by Anna Burke
Leaning over Jessica, she grabbed her by the shoulders, “Stand up and try out your legs. We have to get out of here.”
Jessica did as she was told. Her legs felt like spaghetti, and her head spun as she stood. “Where is he? Where are they?”
“Let’s just say Chris is indisposed, out of it, for the time being. The doc’s out running errands. Whoever took the Mercedes gave Max a burner phone, and he’s been on it pretty much nonstop. He was working angles all day yesterday, trying to score a couple passports, and find a way out of the country. That hasn’t put him in a great mood, so I’ve tried to stay invisible. Turns out their contacts are less than trustworthy at the moment, so he’s been scouting new ones, and that’s taken time. Walk, Jessica, do it. We have to move.” She gave Jessica a little push that nearly toppled her. Regaining her balance, Jessica paced around the bed and back.
“When the cops busted Arnold Dunne, they picked up most of their associates in the general vicinity. The ones that haven’t been rounded up have scattered, gone over the border, or underground, like we are. Last night, they were talking about giving up on Mexico, altogether and heading north. Their latest scheme is to cross the border into Canada and head to Cuba from there. I didn’t hear all of it. He knocked us out again.” Kim shrugged her shoulders.
“Here’s the thing, Jessica. When I said Max is out trying to pick up a couple passports, I mean a couple, as in two. So, maybe they plan to ditch us like the sedan. There are a lot of other options those sick fucks might have in mind for us. Please, keep moving.” She was back in command mode. Jessica did her best to take more steps. Her head was pounding and she felt like she might heave again at any moment, but she was already steadier on her feet.
“I’ve put one more glitch into their plans, for the moment. The doc left me with Chris this morning without giving me one of his magic knock-out potions. The puny freak was feeling frisky after managing to evade the police for a couple days, so I agreed to play along. Yuck! That scrawny prick will be back in alpha dog mode soon. He’ll start to feel invulnerable, maybe invulnerable enough to end our troublesome lives. In his mind, I’m an ungrateful wretch, and you have done him a great injustice. We both deserve to be punished for our sins against the man forever at the center of his own universe.” She went to the window near the door to the room, pulled back the edge of the curtain and scanned the area around the motel. “You ready?”
“Can I pee first?”
“Oh my God, yes, hurry up, please?”
“Okay,” Jessica replied, on her way to the bathroom.
“I agreed to play one of his favorite sex games this morning, Jessica. As degrading and repulsive as that is, it gave me the opportunity I needed. With Max gone, I shot that bastard full of enough shit, pilfered from the doc’s supply, to knock him out all day. He’s barely breathing, so maybe it’s going to kill him. Serves him right for all he’s done. Your friend had a come-to-Jesus moment at the wrong time, Jessica. They had to pack her off quick, before she could squeal about what went on alongside Mr. P’s legendary legit work. It was just a matter of time for her anyway. She was a favorite, but at nineteen, she was old and used up, like me. I’m no longer awed by the man or the three-ring-circus he runs, freak show and all. You ready?”
“Yes, I’m so cold,” Jessica said, wishing she had more time to steady her still wobbly mind and body. She was chilled to the bone, and her teeth chattered. A consequence of her physical condition combined with the twisted tale Kim told. Something didn’t smell right.
“Come on, please hurry. I promise you, Max won’t want to leave us alone much longer.” Kim dug around in the bedclothes and came up with the blazer Jessica had worn when she left for her office on Sunday. She tossed the jacket to Jessica, who put it on hoping to ward off the chill.
“That monster doesn’t trust me one bit. He doesn’t think much of Chris at the moment, either. No, he’s going to want to get back here soon to save his own neck. A neck your friend Kelly took a jab at with a steak knife before she died. That’s how she got away. Well, that’s how she got away as far as the parking lot. Chris told me all about it, the stinking son-of-a-bitch.”
“Do I smell smoke?”
“Yeah, there’s a fire on the ridges above Palm Springs. The roads in and around the valley are crawling with fire fighters and highway patrol. Some roads that lead over the mountains to San Diego are closed, roadblocks set up too. More trouble for our outlaw pals.” Kim was standing behind the curtain, looking out the window again. Jessica caught a peek. The skies over Indio were laden with dark clouds that had drifted east from the South Palm Canyon area where Kim said locals could see the ridges burning. A disconcerting sight, apparently. Not as disconcerting as the sight she glimpsed before they fled their motel room.
Kim had gone into Mr. P’s bedroom and turned on the television, with Jessica on her heels. It was in disarray, most notably, the hotel phone ripped out of the wall. Mr. P was out cold with one bony arm shackled to the bedpost by a pair of golden handcuffs. The fingers on that hand were adorned with bright red nail polish. His face was made up with, smoky eye shadow, blush and pouty lips. Drool pooled on the pillow near his lips. He was completely naked and exposed. “Meet the Lilliputian Mr. P,” Kim said as she tossed a cover over the man. A large sex toy dropped to the floor with a thud. “Overcompensation,” Kim commented without skipping a beat. She worked quickly to lock the door to Mr. P’s bedroom from the inside, while standing in the outer sitting area. The doc would have to pick the lock or break it down, once he figured out that Mr. P was not still amusing himself with Kim.
Outside, they edged their way along the open corridor on the second floor and around a corner to a set of stairs at the back of the motel. Jessica held onto the stair rail as they made their way to the ground. The heat and smoke outdoors undid much of the progress she had made fighting off the drug-induced torpor. She stood at the foot of the stairs, trying to clear her head and figure out where they were.
When she ventured there to interview Bobbie Simmons, Jessica realized how little she knew about Indio. Indio had hosted the Riverside County Fair and the National Date Festival for sixty years. She had gone to the Date Festival numerous times while growing up in the desert, watching with delight as animals paraded across the stage at the finale of the annual Arabian Nights pageant. They had since added the hugely successful Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals to their credits as the “City of Festivals,” but those were held at the Polo Grounds near La Quinta. She struggled to find a recognizable landmark or a street sign that might reveal where they were. From the second floor, she could see that the roadway in front of the motel ran along train tracks to an overpass some distance away, but there was not much in between. They needed to get to a phone.
“Kim, why don’t we go to the registration desk and ask the clerk on duty to call 911?” Jessica whispered the question to her companion.
“I tried to call the cops from our room, Jessica, but couldn’t get the damn thing to let me call out. Some creep at the front desk finally picked up and asked me what he could do for me. I made up some story about wanting to call out so I could get food delivered. He just laughed and said ‘that big handsome doctor of yours told me he was going out to get food. I understand a couple members of your group are under the weather. The doc gave strict orders for you to rest, with no visitors or phone calls. Do I need to call him?’ I told him that wouldn’t be necessary, and yanked the damn phone out of the wall, I was so pissed. That was about twenty minutes ago, right before I woke you. Any idea where we are? We need a gas station or a fast food restaurant, any place like that with a phone.”
“I think the main road out there is Indio Boulevard. There aren’t a lot of shops along the roadway. That overpass west of us is Monroe, and that takes us back toward town. Not close on foot. I couldn’t see what’s to the east. If we get around to the front, we’ll be more exposed, but maybe we can spot somewhere to run. I don’t know what other options we ha
ve, Kim.”
“Okay, I don’t see a way out of here from the back or the side. The motel and parking lot are enclosed by the frigging fence. Let’s stay close to the building around the front, in case the doc has someone else babysitting besides the creep at the front desk.” As soon as they came around the corner, they spotted a gas station one street over. Unfortunately, Kim was right. There was only one way around the fence, and that was through a front entrance leading out of the parking lot to the street. The parking lot was nearly empty. A plain, white, unmarked van sat off to one side, and two cars sat opposite the front entrance, but most of the distance they had to traverse was wide open. There was nothing to shield them from view as they ran.
“I think it’s now or never, Jessica. Are you ready to run for it?”
“Ready as I’m going to be.” With that they dashed diagonally across the parking lot from the corner of the building where they were hiding in the shadows. As they neared the opening to the fence at the motel entrance, a car, two cars, actually, approached at high speed. Not too far away, sirens wailed. Jessica spotted the angular face of the doc at the wheel of the first car that turned into the lot. He did not see them right away, because he was peering in his rearview mirror at the car behind him. When he returned his gaze forward, he spotted them. He hit the accelerator and raced right for them.
“Car,” Jessica shouted, yanking Kim toward her as she lunged for the fence, hoping their forward momentum would get them out of the path of the car and closer to that exit.
“Gun,” Kim shouted back, as she tackled Jessica and slammed both of them into the ground. Jessica heard the screeching of tires, and a metallic crunch, as the doc’s car must have come to a halt nearby. They also heard quick “pop, pop” sounds. A bullet whizzed past and pinged off the pavement in front of them. She heard Kim utter a cry of surprise. Jessica, the wind knocked out of her and Kim’s dead weight on top of her, froze as someone returned the gunfire. The sirens grew louder. More tires screeched, doors slammed and a gun battle blazed around them.
A trickle of blood poured from Jessica’s nose. A torrent gushed from Kim. Jessica managed to wriggle out from under Kim’s body and found the bullet hole in Kim’s shoulder. Taking off her jacket, Jessica used it staunch the blood flow, applying pressure as best she could, while staying low to the ground. As suddenly as the chaos had begun, it ended.
“Yo, Jessica, you okay?”
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Peter,” she managed to say, smiling wanly, as she did her best to keep pressure on Kim’s wound.
EPILOGUE
“Where have I been all my life, Father Martin? It’s as if I’ve been asleep, unaware of what was going on around me. Now, I’m awake, but I’m living a nightmare. First, I catch my husband in bed with Hollywood Barbie. Then, my best friend’s husband is murdered. Now, I find out my poor, sick, childhood friend was part of this porn underground that trafficked in drugs and people. Just kids really, most of them young girls. I must have slipped into one of those parallel universes my surfer dude buddy talks about. What’s next, a zombie apocalypse?”
Jessica had sought out the priest, hoping to make sense of the latest bout of carnage that had left the doc dead, Kim Reed wounded, and Mr. P in police handcuffs. Jessica and Amy Klein had gotten off easier. On Sunday, Peter March had sent the police to Jessica’s law office on El Paseo as soon as he recognized Jessica’s “not okay” code. The police had found Amy alone, out cold, but physically unharmed. When she regained consciousness at the hospital later she recalled little of what had occurred that day. Jessica was hungry, dehydrated, and hung over from the mix of drugs used to keep her under control. She had some scrapes and bruises from evading the speeding car and bullets aimed at her by the doc before police engaged him in a gun battle. The doc lost that battle, cut down by police officers in a matter of minutes.
When he called Jessica on Sunday, Peter had been in his SUV heading to pick up Kim Reed. He knew, immediately, that Jessica was in trouble. Even before she hung up the phone, Peter took off toward El Paseo. When the signal from Kim’s phone began to move again, he followed. When they headed down Monterey to I-10, Peter was only a few miles behind. By the time they exited the highway at Monroe St., and were driving into Indio, he was closing the distance between them. But then, the signal ceased, and Peter was unable to locate them.
The reason the signal ceased was that a member of the flight crew at Jackie Cochran airport called the doc and tipped him off that Mr. P’s plane was grounded. Border Patrol was watching for Mr. P’s Mercedes at entry points into Mexico, and he suspected they were also being tracked. That’s when the doc pulled the batteries from their cell phones. Minutes later, they checked in to the closest motel, hoping to get out of sight before they were spotted. Using the phone in the motel room, the doc arranged to meet someone to pick up a burner phone and unload the Mercedes.
Meanwhile, the search was on, in earnest, for Jessica, Kim and the two wanted men. It didn’t take long for police to figure out that their plan to capture the men at the airport had been leaked, and by whom. Given how quickly they fell off the radar, Peter and the police figured they could not have gone far. They stepped up patrols in Indio near Peter’s last point of contact.
On Monday, police had broadcast pictures of the two men, along with a brief news story that they were wanted for questioning in the disappearance of Jessica Huntington and Kim Reed. That should have been enough to get the creepy desk clerk to call the police but the doc had paid the bastard off. He continued keeping an eye on them using motel surveillance cameras, and, of course, monitoring their phone calls. The investigators caught a break on Monday when someone spotted the doc at a drive thru in Indio and called it in. He was gone by the time the police reached the restaurant but they were reassured that he was still in the area. They also had a line on the car he was seen driving: an older model, gray Ford, make unknown.
The real break in the case, though, came from a call made by a member of the motel housekeeping staff. She caught a glimpse of “el doctor maligno” leaving one of the rooms at the motel, Tuesday morning. Instead of calling the police, she called a friend who had told her about a woman at Agua Caliente who won a big jackpot and was asking about el doctor, “más feo que Picio”—uglier than sin. That friend called another friend, and less than six degrees of separation later, they reached Bernadette. Bernadette called everyone: Peter March, Detective Hernandez, Frank Fontana, the Palm Desert police, and the Indio police. It took a few more minutes for Bernadette to get the original informant on the phone, directly. With Bernadette’s help they were able to confirm the location of the motel and to pinpoint the room the doc had exited. Police converged on the motel.
Peter, armed with the same information, was already on the move before the police. He spotted the doc first and followed him for a few blocks, keeping his distance. The doc suddenly realized he was being followed and sped up, with Peter picking up the pace to stay with him. When the doc took that turn into the parking lot, Peter was nearly on his bumper. In what must have been a fit of rage, the doc tried to run over Jessica and Kim. Then, abandoning the car, he began shooting at them. One of the bullets hit Kim in the shoulder. Peter returned fire and the doc took cover, as police poured into the parking lot. For the next few minutes a flurry of gunfire was exchanged between the doc and the police. Two bullets felled the man, ending the firefight and his life.
The doped-up Mr. P slept through the entire confrontation. He was hauled out on a stretcher, still unconscious, and taken to a hospital where he remained until he was well enough for police to place him under arrest. He lawyered up right away. He tried to get out on bond, but no way was the court going to give Mr. P another chance to flee. Word traveled like wildfire about the charges piling up against the infuriated little man. Given that one of his “sidelines” involved abusing children, the police had already put him in protective custody. When he wasn’t ranting he was sobbing, feeling sorry for himself and the
way he was being misunderstood and mistreated.
Kim recovered quickly and had, indeed, turned out to be a credible informant about Mr. P and the doc’s furtive illicit enterprises. She led police to a cache of secret documents and private mementoes kept by Mr. P behind a false wall in the ‘panic room’ of his Hollywood Hills home. That included photos and video, all neatly stored. His office, Hollywood Hills and Malibu beach homes were all wired, filming almost every move he made. He described the film archive to Kim as part of his legacy, a documentary of his singular genius. He sometimes added voice overs later, or spoke to the cameras while alone, so that not even a private thought might be missed. The voyeuristic narcissist enjoyed watching those films for hours, endlessly fascinated by his own life and an insatiable appetite for corruption.
In addition to even the most mundane aspects of the bizarre little man’s life, the video recordings documented hours and hours of interaction with young girls and boys. In some cases he “groomed” them, wooing them into submission with promises and presents. They attended parties at his Hollywood Hills house, sang for him and danced, posed and role-played. He made promises to many of them that they were on the road to stardom. They thanked him profusely for film shoots or studio demos, a signed CD from Mr. P’s latest recording artist, a pair of sneakers or jeans.