by Jesse Miles
“For what?”
He pointed at the display. “I tell you which one of those guys is the one you’re looking for, and then I give you the girlfriend’s name.”
“How would you know the girlfriend’s name, but not the guy?”
“I tell you that, I give up everything for nothing.”
“Let’s do it this way. You correctly point out the guy I want, I give you forty dollars. Then we’ll discuss the girlfriend.” I showed two twenties.
The boy fingered Dewey Rubens and reached for the money.
I held onto the money. “He drives a red Camaro, right?”
“You can’t fool me that easy. He drives a green Mustang, like Steve McQueen in Bullitt.” He gently took the money and folded it into his shirt pocket. “Thank you. The girl is a wannabe actress. Down at the liquor store her picture is up on the wall with all the other people who think they’re gonna be big movie stars. There’s gotta be fifty pictures up there on the wall. I don’t know her name right now, but the pictures have the names, and I can tell you which one is her.”
“Are you talking about Pandora Liquors, down on Santa Monica Boulevard—the one they just remodeled?”
“Yeah, do I get my sixty dollars after I point to the picture?”
“No, you get another forty dollars, and how do I know you won’t point to just anyone and take my money and vanish?”
“Because I live here, and I’m always on my skateboard, and you’ll come back and kick my ass. I bet I can beat you to the liquor store on my skateboard.”
I walked toward my car. “I’ll see you there, Alan. Skate carefully.”
“Careful, my ass. I’m gonna win.”
He beat me to Pandora Liquors. In my defense, I was pointed the wrong way when we started, and I was held up by traffic.
On the wall behind the liquor store counter, there were about forty actors’ composite photos. It’s a common practice in L.A. liquor stores, restaurants, and other small businesses. Almost all the photos were signed. Three were of recognizable celebrities.
Alan pointed out a black-and-white bikini photo of a young woman named Ninette Foucher. She was all legs, teeth, and hair. She wasn’t bad-looking, but she lacked the special something that reaches out and inspires you. I paid Alan, climbed into my car, and fired up my iPad again.
Foucher’s address came up in less than a minute. She was a twenty-four-year-old UCLA student whose father owned a lumberyard in Louisiana. She lived in an apartment on South Beverly Glen, a short drive from the liquor store. Everything was consistent with what Cal Lamont had told me.
35
4
Ninette Foucher’s apartment complex was a series of midcentury-modern boxes tiered up the hillside. In the middle of the previous century, when the structure was fresh, the landscaping was maintained, and television cables weren’t strung sloppily on the walls, the place could have been on a magazine cover.
According to the mailboxes, N. Foucher was in unit number six, at the top of the hill. The apartment units were accessible only from a long outside stairway on the south side.
A NOTICE OF HEARING document from the Los Angeles Housing Department was posted on the street-level carport. The tenants were petitioning for rent reductions and the right to pay their rent into a city-controlled escrow account until the property owners made certain repairs.
There were two cars in the six parking spaces. An older BMW convertible needed new tires. The other vehicle was a dark-green Ford Mustang. On the back of the car was a round gas cap emblazoned with the word FORD wrapped around the word BULLITT. I pointed my penlight inside the locked car. The only loose item was a hooded sweatshirt on the back seat. A BULLITT emblem was in the middle of the steering wheel, as it should have been, but the dashboard trim was brushed aluminum. I didn’t think it was the correct trim piece. I had worked a few cases with a PI who drove nothing but hot Mustangs. That’s how I know these things.
I noted the Mustang’s license plate and went back to my car, just around the corner. The traffic noise on Beverly Glen rubbed my nervous system the wrong way, so I put my windows up, and started the engine and A/C. Then I settled into the front passenger seat, turned on the usual electronic devices, and did the usual research.
A Department of Motor Vehicles source informed me that Dewey hadn’t notified the DMV of his address change from the Santa Monica apartment I had visited on the way to Lillie’s funeral. The DMV required license holders to report a change of address within ten days. Dewey hadn’t lived at the Santa Monica address for seven months.
Then I found a more egregious example of poor citizenship. Dewey’s car was a 2007, but the Mustang Bullitt Edition from that era was produced only for the 2008 and 2009 model years. Dewey’s car was definitely a fake.
I called Gabriel Van Buren and gave him Dewey’s Santa Monica and Beverly Glen addresses, and the plate off the Mustang. He brought in one of his people, and they immediately found Dewey’s social security number and another address, this one in El Segundo, a little south of the airport. Gabe said they would dig a little deeper and call me back.
I used an online crisscross directory to find Dewey’s El Segundo neighbors and their phone numbers. Two of the four neighbors didn’t pick up. The third hung up on me. The fourth was Mr. Latimer, and he wouldn’t shut up. I told him I was an insurance inspector and that a neighbor of his, a Mr. Dewey Rubens, had applied for disability insurance. I claimed I was verifying Mr. Rubens’s residence and employment information, as part of the routine process for approving his policy.
The short version of Mr. Latimer’s long-winded story went like this: Dewey had been shacked up, off and on, with Sandra Ayer, an “old maid” fifteen years his senior. Six months previously, Rubens had moved into a tiny bachelor apartment attached to the house owned by Miss Ayer. A relationship quickly developed, and Rubens moved in with his landlady. Dewey said he was a “traveling salesman,” and he could stay at the El Segundo address for only one or two days a week. Dewey was almost certainly squeezing money out of Miss Ayer. He was a scoundrel and a smart aleck, and in an earlier generation, a generation in which common sense prevailed, Dewey would have been tarred and feathered.
I thanked Mr. Latimer, called Gabe, and recounted the tale.
Gabe said, “Allow me to top your story. Rubens was involved in a series of distraction thefts four years ago. He was in an acting workshop, and his acting career flopped, but he scored with an aspiring actress from Texas who was also failing to make it big in Hollywood. They always targeted small businesses. They liked to hit places that were open on Sunday and catch them early in the day, when there weren’t many customers. The girl would flirt with the proprietor, usually an older man or a nerdish younger guy. Dewey would lift cash or anything else of value from the safe or the register, sometimes a desk or a coat pocket. One old guy lost a Swiss watch he had inherited from his father. Thirty thousand bucks.
“It wasn’t hard for the cops to identify the perps. There were too many victims giving the same story. Rubens and the girl were detained, and the cops had a search warrant. But no loot was in their possession, and the cute couple had their cover stories down pat. Each one said they suspected the other of stealing, but they weren’t sure. Each one had a really good bullshit story about their partner having mental health problems. The police knew they were dirty, but they had to let them go.”
“Thanks, Gabe, I’m going to pay Mr. Rubens a visit in about five minutes.”
Gabe put a big wide smile in his voice. “Do me a favor and kick his ass for me.”
36
4
I walked back to the apartment building and climbed the long stairway to the target residence, stopping at the second highest level until my breathing and pulse slowed. I didn’t want to encounter Rubens when I was even slightly winded.
I walked up the final few steps, rested a few seconds more, and tapped on the door. The door opened, and Dewey Rubens’s face appeared.
He c
ocked his head at a jaunty angle. “Whatever you’re selling, we’re not buying.” His voice was confident and brash.
I said, “Aren’t you going to do a little tap dance for me, Dewey?”
Before he could answer, I pushed my way in and shut the door behind me. He stepped back and stared at me through narrowed eyes. He wore a tan shirt and camouflage pants. His dark hair was parted into a tall, greasy wave on top. Even without the hair, he was two inches taller than me, about the same weight.
He held his hands out wide, in a conciliatory gesture. “If this is a joke, it’s not in very good taste.” He shifted his left foot forward, telegraphing his roundhouse punch. I ducked it and slammed a fist into his stomach, halfway to his spine. He exhaled explosively and landed on his ass, then rolled over on his side and didn’t move. After a few seconds, he started breathing in a hoarse, guttural groan. He only had the wind knocked out of him. In a half hour, he would be as good as new.
It was a cheesy student apartment, reasonably clean, with posters taped to the wall and an odd mix of furniture. The Monet prints in Rod Damian’s house would fit right in. After making sure nobody else was home, I went through a stack of papers on the kitchen table. According to Ninette Foucher’s bank statement, she was getting a big fat check every month, probably from Daddy, and she was paying the bills. None of the accounting pointed to a monetary contribution by anyone else, such as Dewey.
Now he was on his hands and knees. I helped him onto the sofa. He held his hands across his stomach as he bared his teeth at me and groaned, “If you’re trying to impress me, you’re doing a pretty good job of it. Who are you?”
“I’m the guy with the questions.”
“Are you serious?”
“Life-and-death serious.”
“You sure you’re talking to the right person?”
“Aren’t you the same Dewey Rubens who got his ass fired from Latigo Alliance for sneaking cocaine to Cinnamon Strauss?”
He coughed and bent over to one side. Looking away from me, he said, “I terminated my employment with Latigo Alliance voluntarily. I don’t dispute that I had a relationship with Cinnamon, but that was our business, nobody else’s.”
“By the way, Dewey, did you know she was killed in an arson fire last night?”
He cranked his head around and looked at me from an off-kilter angle. “Are you shitting me?”
“Her house in Brentwood burned to the ground last night with her in it.” I glanced at my watch. “The four o’clock news starts in a couple of minutes.” I picked up the television remote and clicked the power button. “You can see for yourself.” I set the channel and muted the sound. “Does Ninette know you’ve been spending time with Cinnamon recently? Oh, and I almost forgot Sandra Ayer, the senior citizen down in El Segundo.”
He squirmed around on the sofa, trying to find a comfortable position. “Just for the sake of curiosity, why are you so interested in the details of my personal life?”
“You’re an interesting guy, Dewey. You can keep two or three girlfriends going at the same time, and they don’t know the score. You can even persuade them to pay your rent. You can pass off your fake Bullitt Mustang as a real one. I especially admire the scam you were pulling when you were with that Texas girl from your acting workshop, stealing from retail stores. You went for small businesses run by people who couldn’t afford to take the hit. The victim was usually a lonely old man. Your bimbo accomplice would bat her eyelashes at the old guy and rub her tits on him. When the poor sap was distracted, you would grab valuables from an unlocked safe or the cash drawer or a desk. That’s elder abuse, Dewey, and in my book, it ranks you one notch above a child molester.”
Dewey sat angled away from me, avoiding eye contact. “That is a false accusation, and legally it was put to rest years ago. The girl in my acting workshop betrayed my trust. She came on to me like she was a helpless little thing, needed help with everything in her life. There was always some personal problem I had to solve for her. She acted like she was scared to death of the real world. When she asked me to go along with her to those stores, I had no idea she was stealing behind my back.”
“You and Tex conjured up a slick cover story, but it’s not the story I get, and my information comes from solid sources.”
He tried to put some authority into his voice, but the words came out flat and mechanical, like a telephone answering system. “Do you have a badge and a photo ID I can see?”
“I’m only a private investigator. Why don’t you call the police and report me for trespassing and assault?”
“Perhaps I will, and when they take you away in handcuffs, I can call my attorney friend and let him go to work on you in civil court.”
I snarled, “That’s a limp-dicked bluff,” and moved a cordless phone from the kitchen counter to the coffee table, directly in front of him. I put one foot on the table and leaned toward him, with my forearms braced across my leg. “Don’t forget to tell the detectives all the details from your visit to Lillie Manning last Tuesday. You and Cinnamon were in the house with Lillie about the same time she died. The cops are going to ask you if her body was still warm. Was she still breathing? Why were you there? Did you plan to make a buy? Did you find her dead and steal anything? Or did Cinnamon do the dirty work, and all you did was drive getaway?”
A wide smirk angled across Dewey’s face. I looked at my watch and raised the volume on the television. The first news segment was about flooding in Northern California. Next was the residential fire in Brentwood. A reporter stood in front of the rubble and described fitness personality Cinnamon Strauss’s fiery death. An arson investigator stated that an accelerant had been used to start the fire. A police detective said the fire was under investigation as a possible homicide. Dewey’s smirk landed in his lap.
I turned off the television. “If you don’t believe the Channel Nine News, take it from me. I was there this morning, talking to the detectives. The coroner hadn’t hauled Cinnamon away yet, because they were waiting for her to cool off. I made the mistake of standing downwind and smelling her burned flesh.” I wrinkled my nose and frowned. “Have you ever smelled burned human flesh?”
That last crack was just a line, but it killed what was left of Dewey’s bravado. He maintained direct eye contact with me for the first time since I slugged him.
He spoke softly. “What do you want?” He was ready to sing like a tenor at the Met.
I said, “I want clear, concise answers to my questions. I don’t want to hear anything cute. Then I want to go away and never see you again.”
“How do I know you’ll go away and stay away? I don’t want to be involved in this mess.”
“There’s no guarantee.” I handed him my business card. “If I think you’re involved in a murder or some other serious crime, I have to report what I know to the police.”
He set the card down on the table and stared at it. “Makes sense. You couldn’t keep anything like that from the cops, but I’m not worried about it.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Here all night with Ninette. We went to dinner and a movie earlier. We ran into people we know, two different couples. They would confirm that they saw us. I don’t want Ninette to find out about me and Cinnamon, but I can guarantee you I am not going to be blamed for any murder, no matter what she has to find out.”
“When is Miss Foucher due to arrive?”
“Tonight, she goes straight from her classes at UCLA to her acting workshop in West Hollywood. She won’t be home till ten-twenty or ten-thirty. She always comes home at the same time.”
I tried to put a friendly tone in my voice. It wasn’t easy. “Dewey, if I get the information I need, we might be able to keep all this just between you and me. Tell me what happened last Tuesday, when you drove Cinnamon to the house in Castellammare. Give it to me straight. If you and Cinnamon were making a buy, I don’t care.”
Dewey had loosened up, and the words were starting to flow. “Cinnamon hea
rd Lillie Manning was selling some amazingly pure coke. She thought she could get a low price, maybe a freebie. Cinnamon used to be friends with Lillie, but she wasn’t sure if Lillie would return her call at this point in their history. She had this friend of hers . . . his name is . . .” He squinted his eyes almost shut, trying to remember.
I helped him out. “Chesley Alden Lamont, commonly known as Cal.”
He nodded. “That’s the little weirdo. Thinks he’s a hot-shit photographer. He made the appointment with Lillie to make a buy and got the address where she was staying, some house out toward Malibu. Cinnamon conned him into letting her go instead. She had me drive her there, but I didn’t go inside. I was in my car, never saw anything inside the house. No one came to the front door, so she went around to the back. Couple minutes later, she called me, really, really upset. I knew something was wrong, because Cinnamon keeps her cool better than any chick I ever knew. She told me to drive down to the street below and pick her up there. There were stairs between the houses, and she could take the stairs down to the next street. Anyway, I picked her up down there, and she said just drive away nice and normal, not too fast, not too slow. On the way back, she told me Lillie was dead, looked like she overdosed. I almost shit a brick.”
“Did she say anything about the remaining inventory of coke and the money from Lillie’s sales effort?”
“There was money in Lillie’s purse, but Cinnamon was afraid to reach in and touch anything, and there were a few 8-balls. She took four 8-balls.”
“What happened to them?”
“She gave me two, kept the other two.”
“Did she wipe her fingerprints in the house?”
“Used a handkerchief, she said. But she didn’t touch anything except a door handle and Lillie’s neck.” A shudder went through Dewey’s body, and he shook it off.
“What did you and Cinnamon do after that?”
“I dropped her off at her house. We got together at a park and had lunch the next day, talked things over. Couple days later in the news, the cops found Lillie dead. Gave me the creeps.”