“They must have cameras in every room,” Hammond said. “I’ll be damned. Smile, ladies, you’re on Candid Camera.”
“Huh. They’re well concealed, that’s for sure,” Tom said. “I never spotted them, and it’s one thing I generally look for. Something super up-to-date, apparently.”
“Only,” Stanley said, “it doesn’t look like they’re working right now. All the screens are blank.”
Tom poked around the electronic equipment. “No, they’ve been turned off, is all.” He found the switch and flipped it. The monitors came to life, glowing a dim gray-green, and the rooms came into view, six of them to a screen.
“There’s our room,” Stanley said, pointing, and added in an angry voice, “Those bastards have been spying on us. If I’d known that, I’d have given them a real Gypsy Rose Lee.”
“I wonder,” Tom said, “do they just watch, or do they tape what they see?” He opened drawers beneath the wall of screens. “Ah, here we are.”
The drawer was filled with DVDs. “Jesus,” Hammond said, his eyes growing wide, “you know what this means, don’t you? If they’re taping the rooms, we should be able to see who left that Barry guy in your friend’s bed.”
He dropped heavily onto one knee and began to thumb through the discs. The drawer was full of them, filed according to dates. “March 5,” he said. “We’re looking for one dated the fifth.” He flipped through them hastily, muttering under his breath. “March the eighth, here’s the seventh, sixth… the third….” He gave a weary sigh and sat back on his haunches.
“It’s missing,” he said. “We’ve got two days before and the day after, but not the fourth or the fifth. Someone beat us to it.”
“Why two days?” Tom asked. “It didn’t take two days to plant the body.”
“No,” Hammond agreed. “But there’s something showing on that other disc. Something somebody doesn’t want us to see.”
“Who took them?” Stanley asked.
“I’m guessing it was Palmer took the one for the fourth,” Tom said. “That’s probably what got him killed. And Mario, too, because he knew too much. That’s why Palmer let Mario play the magic flute for free. He worked out a deal to get that recording from Mario. The fifth? Well, somebody else had to take that.”
“Or somebody else got it for him while this Mario guy was buried in the bush,” Hammond said.
“These are pretty small quarters,” Tom said, looking around. “It would be hard for someone to go past them unnoticed.”
“Only they were all one big happy family at that point. I think the guard’s mind was where his mouth was. Which still leaves the question of what was on the recording for the fourth. We need to talk to Missy Frederick,” Hammond said.
Chapter Nineteen
FREDERICK WAS waiting outside where they had left him. It was evident from his expression that he knew what they would find and was waiting to be confronted.
“We need to have some conversation,” Hammond said in a major cop voice.
“In my office, please,” Frederick replied. “We can talk more discreetly there.”
He avoided the pool area and led them instead through the lobby, mostly empty at the moment except for a desk clerk who watched with unabashed curiosity as they crossed to Frederick’s office.
Frederick ushered them in and took a chair behind the big mahogany desk. The other three remained standing. Tom leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.
“You found the monitors,” Frederick opened the conversation, looking and sounding sheepish. “Of course. I knew you would. That’s why I didn’t want… well, never mind. It was inevitable, clearly.”
“And the DVDs,” Hammond said. “So, you record all your guests, everything that goes on in the rooms?”
“No, I knew you’d jump to that conclusion, which was why I didn’t tell you about them before.”
“What other conclusion could we jump to?” Hammond asked. “You’ve got video surveillance. Only one reason I can think of for that.”
Frederick took a moment to sort out what he wanted to say. “We do record the rooms, yes, that’s obvious. You’ve seen the evidence of it. Or we did, at least, until today. But the key thing is, not all of them, and not all of the time.”
“You pick and choose?” Hammond asked.
“You might put it like that. We take the occasional peek, is what it came down to. The cameras were timed to go on and off at random, a minute or two here, a minute or two there. We record like that, intermittently, for thirty days, and then the discs are erased and used over. So the record we keep isn’t permanent.”
“But you’ve got it long enough for… for what? Blackmail?”
“No,” Frederick said hotly, “nothing so crude as that, I assure you.”
“What, then?”
Frederick hesitated, as if not quite sure how to explain. “The original idea… well, it was more a question of keeping tabs on our guests’ interests. You know, most high-end hotels keep files on their important guests—what they eat and drink, special requests for bedding, that sort of thing. The next time that guest checks in, they know his preferences, that he likes these sheets, this brand of drinking water. We had reason to want to know our guests’ preferences, too, just of a different nature. By studying their habits, getting glimpses of what they did, we had a better sense of how to be prepared for their wants and needs. That’s really all it was meant to be.”
“Like, which boys would interest the older guys the most?” Tom said. “Who was the most popular?”
Frederick was clearly embarrassed, but he nodded. “Yes. That was part of it. Some of the young men who come here, even though they are very good-looking, do not seem to appeal to our clients, for whatever reason. So of course there is no point in comping those individuals to free drinks and meals. It’s just wasted money. Others… well, if we saw an individual was very popular, and sometimes we were surprised to see who that was, why, then we did what we could to encourage them to come around. They got the drinks, the meals, the special treatment.”
“And while you were at it, you saw not just who your so-called clients were interested in, but what as well,” Stanley said.
“As a for instance, knowing that Jeff Whiting was kinky,” Tom said. “Keeping him around in case somebody was into that scene.”
Frederick drew himself up a bit. “I’m not a judgmental person. There are men who like that sort of thing. People are how they are. And if someone is turned on by, say, the unusual, then it’s as well if one of the young men hanging around shares his tastes.”
“Or?”
“Or the older gentlemen would go elsewhere to find what they want. It’s just good business methodology. We like to keep our clients here. Once they check in, there should be little reason for them to go elsewhere. In practical terms, that means seeing that their needs are met. Whatever those needs might be. And let me say, Jeff Whiting was very popular.”
“And you say nothing so crude as blackmail was intended, but you could have blackmailed them,” Hammond said. “Some of them, certainly.”
“Yes, we could have. But we didn’t. That’s why we recorded to discs rather than directly to the computer’s hard drive. People hack into computers. Anyone who did so would have had ample means for blackmail. But we were doing this for our own purposes, and the discs should have been safe enough. That room, the security room, is kept locked, and hardly anyone knows about the DVDs, but when Barry Palmer was murdered, I thought of the discs. That someone else might know the discs were there.”
“Someone knew, that’s for sure,” Hammond said. “Who besides you?”
“Well, Mario did, of course. Oh… do you think that’s why he was murdered?”
“It’s a possibility. I’d say a very real possibility.”
“How dreadful. I never imagined… anyway, when that occurred to me, that someone might use the recordings for that purpose, why, that’s when I erased them, just today. I took care of t
hat myself, and I stopped the cameras. I turned them all off. If you’d checked any of those discs, you’d have found them blank. I intended to have the monitors removed tonight when Mario came in.” He hesitated, as if there was something more he wanted to say, but was reluctant to do so.
“There were two days missing from the drawer,” Hammond said. “The fourth and the fifth. The fifth is when Palmer was murdered.”
Frederick sighed and reached into a drawer and tossed a DVD onto the surface of the desk. “That’s the one for the fifth.” Hammond snatched it up. “Only,” Frederick said, “there’s nothing on it.”
“You erased a critical piece of evidence?”
“No, somebody beat me to it on that one. It was already blank. I erased the others, though.”
“Except you didn’t erase all of them, did you?” Tom said.
Frederick gave him a pained look. “No, I….” Again he hesitated. “Here, you may as well see for yourself.” He swiveled in his chair and turned on a computer atop the credenza behind his desk. The monitor flashed on, the picture on the screen in color, at first, and then, as the disc began to play, becoming a grainy black and white picture.
“This is the disc for the fourth?” Hammond said. “The day before the Palmer kid bought it?”
“Yes. I looked at it before I erased the discs and thought it should be saved.”
“For what?” Hammond asked.
“You’ll see.” A room came into focus. “That’s the Marilyn Monroe suite,” Frederick said. “You can’t appreciate it like this, but the décor is hot pink. Think of the dress she wore when she sang ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.’ And of course, everything is trimmed in rhinestones.”
Someone stepped into the picture. For a few seconds, his back was to the camera. Then he turned and, almost as if he knew he was being filmed, he smiled at them.
“That’s Jeff,” Stanley said.
“Yes,” Frederick agreed. “Jeff Whiting.”
It was eerie to see him alive and smiling. Only a short while before they had seen his body lying on a steel table at the morgue, dirtied with sand and stained with the marks of death.
Someone else stepped into camera range then, an older gentleman.
“Who—” Tom started to ask.
“Jesus. Hernando Vega,” Hammond said, mouth gaping.
“Yes, Mr. Vega,” Frederick said. “Young Mr. Whiting’s last date.”
Chapter Twenty
THE RECORDING ended at that point; the screen went blank.
“Has that been doctored?” Tom asked.
“No, I told you the taping was sporadic,” Frederick said. “Off and on, briefly, rooms chosen at random. And if you think about it, trying to tape everything, full-time, would have been an extremely complex operation. What we wanted, what we got from the recordings when we ran through them, was a sampling, hints of what our guests were up to.”
“I should have thought that would be obvious,” Stanley said.
“Well, yes and no. Sometimes we got hints we weren’t expecting. One of our gentlemen, as it turns out, rather enjoys being tied to the bed. I would never have guessed and would never have known otherwise. But knowing that, we were able to find a suitable partner for him. Introductions were made. All, as I say, done very discreetly. I think I can safely say he never suspected our involvement. But he was happy. He’s been a regular visitor since. That’s the kind of thing we got from the discs.”
“But there’s nothing here,” Tom said, indicating the video, “except to show the two of them in the room together.”
“Yes,” Frederick said, clearly disappointed. “I wonder… perhaps if the cameras had been set to start taping when, well, whenever someone entered the room, would that have been…?”
“If you want my opinion,” Hammond said, “I think you’re already wide open for lawsuits.”
“Do you really think that bondage queen I just told you about would want to go into court and have his dirty laundry aired?” Frederick scoffed, his smile catty. “He’s well-known locally, though the name he uses here is not his real one. And, I might add, he’s a married man, with an impeccable reputation. No, I don’t think so. Anyway, as of now there’s no evidence. I told you, the recordings have all been erased. Except this one.”
“Who is this guy with Jeff?” Stanley asked.
“Hernando Vega. Mr. Palm Springs, some would say,” Frederick answered him.
“He’s a big real estate mogul,” Hammond said. “Owns probably a third of the commercial real estate in town. And a big political backer. He likes to stay on the right side of the folks in office.”
Which, Stanley thought, explained why Hammond was cautious about stepping on toes. Still…. “Thanks to that disc, he’s become the prime suspect in a murder. He can’t have that much power.”
Hammond looked as if he might disagree. “Is Vega around tonight?” he said instead.
“He was out by the pool when I went by there a little while ago,” Frederick said.
“Why don’t you invite him in here for a chat?”
AS IT turned out, Hernando Vega was still at the pool. Frederick sent him a note, and a few minutes later, Vega appeared at the office. He was a small man, dark-skinned, in a bright green shirt and cream-colored trousers. He wore a yellow diamond, too large really, for his small hand. It sent shards of light glancing about the room. He paused in the doorway, looking with suspicion at the men in the room.
“Hernando,” Frederick said quickly, smoothly, “you must know Detective Dick Hammond, with the Palm Springs Police Department.”
“Homicide,” Hammond said.
Vega gave Hammond no more than a faint nod. He turned his attention to Tom and Stanley. “You’re the dynamic duo,” he said, “from San Francisco.”
It wasn’t a question, and neither Tom nor Stanley replied. “The gentlemen are giving me a hand with the Barry Palmer thing,” Hammond said.
“Which concerns me in what way? I knew Barry, of course, everybody knew him, but frankly I thought he had rather an inflated opinion of himself.”
“His prices were too steep?” Stanley asked.
“I don’t—” Vega glowered at him.
“At the moment, Palmer isn’t the topic of interest, except that he had a boyfriend,” Hammond interrupted him. “Jeff Whiting. You did know him, didn’t you?”
Vega’s face shut down. “I want to talk to my attorney,” he said curtly.
“Well, sir,” Hammond said, “we can do that. But I’d have to Miranda you first, and take you down to the station and book you, which seems like it would be awkward for everyone, when we could just sit here and chat a bit like civilized people.”
“If I am a suspect—”
“Not in the Barry Palmer business you’re not. Not yet, anyway. Like I said, it’s Jeff Whiting we want to talk about.”
The look Hammond gave Vega was challenging, though. Vega couldn’t yet be aware that they knew of his rendezvous with Jeff—unless, Tom added mentally, he already knew about the video. But that seemed unlikely.
Vega sighed and came the rest of the way into the room, closing the door after himself. “I’ll talk,” he said, “up to a point. But I reserve the right to decide when to call my attorney.”
“That’s fair enough,” Hammond said. “Just for the moment, though, you might not want to share this with your attorney. You might prefer that no one else but us know about it.”
“And this is informal? Off the record?”
“For the moment.” Hammond nodded and signaled Frederick. Frederick turned to the computer and started the video. Vega’s eyes opened wide when the room appeared on the screen.
“Why, that’s the Marilyn….” He turned angry eyes on Frederick. “You son of a bitch, you’ve been all this time taping everybody? If I was to go out to the pool and tell—”
“Not everybody, no,” Frederick said. “And not all the time, as you’ll see. And I hope that you will keep all of this in confiden
ce.”
Vega watched the rest of the tape in angry silence, to the point where he could be seen in the hotel room with Jeff Whiting, and then the tape ended. He looked his surprise at the others in the room.
“That’s it?” he said. “All that shows is the boy and me in a room together. Two men in a hotel room—it proves nothing. He might have asked to see me to ask for a loan, or… well, or anything.”
“I’d say it was a safe bet some money changed hands,” Tom said.
Vega looked about to make an angry reply. Then he exhaled noisily. “Okay, okay, so you know about that. So what? That goes on here all the time. I’d guess there’s probably half a dozen meetings like that one going on in various suites at this very moment. Unless you’re planning prostitution charges… and they’d be very difficult to prove. We’re in a hotel. If two men decide to retire to a room for a little matinee action, that’s their business. It’s not illegal to have sex. And there’s no harm in giving someone a gift.”
“That’s not what we’re looking for here,” Hammond said. “Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass who you fuck or how much you pay him for it. What I’ve got is bodies piling up, and you were with one of the dead kids the day he disappeared.”
Vega sighed again. “Yes, of course, as you can see for yourself, I was with Jeff that day. I was really very fond of the boy. But he was a strange young man.” He shook his head sadly.
“The strangulation stuff?” Hammond said.
Vega’s eyes registered his surprise. “You’re onto that too? Yes, it was frightening really, to be honest. I didn’t like it at all. I tried to convince him I didn’t want to do it. I thought it was dangerous, but he was insistent.” His smile managed to look both pleased and guilty. “And he could be very persuasive.”
“So, you put your hands on his throat,” Hammond said. “You choked him while you fucked him.”
Vega actually looked astonished by that. “No, no, that wasn’t how it happened at all. Yes, I had sexual intercourse with him. I don’t mind admitting that. While I was, well, while I was inside him, he put a plastic bag over his head, the sort of thing you get from the dry cleaners, and when we were both getting close to, uh, to finishing, he put his hands up and held the bag tight around his throat, to cut off the air. The plastic stuck to his mouth. I could see he wasn’t getting any air. It scared me. I was afraid he really would choke.”
A Deadly Kind of Love Page 13