by Dianne Emley
“They were too busy checking out the females,” Kissick said.
“Women wearing men’s suits…” Caspers let the comment hang.
Early challenged him. “Women wearing men’s suits what? You find that hot, huh?”
Caspers raised a shoulder. “I’m just saying…Chicks don’t play dress-up for each other. Where was the guy? In the back of the limo or someplace else?”
Kissick pulled over the photograph of a Lincoln Town Car. “He sends her out while he stays in the shadows.”
Schuyler had done a perfunctory search of limo rental companies who employed female drivers and had turned up nothing. In Southern California on a warm Friday night, hundreds of limos are likely on the streets.
A search of Lynde’s condominium in Studio City turned up $10,000 in hundreds hidden in the wall behind her bedroom dresser. Also hidden there was a pair of diamond-and-aquamarine earrings that retailed for about $7,000. What wasn’t there was her laptop computer or datebook.
Frank Lynde didn’t recognize the earrings or know where Frankie might have obtained the money. Prior to the past two months, her financial records showed she had trouble meeting her monthly bills.
Schuyler told about Frankie’s neighbor Mrs. Bodek encountering a woman leaving Frankie’s condominium the Sunday before Frankie was reported missing. Mrs. Bodek found a resemblance between the woman and the drawing of Chauffeur Girl. The woman Mrs. Bodek had seen with Frankie’s keys was similarly disguised, wearing a wig and oversized sunglasses.
Frankie’s car was stolen from the XXX Marks the Spot parking lot sometime Monday, May 23, or Tuesday, May 24. The manager noticed the black Honda Accord parked there Sunday. When he returned to the club the following Tuesday afternoon, it was gone. The car body was found, completely stripped, on a street in the Pico/Union district west of downtown Los Angeles.
“He knew he was going to kill her.” Early dumped the earrings from the evidence bag into her palm. “Kept her for sixteen days, knowing all the time he was going to kill her. He took care of the evidence before she was on the radar. Got everything except what Frankie hid.”
“Guess he ensured Chauffeur Girl’s cooperation by threatening to kill her.” Caspers rocked back in his chair, pleased with his insight.
Kissick shook his head, disagreeing. “There’s a line that people will not cross regardless, with two exceptions. One, she’s psycho. Given that Frankie’s neighbor saw her crying, I don’t think so. Shows she has a conscience.”
Caspers’s bluster faded and he righted his chair.
Kissick continued. “Or two, she’s a drug addict and will do anything for drugs.”
Early held up one of the pricey earrings. “I doubt Frankie was on drugs though, given she had this and ten large hidden in her wall.”
“She did blow through twenty-five grand over several weeks,” Schuyler said. “But she spent it on clothes, shoes, cosmetics—you name it—at the best shops in Beverly Hills.”
“All an addict wants is more drugs, not pretty clothes,” Kissick said.
“Twenty-five grand is a lot for someone making maybe fifty a year to go through in a short time,” Vining said. “She was trying to fill the hole in her life with stuff. The deeper in she got, the more she spent.”
Schuyler added, “Frankie spent, but she saved some, too. Every Monday during the two months prior to her disappearance, she made thousand-dollar cash deposits into her checking account. The sums were too small to attract the bank’s attention. She also started paying her bills with money orders purchased with cash.”
“Someone had the dough to keep Frankie in cash and jewelry and Chauffeur Girl in drugs.” Ruiz tipped his head at the sketch of the chauffeur. “Maybe this one is a prostitute. Frankie could have met her working undercover. Did you check that angle?”
Schuyler said, “Frankie could have met her on the street, but she looks high-end for that kind of action. You can throw a stone and hit twenty girls who look like her in L.A. Here’s a sample of local porn movie and escort agency talent.”
He tossed a stack of professional photos of nude and nearly nude women onto the table. They all had long, blond, rumpled hair; button noses; too-full lips; and overdone breasts.
Vining took a cursory glance. For the men, this was the best part of the afternoon so far.
The banker’s box was empty, the contents strewn from one end of the conference table to the other. Schuyler finished his summary. He shook hands and left the station, his missing person investigation closed.
Kissick began. “I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will. Everything about this case stays here. Even if the chief asks you a specific question, tell him to talk to me, Sergeant Early, or Lieutenant Beltran. I want to keep tabs on who knows what. No chitchat in the gym. No having too many beers with your buddies and next I’m hearing about ten grand found in Lynde’s apartment. This goes double for conversations with Frank Lynde. Emotions about this case are running high all through the department. I don’t want any freelancers working this. Got it?”
The speech wasn’t directed to the seasoned detectives but the wake-up call didn’t hurt.
Kissick continued. “The knock-and-talks haven’t turned up anyone who saw anything around the arroyo last night. Disappointing but not surprising. Hopefully, after we get some publicity out there, the tips will come in. So, thoughts anyone?”
Ruiz picked up the diamond-and-aquamarine earrings. “Frank has no clue that his daughter was into something like this. Finding out she crossed over to the dark side will destroy him as much as finding out she was dead.”
“Three years is a long time to work vice prostitution,” Early said. “For a man or woman. It’s a shitty job. You do your year and rotate out.”
“Vice prostitution is harder for females,” Vining said. “A male cop gets a massage and hopes the girl offers him a happy ending so he can arrest her. The female struts her stuff on the street. You have to dress like a whore. Act like a whore. Talk like a whore. Describe the sexual favors you’ll do. A lot of the johns are well-dressed guys with good jobs. Somebody’s husband. Somebody’s father. It’s tough to see their depraved side. Sometimes the johns want the females to show them their breasts before they’ll offer money. It’s degrading. We all compartmentalize in this job, but working undercover prostitution can get real personal.”
Caspers chewed a sliver from the tip of a bitten-down fingernail and spit it out. “Looks like she only got really into the life about two months ago.”
“About the same time she and Moore hit the skids.” Early picked up the drawing of the chauffeur. “That act at the strip club was not a one-night fantasy. Chauffeur Girl and Frankie had been having play dates for a while. When and where did Frankie meet Chauffeur Girl and her partner?”
“Lolita,” Kissick said.
Early gave him a sideways glance. “Excuse me?”
“Lolita,” he repeated. “You know. Like the old movie. A sexy young girl who wore heart-shaped glasses. An old man who lusted after her.”
Early turned the drawing of the chauffeur to face the group. “Find her and we’ll get to him. Find our Lolita.”
Ruiz set down the earrings and Vining picked them up. Holding one by the stem, she rolled it between her fingers. The large, square aquamarine was the same impossibly blue hue of the waters off a Caribbean island. As she rolled the stone back and forth, the color drew her in. So blue. So beautiful. Refreshing, like looking at a swimming pool on a hot day and imagining the coolness of the water. She saw something at the bottom of the gem. Something dark. Was it an occlusion or something else? She turned the earring, trying to catch another glimpse. She saw it. It looked like a man’s face, rising up from the bottom of the pool, the sun and water casting him in a jacquard patchwork.
She turned the earring a different way and the image disappeared.
You’re losing it, Nan, she chided herself.
She returned the earrings to the evidence bag.
T E
N
W HAT’S NEW, PUSSYCAT? WHOA—OH-OH-OH-OH-OH…”
John Lesley sang the old Tom Jones song to his wife, trying to make her smile. It usually worked. Not tonight.
A bass downbeat pounded through the glass wall of the nightclub’s private suite. In an aquarium that lined a wall of the club, women wearing air tanks, scuba masks, and nearly transparent swimsuits frolicked with one another underwater. It was early for scenesters, but there was already a crowd. A popular D.J. held court on Monday nights. The dance floor pulsated, a sea of bodies in frantic motion, like an anthill disturbed by a stick.
“It’s good to be king, Pussycat. And you’re my queen. Isn’t it good to be queen? Say it. Say, ‘It’s good to be queen.’”
“It’s good to be queen.”
“Say it like you mean it. It’s good to be queen.”
“It’s good to be queen.”
“Poor itty-bitty Puddycat with the sad little face.”
She turned away from his gaze.
“Not even a twenty-five-thousand-dollar watch can cheer you up.” He fussed with the gold-and-diamond Patek Philippe watch on her wrist.
“You took it off Frankie. Took off her earrings, too.”
“I bought all that jewelry for you. Frankie was just borrowing it. You’d have those aquamarine earrings, too, if you’d found them in her condo. Wonder what she did with them. I thought they were very attractive. Nice, but not too flashy. F-ing police probably have them now.”
Pussycat stared straight ahead and shook her head.
“Hey, baby, if you don’t want this jewelry, there are plenty of poor deprived women out there going to bed without Patek Philippe watches in their jewelry boxes. Just hardly able to sleep night after night.”
A tear dropped down her cheek.
He put his arms around her and playfully jostled her. “Baby, I know you’re upset over Frankie, but you’ve got to put it behind you. It was one of those things.”
“It wasn’t supposed to end like that. You promised.”
“You gotta go with the flow. Expect the unexpected.”
“I meet my sister for lunch and come home and see what you did to Frankie…” She brushed tears away.
“That’s right. Listen to what you just said.”
“I had to see my sister. She was wondering what was up with me.”
“Baby, you don’t think. You’re not practical. I needed you there. Frankie went crazy and I didn’t have any choice. I told you not to go, didn’t I? If you’d been there for me, things might have been different.”
“What are you saying? It’s my fault?”
She scrunched her face and the tears flowed.
“Knock it off,” he said meanly. “I hate you moping around.”
“It’s bullshit. You were going to do what you did to Frankie anyway. She kept asking me and I kept telling her no, but I knew in my heart. I knew when you sent me to take the stuff from her place. I knew. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. It happened like I told you. You weren’t there, were you? So you can’t say.”
He pulled the bottle of Cristal from the ice bucket and topped off their champagne flutes. He pressed a flute into her trembling hand. He held her hand to steady it and clicked her glass with his.
“Besides, sweetmeat, why do you want to spend time with anyone but me? It hurts my feelings.” He pressed out his lower lip.
She set down the glass after taking a tiny sip. “I can’t live this way.”
He fished his hand inside his pocket and took out a tiny Baggie containing high-grade methamphetamine. It looked like shards of glass.
“You’re crashing, that’s why you’re depressed.” He tried to push the bag into her hand. “Do a bump.”
“No.” She shoved his hand away. “I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s gotten out of control.”
He set the Baggie on the table in front of her. “Baby, who are you kidding? Just wait until you come crying to me because you need your Miss Tina.”
“You turned me into an addict.”
“Yeah, right.”
“When I met you, I only took it when I had to lose weight or work a long shift.”
“Now you’re on the Jenny Crank diet.” He started laughing.
“That’s not funny.” She dabbed her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “I hate my life.”
“Hate it later. Do a bump now.” He nudged the Baggie closer to her.
She sobbed, “Stop making fun of me. I’m a human being, you know. I have feelings, too.”
He again put his arms around her. “I’m just playin’ with ya. Come on.”
She wasn’t consoled.
He slugged down his champagne and threw himself against the couch, his arms draped across the back. “Baby, enough of this crap, okay? We’re here to have fun.”
“But why did you do that to Frankie? Why?”
“Poor, sweet Pussycat. You’ve gotta understand. A woman like Frankie is a wild animal. If we turned our backs on her for a second, if we made one mistake, she’d have killed us or gotten away and put the cops onto us. The three of us went too far. And she went willingly, believe me. She knew what she was doing. She marched right down to that place called the point of no return.”
“Never again. No more.”
He shrugged. “I can’t see the future.”
“What are you saying? There’s going to be more? Have there been others?”
“Baby, don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answers to. And knock off the woe-is-me bit. Playing Little Miss Innocent. You got your jollies with Frankie.”
He slid his hand up her skirt and laughed when she pushed it away.
He leaned to look through the window at the action on the club floor beneath them. “Look at that redhead standing by the bar, acting like she’s bulletproof. I’d like to put a hurt on her.”
“No way. They just found Frankie today.”
“Don’t worry.” He smoothed the furrows from her forehead with his thumb. “We’re not going to get caught. I know all about the police. How they think. How they work. They’re not that smart. We’ll stay a step ahead of them. I always have.”
“It’s not right.”
“Who are you to talk to me about what’s right, huh? You think you’re better than me?”
She hugged herself.
“Well, do you?”
She whispered, “No.”
“Who the hell were you before I took you off the street? Nobody. I made you. I took you from dirt and put you on a golden pedestal. I can take you down off that pedestal and put you back in the dirt, too, and I mean underground. I’ll do it. I don’t want to, but I will.”
She blinked back tears and said nothing.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m not thinking.”
“Good. Don’t think. You especially shouldn’t think about going behind my back and talking about our life to anyone, especially that sister of yours, or I’ll fix it so you won’t be talking to her or anyone again.”
“I’m not. I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah, right. Baby, one thing I know is women, better than they know themselves.” He looked at the gyrating bodies on the dance floor. “Last night was a long one, but I feel energetic.” He gave her a look that suggested she should be impressed.
“Don’t worry, Pussycat. We’ll just catch and release tonight. I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”
E L E V E N
A FTER THE TEAM MEETING BROKE LATE THAT AFTERNOON, KISSICK sent Caspers to Hollywood to photocopy the rest of Schuyler’s records. Lieutenant Beltran held a news conference on the police station steps and released a tip-line number. Sproul and Jones began logging and evaluating tips that started coming in as soon as the phone number was announced. Vining, Ruiz, and Kissick poured over Frankie’s paper trail and built upon Schuyler’s timeline of Frankie’s activities for the past year. When Caspers returned, Kissick started him on scrutinizing the arrests both Frank Lynde a
nd Frankie had made over the past several years, running suspects through NCIC and other databases, researching criminal histories to see if anyone was worth a closer look. Kissick contacted Frankie’s Internet service provider to gain access to her e-mail messages. He and Ruiz then drove out to Frank Lynde’s house for a dreaded face-to-face interview.
At 9:00 p.m., Vining was still working at her desk and Caspers was at his in the adjoining cubicle. The comments he shot to her through the fabric wall grew farther apart and less energetic. He clearly wanted to leave, but wasn’t going to be the first to say it. Vining was ready, too. She was drained. But there was a lot of work to do and she enjoyed giving Caspers a hint of what it meant to run with the big dogs. Someone needed to give this guy a lesson in humility.
His cell phone rang relentlessly. His hopped-up chatter laced with street jargon was to her like nails on a blackboard. Her cell rang once.
“Hi, Mom,” said Emily. “Still there, huh? I’m ready. Are you coming home?”
Vining remembered her foolish promise to take Emily to the crime scene, enabling her daughter’s dark hobby.
“Em, it’s nine o’clock. You have school tomorrow. Don’t you have homework?”
Vining answered her own question aloud, in harmony with her daughter, “I finished it hours ago.”
Emily was a more serious student than Vining had ever been. Sitting down and attacking homework right after arriving home from school was still beyond Vining’s comprehension, but it was second nature to Em.
“I don’t go to bed until eleven, Mom. We’ll be home by then.”
Vining told Emily she would wait at the bridge for Granny to drop her off there. Vining was ready to leave but didn’t actually mind not going straight home. She was feeling restless. The bridge was a good place to go. She’d seen it a million times, at all hours of the day and night, but was drawn to see it again, to see it as it was now. The energies of Frankie Lynde, Lolita, and her partner were now fused to the place where so many desperate souls had said a prayer—or not—and taken a free fall into the arroyo. The plunge from the top had lured them. Vining felt its allure, too.