Hollywood had been left out in the cold a few years back, falling on bad times when the warmth of the spotlight faded and the shakers and movers departed. All that had remained was trash – throw away, non-recyclable, non-refundable trash – human and otherwise.
Hollywood's Chamber of Commerce continued to sell the gold sidewalk stars to actors in the hopes that interest in the city would be revived. The actors paid for their emblems, held a press conference on the Walk of Fame, and scurried back to Pacific Palisades or Brentwood, Malibu or Montana, wherever the streets were clean and the taxes high enough to keep out the riffraff. Recently, though, there had been a turnaround of sorts and the city was off life support. New business was coming in, fine restaurants were opening, and designers were taking a second look at the long-empty storefronts. Still, the sleaze factor remained and you didn't have to look hard to find it. In fact, the sleazy heart of Hollywood was only a short drive from Fremont Place and that's where Cori and Finn headed after they left the Barnett's house.
"Del Shannon is probably turning over in his grave. They didn't even spell it right. It's supposed to be one word. There's supposed to be an apostrophe. I'm pretty sure about that."
Cori's elbow was cocked on the open window of the car and her chin rested on her fist as she checked out the bar called Run Aways.
"You know, O'Brien, I always thought nannies went to the park and hung out with chimney sweeps when they had the day off."
Finn laughed and got out of the car. Cori did the same and checked out the park job. The rear end of the vehicle was hanging in the red zone but it didn't matter. Cops were like that proverbial eight hundred pound gorilla: they could park it anywhere. Finn joined her on the sidewalk and they took a long look at the place that every cop from Palmdale to San Diego had heard about.
If you wanted to find some kid on the lam from Arkansas or Iowa or a thousand points in between, Run Aways was where you started. Why Rachel Gerber, a woman in her late twenties, a woman with a regular paycheck and long work history, had matchbooks from this place and three other dives on this stretch of Hollywood Boulevard was a mystery Finn and Cori wanted to solve.
"After you."
Finn held the door for Cori but he was on her heels when she walked into the windowless box-of-a-bar. All heads turned their way. Finn counted nine people in the place including the bartender. Four appeared to be under age. All of them looked like they could use a night in jail just so they could get solid food, clean clothes, and a shower.
Finn and Cori looked at them, and they looked back as they ran through the possible grievances the law might have with them. Since each had sinned, it really was only a matter of trying to remember which of their trespasses might interest these two. When it was clear the detectives weren't headed for anyone in particular, the murmurs at the far table resumed, two other patrons set sad eyes on the grimy, mute television hanging from the ceiling, and the rest contemplated whatever vision they saw in the bottom of their glass. The detectives slid onto bar stools and doffed their sunglasses.
Cori swept the place one more time. At the far table, the two men staring into their drinks looked like they couldn't afford one between them much less one for each of them. Their hair was long; one had a beard and the other gray stubble. One wore a sweater over a shirt, over that a torn and dirty jacket; the other wore a hoody that was two sizes too big. Both had pants of no specific color or cut. One wore boots without laces, the other tennis shoes without socks. To Cori's right was a woman whose face was as blank as a check. Her hair was brittle and frizzy, mostly blonde, some gray. There were tracks on her stick-thin arms and Cori knew she was probably a lot younger than she appeared. The kids who were passing the time kept their feet on their worn backpacks and bedrolls. Cori knew all their worldly possessions were inside, and that there wasn't a person in the world who cared about them. It was enough to make her want to run home to Amber and Tucker for a hug and a kiss.
She looked away from the people to the place. Run Aways was bad even by boulevard standards: cracked walls, bare bulbs, sticky wood, and a limited selection of libations. Cori kept her hands on top her purse. There was a ninety-nine percent chance there wouldn't be any action, but she liked to have her gun in easy reach in case this was her one percent day. She also didn't want to touch anything.
"Can I help you?" The bartender had a voice like a helium drinker.
"Hope so," Finn said.
"You don't have to hope, officers. Anything I can do, officers. You name it."
The bartender grinned big, proud that he had tagged them even though a ten year old with half a brain could have done the same thing.
"We're looking for information on a woman name Rachel Gerber. She had a German accent."
Finn took Rachel's photo out of his pocket. They had found it stuck in the back of a drawer in her room. It showed a young woman having a happy day at the beach. She was smiling, holding her hair back because it was windy. They couldn't tell which beach she was at because the picture was just Rachel, the water, and the sand. Finn thought her scanty bikini too small for a big girl, but Cori pointed out that European women had a better body image than Americans. What surprised him was that she had a snapshot when most people her age kept their photos on their phones. Finn held it up for the man to see.
"Look familiar?"
The bartender tipped his head one way and then the other. There was a birthmark behind his ear that crawled up the side of his bald head. Finn thought it looked a little like a Shillelagh with the knob knocking on the man's brain to see if anyone was home.
"Naw. Too clean for this joint, know what I mean? Too much meat to be a junky. German, huh? I fought the Germans. Hard people. Women weren't too bad. Know what I mean? Like to be treated rough. Know what I mean?"
"Sure, I know what you mean."
Finn's grip on the photo was unwavering. Suffering fools was part of the job. This man wasn't old enough to have fought the Germans in any war, so Finn concluded he just liked to fight Germans. Finn also doubted he got up close and personal with many ladies much less tough German girls. Finn pushed the photo closer still.
"Look again, friend. The lady had some matchbooks from here. She might have picked them up when she stopped in for a nightcap. She might have been with a man. Average build, five-nine or ten, medium coloring, possibly with wavy hair."
"Who could remember a guy like that? And she could've gotten the matches from any of our loyal customers."
He laughed like a slutty Minnie Mouse as he put an elbow on the bar. The short sleeves on his bowling shirt inched up and exposed an intricate tattoo on his left arm: a woman in the embrace of a dragon. This man thought a lot of himself, Finn decided.
"You've got a lot of loyal customers, do you?" he asked.
"Damn straight. Like one big happy family around here, but I still never saw that one." He shrugged and righted himself. "I'm not on twenty-four hours a day. Why don't you come back at midnight? The night guy's on then, maybe he can help you out."
"Do you work weekends? Sundays? You work Mondays?" Cori asked.
The man turned her way. There were three rolls of extra skin between his skull and shoulders that passed for a neck, and the staff of his mottle-skinned Shillelagh went crooked in the folds.
"Sometimes." His good humor faded when he answered Cori.
"In the last week or ten days?" she pressed.
"Naw. Talk to Jimmy. He's on most Sundays and Mondays. I haven't worked a Sunday for a while. The last Monday I was here at night was two months ago. Sorry. Can't help."
The three of them looked at one another, making the points of a nice triangle where they racked their balls on imaginary felt. The guy behind the bar had a big eight on his head, but until Finn and Cori could clear the table he wasn't going down. Finn pocketed the picture and ran his finger over the bar.
"I'm thinking your cleaning lady must be on vacation," he said. "The health department might not like the way you keep this place. It's b
ad for your customers' well being."
The man giggled. It was a freaky sound coming from a guy with rolls of fat at the base of his skull, a naked woman tattooed on his arm, and a birthmark club whacking his head for all of this lifetime.
"I should be the one to worry. I have to sterilize everything these creeps touch."
He shot a hateful look at the woman three stools down, but continued to smile. The woman didn't notice. She hadn't touched her drink. Finn and Cori stood up. Finn put a card on the bar.
"If we don't get back tonight, ask Jimmy about Rachel Gerber. I wrote her name on the back there, and you can tell him what she looked like. If he's heard of her, one of you give us a call." He pulled himself to his full height, which wasn't as impressive to the human helium balloon as it should have been. "We would surely appreciate it."
"I'll just do that."
He slid the card off the counter and they heard it fall to the floor. Cori rolled her eyes. People could be so trying. Finn reached into his pocket and drew out another card, wrote the name Rachel Gerber on the back, leaned over the bar and stuffed it into the fat man's breast pocket. That did not make him happy. The pecking order was a bummer if you weren't the one pecking. When that was done, Cori and Finn took off. When they were on the outside, Finn turned his face up to the late afternoon sun.
"'Tis wonderful to breathe again."
He laughed a little but Cori was out of sorts. She had a hand up against the wall of the building and was checking out the sole of her shoe.
"Good thing I'm not wearing sandals. What is this gunk?"
When she couldn't identify it, she opted to let the pavement scrape it away. They walked down the street, Cori's shoe sticking and popping with each step. People coming toward them gave them wide berth; people behind them slowed to match their pace. Everyone on the street knew who the cops were no matter how they were dressed. Cori thought she heard a sigh of pedestrian relief when she and Finn turned into Cholo's, the next bar on Rachel Gerber's matchbook map.
Those who actually turned a profit from their suspect activities satisfied their thirst at Cholo's. They wore clothes that were cheap nods to fashion. Leather was in for the men, but a lot of it looked like it had been ripped straight off the back of a cow in the field. A few of them wore open-necked shirts and knock-off designer Italian cut suits. The women were partial to kohl cat-eyes and maroon colored lips. They showed off their cleavage and abs in T-shirts emblazoned with their resumes: bitch, honey pot, princess. Every belly button sported a jewel; ear lobes were hung with chandelier earrings or hoops big enough for any man to jump through. This razor sharp and semi-prosperous group lived off the foibles of the poor ones who drank at Run Aways.
The bartender at Cholo's was not fat, nor did he make a pretense of happiness. He didn't like his job, his face, or his prospects. Life itself was not something that appeared to thrill him. He was thin and tall and bore acne scars that made him strangely appealing even though he was far from good looking. The one thing he didn't have was a problem with the law. He wiped a glass, filled a drink, listened to and answered Finn and Cori's questions, and checked out the picture of Rachel Gerber that Finn showed him.
"What's she done?" He topped off a mug and sent it down the bar.
"She died," Cori said.
"And not in a good way," Finn added.
The bartender shrugged. His psyche could accept the news of sudden, inexplicable death at the hands of others.
"So," Finn said. "Have you seen her?"
"I have."
He rang up six bucks on the register, took a fifty, and made change for a lovely lady in a Lycra jumpsuit who seemed to have forgotten to zip up past her navel.
"When?" Finn took a seat. Cori stood behind him.
"I don't remember."
"Okay." Finn covered his face with one large hand, a gesture that seemed to indicate his patience, while usually beyond measure, was wearing a wee bit thin. When he dropped his hand, he asked: "Did you see her often then?"
"Often enough." The man flipped a glass over, peered inside to see if there was anything left that shouldn't be. "She'd have a drink, get a little wild, then she'd tone it down. By the end of the night she was quieter than when she first came in. That's kind of opposite of the way it usually goes."
"Did she come in with anyone you know?" Cori asked.
"Some guy," the bartender said. "He never gave me any reason to remember him particularly."
"What did he look like? In general," Finn asked.
"I don't know. What do they all look like?" The man shrugged, his polyester satin shirt fluttered a little. "Like every guy who comes in here who doesn't have a lot of money. Like a wanna-be player. Maybe he was running girls. Not that one in the picture though. He was always hitting on some chick in here, but the German girl helped out."
"How was that?" Cori asked.
"He'd hit up on 'em, then the German got in after a while, bought 'em drinks, and moved them to the end of the bar. She talked to them down there. Those two never left with another girl, they just passed numbers."
"Did you see what kind of car they drove?" Cori asked.
"Does it look like I can see through walls?" The man scowled at Cori. He would have done the same to Finn. "This is L.A. I figure they drive. Maybe they live around here and walk. All I know is that they drink." He turned around and put his skinny butt against the back bar. He crossed his arms. "Any other questions?"
"Did she always stay until closing?" Finn asked.
"They both stayed 'till closing when they were here. They came in late, they drank, they chatted up the girls and had a good time. I still can't give you any names."
"Always the same man?" Cori asked.
"Always," he answered.
"Could you pick him out if we showed you pictures?"
The man shook his head. He lit a cigarette. That was a negative.
"Are any of the girls they talked to here?" Finn asked.
He shook his head again. Finn stood up and did the card trick again. This time it didn't disappear under the bar. The man studied it while Finn gave his instructions.
"I want to know if her friend comes in again. If you see any of the women they were interested in, give us a call."
"They won't talk to you, but I'll call anyway. Hey, there is one more thing. The other reason I remember her?" The bartender shrugged as if to say he knew his information was lame. "She always paid."
They thanked him and went back outside. Cori blinked, put a finger to her eyelids, and then blinked again. She hated dark places on bright days. The sunglasses went on. Like everyone else in California, Cori and Finn didn't feel quite dressed without them.
"It looks like Mary Poppins was cleaning a few sooty chimneys on her day off," Finn said.
Cori laughed, "Bert was the chimney sweep, O'Brien. You should know that."
"Irish are too poor to have chimneys or nannies, so what do I know?" Finn looked at his notebook. "One more to go. Stay Awhile is half a mile down."
"I'm not walking that far in heels," Cori said.
"Ah. You're putting your foot down are you, woman?" Finn deadpanned. Cori rolled her eyes but Finn wouldn't be silenced. He took her arm. "No matter. I'm not wanting to walk down these streets dressed like a mortician anyway."
"When we're done down there, we should call it a day and catch some dinner. It's a shame to waste being all dressed up," Cori suggested as they went on their way.
"No babysitting tonight?"
"Amber's got it covered."
"Let's see how late it is when we finish."
They got into the car and as Finn pulled into traffic food was the last thing on his mind. He was wondering about Rachel Gerber, her encrypted computer, the guy she hung with, the women they hit up on and how strange it was that Mary Poppins was a lush and a kinky one at that.
CHAPTER 26
DAY 5 – MORNING
Elizabeth Barnett was prom queen in her senior year of high school. This surpr
ised her, just as she had been stunned to find herself elected freshman class president, sophomore representative to Government Days, and captain of the debate team in her junior year. She was amazed by her good fortune because in her whole life Elizabeth never quite felt good enough or special enough or smart enough to be noticed.
She grew up in a home in which her mother never made a decision for fear of displeasing her husband; she never made a sound for fear of annoying him. The consequences of this could be swift and brutal. Because of this, Elizabeth learned how to do quiet things. She cooked and cleaned, sewed her own clothes, and smiled at her father. The latter seemed to please him greatly, so Elizabeth smiled a lot. For a long while she was as fearful as her mother, but by the time she graduated from high school, she was worn out from being afraid all the time so she wrapped her fears into one ball, labeled it 'life', and kept smiling.
At college Elizabeth found that the mini-town was filled with former prom queens and freshman class presidents who wanted to continue their reigns as the best, the brightest, and prettiest. Usually the competition was subtle but at times there was sporadic open warfare so Elizabeth kept her head down, graduated from school and waited for the one thing that would make her feel happy, needed and significant. The day Sam Barnett showed up on her doorstep, the unwilling victim of a blind date, Elizabeth found what she was looking for: a young man of promise who chose her out of all the women in the entire world and would love her forever.
Sam also found what he was looking for – the perfect wife for the perfect man he was determined to become. She seemed a gentle soul that he could treasure, a woman content within her homey kingdom, a beauty who adored him almost to a fault. They married, set up house, worked hard, had babies, became rich and Elizabeth was happy until she wasn't happy anymore.
Now they were still rich, still married, their babies were dead and Elizabeth Barnett was angry. She had been cheated, gyped and taken advantage of by fate. She had been so careful, so proactive, and so protective when it came to her happy family. That should have counted for some cosmic brownie point, some Marvel Comic super-hero shield, but it hadn't. Her family was destroyed and Elizabeth Barnett was dying by inches in her big, silent house so she left it.
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