Tinseltown Tango

by Phil Swann

  “I know Colson played us,” he said.

  “Why? For what purpose?”

  “That I don’t know. But that’s only one of the multitude of mysteries we still need to work out.”

  “What are the others?”

  “Let’s start with who actually died in that explosion at the recording studio. Or more importantly, who didn’t?”

  “I don’t follow,” I said.

  “The first thing you should know, Trip, is the coroner found that three of the remains pulled from the building appeared to have suffered a recent gunshot wound. Probably not a fatal one, but definitely debilitating.”

  “What?”

  Clegg nodded, “But what’s more disturbing is that all the victims were located in just one room, the room where you musicians sit.”

  “The live room?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that one,” Clegg responded. “No bodies were found anywhere else in the building. Not in the control room, not in any of the offices, not anywhere else. Only in that one room.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “There should have been people all over that building. At the very least, there should have been a couple of engineers in the control room.”

  “That’s not the only thing that doesn’t make sense,” Clegg replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Trip, how big was Gabriella’s orchestra?”

  I thought for a second. “Two violin players, a bass player, Goetz on piano, a drummer, three horns, and the two bandoneon players. So, ten in total.”

  “So, ten musicians were scheduled to be in that recording studio.”

  “Yes, but I wasn’t there, so there only would have been nine. And now we know one of the bandoneon twins wasn’t there either, so we’re down to eight.”

  “Right,” Clegg replied. “But remember, Carson and Stevens thought they saw you enter the studio with Miss Kaplan.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, starting to use my fingers. “So, since someone was pretending to be me, now we’re back up to nine.”

  Clegg nodded. “The coroner only recovered six bodies, Trip.”

  I shrugged. “He must have missed some. The building was demolished.”

  “No, he didn’t miss anyone,” Clegg replied. “Our people went through it from top to bottom. There were only six victims.”

  I got what Clegg was driving at. “So, we’re missing three bodies.”

  Clegg reached for the file he had tossed on the table. “Not exactly. We know what happened to one of them. Two hours ago, a man was fished out of the Hollywood reservoir. A couple of hikers found him.” Clegg opened the file and handed it to me. “His name was Lorenzo Acosta. We ran his name through immigration. He and his twin brother, Francisco Acosta are, or I should say were, musicians.”

  “The brother,” I responded, looking at the picture in the file.

  “Yes,” Clegg replied.

  “So, he wasn’t killed in the blast, either.”

  Clegg shook his head. “That would have been quite a trick since the coroner says he’s been dead for a couple of days. The coroner also said he was roughed up pretty badly before being tossed into the lake.”

  “Roughed up? How?”

  “Tortured,” Clegg answered.

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t.

  Clegg went on, “So, now we’re down to eight musicians who should have been in that studio.”

  I dropped the file on the bed and went back to my fingers. “Miriam, Daniel, Sid, the bass player, the two violin players, Goetz, and the person pretending to be me. Yes, eight musicians.”

  “Uh-huh,” Clegg responded. “Except, one of the bodies recovered wasn’t a musician. We suspect he was your stand-in.”

  “How could you possibly know he wasn’t a musician?”

  “The coroner was able to identify the body using dental records.”

  “No way,” I replied. “There are three million people in this city. That’s the very definition of finding a needle in a haystack.”

  Clegg shook his head. “Not if you have a hunch like I did. It’s also easier when the corpse is the district attorney for the county of Los Angeles.”

  I almost fell off the bed. “Colson?”

  “The one and only,” Clegg replied.

  “What was Sebastian Colson doing in the recording studio?”

  “Pretending to be you, I suspect. But it gets even stranger.”

  “How?”

  Clegg took a deep breath before delivering the next bombshell. “Trip, all of the victims were male. No female remains were recovered.”

  I don’t remember verbally responding. I only remember the air being sucked from my body. But I must have said Are you sure? or something like that because Clegg explained.

  “All the remains were men at least six feet tall, or taller. Miss Kaplan was a petite woman. She wasn’t there, Trip. Not when the blast occurred.”

  “She’s alive,” I uttered, as much to myself, as to Clegg.

  “We don’t know. We only know she didn’t die in the explosion. Which means our math just got harder.”

  “How?” I asked, fixating on the possibility Miriam might still be alive.

  “We started out with ten people who should have been at that studio—putting aside the engineers and any other office people who should have been in the building but weren’t. We know Miss Kaplan got out, as well as one of the two brothers. The other brother was never there to begin with. Okay, that leaves us with seven people who should have been in that room. Where’s the other body? And who is it?”

  I snapped back into my brain. “Ricardo Goetz,” I stated flatly.

  Clegg nodded. “That would be my guess, as well.”

  My mind started racing.

  “So, it was Francisco who ambushed me at Miriam’s house.”

  Clegg nodded.

  “Because he thought I knew where his brother Lorenzo was. Because we were the only two people who didn’t show up at the recording studio.”

  Now Clegg didn’t respond.

  I continued, “Which means, he also must have thought I had something to do with the explosion. And if he thought that, then that means—” I stopped and looked at Clegg.

  He only stared back at me.

  I got up from the bed and walked over to the window. I looked out and took in the view below me. It was of Hollywood Boulevard. I could see Grauman’s famous Chinese Theatre across the street, the place where all the movie stars stuck their footprints and handprints in cement for posterity. Excited tourists milled about, taking pictures, and comparing their foot size to that of their favorite star. John Wayne’s was particularly popular.

  I looked back at Clegg. “What else?”

  Clegg stood and came closer to me. When he spoke, his low baritone voice was more somber than usual. “Trip, after the coroner completed his initial exam on the remains, beyond discovering that three of the victims were shot before the explosion, he also discovered something else. Something that concerned him so much, he asked for my help.”

  “Why would he need your help?” I asked.

  “Because he needed experts to confirm his findings. Experts only the U.S. government could provide. That’s who those people out there are, experts in biological and chemical warfare. I flew them down by chopper three hours ago from Edward. Unfortunately, they’ve confirmed the coroner’s findings.”

  “Why unfortunately?” I asked.

  “Trip, the people in that recording studio didn’t die from the explosion.”

  “Then, how did they die?”

  “They were gassed to death,” Clegg answered, locking his eyes to mine. “They were dead before the building ever blew up. I suspect the explosion was an attempt to cover up how they were actually killed. Furthermore, the gas used was not just any run of the mill poisonous gas. It was a special type of hydrogen cyanide gas known as Zyklon B.”

  “Zyklon B. Why does that sound familiar?”

  Clegg’s jaw ti
ghtened, and his voice became as hard as I’d ever heard it. “Because it’s the kind of gas that was used to kill millions of innocent people during World War II.”

  I didn’t react. I didn’t even blink. It was with an almost comical calm in my voice when I asked again, “What’s going on. Clegg?”

  “I think you know, Trip,” he replied, without hesitation. “I think you started putting the pieces together at Cabaneri’s house. You’ve put it together, haven’t you? You know what’s going on.”

  I shook my head. “No. I haven’t put anything together. Not for certain.”

  Clegg just stared at me.

  When his gaze became too much, I shoved past him, nudging his shoulder as I did.

  I got to the middle of the room and spun around. “Clegg, if it’s true. It would mean Goetz and the rest of the band are—”

  “I know,” Clegg responded.

  “It would also mean Daniel, Sid, and even Miriam are—”

  “Yes,” he interrupted again.

  “Clegg, we can’t make that accusation until we’re absolutely sure.”

  “I agree,” Clegg replied.

  “So…what do we do?

  “We ask the one person who can tell us if we’re right or not.”

  Clegg stared at me and waited for my response. He was wrong about one thing. It wasn’t at Cabaneri’s house where I started putting the pieces together. It was after the explosion while sitting in the next room. Going to Cabaneri’s house and learning he was Jewish only served as the glue. Clegg finding the toothpick in the trash can only confirmed it. And that’s what bothered me the most. Why hadn’t I seen it sooner? The clues were all there, practically from the beginning. Maybe if I’d been paying attention, I would have seen them. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I was too fixated on just getting the job over with, so I could go home. But even if I had recognized the clues, even if I had put it together, would I have believed it? Or would I have reverted to my usual, Pollyannaish way of seeing the world, and not accepted humans could be so brutal? I guess I’ll never know.

  “Yeah, that’s what we should do,” I said.

  Clegg nodded and headed for the door.

  “But she won’t be able to tell us everything.”

  “I know,” Clegg replied. “But she can confirm enough.”

  “What makes you think she’ll help us?”

  He stopped. “Because we’re going to explain that her father’s life—for what it’s worth—might depend on it.”

  He opened the door and snapped his fingers. A young man instantly appeared. “Get a hold of Agents Carson and Stevens,” he ordered. “Tell them to pick up Gabriella. Now.”

  “Should they bring her here, sir?” the young man asked.

  Clegg looked at me. “No. Tell them to take her to the recording studio.”

  Chapter 15

  As the sun went down on Hollywood, and the lights came up all along Sunset Boulevard, Clegg and I sat in the Caddy, and I stared at the charred ruins of what was once Pacific Recording. Twilight made the blackened rubble all the more poignant. At least it did for me.

  For a musician, a recording studio is a special place. Yes, it’s our place of business, but it’s also where magic is made. Where songs come alive. Where anything can be fixed with a precise punch-in, a clever overdub, or just one more take. A place of creativity, comradery, and usually plenty of laughter. In other words, the antithesis of what I was looking at.

  Neither Clegg nor I had spoken much since leaving the hotel, and that didn’t change once we arrived at the recording studio. I think we both just needed some quiet time in our own brains before the battle commenced once again. We understood what we were about to do wasn’t going to be pretty, but then again, neither was the situation. In fact it was about as ugly as it gets.

  I didn’t know what approach Clegg would take with Gabriella, but I had a feeling his method of inquiry would depend on which version of the woman showed up. If it was the Gabriella from the television studio, then her claws would be out, and she’d be spoiling for a fight. In that case, Clegg would have no choice but to go at her hard, unmercifully berating her until she told him everything he wanted to know. That, I suspected, was why we were at the recording studio. If, however, it was the Gabriella from my apartment, then it might not get so bloody. I prayed for that version. I’d witnessed enough carnage for one day and wasn’t sure I had the stomach for more.

  “The city should have blueprints of this place,” Clegg said, out of nowhere. “Maybe we can find out if there was a way out of that back room.”

  “There was,” I replied.

  Clegg looked at me. “How do you know?”

  “Because all live rooms have outside access doors so equipment can easily be loaded in and out—drums, amps, organs, recording gear, whatever. It’s pretty standard.”

  Clegg nodded. “That’s how the three of them got out then.”

  “Yeah, but why those three?” I replied.

  He didn’t respond, and we both fell silent again.

  It lasted a few minutes until I spoke. “What was Colson’s role in all of this, Clegg? Whose side was he on? Was he helping Miriam? Was she his hostage? Was he working with Goetz? Or Cabaneri? Or both? And if he was, why involve us? Seems to me federal agents would be the last people he’d want around, don’t you think? But Colson forced us onto this case. It’s almost like he needed us to be here. Why?”

  “Good questions,” Clegg responded. “I don’t know is all I got right now.”

  A brown sedan pulled into the parking lot and stopped directly across from us. Square Head and Tonto got out of the car, with Square Head opening the rear passenger side door. I saw him offer his hand, but Gabriella stepped out without assistance.

  She was wearing a dark cardigan over a modest, light blue cotton dress. No sunglasses. No elaborate scarf. Even her shoes were sensible—black, with no heel. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore no makeup. She looked like a completely different person.

  Clegg opened the car door and got out. I did the same, and we headed toward the sedan. As we did, Gabriella came toward us. It was as if we were in a western and preparing for a showdown. An apt analogy.

  Gabriella didn’t take her eyes off Clegg. It’s not that she didn’t see me, I knew she had, she just refused to look at me.

  “Miss Goetz,” Clegg said, which threw me for a second. For some reason, it never occurred to me Goetz was Gabriella’s last name.

  “Who are you?” she asked, slightly raising her chin in defiance.

  “We’re with the United States government. My name is Agent Clegg. That’s Agent Carson and Agent Stevens. I believe you know Mr. Callaway.”

  She still didn’t look at me. “What do you want with me?”

  “I think you know, Miss Goetz, and this will go a lot easier if we don’t waste time on things we both already know.”

  Gabriella didn’t respond.

  Clegg continued, “Do you know where you are?”

  Again, she didn’t answer.

  “Turn around, Miss Goetz,” Clegg ordered. “I want you to look at it.”

  She didn’t, and my heart sank. Any hope for a pleasant chat vanished.

  Clegg put both his hands on Gabriella’s shoulders and violently spun her around. “I said look at it.”

  I heard Gabriella gasp.

  “Clegg, come on,” I begged. “Take it easy.”

  Clegg didn’t let up. “People died in there, Miss Goetz.”

  “I know,” Gabriella responded. “Please remove your hands from me.”

  “People you knew. Your musicians. Don’t you care?”

  “Of course I care,” she mumbled back.

  “You sure as hell don’t seem like you do.”

  “I do,” she replied, turning back to Clegg.

  “Keep looking at it,” Clegg ordered, jerking her back around to face the rubble. “Why aren’t you dead, too? Why weren’t you in there?”

  She sai
d nothing.

  Clegg asked again, “Why weren’t you in there, Miss Goetz?”

  “Because I didn’t need to be,” she answered.

  “I didn’t hear you,” Clegg lied.

  “I didn’t need to be,” she said again, her voice shaking.

  “Who told you that? Who said you didn’t need to be in the studio?”

  “My producer,” she said, now barely holding it together.

  “Anthony Cabaneri?”

  “Yes,” she whispered back.

  “Speak up, Miss Goetz,” Clegg said, putting his face uncomfortably close to hers. “Who told you not to be in this studio?”

  “Anthony,” she repeated, louder. “Anthony told me not to come.”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “This morning.”

  “At his home in Beverly Hills?”

  Gabriella looked at me for the first time. “Yes.”

  “Where’s Cabaneri now, Miss Goetz?”

  “I…”

  “Where is he?” Clegg repeated, his voice in control but rising in volume.

  “I don’t know.”

  Clegg physically turned her around to face him. “I notice you haven’t asked about your father? That either means you don’t care if he was in that building or not, or you know he wasn’t. Which is it, Miss Goetz?”

  Even Clegg wasn’t prepared for what came next.

  “I don’t care!” she screamed, rage erupting from her entire body. “I wish he had been in that building. I wish all of you had been in that building. I wish I had been in that building. I’m finished. Finished with all of it. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care! I don’t care! I don’t care!”

  Gabriella collapsed to the ground and began sobbing.

  Clegg stepped back and let out a long breath. He straightened his tie and then motioned for Square Head and Tonto to come over.

  “Go back to the hotel,” he ordered. “Get everybody out of the room.”

  They answered with a nod and hurried off.

  He looked at me and motioned for me to attend to Gabriella.

  I kneeled and put my arm around her. “It’s going to be okay, Gabriella,” I said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  I know it was a meaningless and terribly cliché platitude, but in the moment I had nothing else. Be that as it may, it did seem to help some. Gabriella eventually composed herself.