"I believe each of us have a problem, and each of us have a solution. Shall we see if we can match them up?"
"I think we can do better than that, Kate. Shall we go somewhere for drink?"
"God, yes."
Choi drove a short block to Taylor's steakhouse on 7th Ave. It was an old-school place with red vinyl booths. And very busy. They cooled their heels at the bar waiting for a table.
"What are you drinking?" Choi asked, hoping a stiff one would calm Kate down.
"I'm having a martini, and you'd better keep pace," Kate teased delicately.
Choi gulped, he was no drinker, but no choice. Kate Hong's moods - her insecurities, Choi could read her. Kate Hong was jealous of Holly Park, for capturing the Dumok's attention, when she could not. Competition never fares well to a vain woman and Kate Hong was certainly that.
"The Dumok has fallen for her," Kate announced, solemnly, as she stabbed her pimento-stuffed olive with the little plastic sword that had come with the drink. "I have never seen such flowers as he sent her, that first day."
"Vigorous, careful, judicious youth is all Holly Park has. The bloom of youth is fleeting, then she will have nothing while you will remain the great beauty you are."
Choi leaned forward, his eyes glittering in the dim light of the bar. Kate Hong's white suit virtually glowed. Choi remembered it for a long time afterwards. The host came by and said their table was ready. They were seated in a booth upstairs, unfashionable, where the families with children were corralled, but the booth was private enough, the waiter amenable, and Choi ordered another round of martinis and filet mignon for both of them. Kate was impressed. Choi seemed more authoritative lately, more manly.
Kate seemed happy. The steakhouse was fashionable, and that was what pleased her. Choi made sympathetic noises as Kate complained about the Dumok and Holly. Choi gently reminded her that she, Kate, was the one who had retained the high profile murder case, not Holly. And that Holly's missing person's case for the Dumok was like hiring her to look for a lost dog, compared to that. If the Dumok had hired a nobody such as Holly, how important could this missing person be?
Kate liked Choi's logic, that and the icy martinis put her in a happier mood, and she agreed to Choi's loan request. She didn't ask what the money was for. She knew it was better not to know. Anyway, his credit was good. He had always paid her back.
Choi drove carefully, to Kate's place, of course. There was a need deep within Kate to feel desired that night. She invited Choi in, it was her new place and he’d not seen it yet. She made them another drink at the wet bar. Her eyes were half-closed as she nursed her drink, but Choi knew the mood she was in. He shut off the lights and they stood in front of the floor to ceiling windows of her bedroom looking out at the glistening downtown.
Choi stood there, looking too, but he only saw what all his hard work and cleverness helping Kate had bought – for Kate. The condo was large and in a good building, beautiful, and decorated with Persian carpets, leather sofas and expensive artwork on the walls. It was then he realized that all the years he had worked for peanuts and done without, Kate had feathered her nest. Anger gurgled in his throat like blood. But she had agreed to the loan and so he was there.
When they finished, it was after midnight and Kate was sound asleep. Theirs was a sexual compatibility built over a long time. As he was leaving, Choi spotted Alexis Linser's ruby ring carelessly flung on Kate's dresser. Kate wouldn't miss it. To her, it was all about the hunt, the carcass was left in the tall grass for the carrion feeders. Choi quietly slipped out the door. He might be a carrion feeder, but he still had some teeth.
At home, Choi put his "Train Wreck" album on carefully as he dropped the stylus into the first groove of the vinyl. He took a cold beer from the fridge and opened it, then sat in his only comfortable chair and let the music roll over him. He glanced at Kate's money on the table next to him a bad feeling came over him. He concentrated on the music, and the jazz helped. It seemed like a long time ago, where it had all begun. Where had all the time gone?
Chapter 27
Heather Hart rarely left Hancock Park, the tiny enclave where serious money had settled 90 years ago and saw no reason to move. It was a neighborhood where the dogs were better cared for than the help. Tall shrubbery, fences and iron gates surrounded it. Graceful, imposing, intimidating from the outside. A secure and utterly private refuge from the inside.
Heather lived the kind of life where quiet perfection was expected. At twenty one, when she had returned from her summer abroad, she had learned the hard way not to step outside the social fences. Since then, she rarely allowed herself to even imagine it, and when she did have those thoughts, she had terrible headaches.
The chance meeting with Mick Chang had changed all that. She found her thoughts wandering. Mick Chang was exciting. Her husband Gordon… she tried to think of the last time she had been excited to come home to him, and couldn’t.
Some families claim to have come to America on the Mayflower. It was rumored that Gordon’s family had owned the Mayflower - or at least financed it - and gone on from there to flourish in America. The Hart family took for granted their name would be on a discreet brass plate or cornerstone on wings of universities, hospitals and museums to which they contributed, or even founded.
The family never traded on their wealth and influence, but strangely, the more discreet they were, the more powerful their influence became.
As expected, Gordon Hart went to the same prep and Ivy League schools as his his parents, grandparents and great grandparents. He could converse expertly on any topic, adding an interesting and unusual perspective without coming across as pompous or arrogant or even academic. His learning was natural resulting from a pure and sincere intellectual curiosity. He read everything, from cereal boxes to white papers and subscribed to many esoteric publications.
But his abiding fascination was golf. Perhaps it held his interest because inherently, golf does not allow for perfection or absolute mastery because of the deliberate amount of chaos and randomness built into the game. Having mastered everything else, no challenge sustained his interest other than sports in general, and golf in particular.
Gordon saw no challenge in women, so he was agreeable to marrying Heather who had a background sufficient to understand what was expected and not to rock the boat too much.
Heather admired Gordon’s brains, and was young enough to think that passion would come with time. In other words, she was too young. But she undertook the marriage in good faith, learned to dress appropriately, smile on cue, volunteer for her mother-in-law’s favorite charities, was never late to events and never made public scenes. She was a perfect wife. Even when it meant coming home to an increasingly medicated husband who was in bed with his dog by 9:30, long asleep on cocktail of pills. Whether they were for ailments real or imaginary didn’t matter, because either way the pills precluded Gordon from being much of a husband. And the idea of becoming a father became one of the things not be discussed because it might upset him.
Strangely, her mother-in-law put no pressure on them to start a family, and Heather was too innocent to wonder. By the time she began to want to ask questions, it was too late. Questions of that sort would just upset everyone.
Nonetheless Heather’s perfection lasted ten years. Then, one night, it stopped, and finally her heart pounded and her blood raced at the thought of being with a man.
Chapter 28
"Over here." Mick Chang leaned over and opened the passenger door of the undercover car. He wore his usual rumpled plaid shirt, baseball cap crushed to his head. He chewed gum and looked around casually. There was a badly folded map on the front passenger seat next to a white, pocket sized bible with a worn leather cover and gold edges. Heather slid into the passenger seat wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, sneakers and dark glasses, even though it was midnight.
Her hair was piled up under a baseball cap. The dashboard had cracks in the vinyl from the sun and the cloth seats had
worn thin and had dark stains. The springs were a lumpy memory. If Heather noticed, she didn't let on.
"Hey baby," Chang pecked her on the lips.
"A Bible?" Heather exclaimed, taken aback.
"Just open it." It was pocket-sized with a worn leather cover and gold gilted edges that looked worn from time. But the pages had been hollowed out and there was a small audio recorder inside where the pages once had been.
"I was on an undercover assignment last night. Spent the night in the can. It's the perfect size for a back or front pocket. The crooks like to brag about their crimes to pass the time. I sat in a cell all night waiting for my cell mate to talk."
"Did he?"
Mick shook his head. "Nope. He just sat there for fourteen hours with his arms crossed on his bunk. He never said a word."
"What if he asked if he could borrow your Bible?"
"Guess I'd be dead. Shit. I never thought of that."
They turned the corner to San Pedro street and stopped next to an outdoor soup kitchen. Mick reached under the seat and pulled out a flashlight and switched it on.
"Stay inside, don't move and don't open the door for anyone."
As soon as he left, Heather immediately rolled down the window so she could hear what was going on. Plus she hadn't counted on the car smelling like stale tacos. Mick walked up to two men in line at a mobile soup kitchen, next to some old picnic tables. Another man sat nearby softly playing the saxophone. Heather leaned forward, her eyes adjusting in the dim light. It was getting darker and the sound of the saxophone soothing, it's tarnished metal virtually glowed. Heather remembered it for a long time afterwards.
Mick knew a couple of the fellows in the soup line. He waited until they had their food: soup and large chunks of bread, and had settled at a picnic table, discretely away from others. Mick perched on a corner of the table.
"What's the soup tonight? Smells good."
"Wishbone soup," grunted the first fellow. "Makes you wish you had a bone for the soup."
"Cops don't eat soup," said the second man. "I hear donuts."
"You fellows tell me if Snapper comes around and I'll stand you a bottle. It'll cut the damp."
"He was working the docks last week but he don’t come around.” Mick handed them a few crumpled one dollar bills. You see Snapper, you let me know. I need to talk to that boy." Mick strutted back to the car slid into the driver's seat and started the engine.
"Done. Next stop gotta head downtown to return the property."
"You're done? What have you done?" Heather asked. "You just talked to those homeless men for a couple of minutes."
"I'm cultivating informants. I'm looking for a guy that's a friend of theirs. Snapper, he goes by. My main snitch. I need him to complete my warrant so we can bust down some doors. He's disappeared."
"And if he doesn't resurface?"
"Then I'm fucked. These guys will tell him. I toss a few dollars and someone bites. It's like fishing. You have to bait your hook, and most of all, be patient. Everybody in this life wants something that someone else can get for them.”
Mick peeled away from the curb and made an illegal u-turn, tires screeching. Heather looked around for a cop, then laughed out loud realizing she was with one.
Chapter 29
The sky flamed orange behind her and Holly felt the sudden chill in the desert air as she got out of her car in the prison parking lot. She tucked the Wolf Linser file Kendall had given her under her arm. This was the inland empire. Over a hundred easily by day in the summer, yet plummeting to forty overnight.
The jail deputy had a precise sneer. "Who you here to see, Counselor?" The deputy drawled. The words rolled slowly off his tongue like he had marbles in his mouth.
"Linser, Wolf Linser," Holly said.
The sheriff deputy gave Holly the once over and his eyes gleamed. "You know what your boyfriend is doing time for, don't you, counselor?" The jail deputy asked when she returned. His mouth frothed at the corners as he spoke, his voice as cold as the A/C in a 7/11. "We don't like his type to begin with, if you know what I'm saying."
He spoke carefully with a curl to his lip. "We don't ask for much here other than to go quietly to the right cell and stay there. But not your boy, he don't get it at all. Our prisons are full of innocent people. Ask around. They all say they didn't do it. Every single one of them. But your boyfriend? There's something different about that one. He's cuckoo." He made slow circular motions with his index finger next to his head.
The deputy's eyes were vacant as he wandered down memory lane, a thin smile on his face, remembering when Wolf Linser had first been imprisoned, the night they couldn't find him and went into lock-down.
"LINSER, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU BOY?! DON'T MAKE ME COME FIND YOU!"
It wasn't pretty when they found him.
The jail deputy came back from the memory his eyes glistened. "We don't much like grown men diddling little girls here, understand? And we don't play nice when the lights go out. They're on a timer, see. It's real dark, real sudden.”
He cracked his knuckles and smiled but his eyes were lifeless. The deputy straightened his shoulders. It was so important for the jail deputy to feel he was better than the men he guarded.
Finally, bored with his game, he motioned towards a steel door. Holly stepped forward, the mechanical steel door click loudly and opened which made Holly jump. She stepped gingerly inside and the doors clamped loudly shut behind her. A second door opened into a large room with steel tables and identical low steel bar stools on each side separated by a plexi-glass window.
Another lawyer sat at the far end with a folded newspaper working on a crossword puzzle, legs crossed. He had wavy black hair with a few gray stray ones pulled back into a ponytail. He wore a paisley print tie, a summer weight plaid flannel shirt and a worn Harris tweed jacket over ancient gray flannel pants and brown Wallabies. A messy stack of legal files spilled over piled at his feet. Holly looked at her unused legal pad and shifted her feet. She thought of Wolf. She was about to meet the great Wolf Linser, former Olympian. The thought excited her.
"Ms. Park?" The voice was accented, high pitched, tentative, and hollow. Holly looked up. The man calling her was tall and thin with long blonde-gray hair. The prison denim and his skin hung from his bones like a coat hanger. His eyes were hollow and his cheeks were gaunt from poor nutrition, abuse and no care. He was skittish, like a rescue animal. His head bobbed and twitched nervously as if expecting a blow at any moment.
Holly flinched, trying not to let her alarm show. There must be some mistake. They must have brought out the wrong man. Kendall Taylor would never have married this man!
"I've had no visitors in seven years. Not one," his eyes flitted about, full of fear and suspicion. He had some sort of unidentifiable European accent, with a musical lilt.
"How's my baby? She never wrote to me, not one single time," his speech was slurred, incoherent at times as he spoke. Perhaps he rarely spoke in here. "Even one letter, so I would have something..." He spoke, but not to Holly. She sat in front of him but he could only see inward.
BUZZ! When the buzzer sounded every twenty minutes, Wolf jumped, then, muttering apologies he darted out of the room, hands cupped in front of his genitals on his tiptoes, his shoulders hunched over. He looked like a castrated two-legged centaur. He was so effeminate and Holly bristled. Is he gay? Holly couldn’t believe the man who stood before her could be a man Kendall Taylor would marry.
"Kendall Taylor sent me, Mr. Linser." Holly steadied her voice as she spoke, then watched him and waited. He did not respond.
"I was hired to come see you regarding the divorce papers you mailed her last week. She feels there was a mistake and asked that I come speak to you. You and Ms. Taylor have been divorced for over ten years. Did you mean to send the papers to Alexis and got your ex-wives mixed up?"
At the mention of Alexis's name his eyes widened. His eyes narrowed as he spoke.
"I didn't do nothing bad to Naomi to
belong in here. You have to believe me. Nothing," Wolf repeated. His eyes were piercing, desperate, furtive. "I made my baby happy." He craned his neck towards Holly. He stopped and reached into his pocket. His long fingers quivered as he took out a piece of paper and smoothed it. "I saw my baby's picture in the newspaper and read the articles. I don't believe it. Alexis framed my baby, too, like she framed me. She was a horrible mother. I was always protecting her from her mother. They were like two dogs each with one end of the stick. See my baby, isn't she so beautiful?" He kissed the paper before holding up the picture of Naomi. His eyes became focused.
"Sometimes, when I think I am suffering... in here," he waved his hand like a host introducing an act, I think of Naomi, and remind myself we are going through the same thing. She never hurt no one. Once there was a bird that fell out of a nest. She carried the bird and nursed it back. We did things like that. She and I, I never hurt my baby. I made her forget the bad things that gave her nightmares... what happened later is just a natural thing between a man and a beautiful woman."
Wolf babbled nervously, twitching his fingers as he talked. Holly watched his yellow jaundiced fingernails and his fractured nervous energy, and felt afraid, wanting so badly to jump up and run.
"Are you saying it was a false accusation?" Holly asked quietly, with a calm she didn't feel at all.
Wolf stopped moving. Madness was seeping into his eyes and he looked feral. His brows furrowed and he squinted his bird-like eyes, suddenly bright. He stood, craning his neck at Holly. His eyes hardened, glacial blue in their coldness and she winced and let out a cry. When he spoke, the high pitch was gone and in its place a nasal snarl.
"Do you really think that we were a nice little family out there on the ranch? Or shall I tell you what you came here to hear?" He crossed his wrists and rocked back and forth, gathering his strength for the task.
"Alexis was never home. I cared for the little girl. I took care of the horses. Naomi liked being around me. She was kind, good with the horses - everything her mother was not. Then life changes happened. The little girl became a young woman. Perhaps it did not happen suddenly, perhaps it only felt sudden at the time and I was a fool and did not see it. And then, too late!! Pah!!!" He spread his hands and opened his fingers wide, like some magician with a trick. "Like rushing water, you cannot push it back up the river."
The Virgin Whore Trial: A Holly Park Legal Thriller Page 11