by David Chill
“You fell into something good.”
“Yeah. Went well for quite a while. But you know, nothing lasts forever in this world.”
I decided not to probe any further on Phil’s family business for now. I also decided to look further into Moose.
“Okay,” I said. “If your daughter filed a police report, there’s at least something to work with. But I’ll need a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Mostly contact info for your daughter, the boyfriend, your ex-wife. You have a current wife?”
Phil looked at me. “Yeah. But I don’t call her that.”
“I wouldn’t either. Plus, how to contact Moose. And maybe your father, too, you can never tell what other family members know. Your dad still live in Culver City?” I asked.
“Yeah, but not in the same place. He’s retired. Lives up on Culver Crest now.”
I nodded. Culver Crest was the ritzy part of Culver City, up on a hill, with a view. It was nothing compared to Beverly Hills or a lot of other tony Westside neighborhoods, but as far as Culver City went, this was pricey real estate.
“Your dad must have done well. For a public servant.”
“You’d be surprised at how well cops do in retirement these days. He got a big payout when he retired from Largo Beach. Something to do with disability. Nice pension takes care of expenses. And his trips to Vegas.”
I thought about this. When we were growing up, there was always something unseemly about Phil’s father. Police officers were paid well compared to other civil servants, but they were hardly at the level of investment bankers. Yet Phil’s father always seemed to be driving a new car, while my mom struggled to make payments on a fifteen-year-old Honda Civic. And Phil’s family often went to Cabo or Cancun for vacations; we drove down to San Diego if we went anywhere at all. And there was the issue of attending Vassar College, where tuition was close to what my mother made in a year. Things didn’t add up.
“All right. I’ll poke around and see what I find. You know about my fee?”
Phil smiled slyly. “You mean, you’re not going to do a solid for an old high school teammate?”
“No.”
The smile disappeared. “How much?”
“A thousand dollars a day. And I require a two-day retainer. We’ll see what I come up with. You’ll get your money’s worth. Most people do.”
He reluctantly reached into his pocket, pulled out a checkbook, and began scribbling. “You know, ever since we sold the business a few years ago, I’ve been a little more aware of money. Got a big pile of it, but no more coming in. It’s all just going out.”
I decided not to sympathize. Phil Zellis could surely make do with his big pile.
“Here you go,” he said, then stood up to leave. “I assume I’ll be hearing from you in a couple of days.”
“You will.”
“Look, I know it’s been years since we’ve gotten together, but I’ve always thought of you as a friend. I hope now that I’m employing you and paying you good money, well, I hope it doesn’t affect our friendship.”
“Why do you bring that up?” I frowned.
“I’ve had a few friendships that went south after we established a business relationship. The people thought my paying them somehow diminished them in my eyes. I hope you don’t feel that way.”
“Not at all,” I said, as I peeked at the check before folding it in half and putting it in my pocket. “In fact, I think our relationship just got a whole lot better.”
Chapter 2
After doing an exhaustive search, I found out nothing more about the Amanda Zeal incident. I spoke with Drew Slick, a detective I knew at the Beverly Hills Police Department, and managed to uncover little of substance. After a good bit of reminiscing and false flattery, Detective Slick told me that yes, an assault had taken place, a report had been filed, a unit had been deployed to the scene, and an investigation was ongoing. But no, I couldn’t have any more details. And yes, Slick said, it sure was a pleasure to hear from me.
I grabbed a quick lunch at a high-end taco truck parked outside of my office building. It was high-end because they had a phone app and a lengthy menu featuring a remarkable variety of tacos, ones stuffed with everything from calamari to short ribs. Avocado, pepper jack cheese and Korean kimchi were available as extra toppings for a not-so-small fee. The days of food trucks being referred to as roach coaches were over; the new world order had indeed begun. I asked for a pair of tacos with carnitas, unencumbered by pricey add-ons, and ate them while sitting on the curb. They weren’t fantastic, they weren’t bad. They were simply what passed for lunch these days.
Moose Machado lived in a ramshackle apartment building along Pico, just east of Alvarado in downtown L.A., not far from Staples Center. It was a tan brick building, the type of shabby building developers stopped putting up after the 1930s, as brick structures would often crumble during an earthquake. The ones that were already built simply remained, occupied by the people who could not afford to live anywhere else.
Moose’s building was called a mixed-use dwelling, a form of development that was having a renaissance in L.A. these days. The apartments were located above a group of family-run businesses, ones that included a liquor store, a barber shop, and the office of an immigration attorney. The liquor store had one of those Plexiglas partitions that separates the customers from the cashiers to minimize the opportunity for successful armed robberies. But despite the mixed-use format becoming more in vogue now, this particular neighborhood remained all too slum-like. The sidewalks were scattered with litter, there was brightly colored graffiti along the sides of the building, and each storefront had a metal guard door that was pulled down each night. The metal protector was rarely seen in nicer neighborhoods, those where broken windows and ransacked shops were not a regular part of life. This was the type of neighborhood you were either born in, or otherwise tumbled down into when your money ran out.
I walked up a rickety staircase and noticed the pungent smell of what were probably tamales, and not very good tamales. I rapped on apartment number four and the door opened a few seconds later. Standing before me was the equivalent of a human dump truck, a massive slab of a human being that seemed almost as wide as he was tall. He had a thick pile of unkempt black hair, a pockmarked complexion, and he wore a decades-old t-shirt that promoted Al Gore for President.
“Moose Machado?” I asked.
“Who wants to know?” he shot back.
“Name’s Burnside. We knew each other a long time ago. High school.”
The Moose peered out for a long moment, striving to see if he recognized me. It didn’t look good. Then a warm smile crossed his face, and it was as if twenty-five years just melted away.
“Burnside. Crap. I remember. The football team at Culver.”
“Right,” I said. “Mind if I come in?”
He opened the door wider and I slipped past his massive girth. The apartment was small, and it was over-furnished with a hodgepodge of aging furniture, faded, yellowing pictures of family, and a variety of Jesus knick-knacks – Jesus strapped to a wooden cross, Jesus standing in a large glass-enclosed candle, Jesus hovering on a wall painting and Jesus looking out from a large piece of stained glass hung over a window. Moose picked up a newspaper from a deceptively soft orange couch and pointed for me to sit. I sat.
“How you been, man?” he asked. “Dang, if it hasn’t been a long time.”
“I’m good. Looks like you left Culver City.”
“Yeah, I’ve bounced around,” Moose said. “You want a beer or something?”
“No, thanks,” I said, looking down at my watch. It was one-thirty in the afternoon. “How long you been down here?”
“Maybe a couple years. This used to be my grandma’s apartment before she passed. It’s on rent control, so I’m not paying much. I got some money problems.”
“Sorry to hear.”
“Yeah, sounds like you’ve done okay. Cop, detective, football coac
h. Was freaky when I was watching a USC game on TV a few years ago and saw you on the sideline. I only know a couple famous people.”
“I’m a very minor celebrity,” I chuckled, thinking maybe Moose hadn’t read the newspaper accounts of my getting kicked off the LAPD a decade ago. Being famous for the wrong reasons had more than its share of drawbacks.
“So, what brings you down here, man?” he asked.
“Phil Zellis.”
“Oh yeah. I heard from Phil this morning. He said he was hiring a guy to look into what happened with Amanda. I guess that’s you.”
“Guess so.”
“Yeah. I’m going over to Amanda’s apartment tonight to look out for her.”
“You work for Phil a lot?”
“Here and there.”
I looked at Moose and then gave his small living quarters the once-over. I wondered what twist of fate deposited Moose in these threadbare surroundings, and got a strong feeling they were of his own making. When people hit bottom, there’s normally a good reason for their fall, and it’s usually their own doing.
“Okay. Got any ideas about what’s happening with his daughter?” I asked.
Moose said nothing for a long moment. I briefly wondered if I should rephrase the question to one that might be easier to grasp, but he finally licked his lips and began to speak.
“I know Phil doesn’t trust this new boyfriend of hers. Wyatt I think his name is. But Phil doesn’t know the half of Amanda. He and his wife weren’t around much when she was growing up. I don’t even know why those two stayed married as long as they did. Phil had me look after Amanda a bunch of times when she was in high school, Phil was like, too busy. I got to know her a little. Nice kid, but wild. Lots of money. Throw in some bad friends, and you got a problem.”
I frowned. “Bad friends, huh? Is Beverly Hills High a rough school these days?”
Moose laughed. “Phil’s kids didn’t go there. I guess if you can afford a big house in Beverly Hills, you can afford private school. Amanda and her little brother went to some ritzy school in Santa Monica. Lot of snotty friends. If you can call them friends.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. She’s a good looking girl you know, but I guess she liked to get guys hot and then not pay off. Do it enough times and something happens. I’ve seen it before. Used to work security at the Peppermint Rhino.”
I stifled a frown. The Peppermint Rhino was the name for a chain of strip clubs on the west coast. I motioned for Moose to continue; I didn’t need him to go into the details of his other line of work. I had been to a few of these clubs, mostly tagging along on bachelor parties. Without the benefits of alcohol-infused haziness, I found most of them to be a little depressing.
“Yeah, well, in Amanda’s case, she was on the school swim team, she told me she was a really good swimmer, said she had a shot at the Olympics or something before she hurt her arm. Don’t know if that was true or not. Anyways, someone snuck in the locker room and shot a video of her getting undressed. Who knows, maybe it was another girl who did it, but the video ended up on the internet. Got everyone upset, the school, the parents, it was a big deal there. Someone got it pulled down pretty quick. No one got caught. Funny thing though, the only person who wasn’t upset about it was Amanda.”
“She wanted the attention?” I asked, rather sure I knew the answer. If Amanda was like a lot of girls who grew up with too much money and not enough parenting. She probably had some yearning that went unfulfilled, and perhaps relished being the girl everyone talked about. It didn’t really matter what was being said. For some people, any publicity was good publicity.
“I guess. She got offers to be on a bunch of college swim teams, ended up at Stanford. Didn’t quite swim as well as when she was sixteen, maybe she never got over that injury. But that didn’t stop her from strutting her stuff. This time the videos that went up on the internet was mostly her looking hot in a bathing suit. She got some modeling gigs, I don’t know if she even graduated, but Fox hired her to be on TV for football games. You know. Interview the coaches at halftime, the star players at the end of the game. She says there have been a few issues, though. I guess that’s why Phil brought me in again.”
“How’s that?”
“Amanda’s getting a lot of attention. With that comes the usual nut jobs. She’s had a few stalkers over the years. I’ve had to step in and deal with them. Among my other jobs for Phil.”
“What did you do for Amanda before? Push a few of those tough prep school kids around?”
Moose gave a small smile. “That was the fun part. Kids who’re born rich aren’t always born smart. Or maybe they thought they could act tough because their dad’s got money. They thought wrong. They got the type of lesson kids normally learn on the streets.”
“Guys have been bothering Amanda since she was a teenager, then.”
“Yeah. Like I says, she’s had a few stalkers. I slapped them around a little. Didn’t take much to get the message through. And I got the feeling no one ever taught ‘em any manners. I taught ‘em a few. And they stayed away from Amanda after that. Far away.”
“You ever talk to Amanda about her own behavior? That maybe she was bringing this on?”
Moose looked away. “No. And I don’t think it would have mattered much. Some girls just get off this way.”
“You think the guy that attacked her was a stalker?” I asked.
He thought about this for a few seconds. “Don’t know, man. But there were two of them this time. Makes me think not. Stalkers, nah. They just want the girl for themselves. They’re usually loners.”
I was impressed with his answer. “Sounds like you have some detective chops. You ever work in law enforcement?”
Moose nodded. “For about a year. Was with the County Sheriff’s department. Good job, but pretty demanding.”
“Most jobs are demanding. What happened?”
“Got into it with my sergeant. I’m not real good at taking orders.”
“Me neither,” I said, starting to wonder how much more I had in common with Moose, and shuddering again at his surroundings. This was the kind of dump I used to wonder if I’d end up in. That was years ago though, before I met Gail, before we had Marcus, and before I started to make some good money. But the fears you once had never fully leave you; they just get pushed into the recesses of your mind, quietly lurking, albeit distant.
“Okay,” I said and handed Moose my card. “Give me a call if anything happens. Or if you need some backup.”
“Sure,” Moose said, fingering the card carefully. “Hey, before you go, I’m wondering if you might be able to help me out of a jam. You being former LAPD and all.”
“What’s that?” I asked tentatively.
“I owe some money to a guy. He’s connected. I’m having trouble paying him back, and he’s making demands.”
“How did you come to owe him money?”
“Lost a few bets. I was having a good run on football this year. But the last month of the season, everything went bad.”
“How much are we talking here?”
“Twenty large.”
I sat back. “Twenty thousand is a lot of money. How’d you get that far into debt?”
Moose clenched his right fist and then opened it again. “Made some bad wagers, so I began betting more to make up for them. Didn’t work. That just dropped me deeper in the hole.”
“You ask Phil for help?”
“Yeah, but he’s not being real generous. Believes people have to solve their own problems.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Maybe get them to back off for a little while until I can pay them their vig. I’ll get ‘em their money, but you know, it’s just going to take some time. People like this aren’t real good at listening to sob stories. They want their money right away, or else. Doesn’t matter how big you are, they can cut anyone down to size.”
“What’s their name?”
“Name’s
Mike White. Has a bunch of goons doing the collections. They’re not good at listening to reason, either.”
I glanced out the window. Across the street, a taco truck was parked in front of a nail salon. It didn’t look high-end. I doubted they had calamari tacos on the menu.
“I can maybe try and talk to them. But don’t expect much. If they’re not worried about a guy like you, they’re probably not going to worry about a guy like me.”
“Yeah,” Moose said as he handed me a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “But you’re all I got right now.”
*
The drive back to the Westside was a breeze, as it often is for about a one-hour window each day. The trick is being lucky enough to zoom onto the 10 freeway during that particular narrow stretch of time, which has an unnerving habit of changing daily. Today, that hour was 2:00 pm. The skies were clear, a soft breeze was blowing, and the temperature was in the high 60s . If you had to endure a January day and could time the freeway traffic just right, there were few places better to live in than southern California.
I exited at Overland, and drove south for a couple of miles through Culver City. Like Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, Culver City butted up against the city of Los Angeles, giving it civic boundaries that were confusing to everyone including police officers. It had its own municipal government, police force, and civic pride, although much of that pride emanated from the famed MGM studios. I knew something about Culver City, for I had spent the first eighteen years of my life here.
Unlike Santa Monica, which could be characterized as an upscale coastal city, or Beverly Hills, which housed some of the wealthiest people on earth, Culver City was a maze of contradictions. It was the glitzy home to the Sony studios, purchased from MGM decades earlier, but it was also a bedroom community, with modest single-family houses and utilitarian apartment buildings. Culver City had developed a burgeoning downtown, replete with trendy restaurants, brew pubs, multiplex theaters, and art galleries. But the south end of town was home to various downscale strip malls that featured check cashing stores, massage parlors, and the types of bars where not many patrons could accurately define what a craft beer was. It was a city that was trying to shed its working-class roots and doing an uneven job of it.