by H Hiller
“So you hid her in rehab.”
“John was angry that I was getting involved and he pushed me down some stairs. I decided to check into to the same place to get away from him, and they were only happy to take my money to let me do so. We were there when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and I came up with a plan for us to both get away. I hired her as my assistant and told John I was moving here to help with the city’s recovery. John had no interest in leaving Los Angeles, but he helped me get moved. We donated a lot of money and did some fund raisers in Los Angeles and here, and I think it was at one of these that he met Dan Logan. They were peas in a pod and were both looking for a way to make a buck out of the chaos following the storm. John would find a way to get a piece of any business deal he worked on. We kept our money and business separate because of the pre-nuptial agreement he made me sign, and since he died my accountants and lawyers have been trying to sort it all out. I guess it’s a huge mess, but he made a lot of money I am only too happy to spend.”
“And where did Biggie come into the picture?” I asked, less to keep her talking than to let her know I was listening to her story and not busy making assumptions.
“Logan was Biggie’s attorney and knew he wanted to start his own record label, and Logan knew John had music executives as clients in L. A. Record labels need a lot of legal work, and the ones in New Orleans at the time had flooded studios and most of their musicians had evacuated. John saw that there was an opportunity to take the lead if Biggie could get started before they recovered. One day Biggie came to see John and brought Parker. He was two years old and my heart just melted. Georgia and I played with him and she said it was too bad he was going to grow up and be just like his daddy. I knew what she meant and I told John what how worried I was. The next thing I knew John told me Biggie and his girlfriend had agreed to let us adopt Parker. I don’t want to think there was an actual trade, but I’m sure it’s what it looks like.”
“Is that why didn’t you announce the adoption? I would think you would have wanted the good publicity of having saved a Black child from a life of crime and poverty,” Tulip asked, with obvious sarcasm. Amanda did not seem to pick up on it as much as I had.
“I wanted to. John simply said to let the ink dry on the paperwork, and I took it to mean that there were probably some legal problems with the way he had handled it. What little I knew of Dan Logan just made me think so all the more. I didn’t want to get into a custody battle with his parents. It would have been all over the papers.”
Neither Tulip nor I said a word, and I consciously tried to not nod affirmatively out of reflex. I could see the corners of my sister’s mouth beginning to tighten and her fingers had begun to curl towards fists but she held her silence. Her legal practice was built on fighting the sort of attorney John seems to have been, and Logan still is. Amanda wasn’t improving her image with Tulip either when she said her concern about the custody fight was the bad publicity.
“John never liked that Parker got more of my attention than he did. We fought more. I should say he wanted to fight more but Georgia kept facing him down and we were living apart by the time he died. A week before he died he came by and said he had come here to see me, but he spent most of his time talking to Biggie about the way money was pouring through the studio accounts. The last night he was here we got into a shouting match and he tried to hit me. Georgia pushed him and John told me to fire Georgia or he would, but he couldn’t and I refused. He stormed off and then a few days later he was dead.”
“Do you think Georgia had anything to do with that?” Tulip spoke up. I was glad she was the one to ask the obvious, but awkward, question.
“I don’t see how she could have been. She was here the whole time.”
“Fine,” I said and shifted the conversation to the next matter involving her cousin. “Tell us about the blackmail payments you have been making.”
“Like I told you,” Amanda began and reached out to take my hand. Hers was hot and sweaty but mine likely felt almost clammy to her. “Georgia came to me right after John died and said Biggie’s bodyguard had told her that Biggie would go to the press about the adoption unless I started paying him to keep quiet. He only wanted ten thousand dollars a month and that isn’t a lot of money to me, I know that sounds stupid, so I went along with it. I gave her an envelope full of cash at the first of every month and she gave it to the bodyguard to give to Biggie.”
“And then Biggie died,” I said as a way of marking the point at which my sister and I had entered this circus.
“Right. And then she said the bodyguard said we had to pay him just like we had been paying Biggie. So I have been, but I don’t trust him to keep quiet like I did Biggie.”
“Any ideas, counselor?” I turned towards my sister. She had been unusually quiet throughout the entire conversation but I knew her well enough to know she had been sifting each tidbit for anything she could use to her client’s advantage.
“A couple of them actually,” Tulip seemed to be staring at Amanda. “I will go over some options with Amanda while you interview Georgia. She may hold the key to how to turn the tables on Bumper and his handler.”
“I guess you’ll need to take care of Parker while I do this.”
Amanda and I held hands as we walked through the house and then she scooped her son up and headed to the deck.
I sat down on the sofa facing Georgia and turned off the television set. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and waited for whatever was about to happen. She seemed to me to be one of those people who reacted to the world around her but did very little to keep things from happening in the first place. She learned to scrap her way out of her messes while following what she hoped was the path of least resistance. No doubt she sensed things were about to change again.
“You need to tell me everything, from the beginning.” This was all I said to her. I did not want to give her the slightest clue of what I already knew. I was hoping she had never confided to Amanda the worst things she had done.
“About what?” She initially tried to stall, as I expected. I said nothing. “What did Amanda tell you?”
“What matters right now is what you tell me.” Georgia seemed conflicted about what to tell me as I had given her nothing to work with. “Let me be clear. I did not come here planning to arrest you. I just need you to help me to connect some dots in my investigation.”
She continued to stare at me as though she was weighing her options. “Whatever I have done was to protect Amanda and Parker.”
“I understand that.” I truly did.
“Amanda needs someone to be strong for her. She’s always had bad taste in men, and who to trust.”
“So you’re her self-appointed knight in shining armor?”
Georgia shook her head. “I just want to make sure she’s okay. I took care of protecting her from John, when he was still around. I have kept Bumper and Biggie from hurting her and Parker.”
“Let’s start over. Maybe begin with your relationship with Amanda.”
“She’s my cousin. Our fathers are brothers, and both are just mean drunks. I stole one of my daddy’s junk cars and drove to Hollywood the night I graduated high school. Amanda had married John by then. They met at a party. She moved in with him and he got her started in the movies, but low budget stuff. She got herself a new agent and started getting good roles. John started beating on her when he lost control of her, but she just wouldn’t leave him. I got a job dancing in a joint on Sunset and took up with guys that weren’t no better than my father. I wound up dating a guy in a biker gang that was selling dope and guns and got scared of what would happen if I ever tried to break up with him. Amanda checked both of us into a rehab place that let her hide out while I got clean. We decided to come out here and start over.”
“And what about your relationship with Bumper?”
“I met him at Biggie's nightclub right after it got opened. John asked me to check it out because Biggie kept asking him for more
and more money and John wanted to know where the money was going. I met Bumper and told him I was working for Amanda. Biggie called me a couple of weeks later and asked if I'd like to make an extra five hundred bucks a week. He told me about being Parker’s real dad and how he just wanted to see his son. He wanted to know if I would bring him by the studio every week or so to make some extra money. I figured I could use the money and Amanda wouldn’t have to know.”
“This was part of your watching her back?” I said. Georgia scowled and I decided to hold my sarcasm in check. “When did Amanda find out about this?”
“She’s never told me she knows anything. John saw a picture of me at the studio with Parker and called me from Los Angeles just before he got killed in that car-jacking. He said he was going to tell her the next time he was here. I was going to tell her about Biggie myself after the funeral and all, but Bumper told me Biggie and him was going to blackmail her about the adoption. Did she tell you that?”
“Yes.” This was not the response she expected. “She also said that she gave the money to you to pass along. How do we prove you weren’t the one keeping the money?”
“Bumper would have hurt me bad if I didn’t give him the money,” she protested. I couldn’t tell if she had misunderstood my implication that she was acting alone or if she thought I somehow underestimated the huge bodyguard’s strength.
“What did Bumper do with the money?” I knew I was hoping for too much to think she may be able to put money in Gabb’s hands. “Did Biggie ever mention the payoffs to you when you took Parker to see him, or was Bumper the only one telling you the money went to Biggie?”
“I don't know what Biggie knew about that money. He never brought it up and he just kept paying me to bring Parker by. So, you know, I did that. I'm really sorry about it, and I know Amanda will probably still fire me for it when she finds out now.”
“Probably. But I don’t see why I need to be the one to tell her about it.” Getting behind this woman’s ingrained defenses was not unlike trying to pet a tiger with a steak in your other hand. “So tell me about the storage locker full of guns.”
“Which storage locker?” Georgia immediately blurted. The choice of words made me wonder if Biggie might have arsenals stashed all over the place.
“You are the one Bumper hired to rent a locker for Biggie to store his guns in, right? You used a fake ID, and I assume you were driving the car Amanda owned before she bought the Volvo, right?” I was fishing on a lot of this. I had no idea what car Amanda owned previously, and I probably should have checked. Georgia shook her head at these accusations, but she was also thinking very hard about what to actually say.
“That wasn’t her car. Bumper is the one who gave me one to drive, and the ID I used. He said they needed a place to store something Biggie was collecting. I just did it as a favor for Biggie, not for Bumper.”
“Where did he get the fake ID?’
“I don’t know,” she assured me. “He just took my picture and the next day he gave me the driver’s license. I had to give it back to him when I brought the car back.”
“When did you find out what Biggie was storing?”
“Bumper told me. He said he was collecting guns and was going to turn them in to the police when they did a buy-back thing. Biggie wanted to get some good publicity.”
“And what became of the guns? They seem to have disappeared.”
“I don’t know.”
The missing guns were becoming important for no useful reason I could see, except to know the truth. The only two people who knew where they were had now both denied any knowledge of their fate. Bumper was a proven liar, but I believed his denial more.
“Yes, you do. The guns are gone and there’s not much I can do about them. I just have to know where they went.”
Georgia stared at me for a long moment before she spoke. “I traded them to my ex-boyfriend in L. A.”
“I thought the whole idea of moving here was to get away from him.”
“It was, but he tracked me down. He’d call and threaten me about what would happen if I ever told anybody about what he did when we were together.”
“I need to read you your rights before you go on, okay?” I said and hastily read them off to her. She listened to my recitation and took a deep breath before acknowledging that she understood she was in very deep trouble. “What did you get in exchange for the guns?’
“I told him John was trying to get me fired and he said he’d take care of that if I gave him the guns I told him Bumper had me hide for Biggie. I only told him about the guns so he would know I knew some people here that would make trouble for him if he came after me.”
“What did you think he meant when he said he would take care of John? Is your old boyfriend a real persuasive talker?”
“I knew what he meant,” Georgia said and tears began to flow. She understood she had just admitted something very bad to a detective who didn’t like her very much. Maybe she thought I would shoot her on the spot for what she had done.
Bumper had to know she was behind the disappearance of the guns. Maybe he had made the connection between the timing of the guns disappearance and John’s death. He might be saving the knowledge as a bargaining chip, or had at least figured out a way to frame her for renting the locker and hiding the guns in the first place. Bumper had likely given me the list of guns as a way to let me know he had something on Amanda’s cousin and could start a nasty tabloid feeding frenzy anytime he wanted.
That situation was bad, but now it was time to confront Cisco’s assertion about her involvement in Biggie’s death. “I need to know what you know about the dog that killed Biggie.”
“I didn't know it would be so messy. It wasn't what I wanted to happen at all,” she sighed, close to tears. I was surprised enough that I just waited for her to start again. I had made the dog statement just to see if she had any knowledge at all, still hoping she might implicate Bumper. Georgia was full of bad news, and it was all coming out.
“So you knew about the dog attack?” I sat back in my seat and braced myself for my theories about Bumper’s involvement to collapse. Georgia finally broke the silence.
“I met Cisco at the club one night, when he came in with Jerry. They were hanging with Tyshika. That's when I found out her cousin worked at the dog place. Anyway, Cisco and me hooked up. I went to his place and saw his dogs. I knew he was using them to fight. I told him about Bumper taking money he said was for Biggie’s blackmailing Amanda. Cisco told me how we could kill Bumper with one of his dogs. We just had to get it close to him.” Georgia began to go into more detail. “So I told Bumper it would make Biggie look badder if he had a big attack dog. He thought so, too, and started working on Biggie to get one. Biggie didn’t want one because he was afraid of dogs, but Tyshika said her cousin was a dog trainer and could train one any way Biggie wanted. She had nothing to do with any of what Cisco and me had planned.”
I was starting to understand why Cisco had distanced himself from this when I spoke to him earlier. It occurred to me that, in a rare moment of clarity, he probably realized he was not in a healthy partnership once he had already committed himself to helping Georgia. I knew that what she was telling me was as close to the truth as I was going to get from either of them. I also knew that her story would probably change the instant she learned Cisco was already trying to trade her in for a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“Tell me about the actual dog attack.”
“Cisco said he had a way to make a dog go crazy. It was some crazy-assed dog whistle that only dogs can hear. All you had to do was blow it near the dog. Bumper cornered me at the studio a couple of weeks before Biggie got killed and said he knew all about my plan with Cisco. He said he was a cop and could arrest us, but said he’d leave us alone if I helped him use the dog on Biggie. I didn’t want to, but he had what Cisco and me talked about in that VIP room on some kind of tape. I agreed to help him but never told Cisco that Bumper knew about everything.”
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“Why not?”
“I was going to find some way to get the dog to kill both of them. Then everybody would be rid of what they was doing. Bumper talked Biggie into having his birthday party at the Hard Rock Café and told me what day they would pick up that dog. I called Cisco and told him when to switch the dogs and then I blew on the whistle out on the balcony when Bumper went back to the car and gave me the signal. He was going to wave his hand just before he closed the door.”
“So did you tell Cisco it was actually Bumper that wanted the dogs switched?”
“No. I thought he might chicken out if he knew there was that videotape. Bumper told me to tell him to change the dogs when Tyshika picked up Biggie’s dog. Cisco had a dog that would go nuts when it heard the whistle and he dyed it blue to hide the switch.”
“It certainly did go nuts. You blew the dog whistle out on your balcony when Bumper wanted the dog to attack. Is that right?” I hated to ask the question, because I truly did not want to hear another affirmative response.
She simply nodded. “He said to blow the whistle when he closed the door. I tried to get it to attack him, too. I blew the whistle while he had the door open, but he got away”
“Why didn't you just call the cops about Amanda being blackmailed?”
“Bumper said he could make it look like I was doing the blackmail, and he showed me a badge and said he'd have me killed in jail if I ever said anything.”
“Bumper told you he is a cop?” Arresting the arrogant son-of-a-bitch for impersonating a police officer was going to be nearly as satisfying as the murder charge.
“He told me he is an undercover cop. Is he lying?” Georgia wondered. I'm not sure why she thought I would know, but I did know. Good help is damn hard to find, but a nanny that will kill to protect you and your child is almost priceless. “Am I under arrest?”
“Right now you are just under house arrest,” I made something up just to keep up the appearances of knowing what the hell I was doing. Doing nothing would only confuse everybody. “Do not discuss this with anyone, especially Amanda or Bumper. I will see what I can work out in exchange for your testimony before I talk to you again. I am serious, Georgia, do not speak to anybody.”