by M. Z. Kelly
I turned what she’d said over in my mind for a moment. “If Jezzie was using steroids, how do you think she would have beat the drug testing? The Olympics has a very aggressive testing program.”
“A lot of it’s a matter of timing, avoiding testing at the time the red blood cell count is elevated. That would probably require someone gaming the system.”
“You mean, as in having someone on the inside who could change the test results or the timing of the tests?”
“That would be my guess.”
I pushed the last of the grilled sea bass around on my plate and frowned. “So what you’re telling me, Brie, is that absent someone admitting they assisted Jezzie in cheating on the tests, or someone saying they supplied her with steroids or observed her using them, it’s going to be impossible to prove?”
“I think that would be a pretty good summary of where we stand.”
***
I got home around ten, Bernie greeting me with a tail-wag at the front door. I was feeling a little depressed after rehashing my disastrous life with Brie and because of what she’d told me about her marriage ending.
In my weakened condition I accepted a glass of Chica Loca from Natalie and pulled a box of Fugs out of the pantry. Fugs are my own creation, a cheesy concoction borrowed from an old Hungarian recipe involving deep fried carbs and mega-calories. My depression deepened after I joined my roommates in the family room.
“I shoulda just blown my brains out in Vegas,” Elvis said, removing the dead squirrel topper from his head. “What do I gotta live for anyway? I’m old, bald, and broke. Everything hurts, even my nuts.”
“You just suffered a groin pull last night,” Nana said. “The only cure for that is to get right back in the saddle.” Her voice was strained, somehow deeper. She sounded like she had a cold or maybe was channeling Willie Nelson.
Mo twisted a strand of yellow wig hair between her fingers and said to Nana’s boyfriend, “If you decide to do yourself in just don’t make a mess ‘round here. We got enough problems.”
“He’s not going to shoot himself,” Nana said in her altered voice, at the same time patting Elvis’s skinny leg. “We just need to work out a few kinks.”
Natalie came over and bent down to Nana. “What’s up with your teeth? They look bigger and you aren’t makin’ that ridiculous clickin’ noise anymore.”
She had a point. I looked at Nana more closely and realized that her teeth looked like something out of one of those silly commercials where dogs wear dentures.
“They had a special at Starlight Dentistry on the strip in Vegas,” Nana said. “I got a whole new set of choppers for two hundred ninety-nine bucks.”
“I know ‘bout places like that,” Mo said, grimacing. “For that price, I bet they took your teeth out of some big old dead guy at the morgue, washed ‘em off, and stuck ‘em in your mouth.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Nana said. “They’re called, Leonardo’s. My Leo’s are considered state of the art.”
Mo frowned. “Looks to me like Leo musta had a mouth like a bull moose.”
Elvis was saying something about deadly viruses when I heard a door closing and Tex coming down the hall.
“How’s Project J comin’ along?” Natalie asked him as he entered the room.
Natalie’s nerdy boyfriend took a seat next to her. His hair looked like he’d just had a close encounter with Leo and the moose had licked his head.
“I should be done before your class starts,” Tex said to Natalie.
“Project J?” I said, feeling the effects of Chica Loca. “Don’t tell me you’re working on some kind of nuclear experiment in the basement.”
“Not this week. Dr. Ludmilla gave me some blueprints and I’m just putting a few things together for her. It should make your class quite…stimulating.” He whispered in Natalie’s ear. She giggled and told Tex that he was a very bad boy. Another wave of depression hit me when I thought about doing my segment of the upcoming class.
Nana said something to Elvis about her not being contagious. Natalie then said to her, “Your voice sounds like you swallowed a bloody bullfrog.”
Tex said, “The change in Nana’s voice is likely the result of a differentiation in the laryngeal airflow relative to the articulators, thereby strengthening her pitch and tone.”
“What the hell did he just say?” Mo asked me.
“Nana’s new teeth make her sound like Willie Nelson,” I said, before swigging another round of Chica Loca.
“My friend Alice wants to come to your class,” Nana said to Mo in her new voice. “Maybe we’ll bring a couple of our girlfriends, too. We’ll sit in the back row, be quiet as mice.”
Mo wagged a yellow-nailed finger at her. “Last warning—you show up and I’m having Kate cuff you to my bumper and I’m dragging you through the parking lot.”
“Might not be a bad way to go,” Elvis said. “Someday an asteroid’s going to smack the earth and we’re all going to die anyway.”
“Or we might have a nuclear war or a terrorist strike,” Mo said, doing an eye roll and shaking her head.
Elvis’s shoulders sagged. He exhaled. “Damn right. What a miserable fucking world.”
I took a big gulp of Chica Loca, downed a Fug, and changed the subject before I gave in to the urge to pull out my gun and shoot myself. I said to Mo, “Did you and Natalie go over to Northridge Studios today?”
Mo nodded. “We talked to their human Resources department. Got us an address for your father’s killer and checked it out, but it’s just a mail drop.”
“Let me have the address,” I said. “I’ll have our officers do some checking, see if he shows up for his mail.”
Natalie scribbled down the address. “The talk is that Cooper, or John Felton as he now calls himself, might be working part-time, doing makeup for an upcoming fuck film.”
“An X-rated movie? What’s the name of it?”
“Don’t know, somethin’ like Dirty Girls from Mars. Mo and me are gonna check it out. We’ll let you know what we find out.” Tex whispered in her ear again. Natalie responded with more chuckles.
Mo waved a hand as I started to tell them to stay away from the studio. “You keep worrying like this, Kate, and you’re gonna turn into Elvis.”
As if on cue, Nana’s boyfriend said, “I think I’m having heart problems. My chest hurts and I’m sweating. Somebody call a doctor.”
“Look on the bright side,” Mo said to him. “A heart attack will save you from the war and the terrorists.”
“I can nurse you back to health” Nana said, her new choppers looking like something out of Shark Week. “Let’s go upstairs so I can examine you.”
Nana dragged Elvis over to the stairway scooter like a big game hunter who’d just bagged herself an elderly deer. She pushed him into the contraption, got on his lap, and they rode upstairs together. She turned and smiled at us, her new Leo’s gleaming. For some reason The Big Bad Wolf came to mind.
Mo turned to me and said, “If those two start screaming again like last night you’re gonna have another homicide on your hands.”
I was now really feeling the effects of Crazy Girl. I opened my big mouth and without thinking said, “Speaking of homicide, what do you guys know about Chucky Wilson dealing steroids.” Even as I asked the question I regretted it.
“I heard that big bag of pork got whacked today,” Natalie said. “Was it a drug deal gone bad?”
I shrugged, trying to downplay my earlier question. “We don’t know.”
“Steroids?” Mo said. I could see her wheels turning. “You think that monster might have been dealing steroids to Jezzie before she died?”
All I needed was for Mo and Natalie to open their big mouths at the university and then have it get back to the press. “We don’t have any…”
“Wow, this is big,” Mo went on. “Wait till news of this gets out.”
I tried to cover my tracks. “This is confidential. You can’t mention it to anyone.”
“We’ll keep it on the down low,” Natalie assured me. “But somebody at the school’s gotta know if Jezzie was on the juice ‘cause of Chucky.”
“No,” I said. “You’ve got to be discrete.” What was I saying? These two were about as discrete as a couple of prostitutes in a church.
“This is all starting to make sense now,” Mo said. “I’ll betcha Barry Ralston was also juiced. Maybe that’s why he went psycho in Bakersfield.”
I remembered now that Mo had mentioned Ralston might be on steroids when she and the others had been held hostage. I tried to process that but had trouble focusing due to the effects of Chica Loca.
“I think I’m going to call it a night,” I said, standing up and feeling a little wobbly.
“Kate’s drunk,” Mo said. “She can’t hold her Crazy Girl.”
“I can too,” I said, stumbling over to the chair and grabbing Bernie’s leash.
I headed into the backyard so that my dog could take care of business, and before I had to endure another insult. I was turning the corner, coming around some rose bushes when I lost my footing. I went down with a splash and realized I’d landed in the Jacuzzi. My friends must have heard what happened because they all rushed outside.
“Shit…shit…shit,” I screamed.
Mo, Natalie, and Tex came over as I tried to regain my bearings and salvage what was left of my dignity. Bernie also trotted over and sniffed at me, wagging his tail.
Mo looked at me, then at Natalie and Tex. “I knew Bernie was talented,” she said, “But Kate’s now giving him commands to crap.” She looked back at me. “Maybe you should think about entering him in one of them dog shows.”
“Funny,” I said, pulling myself out of the water as Natalie and Tex laughed and pointed at me. “What’s so damn funny?”
“It’s your hair, Kate,” Natalie said. “You look like ya borrowed Elvis’s hair.”
I stood there trying to wring the water out of my blouse when we heard someone talking from an open upstairs window. Then the voices got louder until I realized it was Nana, in the persona of Willie Nelson, and her boyfriend, Elvis. They were having sex.
Mo turned, stomped back toward the house, and said, “I’m gonna murder ‘em both.”
I turned to my other roommates and said, “Maybe I’ll get lucky and an asteroid will destroy the earth tonight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I spent most of the next morning nursing a headache and fussing with hair that was in a state of full rebellion, thanks to my tumble into the Jacuzzi. After a shower, some conditioner, and twenty minutes with a blow dryer, I decided that I looked semi-human again.
My wardrobe was almost as big a disaster as my hair. I’d lost most of my clothes in an apartment fire a few months back and since I was broke there wasn’t much to choose from. I finally settled on a brown pantsuit that seemed a little tighter than the last time I’d worn it.
If there was a guy around, I would have asked, “Does this outfit make my butt look big?” Since I didn’t have a guy to lie to me, I asked Bernie the question. He just wagged his tail and whined, which I took to mean, No way, Kate. In fact, your outfit is the bomb. Self-delusion can be a wonderful thing.
I then took Bernie into the backyard to do his duty where I told him, “You’re lucky that you can go to work naked.” While he was doing the trot and sniff my phone rang. It was my mother.
“Shumi wants to meet you,” Mom said. “I thought we could get together tomorrow night at Musso and Frank’s if you’re free. It would be the perfect way to introduce the two of you.”
I’d almost forgotten about my mother’s new beau.
“How did your night out with him go?” I asked, trying to keep images of my mother having sex with the new age guru out of my head.
“We had a wonderful evening. There’s so much we have in common. It’s truly amazing.”
I decided to tease her. “I hope you didn’t get too…friendly, if you know what I mean.”
Her voice pitched higher. “Kate!” She laughed. “We just kissed and did some petting.”
Petting? My mother did petting? Yuck.
I checked my watch and realized I was behind schedule for work. “I’m running late, Mom. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
On the way out the door, Natalie reminded me that the sex and relationships class was tonight. I turned to her and said, “Just promise me that you won’t embarrass me.” She just smiled, turned to Tex and giggled.
On the way into the station I left a message with my brother’s friend Barry at Sinclair’s Salon, asking if he could work me into his schedule after work tomorrow. I then got a call from Lieutenant Edna telling me that everyone was to report to the Media Relations Section in Los Angeles at nine. The lieutenant didn’t know what the meeting was about, but said, “Anytime you’re told to appear at MRS no fucking good will come of it.”
I found Edna, Charlie, and the brothers milling around the corridor outside MRS, waiting for an audience with the commander. I was told that Pearl couldn’t make the meeting but would catch up with us in the afternoon.
“Of all the times for Decker to be on vacation,” Edna grumbled. “Nothing like being thrown to the wolves by the captain—again.”
“We got your back, lieutenant,” Kyle Gooch said. It looked like he’d added more highlights to his gelled hair. “My bro and me are ready to go boom-boom on the commander if he gets out of line.”
“Roger that,” Glade said. “If we have to, we’ll go Hannibal on him, Chucky-style.”
“You two keep your big mouths shut during the meeting and stay out of my fucking way,” Edna fumed. He turned, told me he was going to get some fucking coffee, and stormed off.
“I think our boss has hemorrhoids,” Glade said to me.
“What?”
“He acts like his rectum is on fire. The Dude’s gonna blow an ass gasket one of these days.”
He had a point but I didn’t respond. Instead, I walked over to Charlie who was sitting on a bench looking like he’d just lost his best friend. I sat beside him as Bernie settled at my feet.
“What gives, partner?”
He breathed heavily, coughed. “Wilma called last night. We talked for a while, then I went over to her place.” A smile found my grumpy partner’s lips. “I didn’t get much sleep.”
“So you two are getting back together?”
He shrugged. “She admitted that she’s been visiting an old boyfriend in the valley. I think that’s the house I followed her to. According to her they’re just friends but I don’t believe it for a minute.”
“Why not?”
Charlie looked at me like I’d just scored a fifty on an IQ test. “Women and guys can’t be friends, Kate. It would be like me suddenly sprouting wings, turning into a squirrel, and flying around the station.”
I tried to keep from laughing at the visual. “But you and I are friends.”
“That’s different. You’re…”
Muriel Shafter came out of the MRS office and called to us. I turned back to Charlie and said, “I’m what?”
“You’re just not my type, that’s all.”
Thanks, Charlie. Not that I wanted to be your type, but lately I’m not feeling like I’m anybody’s type.
When Edna arrived with his coffee we all assembled in the conference room adjacent to Commander Nelson’s office where we’d met with him before.
Muriel Shafter began the meeting, her fish eyes not making contact with anyone as she spoke. “The commander would like an update on the Rose case. Haley Tristan wants to run a follow-up story and we’re considering granting her access to the investigation again.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” Okay, I didn’t say it. What I did say was, “I don’t understand why this is even being considered after the negative comments she made about the department in her prior article.”
Shafter shuffled some papers in front of her. “We think the article was fair.”
“Fair
? It was a hatchet job and she personally disparaged me.”
“Thick skin, Detective,” Commander Nelson said, taking over for his personal twit.
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve got to develop a thick skin. Comes with the territory.”
“I’d have to be a rhino not to have been offended by her comments.”
I got a couple of atta-girls from the brothers, before Edna gave them the stink eye and they shut up.
Nelson chuckled and then went on. “The chief considers the article to be a new beginning. He recognizes that some people might be upset by what she wrote, but he thinks it could eventually lead to a better relationship with the press and more open communication.”
“Then The Beast is insane.” Okay, I was fantasizing again. Instead, I tried to be tactful but get my point across. “In the meantime, he’s alienating his officers, losing support at the street level.”
“Your opinion is duly noted,” Nelson said, his eyes narrowing. “Let’s move on. I want a summary of where we stand.”
I exhaled, trying to calm myself. Edna and I then took a few minutes, going over the Juanita Sanchez case as it tied into the Rose murder, explaining that her killer, Jeremy Shulman, was murdered by the victim’s mother in an act of revenge. I said that Lydia Sanchez probably had help in killing Shulman but we had no leads on an accomplice. We then explained how steroids were found in Shulman’s truck and that we had a police report linking him to Chucky Wilson.
“Shulman was positively identified by a friend of Jezzie’s as hanging around her practices and intimidating her,” I said. “We think he might have been acting in concert with Wilson, maybe pressuring Jezzie to rehire him as her agent. Or it could be that he was blackmailing her by threatening to expose her steroid use. It’s possible that when she refused to cooperate Shulman killed her at Wilson’s direction, but that’s only speculation at this point.”
“What makes you think Jezzie Rose was using steroids?” Nelson said.
“Kate found a partial label in her bedroom that looks like it was from a doping agent used by athletes to stimulate red blood cell production,” Edna explained. “It gives them a competitive advantage. Several other performance enhancing drugs, some coke, and some meth were also found in Wilson’s home and office.”