“I need you for a moment, please.”
“S’cuse me.” Barbie swung herself up from the couch and teetered for a minute on her heels—butt waving perilously in our faces as she tried to get her balance. Terry and I reached out and gave the tush a little push, and Barbie was back on her feet.
“Thanks!” she said, tottering to the window. The woman waved her through the door and Barbie was out of sight.
Terry leaned over to me. “Buns of steel,” she whispered.
“Tell me about it. I think I sprained my ring finger on her left cheek.”
We cooled our jets until Barbie returned a few moments later, looking considerably less happy than when we’d first met her.
“Tatiana’s moved,” she said, “and we don’t have a forwarding address. Or a phone number. So . . . ’bye!”
She spun on her spiked heel, heading back to the office.
“Wait! Does anybody else know how to get in touch with her?” Terry said.
“Nope. ’Bye!” Barbie said, running to the door on tiptoe.
“Well, could we speak to the doctor?”
“Nope. ’Bye!” And Barbie disappeared for the last time.
“Well, that was a total bust,” I said, as we went down in the elevator.
“Not really. At least we know that Tatiana is persona non grata at Hattrick’s office. The black babe obviously told Barbie to blow us off.”
“But if she’s skipped, where does that leave us?”
“Oh, we can get a line on her.”
“How? We don’t even know her last name.”
“I think we can get something out of that Janice woman.”
“You do?”
“Oh, yeah. She may look tough, but she’s mush.”
“I don’t know.” But even as I said it, I knew to trust Terry on these matters. She had an uncanny knack for reading people and almost never missed with her gut instincts. Except when they turned out to have been menstrual cramps.
“Let’s stake her out,” Terry said.
“Where?”
“Where does everybody in an office building go, sooner or later?”
I frowned. “The ladies’ room?”
“Like I’m gonna hide in a stall, breathing bathroom fumes!”
I stared at her for a second. “Oh, the coffee shop.”
“Duh,” she said, rotating her eyes to the ceiling. “It’s next to the front door. She’ll have to pass it on her way out.”
I ordered chamomile tea from the teenage girl behind the counter, thinking we’d better not have caffeine at five-thirty. Then I sat back down at the table and thought, Nah.
“Oh, miss?” I called to the girl. “Could you make that two lattes instead?”
“Sure thing,” she said. “Would you like them no-fat?”
“No,” Terry said.
“No fat?” the girl asked.
“No, yes to the fat. No to the nonfat. Okay?”
The girl frowned in confusion.
Terry sighed. “Please put fully fatty milk in our coffee.”
“Well, you don’t have to get snotty,” the girl said.
“She’s in withdrawal,” I said, hoping it would deter the girl from spitting in our lattes. Teenaged coffee clerks can be vicious creatures when provoked. Once, after complaining about being forced to say venti when I wanted a large coffee—the server even pretending ignorance of the meaning of the word “large”—I found a venti-sized roach backstroking in my cappuccino.
“Great people-watching here,” Terry said. “Lots of celebrities have shrinks on this street. You see ’em here all the time.”
“Thought you were too jaded for celebrity spotting.”
“I’m not gonna climb over their fences or tackle ’em for an autograph or anything, but if they walk past the window, sure I’ll look. Hurts them deeply if you don’t. There’s a pharmacy across the hall, did you notice? I’ll bet the place is crawling with them, going in for their Zoloft and Xanax and Viagra.”
I sighed, bored with the whole subject. “Probably.”
“Hey, look! It’s John Malkovich!”
My head jerked around to the window.
“Made ya look.”
“It is John Malkovich,” I said, squinting. “And I think he’s already picked up his prescription of Xanax. Looks like he’s moving underwater.”
“That’s not him. It’s someone being John Malkovich. He’s a lesser actor who wants to be him, like Christian Slater trying to be Jack Nicholson.”
“Oh. You could be right.”
Terry pointed toward the entrance of the coffee shop. “Yo! Here comes Janice, now.”
Janice strode past the window in a butter-colored leather coat, on the way home at the end of her workday.
“Let’s book,” Terry said.
We jumped up and I threw ten dollars on the table even though we hadn’t been served, and we followed Janice out the front door and onto the street.
We followed her for two blocks. The sidewalk was already filling up with people leaving their workplaces, providing us with good cover in case she turned around. Eventually, she came to a bus stop and sat down. We hesitated behind the bench. Should we walk up to her, tap her on the shoulder, and start right in with Where’s the Russian, lady? before her bus arrived?
But she knew we were there. She turned around and looked us in the eye. “Why are you following me? You with the plaintiff’s attorneys?”
Terry could spot ’em, all right. This woman had spilled a very interesting tidbit before we’d even asked a single question.
“We’re Terry and Kerry McAfee,” Terry said.
“I heard that much in the office,” Janice snapped, daring her to say more.
Terry refused to be intimidated. “We’re private investigators. We work for someone whose husband has disappeared with a bunch of her money.”
This got Janice’s attention. “Who?”
“Lenore Richling, a patient of Dr. Hattrick’s. Know her?”
“Yeah, I know her.” Janice seemed more intrigued than annoyed now.
“Look, could we buy you a cup of coffee?” Terry said.
“No,” she said, “but I wouldn’t turn down a drink.”
Hey. The mush theory suddenly had legs.
Janice took us to a sleek yuppie bar around the corner. It was long and narrow, a richly appointed upscale place with a second-story balcony.
“Let’s sit up there,” she said, pointing to the balcony. “That way if someone comes in from the office, they won’t see me talking to two private dicks. Or is it dickettes?”
“Investigators,” Terry said, “but I could go with dickettes.”
“Nah,” I said, “sounds like a chorus line of men doing high kicks in tap shoes.”
Terry nodded. “True.”
We placed an order at the bar for three sour-apple martinis, then made our way up the steep staircase. The balcony gave us an unimpeded view of the front door and a godlike perspective on the mosh pit of young singles below, trolling for dates after a hard day at the gallery or the clothing store or the shrink’s office.
Janice had ditched her conservative office look for brown flared pants and a cream-colored sweater that clung to her curves like a second skin, gold hoop earrings, and shiny cinnamon gloss slathered on her generous lips. Her transformation from officious boss to Happy Hour sex goddess was a mind-blower, like she’d gone into a phone booth as Nurse Ratched and bounded out again as Tina Turner. As she swayed up the stairs she extruded come-hither pheromones that turned all male noses in our direction.
“So the sweet young mister left with Mrs. Richling’s money,” she said as the martinis arrived. “That figures.”
I thought we’d caught her just at the right moment. She gave the impression of being disgusted with something or someone, and anxious to unburden herself.
I lifted my glass. “Cin cin.”
“Cheers,” Janice said, clinking. “So . . . how much did he get?”
> “Not much,” Terry told her. “Ten thousand dollars.”
“Pay my bills for a while.”
“Ours, too.”
We all drank to that one.
“Did you ever meet Mario?” I asked Janice.
“Mmm-hmm. He came to the office a couple of times with Mrs. Richling. He’s fine,” she said, wagging her head appreciatively. “Way too young for that old—I mean, for your client.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We know she’s a bitch on wheels. Did he ever come to the office on his own, without Mrs. Richling?”
She gave us a wise look. “Yeah.”
“Do you know if he was involved with Tatiana?” Terry asked, getting right down to it.
Janice’s head bobbed up and down, but her lips were firmly pressed together. Like she wanted to confirm, but wouldn’t say it out loud.
“So she was involved with him?” I asked to be sure.
Janice leaned in, a wicked gleam in her eye. “He wasn’t the only one she was involved with. She was doin’ the doctor, too. Girl spent more time on her back than a June bug.”
Hmm. I wondered how Tatiana’s sexual proclivities might play into this scenario. Could she be some femme fatale who had set everything in motion, seducing Mario and getting him to steal from Lenore?
“She was a medical assistant, right?” I said, causing Janice to spray some high-priced vodka right past my ear.
“Ha! Girlfriend had no medical training. She didn’t do nothing except spend a couple of hours in the office meeting with prospective patients. And got paid plenty for it, too.”
“But what did she do, exactly?”
“She was a model. One of Hattrick’s masterpieces. He’d drag her little ass in and tell people they were going to look just like her when he was done with them. Of course they didn’t. Lately, people have been coming out looking like freaks. The doctor—” she expelled a breath, “started messing up bad. Was named in a bunch of malpractice and breach-of-contract actions. But when the lawyers started coming around for depositions, our little Russian hottie was nowhere to be found.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, remembering the crowd of surgical hopefuls in Hattrick’s office. “He had an office full of patients—”
“Not like he used to. A few insurance cases, people who don’t know any better. But the money people, the society crowd, they been staying away in droves.”
“But what about Lenore?” Terry said. “She said he was the best in the business or something.”
Janice made a face. “She’s a freebie.”
“Free surgery?” Terry and I said together. “Why?”
Janice shrugged. “Dunno. But you’d think she was paying top dollar, the way she bosses him around.”
A gratis face-lift. This was an entirely new wrinkle, so to speak. File it away under W for weird, I beamed to Terry, a degree of mental telepathy coming with the twins territory, then brought the conversation back around to the missing assistant/model.
“Where do you think Tatiana went?” I asked Janice.
“Don’t know. She’s probably still around somewhere, living off some dude. Maybe Mario, who knows?”
“Do you have an address for her? Or a phone number?”
Janice sobered up instantly, fear crossing her eyes. “Oh, uh, I don’t think—”
“What’s the matter?” I said, surprised at the abrupt change in her demeanor, from gleefully catty to completely cowed in just under two seconds.
She looked over Terry’s shoulder as she answered. “Tatiana’s not someone you want to mess with. She’s cold, you know? Out for herself. I wouldn’t want her mad at me.”
I tried to reassure her. “She wouldn’t have to know you gave us the address. In fact, all we need is a last name. We’ll find her.”
Janice studied me for a moment, then shrugged. “Oh what the hell. She probably took her act someplace else, anyway. I have an address in Hollywood.” She pulled a day planner from her bag and flipped it open. I caught a glimpse of a dog-eared school picture on the inside of the front flap. A six-year-old with a sassy smile, missing two front teeth.
“Cute.” I pointed to the picture. “Yours?”
She expanded with pride. “My baby,” she said, showing the photograph to Terry, who smiled in appreciation.
Janice studied the picture for a moment, her eyes misting over. “He’s a smart boy. So smart. And he was so proud of me when I got this job. I’d worked long and hard to get here. There’s nobody better at running a medical office.” She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with a cocktail napkin.
“Now all I do is field calls from dickhead lawyers and pissed-off patients. I was better off in Fox Hills, but you couldn’t have told me that. No ma’am, I was going to the Hills of Beverleee . . .” She snorted into her martini glass. “Swimming pools, movie stars.”
This Janice was not only mush, she was a very cheap date. I hoped she wouldn’t ask for another drink, even if it did mean we’d get more information out of her. I didn’t want her to go home to her kid sloppy drunk.
“Look, we’re sorry,” Terry said. “We didn’t mean to dig into all this other stuff. All we really need is a way to get in touch with Tatiana. She’s our only contact for Mario.”
Janice ran a finger over the plastic shield on the photograph. “Sure, sure,” she said, then flipped to the address pages. “Here it is. She lives off Franklin on Argyle.” She pointed to an entry for Tatiana Pavlov. Terry quickly wrote the name and address on a napkin.
“Thanks a lot,” she said. “We owe you.”
“Just don’t tell her where you got it.” Janice looked at her watch before swilling the last drop from the bottom of her glass. “Well, I got to get home to my boy. Thanks for the drink.”
We stood and shook her hand.
“Thanks, Janice,” I said. “Good luck.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll need it, I’ll need it,” she said, giving her head a little shake as she made her way carefully down the stairs, then disappeared through the front door.
Terry looked at me. “Wonder what’s up with the doctor?”
“Who knows? Maybe he got too successful. Took on too many patients and got careless.”
“Hmm. Still early. Want to pass by Tatiana’s?”
“Suits me.” I chugged the rest of my martini. “I bet Mario’s using the ten thousand dollars for fun money with his floozy.”
Terry slammed her glass on the table. “Let’s go nail the little Russkie slut.”
The sun was setting as we arrived at Tatiana’s address on Argyle Avenue, a cluster of 1940s-style stucco bungalows around a courtyard planted with yucca and bright orange birds-of-paradise. Terry continued past the building, then pulled up to the curb in the next block, parking the Harley out of sight.
We went back to the complex and across the well-maintained grass, locating apartment 4 square in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped complex. We knocked, and as we waited, a head poked out of the door to our left.
“She’s gone,” a young man lisped past his tongue stud.
One look told me he was gone—his eyes glowing pink, surrounded by a cloud of wacky-tabacky smoke. He favored the current trend of circus geek chic: industrially dirty jeans slung from his pelvic bone, pigeon-chest and shaved head covered with spiky tattoos, metal pins and studs skewering the soft tissue of cheeks, lips, and eyebrows.
“Tatiana?” Terry said. “We’re looking for Tatiana.”
“She took off,” he said, shrugging. “Like a few days ago.”
“Any idea where she is? We’re friends of hers.”
“Don’t know, man. She left with that dude she used to hang with. Had a couple of bags, and was all, like, amped.”
“Hmm,” I said, not wanting to sound like I was ignorant of Tatiana’s friends, since I was supposed to be one of them. “Uh, young guy? Dark—?”
He nodded. “Thinks he’s the shit?”
Probably. “Mario?” I asked, to be sure.
“Ne
ver heard his name.”
“Okay, thanks,” Terry said, attempting a last look through the curtained windows.
The bald, tattooed, half-naked man disappeared back inside, then Terry whispered to me, “I’m gonna see if there’s a back door. Keep watch out here.”
“Okay,” I said, moving away from the door. I didn’t think the neighbor would jump on the phone to the police if he saw us lurking around, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. I walked back to the front sidewalk and leaned on a palm tree, thinking Terry would join me in a few moments. Even if there were a back door, it would probably be locked, and we’d be no wiser to Tatiana’s movements . . . unless.
Unless Terry had broken into the apartment.
Oh shit, say it ain’t so! But I knew that she had, the same way I always knew when she crossed a line—a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Before I’d had time to formulate my next thought, I heard a noise behind me. I turned to see a short man in a plaid sport coat exiting a beat-up Toyota Tercel. He punched the lock on his door, slammed it shut, then scooted across the grass, headed directly for Tatiana’s apartment.
I followed him across the lawn, keeping to the sprays of orange blossoms for cover. What if he had a key? What if Terry had actually managed to get inside? He knocked on the door and sure enough, Terry opened it—probably thinking it was me.
“Tatiana Pavlov?” the man said to her.
She didn’t lie outright, so much as nod her head faintly. He shoved a brown envelope at her. She took it, wearing latex gloves.
“You’ve been served.” He turned on his worn heels and hustled back down the walkway past me to his Tercel.
As soon as he pulled away, I came out from behind a bush and made a What are you doing? gesture to Terry, who was still in the doorway. She waved me in with the envelope, a finger across her lips, and I ducked into the apartment.
“Put on your rubbers, please,” she said, handing me a pair of latex gloves. I nudged the door closed with the toe of my platform tennis shoe, then snapped the gloves on. I peeked out the front curtains, but Tattoo Man hadn’t made another appearance.
“You can’t accept a summons intended for someone else,” I fumed at her. “That’s against the law!”
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 3