Then he forgot to breathe.
Shouldering the rental car door open, he stepped out into the misty air, felt dizzy on his feet and staggered to the left rear fender. How many rings had gone by? Two? Three? More even?
Finally, a click and a voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Uh…Hi. I’m looking for Karrie?”
“Sorry. Wrong number.”
And there, the conversation ended with whoever had answered clicking off as if the man at the other end was disposable.
“Not my Karrie,” Andrew wheezed aloud to nobody but maybe the lizards and snakes in the canyon beyond. The voice he heard had a bit of husk to it. A smoker’s voice. Or maybe the woman who had answered was just unlucky with how DNA had installed her vocal cords.
Not my Karrie.
Andrew found himself wadding the slip of paper into a tiny ball which he flicked away with less regard than a finger full of snot. The anger in him welled and flushed to his skin. His muscles tensed. And without a shadow of forethought he cocked his arm and hurled his mobile phone as far as he could, spiraling it across the road and deep into the canyon.
The San Fernando Valley stretched before him like a foggy sea of suburban sprawl. He imagined it was a frozen Wisconsin lake and the slightness of breeze smelled like a mix of ice and winter juniper.
Eventually, a calm came over him. His heart slowed. His breathing and heart rate returned to something that a trained medic might concur resembled normal.
“Daddy’s here for you, honey,” said Andrew to nobody but the air. “Daddy’s here and I’ll stay ’til I can bring you home.”
25
El Segundo. 12:30 P.M.
Lucky had no illusions whatsoever that the phone number he had handed Andrew might be a dead-end for the daddy. All cell phones had caller ID. Young Karrie could easily be in the habit of declining to answer calls from unknown numbers. Or worse, IDs that come with area codes that might remind her of home sweet home. The child was, after all, a runaway. And there were always reasons why—all of which might have prevented Karrie from accepting the call from her father.
With the Crown Vic parked at a broken meter on Sepulveda, Lucky waited in the driver’s seat a block south of a ten-story, glass and steel high-rise with an aviation firm blocked in blue letters across the top facade. With a little patience and five hundred dollars cash, Lucky was moments from completing his street transaction for something other than pain pills. And it wasn’t even illegal though it sure as hell felt like it should be.
To access the call and cell tower records attached to that mobile phone number, Lucky would need to secure a warrant or court order, both requiring the signature of a Superior Court judge. Had Lucky not been between LA and Kern County Sheriffs’ gigs, it might have been a shade easier had there been a case number and a crime.
But thank Christ for the gift of technology. As a process server, Lucky had the occasion to use one of the hundreds of data brokers currently mining the personal information most digital consumers gave away for free—or more accurately—without their own knowledge. Nearly all such companies worked on a mass scale, collating and selling their demographically-packaged gold in volume chunks to everybody from major retail chains to ever-interested political parties. Currently, the private detective market hadn’t proved scalable or showed enough promise of profit to anyone other than the occasional enterprising computer jockey who thought a few extra dollars might ease the pain of spending forty-plus hours a week as a cog in a sea of corporate cubicles.
Lucky’s cog was named Emery.
Emery was maybe five-foot-two inches max in her trademark black trench boots, and Lucky guessed her tech-savvy job didn’t leave her with enough cash to feed her two addictions: tattoos and Molly, the crystal powder form of MDMA, aka the street drug Ecstasy. Besides her weekend sojourns to any rave within driving distance of her electric vehicle, the twenty-five-year-old was on a mission to cover nearly every square inch of her alabaster skin with artistic ink and by Lucky’s calculation, was just about halfway to achieving her goal. His discovery came on a drunken night that landed somewhere between a weak moment and a mutual act of convenience. Emery and Lucky had agreed to meet up to exchange about two hundred dollars worth of personal data on a hard-to-find former hedge fund trader who had so far dodged a myriad of subpoenas. The after-work Tiki bar where they conducted business was barely around the corner from Emery’s Playa del Rey apartment. One funny umbrella’d drink had led to another and the unlikely pair found themselves between her sheets. Afterward, Lucky had joked that it was just like having real sex with the Sunday comics.
Emery had not only been amused by Lucky’s review of their one-night stand but had posted the quote on a variety of her social media pages as something akin to an advertisement.
“Hey, I got a new one,” said Emery, before her butt so much as landed in the passenger seat of Lucky’s borrowed Crown Vic.
“Sure you wanna show me here?” half-joked Lucky.
“Not on or near any of my gold and treasure,” laughed Emery, revealing teeth even whiter than her skin. “Right here.”
Emery lifted her sweater to reveal some of the flesh that covered her rib-cage. With a shellacked black fingernail, she circled what appeared like a cartoon cat with a Pinocchio-like red nose.
“You don’t recognize her?” asked Emery off Lucky’s puzzled look. “It’s Krazy Kat.”
“Right, yeah. So it is.”
“You don’t know Krazy Kat?”
“Nope.”
“From the old Sunday comic strips?”
“Look. I’m older than you. But maybe I’m not that old.”
“Well, I did it cuzza you and what you said.”
“As long as you didn’t do it for me.”
“You were good, Mr. Lucky,” winked Emery. “But not worth permanent ink.”
Lucky feigned a look of insult while Emery pulled out a manila envelope she’d hidden between the top of her jeans and the small of her back.
“Your number wasn’t attached to a smartphone so I couldn’t get a lot of details,” said Emery. “But it did geolocate. So between that and the cell towers I got patterns enough where I think you can, at least, intercept her.”
“I’ll take it,” said Lucky. Emery was already pushing her way out the door when Lucky stopped her. “Hey. Dontcha wanna get paid?”
“She’s a runaway, right?”
“Yeah.”
“On me then,” said Emery. “Think I wanted to be that girl for maybe three years of my life. But I stuck it out and, hey, despite all my body art, my family is really dope about me now.”
“Appreciate it. But a job’s a job.”
“Just lemme know how it all turns out.” Emery shut the door with a thunk, twiddled her nails at Lucky then turned tail back to her building and the cubicle which, by Lucky’s account, she owned more than it owned her.
26
Hollywood. 1:41 P.M.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this shit?” shouted Herm in a rare and honest moment. He waved a black-and-white headshot of a comely, blonde actress and, had he not been so tall and intimidating, would have been barking directly into Cherry Pie’s face.
“I know she’s not who you asked for, but she’s right outside the door,” fought Cherry, wanting to reach for the doorknob that led away from that closet-sized hunk of white-walled audition space. Her friend Cameron, who had agreed to audition in place of her temporary roomie, Valeriana, was beyond the door.
“I specifically said you and the other girl,” angered Herm. “Now, you’re wasting my time with some—”
“Her name is Cam. And she’s blonde and pretty and maybe your Audi people will like her—”
“You want me to meet her?” The question was more sarcastic than rhetorical, but Cherry didn’t seem to read either.
“Yes. That’s why I brought her.”
With that, Herm practically shoved past Cherry as he reached for t
he knob and yanked the door open. Springing to her feet was a leggy bottle blonde with a Barbie tan and the body of a wannabe runway model in need of three more inches.
“Sorry to waste your time,” spat Herm. “But you’re wrong for the part.” And before Cherry could so much as defend herself, Herm had already spun on her with an index finger inches from the perfect, turned-up nose her immigrant mother had bought her for her sixteenth birthday. “And since she’s wrong, that makes you wrong! Package deal, I said. You and the unicorn!”
“Unicorn?” quizzed Cherry, wondering if she had heard him right.
“I’m all done here,” impressed Herm. “And so are you.”
“Well, you don’t have to get your panties in a bunch,” the dancer defended. “It’s just a fucking car commercial.”
“Which you’re not gonna be in,” reminded Herm, as if there ever was a damned Audi spot that he had been hired to cast.
“You know what?” pissed Cherry. “I’m gonna report your shit to SAG.”
“Whatever,” said Herm, jonesing for a drink as much as he ever could recall since getting sober. Let her call the Screen Actors Guild and complain until she got it out of her system. He wasn’t registered as a legitimate casting agent. Herm was sure his name was nowhere in their database because his kind of placement work was off their radar. And they were damned glad for it.
“C’mon, Cam.” Cherry grabbed her friend’s arm and guided her toward the exit.
“Really sorry,” said the blonde, uncertain as to whom she was or should be apologizing. Herm or Cherry?
The casting man watched the pair clip-clop in their stacked heels all the way to the stairwell, vanishing from sight but hardly from Herm’s recent memory. He’d be sure to hold onto the anger for hours. Probably until he had escaped the Basin for the deep Valley and his home-sweet-fixer-home and that loving caress of brewed hops wafting on the air.
But first…
Herm latched the door to his rented audition space and retreated to a rear stairwell that fed all the way down to the turnkey complex’s basement business office. The manager, a chain-smoking matron who seemed to never age nor gain nor lose a single one of her two-hundred-plus pounds of ghetto charm, appeared to know each of her customers by the sound of their descent.
“How ya, Herm?” asked Queenie without looking up from her computer screen.
“Looking for one of your fuck-tard renters.”
“I got lots,” said Queenie. “Which one you lookin’ for?”
“Dude with the end block.”
“First floor or your floor?”
“My floor.”
“That’d be Mr. Gabriel Roth.”
“That’s him.”
“Always nice to me,” defended Queenie. “What you want him for?”
“Personal.”
“Now Herm.” Queenie’s voice lowered to a mannish growl. She peered up over her rhinestone readers and pursed her lips as if she had tasted something sour. “You know I don’t do with nothin’ personal.”
“Seen him ’round?”
“Not yet today. But he comes and goes when he comes and goes, you know?”
“You’re full of information.”
“Way it is. He’s all artist that boy.”
“Got his number?”
“For personal? Or for somethin’ havin’ to do with workin’ outta here?”
“Business, babe. Just don’t wanna have you deal with it.”
“Sexy when you lie,” teased the marm, punching up Gabe’s contact number on her computer screen. She highlighted the digits and turned the screen to face her visitor. “If he calls me to complain, you didn’t get the number from me.”
“Guarantee he won’t,” promised Herm, squeezing out a closed-mouth smile that could have leaked saliva at the corners. He quickly copied the number onto his own phone, drummed his knuckles across Queenie’s desk, then disappeared up the stairs in three graceful strides.
“You still got it, Herm!” she barked after him.
“Uh huh,” was all he echoed back to her before his footfalls faded into nothing.
27
Van Nuys. 4:07 P.M.
As a strip club, The Rabbit Pole was relatively new to the competition for San Fernando Valley men in search of naked women and weak, overpriced liquor to quench their undernourished souls. Sandwiched between a plumbing distributor and a construction equipment rental company sporting a lot stacked with earth movers, cranes, and cherry pickers, the royal blue joint looked like a large, single box.
In neon script that never dimmed read the club’s simple credo:
All Nude Girls All the Time
From 11 A.M. to Midnite.
The dancers at the club worked in three shifts: the Early Riser, aka the first shift of the day, grinding it out for the unemployed, the disabled, and men who wanted to put a wrap on their horny minds by the end of lunch hour; the second shift, named by the employees as Happy Ending Hour, ran from four in the afternoon to eight in the evening, primarily attracting the kind of wolf who desired a buffer between the job and whatever he called home; the final work block of the day, from eight to closing, was appropriately called Last Dance.
For Cherry Pie, Last Dance was her most favored shift. It allowed all day to audition, afternoons to attend either acting or dance classes, and early evenings to work-out a few extra bucks as a party dancer. Her late nights were left either for partying or stripping for big tips at The Rabbit Pole. And though she wasn’t the least bit ashamed of her side gig as a fantasy sex puppet, she figured the odds of her not being recognized increased with the lateness of the day when the business professionals waned in favor of bachelor parties, couples in search of stimulation, and single men fantasizing about a date with a beautiful stripper.
And the girls of The Rabbit Pole, they were so very beautiful. It served as a reminder to Cherry Pie that in a town where shallow was an art, beauty came fast and damned cheap.
“Well, look who’s working the Happy Ending Hour,” blurted a dancer Cherry knew only as Yolo. Short, she figured, for Yolanda.
“Yeah,” acknowledged Cherry, finding an empty stool at the dressing room mirror. “I heard a buncha Persian dudes were comin’ in, looking for a party.”
“No shit?” asked Yolo. “You sayin’ they gonna bring the Benjamins?”
Cherry only smiled and got down to her makeup kit. The Persian line was total bullshit. But it was sure as hell easier to sell than the truth. Which was that she was pissed as hell after her run-in with Herm the Casting Man. She had first tried to laugh it off with an extra sugary caramel Frappuccino. Then she had tried to sweat off the lingering angst with a double-dose of dance classes. Yet Cherry still couldn’t shake the lousy taste that Herm had left in her mouth. With that, she recalled what so many performing coaches had taught her. Use the painful emotion. Savor it and profit from it. Fine, she thought. If there was a spot available, she’d channel it from the pole. She would set her high beams on a man who closest resembled the casting asshole and bleed every last greenback from him. She would even throw in a lap dance or two if it separated the man from his money any faster.
The owner of The Rabbit Pole, a lanky Vietnamese entrepreneur who all the dancers affectionately called General Ho, was happy to fit Cherry into the line-up whenever she was willing. She was a cash machine and Cherry knew it. Her sass alone could whip a party of men into a rain-making frenzy.
“Your body bangin’ today,” grinned General Ho. “Not so tired like when you work Last Dance.”
“I always look good for you,” defended Cherry. “That’s cuz I’m in my fucking prime.”
Prime was an understatement. In show business, where a female performer’s shelf life is generally shorter than the average auto lease, Cherry was more than aware that the clock was tick-tick-ticking.
Lookin’ real good, Miss Elk Grove.
Cherry examined herself while unlatching the locks on her makeup kit, her deceased father’s old fishing tack
le box. She had begun using it during her stellar three-year run as lead in every one of her high school and community theater performances. The local looker who came in third place in Elk Grove High’s valedictorian chase and was unanimously voted most-likely-to-become-a-movie-star, had forsaken her mother’s wishes for a Catholic college and an M-R-S degree in exchange for a chance at Hollywood glory. It had been four years since she had last spoken to her Polish-born mom, having long since vowed not to return until her dreams had been fulfilled and there was a bank account with her birth name on it, full of cash, so she could prove she was right about her future all along.
Marcjeri Piechowiak.
From as early as she could recall, all the kids had called her Cherry instead of the phonetic mar-chair-ee that was her given name. And by junior high, the last name was a natural, shortened to Pie by anybody with a scintilla of imagination. The name Cherry Pie had stuck to her like a cattle brand. Add to that the easily downloadable tune by the eighties hair-metal band Warrant and the black-haired Marcjeri couldn’t walk down a high-school corridor without someone singing—or even thinking the lyrics:
She’s my cherry pie...
By the time Miss Cherry had rejected higher education in lieu of a career in the limelight, she’d made the lascivious moniker her own, practically forgetting how to spell her own christened name when it came to filling out applications for credit cards and driver’s licenses, and most importantly, income tax forms.
Perhaps such is why she liked most of her paid gigs, including that at The Rabbit Pole. Both General Ho and the customers paid in cash. A nightly, tax-free haul of singles, fives, tens, and every-so-often, a few Andrew Jacksons. But my-oh-my did those low denomination bills add up.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 43