I started to speak, but Joey jumped in. “We work together.”
“Marty,” I said, “we’re wondering if you’ve filed a police report on Annika.”
He leaned back, folding his hands. “Let’s put this in context, shall we?”
“So that’s a no?” I asked.
“You need to understand teenage girls. Off the record? Opportunists. They come here with some kind of work ethic, because that’s how it is for them back home. Then they see their American counterparts, and in three months, they’re as reliable as rock stars.”
“They don’t come from Mars,” I said. “It’s not like there’s no sex, drugs, rock and roll in Europe.”
Marty shook his head. “These are working-class types, slated for factory jobs until they get married and produce kids of their own. They’re from backwater towns. If they were more sophisticated, they’d be in college, not coming to change diapers for minimum wage.”
“What’s that got to do with—” I said, but he cut me off, sitting forward.
“What do you think happens when these sheltered young things get turned loose in L.A.?”
“I imagine that depends on the sheltered young thing in question.”
“Right. Type One gets homesick, fat, runs up the phone bill. Type Two? She gets drunk, she gets a tattoo, she gets knocked up. That’s the type to take off and leave us holding the bag, finding a replacement for the host family.”
“And what if Annika wasn’t a One or a Two?” I said. “Have you met her?”
“I don’t have to.” He patted a stack of documents. “We’ve had complaints. Discrepancies on her application, for starters. Go to the police? Police aren’t going to care about some German girl skipping out on her job a month early.”
I had an urge to reach out and grab the papers off his desk. “Can I see the application?”
“Our files are confidential.”
“Isn’t that handy?” Joey said. She’d been leaning so far back in her folding chair, I worried she’d tip over. Now she straightened up, the front of her chair hitting the floor sharply. She smiled. “Smart guy, Marty. Why search for a girl who could turn up dead, which would be bad for business, when with no effort she can stay missing and no one will care?”
Marty walked to the door and held it open. “Excuse me, ladies. I have work to do.”
“Nice business license.” I went to inspect the document on the wall behind his desk. “Cheap frame. Is this something you’re fond of? Because I wouldn’t take it for granted.”
Marty left his post at the doorway to join me behind the desk, perhaps feeling he’d made a tactical error in leaving it. He was shorter than me, and there was a subtle smell emanating from his shirt, the kind that comes from ironing clothes that aren’t quite clean, trying to get another day’s wear out of them.
“Get out of here,” he said. “This is private property and you’re trespassing.”
“Okay,” I said. “Call 911.”
Joey strolled to Marty’s other side, so that he was now pinned between desk and wall, Joey and me. “Go for it, Marty. Tell them you’re being menaced by two tall girls.” Joey was tall, and as menacing as a stalk of celery. Still, Marty could not physically remove us without resorting to violence and considerable loss of dignity.
“You media people are sick,” he said. “What do you want from me?”
“What’s the discrepancy on her application you referred to?” I said.
“This isn’t for publication. I’m not giving you permission to print this.”
“I guarantee it won’t make it into print.”
“There was an incident with the police back in Germany that she didn’t tell us about.”
“What kind of incident?”
“All I know is, she lied about it. You want specifics, ask the German police.”
“Marty,” Joey said. “We came to San Pedro. That’s our limit. Why not just tell us?”
“I’m telling you. There’s a police report on her. Unspecified.”
“How’d you find out about it?” I asked.
“I got a phone call, I don’t know who from. They said, Take a closer look at her application. I put in a call overseas, and sure enough, they got something on her.”
“But it could be something minor?” I said. “Unpaid parking tickets?”
“Doesn’t matter. Any run-in with the law is a no-no. She lied about it, that’s fraud, that gets her deported.”
“So you were getting ready to deport her?” I asked.
I saw his mind working, trying to figure out which answer would sound best. “We were considering our options.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Annika had a police record, but you didn’t bother to find out what it was, or tell her host family?”
A mulish look came over his face. “We had the matter under investigation. Things of this nature take time.”
“Yes, we can certainly see how swamped you are,” Joey said.
“Go to hell.”
We’d pushed him into a corner. I took a conciliatory tone. “What else? You said there were complaints, plural.”
“I don’t have another word to say to any goddamn reporters,” he said. “And I’m calling the Times.”
I smiled. “Oh, did you think we work for the L.A. Times? I’m sorry, you misunderstood. We read the L.A. Times. Joey even subscribes. Me too, but only on Sundays.”
“Sometimes we write letters to the editor,” Joey added.
Marty turned red, then pushed past me with some force and marched over to the receptionist’s station. “Get out.”
“Gladly,” I said, moving to the door. “By the way, Annika is not fat, drunk, stupid, lazy, irresponsible, or blinded by the American way of life. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Bye, Marty,” Joey said. “Enjoy the job while you have it.” She joined me out in the sunshine and aimed her keys at the BMW, which beeped in response. “Just when you think a used car salesman is as bad as it’s going to get,” she said, “you meet Marty. Where to now?”
“Where nobody else wants to go,” I said. “To the cops.”
6
The West Valley Community Police Station was on Vanowen Street just west of Wilbur, in a neighborhood that hadn’t changed its socks since the 1950s. Cramped bungalows occupied tiny lots, tract houses in need of paint jobs, the kind I might one day afford. Yards were area rugs of patchy grass, a far cry from the lawns of the Quinn estate in Encino. Probably the only thing these people had in common with the Quinns, in fact, was this branch of the LAPD.
If I hadn’t been obsessed heading to San Pedro, I was edging toward it now. The encounter with Marty Otis had intrigued Joey, but it disturbed me; I hoped that laying it out for the police would quiet my anxiety.
The cops were housed in a series of trailers behind a green public library. Next to the library was the future police station, surrounded by a construction fence, a municipal project that might or might not reach completion during anyone’s lifetime. Joey and I circled the block twice before we found the interim parking lot, on a side street called Vanalden.
The main trailer was packed, which was to say there were six other citizens in there. At the head of the line, a woman wept as an officer across the counter took notes. Across the room another officer struggled to find English simple enough to be understood by the carjack victim she was interviewing. Near some vending machines a third officer advised a middle-aged couple in matching leather jackets about their elderly parent who liked to help herself to periodicals at a newsstand. A fourth officer canvassed the line, directing people the way they do at LAX, expediting things on a busy day.
“We’re here to file a missing person’s report,” I said when he reached us.
“For a child?” he asked.
“No, she’s nineteen. No one’s seen her for several days.”
The officer looked up at me. “Mentally ill?”
“No.”
“Any indication she was
the victim of a crime?”
Thoughts of blackmail crossed my mind, anonymous calls to her au pair agency, threats of deportation. “Not yet,” I said. “But she wouldn’t just walk away from her job and her friends.” And her computer.
“Not much we can do. People do wander off. With nothing to go on . . . got a photo?”
“We can get one,” I said.
“Well, bring it in,” the officer said, “but it may not help much.”
“Can we file a report?” Joey asked.
“Yes, you could do that.” His tone indicated that this would be a waste of everyone’s time, but he pointed us to the officer across the room.
This woman was crisp but friendly, probably happy to be hearing her native tongue. She asked questions and wrote down answers on the requisite form, a single sheet of white paper. It depressed me, the things we didn’t know about Annika. We put her at five foot three, 115 pounds, but her birth date, identifying marks and characteristics, even jewelry were trickier. I recalled a red watch and silver hoop earrings. Joey thought she had a birthmark on a forearm. Neither of us knew the name of her dentist.
“So what happens now?” I asked as the officer finished writing.
“We send it next door to a detective.”
“Can we talk to him? Her?”
“I’m not sure who’ll be assigned, and if they’re in right now. Anyhow, there’s nothing they can tell you.”
“But if we were really horrible people,” Joey said, “and made a big scene and started yelling and demanded to see a detective, what would happen then?”
The officer looked up. “Then you’d get to see a detective.” She stood and called to her colleague manning the counter, “Who’s around next door? Anyone?”
“Cziemanski,” an officer called back, without looking up.
“Cziemanski,” she said, and pointed to the exit.
Detective Cziemanski worked in a trailer marked “Detectives,” at one of twenty or so desks crammed into a small area. The carpet was the same teal blue as the one next door, but less worn and dirty. Both trailers gave the appearance of having outlasted their intended lifespan and maximum occupancy by 25 percent.
“Shum,” Detective Cziemanski said. “Shum-man-ski. Not Chum or Zum or Sum or Chime or Zime. Here’s what happens: I take this report, I see there’s no clear indication of a crime, so I send it to Missing Persons.”
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“Parker Center. Downtown.” He ran a hand through his hair, or what would have been his hair had he had any, which he didn’t. His skull glowed as if oiled, reminding me of the White’s tree frog, Litoria caerulea, which I’d been researching for the mural. “They put it in the computer. I never see it again. Your friend turns up in a week or a month, and—. Okay, are you the type, when you can’t make a dinner reservation, you call the restaurant to cancel?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, so you call me up to say she’s back, or she’s living in Bali with her boyfriend, and I say thanks for letting me know.” He smiled. His smile made him look younger, too guileless for a detective. His baldness made him look older but made his ears more prominent, which made him look younger again. I put him between twenty-nine and sixty.
“So you don’t investigate anything, and you’re just talking to us now to humor us?” Joey said.
“Yeah, pretty much. Next door sends people here, we send them back. Which is okay, I like talking to you. You seem rational, you’re clean, you’re worried about your friend. You’re also good looking, both of you, but I’m not supposed to say that. I think you can sue.”
Joey smiled. “That’s why you’re working in a trailer. All those sexual harassment lawsuits.” Joey had family in law enforcement. She was right at home here, even drinking the coffee, which smelled like it had been brewing as long as Cziemanski had been on the force.
“And if Annika doesn’t turn up?” I said. “Same scenario, except we don’t call to cancel the dinner reservation? We just wait around, year after year?”
“Unless she’s a juvenile, a criminal, or very elderly,” he said, “I’m limited. There’s no law against disappearing. As long as you’re not wanted for a crime, it is, as they say, a free country. Now, you report a lost kid, or a mentally handicapped person, we’re out there in numbers and we stay out till we find them. Or let’s say your friend’s a victim of domestic violence, her husband threatened to kill her last week—I take it that’s not the case?”
Joey and I looked at each other and shook our heads.
“Does she have a drug problem?”
“Maybe,” I said, at the same time that Joey said, “No.”
He looked back and forth at us. “What’d you have in mind for me to investigate?”
“I guess I figured you’d check out her known associates,” I said. “On the other hand, we’re her known associates.” There was also Maizie Quinn, who might feel compelled to show the police the drugs under Annika’s bed, and Marty Otis, who’d describe her as a liar and a felon. What if Annika showed up tomorrow and found herself, thanks to me, facing criminal charges and deportation? Maybe I hadn’t thought this through.
“We have to look at the odds,” Cziemanski said. “This kind of thing, she’s off in some time-share she forgot to tell you about. That’s how it pans out, usually.”
“Unless you’re Chandra Levy,” Joey said.
“Who?” Cziemanski and I said it at the same time.
“A few years back. She slept with a congressman and disappeared, and it was all over the news for weeks. And she turned up dead.”
“Did your friend sleep with a congressman?” Cziemanski asked.
“No,” I said, at the same time that Joey said, “Maybe.”
He looked back and forth between us.
Joey said, “Would it help if she did?”
“Sure,” Cziemanski said. “It’d help more if she were a congressman. Anything to set her apart from the other forty or fifty thousand missing Americans. Not including kids.”
“Forty or fifty thousand?” I said. “And she’s not even an American.”
“Well, then. Unless she’s wanted for war crimes, it’ll be tough getting anyone interested. You two the only ones worried about”—he looked at his report—“Annika Glück?”
My heart sank. “Except for some odd people on an odd TV show. And her mother.”
Detective Cziemanski folded the report in half, then unfolded it and added it to the mess on his desk. “I’ve got your numbers. Let me know if anything else turns up on your end. Meanwhile, I’ll look into it. But don’t get your hopes up.”
We walked out of the trailer to Joey’s husband’s BMW, shiny and sleek, a standout in a parking lot full of trucks, minivans, and nonluxury vehicles. “Amazing,” Joey said. “You go in expecting to hear ‘Let us handle this’ and instead, they all but deputize you. What fun.”
“I hate when people say ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ ” I said. “It’s as bad as saying, ‘Don’t give up hope.’ You either hope or you don’t, but you don’t adjust yourself like a toaster oven.”
Joey clicked her key at the BMW. “I’ll tell you what he hopes. Cziemanski’s hoping for a reason to call you, because that cop likes you.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“His name’s Peter. I read his reports upside down. He’ll ask you to call him Pete.”
“I’m not calling him Pete. I’m immune to—I’m still recovering from—”
“Doc. I know. But consider this: all we need for Cziemanski to work Annika’s case is one or two suspects. So first we hand him the boyfriend—cops always suspect the spouse or the lover. Then we offer an alternate: Marty Au Pair. Give me a minute, I’ll make up something incriminating about him.”
“I’m all for finding the boyfriend,” I said. “But you’re wrong, Joey. It’s not suspects Cziemanski wants, it’s a crime. Dollars to doughnuts, nobody’s going to care about Annika Glück until we come up with a dead
body.”
7
If there’s anything trickier than finding a missing person, it’s finding the boyfriend of the missing person when all you have to go on is “Rico.”
We called Annika’s mother from Joey’s car, on the 101 freeway. It was three P.M. in L.A., midnight in Germany, but I figured Mrs. Glück wouldn’t be sleeping well, and I was right. All she could tell us about Rico, though, whose last name she didn’t know, was that he was a “goat boy.” There aren’t a lot of goats that need tending in Southern California, so I decided she meant “good boy.” I told her I’d call when I had news, and hung up before her lamentations could put me over the edge. I was worrying quite well on my own.
I tried Maizie Quinn, on the chance that she’d recalled Rico’s last name. A human answered—Lupe, the housekeeper, who said Mrs. Quinn was at her sushi class. When I hung up, my phone rang. I answered it and was met with silence, the kind that signals a telemarketer about to take a stab at your name. Did telemarketers call cell phones? “Hello,” I repeated.
“Wollie Shelley?”
“Yes.”
“Just checking.”
That was the whole conversation. I said hello again, then did something I must’ve picked up from the movies: I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it.
“What?” Joey said. “Who was it?”
“No idea.” I shook my head, disoriented. An electrical current of sorts was running through me, shaking me up despite the prosaic nature of the words. It jogged my memory. “Wait, I’ve got it. His last name. It’s Feynman.”
“Annika’s boyfriend?” Joey said. “Rico Feynman?”
“Well, she called him Richard. It was after one of our tutorials. We were at the coffee bar, and I was going to walk her to her car, but she was going to wait around, she had a date. I said, ‘A nice guy, I hope?’ Because we’d been talking about our tendency to fall for the wrong kind of guy, and she told me not to worry, this one was a fine man. Literally. That was his last name. Feynman. She spelled it out.”
Dating is Murder Page 5