by Jesse Miles
Back in the kitchen, the drawers and visible shelves were bare. The higher shelves are where departing tenants tend to leave things behind. I wanted to move the ladder into the kitchen and gain some altitude, but there was too much potential for making noise, or otherwise finding myself in an awkward situation. The garbage bags were the juiciest targets.
When I was tying the bags shut, another man came in the front door. We both said hello, and he walked quickly to the bathroom. While he and the other guy were talking in Spanish, I carried the trash bags to the alley and into the carport space where I had seen Cal’s Mazda the previous Thursday evening. I moved my car from the street to the alley and backed it into the carport. Before tossing the bags into the trunk, I looked into Cal’s storage bin. Empty.
Twenty minutes later, my car was backed into its usual space behind my office. The sun hadn’t set, but I wanted more light. I opened the trunk, unlocked my office, and turned on an outside light. After positioning my trash bins and an empty cardboard box exactly where I wanted, I put on latex gloves and grabbed a fixed-blade knife. Now it was time for one of the hotshot LA private detective’s most glamorous tasks.
Cal’s rubbish was spick-and-span, as far as rubbish goes. The gooey kitchen garbage and bathroom trash were tied into smaller white bags. The food cans and jars had been rinsed out. Dried-up writing pens, pencil stubs, and other desk debris were wrapped into a paper bag. Discarded clothing was clean, rolled up tightly, nothing in the pockets. I put the paper items in the cardboard box and tossed everything else. Before I put the knife away, I cleaned the blade with a paper towel and alcohol.
I emptied the cardboard box onto the writing table and organized everything into categories: unopened bills, remnants of opened bills, junk mail, magazines, catalogues, printed Internet pages, and a five-by-eight notepad with only two sheets remaining.
In the magazines and catalogues there were no loose pieces of paper, notations, or anything else of interest. The junk mail was exactly what it appeared to be. In reviewing the bills, I concluded Cal had made his car and car insurance payments but hadn’t paid for his utilities or renter’s insurance; that would be consistent with his planning to skip town in the near future.
The notepad showed no writing on either of the two remaining pages or on the cardboard backing, but there were faint indentations on the top sheet. I used the age-old trick of rubbing the side of a pencil lead across the paper. Hand-printing from the previous page came up, probably from a ballpoint pen. I couldn’t make it out, even with my illuminated magnifying glass. Win some, lose some.
The Internet printouts were advertisements for cheap apartments in East Hollywood and Central LA. Eight apartments had been circled and six of those crossed out. The two finalists were near Downtown LA. Both rentals were furnished and available on a weekly basis. None of the six candidates Cal had crossed out showed a weekly rate. He probably needed a place to flop for a week, so he could take care of last-minute business before saying farewell to the City of Angels.
30
4
Cal’s Mazda was in the parking lot of the second address I checked. The two-story apartment building was an unreinforced masonry structure, circa 1900. A sign over the door said BIXEL ARMS. In a category seven earthquake, the place might fall in thirty seconds. In the building’s defense, it was well-painted and devoid of trash and graffiti. On the other side of the lot, a tavern caught my eye. It was an older building, the front of which was a convex curve of obscure glass blocks over red bricks. The fresh-looking bricks must have been recently sandblasted. A bright red neon sign on top spelled out RAY’S RECOVERY ROOM. It was the sort of dive bar I might have patronized during the misspent phase of my youth.
A locked gate blocked access to the apartment’s front door. It wouldn’t have been prudent for me to stand on the sidewalk and pick the lock. Too much vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Too many eyeballs.
I parked across the street, waited, and watched. Eventually, a car turned into the lot. A young woman in business attire got out carrying a briefcase and a Styrofoam box that probably held her dinner. She keyed herself through the gate and slipped through the front door. If I had been standing by the gate instead of sitting on my ass, I might have talked my way into the apartment. That thought gave birth to an idea.
I retrieved a tie and aluminum clipboard from my briefcase. The one-inch-thick clipboard holds a variety of forms inside. I put on the tie and attached a form to the top of the clipboard. The form was titled FIRE SAFETY ASSESSMENT CHECKLIST.
While standing in front of Bixel Arms, ostensibly looking for fire hazards, I printed the name Chesley Alden Lamont and the apartment street address on the form in big bold characters that would be visible from a distance. Another car pulled into the lot, and a young couple got out. I waited at the gate, scrutinizing the Bixel Arms apartment building as though I were terribly concerned about something. When the couple approached, the man glanced at my clipboard, which I had angled toward him. He keyed the gate open for his partner and let me follow them into the building.
When the couple went for the stairs, I said, “Do you know which unit the new tenant is in? Cal Lamont? The guy with the black Mazda?”
The young man pointed down the hall. “I think he’s in number five, middle of the hallway. Just moved in.”
I thanked him and kept moving. The building was designed in a dormitory configuration, with shared bathrooms in the hall. It reminded me of a 1940’s film noir flophouse, except the carpet and walls were spotless, the lighting was warm, and there were no drunks passed out on the floor.
I tapped on door number five and waited. A voice behind the door said, “Who is it?”
I put some cheer into my voice. “Burritos Galore . . . home delivery.”
The door opened, and Chesley Alden Lamont appeared. “You must have the wrong apartment.”
I shouldered my way in and elbowed the door shut. Cal gasped, backpedaled to the window, and looked down at the parking lot.
I said, “This is not as bad as it looks, Cal. There’s no need to jump out the window.”
He looked down at the lot again, then back at me. “Who are you?” He sounded tired.
“My name is Jack Salvo. I’m a private investigator.” I handed my business card to him and stepped back, trying to look friendly, but not too friendly. “I have questions about Lillie Manning, Cinnamon Strauss, and Dewey Rubens. I just need a little information, then I go away. Before you decide whether or not you’re going to help me out, you have to know I can make phone calls to people like Rod Damian and Marty Trask. Then you’re on the run again.”
“How did you find me?”
“It’s what I do for a living. If I told you the details, it would be like a magician giving away his secrets.”
The furniture in the sad little apartment consisted of a twin bed, two white plastic chairs, and a white plastic table. Other conveniences included a table lamp, a small refrigerator, a sink, and a hot plate. The electrical conduits on the walls and ceiling gave the place an industrial look.
Two suitcases, three duffel bags, and six cardboard banker’s boxes were neatly arranged against one wall. Zippered garment bags filled the closet.
I gestured toward the boxes and luggage. “Are you moving back to Boston?”
He whispered, “What do you want?”
Like a good prosecutor, I made my question one to which I already knew the answer. “Cal, last Tuesday morning did you go to a house in the Castellammare district and pay a visit to Lillie Manning?”
He thought it over for a few seconds and decided it would be best to cooperate. “I was supposed to see Lillie, but I let someone else go in my place.”
“Was that someone else Cinnamon Strauss?”
He said in a stiff monotone, “Yes, it was.”
“When was the last time you saw Lillie Manning?”
“Six or seven weeks ago, when we were at the same party. When I saw in the news she was dead, I almost
fainted. I was supposed to see her last Tuesday. From the news reports, it sounded like she was dead when I would have been there. That’s when I knew I had to get out of my apartment and go incognito. It seems I didn’t do a very good job of it.”
“Cal, I made some inquiries, and I know you’re smart, and you’re a decent guy. I’ve been paying cash to reliable informants to get the information I need. I can hand you two hundred cash if you can help me find Dewey Rubens. I don’t want vague information. I want specific information that will put my face in his face tomorrow at the latest.”
“If I weren’t flat on my ass for money right now, I would offer to do it for free, if I could go along and watch him squirm.”
“I take it you don’t like Dewey.”
“The lout tries to pass himself off as a blue-collar intellectual, but intellectually speaking, he can’t find his ass with both hands.”
He moved a chair against the wall and took a seat by the window. The side of his face glowed reddish from the neon light coming from Ray’s Recovery Room. I set my clipboard on the table and moved the other chair straight across from him.
He said, “Two hundred dollars would make the difference between my sleeping in my car and staying in three squalid motels on the way home. I can do the trip in four days.”
“When are you leaving town?”
He pointed at the boxes and luggage. “Very early tomorrow morning I will load my shitty little Mazda with all my earthly possessions and drive back to Boston. Actually, it’s a town called Dedham, out in the suburbs.”
“I’ve been through there when I had to drive from Boston to Norwood. What are you going to do when you get there?”
“I’ll have to live at my parents’ house at first. I’ll try to finish my master’s degree in library science, starting in the fall. Actually, I can start with summer classes this June. I’ll work my way into some photography pretty quickly, probably menial work, like weddings.”
“No more Hollywood glamour?”
“Hollywood is dullsville cloaked in ostentation.”
“That’s a good line. You mind if I use it?”
He shrugged. “Feel free.”
“Cal, after you get your degree, you could get a library job in LA. That would give you a platform to operate from, and you could build your celebrity photography business on the side.”
“That’s what my father said on the phone yesterday. The way you say it makes it sound more reasonable.”
I kept thinking about Cal being forced to clean up his own vomit, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Call me Mr. Warmth. “I’ll tell you what, Cal. You help me out, we’ll make it three hundred, and you can stretch the trip to five days and four nights. That would be a safer drive. I just need accurate information.”
That put a weak smile on his face. He said, “Within the last two or three months, I’ve heard from two different people that Dewey is shacked up with some bimbo who thinks she’s going to be an actress. He is undoubtedly living off her. He has a reputation as a world-class sponge.”
“Do you know what kind of car he drives?”
“I know nothing about cars, but I’ve heard it makes too much noise. A girl I know described it as a ‘penile projectile.’”
“You know the name of his girlfriend, or can you find an address for either of them?”
“I don’t know his girlfriend’s name or address, but there are two calls I can make.” He lifted his phone off the table and placed a call that went nowhere. “That number’s no good anymore. Doesn’t surprise me.” He placed a second call and spoke to someone named Rita. After the usual chit-chat, Cal brought up the subject of Dewey Rubens. For a minute or so, he mostly listened while Rita talked.
Cal ended the call and said, “She doesn’t know the exact address, but she said Dewey is living with some girl in an apartment in the general area of Beverly Glen and Santa Monica Boulevard. On one occasion she saw them walking hand-in-hand down Beverly Glen, toward the gas station. She says Dewey’s car is a green Mustang. The girlfriend is thin and has dark hair. Rita says the girl is on the edge of being a horseface, but you have to keep in mind that Rita tends to exaggerate everything for dramatic effect. She also tends to criticize the appearance of all women, except herself.”
“If all that is correct, I can find him.”
“Rita may not be the most diplomatic person, but she blurts things out honestly.”
I laid three Benjamins on the table and picked up my clipboard. Before I went out the door, I said, “You need to keep plugging away and get that degree, Cal. Just keep plugging away.”
On the way home, I stopped by the intersection of Santa Monica and Beverly Glen, looking for a potential information source. Like Lillie Manning, the neighborhood was dead. I needed to come back in the morning.
31
4
Thursday morning, I crawled out of bed, made coffee, and checked the news on my desk computer. A Channel 11 headline jumped up at me: fatal house fire in brentwood. The photos and video showed a small house mostly reduced to rubble and smoke. It looked like it might be near Cinnamon Strauss’s new residence. I took a big gulp of coffee, the video went to an aerial shot, and I choked on my Colombia Supremo. The burned-out house was, in fact, the residence of Cinnamon Strauss. I ran through the shower and drove straight to the fire scene.
The street and alley were blocked to traffic. The fire trucks were mostly gone, but there were two LAPD patrol cars and an unmarked detective-special. There was also a meat wagon from the Coroner’s office, the second such vehicle I had seen in recent days.
I parked on the cross-street and walked into the alley, threading my way between two pools of greasy water. Part of Cinnamon’s back fence, including the gate I had forced open on Tuesday, had burned away. The house was mostly gutted. A lonely firefighter stood at the edge of the blackened remains and played a hose back and forth on sections that were still smoking. The attached garage in back was burned halfway to the ground; the Jaguar inside was far beyond salvage.
Flames from the garage had gone up a pole in the alley and damaged the power lines. Two Department of Water and Power employees, in their orange and yellow vests and white helmets, were setting up a big spool of power cable. Another DWP worker was leaning over a folding table, furiously working with pen, paper forms, and calculator.
I walked back down the alley and around to the front. On one side of Cinnamon’s property, a neighbor’s single-story house was scorched, some of the paint melted into the flowerbeds. On the other side, a car parked next to a two-story house was mostly a gray shell with some of the lights, windows, and metal trim burned into vapor. A warped window screen from the second story lay on top of the roasted car, and the entire mess was crisscrossed with partially melted vinyl window blinds.
A muscular finger tapped my shoulder. Two smiling faces filled my field of vision. West LA Detective Rocky Platt and his partner Mark Stevenson.
Rocky said, “I love the smell of burnt flesh in the morning.”
I said, “Was there an accelerant?”
“The dogs aren’t here yet, but the firemen already smelled it.”
“How many victims?”
“If you were to go down the sidewalk a few yards, that would put you downwind to the point where you could detect the barbequed odor of a lone woman tentatively identified as Sophia Strauss, more popularly known as Cinnamon Strauss. The medical examiners are waiting for things to cool down before they shovel her into a bag. Are you here to pay your respects to the deceased?”
I took a closer look at the fire debris and noticed the corner of a yellow tarp. “I met Cinnamon Strauss for the first and only time yesterday afternoon. I saw the fire on the news this morning and came straight here.”
“Is there anything you’d like to tell us about her? Maybe something you forgot when we were having our little visit last Thursday afternoon at the station?”
“Yesterday afternoon was the first time I ever spoke to he
r.”
Stevenson said, “How did Cinnamon Strauss attract your attention in the first place?”
“When Greta Manning hired me to find her daughter, I talked to a lot of people. A lot of names came up, including Strauss. After Lillie’s death, I went back and looked at all my leads, even the flimsy ones.” My answer was not entirely forthright, but I did not tell a lie.
“I don’t recall you mentioning Cinnamon during our interview last Thursday.”
“When I got the case, I had better leads to follow, mostly the clubs and restaurants where Lillie used to hang out.” That was another intentionally vague answer.
Rocky said, “What did Cinnamon tell you?”
“She used to know Lillie Manning, but the friendship had faded. She made it sound like they mostly just happened to be at the same party or the same club at the same time.”
“What else did she say?”
“She didn’t speak highly of Rod Damian, said he’s basically a leech. She liked the décor in my office, and she was very sorry for the Manning family.”
“I’ll bet she would have been even sorrier to know she was going to be dead in a few hours. That’s two stiffs in less than a week, and they knew each other.”
Stevenson jabbed a finger at me. “And they’re both connected to you, Salvo. Makes us wonder what all the connections are. Where was it you talked to Cinnamon?”
“In my office. I dropped by her house Tuesday, but she wasn’t home. I left my business card in her mail chute, and she walked into my office the next afternoon.” I didn’t bother to mention my climbing through her bedroom window Tuesday and finding the coke and cash.
Stevenson continued, “What time was it when she showed up at your office?”
“Two-thirty.”
“How long was she there?”
“Ten minutes.”
“You say you learned nothing from her?”