“It is a bit late for that,” Markov said. “How many people are aware that Daisy made certain accusations about Mr. Kim before she disappeared?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Mr. Kim knows,” Markov said. “So why would I not know?”
Now Hector was sure. Markov and Kim were not employer and employee. They’d been partners in everything from the get-go, including the human trafficking that had gone awry.
“Okay, I don’t know who all mighta heard by now,” Hector said. “Every one of them bitches have mouths that never shut. For sure, Violet and the Mexican heard Daisy ranting. After that, Suki and Ivana also heard about it secondhand. And in another couple days they’ll probably be talking about it on the Today show, and maybe Whoopi Goldberg and the rest of them other bitches at that morning hen party will be clucking about it by Friday.”
“There is a difference, though,” Markov said. “With the others it is either hearsay or nothing but the ravings of a grief-stricken girl. A girl who is now dead and cannot prove any of her accusations. But the Mexican dancer knows something more than the others. I believe her name is Lita Medina, is it not? The Mexican dancer can provide what the lawyers call direct evidence. She saw something.”
Hector was stunned. “Why do you say that? How do you know what she saw?”
“Because after Mr. Kim learned that Lita had also disappeared the very next day after Daisy did, he persuaded Violet to tell him why Lita ran away.”
Hector’s throat constricted. “Why did she run?”
Markov said, “Because she saw Daisy go away from her apartment with somebody on that day she disappeared. Lita did not identify the somebody to Violet.”
“Who do you think it was?” Hector croaked.
“Do not insult my intelligence,” Markov said.
“Mr. Kim?”
“That would be a reasonable guess,” Markov said. “Now, what I would like to know is, did the roommate Violet also share the same information with you?”
Hector took a breath and decided he had to lie. “No, this is the first I heard that Lita saw somebody with Daisy that day.”
Markov looked hard at Hector. “I would hate to think that you keep secrets from me.”
“I tell you, this is the first I heard of it!” Hector lied again. “And I wish I hadn’t. Now I really think I oughta go home to Pedro and leave Hollywood and all its problems to smarter people like you.”
“Do not talk like an idiot,” Markov said.
“Look, Mr. Markov,” Hector said. “If Mr. Kim is . . . somehow involved in the disappearance of Daisy, then the cops’re probably gonna find it out sooner or later. Can’t you distance yourself from him? Like, get him the fuck outta all your investments?”
In a rare moment, Markov spoke with what, Hector figured, was something approaching honesty: “Mr. Kim and I have a business relationship that cannot be severed. We must protect each other for mutual economic survival.”
Markov’s ferocious stare was making Hector’s hands sweat. He said querulously, “I don’t know what more I can do for you.”
Markov said, “If Kim were gone, I believe you and I could proceed with business as usual. Except that there would be more for me in your regular collections, and I would share a percentage of it with you. However, Mr. Kim does not intend to leave.”
“You got the wrong guy if you want something like that set up! That goes way beyond my job description!”
“What are you talking about?”
“About Mr. Kim leaving for good!” Hector said.
“I meant leaving the country,” Markov said. “Not leaving the world.”
Bullshit, Hector thought. I know what you meant. He impulsively lit a cigarette, even though there was no ashtray in the room. Markov got up and went to the kitchen, returning in a moment with a saucer for the cigarette ashes.
He said, “Then we have no alternative other than to protect Kim from arrest, because I greatly fear whatever he might feel compelled to say in order to make a deal with prosecutors. And that would be very bad for me, and I could make it very bad for you by making a plea bargain of my own if I were to be arrested.”
“Are you saying you’d rat me out?” Hector asked. “The cops don’t want a grifter like me! I’m a flunky! I jist take care of a bunch of bitches for you!”
“You conspired with Kim when there were thirteen people alive in that storage container,” Markov said. “Living human beings that you knew about. You did not inform the authorities about those trapped people.”
“They were already dead!”
Markov said, “How do you know exactly when they died? They could have been alive when you first learned about them. They could have been rescued if you had even bothered to call the authorities with an anonymous tip. But you did nothing to help them. That is what a federal prosecutor would say. We are all in trouble because of Kim’s stupidity, and that includes you.”
“Well, I’m not hooking up with some Crip to do a job on Kim! I don’t get down with that kind of shit,” Hector said. “It’d be real nice if Kim went to his reward with Buddha, but I can’t make it happen. I got an inner coward that tells me what I can do and what I can’t. And he’s speaking to me right this minute and telling me to get the fuck outta Dodge!”
“Calm yourself, Hector,” Markov said. “You have the ability to protect Kim from arrest, at least for the time being. At least until this search for Daisy’s killer hits a dead end.”
“How do I do that?”
“Find the Mexican dancer, Lita Medina. And give her location to Kim. He won’t be so clumsy and violent next time. If she is no longer a threat to him, then he can be dealt with at some later date. But right now there is no time to waste.”
“You’re telling me to set the girl up for—”
“No, of course not,” Markov interrupted. “I am asking you to do nothing more than find her and tell Kim how to find her. He will pay the girl to forget what she saw. Perhaps he will give her enough money to go back to Mexico and thrive. Then everyone will be happy.”
“But maybe he’ll decide to save the money and jist deal with her like he dealt with Daisy!”
“Hector, we are all facing arrest and trial, and you are talking like a fool,” Markov said. “You found the girl dancing in a strip bar down in the harbor area. You told Kim about her, and he went there and gave his approval to hire her. You picked her up and brought her to Hollywood. You know that much about her, therefore it cannot be hard for you to locate her acquaintances down there and offer them money to tell you where she might be. You are a San Pedro boy, are you not? Just find her and let Kim handle her with money. Are you not being overly concerned? What is she to you but just a Mexican stripper?”
“Gimme a minute to think,” Hector said, smoke sliding from his lips. “I’m starting to lose my shit here.”
“Let me see if I can find you a drink,” Markov said. “Is chardonnay all right?”
“Yeah, anything,” Hector said, and Markov went to the kitchen.
Hector Cozzo was having trouble processing all this information. It was way too much. Now he thought of a dizzying array of things—about the scratches on Kim’s face, for instance. He figured you didn’t have to watch every episode of CSI to know that fingernail scrapings might reveal enough DNA material to identify an assailant. And sooner or later, Violet was going to tell somebody else what Lita had told her about seeing somebody pick up Daisy in a car. Or maybe Violet would go to the cops herself if there was a reward posted. And that would make the cops go balls out to find Lita Medina, a very important eyewitness. And the Mexican dancer would lead them to the Korean. So Kim looked like he was cooked one way or the other, unless Lita Medina went away and stayed away.
Then he recalled something else Markov had just said: “You picked her up and brought her to Hollywood.” But he hadn’t! Dinko Babich did that job, Hector thought, but Markov doesn’t know about Dinko, and neither does Kim. Hector remembered ho
w Dinko couldn’t take his eyes off Lita Medina even though she danced like an organ grinder’s monkey. Dinko took her to Hollywood, and he might’ve taken her away from Hollywood!
And then there was the little matter of the peg-leg guy and his tall sidekick, who happened to be fucking cops. But at this moment there was no way he was going to reveal that bit of information to Markov. Hector figured it meant that their whole enterprise was under police scrutiny and Markov was going to be put out of business soon, no matter what.
He decided that the best course of action was to walk away from this shitstorm ASAP and return to Pedro to hide out for a while and hope for the best. That’s exactly what he’d resolved to do, until Markov reentered the living room with his drink, as well as an offer that changed everything.
“It is a decent chardonnay,” Markov said, “not like the so-called drinkable bilge we sell at Club Samara.”
Hector took a sip. “It’s okay.”
And then Markov said, “How would you like forty thousand dollars?”
Hector almost spilled his wine before muttering, “I’m not plotting with nobody to ice Mr. Kim! I already said.”
“Of course not. Forty thousand with an additional ten-thousand-dollar bonus if you find Lita Medina in the next three days and if the dangerous situation is successfully concluded by Mr. Kim. I think you are right that the police will soon be looking for him. And by the way, I do not even know where he is right now. Probably with a lady friend of his in Koreatown, I should think.”
“Fifty thousand dollars jist for the location of the Mexican dancer?” Hector said, needing to hear it again.
“Only if you can do it in within three days and if Kim concludes the matter satisfactorily,” Markov said. “Time is of the essence. If you do not succeed, I am afraid that I may be liquidating all of my investments for fifty cents on the dollar and leaving Hollywood quickly and forever. They say that Costa Rica is very pleasant and not expensive.”
Hector figured that his mentioning Costa Rica meant that it would be the last place he’d go. Then he thought about fifty large. A stake until he got back on his feet. Enough to buy time to find a new hustle. Actually, when the undercover peg-leg cop had been trying to do his sting, he’d brought up something that Hector had already heard good things about: the illegal video poker machines. Hector wondered if fifty grand could get him started in that currently thriving enterprise.
Hector said, “If I find her in three days and give her up to you, you’ll order Mr. Kim to pay her off, right?”
“Fair enough,” Markov said. “Then do we have a deal?”
“I’m down,” Hector said. “But we gotta work out how and when the money is paid to me, and you gotta guarantee the girl won’t be getting the Daisy treatment.”
“She will not,” Markov said. “And in any case, what happened to Daisy could have been an accident. That kind of unintended thing can occur in the heat of the moment when passion overtakes reason.”
Hector lit a cigarette while driving back down from Mount Olympus, past all the cypress trees that had been used to beautify and sell the development. And he thought, They really are just hoodlums. Markov and Kim had seemed so powerful and impressive to him before all this. He’d been in awe of Markov in particular, with his nightclub and massage parlor. But now that the squeeze was on, they reminded him of the catch on the Pedro fishing boats. Those glorified pimps, Markov and Kim, were thrashing around like the mackerel trapped by the gill nets.
SEVENTEEN
Most of the next day was spent cleaning the house. Lita Medina had been in the Babich home long enough to be a bit assertive when she saw Brigita Babich breaking out the cleaning equipment early in the morning, and Brigita reluctantly allowed her guest to pitch in. Even before Dinko was out of bed, he could hear the vacuum going in the living room and his mother and Lita laughing at Ollie the cat, who was attacking the dustcloth Brigita was using to polish the walnut coffee table.
Dinko came sleepily into the living room barefoot and shirtless, wearing only faded jeans, and saw the tornado of dust motes swirling against the glare of the rising summer sun, which was pouring through the picture window.
“Why don’t you just roll up that cat hair and take it to the homeless shelter,” Dinko said. “They could stuff their lumpy mattresses with it.”
“Why don’t you just help us work?” his mother replied wryly.
To her astonishment, Dinko said, “The windows could use a once-over. I’ll get some paper towels.”
She’d been joking with a son who had never so much as picked up his clothes from the floor of his bedroom, and who had to be nagged to simply haul the trash receptacles to the street for pickup. But in a few minutes he was outside on the front porch spraying the picture window, and doing a pretty good job of polishing the glass without smears.
“This is a miracle,” Brigita said to Lita.
“Sorry,” Lita said, indicating she did not understand.
Brigita remembered the Spanish word. She said, “We must offer a prayer of thanks to Our Lady of Guadalupe for el milagro. Dinko is actually working!”
Lita understood that, and they both laughed while Dinko made comical faces at them through the window.
The three of them worked hard for an hour, and then with apologies to Lita for a late breakfast, Brigita entered the kitchen to prepare the first huge meal of the day. Lita followed her and squeezed fresh orange juice.
Lita and Dinko were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and Brigita was frying eggs when Dinko said to Lita, “With those wheels you should wear cutoffs all the time.”
“Wheels?” Lita said.
“He’s complimenting your pretty legs,” Brigita said, “in his uncouth way.”
“I got bags full of couth,” Dinko said. “I’m a Pedro pirate.”
Lita looked quizzically to Brigita to translate, and she said, “The pirate is the mascot at San Pedro High School.” She added, “Which was where he ended up after spending three years at Catholic school.”
“Got tired of those holy Joes and Janes pushing us around,” Dinko said. “Besides, I didn’t figure I needed a Catholic school diploma to work on the docks. I liked saying I belonged to a crew of pirates. I had a pirate on my T-shirt and my baseball cap.”
Lita said, “Do you like the job on the docks, Dinko?”
“In a weird way, I really do,” he answered. “My father was a longshoreman, and his father, too. It’s different now, though.”
“How?” Lita asked, refilling Dinko’s coffee cup.
“It’s about sixty percent . . .” He hesitated, trying to decide whether to say “Hispanic” or “Latino,” but finally just said, “Mexican.”
“Is true?” she said. “Men from Mexico?”
“No,” he said. “We call everybody Mexican if their ancestors came from there. Or somewhere near there.”
“But they are Americans, no?” Lita said.
“Yes, honey, they are,” Brigita interjected. “He should’ve said that the union is about sixty percent Hispanic nowadays.”
“Is a problem, yes?” Lita said to Dinko. “Too many people there that look like me?”
“Nobody looks like you,” Dinko said. “Almost every woman in L.A. County would kill to look like you.”
Brigita said, “People like Dinko feel . . . not so comfortable when they work around too many people not like themselves.”
“I understand,” Lita said.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Dinko explained. “I got lotsa union buddies that’re Mexican-American, but we don’t have many that’re real Mexicans.” Then he thought about it and asked, “What do real Mexicans like you call our Mexican-Americans anyways?”
Lita shrugged and said artlessly, “We call them gringos, same like you.”
Brigita and Dinko exploded in laughter, and Lita flashed a good-natured smile but really didn’t understand the humor in what she’d said.
“You’re priceless, Lita,” Brigita sai
d, wiping tears from her eyes.
“What means ‘priceless’?” Lita asked.
“It means that you’re worth everything in the world to us,” Dinko said, taking her hand in his. “And that’s the truth.”
Brigita put the eggs on a platter with the ham slices, and felt the worry growing in her heart. This was all happening too quickly. It was much too soon. Yes, she was an adorable girl, but they hardly knew each other!
Hector had had another very bad night. With all the worry he was experiencing, mingled with the excitement of earning fifty grand, he needed extra zannies to sleep, and he felt like shit when he woke up at noon. He attempted to read the morning paper but couldn’t focus. No matter how many times he tried to revisit recent events to determine what he’d done wrong, he could not come up with much.
The night with Basil and the crazy quack had been foisted on him. He hadn’t asked for it. And that had brought him into direct contact with undercover cops. So now his name was in a written report, or on a bulletin board, or in a police computer, or however the fuck the cops did it these days.
And as for the so-called conspiracy to help Kim get his smuggled slopes out of the storage yard, he hadn’t done anything but talk to a Crip and set up a meeting that never worked out. How was that so wrong? Despite what Markov claimed, he didn’t believe he could ever be convicted of anything involving the deaths of those people, but he still might get busted for it along with Kim and Markov. And he might get indicted on a RICO statute or on a state charge of conspiracy, involving the massage parlor and Club Samara, where they were running whores and evading income tax. That much might happen to him. He could still end up in state or federal prison for a few years.
It made his stomach burn and gave him a headache. He had an overpowering urge to “get back to town,” which was what all the old-timers like his parents and uncles and aunts called returning to Pedro. He truly wanted to get out of Hollywood and get back to town, and stay there for a while. And he would too, if that old pimp hadn’t put fifty grand on the table. Now what choice did he have?
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