That’s really not it, Dick.” Frank’s brow creased. Through straight lips, he said, “Supposed to see the old man tonight. I could tell him Dick says hello if you’d like.”
“Rick,” Stromwell chirped as if Frank had forgotten again—as if anyone needed to be corrected that many times.
After a long moment of silence, Rick moved his mouth to speak. Frank could tell the next words were going to be the start of a long and exasperating story about the last ten years that Frank had missed. Everything from weddings to graduations. Frank didn’t want to hear it.
“I need to talk to one of your tenants,” he declared, getting down to business.
“Always the detective,” clucked Rick.
“It’s what I know,” Frank said. Sipping his coffee, he clarified, “A resident by the name of Chad Campbell.”
“Yeah,” Rick said as he fished some lunchmeat from his teeth, “He’s here. What do you need to know?”
Peering up from his steaming mug, Frank said in a low voice, “For starters, why’s he here?”
Finished picking through his teeth, he flicked gunk from his fingers and said, “You could’ve figured this out on your own.”
“Phone died. Traffic. I’m here,” Frank said in a hurry. “Just tell me.”
“Why do you need to know?”
No one ever wants to do more than they have to.
“I’m investigating a death. He’s my prime.”
Frank was all but growling at the slop
py man behind the desk.
“Who’s the vic?” Rick badgered as his eyes widened and he poured some coffee down his fat throat.
“What’s with the third degree?” Frank asked. “You know her. Judge Mary-Beth Johnson.”
He corrected himself, “Ex-judge.”
Rick nodded. Then, leaning over his computer, he punched a few keys with his mustard-stained fingers. After a quick glance at the screen, he picked a pencil off the desk and began twirling it between his thumb and forefinger as he leaned back in his chair.
Looking at Frank, Rick said, “Shit. Looks like you’re on the right track. She was the presiding judge on his case. Put him away for four years. Statch and bash. County sent him to live with me a couple months ago. He’s a good guy. Best one here. The boy didn’t deserve what he got. You know the girl was eighteen when they went to trial?”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Frank shook his head. How could he have known that?
“Yeah,” Rick said as he shifted in his seat, “She was eighteen and her pops didn’t have a scratch on him. Assault my ass. Prolly didn’t even need to visit the hospital. Rich folks. Family looked like contestants on Family Feud sitting there. They’re just watching a man’s life go down the shitter instead of guessing words on a board.”
“Mm-hmm.” Frank said, “Lots of families look like that. Takes years for some trials. Most of them resolve long before, physically and emotionally.”
“It’s just hard to believe he’s your murderer.”
“Not every murderer acts like a murderer, Dick. You want him to walk around with blood dripping from his sleeves and a knife stuffed in his warm-up pants before you start to ask questions? Not me. I’m asking questions. Nice guy or not.”
Frank gulped the last bit of his coffee and said, “Where is he?”
“Whatever, Frank. You were never one for opinions,” Rick spewed as he leaned forward, handing Frank a business card. “You’ll find Chad here. That’s where he’s working.”