“Why do you keep blaming me?” said Valerie, her voice breaking.
He advanced on her. “This is important. I have to have that suitcase.”
“What’s so important about it?” said Deirdre. “Why does everybody want it, if it just had your business papers in it?”
“That’s beside the point,” said Lyndon. “The point is, it’s mine.”
“What makes you think Val took it?”
“Because she’s snorting so much coke she’s turning into an addict.”
Shutting her eyes Deirdre shook her head incomprehensibly. “I don’t see the connection.”
“You will when I explain,” said Lyndon, not elaborating.
“I’m waiting.”
“First of all, it wasn’t my suitcase.”
“You’ve been saying all along it’s your blue suitcase.”
“Never mind that. When we got back from Cabo, I tried to open it and I couldn’t. I realized it wasn’t mine, though it looked like mine. Somehow or other, the suitcases got switched. The other guy got mine, and I got his.”
“Was there a name on the suitcase? Let’s return it to its rightful owner.”
“There wasn’t any name on it.”
“If you couldn’t open it, how do you know what’s in it?”
“I jimmied the lock.”
“Do you think that was wise?”
“I thought the owner’s address might be inside on a passport or on a bill or something like that.”
“And?”
“And I found out what was in it.”
“Which was?”
“Women’s clothing was in it.”
Deirdre recalled the woman’s undergarments she had found in Lyndon’s room. Maybe those clothes didn’t belong to a woman he was seeing but to the woman who owned the blue suitcase.
“Why would somebody kill Busby just to get a woman’s clothing? It doesn’t make sense,” said Deirdre.
“I took all of the clothing out in my search for identifying documents. I didn’t find any documents, but I noticed a curious thing. I realized the ‘empty’ suitcase weighed over twenty pounds, even though I had cleaned it out. I laid the suitcase on the floor and measured it. I found out the bottom was situated in the middle of the suitcase and not on the base.” He knocked back his beer. “It was a false bottom. I managed to pry it loose to see what was under it.”
“Tell me.”
“Ask Valerie.”
“What do I want to ask her for?”
“Because she found the suitcase and took it.”
Deirdre turned to Valerie. “Is this true, Val?”
“No,” muttered Valerie, her voice barely audible, her eyes down.
Deirdre eyed Lyndon. “Why do you keep blaming her?”
“Because she’s got the suitcase. It’s the reason she’s hooked on coke.” Lyndon paused a beat waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Yeah, the suitcase was stuffed with ten kilos of cocaine bricks wrapped in plastic.”
Deirdre widened her eyes.
She wondered if she could believe him. If he was running around with another woman and lying about it, could she believe anything he said? And Valerie had denied his accusation that she had taken the suitcase. Still, it might explain Valerie’s newfound habit. It would also explain why somebody was willing to kill Rakowski. If they thought he had the coke—but Rakowski didn’t have the coke. Maybe they thought he did.
“Is this true, Val?”
Valerie didn’t answer.
“Val?”
Valerie looked up at her. “I found the flake by accident. I thought Dad was a pusher.”
“I’m no pusher,” said Lyndon. “It’s not my suitcase.”
“What are we going to do?” Deirdre asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t we call the cops?”
“They’re gonna think the same thing Val thought—that I’m a drug dealer,” said Lyndon, pacing around, worked up, slugging beer.
“They’d know what to do.”
“Yeah, they’d throw me in the joint. Think about the perception.”
“The perception? The sale of narcotics is illegal. That’s the perception, and it’s the law.”
Lyndon shook his head no. “I work in Hollywood. Everybody thinks of people in my business as elitist sex-and-drug addicts living life in the fast lane. The Hollywood Babylon scene. If I take this coke to the cops, they’re gonna accuse me of being a dealer—just like Val did. That’s why I didn’t turn the coke over to the cops when I found it in the first place. I knew they’d toss me in the joint. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
Deirdre thought about it. “Let’s give it back to these people, whoever they are. They must be drug dealers. They’re the types that would cut off a dog’s head. And they’d kill us in the blink of an eye.”
“Don’t you understand? I can’t give anything to anyone. I don’t have the suitcase.”
“Where is it, Val?”
“I wish I knew,” said Valerie, moping.
“How can you not know?” said Lyndon, rounding on her. “You’re the one that took it.”
“I hid it in my room.”
“Go get it, and we’ll decide what to do with it,” said Deirdre.
“I can’t,” said Valerie, burying her head in her hands and sobbing. “It’s not there anymore.”
“Jesus Fucking H. Christ,” said Lyndon.
Chapter 99
Driving through the rain down Sunset, following a chain of smeared red brake lights flashing ahead of him, Brody felt miserable about Terri’s death. He wondered if he was to blame. Had he inadvertently led the killer to Terri when he had visited her the first time to question her about Lyndon?
The killer had to be the same guy that had tried to break into Deirdre’s house. How many killers and home intruders used crossbow bolts for weapons? It was a unique MO. It was the same guy, all right. Unless the archer had inspired a copycat killer. But who would want to copy a killer nobody had ever heard of?
The archer must have followed him at some point when he had gone to see Terri at the Convent, decided Brody.
Brody had started to really like Terri. Sure, she was a starry-eyed naïf in Tinseltown, but it wasn’t her fault she was in a tough racket. She wanted to be an actress in the movies. She had no idea about the reality of the profession. Nobody had until they tried to break into it.
She had ended up with Lyndon Fox to represent her, a sleazeball who was perfectly willing to use his clout in Hollywood to coerce sex from beautiful women craving to be actresses and models. Maybe all talent managers were like Lyndon. Maybe it was the nature of the business. The casting couch, and all that. After all, what else could you expect in Babylon? Why did the sleaze and the glitter hold such allure for young women? he wondered. Maybe it wasn’t the sleaze and the glitter but fame and fortune that beckoned them.
He warned himself not to fall for another girl again. She would end up dead if he did—like his murdered wife Jennifer. And now Terri. But he barely knew Terri. How could he be falling for her when he had just met her?
He was as bad as a serial killer. He was leaving a trail of dead women behind him wherever he went.
He had to go it alone, he decided. It was the nature of his business—a dirty business indeed. When you dug under rocks for a living, all sorts of nasty things crawled out. Anyone in the area around him at the time would pay the consequences.
He hit the brakes so he didn’t rear-end a jeep driven by a guy in a yellow slicker slowing in front of him.
He needed to cut out his wallowing in self-pity. It accomplished nothing. He had to pick up the pieces and keep on going and meet another woman and send her to her appointment in Samarra. There he went again with the self-pity.
In a fit of anger and frustration, he slammed his Mini’s headliner with the heel of his open palm.
“Shit.”
He was supposed to be helping people with their problems in his line of work. Instead he wa
s leaving behind him a trail of death.
He felt his iPhone vibrate in his trouser pocket.
He decided he better take the call because it must be Peltz.
He pulled over to the shoulder into a dirty puddle that the rain was forming in a rut, killed the Mini’s engine, and took the call, which said Private on his caller ID.
“Hello?” he said.
“Caligula,” the voice whispered.
Not again, thought Brody. “What is your problem? Who is this?”
“I have your life in my hands.”
“Is that a threat?”
The guy rang off.
Brody decided he needed to start blocking this nut’s calls. He had no time for crank calls. He would take care of it later. Right now he was in a rush to get to Deirdre’s.
He put away his cell, fired the Mini’s ignition, flicked on his left turn signal, and edged into traffic.
Chapter 100
Sitting on her living-room sofa Deirdre desperately wanted to believe Lyndon. She had never wanted to believe he was cheating on her. She believed she was going out of her way to give him the benefit of the doubt. But she wasn’t convinced he was telling her the truth when he had declared his innocence.
It was the same deal with Lyndon’s story of finding cocaine in the blue suitcase he had said belonged to a stranger. It could be true, and she wanted to believe him. After all, why would he concoct such a Byzantine story? But how did she know he wasn’t concocting the story to hide the truth that he was a coke dealer?
How many double lives was the guy living? she wondered. Or was he living any at all? Was he a philanderer and a drug pusher or was he what she thought he was when she had first met him and decided to marry him—a successful and loving talent manager?
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she decided to believe him about the mix-up with the blue suitcases.
“Do you have any idea where the suitcase is?” Lyndon asked Val, as he stood before her and she slumped on the sofa.
“All I know for sure is, it’s not where I hid it.”
“Who knew about it other than you?”
“Nobody.” She paused, thinking about it. “I mean . . .”
“What?”
“Nick. Nick knew. I shared some of the flake with him.”
“Nick? Who’s Nick?”
“My boyfriend,” Valerie said irritably. “You see, you pay no attention to me. You have no idea what’s going on in my life, and you don’t even care.”
Lyndon bowed his head toward her and gazed into her watery eyes.
“That’s not the point,” he said, gesticulating with his hand. “We need to find that coke or they’re gonna wipe us out.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know where it is?”
“That guy I’ve seen around here with you is Nick?”
“Haven’t you been listening to me?”
“Calm down. Did you see him take it?”
“No. But he’s the only one I can think of who knew where I hid it.”
“Do you have any idea how much that stuff’s worth?”
“No. He said it was good stuff, though. Zero zero zero, he called it.”
“Zero zero zero?”
“That means pure, according to him. Most coke in California is only 30 percent. It’s cut with other stuff—anything from mannitol to caffeine, which is in Chalk.”
“Chalk?”
“It’s cocaine cut with a bunch of amphetamines to make it seem more potent than it is. There’s a lot of Chalk going around. That’s what most buyers end up with around here.”
“How does he know all this?” chimed in Deirdre.
“He’s smart.”
“Maybe he has a sideline you don’t know about. It’s this gig economy we’re living in nowadays.”
“He’s on his college volleyball team.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Deirdre. “Unless the college is paying him to play volleyball, and I doubt that.”
“I don’t know where you’re coming from.”
“He knows way too much about cocaine for my liking. He could be a pusher.”
“A good reason for him to steal it,” said Lyndon.
“You said it’s not yours in the first place,” said Valerie. “Why do you care about it?”
“It’s got to be worth over a million dollars on the street. And those guys who want it will kill for it.”
“If I had it, I’d give it to you.”
“They must be cartel members. It’s the only explanation.”
“We need to call the cops,” said Deirdre.
“No. No cops. We can take care of this. Lemme think.” Lyndon scratched his temple. “We need to give them the suitcase. Then they’ll leave us alone.”
“We don’t have the suitcase. That’s the problem.”
“Where’s this Nick guy?” Lyndon asked Valerie.
“How should I know?” said Valerie.
“He’s your boyfriend.”
“I’m not his keeper.”
“Call him now and tell him to come here,” said Lyndon, his voice firm.
“I don’t have my cell phone. It’s in my bedroom.”
“Well, get it.”
In a burst of anger and frustration, Valerie leapt to her feet and scrambled up the stairs to her bedroom.
“Don’t yell at her, honey,” Deirdre told Lyndon. “She’s in this mess with the rest of us.”
“We need that suitcase. Our lives depend on it.”
Valerie jogged down the stairs, cell phone in hand.
“Don’t look at your cell phone while you’re coming down the stairs,” said Deirdre. “You’re gonna fall and break your neck.”
Valerie rolled her eyes in disgust and stopped looking at her cell. She reached the floor, strode over to them, and punched out Nick’s number on her iPhone.
“Tell him to bring the suitcase here with him,” said Lyndon.
“I’m not even sure he has it,” she said, watching her cell’s screen.
“It must be him. Who else could it be?”
Valerie pulled a face. “Maybe Lupe stumbled onto it and took it.”
“I already talked to her,” said Deirdre. “She said she didn’t know anything about the suitcase.”
“And you believed her?”
“She’s been with us a long time, and she’s bonded.”
“He’s not answering,” said Valerie, listening to Nick’s phone ringing at the other end of the connection.
“This is sort of urgent,” said Lyndon.
Chapter 101
Driving through the grey curtain of rain Brody could see on the side of Sunset Boulevard a stonework Lutheran church with a neon sign in front of it that said in cursive red letters Do You Think Everyone Hates You? and in white letters underneath them Jesus Loves You.
Brody didn’t know if everybody hated him, but they sure weren’t doing him any favors. He was on his own whether they loved him or hated him—and, one thing was sure, they didn’t love him. If Jesus loved him, Jesus wasn’t showing his hand.
Brody hadn’t stepped inside a church since he’d attended a Congregationalist Sunday school as a kid. When his parents had stopped attending sermons, they had stopped taking him to Sunday school. And that was the end of his churchgoing. He had never even been baptized, they had told him once, and he hadn’t cared one way or the other.
Plowing and jerking through a puddle that filled a foot-wide pothole, his neck snapping back, Brody came out of his reverie with a start. He wished he could make better time. The storm and his fellow drivers had other ideas.
Dissatisfied with the progress he was making, he hung a right onto a deserted street and pulled over to the shoulder. Setting the shifter in neutral, keeping his foot on the brake pedal, he slid his cell phone out of his trouser pocket and called Victor Lopez.
The phone rang four times, and still no answer.
Brody was getting keyed up. Why didn’t Victor answer?
Had something happened to him? Had the Fox family’s assailants already mounted their attack and taken out Victor? Brody’s imagination was working overtime trying to figure out why Victor wasn’t answering.
After the seventh ring, Brody put away his cell, puzzled and anxious. He punched out Deirdre’s number. Maybe she could tell him why Victor wasn’t picking up.
The phone rang five times.
She wasn’t answering either.
Had something happened to the Foxes? Was he too late to help them? Why couldn’t he get through to anybody?
Worked up, he pocketed his cell. He wondered if he should alert the cops. But he had no proof anything untoward was happening at the Foxes’ residence. And, besides, Lyndon Fox had insisted he keep the cops out of the picture.
Brody had to take matters into his own hands. He hoped he wasn’t too late.
Maybe there was an alternate explanation for Victor’s and Deirdre’s failures to answer their phones, decided Brody. Maybe the weather was precipitating transmission problems between cell towers. Maybe a lightning bolt had struck one of the towers and knocked it out of commission.
Brody decided he shouldn’t jump to conclusions and assume the worst, which as a private eye he was prone to do, since he spent most of his time in contact with the skeevy underbelly of society.
Checking for traffic in his driver’s side-view mirror and in his windshield, he pulled a U-turn and returned to Sunset Boulevard, where he halted at a raindrop-blistered stop sign till traffic on the boulevard let up and he could merge into it. Plagued by misgivings, he continued on his way to the Foxes.
Chapter 102
That night, sitting poolside next to his wife Carmen at his hacienda in Guadalajara, Gaetano was hosting a party. The lights around his pool shone down on nubile women in bikinis cavorting in the water. A CD player pumped mariachi music through speakers mounted on poles bordering the patio and pool area.
A voluptuous brunette with dewy brown eyes and her breasts spilling out of her salmon halter was lolling on an inflatable unicorn, while a lissome girl with sparkling blue eyes and rippling abs lay on her back on a buff inflatable raft gazing up at the new moon. Every once in a while she would do a sit-up to emphasize the chiseled cut of her abs and catch the admiring eyes of the men standing and chatting around the pool, drinks in their hands.
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