Randi smiled. Big.
“Fabulous,” I said. “Want to do this now?”
She shook her head. “Can’t. We’re having lunch with Tyler Faustus. You know him? No, you haven’t met him.”
Some Hollywood bigwig, undoubtedly.
“And then we’re going away to Catalina until Sunday night. I don’t want him around in case your friend Roger shows up again. So you can talk to Sir Gareth next week.”
Whoa. No. That was not okay. Stevie and I were Gary’s human pill-reminder alarms. He had a nasty habit of missing doses if he didn’t have someone opening his mouth and shoving the medications in. “Could I talk to you for a moment?” I said. “Alone.”
He held up his hand. “It’s fine. Away for a day.”
“I count that as two days, Gary.”
Randi nestled in closely to Gary’s side. “I’ll take care of him, honey. Don’t you worry about him. Come on, Sir Gareth. We have to get to Santa Monica.”
She remained locked to him as she pulled him out of the library.
Stupid bastard. Old men were ridiculous when it came to young women.
Well, if that’s what he wanted, far be it from me to stand in his way.
Zeus on a cloud, I’d introduced them. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If there’s one person on earth who knows how easy it is to worm her way into someone’s life lightning-fast, it’s me. I just didn’t think Randi was that good.
I put off any and all thoughts about what I’d have to do in the coming week about Randi, provided she didn’t talk herself out of her newfound relationship by the end of a weekend away. Women who move in tend to be unpleasant about women who are still living there.
Stevie was in the guest-house kitchen, sitting at the breakfast counter. She had laid the papers she’d printed about McClanahan’s arrest down the length of the counter. And she was crying.
“Sweetheart,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
“He’s listening to her,” she said. “He asked me to sort his papers, and he didn’t tell her that. He just let her say those things.”
“I know. He’s being a bastard. He’ll get over it.”
“He won’t,” Stevie said. “They never do.”
For a girl who’d never had a relationship with a boy, she was remarkably sour on the whole idea already. We hadn’t had the best examples of human relationships while we were growing up, and I’d hardly been a model of right behavior over the past decade.
“There’s nothing we can do about Gary right now,” I told her. “Let’s look at these papers. Where are the ones about the police officer?”
Her index finger stabbed out blindly and hit a paper to her right. Stevie knew where everything was all the time.
The first time, I hadn’t looked closely at the photo of Officer Broderick Tennyson shaking hands with his lieutenant, commending him on his arrest, because I didn’t think it was important. But my second look showed me something different. Ten years, a man in his early twenties now in his thirties, with a couple of years of heavy drug use. It was possible, but not certain. The uniform hat, low on his forehead, obscured the view.
“Any other pictures of him?” I asked my sister.
She typed on her computer quickly. “Not much about this fellow out there,” she said. “Odd, given that he was a decorated police officer. But there’s this. It’s old. Low resolution.”
She turned her computer around and showed me the picture. I was right.
“Dammit,” I said before I could stop myself. Stevie sharply inhaled, but if there was one time that had earned every swear I could think of, this was it.
Two men involved in the construction business who were also involved in drugs wasn’t as much of a coincidence as I had thought. Not that my stepfather Roberto had known this when he set me on the task of helping Dr. Anson Villiers—he had asked me to do that specifically to get two pieces of information through to me.
The first was, Roberto was watching me all the time. He knew I accompanied Anne on her interviews and story gathering, so he followed Anne’s career closely. He was finding out about the people and places she was going. He knew about the Baldwin Park trip, and he knew that my injuries had come from meeting Courtney Cleary and her boyfriend, Roger Sabo. I would not hide from Roberto Montesinos again.
The second thing he wanted me to know was that, when he found out Anne had that assignment, he had found out who Roger Sabo was. And when I got beaten up, he knew who’d done it. He wanted me to find out who had done it. And maybe figure out I was in over my head this time.
Because the cop who’d arrested Chris McClanahan twelve years ago, Broderick Tennyson, had changed his name. He was now known as Roger Sabo.
I had the feeling that Tennyson-Sabo’s connection to two very different construction firm owners—who knew one another back in Simi Valley—wasn’t a coincidence after all.
If Chris McClanahan answered one question for me he would tie together a lot of these loose ends. There was no earthly reason he’d want to answer this.
So I would offer incentives. How generous was Roberto willing to be to ensure Erica Rose performed at Dr. Villiers’s nonprofit fundraiser?
He’d given me permission to speak for him, so I was figuring damn generous.
I pulled out my cell phone.
“Who is this?” Stevie asked. She blinked a few times and then turned the computer around. “You clearly know him... This is Roger Sabo, isn’t it? I’ll see if I can find out if he’s still a police officer.”
How my sister figured that out so quickly, I had no idea. If Stevie and Roberto ever went into business together, the rest of us should just swear fealty and be done with it.
“Might be tough. I think he’s a very, very undercover cop,” I said. Then, to the phone, “Hi Chris, it’s Drusilla Thorne. We need to finish our little chat... No, now... Where and when?” I memorized the name he gave me. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” I kissed the top of Stevie’s head. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”
Chris and Erica Rose were at a photographer’s studio in Westwood. I felt a little exhausted when he told me. Westwood wasn’t over the hill in the San Fernando Valley, but it was on the far side of the 405. When I had money again, I would travel solely by chauffeured car and helicopter. It was a tiny office in a converted house near UCLA. A modest black wooden sign with white lettering posted in the yard out front listed the occupants. Ottofocus Photo was the third one down and had the best graphic design for its logo.
I let myself in the door in the back and a female assistant with spiky green hair and striped zebra leggings under her purple sweatshirt stopped me in the doorway. To prevent me from running pell-mell through the place, yelling, perhaps.
The photo shoot was in progress. Erica Rose was following the instructions the photographer yelled out at her: jump, wave her arms, look enthusiastic, try really enthusiastic this time. Instead, the teenager looked exhausted. Didn’t she have to be in school? I wondered.
Chris McClanahan watched his daughter with a combination of pride and a critical eye, waving his hand at her from behind the photographer’s back, telling her to move, to smile, to bend over. At one point the photographer turned and shot the world’s meanest glance at him, and McClanahan didn’t even notice.
Then he happened to look in my direction and swear.
The photographer looked at me to see who had possibly interrupted McClanahan’s backseat driving. Then he went back to shooting Erica Rose.
“Five minutes,” McClanahan said to me.
“Make it twenty-five,” I said, opening the door I’d just walked through. “Or however long this is going to take.”
We stood out in the parking lot behind the house. McClanahan took a soft pack of cigarettes out and lighted one. He didn’t offer me one. I told myself I wouldn’t have taken one anyhow. The easiest way to believe a lie is to tell it to yourself.
“Why are you here?” he sai
d.
“Because you want to be convinced to come to the fundraiser tomorrow.” And because Roberto had given me the task of making this happen. I had all sorts of incentive.
“Fuck you. We’ve talked about this. We’re done,” McClanahan said.
He didn’t really think we were done, of course. You don’t give directions to your location to someone you’re done with. If you’re talking, you still want something.
I smiled and shook my head. “You walk back in there, I assure you here and now your daughter has played her last shopping mall. Or fundraiser. Or birthday party. Or street corner. Roberto Montesinos’s wife owns the company that produces your daughter’s show and syndicates it. They will stop buying it. Tomorrow.”
Maybe Roberto had a third thing he wanted me to figure out: I did have the power to settle this. He wanted to see how I was going to do it. This issue with Erica Rose was small potatoes compared to what I might have to deal with when I came back from the dead. He wanted to see how much work I was going to need.
“I want everyone to get something out of this. Everyone walks away happy. What is it that you need to walk away happy?”
“I’ve gotten the short shaft from this group since Erica Rose signed on. She needs to be respected as a professional. She’s not doing this as a favor.”
Translation: he wanted money.
Fine. We haggled a bit and I offered him a number in the mid four digits, in cash. Less than I’d been prepared to offer, that was for certain.
“What else do you need, Chris?”
“She’s sixteen. She can’t work all day and all night.”
Translation: he wanted her to show up and leave almost immediately.
“She is on stage at seven o’clock and she sings four songs,” I said.
“Two,” he said.
She barely had the voice to do two in a row. I sighed heavily. “Three. What else?”
He paused.
He’d had a short list of demands.
“How about you, Chris? Are you being taken care of? Is there anyone you’d like to meet? Possibly discuss Erica Rose’s movie career?”
His eyes widened. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I would. I’d like to get Erica Rose a new movie agent.”
“Do you have someone in mind?”
McClanahan mentioned some name, Tony somebody-or-other. I didn’t keep track of who the top agents in Hollywood were. But I was certain Roberto could find out who this person was.
“We can make that meeting happen,” I said, “provided you stick to what we’ve agreed to here. Erica Rose shows up on time, and she does three songs. She shows up late or she leaves early, no one’s going to be happy.” And he wasn’t going to get any of his money under the table.
He nodded. He put his hand out to shake.
“Not so fast, Chris. There’s one thing you need to tell me to make me happy.”
“Erica Rose will—”
“Will appear at the party she already agreed to be at. But now I’ve had to chase you halfway around creation to get you to agree to that. So you need to tell me something.”
“Okay. What?”
“It’s about your arrest.”
His anger was instant. He really did not like talking about it. “Fuck you. No. I’m not talking about that with you.”
“Chris, you did your time. Your history doesn’t affect our agreement or Erica Rose’s performance tomorrow night. But there’s something you know that I need to know.”
He stuck his index finger in my face. I didn’t blink. “I got nothing with that shit anymore, do you understand me?”
I nodded. My cheek hit his index finger mid-nod. “Excellent decision on your part. I still have a question, though. It doesn’t go beyond our conversation here and now.” I waited until McClanahan was ready. “The bloke who arrested you. Tennyson.”
If I hadn’t had the mild suspicion before, the way McClanahan shook his head and gritted his teeth told me I was definitely about to ask the money question.
“You knew him before the arrest, right?”
“Fuck you, I’m not saying a word.”
“You think Roberto Montesinos has a cop working for him?” I said.
“People who are too helpful make me suspicious.”
I lifted up the edge of the blouse I was wearing. He stared at my stomach, with its bandage and bruises. “Broderick Tennyson did this to me a few days ago. Also, you might notice while you’re looking that I’m not wearing a wire.” I dropped the hem. “So could you answer my question, please? You knew him before he arrested you, right?”
“Yeah. You might say that.”
“He was part of your operation.”
McClanahan nodded. “Yeah.”
“Tell me how it worked.”
“Why? This was ten—twelve years ago. What do you care?”
“Because I think he’s doing it again, Chris. He’s doing it here, in Los Angeles. And I think he killed someone this week because of it. Tell me how it worked.”
He told me. It was pretty simple.
The construction crews around Los Angeles were almost all Mexican or Central American immigrants. Very few of them had the right papers. Chris McClanahan had set up a smuggling operation with incoming workers: they carried in meth from Mexico and when they got to Simi Valley, they had semi-legitimate work waiting for them. McClanahan delivered the meth to Broderick Tennyson, who not only distributed the drugs but arrested McClanahan’s main competition.
“How big was your construction firm?”
“We did five million in projects a year.”
“And how much did you clear in meth?”
“About fifty percent of that.”
Wow, I thought. Nice work if you can get it, except for the murders and the addiction and lives ruined and such. “What did it depend on?”
He shrugged. “How many guys I could get on the crew. They didn’t want to keep coming in and out, and who can blame them?”
I nodded. “Did Greg Hitch—”
McClanahan exploded with anger. “That fucker? You come here and ask me about him? You know he was going to be the main witness against me, right?”
I shook my head. The stories about McClanahan’s trial had been sparse. The whole thing had been put to bed rather quickly. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. Why was he the witness?”
McClanahan seemed to finally accept he was going to stand there and talk to me until I was satisfied. “We shared crews. When guys finished their shifts for me they’d go pick up work from him and vice-versa.”
“Which is how he found out about this.”
McClanahan shrugged. “I told people about Tennyson’s involvement and it got covered up.”
Maybe Hitchcock had proposed a deal to Tennyson: they both move to L.A. and start doing this on a much bigger scale. Tennyson would go to work in Vice as an undercover cop, arresting the competition and protecting Hitchcock. And Hitchcock wasn’t going to share workers with anyone this time. And how many workers did Hitchcock have going at any one time? On large-scale projects?
I wondered if Stevie could piece together how much HCFC was clearing a year in contracts. If he was doing fifty percent again importing meth—
McClanahan pulled another cigarette out of the pack. He really did not enjoy reliving his glory years. Good. Maybe he had his eyes firmly focused on the future. “We done now?” he asked.
“A limo will be at your house enough time before the fundraiser to get you and your daughter,” I said. I put my hand out, and we shook. “Thank you very much, Mr. McClanahan. You’ve been extremely helpful.”
In my car I called Anson Villiers’s office and left the message that everything should be straightened out with Erica Rose. “If there are any problems, if she’s late, if she behaves badly, call me immediately.”
I left a message for Roberto and told him he needed to get in touch with Tony Somebody-or-other, a movie agent, to have a meeting with Erica Rose. Just a meeting. That was all I pr
omised.
When I hung up, I stared at the phone for a moment. Should I tell Anne about what I’d just learned from Chris McClanahan? In the end I decided she ought to know. At the very least, she could start investigating it, and maybe she could make a bigger story out of it. “Ring me as soon as you can,” I told her voicemail. “Not only do I have a way out of our problem with Sabo, I have a gigantic story for you.” I gave her the short version on the phone, mentioning Sabo’s real name.
And there’s nothing that keeps a freelance journalist happier than a big story dropped in their lap.
Well, if I were a freelance journalist, that would keep me happy.
There are several reasons I wouldn’t make it as a journalist, and my problems with reading comprehension were among the least important.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I LAY DOWN on the sofa in the library, staring up at the tin ceiling. Now that Gary and Randi weren’t in here, it was quiet and relaxing again. Stevie wasn’t enjoying the silence much, so I told her what I’d learned from McClanahan. “Way, way bigger than money laundering. And Courtney knew something about all of it.”
“Perhaps you should call Detective Gruen with this information,” she said.
I grinned. “Maybe I should, huh?”
She sighed. “That’s not what I meant.”
My phone buzzed with a text. Stevie glanced at it. “Anne’s outside. She needs to talk to us.”
My phone message about a possible story had piqued her interest. But she couldn’t call first? Even I think it’s a little inconsiderate to stop by someone’s house without calling first. Well, unless I’m breaking in. I don’t call before doing that. And since when did Anne text before she came over instead of call? “Finally. Where the hell—Hades has she been?”
Stevie did whatever tech magic she does to open the front gates of Gary’s estate and we walked through his house. “Hades is not the equivalent of the Christian hell,” she said. “It’s more akin to—”
“Tell me all of this again, when I’m reading comparative mythologies at some university. Oh dear, you’ll be waiting a very long time.”
Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) Page 18