Flea Flicker

by David Chill

  “You think what was going on here was a money issue?” I asked.

  Juan looked past me and paused. “You hear rumors. Some are true, some are nonsense. What I’d heard from PAB was that Glasscock was getting death threats. Not sure why, he didn’t bother to include me in his conversations. But yeah, money’s a possibility. I also want to talk with Gail about something.”

  “Oh?’ I asked, eyebrows arching.

  “Not quite what you think,” he smiled. “But rumor has it Glasscock’s had a few flings. Someone in the City Attorney’s office might have been playing around. I want to get Gail’s take.”

  I took this in and decided not to probe, I’d find out from Gail in due time. I pointed to the building. “You know when this actually took place?” I asked.

  “Probably Friday night. Rigor mortis already passed, the body started getting flexible again, which means it had to be a couple of days. Last person to see him was a staff member leaving work at 5:00pm. Only reason we found out on a Sunday is the cleaning person came in this afternoon and discovered him.”

  “They don’t clean on Friday nights?”

  Juan shook his head no. “We ran the janitor through the wringer. Said he wanted to see his daughter’s play on Friday evening, he figured no one was working over the weekend. Thought he’d just come in today and clean up and no one would know the difference on Monday morning.”

  “You have some thoughts on who did it?”

  “Sure, Burnside,” Juan said, rolling his eyes. “I’ll have something on your desk first thing in the morning.”

  I smiled. “Hey, Juan, there’s something else I’m working on. Mind if I stop by your office this week. Shouldn’t take long. It’s USC related.”

  “Oh, that’s perfectly fine,” he groaned. “I’ve got nothing better to do than help out our fine private investigators.”

  “It’s all in the spirit of making the world a better place.”

  Juan glanced around at the scene and gave me a playful punch on the shoulder as he walked over to a group of uniforms. I looked around as well. The police weren’t letting anyone into the building, and a few detectives were interviewing shocked bystanders. The ballistics crew would handle most things tonight, but the meat of the investigation would be done when the bulk of Glasscock’s staff showed up tomorrow morning for work. I noticed Gail speaking to a young woman and walked over.

  “Hi there,” I said, giving Gail a peck on the cheek.

  “Hi Sweetie,” Gail said. “This is Emma Wick. She works for Colin. Or worked. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Emma said, her eyes tear-stained as she shook hands with me. She was short and blonde and curvaceous, and she wore a black leather jacket over a bright red turtleneck sweater. I guessed she was approaching her late thirties. Then I stopped and realized I was a good bit older than her, and the definition of what was young sunk in hard. It did not make me feel good.

  “Sorry for your loss,” I managed.

  “This is just tragic. We all loved him.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. “What do you work at here?”

  “Field operations,” she said. “I organized town halls and community events for Colin. Background work mostly.”

  “Are you the only one who does this?”

  “No, there are a couple of us. But we all do a little of everything. Colin liked people to be cross-trained. I pretty much did whatever he wanted me to do,” she said with a sniffle.

  “How did those community meetings go?” I asked. “I understand some people were upset with him. The traffic problem.”

  “Oh,” she said with a wave of the hand. “People who don’t want to accept progress. Don’t like change, they just want to go on doing the same thing, not have their lives disrupted in the slightest. Whenever we suggested anything new, they just hated it. Hated it. Bunch of nimbys.”

  “Nimbys?”

  “Not-in-my-back-yard types. They want change, but they want it done somewhere else. These people were difficult to deal with, they wouldn’t even listen to Colin. At one event, they shouted him down and he was unable to speak. We finally just stopped doing those town halls.”

  “I’m sure that was frustrating,” I said, looking at her closely. “You think one of the protestors had something to do with this?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them. They’re animals. Whoever did this had an agenda,” she said. Just then, a number of employees from the coroner’s office walked past, wearing dark windbreakers. Emma gasped, the wave of harsh reality seeming to swirl around her, and she buried her face in her hands. I turned to Gail. She patted Emma on the back, said something soothing in her ear, but Emma didn’t seem to hear it. Gail took my hand and walked me a few feet away.

  “Sweetie,” she said slowly, “you’re not working robbery-homicide, you know. There are detectives here for that.”

  I took a glance around. “I’m sure they’re around here somewhere.”

  “I’m just saying that getting involved in a homicide investigation – no, make that an assassination – is beyond your role.”

  I shrugged. “Curiosity. It’s in my blood. So, how come you’re here?”

  “I knew some people on his staff,” she said. “I can’t get into anything more now.”

  I didn’t press her. She asked who won the Charger game and I stopped and didn’t have a good answer because I simply didn’t know. In a lot of ways I didn’t care. We made plans for dinner, the gist of which involved my stopping off at Versailles to pick up Cuban roast pork. And I was advised to make sure I got black beans and rice, since that was now one of Marcus’s favorites.

  On the way to the restaurant, I stopped off at a few more of Tyler Briggs’s hangouts, various bars and greasy spoons, showed them his photo, but no one said they had seen him lately. I placed a call to Hannah Briggs but just got her voice mail and left a message that there was nothing new to report. I finally arrived home and we had a quiet dinner. Both Marcus and I forgot all about watching the Charger game we recorded, and instead had a marathon session of checkers. Marcus, not surprisingly, managed to win all the games, our night ending with him stretching out on the living room floor, leaving me to pick him up and carry him off to bed.

  The next morning I went into the office, did some paperwork, looked up where Patrick O’Malley was living, and tried to find any and all tidbits about the career of Tyler Briggs. I took a mid-morning break and went over to Primo’s donuts, another place Tyler Briggs had frequented, but all I left with was a warm bear claw, a cup of black coffee, and an uncertain feeling about this case. When someone has gone missing for more than 48 hours, it is not a good sign. I left a message with Juan Saavedra, but knew not to expect a call back any time soon. I was beginning to focus on where I should go for lunch when my phone rang. The number was local but I didn’t recognize it. There was a more than 50-50 chance this would be another telemarketer, but I decided I didn’t have the luxury of taking that risk. It was a good thing I picked up.

  “Burnside.”

  “Hi there, Detective. It’s Gene.”

  “Gene,” I said, my mind combing through all the Genes I might have met in my life.

  “From the Alibi Room.”

  “Sure,” I said, hesitantly. “What can I do for you.”

  “You were looking for Coach Briggs.”

  “Still am. You know where he might be?”

  “I do. As a matter of fact, I’m looking at him right now. And he doesn’t look real good.”

  *

  It took a while to reach the Alibi Room, and it was not a nice drive. The day had turned cloudy again and a few drops of rain had begun to fall. In L.A. that was reason enough for traffic to grind to a gnarly crawl. Cars inched along, with drivers undoubtedly cursing the vehicle in front of them for not knowing how to drive in the rain. Or maybe for simply being out on the road in the first place.

  A few years ago, someone hatched what they probably thought to be an ingenious plan to get every
one to better appreciate Mexican immigrants. They decided to organize a one-day-a-month boycott, whereby all Mexicans would stay home and not go to work. It was called “A Day Without A Mexican,” and the goal was to slow the local economy down, helping Angelenos understand the impact that people of Mexican heritage had in L.A. They succeeded beyond their expectations, but not in quite the way they anticipated. Traffic was unusually light that day, people were very happy to see their drive time shortened, and some jokingly wondered if this could be expanded to three or four days a month. Not surprisingly, the boycott was quickly and permanently scuttled.

  I walked into the Alibi Room and Tyler Briggs was sitting morosely at the bar, a pint of golden lager in front of him, his eyes staring intently into the glass, as if the secrets of the world lay buried inside. He picked up his beer and took a long, gulping swig. It was not the swig of someone thirsty, but more like the absent movement of someone who knew this was a means to an end. When he put the glass back down, half the beer was gone.

  I said hello to Gene, then walked over to sit down on the barstool next to Tyler Briggs.

  “That seat’s taken,” he said without looking up.

  “Yeah,” I responded. “By me.”

  This time he turned to look, ostensibly to give me the evil eye, but his glare softened as some form of recognition seemed to set in. “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “You do. The name’s Burnside. Ring a bell?”

  “I think so. Pleasure to meet you again,” he said, albeit without any sincerity.

  “I’m sure it is,” I said.

  Tyler Briggs struggled to place me. He did not appear to be a healthy man. His eyes were tired and his face was puffy. He looked as if he had been ill, his skin had a chalky coating to it, and his mouth drooped. I couldn’t tell if he needed sleep, or had had too much of it.

  “You used to coach,” he finally managed. “At SC.”

  In his dismal mental state, I was almost surprised he could stitch even that much together. “That’s right,” I said. “Left SC when Johnny Cleary went to the Bears.”

  Briggs processed this slowly. “Yeah, it’s coming back to me. I met you a couple of times on campus when I was with the Jets. USC’s Pro Day. You had some good talent there.”

  “We did.”

  “You coaching somewhere now?” he asked, rubbing his face in a half-hearted attempt to energize himself.

  “No, I left the profession.”

  “Me, too.”

  I didn’t bother to clarify that he was fired. But to be fair, no matter how good or bad a coach might be, injuries, mistakes by key players, or sometimes the cruel winds of fate often end a coaching assignment. I knew one NFL coach who was fired because he failed to make the playoffs one year, even though his team had a winning record; he was replaced by the owner’s son-in-law.

  “So, I’ve moved back to my old career,” I said. “Private investigator.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said, perking up a little and managing a smile. “Big change from coaching.”

  “True. But I always seemed to get roped into something related to football. In fact, I’m on a couple of cases now that are football related. One of them includes you.”

  He peered at me. “Me? How’s that?”

  “Your wife hired me to find you. Hannah’s been worried sick.”

  “Oh, man, I was meaning to call her last night. Shoot, I’m in trouble now,” he groaned, then took another swig of beer. “Let me just get rid of this headache.”

  Now it was my turn to peer back at him. Something was not quite right here. “Do you know what day it is today?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “Saturday. Why?”

  I shook my head. “Not even close. It’s Monday. You don’t remember your weekend?”

  Briggs tried to lean back, but we were on barstools and he came perilously close to falling over backwards. Grabbing the polished-brass edge of the bar, he lifted himself upright again, reached for the rest of his beer, and drained it quickly. He pointed to Gene for another. The bartender thought about this for a brief second before he refilled it, sliding it in under a clean white napkin. I looked at Gene.

  “How many has he had?”

  “This is number three,” Gene answered.

  “You keeping score?” Briggs asked the bartender before turning back to me. “Go on. Get lost. You did your job. You found me. I’ll take it from here.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t know how you got here, but you’re in no condition to drive home. I’ll take you. You can finish your beer if you think you need it.”

  “I need it,” he said. “Believe me, I need it.”

  “You mind if I ask you what happened on Friday night?”

  “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure,” I lied. At this point, my client was Hannah Briggs, she was paying my fee, and she was the one to whom I owed whatever information was worth sharing. And from what I could see, Tyler Briggs was little more than a walking grease fire, and keeping secrets from his concerned wife did not sound like a plan that would benefit either of them.

  “Picked up some hot girl here,” he said, taking another long pull from his glass. “We went to a motel, I banged her brains out and then fell asleep. It was a little weird. I had some wild dreams. Felt like I was banging her all night. Then I woke up and she was gone. And man oh man, did my head hurt. That’s why I came here for a little pick-me-up. Figured I’d tweak the headache before going home.”

  “A motel,” I said, starting to reconsider how much I would tell his wife. As much as people say they want to know about their spouse, the reality is they don’t always want to know everything. I was also a little surprised that Tyler Briggs would share such intimate details, but never underestimate the lubricating power of alcohol.

  “Yeah, that was weird, she said something about being separated from her husband, she didn’t have a place. We went to some joint called the Snuggle Inn. From the outside it looked like they rented rooms by the hour, but it turned out to be decent. They even had HBO.”

  “That’s great,” I remarked absently. “Say, can I ask you something?”

  “I guess.”

  “You have a beautiful wife at home.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I was actually complimenting her, not you,” I said, starting to get a little annoyed. “Why’d you need to go off with someone else if you have a wife like that at home?”

  “You married?” he asked.

  “Yup.”

  “You ever stray?”

  “Nope.”

  Tyler Briggs sighed, and I felt like doing the same. I had had my share of one-night stands, and there were a few nights where I drank more than I should have. But when I met Gail, everything changed. Maybe because I met her late in life, maybe because I became an older dad, whatever the ultimate reason, I appreciated what I had and didn’t want to mess it up.

  “I guess then maybe you wouldn’t understand,” he finally said.

  “Things come easy to you, don’t they?” I said, knowing the answer already. What I didn’t understand was how those born into wealth could simply accept it as a given without looking around at the rest of the world. Without recognizing it, the shiny gift of being born on third base was an achievement accomplished by doing little more than winning the sperm lottery. There was a distinct lack of appreciation among some people when it came to where they had landed in life, as if it were all part of a master plan, one in which they were simply, and for all the right reasons, anointed as being special.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” he said. “Coaching, play calling, recruiting players. You know it’s not all that different from picking up women. It’s all about confidence. And it’s about selling. I know how to sell.”

  “How are you going to sell your wife on the fact that you’ve been on a bender for three days?” I asked.

  He laughed. “I’ll come up with something. I always do.”

  “Okay. Why don’t you finish your
beer and get your story straight. I’ll give you a ride.”

  Briggs downed the rest of his glass in one swallow and got up and walked out of the bar. I looked at him and looked over at Gene, and finally reached into my wallet and tossed a few bills on the bar. I had forgotten to inform Hannah Briggs that expenses were above and beyond my standard fee. Judging by her home on the Silver Strand, that shouldn’t pose a problem, but you never knew. Some people were especially thrifty, and in that area, surprisingly, often the rich were not all that different from the rest of us.

  I hurried and led Tyler over to my Pathfinder, when all of a sudden he doubled over in what might have been pain. I thought for a moment he might get sick, and the idea of him regurgitating his liquid breakfast in my front seat was not a pleasant one. He finally stood back up, wobbled a little, and said he was just a little woozy. Happens all the time, he told me. Judging by the amount he was drinking before noon, I didn’t doubt it.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll drive you home in your car. That’ll make life easier for you,” I said, not bothering to add that it would make life far easier on me if he threw up in his own vehicle. “What’re you driving?”

  He looked around for a moment before pointing to a light blue Mercedes. He handed me the keys and we climbed in.

  “You feeling okay?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty hungry,” he admitted. “Famished, actually. Can we stop for something to eat?”

  It was almost lunchtime, so I said sure. “You got a favorite place nearby?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he responded. “I usually go there at night, but they open around ten in the morning. You ever been to Tito’s?”

  “Yes,” I responded. “Know it well.”

  Tito’s Tacos was an L.A. institution, not because the tacos were especially good, and not because they were especially authentic. Tito’s was a place where kids growing up on the Westside often got their first taste of what used to pass for Mexican food in L.A. It had been around forever, located in the shadow of the 405 Freeway on Washington Place, a taco stand where you ordered at a window and picked up your food there after an interminable wait. They served dishes that were more Mexican-American. Their signature item was a hard-shell taco filled with seasoned beef, lettuce, and a pile of shredded iridescent orange cheese of some sort. I once took an LAPD partner there; his heritage was Mexican, and he scoffed at the notion that this was real Mexican food. It was like calling chop suey real Chinese food, he sniffed. Or like calling a barbecued chicken pizza real Italian food.