Flea Flicker

by David Chill

“What’s that?”

  “The man kept Do Not Disturb sign up all weekend. The maid, she finally knocked yesterday afternoon, got no answer, so she opened the door. He was asleep by himself. Guess the blonde left, not sure why he wanted to spend the weekend sleeping, but like I say, people here are funny.”

  “Who was the maid?” I asked.

  “Teresa. She doing up the rooms now. You can find her in the back. Say, what’s your interest in all this? Guy do something wrong?”

  I thought about this for a moment and shook my head. “We need to respect his privacy,” I said, and walked out of the office, headed for the back of the motel. It was a cheap-looking place, but everything seemed neat and orderly and well-maintained. The exterior had been treated with a fresh coat of paint, the parking lot looked as if it had been blacktopped recently, and the trash bins were neat. Maybe this was a classy joint after all.

  I found a young Hispanic woman wearing a light gray maid’s uniform coming out of one of the rooms. She had the standard cleaning cart nearby, replete with sheets, blankets, Kleenex, and toiletries.

  “Hello,” I started.

  “Sí, señor?”she answered.

  “Habla inglés?” I asked, depleting a large percentage of the high school Spanish I still could recall.

  “Poquito,” she managed. “A little bit.”

  “All right,” I responded. “You’re Teresa?”

  “Sí, mi nombre es Teresa Ortiz.”

  “Okay, Teresa. The man who left this morning. He was here all weekend. The one who left without checking out. Do you remember him?”

  “Sí, sí,” she said, nodding her head vigorously.

  “What room number was he in?”

  “Dieciocho.”

  I felt like I needed to pull up Google translate on my iPhone. “What is that in English?” I asked.

  “I think … eighteen?”

  I flashed my fake badge. “Can you show me the room?”

  Her eyes widened, and she paused for a moment. I wondered if she thought I was an immigration officer. It was common knowledge that Los Angeles had an above-average percentage of illegals, and their antennas were always out for the authorities.

  “It’s okay,” I said, and held up my hand. “I’m not INS and I’m not interested in you.”

  She still looked at me warily, rolled the matter over for a moment, and then led me down the hall. She opened the door to Room 18 with a swipe of her card, and we walked inside.

  The room had been made up, and like most freshly cleaned hotel rooms, it looked immaculate. Cliff Roper’s daughter, Honey, was working in management for the Disney hotels in Anaheim, and she once told me that hotel rooms were expected to look pristine to every guest. That it would appear as if no one had ever spent the night there before, that the bed should exude the feel of a brand-new, never-slept-in nook. The idea that hundreds of people had previously climbed into that very bed and performed an array of acts that went well beyond sleep was a fact to be disguised at all costs. And even this less-than-stately inn, situated in an unlikely section of an over-sexed city like L.A., had managed to achieve that lofty goal.

  “Looks like you did a good job of cleaning,” I observed, walking around the room a few times and not seeing anything out of the ordinary.

  “Gracias,” she replied.

  “Did the guest by any chance leave anything behind? Anything at all?”

  A look of horror suddenly washed across her face. “Sí. They did.”

  “What?” I asked.

  She licked her lips and led me back outside. We walked back down the hall and around a corner. She opened a door and pointed to a white, plastic garbage bag in the dumpster.

  “Aquí,” she said.

  “Would you mind removing it?” I sighed.

  She hesitated, but then she put on a pair of gloves and pulled open the bag. Very carefully, she looked inside, moved her hand, and gently pulled an object out. It was a syringe.

  “This was in the room?” I peered at her.

  “Sí.”

  “Okay. Here’s what you need to do. Put that into a separate plastic bag, a small one. Make sure it’s clean, and preferably new. Some other police officers may be here later. Give it to them. Okay?”

  “Sí.”

  “It’s very important.”

  “Sí.”

  I looked at her. “Did he leave anything else?”

  She drew in a breath, thought for a long moment, and shook her head no.

  *

  When you’re close to a Costco, you invariably stop in. It is like a magnet, grabbing your attention and tugging you toward the undersized parking lot, where you jockey for position to snare a vacant parking space. The fact that this was three in the afternoon on a Monday made no difference. Costco was always busy, and you simply gave thanks you didn’t arrive on a Saturday afternoon, when it was really crowded.

  I picked up a rotisserie chicken, along with over a hundred and eighty-five dollars worth of groceries I hadn’t planned on buying. But when you walk into that high-roofed warehouse loaded with all sorts of apparent bargains, your mind stops functioning coherently. It was all I could do to not fill my cart to the point where it was overflowing. I purchased enough food to last quite a while, never stopping to wonder if all of it would fit into our refrigerator and cabinets. Sometimes you just have to wing it.

  My arrival at home was met with the best part of every day, which is to say hearing Marcus yell “Daddy’s here!” As he watched me lug a big carton of groceries into the kitchen, he caught my eye and asked the question he believed should prevail over all others.

  “Did you get something for me?” he asked.

  I smiled and said yes, tearing open an oversized package of colorful gummy bears. Seeing his wide eyes and bright smile was the unforeseen joy of being a dad, a prize I never anticipated. I simply fell into fatherhood, hapless and clueless, with no plan or idea for how to move forward. I read a few parenting books, but they really didn’t give me much of a blueprint. I did not have a dad growing up, so most of my knowledge about fatherhood involved on-the-job training. Thankfully Gail came from a family of five, she was the oldest, and she had experience in the task of looking after kids. But a mom can only impart so much to a boy. A dad has a different role.

  “How was your day?” I asked him as he carefully chewed a blue gummy. I bit into one also, and couldn’t quite pinpoint the flavor. I read the package and the answer eventually became clear. Somewhere along the way, blue raspberry materialized in our society, odd in the sense that I never saw a raspberry that was any shade beside red or black.

  “Okay,” he said absently, and then he changed the subject. “Daddy, what am I getting for Christmas?”

  I rolled my eyes and walked back into the kitchen. Our nanny was already unloading the groceries and putting them away as she gave me a smile and a hello. I tried to think of an answer for Marcus, and after letting it ping-pong around in my mind for a bit, I walked back into the living room to join him.

  “Well?” he asked, looking up at me curiously.

  “I guess you’ll have to wait for Santa to come in a few days to find out,” I said.

  ”Dillon Gelber says there’s no such thing as Santa.”

  I looked at him. “Who’s Dillon Gelber?”

  “He’s in my preschool class.”

  “Oh. Who do you think knows more about this – me or Dillon Gelber?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t get the right answer on that one.

  “Well, you. But it doesn’t make sense. Santa climbing down our chimney? He’s too fat. And what about kids who live in houses without chimneys? And how does Santa get to everyone’s house in one night? Everyone in the whole world?”

  I looked down at the carpet. Questions like these were going to be inevitable with a bright, inquisitive child. “Marcus, Santa has a lot of helpers. It’s not one Santa that makes it to everyone’s house. There are a lot of Santas out there.”

  “Okay,” he said after
some processing, giving me a brief respite of relief. I never imagined matching wits with a five-year-old could be this taxing.

  “Good,” I said.

  “So, am I getting an Xbox for Christmas?” he asked.

  I reached in and took another gummy bear. This one was green, and I couldn’t quite figure out if the flavor of this one was apple, lime, or some odd multi-flavor combination someone dreamed up in a chemistry lab.

  “We’ve talked about this, Marcus,” I said, chewing carefully. “Mom and I think you’re a little too young. We want your brain to develop more before you go get hooked on video games.”

  “But most of my friends have them,” he pointed out.

  “A lot of your friends have older siblings,” I said, not reminding him that they also had parents who were more interested in appeasing their children, getting a built-in babysitter, and figuring they’d work out any issues caused by excess exposure to violence at some undetermined point later in life. L.A. was a burgeoning market for psychotherapists, and I sometimes wondered if one-half of L.A. was in treatment with the other half.

  “So, because I don’t have an older brother, I don’t get to have an Xbox?”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “Are you playing any of these video games at your friends’ houses?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “Are they violent?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking down.

  “Marcus, when Mom and I feel you’re old enough, we’ll get you an Xbox. Until then, you’ll have other toys to play with. And while I’m not thrilled to hear you’ve been playing these games at your friends’ houses, I’m not going to do anything about it for now,” I said, thinking a parent has only a limited amount of power over their child, even one who has not yet enrolled in kindergarten.

  We spent some time playing Chinese checkers until Gail came home. She smiled at the bounty I procured at Costco, but mostly, I suspect, at the idea we wouldn’t need to cook tonight. We split the rotisserie chicken, and I rubbed three potatoes with olive oil and speared them with a few pokes of a fork before putting them into the microwave. I threw a few large handfuls of cut lettuce into a bowl, splashed them with some Italian dressing, tossed the contents a few times, and voila, we had a fast and good dinner. As we cleaned up, Marcus wandered out of the room to play with Chewy, our Cocker Spaniel, who was more interested in scratching and ridding herself of the fleas she had somehow acquired. Once Marcus was out of earshot, I brought up the highlights of my day.

  “So, I guess you heard about Tyler Briggs,” I started.

  “Yes,” Gail said. “The police picked him up this afternoon.”

  “Actually, I picked him up. The police were just the ones who took him in for booking.”

  “Oh?” Gail looked at me. “How did that happen?”

  “A sympathetic bartender followed up with me. Guess it sometimes helps to leave your business card. I also talked with Hannah. She wants me to stay on the case. She doesn’t think Tyler did it.”

  “I understand,” Gail said slowly. “She’s the spouse.”

  “I also told her you’d pass along some suggestions on defense attorneys. I hope I didn’t cross a line here.”

  Gail thought about this for a second. I loved watching her think, but I loved watching her, regardless. Her chestnut-brown hair, pulled back into a pony tail, her clear gray eyes, her bee-stung lips, they never failed to grab my attention.

  “No, you didn’t cross a line. She should know a few good ones, but I can provide some, too. I’m a firm believer that everyone should be represented well in court. Especially for a case involving a capital crime.”

  “Why do I sense some hesitation here?” I asked. “Am I wrong?”

  Gail shook her head. “It’s just some scuttlebutt I heard around the office. About this case. And I didn’t hear it from the police, I heard it from a colleague. Someone knows a Glasscock staffer.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “I’ve learned the police have some pretty concrete evidence.”

  ‘What’s that?”

  Gail smiled, and dried her hands on a towel. She put her arms around me and gave me a kiss. “You know, sweetie, there are some lines that I can’t cross. Some things I’m not supposed to say in detail.”

  “I can keep a secret,” I smiled, Burying my face in the nape of her neck. She started to wiggle but didn’t withdraw from me.

  “I’ve heard they found something near the scene. I don’t know what. Just something that led them straight to Tyler Briggs. There might be video too, but you know, it gets dark by 4:30 pm these days. I don’t know how clear that would be. But there’s something.”

  “I guess I should put my crackerjack investigating skills to work.”

  “I guess you should. The police have been wrong before. And I can’t figure out the relationship between Tyler Briggs and Colin Glasscock.”

  “Neither is going to win any Mr. Popularity contests these days,” I said. “Maybe that’s it.”

  “I don’t think so. Glasscock has been really unpopular since they instituted that road diet on Venice Boulevard. And Glasscock has also been rumored to be having an affair with someone.”

  “A politician cheating on his wife. Goodness, that never happens,” I said. “Anyone you might suspect?”

  “No, and I don’t want to speculate. But do you remember the woman I introduced you to the other night, Emma Wick? Smart lady, I’m not sure that she’d be mixed up in Colin’s private life, but I’ve learned not to rule anyone out. Still, she seems to know a lot and she can be chatty. Might be worth having another talk with her.”

  “Chatty? My favorite type of person to grill. You know, I didn’t tell Hannah this, but her husband admitted to being with another woman himself this weekend, some one-night stand. Bizarre circumstances. He picked her up on a Friday night, slept through the weekend at a motel, and left on Monday morning, not realizing the weekend had slipped by.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Gail admitted. “If this is his alibi, it’s not a good one.”

  “So, what do you think?” I asked. “You’ve worked with Hannah. You’ve heard her talk about Tyler. She ever mention anything that might make you believe Tyler was capable of such an act?”

  “Everyone’s capable of murder,” she said. “Put in the right situation.”

  “You know what I mean. In this particular instance.”

  “I’m not sure,” she shook her head. “Just that her husband worked too much, and he had the maturity of a fifteen-year-old. Which I gather was his age when they met.”

  “Yeah, Florida. High school sweethearts. Went to college together.”

  “She’s smart, I’ll give her that. Good attorney. Maybe not the best taste in men.”

  “Uh-oh. Smart women, foolish choices?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “Hope that doesn’t describe you,” I said, continuing to smile and draw her closer.

  “Not at all,” she whispered in my ear, and hugged me tight. “Don’t worry. You get into too many scuffles, but you’ve always been protective. I worry about you sometimes. But my choices regarding you? I have no regrets on that score, sweetie. In fact, I have none at all.”

  I admit that did make me feel a little better.

  Chapter 6

  The next morning remained cold, but at least the clouds were breaking up, the sun began to peek out, and there were patches of blue forming. It looked like it might be a nice day. I parked down the street from the Glasscock district offices and walked inside. The mood was quiet and somber, there was a minimum of activity, and it felt as if a dreary cloud was hanging over the office. Even the temperature in the office felt cool. I approached the receptionist and handed her my card. No sense flashing a fake ID to a city employee; they were the ones who would most likely insist on inspecting it assiduously, and asking the all-too-unnerving questions, such as why it looked blatantly illegitimate.

  “Hi. I�
��d like to speak with Emma Wick, please.”

  The receptionist was a light-skinned African-American woman in her early thirties. She glanced at the card and then back up at me, before asking what this was regarding. I told her I was part of the homicide investigation, my tone brusque and demanding, the way an impatient LAPD detective would sound. She picked up the phone and pressed a button, and talked quietly with the person on the other end. Even though I was just four feet away, I could barely hear a word she uttered. She replaced the receiver, got up, and told me to follow her.

  We walked down a narrow hallway paved with soft blue carpeting, and she led me into a small office. Emma Wick was speaking rapidly into her phone, sitting behind a large oak-veneer desk that was scattered with black plastic letter trays, pencil cups overloaded with cheap pens, and a few dozen files sprawled in no particular order. She was still wearing the same black leather jacket, not surprising perhaps, since it was a little chilly in the office. A buxom blonde, she was certainly attractive, although today her hair was pinned up and she had on black framed glasses which served to make her look more professional. Under her jacket, she wore a red v-neck sweater that showed a hint of cleavage. I silently complimented myself on my keen observation skills. After a few seconds, I cleared my throat and she looked up before raising an index finger as she continued her conversation.

  “Yes, we will be there. No, the work doesn’t end. Yes, this was tragic, we’re all in shock. Uh-huh. Sure.”

  She hung up the phone and gave me a curious look. “Aren’t you Gail’s husband? The private detective?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “You know, I’ve given my statement four times now. I’m not sure how much more I can help be.”

  “You never know. But I appreciate your taking a few minutes.”

  Emma Wick nodded her head rapidly, and pointed to a chair across from her. She shuffled a few papers on her desk, as if to let me know she had better things to do.

  “I’m doing this as a favor to Gail,” she told me. “I like her. She’s nice.”