“Perhaps I should check with our corporate office.”
“Perhaps you should.”
Davie waited fifteen minutes in the lobby under the spell of recessed lighting and a single iris impaled in a Zen flower dish centered on the lobby table. A band played dance music in a room down the hall. After what seemed like endless ABBA tunes, Davie heard the whisper of tulle and the click of high heels against marble tiles. She turned to see a woman walking toward her in a wedding dress. The bride headed toward the front door, pulling a cigarette and lighter from her cleavage. Wednesday was an unusual day for a wedding. Davie wondered if a film company was shooting a movie, but she saw no evidence of cameras or clapperboards.
When Nyland returned, he informed Davie that corporate had cleared her to view the video but not to copy it. He led her to a back office where monitors covered an entire wall and introduced her to the hotel’s Director of Security, Cal Rogers.
“Show her the video,” Nyland said. “Then escort her out of the hotel.”
Rogers had the well-toned physique of an athlete. Wire-rimmed glasses failed to mask his ice blue eyes. His premature gray hair was tied in a ponytail at the nape of his neck with a string of black leather. His features were symmetrical and delicate, what some might call pretty.
A small desk abutted a back wall and displayed matching charcoal-colored containers for every office need: papers, pencils, paperclips, and business cards. On the desk was a small Lucite trophy embedded with a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s star and the words Deputy of the Year awarded by an Elks Lodge. Davie had received a similar award as a patrol officer assigned to Southeast Division.
“How long were you on the job?” Davie said.
Rogers glanced at the trophy. “Four years, all on jail duty. I hated every minute of it. Now I bust people for smoking in the rooms and staying past checkout time, but I don’t take my work home with me.”
Rogers folded his muscular frame into one of two chairs in front of the wall of computer monitors. He motioned for Davie to sit in the other one. His long slim fingers tapped the keyboard until a view of the front door appeared, dated and time-stamped the previous Saturday night.
The action was in black and white but of good quality. Davie could clearly see a woman—thin, light-haired, and wearing a coat—enter the lobby at 9:10 p.m. She couldn’t confirm that the coat was red, but the woman was definitely Anya Nosova.
“That’s her. That’s my victim.”
Rogers switched to the reception-desk view. They saw Anya speaking to the clerk, gesturing. She appeared to be asking for directions.
“Have you ever seen her at the hotel before?”
Rogers stared at the screen. “Not me, but I can ask around.”
“Where was the New Year’s party held?”
“Fifth floor. Presidential Suite.”
She thought about the man who flashed that LAPD business card when he picked up Anya’s purse at the Volga Bakery on Monday.
“Any law enforcement types at the party?”
He glanced at her and frowned. “I was off that night but it’s unlikely.”
“Can you show me the shots from outside the suite?”
“We don’t record beyond the elevators. Privacy issues.”
Rogers changed the screen format so they could view four shots at once, including the fifth-floor landing. At 9:16 p.m., the elevator doors opened. Anya stepped out of the car and turned right.
“Which way is the Presidential Suite from the elevator?” Davie asked.
“It’s the only suite on the floor. There would have been a sign near the landing, directing guests to the right.”
“What’s to the left?”
“The service entrance to the kitchen. Nobody uses that door except the caterer.”
During the next few minutes, she and Rogers watched a parade of arriving guests, men with attitudes and women wearing enough flashy diamond jewelry to light up a runway at LAX. There were also a dozen or so beautiful young women in skimpy outfits who looked like hookers to Davie.
At 9:40 p.m., the elevator doors opened again. Four people exited, including a slim man with a buzz cut and an air of macho entitlement and a stocky guy with a Joseph Stalin mustache. Two tattooed knuckle draggers dressed in dark clothes shielded the men. They were probably private bodyguards, but they reminded her of extras in a 1940s gangster movie. One of the bodyguards scanned the hallway. When he saw the camera, he raised his hand to block the lens.
“Who are the two guys with the mouth breathers?”
Rogers leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Don’t tell my boss I said this, but the thin guy is the host of the party, Grigory Satine. He has some sort of event at the hotel every couple of months for the local glitterati.”
“Who’s usually on the guest list?”
“Everybody from business tycoons to politicians.”
“Anybody I’d know?”
“Maybe, but I can’t give you any names. All I’ll say is Satine spares no expense. Pricey booze. Gourmet food. Beautiful girls.”
“Hookers or Hollywood starlets?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Where does he get his money?”
“He owns a nightclub in West Hollywood called Perestroika.”
“Is he mafia?”
Rogers shrugged. “As far as I know, he’s a local businessman who likes to entertain.”
“Who’s the stocky guy with the mustache?”
“Never seen him before.”
Davie kept her gaze riveted on the screen. A few minutes later, she bolted upright in her chair when she saw Ray Anthony Falcon step out of the elevator car. For a moment he stood alone on the landing, fiddling nervously with his shoulder-length curly hair. She couldn’t confirm the color but the tone was light. She guessed it was golden blond.
The hair all but confirmed Falcon was the man John Bell had seen at Anya’s apartment earlier that evening. The two had left around at the same time but in separate vehicles. They were obviously heading to the same party. She wondered why he hadn’t offered Anya a ride.
Falcon turned right and headed toward the party. Davie pointed to the actor. “Ever see that man at the hotel before?”
Rogers hesitated. “Not here. He’s that movie star with the three names, right?”
Davie nodded and asked him to fast-forward through the next few hours of tape, looking for shots of Anya. But if she had left the fifth floor that night, she hadn’t used the guest elevator.
“Is there another way off that floor?”
“The stairs, but we would have seen your girl walk past the camera to get to the door. She could have left by the service elevator in the kitchen, but only the catering manager and her staff have security key cards.”
The video showed guests, including Falcon, moving toward the elevators until 2:23 a.m. After that, Davie saw no one in the hallway until 3:17. The action was speeding by so fast she almost missed it.
“Stop,” she said. “Back up.”
Rogers replayed the footage. A heavy-set man wearing a chef’s coat pushed a cloth-covered cart down the hall toward the elevator. A baseball cap obscured his face.
“Looks like one of the kitchen staff,” Rogers said. “I don’t recognize him, but the caterer sometimes hires outside help for these events.”
“Are they allowed to ride the guest elevator?”
“They’re supposed to use the one in the kitchen, but at that hour nobody would complain. The catering manager should be able to identify the guy, but she won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”
“Run the video again.”
Rogers complied and together they watched the action two more times.
“See anything odd about that cart?” she said.
“There’s nothing on top of it.”
�
��And we can’t see what’s under the tablecloth.”
“Looks like a metal cart from the kitchen. There’s usually a shelf below where they put dirty dishes.”
Davie’s mouth felt dry as she watched the waiter bend his body at a thirty-degree angle and prod the cart down the hallway with long slow strides.
“The guy’s built like a brick shithouse,” she said.
“Yeah. So?”
“So why is he struggling to push the cart?”
Rogers let out a soft whistle. “Good question.”
“Could he have left the hotel without being seen?”
“Maybe by the side lobby door. There’s no camera there.”
Davie wanted to show Kozlov the surveillance video, hoping the man who’d picked up Anya’s purse had been among the guests.
“I need a copy of the video.”
“I can’t give it to you. I’d lose my job.”
“You’re going to make me waste time getting a search warrant?”
“You have five more days before the system automatically tapes over itself. In case you have trouble with the judge, I’ll ask Nyland if I can make a copy and hold it until you get the warrant. That’s all I can do.”
Davie was disappointed but not surprised. Taping over old footage was standard procedure, which meant she wouldn’t be able to see if Anya had attended of any of Satine’s previous parties.
Rogers stood. “I’ll find Nyland. I’ll meet you in the lobby in about ten minutes.” Then he walked out of the room.
She wondered if he’d left her alone with the video equipment because he’d lost his edge or because he still remembered how hard it was for a cop to catch a break. Didn’t matter. She decided to exploit the opportunity.
Davie’s pulse drummed as she pulled her phone from her pocket and switched it to camera mode. Snapping photos on her cell might cause chain of custody issues when the case went to trial, but it was worth the risk if having the pictures led to an arrest.
She had watched Rogers reverse the video several times, so she followed his example and reversed it again. She repeatedly glanced at the doorknob to make sure it wasn’t turning as she pushed play, fast-forwarding and stopping to snap photos of everyone who was at the party that night, including the man rolling the cart toward the elevator. Despite her fear, nobody burst through the door to confront her. When she was finished, she slipped the phone into her pocket and left the room. Rogers was waiting for her in the lobby.
“Nyland said it’s okay to preserve the video, but he won’t budge on letting you have a copy. I’ll ask the catering manager if she recognizes the guy pushing the cart and give you a call tomorrow. I know you’ll have to interview any witnesses yourself, but at least it’s a start.”
Davie slipped him a business card from her notebook. She hoped her gratitude was reflected in her tone. “Thanks.”
His nod told her he understood. As she slid into the car, she noticed he was still standing by the hotel entrance, watching her.
Davie had no way of knowing if the party’s host was a member of the Russian mafia, but from experience, she knew criminals often preyed on people of their own race or nationality. Los Angeles had a large Russian émigré population, and it appeared that Anya Nosova might have been hobnobbing with some of its shadier members.
A few months back, she had read an internal LAPD bulletin about several cases in Northern California involving the remains of young Russian prostitutes pulled from bodies of water. Police suspected the girls were victims of the Odessa mafia, but they couldn’t prove it.
Anya was found in a river of sorts—the L.A. sewer system. She had been stranded in the city with little money. Yet she’d managed to collect benefactors as easily as seashells on the beach. Karen Skjelstad said Anya was hanging out with a bad crowd. Troy Gallway said she was ambitious. On Saturday night she attended a party hosted by a nightclub owner with other young women, some who looked like hookers. Davie wondered if Anya had turned to prostitution to keep herself supplied with vatrushkis.
Anya’s murder might be unrelated to the cases in Northern California, but Davie planned to find an expert within the LAPD who could provide a conduit to L.A.’s Russian community.
In the meantime, she was going to have a chat with Grigory Satine. It was 9:13 p.m. The action at Perestroika was likely just getting started.
19
Perestroika was located in the middle of a nondescript block of storefronts on Santa Monica Boulevard near Plummer Park in West Hollywood. The only signage was a neon P to the left of what Davie assumed was the front door. Black curtains shrouded the entrance. About a dozen twenty-somethings, mostly dressed in black party attire, were lined up near the door, waiting to get in.
For the next few minutes Davie sat across the street in the Jetta, watching people advance to the front of the line and then disappear behind the curtains. The pace was slow, so she assumed there were gatekeepers but she couldn’t see them from her vantage point in the car.
She didn’t want to alert Satine by flashing her badge at the door, but if she got past the bouncers, she was sure she could talk to him. The line swelled to about twenty people before Davie shook her hair out of its knot. She smeared gloss over her lips, removed her gun belt and tucked her .45 inside her purse, along with Anya’s photograph. As an afterthought, she undid the top two buttons of her oxford shirt, hoping to distract from a black polyester pantsuit that screamed cop. Then she strolled across the street and melted into the crowd.
When Davie reached the front of the line, she recognized the two massively built men standing at the entrance. They were the knuckle draggers she’d seen guarding Satine at the Edison New Year’s party. The pair reminded her of Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum from the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland book that Bear had read to her as a child, except these two had matching buzz cuts and gold chains nestled on hairy tattooed chests. Each of their arms was the circumference of her waist. She wondered if they trained at the same gym or shared the same steroid needle.
The shorter of the two men had eyes that were feral and predatory. They reminded her of mythic beasts that killed not for food but for pleasure.
He thrust his hand toward Davie. “ID.”
She flashed a smile as she held up her driver’s license, hoping the gesture looked coquettish and not demented. “I look young but I’m old enough to know better, if you know what I mean.” She would likely score more points if she batted her eyelashes, but she couldn’t force herself to do it.
Davie’s heart pounded as the beast pointed the beam of a flashlight on her card and studied it carefully.
“Let her in, Vlad. Perestroika is made for pretty girls.”
Vlad’s expression hardened. He shot back with a few angry words in Russian.
His partner’s cupid’s bow lips stretched into a smile. “You forget. We are lion tamers. This one is no more than a hundred pounds. If she causes us trouble, we will poke her with our chairs.” He elbowed Vlad’s tree-trunk arm and winked.
Vlad didn’t seem appeased, but a moment later he motioned Davie inside. As she stepped over the threshold, she sensed Vlad’s gaze fixed on her back like the laser beam of a hunting rifle.
Perestroika’s interior lighting was dim. The air smelled of onions and strong perfume. As Davie’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she noticed yellow, magenta, and red silk streamers billowing from a glittery disco ball mounted to the ceiling and flowing into the far corners of the room. Tables covered with food and bottles of vodka hugged the dance floor. A deejay on a riser played music for a pack of gyrating dancers. Suspended above his head, a woman danced in a cage, wearing knee-high black boots and black lingerie.
Grigory Satine stood near the bar on the left side of the room. His image on the Edison’s surveillance cameras didn’t do him justice. Davie guessed he was a few years shy of forty with short hair the color of s
ummer wheat and sapphire eyes that were alive and engaged. His nose was flattened as if it had been broken, but that only made his face more interesting. An expensive-looking suit draped his trim frame like a second skin.
Satine’s expression was confident, almost cocky, as he whispered in the ear of a thin blonde with oversized breasts that looked grotesque on her teenaged body. The young woman’s gaze darted around the room with a haunted expression. A moment later, Satine walked into the crowd as an aging Baby Boomer slipped onto the stool next to the blonde. A forced smile ghosted across her lips as she moved her hand between the man’s legs. A few minutes later, the pair stood and strolled toward the front door.
Anya had come to L.A. to be a model, but sometimes “model” was a euphemism for “prostitute.” She imagined Anya sitting at the bar, hooking up with rheumy-eyed old men in order to line the pockets of Satine’s custom-made suits. What Davie had learned so far about Anya wasn’t shaping up to fit the Hollywood cliché of the beautiful young girl lured into prostitution and then used, abused, and discarded like yesterday’s garbage. Still, Davie felt troubled as she imagined Anya servicing men from this dimly lit bar.
She watched Satine stroll down a long hallway before following him, her hand in her purse, gripping the butt of her .45. Satine used a key to open a door toward the rear of the nightclub. His body tensed when he saw Davie walking toward him.
“If you’re looking for the restroom, it’s by the front door.” His voice was smooth and mellow with only a hint of an accent.
“Actually, I was looking for you.”
He cocked his head and smiled as she stepped past him into his office. The décor was a mix of modern metal furniture in shades of charcoal and black. One wall was accented with Russian religious icons all depicting the Virgin Mary. The icons looked old and valuable, maybe priceless. They added splashes of gold, carnelian, and peacock to an otherwise monochromatic room. She wondered how Satine had acquired them. A two-year associate degree from Santa Monica College hung on the wall behind Satine’s desk, a small detail she found odd.
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