by Connie Dial
“It’s such a waste,” David moaned, sitting at the table. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”
Josie was quiet. She knew the wrong word now would set off another flurry of recriminations. The young man’s death was sad, but she wouldn’t accept blame just to make her son feel better.
David was quiet for several seconds, peering into the mug as if he were praying or expecting some message to suddenly appear in the coffee grinds. “Sorry, Mom,” he mumbled without looking at her.
There should’ve been something she could say to make him feel better but nothing came to mind, mostly because it had become increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that not only Cory, but Hillary and Misty might’ve been a consequential part of his life.
“How well did you really know Hillary Dennis?” she asked, hoping that, caught up in the moment, he might let his guard down and finally tell her the truth.
He looked up but didn’t speak. His expression said it all—I’m distraught and you’re interrogating me.
“Honey, he’s upset. Do this later,” Jake said, reaching over and touching David’s arm.
Disgusted, she pushed away from the table. “I’m tired. I gotta get some sleep. Clean up when you’re done,” she said, but only got as far as the kitchen door before returning to the table and confronting them.
“I’m done. If either of you were involved with Hillary or her whoring business, tell me now or you’re on your own and don’t expect me to protect you anymore. And you,” she said pointing at Jake, “if you really wanna help, stop treating him like a baby.”
She turned and walked away from the silence permeating the room. Suddenly, fatigue had sapped all her energy and resolve. The investigation didn’t matter. If she couldn’t bring order or sanity to her own house, what difference did the rest of it make?
Several bottles of wine were sitting on the dining room credenza. Without thinking or looking, Josie snatched one on her way to the stairs. Instead of going up to her bedroom, she stopped at the second floor den where she found a corkscrew on the small wet bar and opened the bottle. The cabinet above the sink had all their best glassware, so she took one of the biggest Waterford goblets and filled it with the expensive Pinot Noir she’d been saving for a special occasion. What the hell, she thought. This is special. It’s the day my family officially disintegrated.
Early morning sunlight made the room unbearably bright and warm. She closed the shades, kicked off her boots, and lay on the couch with her glass and the bottle resting on her stomach. Josie intended to drink until her consciousness drowned in alcohol and she passed out. When she woke up—with any luck—the two most important and exasperating people in her life would be out of the house and she could think clearly again.
The first glassful was gone, but she lay on the couch staring at the clock on the wall and understood why people took drugs. Normally, she’d fall asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, but for the first time in her life she couldn’t rationalize or drink enough to shut down her brain.
She heard a light tapping on the open door and sat up, filled the glass again before cocking her head just enough to see David standing sheepishly outside the room, staring at his bare feet. His long hair was uncombed. When he was a boy, he’d developed the habit of twisting the ends of his hair when he was stressed. He started doing that after she made him stop biting his nails. Standing out there like that, he almost looked like her little boy again . . . a very tall, skinny version of her little boy.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“I’m tired.”
He sat on the couch beside Josie, but she wouldn’t look at him. Her son’s simplicity was disarming and he had a way of making her forget how angry she was with him. This time she didn’t want to forget. She needed to hold onto that anger until there weren’t any more secrets.
“Cory was like a little brother to me,” he said, softly. “He didn’t have anyone else, so I protected him.”
“From what?”
“Can I have some of that?” he said, nodding at the bottle and getting up for a glass.
“Protected him from what?” she repeated, pouring a little wine in his glass.
“Himself mostly.”
She felt a piercing pain building between her eyes. “No more riddles . . . if you’re gonna tell me something do it, or let me get some sleep so I can go back to work.”
David exhaled and sat back, took a sip of wine. “You really don’t give an inch, do you? You look and talk like other mothers, but you’ve got the heart of a gunnery sergeant.”
He’d probably intended that description to be insulting, but Josie had been called worse, and she thoroughly admired gunnery sergeants a lot more than most mothers. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to let the remark pass without countering with a dose of reality.
“Giving birth to you was the most excruciatingly painful thing I’ve ever done in my life, but when the nurse put you in my arms, when I smelled your hair, touched your tiny fingers, I instantly forgot the torture of labor and loved you completely. I vowed at that moment nothing would ever hurt you, and even now when I think you’ve been harmed in any way, it makes me angry and physically sick.”
“Look, I didn’t mean . . .” David said contritely, trying to interrupt her, but she wouldn’t allow him to apologize. That wasn’t what she wanted.
“When you were a child I treated you like one, but I can’t live your life for you. You’ve got to skin your knees and get your heart broken. I hate it, but it’s supposed to make you a better man, so stop bullshitting me and tell me what’s going on before this gets to the point where I can’t keep you out of it anymore.”
David groaned as if he were in pain and pulled at strands of his hair. She knew he had a flair for the melodramatic so she waited.
Finally he sighed and blurted out, “Cory told me Hillary was whoring, doing drugs for years. Word got out about her heroin habit so no legitimate studio would hire her after her second or third movie . . . all her other films were soft porn crap. Cory told me his dad was her regular customer. One day she needs money and threatens to tell the media about their sex life unless he gives her a lot of cash. He refused, and a week later she’s dead.”
“Did Cory think his father killed her?”
“It’s weird. Cory always swore he hated his father, but he was terrified when he thought something bad might happen to him.”
Josie got up and stretched. She was so tired her joints were beginning to ache. “Do you know if either Goldman killed her?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Cory was frantic that his dad might’ve done it and Mr. Goldman, he asked me if I thought Cory could’ve done it. Misty Skylar was the only one I knew who was really pissed-off at Hillary,” David said.
“Her agent, why?”
“Cory said he thought Hillary got so good at the blackmailing business she didn’t need Misty anymore because they’d had a hellacious falling-out.”
Josie rubbed her temples in an attempt to thwart the growing headache. “Why the hell did you get mixed up with these people?”
“I didn’t. I just tried to help my friend. He told me stuff in confidence. He’s dead now, so I figured it’s okay to talk about it.”
She put her glass on the floor and held her head with both hands. “Did he tell you who he thought killed Hillary?” she mumbled, not expecting an answer.
“He said it must’ve been the cop.”
Josie sat up and instantly forgot the pain. “Which cop?”
“He told me Hillary’s blackmail partner and lover was a cop, and they were setting up some huge score. He figured maybe they had an argument over the money, or the cop got pissed about all the guys she slept with and shot her.”
For another hour, Josie scraped every bit of information she could from her son’s memory. She was grateful he didn’t know more, but a little disappointed too. He did know Hillary kept the journal with names, times and places, and that she got money from her more
influential clients by promising not to give the media a full account of their sexual exploits—provided they coughed up enough cash. Cory had agreed to be her “gofer” to protect his father, but it was too tempting and she went after the councilman anyway.
When they finished, Josie was reasonably satisfied David was on the fringe of these people’s lives, but it wasn’t in her nature to wipe away all suspicion, and there was one question that still needed to be asked.
“Was your dad involved in any of this?”
David was mid-swallow and coughed, nearly choking on the wine.
“Dad?” he asked, incredulously. “Not hardly, he tried to help me find work and felt sorry for Cory . . . gave him a few bucks because he could see the guy was my friend and I worried about him.”
“Your father never had any contact with Hillary?”
“Dad’s not like you. He doesn’t judge people. Everything’s always so . . . tense with you. It’s like you can’t relax and just let people be themselves.”
“Did your dad have contact with Hillary Dennis?” She didn’t want psychoanalysis; she needed an answer before her head exploded.
“No . . . I don’t think so,” he said, raising his voice just enough to let her know he hadn’t been intimidated.
“My head’s killing me. I really need to get some sleep.”
David stood and put his glass on the leather ottoman in front of the couch. “That job’s gonna give you a stroke.”
She rolled over onto her stomach and lay with her forehead pressed hard against the cushion. No, she thought, the job is fine. You and your father are gonna give me a stroke. After a few seconds, the room was quiet so she figured he’d gone. Josie loved her son, but it bothered her that his take on the world and hers were so different. For example, she’d never found naïveté an attractive or trustworthy quality in a man.
It was after two P.M. when Josie opened her eyes again. Apparently the headache was from lack of sleep because it had disappeared. She was still on her stomach, but her neck was stiff from tucking her head into the arm of the couch. She made two mental notes to herself. First, don’t fall asleep on the couch in the den again, and second, don’t drink wine for breakfast.
A shower and a pot of coffee later, she was eager to get back to Hollywood station. Jake had taped a note to the coffeepot saying he would call her as soon as he was able to link the number on the back of his business card to the subject of the witness protection program. He signed it, “Love, Jake,” so apparently she hadn’t pissed him off more than usual and he was still willing to help. There was no sign of David and for a lot of reasons she was relieved.
WHEN JOSIE arrived at Hollywood station, she immediately went to detectives where she found Behan in one of the interview rooms with Hillary’s journal. He had piles of pages torn from a yellow legal pad full of notes he’d made that morning. He had arrived a few hours before her and had a chance to examine most of the young woman’s entries and the loose paperwork. Josie explained that she’d taken Jake’s business card to ask him about the number on the back, and told Behan what her husband had said and how he was looking for the person to match the witness number.
“Sorry, I should’ve told you,” she said, when she finished the explanation.
Behan was quiet for a few seconds, taking too long to examine a page of the journal. Finally, he looked up expressionless and asked, “Would we be having this conversation if that had been Jake’s personal number?”
“What do you think?” she countered stone-faced, staring into those bloodshot blue eyes.
He didn’t answer, but they both knew if the card incriminated Jake, it had about as much chance of survival as he had of becoming chief of police.
Josie left him to sift through the journal, attempting to identify Hillary’s customers and focus on anyone who might’ve had a motive to kill the young woman. She had a feeling the list would be a long one.
DAY-TO-DAY business in the station had been kept manageable by the lieutenant watch commanders. Josie put Behan in charge of detectives until the incoming lieutenant transferred. Ibarra had departed before his Wilshire assignment began, saying he needed time to get some personal matters in order before starting the new job. The fact that detectives ran smoothly without him wasn’t a revelation to Josie.
She had nearly finished reviewing her calendar for the upcoming week when Jake called. He had accessed the warehoused information on the witness protection program, but wouldn’t reveal how he’d managed to do it. She knew he lost his security clearance when he resigned from the district attorney’s office a few weeks ago, but somehow he located and identified code number 700. The subject’s real name when she lived in New York was Brenda Manuci. The new identity she’d chosen before being relocated in Los Angeles more than a decade ago was Misty Skylar.
TWENTY
In less than an hour, Jake was sitting in Josie’s office with her and Behan going over the notes he’d copied from the district attorney’s witness protection file. She couldn’t explain how or why it happened, but her husband was exhibiting real enthusiasm for catching bad guys again.
“Luckily, they had scanned all the dead files and as usual, my old boss was out of his office sticking his pretty face in front of a news camera,” Jake said smugly.
“Don’t you need some special kind of password to get into those files?” Behan asked.
“The guy’s a computer dummy. I set up his access code before I quit and figured he’d never change it. Of course, he didn’t. Mediocrity is so predictable.”
“Why’d they even let you in the building without ID?” Josie asked, still not believing this was her husband talking. What happened to that ‘I’m sick of living off other people’s misery’ guy?
“I used my revoked identification card and nobody bothered to check it, just waved me through . . . so much for beefed-up security.”
Jake told them he’d managed to scribble two pages of notes before he saw his former boss in the hall security camera returning to his office. He shut down the program and sat in the visitor’s chair pretending he’d been waiting to say hello. They chatted for twenty minutes, then Jake excused himself.
“I’m sure the moron is still wondering why I came to visit, since I’d made it abundantly clear I thought he was an ivy-league buffoon when I worked for him.”
Then he explained how the D.A.’s file had meticulously laid out the story of Misty Skylar aka Brenda Manuci’s former life in upstate New York.
“Brenda was a second cousin of one of the least-known organized crime family bosses in the state,” Jake said. Josie wouldn’t have recognized the name, but she’d seen it in Marge’s research on Vince Milano and knew the club owner had been associated with the Manuci family when he lived on the east coast.
“She turned federal witness on a low-level member of the family who was collecting rent from drug dealers for the privilege of occupying prime street corners in a sleazier section of downtown Rochester. She owed the guy a ton of money and wanted him out of the way, so she agreed to testify against him in exchange for immunity and a promise from the feds for a continuous flow of more cash than she’d seen in her entire life.”
“She had to know the family would never let her get away with that,” Behan said.
“Brenda was young and stupid and in her drugged-out little brain didn’t really think her plan through,” Jake said. “The guy was a lowlife but still family. The Manucis didn’t take kindly to her dispatching a blood relative off to federal prison.”
“Is that why they moved her out of New York?” Josie asked.
“When somebody tried to run her over with a stolen delivery van, the feds decided to move her to Southern California and change her name.”
“So how did Hillary get your business card and how did she figure out Misty was really Brenda Manuci?” Josie asked.
Behan said, “If Hillary knew Misty had something that important to hide, her agent would become a perfect mark for blackmail.�
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“But how would Hillary know? Unless Misty made a mistake and told her.” Josie said.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jake said. “But it gets better. Misty might’ve blabbed about working for the feds, but I know how Hillary got the whole story. Somehow she got my card with the D.A. file number and somebody figured out what it was. Any inquiries into that system are documented and there’s only been one inquiry other than mine, and you’ll never guess who that was.”
“This isn’t Jeopardy. Who the fuck was it?” Behan said.
“Eric Bright.”
“Our deputy chief?”
“Yep, a month ago, he was allowed access for an alleged LAPD investigation.”
“Him personally or somebody from his office?” Josie asked.
“Didn’t say, but whoever it was probably gave that information to Hillary and she’s in extortion heaven.”
“If Hillary threatened to expose her to the Manucis, Misty had both motive and opportunity; she was at the party and had plenty of time to remove gunshot residue or any other evidence before we ever got to her,” Behan said.
“Contact the D.A. and get any surveillance tapes or witnesses they might have for the day that information was accessed.” Josie told Behan. “If it was Bright, he’s got some serious explaining to do,” she said.
“Who else would it be?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know, but we’ve got no room for error on this one. We’ll wait for confirmation.” She wanted to drag the deputy chief into the station too, but knew she had to be right. Behan gave her a disapproving glance, but it wasn’t his neck on the chopping block if they were wrong. “In the meantime, go back to Little Joe and Mouse. If Misty shot Hillary, somebody gave her that stolen gun. It was taken from the Palms and those two know everything that happens in that shithole.”
Behan picked up his notes and left without another word. She knew he was upset. He didn’t like her running his investigation and normally she’d agree with him, but this wasn’t just another case. The fallout from this one could impact the entire city government. Chain of command had been compromised; division of labor was irrelevant until all their suspicions were tracked down and disposed of or confirmed. Red’s a big boy, she thought. He’ll get over it.