by Neil Russell
“I’m gonna call the TV stations and every fuckin’ paparazzi assignment desk in town and tell them my neighbor’s havin’ another pool party.”
I remembered that one of the recent crop of showbiz bad girls had bought the house next to Benny Joe’s, and she liked to get high and naked with a few dozen of her celebrity friends. The narrow, twisty streets under the Hollywood sign weren’t designed for more than an occasional car, so fifty trying to beat each other to a front page were really going to fuck up the landscape. Not to mention the floodlights on the choppers.
“Another little gift to the homeowner’s association.”
“Fuck them. Where were they when my ex was shootin up my ‘Vette?”
“That old Norton of yours up to off-roading?”
“With your little G-girl pressin’ her hard titties into my back, I can hardly fuckin’ wait.”
“My best to Lulabelle.”
I locked up and went looking for Dr. Dan.
* * * *
When we hit the Vegas city limits, I toyed with stopping to see Birdy, but she’d probably be on her way out to the ranch. Besides, she hadn’t returned my last two calls, so she apparently didn’t need any cheering up. Instead, I dropped the doc at the hospital and swung by the MGM.
Fat Cat, Coggan and Wal-Mart met me in the coffee shop. I let Eddie and Jody sleep. I had a feeling they were going to need all they could get.
Wal-Mart looked even bigger than I remembered. He was going to make a nice impression where I was sending him. “Coggan, I want you and Man Mountain here to pay a visit to one Wesley Crowe. You’ll know the best questions to ask.”
“If he’s a cop, I think I’d have a better shot,” Fat Cat said.
“That’s exactly why I’m not sending you. This isn’t about his being a cop. It’s about his being Chinese. And a very rich man’s brother-in-law.”
“Should be fun,” said Coggan. “People like to talk to me.”
“What about me?” asked Fat Cat. “I thought we had a deal. No fuckin’ secrets.”
“You’re going with me. I may need you to handle a fireman.”
“Jesus, I hate those self-important assholes.” He lapsed into singsong. “Hey, look at us. We’re everybody’s heroes, and we don’t even carry guns.”
“You’ll be perfect.”
My record time Vegas to Beverly Hills is three and a half hours. Maybe with a badge in the car, I could run fast enough to get a couple of hours in my own bed before meeting Cheyenne Rollins.
* * * *
I awakened at seven feeling fresh. There’s something about your own bed. There’s also something about your own shower. Despite the cataclysmic predictions the water department spews out with the same regularity that the Today Show announces the end of the human race from the flu or a shortage of Priuses, I stand under my hot water—which I pay for—until I decide to get out. Here’s a thought. We live on a fuckin’ ocean. Figure it out.
Fat Cat had taken the Ram and run home for his own nap and a change of clothes, and he was waiting in the living room with Mallory. They were munching cashews and comparing notes on the correct way to roast a pig, which suddenly made me very hungry. I grabbed the bowl of nuts, and Fat Cat followed me downstairs to the garage. In the background, I heard Mallory say something like, “Bring back the bowl. It’s part of a collection.” I never really had a mother, so he does his best.
Fat Cat looked at my car collection with interest but not drool. “Dion said you had some fancy wheels. Looks like you got a thing for black and red too.”
“I’m working on that. I’m negotiating for a DeLorean, and they only come in stainless. You ever drive a Rolls?”
“Only the ones in the department.”
I tossed him the keys, and he eased us into the Beverly Hills evening. “I could get used to this,” he said as he headed toward Sunset.
* * * *
The late, lamented Beverly Hills Gun Club used to be hard by the railroad tracks in a seedy part of West LA, five miles from the nearest border of its namesake. It was one of my favorite hangouts. Cordite and attitude. Not to mention gang-bangers taking target practice alongside the cops they’d be exchanging Uzi fire with later.
In the same tradition, Gladstone’s 4 Fish is actually in the Palisades. That doesn’t, however, keep them from claiming Malibu—and Santa Monica from claiming them. People from Pacific Palisades don’t claim anything, except being rich, and that most tourists haven’t figured out a lot of famous faces live there.
Sandwiched on fifty yards of sand between the PCH and the surf, Gladstone’s is people watching, big food and bird attacks at their finest. And like the gun club, I have a romance with the place. There are beach joints up, down and across this nation’s coasts, but nowhere else is it possible to run into Spielberg or Schwarzenegger working on a plate of garlic fries while he dodges flying seagull shit and a homeless guy sleeps on the sand ten feet away. It doesn’t make the food any better, but it says everything about my adopted home of LA. I couldn’t live anywhere else.
Fat Cat self-parked the Rolls at the far end of the lot, and we wandered slowly toward the restaurant until I saw the red Wrangler. It had a fresh scrape on the driver’s side fender, and there were scattered papers and a map on the passenger seat, indicating no one had ridden here with her.
Cheyenne Rollins had her back to me and was tucked into a wide wooden booth at the end of the far dining room. The nearest occupied table was a section away. She was a handsome lady, in clothes a little too tight for Sunday mass but ideal for a margarita and nachos, which is what she was working on. As I got to the table, I saw a baby wrapped in a pink blanket lying on the seat next to her. The cleft palate on the happy, gurgling child was severe, but I’d seen worse.
“I promised myself that if we ever met, the first thing I’d do is tell you how brave you are.”
She looked at the two large men standing over her and didn’t miss a beat. “If you’d see me crying sometimes, you’d retract that in a hurry.” Cheyenne Rollins was one of those people who was completely self-possessed. It’s rare, so it’s always impressive.
“I’ve seen men cry in combat and keep firing their weapons. You’re a keeper, young lady.” I pointed to the baby. “Someday, you’ll have to tell her how she got here.”
“And if she’s like every other kid, she’ll roll her eyes and groan.”
We introduced ourselves, and I saw something else. She and Fat Cat had connected. Not the thunderbolt of The Godfather fame, but a quiet emotional connection when a strong but damaged soul stares into a light she didn’t know existed.
“What’s your real name?” she asked Fat Cat.
“Hugo.”
“I like that. So that’s what I’m going to call you. Hugo.” It wasn’t a question, and you knew it wasn’t open for debate.
She slid the child farther into the wide both, and Hugo sat beside her. I sat across. The pert, short-shorts server had apparently been waiting for us and pounced before our rears got settled. “I’ll have a glass of Stella,” I said.
“Same,” said Fat Cat.
“How about one of our great starters?” she asked.
“I’m good.”
Cheyenne pushed her nachos toward us. “Please,” she said. “All I seem to do is eat and worry.”
“Running for your life is hard work,” I said.
“Do you think maybe you could do something about that?”
“That’s why we’re here,” said Fat Cat, and I heard a huskiness in his voice that hadn’t been there in the car.
“‘Did that fireman mention I was really anxious to talk to Francesca Huston?”
I nodded. “She’ll be along shortly. But I thought we might cover a couple of things first. Ms. Huston isn’t much with small talk.”
“Shoot.”
“Can you take us through everything step by step?”
“Everything? Okay, but a lot of the China stuff’s a blur. When we weren’t sick, we were h
igh.”
“Okay, while you’re still fresh, start with the most difficult part.”
She nodded. “A Chinese guy who barely spoke English met us at the airport in Hong Kong and took us to a dive where they pushed drinks on us. That’s where we got slammed with the drugs. It was dark when we left, and Sherry and I were leaning on each other just to walk. The guy put us in his backseat, then drove a long time. At some point, I realized we must be going up because my ears started to pop.”
“Victoria Peak,” I said.
“Can you like see the whole city from there?”
“Yes.”
“Then that was it. Jesus, was it high. The next thing I remember was this gate with a butterfly on it—one that broke in the middle when it opened. The driver dropped us at what I’d call the service entrance where this pretty, but very cold Asian woman was waiting for us.”
I was betting Crimson. “Name?”
Cheyenne shook her head. “I asked, but she said we were there to entertain not sell Girl Scout cookies, which I thought was hilarious at the time, but it was probably the drugs. The house was really crazy inside. All kinds of big art but with these like curtains everywhere.”
“Curtains?”
“Yeah, white ones. Hanging from the ceiling, the walls, everywhere. And the place was dirty. Like the housekeeper was on strike. Plates of food sitting around, cigarette butts in the carpet, unflushed toilets. Disgusting. The woman took us to a bedroom that was a little cleaner and told us to get undressed. Nothing but heels. The highest we had.
“Even fucked up, I didn’t like that, but when I started to say something, she hit me like I hadn’t been hit since my old man died. ‘No clothes,’ she screamed. ‘If somebody wants you to put something on, you do it and don’t argue. Otherwise, nothing but shoes. Now let me see your bush.’
“I was, like what? My bush? It’s fuckin waxed, bitch. But she looked anyway and rubbed it for a minute like I was gonna lie down and beg for more. I just looked at her, and she stopped. Then she checked our breath and armpits. Jesus Christ, I said, we weren’t there to join the fuckin’ army.
“I guess she didn’t appreciate that, because she called in some guys who held me down and gave me a shot. After that, all I did was fly. And fuck. Fly and fuck. The sun came up and went down I don’t know how many times, and people kept leaving and new ones kept coming, but Sherry and I were still fucking. Sometimes guys, sometimes women, sometimes both. Sometimes each other. They must have let us sleep, but I don’t remember much except having things stuck in me.”
“And was everybody else Asian?”
“Of some kind, yes. There was this one guy who spoke like an American and came in a few times. But he didn’t get involved. He just talked to the woman, then left again.”
“Big guy. Gray hair. Sixties, but could pass for younger.”
“I never saw him. He was always in a shadow or behind one of the curtains, but if you know his name, don’t tell me. I’m working on forgetting.”
The waitress came back, and Cheyenne said, “I could go for a burger.”
Fat Cat and I ordered the same. “Why don’t you tell us about your escape from Chuck and Lucille’s,” I said.
She looked grim, but soldiered on. “I’ve got to get it out sometime. I’d just stepped out of the shower when I heard a commotion in the living room. People shouting and furniture breaking. Then Chuck started yelling, ‘INSPECTOR SANDS! INSPECTOR SANDS!’ “
“Who the hell is Inspector Sands?” asked Fat Cat.
“Not a who,” I said. “It’s the London transit system’s emergency code. It’s derived from ‘Mr. Sands,’ the phrase theatres use for a fire in the house. Chuck cross-trained with the Brits after the subway bombings. Probably where he picked it up.”
Cheyenne looked at me. “I didn’t know that. Chuck just said if I ever heard it, I was supposed to run and not stop running until I got to the safe house.” She suddenly smiled. “It’s probably not cool to make jokes, but I wish he would have said something about getting dressed first. That was one long, uncomfortable drive. Thank God the agriculture checkpoint was closed.”
* * * *
38
Working Unrestricted and Investment Banking
As Cheyenne finished her narrative, our server cleared our empty plates and brought us fresh drinks. “Did Lucille tell you where the two children were going?”
A curious look crossed her face. “If you guys were friends, I thought you would already know. They were for them.”
“Chuck and Lucille?”
“She told me they wanted to give two kids who would end up on the streets a chance at a real life. And that nobody would interfere if they were visibly disabled.”
So that was going to be Lucille’s big announcement. Fabian and Astaire were going to be grandparents. “Do you know how much money was involved?”
“I don’t, but she told us that the Chinese had begun waiting until girls showed up to collect children, then demanding double what had already been paid. And she couldn’t go back to the families, because most of them had mortgaged their houses. So Chuck had done some . . . uncomfortable things to make up the difference.”
“She used that word, uncomfortable?”
“No, that’s me trying to make it better. The word she used was dreadful, and that Chuck had put his career on the line.”
I didn’t see the need to get into voodoo taxes, and that Chuck had probably had to cast his net even wider to cover the extra money. “Wasn’t buying children breaking the law to begin with?” I asked.
Cheyenne suddenly got very angry. “Since when is rescuing a baby from a terrible death wrong? You want to fire up the indignation engine, then let’s start with, ‘I’m feeling a little blue today, should I shop Armani or Africa?’ Or how about the Hamptons social climbers trying to improve their multicultural cred.”
She put her hand on the baby’s forehead. “If you could see the place this little doll came from—hundreds and hundreds of kids with missing limbs, twisted spines, Down Syndrome or just a lousy cleft palate, all piled into rooms the size of closets—you’d kill somebody. And because they’re classified as ‘abandoned,’ their goddamn government won’t even let them be citizens, meaning that sooner or later somebody’s going to stop feeding them. My God, if I ever got elected president, I’d start a war with those motherfuckers.”
She was right. My neck was on fire just listening to it. To quote Detective Kujovic, “How about them fuckin’ Olympics?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just can’t get that vision out of my mind no matter how hard I try.”
“No explanation necessary. The Brandos had been at this baby business a long time. Do you have any idea why they picked now to adopt kids of their own?”
“Lucille said they couldn’t risk it before because somebody might have tried to hurt their kids to get at her and Chuck. That what started out as getting a few government officials laid by hot American chicks so helpless kids could escape destitution had turned into something so sick that she and Chuck couldn’t bear it anymore. She said she woke up every night vomiting over what they’d become. So they were closing down the operation.”
Closing it down? The words hit me like a shot. You don’t lease a ship at twenty grand a month and park it within range of the Chinese coast if you’re getting out of the business. “Are you sure that’s what she said? Closing down?”
Cheyenne looked at me angrily. “No, I’m making it up. What the fuck is wrong with you? Suddenly, I’m delirious?”
“I’m sorry. It just caught me by surprise. Is that all she said?”
“No, she said there were going to be some very angry people, but they wouldn’t stay angry long. I’ve got no clue what that meant.”
I didn’t either, but I couldn’t get bogged down with it now. “I know this isn’t a question you probably want to answer, but I need to know how were you recruited.”
“At this point, I’m beyon
d caring what anyone thinks, so sure. All the girls in the Vegas flesh business knew you could pick up a ton of money if you were willing to do two weeks unrestricted in Hong Kong. And that the connection was this guy Donnie Two Knives on TV. It was like, hey, if I really fuck up, I can always call Donnie.”
“Define unrestricted.”
Her tone got ugly. “You’re over twenty-one. Use your imagination.” Fat Cat put his hand over hers, and she clutched at it with both of hers. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I’m still trying to readjust. Basically, it means if you can fuck it, or it can fuck you, put a smile on your face. I thought it was for DVDs because there are a lot of rich collectors in Asia. And it was . . . kinda. Sometimes you’d see a guy with a handheld, and he’d asked you to moan louder or talk dirty, but it wasn’t the really raw stuff, so it was probably just leverage over the officials. But then Sherry disappeared, and even in the fog I was in, I got so scared I remember this guy slapping the shit out of me because I was screaming.”