by Dave Stanton
We rented a full-sized sedan, a Ford Crown Vic. I entered Leo Rosen’s address into my GPS and drove out to the 405. It was ninety-five outside, and heat waves rose in a low haze off the black asphalt. We headed north, and I knew a mountain range lay just beyond Santa Monica, but it was hidden behind a layer of orange-brown smog.
“I want to see what Leo Rosen has to say before we talk to Bannon,” I said. I changed lanes and let a BMW pass. The surrounding traffic was flowing at eighty MPH. Another car came up close, and I accelerated hard and contributed a blast of exhaust to the local air pollution.
“Everyone’s in a hurry,” Cody said. “I love it down here.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Life moves at a faster pace. And there’s more variety of people. Check her out.”
I looked to the left at a brunette in a yellow convertible Corvette. Her hair was tied in a ponytail, and her bikini top held obviously enhanced breasts that looked immune to gravity.
“We’re in the capital of cosmetic surgery.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Cody replied, staring past me and straining to get a better look at the woman in the convertible.
“I didn’t say that.”
“We should stick around tonight. Maybe hit a few clubs.”
“I make a lousy wingman,” I told him.
“Nonsense. You got rugged good looks but no lines. You’re the perfect wingman.”
“Gee, thanks.”
We drove for another couple minutes until I took the ramp onto Interstate 10. A minute later the freeway terminated at the Pacific Coast Highway, which hugged the coastline for the length of California. I turned left and lowered my window. The smog seemed to have dissipated, and the air that rushed in was cool and tinged with a briny scent. After a half dozen blocks, I took another left onto Ocean Park Boulevard. Another couple turns, and we rolled down a narrow residential street shaded under a canopy of willow, birch, and cypress. Halfway down the street I pulled over in front of a house with two arched brick doorways.
We went through a picket gate and down a wet stone walkway splitting a water-soaked lawn. The house was a duplex. The door to the left was 1A. We went to 1B and knocked. Cody stood aside, and I bent at the knees, leveling my face with the peephole in the center of the door.
After a minute the door opened. The man in the doorway was less than average height, and his receding hairline was obvious, even though he’d arranged his curly black hair to fall over his high forehead. His nose was prominent, and his lips were pouty, like a woman’s. He wore black designer shorts advertising a brand targeted at surfers—or those who identified with surfers. His beige shirt was the same brand, and around his neck was a string of bleached shells.
“Leo Rosen?” I said.
“Yes?” he said, his voice a nasal drone.
“Dan Reno, private investigations. We’d like to talk with you regarding Lindsey Addison.”
He glanced up at Cody, who was standing behind me. After a pause, he said, “Who hired you?”
“The Addison family.”
He crossed his arms, eyes downcast, and shook his head. “What do you want to know?”
“How come you wouldn’t testify?” I asked.
“It wasn’t in my best interest,” he replied, measuring his words carefully.
“You care to elaborate on that?”
“Look, I feel sorry for Lindsey and all, but the trial’s over.”
“You don’t give a shit about her,” Cody said.
He blinked. “What? That’s not true.”
“Then what happened?” I said.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
I felt Cody’s hand on my shoulder, and he pushed his way by me. “Listen up, Leo,” Cody said. “We’re considering motivations here, and we know you had a hard-on for Lindsey. So maybe you and Duante Tucker were planning on tag-teaming her, but you chickened out. Is that what happened, you twisted fuck?”
Leo blanched and stepped back as if Cody had spit in his face. “No,” he stammered. “That’s ridiculous.”
“We get all sorts of ridiculous ideas when pukes like you start jacking us around.” Cody took a step into the house.
“Hey, you can’t—”
“Or maybe you hired Tucker to rape her when she wanted nothing to do with you,” Cody went on. “Is that how you get your rocks off?”
“You’re crazy! Mister, tell him he’s crazy!” Leo shouted at me around Cody’s towering mass.
“Let’s go sit down, Leo,” I said. “You’ll feel a lot better when you get this off your chest.”
“Okay. Okay, goddammit.” We followed him inside to a glass-top dining table perched on wrought iron legs. “I had nothing to do with any of this. I’ll tell you what happened. You just keep my name out of it. Deal?”
Cody and I sat across from him and nodded.
“Look, I liked Lindsey. I hoped maybe I might…get to know her, you know.”
“Go on,” I said.
“I knew she was going to Tahoe, so yeah, I went up there, hoping to hit on her. But I never even said a word to her.”
“But you followed her to the nightclub,” I said.
“Yeah, but that was it. It’s not like I was stalking—I never even talked to her.” He looked down, and I could see his face reddening.
“What happened at the nightclub?”
“Man, she was with her friends, and then those bimbos split with a couple dudes, and she was all alone.” He looked up at us, and I could see the shame and regret taking hold on his face. “I wanted to go sit with her, but I get all tongue tied, and…I just couldn’t make myself. If I had, maybe none of this would have happened.”
“What happened next?”
“She left the place, and I followed her out, thinking maybe I might find a way to at least say hello. Maybe in the parking lot or something. I was probably thirty yards behind her when the man came out of nowhere. He hit her, and in a second she was in his car.”
“What’d you do?” Cody asked.
“I ran to help her. But he was too fast. He took off just as I got there. But I got the license plate, and I also got a pretty good look at the guy.”
“So you called nine-one-one,” I said.
“Right.”
“And then?”
“I flew back home the next day. When I landed, a cop from Nevada called, told me Lindsey was in the hospital, and I basically told him what I just told you.”
“Did you identify Duante Tucker?” I asked.
“Not until a week later. The cop called again and e-mailed pictures of twenty different black guys. I picked out Tucker. The cop told me I’d need to come back to Tahoe and testify at the trial. I said okay.”
“So what happened?”
“About a week after that, I get a phone call. A voice tells me I better not even think of testifying. He says he and his crew are watching me, and I need to stop talking to the cops and disappear until the trial’s over. He said if I don’t, I’ll be paid a visit by some gentlemen from South Central LA, and they’ll make me the object of a bitch party. You know what that is?”
“I can guess. Did you get a phone number where he called from?”
“No. The caller ID said unknown. So, just so we’re clear, a bitch party is prison slang for a gang rape. The man said they’ll hurt me so bad I’ll be begging to suck their dicks and swallow their jism just to make the pain stop.”
“Did you tell the cops?” Cody asked.
“I told the man on the phone, hey, I’ll be subpoenaed, they could arrest me if I don’t show at the trial. And he said he doesn’t give a shit, and the cops won’t protect me when he and his boys with the horse dicks show up.”
“So you didn’t call the cops?”
“Listen, the next morning there’s an envelope on my front porch. In it’s a picture of a white man sucking a black dick while getting butt-fucked by some big black dude. The white guy’s face is all bloody. There’s a little note
paper-clipped to the photo. It says, ‘Could be you.’”
“You think about giving it to the police?” I asked.
“Yeah. For about two seconds. Then I packed my bags and took a vacation for six weeks. Spent most of that time south of the border, where my cell phone doesn’t work. Burned through some savings, but I’m still alive. I was hoping I’d never hear about any of this again.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Cody said.
“Hey, I cooperated with you, I told you the truth. I’d love to see Tucker rot in prison. I’d love to see him suffer and regret every moment of his shitty life. But I got my own life to worry about.”
I looked at Cody, and neither of us had a response for that. We stood, and as we headed for the door, I said, “You still infatuated with Lindsey?”
Leo’s mouth opened, then he closed it and slowly shook his head. “No, I think I’m pretty much over her.”
“Go figure,” Cody said.
• • •
When we drove away, flecks of sunlight had penetrated the trees and danced on the pavement and across our windshield. The houses on the street were an eclectic mix of small haciendas, ivy-covered cottages, and neat bungalows. The scene could have been an idyllic slice of SoCal life, but my mind was on other things, namely, Leo Rosen’s grim tale, which sat in my gut like a bad burrito.
“Did you believe him?” I said.
“Yeah,” Cody said. “I don’t think he made that up. What do you think?”
“I don’t think he was lying. I also think he did the smart thing to cover his ass.”
“Literally.”
“I mean, I think the threat was probably real,” I said. “And I doubt the local police would have put a twenty-four-hour surveillance on him.”
“Not for all the weeks leading up to the trial, anyway.” Cody was studying his mobile device. “Turn here. Amber Meline’s address is a couple miles north.”
“I got an idea,” I said, slowing for a stop sign. “After we’re done with Amber, let’s take a spin by Tucker’s old neighborhood.”
“In Compton?”
“Right. Maybe we can find someone who knows him.”
“In Compton?” he said again, eyebrows raised.
“Why not?” I asked.
“We’re unarmed, for one.”
“Well, we’ll just have to stay out of trouble. Play it low-key.”
Cody cast me a dubious glance. “Compton ain’t a low-key kind of place. Couple crackers like us, we’ll be about as welcome as Muhammad Ali at a Klan rally.”
“That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”
“Isn’t that one of my lines?”
“Probably.”
We made our way north on the highway. To our left was the Pacific Ocean. The sea was a muted blue, and a thin line of clouds hung over the horizon. From the pallid sky, a flock of gulls descended to where the waves lapped at the shore. We turned onto a street that followed a bluff until we were a hundred feet or so above the beach.
“This is it,” Cody said. I pulled over at the curb, and we walked past a hedge to a curved driveway that circled a tiered stone fountain. The house beyond looked like something out of Renaissance-era Italy. The front door was shaded under a deep portico supported by twenty-foot fluted columns. The roof above was terracotta, and colorful flowers grew around two small circular balconies on the upper floor. To the right, three cars were parked: a late-model Ferrari, a Porsche Carrera, and a Ford SUV.
We walked to the door and rang the bell. A minute passed before a lean man in his sixties answered. “Yes?” he said. He wore a black suit jacket and black pants. His hair was gray, and wire-rimmed spectacles rested low on his pinched nose.
“Is Amber Meline available?” I asked.
“Who may I say is calling?” he said, his voice a droll monotone.
“Dan Reno and Cody Gibbons, private investigations. This is regarding Lindsey Addison.”
“Please wait,” he said. It sounded as if gravity was pulling the words from his mouth. “I’ll let her know.” He closed the door quietly.
“I’ll be goddamned,” Cody said. “I think that’s a butler.”
“I didn’t know they still existed,” I said.
It took another five minutes for the butler to return. He wore an expression of resigned exasperation but simply said, “Miss Meline will see you now. This way, please.”
The expansive interior of the house was dominated by a sweeping staircase that rose from the white marble floor. We followed the butler into an adjoining room, where a pool table and wet bar were bathed in sunlight pouring in from a pair of opened French doors. As soon as we stepped outside onto the flagstone patio, I heard a man’s laugh and saw a small cluster of people, cocktail glasses in hand, gathered under a wide umbrella next to a swimming pool.
The group, four men and two women, didn’t acknowledge us as we approached behind the butler. Two of the men wore jeans and T-shirts, and one had a large video camera resting on his shoulder. The other two men were clad in bathing trunks that revealed uniformly bronze skin and hairless chests. Their physiques were slim and well-proportioned but not necessarily athletic. Blond hair, blue eyes, small noses. They were twins.
The two women, both in bikinis, lay on lounge chairs. One had short, platinum hair and snakelike eyes. Fake boobs, thin waist, curvaceous hips. The other had long, dark hair, thick eyebrows, and a less abundant figure.
“Miss Meline, your guests.”
“Hey, there,” the brunette said, smacking her gum. “Private eyes, huh?” She turned her head to look up at us, her tanned legs stretched out before her.
“I’m Dan Reno, Miss Meline. Can we go somewhere else to talk?”
“No way,” she giggled. “Whatever you got to say, say it here.” She wore big sunglasses. Behind them, I imagined a drunken sheen in her eyes.
“Regarding your testimony at the trial, Miss Meline,” I said.
“It wasn’t much of a testimony, really.”
“That’s what I heard.” I stood looking down at her. In the sunlight a faint trail of peach fuzz ran upward from her navel. “I also heard you’d previously identified Duante Tucker, but on the stand you changed your story.”
She licked her lip and took a sip from her drink. “So what? I changed my mind.”
“Hey,” Cody said. “Is that thing on?” The man with the camera was pointing it at us.
“I’m just testing the lighting,” the man said.
“If you want to keep it in working condition, point it somewhere else.”
“No problem,” he said and turned away.
I turned back to Amber Meline. “Did somebody influence you to change your mind?”
“What does it matter?” she said. “I didn’t recognize the man. End of story.”
“It matters a lot to the Addison family,” I said.
“I’m sure they’ll get over it.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that, Amber. I thought Lindsey was your friend.”
“Acquaintance, more like,” she replied.
“Excuse me,” the platinum blonde interjected. Her pupils were tiny pricks of black, and her irises were speckled with yellow flecks. The bikini bra she wore clung wetly to her breasts, and her large brown nipples showed plainly through the thin material. “I hate to cut you short, but we have a schedule to keep,” she said.
“What kind of schedule is that?” Cody asked.
“My boyfriend and me are filming a promotional piece,” Amber said.
“To promote what?”
“My career.”
“Which is…?” I asked.
“Amber will be starring on a reality show this fall,” the platinum blonde said. “You ever watch reality TV?”
I shook my head. “Not often,” Cody said.
“You’ve heard of Paris Hilton? Kim Kardashian?” the blonde asked.
“Who hasn’t?” Cody said.
“How about Pamela Lee Anderson?”
�
�Sure. What’s the point?”
“The general public considers them airheaded bimbos. But they’re among the richest entertainers in the business today.” She looked at her watch and sat up in her chair. “You know why? Because they understand marketing. They understand that sex sells.”
“You know what all three of them have in common?” Amber added, her tipsy voice like a little girl’s compared to the throaty tone of the blonde’s. “They all made hot sex tapes with their boyfriends, and that’s what launched them to stardom.”
The blonde with the snake eyes stood and slipped her bare feet into a pair of heels. “Now, if you’ll excuse us,” she said, “we need to begin filming.”
“Hey, I recognize you. You’ve been in movies yourself, right?” Cody said.
She nodded. “Don’t get a hard on, big boy.”
The butler approached, and the group began moving toward the house. “Which one is your boyfriend, Amber?” I asked.
The twins came to either side of her, and each hooked a thumb into her bikini bottom. “Both, today,” she said.
• • •
As we drove away from the posh mansion where Amber Meline lived, I tried not to question her actions regarding her testimony, or how she planned to supercharge her career. As to the former, I had no doubt she’d been threatened, probably by the same people who scared off Leo Rosen. It probably hadn’t taken much to get her to clam up.
As for her movie-making plans, maybe a sex flick was what it would take to catapult her from anonymity to stardom. She didn’t seem to have a problem with the concept. Maybe one day, every aspiring actress would do the same. Hollywood culture seemed to reward that sort of approach. But I doubted Lindsey Addison, given her recent frame of reference, would have been too entertained by her friend’s behavior.
We drove inland toward the freeway, and within five minutes, the digital temperature gauge in our rental car moved from 79 degrees to 90. When we got on the 405, the freeway was choked with cars. We crept along through a haze of smog so thick I could nearly taste it coming through the air conditioning vents.