by Blake Banner
“Have you told the cops?”
“I have nothing to tell them yet, that’s why I need a detailed breakdown of the comings and goings of the household, day by day.”
He gave his head a little sideways twitch and picked up a pen. “Good enough for me. Who is the subject?”
“Aaron Fenninger.”
He laid down the pen again and stared at me. “The Aaron Fenninger? The Aaron Fenninger who just got back from visiting the President at Camp David? The Aaron Fenninger who was just awarded an Oscar for best director?”
“Is there another?”
“You think Aaron Fenninger is holding your sister against her will?”
“You were twenty years on the L.A. police force. Are you going to tell me Hollywood celebrities don’t commit serious crimes?”
He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out except a long sigh, at the end of which he said, “No. I’m not going to tell you that.”
I shrugged. “If you don’t want to risk upsetting the aristocracy, I can take my business elsewhere…”
“No.” He shook his head. “I’ll take the job…”
I studied him a moment. “I don’t want him to know you’re there. And I’m not going after him through the courts. This is a confidential report. You’re safe.”
“No problem. I’ll do it. When you want me to start?”
I tossed a thick manila envelope on the desk. “That’s expenses and a week’s pay at above your going rate. Discretion is important. Start as soon as you can, today. I’ll need a report every evening. You know where he lives?”
He spread his hands and made a face that was ironic. “Everybody knows where he lives. He has a mansion in Malibu.”
I nodded once and stood. “I’ll be in touch.”
He looked inside the envelope and his eyebrows said he was happy. I left his office and his secretary showed me a face that said she didn’t want to like me but did anyway. I smiled at her. “He taught me to say please and thank you. Now I’m going home to practice. If I get really good, will you give me a sticker?”
She said something that wasn’t polite, but she smiled as she said it.
I took the I-10 down to Santa Monica and then followed the Pacific Coast Highway for fifteen miles, with the windows open and the salt air of the Pacific slapping me in the face. It was twelve thirty by the time I parked on Wildlife Road, and I was surprised to see that my twenty year-old Chevy Silverado wasn’t as conspicuous in Malibu as I had expected. I was a hundred yards from Fenninger’s gate and there wasn’t a Bentley, a Cadillac or a Ferrari in sight. I guessed they were all in high-tech garages.
On the way I had bought myself a hamburger and a newspaper, and now I settled down to eat and watch.
After half an hour a Buick sedan turned into the road from Selfridge Drive, then turned into Fernhill and parked. In his mirrors he would have a clear view of Fenninger’s house. I figured that was Ted Wallace. Half an hour later the gates rolled open and a white Jaguar F-Type rolled out. It slipped past me and, through the open window, I saw it was Fenninger at the wheel. I made a U and followed at a discreet distance.
At the intersection he turned east onto the Pacific Coast Highway and began to accelerate. Fortunately he stuck to the speed limit and I was able to settle six cars behind him and follow at a steady sixty-five miles per hour. At Santa Monica he took the Santa Monica Boulevard toward Hollywood.
It was a good ten mile drive through Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, until we finally came to Cahuenga, where he turned left, then right onto Sunset Boulevard, There he pulled up outside a steel and glass tower opposite the Pacific Cinerama, gave his keys to a boy in uniform and went inside. The boy took the car down a side street. I figured he was going to park it. A sign outside the building told me that Fenninger Productions had its head office on the sixth floor. I drove on by and parked outside the Caviar building. I gave the wing mirror a twitch and sat for half an hour watching the door. Nothing much happened.
I sat for another couple of hours and a lot more of nothing much happened. Finally, at three o’clock his car came back and another boy in uniform handed him his keys when he came tripping out of the front door. He climbed in the Jag, did a U-turn and accelerated past me, going east. I took off after him. At the bridge he turned right onto the Camino Real Freeway and headed south at speed, back toward downtown L.A.
Eventually he turned south onto the Harbor Freeway and came off at South Beaudry Avenue to cross under the bridge and park at the lot on 8th and Figueroa. I parked at the other end of the same lot, climbed out and crossed the road behind him to the Ernst and Young Plaza. I followed him into the lobby and watched him step into one of the elevators. There was a woman there with a cleaning trolley. I smiled at her apologetically and said in my best Hugh Grant English, “Excuse me, but, wasn’t that Aaron Fenninger?”
She gave me a look that was on the sarcastic side of ironic and said, “Yup.”
I laughed. “I’ll never get used to Los Angeles. I suppose he must be going up to…”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Ten bucks and I’ll tell you.” I gave her ten bucks and she said, “Intelligent Imaging Consultants. He’s a consultant. Top floor. And boy? Your English accent sucks.”
I walked away laughing, shaking my head and saying, “You Americans!” like I thought she was funny.
I went back to the truck and sat for a long while, drumming my fingers on the wheel and thinking. Intelligent Imaging Consultants. It had Omega written all over it and Fenninger was a consultant. My purpose here was to take out Fenninger. I could see Sergeant Bradley in my mind’s eye, his big Kiwi face, his stringy beard and his cold blue eyes staring at me. “Stick to the mission, stick to the plan. Everything else is called fuckin’ suicide, sir.”
He was always right. But he wasn’t here to slap me around the head if I got it wrong. And there was nothing to be lost, I told myself, by finding out a little about Intelligent Imaging Consultants. I climbed out of the truck and crossed the road again, but this time I went into the FIGat7th shopping center. There I bought myself a disposable pay as you go burner and called Ted Wallace.
“Was that you in the red Silverado?”
“No. Listen. I want you to find out everything you can about a company called Intelligent Imaging Consultants. Fenninger is a consultant for that company. Can you do that?”
“Sure. No problem. It wasn’t you?”
“No.”
“OK. Catch you later.”
At seven thirty Fenninger came out with three men and a woman. The woman was dark, possibly Hispanic. One of the men looked Japanese, one was white and the other looked Arabic. Fenninger was talking a lot, gesticulating. The others were laughing. They crossed the road, dodging the slow moving traffic, into 8th Street, and pushed their way into the Brazilian steakhouse there. I sighed, went and found myself a burger and a bottle of beer, and settled in for a long wait.
At half past ten they came out, said their farewells on the sidewalk and Fenninger returned to his car. I watched him climb in and followed him all the way back to Malibu, where the white gate rolled open and he pulled into his drive.
Ted Wallace’s sedan was gone, but there was a Ford Fusion in its place. I was tired and my body ached, and I needed to think. I could hear the bottle of Bushmills Kenny had given me calling to me, so I turned around and made my way back to Watts, and the Toro guest house.
I left the truck around the corner and pushed through the Mexican curtain. Don wasn’t there. There was a woman behind the counter. There was a look about her that said she was Mexican. Physically she could have been from anywhere in the Mediterranean or Latin America, but there was something in her eyes that said she was Mexican. The look she gave me said Don had told her I was trouble and to stay clear of me. That suited me fine. I nodded and said, “Buenas noches.”
Her eyes narrowed and her left eyebrow arched. “I speak English. Good night.”
I met her stare but didn’t answer.
I went to my room, poured myself a large whiskey and opened the window to have a smoke and think about what I had learned. I decided I’d learned enough to complicate things, but not enough to know why.
Three
Aaron Fenninger was Epsilon, number five in the Omega hierarchy. That made him a man with a lot of power, and it meant that everything he did in his professional life was part of his work as a leading member of Omega. More than that, it meant everything he did in his professional life was an integral part of his work for Omega, and more precisely Omega 1. That meant that if he was consulting on the board of Intelligent Imaging Consultants, the work of that company was, somehow, directly relevant to Omega’s plans.
Outside my window the fountain made little wet noises. I examined the amber spirit in my tooth mug, sucked on my cigarette, inhaled deeply and let the smoke out through my nose. I closed my eyes and in my mind I recited the competences of Omega 1: free market capital, mass production, mass distribution, technological research and development in non-biological fields, social cohesion, conflict and tension. There was no immediate, obvious link with Fenninger. Except…
Hollywood, the world’s most powerful propaganda machine. So Omega had learned from the Third Reich, and Fenninger was their Goebbels. I took a swig and let the smooth burn run down my throat and warm my belly. It made some kind of sense, but when I remembered the sophistication of the research I had come across, both at the sun beetle farm in Colorado, and at the John Richard Erickson Institute[6], it was hard to believe that any of that was being applied in Hollywood. For one thing, the United States had never been less united, had never had a more divided, confused sense of purpose. The kind of chaos and division which was afflicting the US was not the product of anodized, neutralized or standardized minds.
What was it the product of? There were plenty of theories out there, most of them made party political points; few of them, if any, stood up to intellectual scrutiny. Perhaps chaotic disunity was an essential part of human nature, and there was more of it now than ever before because there were more people now than ever before. If that was the case, then Fenniger’s work as Omega’s head of propaganda wasn’t very effective.
I drained my glass and dropped my cigarette butt into it. It gave a small fizzle and died. One thing was clear in my mind. It was about the only thing that was. I had to get inside Aaron Fenninger’s offices and see what he was about—before I killed him. When Fenninger died, his work had to die with him, otherwise there was no point.
I slept badly and at eight the next morning, after a work out and a shower, I called Ted Wallace. He was at his office, his relief was on duty at the house. So I got in the truck and drove downtown to talk to him. As I stepped in, his secretary looked at me like I wasn’t the nicest thing that had happened that morning. She smiled with her mouth but left her eyes on scowl duty and said, “Good morning, Mr. Nine O’Clock.”
I smiled with all my face and said, “I would tell you my name, but then you might steal my soul.”
She raised an eyebrow. “My God,” she said without feeling, “A man in L.A. who has a soul.” She looked back at her computer and jerked her thumb at the door. “He’s expecting you.”
He had a pot of coffee on the desk and a paper bag full of fresh croissants. There were two cups, a carton of milk and a box of sugar. He said something that sounded like “Mng-ng!” gestured with his chin at the cup he wasn’t holding, and added, “H’llash’llf!”
“Thanks.” I sat, poured mine black and grabbed a croissant. “What have you got?”
I bit and chewed while he drank and swallowed. “Not a lot, to be honest. The house is gated and walled, so it’s impossible to see what goes on on the inside, unless you want to start getting into expensive electronic surveillance, and even if you did, I’m not sure how successful you’d be. These guys employ the best and can afford the best.” He sighed, bit, chewed. “One thirty PM he left the house in his Jaguar, but you already know that because you weren’t waiting for him in your Chevy Silverado and you didn’t follow him.
“Three PM his wife came out…” He opened a file and dropped a couple of large photographs on the desk. They showed an attractive woman in her thirties, in jeans and a white blouse. She was holding hands with two children, about eight or ten, a boy and a girl. “She walked two doors down to the Reeds’ residence, stayed there until six PM and returned. Nobody arrived and nobody left until around midnight, when Fenninger returned. The exact time is in the report, but you know that because you were not following him in your not a Chevy Silverado.”
He poured himself more coffee and stuffed half a croissant in his mouth.
I asked, “How about Intelligent Imaging Consultants?”
He looked at me and blinked, then looked at his watch. “What I’ve been able to find out since last night is that it is basically a think tank set up with money from various corporations…”
“Media?”
“All visual media, TV, video, cinema, IT obviously, and their main function seems to be to advise or make recommendations on what shows or movies to produce, promote or axe.”
I frowned. “So I have a movie I want to produce…”
He shook his head. “Mh-mh…” He swallowed and sipped coffee. “No, you are a corporation that produces maybe a hundred and fifty shows, covering everything from news to sci-fi to comedy to drama, et cetera. Now, once a year you need to decide what gets axed, what goes on for a new season, and what new projects get the green light. Correct?”
I nodded. “OK.”
“So sometimes that is a tough call. Often it’s a tough call. In the old days you did it on a mixture of gut feeling and ratings. These days it’s market analysis, what’s trending on Twitter or Facebook—all that shit. So these guys went to the big corporations and said, ‘we have the expertise, we can look at your shows and tell you which ones to axe, which ones to keep and promote, and which projects to green light.’ And they give them this advice based on market analysis.”
“And they have a consultant who is a TV and cinema producer. No conflict of interests there.”
He smiled. “This is Hollywood. There are no conflicts of interests, only interests.”
I thought about it for a minute. “That’s a hell of a lot of work and research for four people.”
He sighed. “I have more digging to do. As well as run a detective agency, I also have a life that includes a wife and kids.”
I offered him an ironic face. “I heard that some people do that.”
“Yeah. My guess, they have a team of freelance researchers trawling through social media and reports from market research companies. They distill all that research and show it to their consultant. He ignores it and makes his recommendations on what he wants to see axed, promoted and green-lighted. That has always been the way it has worked in Hollywood.”
It was what I had imagined, and it meant that Omega got to choose what dominated the media. In classic Omega style, they had a conspiracy in which millions colluded without ever realizing it, while one conspirator pulled the strings.
I nodded. “Good work.”
He looked surprised. “It is?”
I smiled. “Sometimes you just need a pro to confirm what you suspect. Stay on the Fenninger residence. If I don’t see you tonight, I’ll drop in tomorrow morning. Tomorrow the croissants are on me.”
In the outer office, on my way out, I smiled at his secretary as I passed. “What’s your name, by the way?”
She didn’t look up from her computer. She just said, “Seriously?”
* * *
There was a surprising stillness and quiet on Sunset Boulevard. It was half past two in the morning. Listless aluminum streetlamps painted the blacktop with a sickly sheen of yellow light. The shops were closed, the offices were closed, the pizza parlors and cafes were closed. All the buildings had darkened windows, like dead, closed eyes, and black doors like gaping mouths. Only the night watchmen were awake, sitting behind their dimly lit de
sks, watching small TVs in their towers of steel and glass, while outside, empty streets echoed with distant sirens under a black, invisible sky.
I’d had the Emperor sitting in the back of the Silverado with the controls on my lap. Take off had been uneventful and I was now using the onboard cameras to come in for a gentle landing on the roof of the small, six story tower where Fenninger had his offices. The landing was good and I deposited the payload, then brought the drone out of range, back to the truck. When it had settled safely I triggered the powerful EMP generator I had deposited on the roof, then pulled on a woolen hat and a pair of heavy shades, and made my way across the road to the main door. I could see the guard inside messing around with his screens and his computer, trying to work out what had happened. I rapped on the glass and held my home made FBI badge against the glass. I’d had to return the one I’d ‘borrowed’ from Agent Harrison Mclean during the UN fiasco[7], but I’d managed to produce a decent copy before doing so, with the advantage that it had my photograph in it instead of Mclean’s.
The guy in the uniform inside scowled at me, hurried over and looked at the badge. Then he opened the door. I stepped in, waved the badge at him again and said, “Special Agent Mclean, your IT out?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Cameras?”
“Uh-uh, everything, all out. What’s going on?”
“You got anyone patrolling the building?”
“No.”
I scowled at him like it was his fault. “Why not?”
“We ain’t got valuables here. It’s only six floors and we just got documents, film scripts, that kind of stuff. I take a walk every couple of hours. If we have trouble we call the cops.”