Rock & Roll Homicide

by R J McDonnell

  “It’s in that yellow research manual they give to everybody who owns a phone. If you cross-reference it with a Thomas Brothers Map Book, you’ll have an hour and a half to figure it out. Think you can you handle it?” he asked with much sarcasm.

  “I can’t wait,” I said and he hung up. Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Ten to one lunch sets me back at least $50. I hope Chelsea isn’t a grinder when it comes to expense reports.

  My next call was to Bernie Liebowitz. Of all of the club owners I worked for, Bernie was the best. He’s a former rock & roll agent who got out of the business because he couldn’t stand seeing his clients constantly getting ripped off by the recording companies. He agreed to meet me at the start of happy hour.

  As expected, Larabee’s turned out to be an upscale restaurant just off of La Jolla Boulevard. It’s a white Spanish building with a red tile roof, built into the side of a hill overlooking the Pacific. The restaurant had several terraces filled with alfresco diners. Inside the beveled glass entranceway was a hostess who looked very familiar. I’m sure she played the part of a mom on one of those sitcom’s that has been in reruns for years.

  “Do you have a reservation?” she asked with the warmth and charm you might expect from Beaver Cleaver’s mom.

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “Do you think you could squeeze in a party of two?”

  “We’re booked solid until at least 2:30,” she said.

  “Actually I’m meeting someone. It’s quite possible he made a reservation. His name is Walter Shamansky,” I stated with raised eyebrows and a hopeful inflection in my voice.

  Beav’s mom made a big production of perusing the reservation list carefully. When she finished she gave me a sad, sympathetic expression and a little shake of the head. “Mind if I wait until Mr. Shamansky arrives?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” she replied and extended her arm toward a church pew adjacent to the door. Just as I was thinking Shamansky stood me up, in walked a muscular, 50-something guy with a shaved head. Beaver’s mom lit up like Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade.

  “Howdy stranger!” she enthused. “I thought you lost our address.”

  “Not a chance. Where else in La Jolla am I going to find four-star food and a five-star hostess,” he said, laying it on thick.

  “Where’s the benevolent benefactor today?” she asked.

  He replied, “I’m supposed to be meeting a PI.” Beaver’s mom gave a head nod in my direction. Walter Shamansky turned to face me and asked, “Son of Duff?”

  I raised my hand and stood. “That’s me.” He flapped his palm indicating he wanted me to fall in line behind him as he turned his attention back to the hostess. As I approached I said, “I thought you didn’t have a reservation for a Walter Shamansky.”

  Beav’s mom looked at Shamansky and asked, “Is that your name, Kojak?”

  “You can call me anything you want, beautiful,” he replied with a wink. She feigned embarrassment and showed us to a window table with a view of the ocean.

  I started to launch into the spiel I had prepared, but got halted by a raised palm as Shamansky focused on his menu. I wanted to ask if he’d recently been promoted from Traffic Division, but held my tongue. After a couple of minutes the poster girl for anorexia nervosa stopped by our table and asked for our orders. Shamansky flirted as shamelessly as he had with the hostess. Surprisingly, this twenty-one-year-old also knew Shamansky and treated him like a friend.

  Once our orders were taken Shamansky said, “OK, let’s hear it.” I proceeded with the scenario I worked out with Dad. When I finished Shamansky said, “I gotta give your old man credit. For a guy who’s three years retired, he set you up with a very believable story. Almost any other cop in the department would have bought it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  He replied, “Your dad and me never saw eye to eye. He was with the In Crowd, the Irish Mafia, and I wasn’t.”

  “Are you saying my dad was dirty?” I asked with a pugnacious tone.

  “No. Nothing like that. The Irish Mafia in SDPD is a clique. A large group of Irish cops who hang out together and watch each other’s backs in the field and at promotion time,” he said with a bit of acrimony.

  “I have a flash for you, Shamansky, he never made it past detective,” I noted as the tension mounted.

  “Don’t get me wrong. I like your dad. When we were both at Western Division we had two of the highest clear rates in the department. He was a damn good cop. I just didn’t care for the company he kept,” he said with a notable drop in hostility. Just as the smoke was clearing, Olive Oyl arrived with lunch.

  We ate in silence for a couple of minutes, then Shamansky said, “Here’s what I’ve got to offer. If you read the papers you probably know the assholes on city counsel cut our budget to shit. No overtime; hiring freeze; and something they’re calling ‘total accountability,’ which is short for more paperwork/less field time.” He shoved an artichoke heart into his mouth and, once again, held up his palm, telling me it was not yet my turn to speak. “Your little scam about a civil suit tells me you’re willing to do some legwork in exchange for some information. Here are the rules: If I give you an assignment, you give me exactly what you find - no holding out on me and no partial truth. If you can do that I’ll keep you in the loop on the investigation. Deal?”

  “I can live with that, on one condition. No bullshit assignments to satisfy the brass. You ask me to do something we need to know to move forward, I’ll give it to you straight,” I said while returning his stare with equal intensity.

  “You are definitely the son of Duff. That’s a good thing. OK, no bullshit assignments. What do you need to know?” he asked.

  Before I could launch into my questions our server rolled a dessert cart to our table and looked like she was auditioning for the role of game show hostess as she hand-gestured from one confection to the next. When it was mercifully over we ordered coffee. “What did forensics have to say about the bomb?” I asked.

  Shamansky replied, “It was a combination of BBs and a blasting cap in each ear pad of the headphones.”

  “Wouldn’t that make the earphones noticeably heavy” I asked.

  “Here’s something you’ll find very interesting. The headphones were a recent gift from your client. According to her, he had been asking for a heavier, tighter seal to block out extraneous noise. A studio sound tech confirms that he asked for a recommendation on a pair that had those features,” he said.

  I asked, “Is that the only reason you like my client?”

  “Not at all. She inherits five million bucks from an insurance policy. Her husband, like all rock stars, may have had infidelity issues. And, everyone I’ve talked with tells me Terry Tucker was a sonofabitch,” he said with confidence.

  “Don’t tell me you’re relying on clues from the National Inquirer,” I said, defending my client.

  “Talk to the band,” he retorted as he stood up from the table.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he replied, “Leave a big tip.”

  I waited until I got down to the street before calling Jeannine. “Were you able to get me an appointment at Cerise Records?” I asked.

  “Everything else on the list is going very well. But, Cerise Records was really weird,” she said.

  “Weird, how?” I asked.

  She replied, “I told the receptionist who I was and everything, then she put me on hold. She must have put her hand over the phone, but I could still hear her explaining it to her boss. He said, ‘Tell them I am out of the country and won’t be back for at least a couple of weeks.’ When she came back on the line she told me what her boss said.”

  “What’s the boss’s name?” I inquired.

  “John Koflanovich. I couldn’t hear him very distinctly, but he definitely had a foreign accent,” she added.

  I got the address and decided to try a drop in. It’s infinitely easier to blow someo
ne off on the phone than it is in person. Twenty minutes later, I entered a large business office complex that was decidedly more upscale than my modest quarters, but definitely not in the same league as the major record labels. Fortunately, they had an on-site management company listed on the marquee.

  As I walked out of the elevator I was disappointed to see an interior hallway with no windows. There were only two office suites on Cerise’s side of the hallway. The other was Cleason Enterprises. As I walked into the Cerise reception room I was again disturbed by the absence of interior windows. No way of telling the size of the suite or how may people were in their offices. The receptionist was an attractive blond in her mid-twenties.

  “Hi. I’m with Cubic Property Management. We’re having an electrical problem on this floor and I need to take a look at your panel,” I said.

  She replied, “Let me speak to the boss.” She then left her desk and opened a heavy, walnut door just to the side of her reception desk. When she returned she said, “I’m sorry. There’s a confidential meeting going on right now and no one is allowed in the interior suites. If you would like to leave your name and number I can call when it’s OK. Or, I can just call Cubic.”

  “I’m afraid you don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I just came from Cleason and their computers are completely down. They’re losing money by the second.”

  “We work with some very big name acts in the music business. When they’re in negotiations it’s imperative that we maintain the highest standards of confidentiality. Entertainment Tonight, the Hollywood Tattler, California Confidential and the tabloids are constantly snooping around here. I’m sure you are who you say you are, but if a new talent or his agent sees you wandering around back there it could easily cost us a big contract.”

  I responded, “I understand. But Cleason is very important to us, so I’ll just wait until the meeting is over if you don’t mind.”

  “That’ll be fine,” she said.

  After about ten minutes of watching the receptionist primp and preen, a plan came together. Without her noticing, I took my Swiss Army knife out of my pants pocket and the vitamins I forgot to take after lunch, out of my shirt pocket. I poked a small hole in one of the pointy ends of a Vitamin E gel cap. “Excuse me,” I said to the receptionist. “Did you go out for lunch today?” I asked.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?” she inquired.

  “When you turned I saw something in the back of your hair,” I said. She immediately started reaching for the back of her head. “Don’t touch it!” I exclaimed as I stood up and walked toward her. “It looks like bird dookie. Turn around.” When she did I squeezed the Vitamin E into the back of her hair as I touched it lightly. “Eeeeewwww!” I exclaimed as I quickly withdrew my hand, revealing a strand of clear, sticky liquid spanning two of my fingers. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is!”

  The receptionist took one look at my fingers, made a high-pitched sound and bolted out the front door toward the hallway Women's room. After wiping my fingers, I let myself into the interior office suite and noted three offices on either side of the hall. There was no identification on any of these doors. However, at the far end of the hall was an ornate door with a brass plate displaying the name John Koflanovich. As I cautiously made my way down the hall I heard a noise behind me and, before I could turn around, felt the cold steel of a large-caliber handgun poking into the flesh below my chin as the shaft of the gun rested on the side of my neck. “Don’t move or you’re dead,” said the owner of the handgun with a heavy Russian accent.

  “That’s it! You Ruskies are getting an eviction notice today!” I barked with all the righteous indignation I could muster. “Cubic Property Management does not allow firearms in this building. It’s in the lease you will soon be responsible for losing.”

  “Bullshit!” was his reply.

  “The computers are down at Cleason Enterprises, your next-door neighbor’s suite. We’re not going to lose them as a tenant because you think you can deny us access to the electrical panel when it says very clearly in your lease that we have access whenever it’s necessary,” I said with conviction.

  “Turn around and show me some identification,” he said as he withdrew the gun from my neck. When I turned around I saw a man in his late thirties of medium build, holding a pistol aimed at my chest.

  As I reached for my wallet he gestured excitedly with the pistol and said something in Russian. I retrieved my movie rental card from my wallet. As I reached out to hand it to him I said, “You keep waving that gun at me and you’ll not only get evicted, you’ll get deported.” When I said this he pointed the gun away from me for the first time. I made my move.

  You already know that I’m a man of many talents: detective, musician, and dispenser of psychological advice. So, it’s completely understandable if you mistakenly assume I’m an expert at karate. Unfortunately, the only black belt I own is currently holding up my pants. I developed my best move in my childhood as a result of defending myself against my sister. She is two years older, but I passed her in height and weight when I turned seven. In spite of her lack of stature, Lisa packed exceptional punching power. If I teased her, took stuff out of her room or any number of minor transgressions, I could count on her to come in with a hard right to the breadbasket. When she first started doing this Mom was appalled, but Dad recognized it as a way for her to fend off unwanted advances as she transitioned into her teenage years. The bottom line was that Lisa could pummel me to tears, but I could only learn how to block, evade or trap her punches. Being a survivalist at heart, I became quite proficient at sidesteps and trapping her right hand under my left arm, like a boxer tying up an opponent with a clinch. I also learned the effectiveness of a good body punch and have first-hand knowledge of exactly where such a punch will do the most damage.

  So, when the Russian pointed the gun to his side, I trapped his gun hand under my arm and, in one motion, brought a power punch up into his solar plexus. His knees buckled and I shouldered him backward two steps into the doorjamb behind him. He banged his head hard on the corner of the doorway and his lights went out. I then saw Koflanovich’s door open part way and heard the unmistakable sound of large dogs growling. I was on the other side of that walnut door faster than a heavy metal drummer on double-espresso.

  As I exited Cerise Records I ran into the receptionist in the hallway. “Did you put that stuff in my hair?” she asked angrily.

  “Are you kidding? Most of the time I don’t even kiss goodnight on the first date,” I replied without breaking stride toward the exit.

  By the time I got back to my Acura NXS, reality had set in. My heart could have kept time for a drum and bugle corps. My hands were shaking and I was too light-headed to drive. I sat in my car with the windows up and the air-conditioning on full-blast. I kept visualizing myself lying in the hallway of Cerise Records being fitted for a toe tag by an Assistant Coroner. After about ten minutes I calmed down enough to navigate over to the Dali Lama Yo Mama, Bernie’s nightclub. It was only 5:30 PM and the night clubbers wouldn’t be out for several hours, but Bernie opened up at 5:00 to catch the Happy Hour crowd from the nearby office buildings. I sat on a barstool near the server station, hoping to connect with a familiar face.

  I ordered a double vodka gimlet from a bartender I vaguely remembered as a rookie back when I was leaving the music scene. I’m normally not a big drinker. I had to deal with too many drunks as an entertainer to ever want to join their ranks. But, I needed to steady my hands before my chat with Bernie.

  “Hey stranger, I thought you got married and moved to the valley,” said a voice I recognized, from directly behind me.

  “Gag me with a spoon,” I responded with a Valley Girl inflection. “And it wasn’t me who was engaged last time we talked. What happened to that Matthew McConaughey wannabe you were hooked up with, Jasmine?” I asked.

  “I married him,” she said.

  “Oops,” I said, “I always thought Matthew McConaughey was pretty cool.�
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  She replied, “Matthew is very cool. But that dick-head I married is history.”

  “I’m sorry. Is that why you’re waiting on the suits now instead of the rockers?” I asked sympathetically.

  “I thought you got out of the head-shrinking business?” Jasmine retorted in a way that brought back memories of her feisty nature.

  “I did and for the same reason you got out of your marriage. I couldn’t live with the dick-heads either. Most of the bosses I met needed more help than the clients. At least you don’t have that problem working here,” I said.

  “You got that right. Bernie is the real deal. I’ve been working here for six years now and for at least the first two I kept waiting for Bernie to show a little bit of a dark side,” she said then shook her head. “Never happened.”

  “Is he around yet?” I asked.

  “Yeah, he’s in his office. I’ll tell him you’re here after I help the white collars get happy,” she said with a smile.

  I finished my drink and ordered another double. As I was reaching for my wallet, I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder while Bernie told the bartender, “This one’s on the house.” Then to me he said, “Since when did you start slamming doubles.”

  “Since about an hour ago when a thug stuck a gun in my neck,” I said, knowing it would be counterproductive to hide anything from my mentor.

  He replied, “I thought your practice was limited to the foibles of the rich and famous.”

  “I’m working on the Terry Tucker murder. I’m sure you’ve been following it in the papers,” I said.

  “Terry played my club a few times in the early days when he was with Caliber 9,” he said. “I was saddened, but not entirely shocked.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “Terry was a perfectionist. The first time he played here he very politely asked if his band could rehearse some new songs at the club the afternoon before their performance. I agreed and showed up at noon to let them in. Terry worked them non-stop until 4:30 PM. He was pretty confrontational in the way he addressed his band mates when they didn’t measure up to his expectations,” he said.