“He’s meeting the coroner at the morgue. But he’s not actually my partner. He’s BHPD. I’m with Robbery Homicide, Central Division.”
We waited for him to elaborate.
“We’re working together on an interim basis, a cooperative effort between departments.”
“Huh,” Terry said, sitting back and frowning.
“So,” he said, “I guess we know why Janice didn’t meet you last night. You want to talk to me now, or you want your lawyer?”
We shook our heads. “Go ahead, ask us anything,” I said. “This is awful.”
“You gotta catch this bastard.” Terry poked a spoon at him for emphasis.
“But first,” I said, “there’s something you should know about.” Stedman nodded for me to continue. “Well, if they’re making imprints of the blood outside the third floor landing . . .”
Terry lifted her foot and pointed to the sole of her boot.
Stedman frowned at her. “You stepped in it? You didn’t say anything about blood on the landing when we interviewed you.”
Her voice went tiny. “I thought it was taco sauce.”
“What? Did you say . . . taco sauce?” Stedman’s shoulders started to shake and he pursed his lips, trying to stifle a laugh.
I glared at him in full-on hormonal mode. “If you start laughing again you can forget about any more cooperation!”
He sputtered a little, then took a deep breath and stirred his coffee, determined to keep a straight face. “Okay, it’s passed. Anyway, we have you to thank for finding the victim’s body.”
We looked at him curiously.
“Yeah, after you told us that Janice didn’t show, we went through the building more thoroughly. We had thought the blood on the landing came from the perp or the doc, but you pointed out another possibility.”
“Glad we could help,” I said, a lump swelling my throat.
“Now you can help by telling me the whole story. The real reason you were there last night.”
I looked at Terry and she nodded. “We think the doctor was involved in prescription drug dealing,” I said.
He gave me a poker face. “You do?” It was hard to tell if there was any sarcasm behind the remark.
“Yeah,” Terry said. “And we told Janice what we suspected, and she offered to show us some evidence.”
“And what were you going to do with this evidence?”
“Give it to the cops, of course. To you,” I said. “If it was for real.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And we don’t have proof of this yet,” Terry said, “but we think the doc was supplying these drugs to the manager of the Dauphine Hotel, who in turn supplied them to guests in residence, patients of the doc’s. The manager’s name is Alphonse, a tight-ass Frenchy with a big cologne problem.”
“Cologne problem?”
“He wears enough to shut down every nose from here to Bakersfield.”
“Well, I don’t think he’s gonna have that problem anymore,” Stedman said. “He wears too much cologne where he’s going, he’ll end up the snuggle bunny of some big hairy convict.”
Terry and I frowned at each other, confused.
Stedman leaned in and lowered his voice. “We got Alphonse in custody right now. And guess what? We think he’s been dealing drugs, too.”
He pulled a card out of his pocket and slapped it down on the table. Our business card. We stared at it for a second, then looked back up at his grinning mug. “The blonde at the registration desk? Ours. Been on the inside for months. A great undercover gal.”
I let my mouth fall open, then shut it again.
“She told us you were getting close, making veiled accusations and whatnot, so we decided to bring Alphonse in before he got the idea to zero you out.”
Terry looked up at the ceiling, her tongue planted in her cheek.
“Is this what your cooperative effort is about?” I said.
He gave me his sternest look. “It goes no further than this table.”
“What about Sergei Pavlov? Is he part of your investigation?”
“No, he is the investigation. The Organized Crime division has been looking for that rat bastard for months. He’s a pretty big deal in the West Coast Russian syndicate. But he keeps giving ’em the slip, and now it looks like he’s resorted to homicide to cover his tracks. That’s how come I got involved.” He paused. “How do you know about him?”
“In a minute,” Terry said impatiently. “So he’s your number-one suspect for these murders, Hattrick and Janice?”
Stedman nodded.
“There may be another murder attributable to him,” I said. “There was an unidentified man killed in Hollywood a few days ago . . .”
Terry rolled her eyes at me, then fell forward on the table, head on her arms.
Stedman’s furry eyebrows leaped to his hairline. “Yeah? What about it?”
“We believe it was Mario Vallegos, Lenore Richling’s husband. I mean, the guy she was passing off as her husband,” I said, with a mysterious compulsion toward the truth. There’d be hell to pay with Terry later, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t bring charges against us at this point—they had bigger fish to fry.
“Thanks for the tip, but we got that already. His sister reported him missing and we got her to ID the body.”
Terry looked up. “What’s her name?”
“The sister? Irina.”
Terry looked over at me. “So Rini was Mario’s sister.”
Suspicion crossed Stedman’s face. “How’d you know it was Mario who got offed?”
Terry kicked a new dent in my shin. “We saw the murder on the news,” she said. “It was just a lucky guess.”
Stedman gave her a sly smile. “Uh-huh.”
“So you must also know that Mario was in Tatiana Pavlov’s apartment when he was shot,” I said. “Sergei’s ex-wife, ex-employee of Dr. Hattrick, ex–Russian citizen. Is she a suspect as well?”
“Nah, she checked out. Solid alibi. She’d moved in with a new boyfriend, a big macher in the entertainment business. They had fifteen people at his house for a party. Movie executives, agents. That bunch.”
So the dude Tattoo Man saw Tatiana leave with wasn’t Mario, after all. It was some movie-industry person who “thought he was the shit.” Well, didn’t they all?
“Is the case still open?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Put Sergei Pavlov at the top of your list of suspects for that one, too.”
“Why do you like Sergei for Mario’s murder?” he asked.
“Jealousy. Tatiana may have been having an affair with Mario. She denies it, but it’s been alleged.”
He nodded. “I’ll look into it.”
“Janice also thought she was having an affair with the doctor,” Terry said. “Maybe you can get Barbie to corroborate that.”
“Barbie? Barbie who?”
I shrugged. “Didn’t say. She’s a first-name-only kind of gal. Calls herself a beauty consultant. She took Tatiana’s job.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Barbie,” Terry and I said at the same time.
He made a face, like we were yanking his chain.
“No, seriously,” Terry said. “She has long blonde hair, ta-ta’s like heat-seeking missiles, great legs, and butt cheeks like boulders.”
Stedman loosened his collar. “She was definitely not there this morning. I’d have remembered.” He sat back in his chair. “Are you sure she worked for the doc?”
“Yeah,” I said, “although she may have been new.”
He made a quick note, circling her name. “I ask, because after we found Janice, we went through the employee records, just to make sure we weren’t missing any more bodies. No mention of a Barbie.”
Terry shrugged at me. “The first time we went to the doctor’s office, she was there, all right. Tried to sell us on a bunch of procedures to correct all our glaring physical deformities.”
Stedman gave her a head
shake to indicate he thought she was just fine as is.
“I know,” she said, “but that’s how they make their money. Convincing perfectly normal people that they’re repulsive monsters.”
Stedman laughed. “Don’t let it get to you, you’re fine. Hell, if I was thirty years younger . . .” He leered at her and I could feel the heat radiating from his oversized pores.
Here we go again. Invisible sister.
“Detective, we’re very concerned about something,” I said, bringing him back to the present, in which he was a too-old cop lusting after a lesbian witness. “Janice had a son, a little six-year-old. Someone needs to find him and take care of him.”
“You know his name?”
“No, but she had a photo of him in her day planner. Maybe the picture has his name on it.”
“Got that right here.” He reached into his briefcase and removed a plastic bag marked as evidence. He pulled on latex gloves and opened up the date book.
“There he is.” I pointed to the tattered school picture behind the glassine window.
Stedman pulled out the photograph. There was a name scrawled in babyish letters on the back. He popped his reading glasses onto his nose and peered through the lenses.
“Thought you said it was a boy,” he said, turning the back of the picture toward us.
Janice Gray. Age Six.
“What?” Terry said. “It’s a picture of her?”
Stedman glanced at it again. “Looks that way.”
“But why did she tell us it was her little boy?”
He hoisted chubby shoulders, shaking his head.
“So she could represent herself as something she’s not,” I said. “A hardworking single mom who’s been caught up in circumstances beyond her control. To gain our sympathy so she could manipulate us.”
“Jeez,” Terry said, slumping back in her chair. “Everyone we talk to is always lying their asses off.”
Stedman winked. “Welcome to my world.”
We talked to him for another hour, outlining our theory of how the blackmail ring overlapped with the drug ring. We told him about the missing Bacon, too, and our belief that Suzie Magnuson had been involved with insurance fraud along with Lenore. His eyes lit up when we mentioned Hugh Binion, but he kept his own counsel on the big attorney. Maybe he suspected Binion of involvement in Sergei’s disappearance and was playing that one close to the vest.
Overall, he seemed impressed, ready to credit our ideas. I glanced at my watch and realized we’d have to hurry home to get dressed for the funeral.
“Sorry, Detective. We have to go. Today is Lenore Richling’s funeral.”
“Richling’s funeral, huh? Maybe I’ll come, see if there’s anyone of interest in attendance. Where’s it at?”
“Beverly Eternal Rest on Beverly Drive, three o’clock.”
He gave a short laugh. “Why the fuck is everything named Beverly around here? Who was this Beverly, anyway?”
Terry looked at me. “Any ideas?”
“No,” I said. “But we’re not detectives for nothing. We’ll track her down.”
“Hope you feel better, getting Mario off your chest,” Terry sniped as we walked back to the parking garage. “I knew you’d have to say something.”
“I couldn’t help it. It just came up and out of my mouth involuntarily, like a burp.”
“Ever thought of covering your mouth when you’re about to belch up incriminating information?”
“At least we know they’re looking for Sergei. That’s a relief. They’ll pick him up and nail him for the murders and everything’ll be hunky-dory.”
“Doesn’t mean we have to stop investigating.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I still want to know what happened to the Bacon.”
“Fuck the Bacon,” she said. “I want to nail Sergei.”
“Well, we better watch our step or we could be the ones nailed.”
“Sure. I’m always watching.”
“No, I mean it, Ter. The next time he could plug us with lead instead of morphine.”
“I said I’d watch it,” she said, as she hopped on the bike.
As we pulled out of the parking garage onto Bedford, I noticed a gray sedan behind us. The driver wore dark glasses and had short hair, and he was so focused on what was in front of him, namely us, that I immediately became suspicious.
Normal drivers never focus on what’s in front of them. Normal drivers switch radio stations, talk on the phone, pick their teeth or check their makeup when they’re stopped. Also while they’re moving. His hands were gripping the wheel at ten and two o’clock, and his eyes were staring straight ahead.
The car was also suspect. A boxy gray thing in a neighborhood of sleek foreign cars and luxury SUVs. Nobody drove plain old cars around here. If they did, they risked being pulled over, a victim of vehicular profiling. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but one thing was sure. This guy was so unremarkable, such a good driver in such a normal car, that he just had to be bad news.
When we were stopped at a red light on Santa Monica Boulevard, I tapped Terry’s helmet. “Don’t turn around. Someone’s following us.”
She peered into the rearview mirror. “Gray sedan?”
“Yep.”
“How long?”
“Since the garage.”
“Okay, don’t worry.”
The light changed and she burned rubber through the intersection. I turned around and saw the gray sedan lurch forward after us.
Terry darted into the middle lane and gassed the bike, zooming past a monster truck of a Lexus SUV, then ducking between the Lexus and a white Cadillac. The Lexus had to brake to avoid hitting our back tire and he laid on his horn, causing the Cadillac driver to hit his brakes in panic. Terry ducked out from between them and rode along the lane divider next to a Jeep Cherokee, whose driver could be seen behind his window shooting us the finger and yelling, Fuggenidiotwhatdoyouthinkyerdoing?
But I had no time to return the gesture because Terry braked, and the Jeep sped past us. She zipped into its wake, causing an older woman in a Lincoln in the next lane to slam on her brakes, sending her toy poodle sailing right into the windshield and then back down in the front seat, yapping his little head off.
Terry tore past the Lincoln and across two lanes of honking, screeching traffic to the green light at the corner, making the turn at an acute angle, my nose almost scraping the asphalt.
Then she gunned it down a residential street whose name I didn’t catch because my eyes were running like leaky spigots, and she was halfway down the next block before she saw the crosswalk full of first-graders.
Our brakes squealed and the wheels locked and we spun ninety degrees to the left, sliding sideways toward the mob of wide-eyed kids, who were frozen like fawns in the headlights, and finally skidding to a stop six inches from the Nikes of a kid in a Dodgers cap, the stench of burning rubber in our nostrils.
We sat in silence for a moment, catching our breath and letting the adrenaline subside. I was so glad to be alive. I looked up at the sky, noticing for the first time today that it was clear blue and almost cloudless. Yes, Robert was right—it was important to take stock, to appreciate how fleeting life is, to breathe in every moment while we live.
Lost in these thoughts, I didn’t see the crosswalk monitor stomping over to the bike until the last minute. She was forty, rotund, and quite indignant, swinging her stop sign around like a pair of nunchucks.
“What kind of monsters are you?” she screeched. “Endangering the children!”
Then Terry said something she shouldn’t have. “Oh, bite me. We didn’t kill anyone.”
The stop sign came crashing down on her head.
It came down on her head again and again, the wooden spike making a terrible crunching sound, which I knew was even worse for Terry, but I guess that’s why they make you wear helmets in California. I finally managed to wrest the stop sign from the woman’s grip and hurled it to the grass at the side of the
road, giving Terry enough time to reorient herself and rev up the bike so we could make our escape.
As we pulled to a stop at the corner, I looked to our left and saw the gray sedan idling by the side of the road. Terry evidently didn’t see it, and I didn’t say a word. She had almost killed us once, trying to evade a possible killer, and I wasn’t going to give her another chance. She took a right, eventually getting us back to Santa Monica Boulevard, and we were on our way home to Beverly Glen.
The gray sedan behind us all the way.
It wasn’t until we were inside the house pouring kibble into bowls for Muffy and Paquito that I told Terry we’d been followed.
“Goddammit, why didn’t you tell me?”
“And risk my life in another high-speed chase?”
“Oh, you liked it,” she said. “That’s the most fun you’ve had all week.”
“Well, let me think about that one,” I said, my throat tightening and my voice rising a fifth. “No, I’d have to say that discovering a mutilated corpse—no wait, two mutilated corpses—was the most fun I’ve had all week. No, wait. I think I liked being arrested and hauled down to Parker Center like a common criminal even better!” My voice had crept up another third, making it a full octave higher. I sounded like Michael Jackson on helium.
“All in all, it’s been a real fun week. But I think I would have had even more fun if we’d actually mown down that little first-grader. What do you think his name was? Timmy? Bobby? Think it would have been fun going to his funeral and laying a rose on his tiny coffin before we were hauled off to spend the next ten years in the slammer for vehicular manslaughter, which we wouldn’t even serve ’cause we’d be shiv’d by a gang of angry crack mothers for cutting down an innocent child in the sixth year of his life. Don’t you think that would have been even more fun? Think you could arrange it next time?”
Terry petted Muffy and Paquito, who were munching away happily. “You’re such a worrier.”
“So who do you think he is?” I said, sighing.
“Who?”
“The guy in the gray sedan!”
She made a face. “You see what you do? You go off on a rant and I forget the important things!”
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 22