by Neil Russell
“So the actor just had to wait him out.”
“Yeah, but the studio wouldn’t. If he didn’t show up for work, they’d recast and sue for damages. So I got myself invited down to Medellín to meet with Garza.”
“How?”
“The DEA guy called him.”
“They can do that?” She sounded incredulous.
“It isn’t like TV. These guys all live in the same world. They know each other. They have each other’s private numbers. It’s business, even with the Colombians.
“I’d already determined Garza was a big movie fan, so while he was showing me around his hacienda, I told him that the wayward and now-penitent actor had always wanted to shoot a picture in Colombia but didn’t have the right contacts. And just like the old saying—everybody’s got two businesses, their own and show business—Garza got a Hollywood erection. He even had a story he ‘just knew’ would be a worldwide sensation.”
“Let me guess. The Wilson Garza Story.”
I nodded. “And who better to play Garza than the real deal. So the actor hired a Spanish-speaking screenwriter, Carlos Goldstein, who, in return for twice his usual fee, agreed to log a lot of overseas phone hours with Señor Garza, talking character arc, motivation and act breaks.
“Motion picture development makes cancer research look fast, and if you’ve got a slow writer, it’s like waiting for the Academy to honor Reagan. And just about the time Garza started wondering if he’d been had, somebody put an RPG up the ass of his Escalade. Problem solved.”
Kim was laughing out loud. “I know you don’t take money, but this guy owes you big time.”
“Well, sometimes, if the situation warrants, I come up with something that reinforces a lesson or has a positive impact somewhere. In the Garza matter, I told the actor I would appreciate his taking a hundred thousand of his tax-deductible dollars and giving them to Sister Vonetta, the head of St. Regis Catholic School in South Central L.A.
“A product of hood herself, Sister V. is one of my all-time favorite people. Imposing in every way—physically, spiritually and vocally. And over the objections of the archdiocese—and maybe even the Vatican—through sheer force of will, intimidation and a lot of shouting, she has single-handedly created the most rigorous learning institution in the city.
“South Central is as rough a place as there is, but once you enter the gates of St. Regis, you wear a uniform, you don’t speak street, you have to buy all of your own materials and the discipline is unforgiving. Parents sleep in line for a week to apply.”
“Sounds like she should be on Oprah.”
“Wouldn’t work. Oprah wouldn’t get a chance to talk.”
“And Jake Praxis was grateful.”
“Loved the whole thing—especially the hundred grand to Sister V., which he told the star, was about ten times too light considering his stupidity. So Jake and I became friends, and every now and then, he calls me when he has a delicate situation. Most of the time I give him some advice and move on, but sometimes something comes along that’s intriguing, and I get involved.”
“So he’s not really your lawyer, he’s more like a colleague.”
“We do things for each other. He’s on the board of my foundation too.”
“That would be the Black Foundation?”
“Catchy name, don’t you think?”
Kim was looking at me strangely. Finally, she said, “Just who in the fuck are you?”
6
A Torn ACL and Russian Women
I eased the Rolls off Olympic and into Ralphs underground parking garage. We’d driven by the outside lot upstairs, and it had been packed, but down here, there were only three cars, all grouped near the elevator. Kim directed me to where she’d parked the night of the kidnapping. I pulled in a few spaces beyond, and we both got out.
“What are you expecting to find?” she asked.
I stood in Kim’s parking space. “You were here, and the van was behind you, facing the building.”
“Yes.”
I pointed to the ground, and Kim saw the four broken fingernails lying on the pavement. She took an involuntary step backward, then came forward and bent over them. “My God, it really did happen.”
With Kim trailing me, I wandered off in the direction the van would probably have come from. In the farthest corner of the garage, I found three unfiltered cigarette butts that had burned themselves out rather than being stepped on. I bent down and picked one up. The blue lettering was intact—Gauloises.
“What’s that?” asked Kim.
“Confirmation of Tino’s bad taste.” I threw the butt back down and walked a few steps further. I found what I expected. The distinctive ash from a cigar. I pointed to the parking space between the two ash piles and gestured with my hands. “Tino backed the van in here, then he and Dante waited until the woman sent you down. I thought you said you were only gone ten or fifteen minutes. Tino got through three cigarettes.”
“Maybe he was nervous,” she shot back. Then she reconsidered. “It could have been a little longer. I did browse the deli section for a while. So they were following me.”
“All the way from work, I expect.”
“And I made it easy by going into a deserted garage. Some price to pay for a little shade.”
“They were probably going to take you from home, but when you pulled in here, they improvised.” I made a full circuit of the garage. In the corner near the elevator was a surveillance camera mounted in the ceiling. If it had the right lens, it could see the entire garage, but someone had spray-painted its eye with black enamel.
“Let’s go upstairs,” I said.
When we entered the store, Kim took hold of my arm. I looked down at her, and she shivered. “It gives me the creeps being back in here.”
We walked over to the manager’s desk at the front of the store. It sat up on a platform and was being manned by a handsome young guy wearing a name tag that read Arkadios. As we approached, I saw him look up and try to figure out if I was a Laker. It’s a look I’m familiar with.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Yesterday my wife parked her car downstairs while she was shopping, and it got scratched. I noticed you have a surveillance camera down there, and I was wondering if maybe there’s a tape I could look at.”
“We don’t assume liability for our customers’ cars, sir.”
“And I’m not claiming any. I just want to see if there’s a license number I can take down to give to my insurance company.”
Arkadios furrowed his brow. “I couldn’t do that, sir. What if you tracked the guy down and beat him up or something? Ralphs could get sued, and I’d lose my job.”
A woman walked up and asked Arkadios where she could find the ricotta cheese. After he directed her, he turned back to me. I leaned over his desk so our faces were almost touching. It made him uncomfortable.
“Arkadios,” I said, looking at his name tag. “Greek?”
He drew himself up proudly. “Yes.”
“Athens?”
“No, Santorini.”
“Ah, the Cyclades Islands. Paradise. Tell me, does Nick Pouliasis still make his famous lamb with rosé sauce?”
A smile came across Arkadios’s face. “I was a waiter at Koukoumavlos,” he said with pride. “Nick hired me when I was sixteen.”
“Then you are a responsible young man. Nick is a very demanding boss.”
“He said I was one of the best.”
“Arkadios, are you married?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Then I hope you’ll understand my problem.” I lowered my voice. “You see, I caught my wife sleeping with this guy she works with.” I heard Kim suck in her breath, but she stayed silent. “I told her I was taking the kids and leaving. But she begged, and she cried. Said she’d been crazy and stupid. That she’d never do anything like that again. So for the sake of the kids, I decided to give her another chance.”
Arkadios looked up at Kim, who must have looked properly shoc
ked. I continued, “Then two nights ago, she comes home with alcohol on her breath and a big fucking scratch on the new Mustang I busted my ass to buy her. She says she stopped off to have a glass of wine with a girlfriend, then came here, where the car got scratched in the garage. I want to believe her, but I think you’ll understand I need to be sure.”
I saw Arkadios look over at Kim again, then back at me. When he did, the apprehension was gone from his eyes. We had just become coconspirators. “I’ll get the key to the security room.”
It was more like a closet wedged between the meat cooler and the employee lockers, and there was barely enough room for the three of us to stand. But the technology was up to date—Panasonic Digital with almost unlimited memory.
“When were you here, ma’am?”
“Saturday, between five thirty and six.”
Arkadios expertly manipulated the equipment, and in seconds, he had the right scene. The camera was fitted with a good lens, and after a moment or two, the Mustang came into view at the entrance ramp. As Kim parked, the dark blue van entered the garage and stopped just inside the entrance.
Unfortunately, the camera was positioned so that only the van’s right side was visible, and it was too far away and the garage too dimly lit for me to make out any details. After a few seconds, an arm extended out the passenger window and pointed toward the camera. Immediately, the van backed out of the garage and disappeared.
We watched Kim walk to the elevator, enter it and the doors close. Then, from out of nowhere, a hand holding a can of spray paint came around from behind the camera. A finger depressed the valve, and everything went black. But not before I saw the seven-legged spider tattoo on the spray painter’s forearm.
“People are assholes,” said Arkadios. “If they’re not stealing carts or drinking a carton of milk while they shop, they’re vandalizing the parking lot. I’m afraid this isn’t going to tell us who scratched your car, but it does prove your wife was here.” He looked at Kim and smiled.
“Yes, it does,” I said. I nodded to the Mac on the small desk in the corner and said to Arkadios, “Do you think you could burn me a copy of that scene we just watched?”
“No problem.”
A few minutes later, Kim and I were back in the car.
“Thanks for making it so I can never go in there again,” she said tartly.
“You’ll be a celebrity.”
“Yeah, and next time I stop for a head of lettuce, Arkadios’ll check my cart for Trojans.” Kim lit up a Benson & Hedges. Exhaling, she said, “And what was with that Santorini business?”
“It’s one of the most beautiful—”
Kim rolled her eyes. “Save the travelogue. You’re not the only one with a passport. I was just wondering what you’d have done if he’d been from Helsinki.”
“I’d have asked him about the sautéed reindeer at Kappeli—and if Ari still sings the Love Song from Carmen at midnight.” While Kim chewed on that, I let a FedEx truck go by, then turned west on Olympic and accelerated into traffic.
Princeton Street is in a fashionably run-down Santa Monica neighborhood about two miles from the beach. The aging one-story bungalows sit on postage stamp lawns, and broken-down Dusters and RVs drip oil on driveways hand-poured by the original owners when they came home from Iwo Jima. During Rose Bowl week, when rubberneckers from Iowa and Michigan cruise SoCal streets in their rental cars, the color drains out of their faces when someone mentions that these places go for over a million.
Chez York was a cute little place with green shutters and a front yard full of cactus. Unlike most of its neighbors, the paint was fresh and the awnings new. I pulled to the curb in front of 429 and told Kim to wait in the car. Picking my way past a couple of dwarf saguaros, I peered through the front window. It was dark inside, but not so dark that I couldn’t see that the place had been trashed.
I went around back, past more cactus and a blue tile fountain, and found the back door jimmied. I pushed it open. The kitchen was a mess. Not only had the drawers been pulled out and dumped and the cabinets trashed, but whoever had been here had also taken everything out of the refrigerator and thrown it against the wall.
Further in, they’d shoved the china cabinet over onto the dining room table and hacked at the furniture in the living room with a knife. They’d even cracked the television screen with the fireplace poker.
The master bed and bath hadn’t fared any better. Drawers were smashed, the bedposts broken off, and every mirror and even the shower door were shattered. The guy with the knife had been busy here too, slashing Kim’s clothes and the drapes. Same with the second bedroom.
But whatever this was, it was by design. Vandals usually aren’t thorough. They lay waste to a couple of rooms, then get tired. This was pros covering up a sophisticated search, and it confirmed my suspicion about why they’d taken her car. They’d been looking for something. I needed an inventory, so I started back toward the front to get Kim.
I heard the guy coming behind me, but the hall was too narrow to get completely out of the way. I didn’t know where he’d come from, only that he had a clear shot at my back. At the last second, I flattened myself against the wall, and the shovel he was swinging missed my head by inches. Instead, it hit me on the top of my left shoulder, clipping my ear as it went by and numbing my arm all the way down.
The force of the blow drove me to the floor, and the guy moved in for the kill. But instead of trying to get away like he expected, I rolled toward him, and his second swing whanged off the hardwood floor.
I aimed my foot at the front of his left knee and connected. The guy was wearing shorts, and I saw his leg bend too far in the wrong direction. The ligaments popped audibly. He screamed in pain, but instead of collapsing, he turned the shovel on its edge and brought it down savagely, like an axe. Fortunately, he missed, but the floor didn’t fare so well. The shovel hit a seam in the hardwood, splintered it and got wedged in the gash. It was all I needed.
I kicked upward into his crotch and felt the heel of my shoe mash soft flesh. This time, the guy went down. Taking no chances, I rolled on top of him and hit him in the chin with two short, powerful shots. His eyes glazed, then closed. He was out.
“Gary! Jesus Christ, what are you doing in here?” I looked up and saw Kim. But Gary wasn’t going to be answering her anytime soon.
Shakily, I got to my feet and took inventory. There was no telling how big the bruise was going to be where the shovel had hit my shoulder, but nothing was broken. Kim was bending over the unconscious man, pushing his hair off his forehead. I finally noticed how big the guy was. Linebacker size.
“If you don’t mind my asking, who the hell is Gary?”
“Gary Wainwright. He lives next door. He’s got a landscaping business and takes care of my yard when he does his own. Do you think he needs an ambulance?”
Just then Gary rolled onto his side and began to snore, a common reaction when people are knocked unconscious. I looked at him, then at Kim, and shook my head. “What he’s really going to need is an orthopedic surgeon, but that can wait.”
Kim looked at Gary’s knee, which was already swollen to twice its previous size. I thought she was going to be sick, but she managed to keep it together.
We walked back to the living room, and Kim looked around, really seeing the mess for the first time. She started toward the kitchen, but I stopped her. “It’s just as bad in there. Everywhere, actually.”
Fumbling out a cigarette and clumsily lighting it, she sank down on her sofa with the stuffing hanging out and took a deep drag. “Why would Gary do something like this? I’ve always been nice to him.”
“Gary didn’t do anything. My guess is he saw the mess and came in to check on you. Then I walked in.”
“How do you know he didn’t do it?”
I explained why and asked her what she had that somebody would want badly enough to risk a noisy, time-consuming break-in in a quiet neighborhood. “Let’s not kid each other, okay. You k
now, and I know, it was Tino and Dante—or somebody working for them. It may not be why they grabbed you, but it’s a loose end they wanted tied up.”
I watched her carefully. For a split second, I saw something in her eyes, then it disappeared. She pretended to run through a mental checklist. “I can’t think of anything, but let me look in the bedroom. See if my jewelry is still there.”
She was buying time. She returned shortly, shaking her head. “What a fucking disaster, but nothing’s missing.”
She was acting like a schoolgirl, so I pushed. I didn’t expect an answer, but I wanted to see her reaction again. “Cut the crap, Kim. Tino and Dante weren’t looking for a drug score. You have something they want. What is it?”
Again her eyes flashed, but she covered it more quickly this time. Now, though, I knew it was fear, not calculated deception. She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
I wasn’t finished. “If they found it before they grabbed you, it was probably in the van.”
She got angry. “I told you, I don’t know. And I didn’t see anything. Maybe you forgot, but I was a little fucking busy trying to save my life.”
There was a moan from the hallway. Kim got up, and I followed her.
Gary’s face was pale, and when he got to his feet, he was trembling from the pain in his knee and elsewhere. But I had to give him credit, he sucked it up and didn’t complain. He even apologized to me. “I was so pissed I just didn’t think,” he said.
“When did you notice the break-in?” I asked him.
“Only about fifteen minutes before you got here.” Looking at Kim, he said, “I was going to plant you a new cactus I had left over from a job in Brentwood, and when I came through the backyard, your door was standing open.”
We got Gary to the sofa, and he sat down heavily. Kim brought him a glass of water.
“Did you notice anything unusual the last couple of days?” I asked.