by Fante, Dan
Boxcar never attended the actual meeting. He always stood outside and, for his own reasons, listened at the doorway. He also had a serious profanity problem and he tended to fart loudly in public whenever the urge came to him.
“Hey,” Boxcar whispered, “howz it hangin’, shitwad?”
I nodded hello.
“Yo, JD, look inside, brother, these cocksuckers have taken over our meeting.”
“Who?” I asked. “What cocksuckers are we talking about?”
“Look for yourself.”
I stuck my head inside the door and saw that the room was packed. Near the front I recognized several new celebrities—TV and movie people.
“What’s it all about?” I asked the big guy.
“Some asshole’s AA birthday. Look in the corners near the podium. See them two pimpshit fuckin’ bodyguards?”
“Bodyguards?” I said, playing it dumb.
“What do you take ’em for, ballerinas? Wake the fuck up!”
When Boxcar began scratching his head and beard crazily, I left him at the door and made my way inside.
THE SECRETARY OF the meeting for that day was an AA Malibu fixture, a woman named Dotti Patrick, once a sixties and seventies daytime TV queen and now an eighty-five-year-old recovery zealot with over forty years of sober time.
Dotti stepped off the podium and some scattered-looking newbie guy began reading Chapter Five from The Big Book. A room that held several dozen people was now at twice its capacity.
Hearing the new guy read made me smile. He announced himself as Chad and he was very nervous and stumbling over the unfamiliar words. You can always pinpoint a newcomer to AA when they read Chapter Five because it is a long chapter and the new people always jumble Bill Wilson’s unfamiliar syntax and blow it the first few times. Their lack of time in recovery is a dead giveaway.
I made my way down an aisle toward the left side of the podium where I normally sit. There were no seats but just as I leaned back against the wall, listening to Chad continue to fumble through Chapter Five, a child began screaming in the chairs near me. The mom looked around, saw twenty pairs of accusing eyes on her, then got up to remove her unhappy kid and allow the distraction to continue from the parking lot.
Me and another guy took the empty seats.
I recognized a lot of the regulars but Boxcar had been right, this was a true L.A.–Malibu AA lovefest. Many more big names than usual.
Looking down my row I also saw Meggie and her Frenchie boyfriend, Claude.
When I caught Meggie’s eye, she looked away. Then Claude’s expression bored into me. My reaction, after Claude had turned away, was to reach behind me and adjust my new Beretta under my jacket. I didn’t need another public embarrassment with a gun.
The only person taking an anniversary cake that day was called to the podium by Dotti. Walking toward the front of the room, he looked like a Ted Turner stand-in. In his late seventies or early eighties, over six feet tall, tanned, and workout fit. He was wearing a starched, light-blue thigh-length long-sleeved shirt, turned up at the cuffs. It hung loosely down over his expensive tan slacks. High-end loafers with no socks completed the ensemble. His thick, wavy gray hair had to have been professionally cut and he had two gold hoop earrings that fit snugly over his right earlobe.
I was less than six feet from him as he stood next to the podium with his arms folded. From there I could make out what looked like a faded tattoo behind the sleeve of his shirt, on his left forearm. This man’s presentation spelled fame and money: Hollywood money. Bo-coo bucks.
Dotti was now holding a cake with eight lighted candles on top, while a girl in her twenties, probably the guy’s granddaughter, stood up and came forward to join him near the podium.
Next to come up front, waved forward by Dotti, was a famous male movie star whose name I couldn’t remember. The little group held hands and began a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” They were immediately joined by everyone else in the room. Dotti’s theater-trained voice was the loudest.
After blowing out his candles, Iron Pops stepped to the podium and straightened the mic before speaking. “My Name is Karrrl Swaaaan,” he drawled, “and I am an al-co-holic.”
I picked up that the accent was British by way of some German-speaking country. Now the ink I’d seen on his arm began to make sense.
The dapper old guy in front of the room was one of the most successful men in Los Angeles—a famous film producer of space movies, the Karl Swan. Everyone in the room had their full attention on him.
“I would like to thank and acknowledge my daughter Sydnye for giving me my birthday cake today. I am proud to say that she will have eighteen months of recovery shortly. And of course I must also gratefully acknowledge the support and love I have received from my good and old friend. The handsome fellow you see standing next to Sydnye. We’ve made four films together and his sponsorship, forbearance, and unwavering dedication to my recovery have allowed me to change my life.”
I looked at Sydnye again. My brain quickly took away the high-end clothes and earrings and makeup, then replaced them with a hoodie and sunglasses. It made me smile to myself. Bingo!
Old Karl was four times his daughter’s age. That was weird, but this was Hollywood, where the rule book doesn’t apply. Seventy- or eighty-year-old movie stars and directors married teenagers all the time.
I listened as Swan went on in his honeyed voice. “And Chad, thank you for that stirring rendering of Chapter Five.”
I thought, What goddamn rendering did this guy hear? Chad had almost passed out while stuttering over what he was reading.
Swan continued. “Sadly, I regret that I don’t get to as many meetings as I would like to these days. My production schedule often does not allow for the time and opportunity. That notwithstanding, may I simply say that I owe everything I am today to Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you, AA. Thank you for showing me a new way to live.”
Well done, Karl. You parroted the party line perfectly. I was sure that, outside, my pal Boxcar was snarling to himself and grunting curses.
THAT DAY’S MAIN speaker was, no doubt, chosen by Dotti to complement the presence of the great Swan. She identified herself as Natasha. She was fiftyish and still beautiful—thanks to the skills of her surgeon—and also a former TV star with a long-running female crime-show series, who kept smiling down at Swan as if to say, I’d be willing to put your shriveled old pecker in my mouth right here, in front of everybody, for a gig in your next blockbuster.
By the end of the meeting I wanted to puke on Natasha and her pandering star-fucker pitch, filled with insider movie-industry tidbits and having almost nothing to do with the Twelve Steps and recovery. I was beginning to hate the secretary of the meeting, Dotti, for selling out AA that day and making my recovery program a Hollywood/Malibu circle jerk. I felt alone in the room except for Chad who, like me, was holding on to his ass for dear life. I understood Chad. We were brothers.
THE MEETING HAD been a waste of time, recovery-wise, but not a loss by any means. Fate had allowed Sydnye and me to see each other again, up close and personal, less than ten feet apart. Though she hadn’t let on, I was pretty sure she’d made me.
IN THE PARKING lot the Swan daisy-chain and swooning and kissy-kissy continued while I talked with Boxcar about Woody. “Goddamn shame about that dude,” Boxcar hissed. “The good motherfuckers are the ones who always go down first.”
Swan, with Sydnye by his side, stood next to his silver Bentley convertible as the group of movie and TV people continued with the hugs and handshakes. Nearby, observing the action, were the two well-muscled Latin-looking dudes in sport clothes that Boxcar had accurately made as Swan’s bodyguards.
When I’d finished talking to Boxcar, before walking away, I took a last look over at Sydnye, hoping to make eye contact again. Her smile was painted on and her eyes were set on her famous father. No soap.
Half a minute later Swan, with Sydnye sitting shotgun, paused at the stop sign next to the lot’s exit and Woody’s Honda. There were two dogs in the backseat. Rottweilers.
Then something odd happened: The old guy seemed to be looking at me, watching me as I unlocked my car door. He was smiling, but the expression in his eyes wasn’t joy; it was strange—like a cheetah eyeing a lone chicken from behind a wire fence.
Then Sydnye looked my way too. She wasn’t smiling. Not smiling at all.
I could hear music floating in my direction from the convertible’s expensive sound system. It was a Cole Porter tune from the thirties, sung, it sounded like, by Tony Bennett or Vic Damone, or someone like that: “You’re the top, you’re the Coliseum . . . You’re the top, you’re the Louvre Museum. You’re a melody, a symphony by Strauss . . . you’re a Bengal bonnet, a Shakespeare sonnet—you’re Mickey Mouse!”
“Have a wonnn-der-ful day,” Swan chimed over the music.
My mind immediately went to the songs I’d heard playing on Woody’s speakers in his apartment the day I found him and his tortured body. Sinatra sings Cole Porter. Bingo!
“Yeah, you too!” I called back, not looking at Swan but putting all my attention on the daughter, Sydnye.
As I got into Woody’s car and closed the door, Swan’s Bentley turned left, and was heading toward Grayfox Drive and his estate.
Inside the car, with my windows rolled up, I yelled out, “Gotcha, Sydnye! I gotcha now!”
TWENTY
I started the Honda, dropped the tranny into R and began to back up, but as I did, glancing into my rearview mirror, I saw the bottom half of a man’s torso just behind my car, blocking my way.
I popped the transmission back into P.
Two seconds later, Santa Monica detective Jim Archer was at my door. I pressed the power window button once and lowered the glass an inch or two.
“Time to talk,” Archer said in his flat, Special Ops voice.
“About what, Detective?” I said.
“You’re lucky, Fiorella.”
“You call this luck?”
“Open the window now, before I kick it in,” Archer snarled. “Do not fuck with me! Open it, or I’ll take you down right here! You know I’ll do it too.”
I lowered the window. “Okay, now what?” I said.
Archer scanned the parking lot, then turned back to me. “We need to talk. Let me in. Open the passenger door.”
A few seconds later he was beside me in the front seat. Sneering. “So, you snagged your friend Woody’s car. What’d you do, swap out the plates?”
“No idea what you’re talking about, Detective. This car once belonged to my mother, Nancy Fiorella. It’s my car now.”
“Well, if it is then you got nothin’ to worry about. But if it’s the one we have the BOLO on, you might be parked here in deep poop, sonny-boy. Know wh’am sayin’? Anyway, FYI: we know all about the car and your friend’s keys and the other shit you took. It’s old news.”
“And . . . ”
“But today does happen to be your lucky day, nutball. I’m not here about that stuff and I’m not here to jack you up. I’m serious.”
Archer pivoted in the passenger seat and was taking me in, studying my expression. “You’re on to it, aren’t you? I know you’re on to it!”
“On to what, Detective?”
“Listen up. Let’s pretend just for half a minute that I’m on my day off and I’m doing some backup case work on my own, okay? Let’s also pretend I’m not here and I didn’t see you. How’s that?”
“Better. I like playing pretend.”
“You’re on Swan! Somehow you added it up. He made you just now—and you made him. I saw it for myself. You’re not as dumb as I thought.”
“Keep talking.”
Detective Archer rolled his eyes. “Pay attention. Okay? I come out to Point Dume once or twice a year—I even take a sick day when I have to—for one purpose. Call it a mission; I’ve done it for the last eight years. Any idea what that mission might be?”
“You like looking at dried-up movie stars whose kids hate them? You’re a daytime-TV fan?”
“I come here to let Swan see me. To rattle his fucking cage. That’s why I come. I come on his AA birthday. Today, as you somehow found out, is his AA birthday.”
“And . . . ”
“Stop dancing, Fiorella! You’re pissing me off. For your information, the MO of your friend O’Rourke’s homicide fits the profile of eleven unsolved murders going back almost twenty-five years.”
“Now that is interesting,” I said. “I’m listening now.”
“I worked those cases.”
“You?”
“Yeah, me! That was before I was kicked sideways, then forced to resign at the sheriff’s department. Before I stepped on my own dick over Swan.”
“You just said twenty-five years’ worth of murders.”
“Eleven homicides. So, you might say I have a special interest in Citizen Swan. Okay, so I am here now, pullin’ your coat. I’m saying you’re on the right track. However you made the guy on your own, your moves so far are above the line.”
“Thanks for the heads-up. I appreciate it.”
“Apparently you do know your ass from Catalina Island. I had you down as some kind of loose cannon, a New York City burnout. I also know you did time in the bughouse. By the way, what were the real names of the Russians you killed? It took me a while to dig all that up.”
I decided to avoid the question. “Look,” I said, “just tell me what happened with you and the cases. Eleven homicides? Seriously, that does interest me.”
“Maybe, just maybe, we can help each other.”
“Okay, so fill me in?”
“There were no arrests. One suspect only.”
I shook my head. “That’s not much of a batting average, Detective.”
“In the immortal words of Johnny Cochran—out of the side of a mouth that occasionally did tell the truth—Cochran once said, ‘The color of justice in Los Angeles is green, as in dig-deep expensive.’ ”
“I hear that.”
“Keep listening. Those eleven unsolved homicides featured dead illegals from Mexico and south of the border, illegals that meet the MO of your pal Woody’s murder. Torture mutilation killings. All buried on Point Dume. Some—the more recent ones—also with multiple amputations. And just last week, as I’m sure you are aware, two Latinas also went missing near Paradise Cove. But we haven’t found those bodies yet.”
“You matched Woody with the MO to the Point Dume bodies?”
“Up until now all those bodies were buried, less than a mile from Señor Swan’s mansion, up on Grey Fox hill. You may or may not know that Point Dume is an ancient Indian burial ground.”
“That I knew, Archer. I was brought up here, remember? So you’re looking at Karl Swan and his daughter?”
“Not the daughter. Just Swan. He was ninety percent good for one murder. One murder was all I wanted. Just one murder. Then, he and his ten attorneys and his eight hundred million dollars and his political pull had me locked out of the case and eventually transferred.”
“But you had one solid homicide?”
“It was close. I had a decade-old DNA match and one witness who could corroborate Swan’s involvement. Unfortunately, that witness disappeared and is, I assume, presently dead. I was less close on the other murders but I was still working them. I had all eights and some nines but no witness
es. It turned out that my DNA match guy had been Swan’s driver, so there was poop in the duck pond on that one, but I was on my way. I was close.”
“And no one stepped up? No arrests were made?”
“Like I said.”
“Police work is crap. Pointless bullshit.”
“My book was good. My work was solid. If it had been anyone else but Swan we’d’ve gone to the grand jury. Now, just a few days ago, when I saw your friend’s body, I pretty much knew that Swan was back in business. The sick fuck. I want him down for this one. The only variable is that your friend’s killing was in Santa Monica. That’s the only thing that queers the profile.”
“Jesus, Detective, if you think Swan could be good for Woody, then make your move. You’ve certainly got enough to make a pinch. Go for it.”
“I tried. I took it up the ladder a few days ago. Me and Afrika. We ran Swan and the old MO and half a dozen cases passed the brass. There were too many matches for them to shitcan our pitch. We gave it a nine.”
“And?”
“This morning we were called into the big guy’s office—the big guy is a woman these days—and told, point-blank, to stay off Karl Swan.”
“C’mon,” I said.
“Our orders are to steer clear of anything to do with Mr. Swan. Supposedly, the way they’re spinning it, I’ve overreacted again, trying to nail the asshole to my old Malibu files, and in the process, I’ve roped Afrika into it.”
“Long live police politics,” I said.
Archer kept talking. “Then, two hours after the meeting, after I got my dick handed to me like a Pink’s hot dog, I’m sitting at my desk considering a new career in the night-watchman industry, and I received an e-mail from my L.A. Times contact. That e-mail informed me that the instructions for me to back off came down from up north in Sacramento, at the highest level. The whole thing gets a pass.”
I decided to trust Archer. He’d leveled with me and now I was going to give him what I had—at least some of what I had. “Look,” I said, “you may be wrong about Swan—at least on this one.”