by David Chill
I nodded in return, hopped into my vehicle and drove inside. The garage was big and roomy, and the spaces were wider than most parking structures offered. There was a distinctive odor, not of gasoline fumes, but more like fresh paint. Most of the cars were late model, with an abundance of Mercedes, Lexuses, and BMWs. This seemed like a nice place to park, although finding an open space proved a challenge, with the visitors’ spaces all filled up. An executive once told me that employees often grabbed these spots, as they were closer to the elevators, saving time when people were running late. It was another reminder that people who worked in show business were just a little different.
My phone buzzed, and when I picked up, I was treated to the silky smooth voice of Grady Pinn. There are some sportscasters who were born to have a microphone in their hands, and Grady was one of them. I told him I had just arrived on the studio lot, and asked if we could get together and talk this morning. He told me to meet him at the commissary at eleven.
Wyatt Angstrom’s office was on the sixth floor of a new office tower. The tower had an exterior of blue glass and a large lobby that featured a wall full of TVs, all tuned to different cable channels. I rode up a smartly designed elevator with a dozen other people, none of whom spoke to one another, all silently glancing down at their phones, some moving their thumbs rapidly. I found Wyatt’s office after a few minutes of walking aimlessly around the sixth floor, finally breaking down and asking someone for directions. Wyatt’s assistant’s desk was situated directly outside his door. The assistant’s nameplate said his name was Dirk, and he looked like he was barely out of college. He was listening to someone talk in rapid-fire staccato on his phone, glancing up at me briefly as he took notes. I waited a good five minutes until the call was completed. Even then, it took another ten seconds for him to acknowledge me, just as I was starting to feel my level of irritation rising.
“May I help you?”
“I’m Burnside. I have an appointment with Wyatt.”
“Oh,” he said, looking into his computer screen. “Funny, I don’t have you down on Mr. Angstrom’s calendar.”
“Yeah, that’s funny.”
“No, I really don’t see you on there.”
“And I really don’t care. Can you please tell Wyatt I’m here?“
“I need to figure this out.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “Just go ask him.”
“What is this regarding?” he inquired.
“It’s a personal matter. He may want to keep it private.”
“Oh. And just what is the reason for your visit?”
I gave him a long look. That intimidated some people, but Dirk wasn’t one of them. Maybe he was used to people posturing. Maybe he was just numb.
“Like I said. My visit is personal. It’s not something Mr. Angstrom would want me to discuss,” I said, wondering at what point I would grab him by the front of his shirt and shove him up against a wall. My sense was that it might be coming soon.
“Well, I’m Mr. Angstrom’s personal assistant, so I … ”
“Dirk!”
We both turned to look at a short, muscular man, about forty years old, with an intense look on his face. He had a bandage above his chin and one of his eyes appeared red and swollen. He didn’t look happy.
“I’ll see this Mr. Burnside. And Dirk, next time someone tells you they have a personal matter to discuss with me, you can assume it’s a subject that they don’t need to discuss with you.”
“Yes, Mr. Angstrom, I only … ”
“Mr. Burnside, please come inside,” Wyatt Angstrom said brusquely, in a voice a couple of octaves louder than necessary, one that served the dual purpose of shutting down his assistant and letting him know who was the boss. He shot his assistant a final glance before turning and following me.
His office was large and plush. The desk was big and was probably made from oak. Numerous plaques hung on the wall, and there were some framed posters as well. The windows faced east with a distant view of downtown, and striped sunlight peeked in through the mini-blinds. The carpet was thick and surprisingly deep. Wyatt Angstrom walked behind his desk, and motioned for me to sit in one of the black chairs facing him. The chair looked beautiful but it was hard as a rock. I shifted to get comfortable.
“Sorry about my assistant,” he said. “Everyone wants to get a job at a studio, but they don’t know how to act once they get here. You’re lucky if you can find one who isn’t a jerk.”
I looked at him and responded with a tired bromide. “I’m sure good help is hard to find.”
“Yes,” he said and got right down to business. “I understand Amanda’s father hired you. He called me last night. Said that you’re a detective of some sort, and you two were friends. Go way back.”
“High school football,” I said, not bothering to correct him about being friends. “I’m a licensed private investigator.”
“Impressive,” he responded, his tone sounding dry. “I’d like to find out what happened the other night, too.”
“Tell me about it,” I said in a short, clipped manner. If Wyatt Angstrom was going to dispense with pleasantries, I would, too.
Angstrom shook his head. “Not totally sure, exactly. Couple of gangsters followed us back to Amanda’s place after dinner. They jumped us.”
“Gangsters?”
“They were Hispanic,” he said, running his fingers through some thinning hair. “They looked the part.”
I didn’t bother to let him continue down the path of typecasting people. “They get any valuables?” I asked.
Wyatt Angstrom rubbed the left side of his face. It was a rugged face, both handsome and ugly at the same time. He had thinning hair and small eyes. He wore a tailored, button-down white shirt with the letters WHA monogrammed just above the cuff, and he had on a nondescript blue tie.
“Nothing was stolen, and that’s the weird thing. It never got that far. In fact, everything happened really fast. We were just walking along one minute, and the next this white van pulls up beside us and these two cholos jump out. They didn’t demand anything, they just attacked us. One of them grabbed my arms, the other started to pummel me. If I had been ready, I would have kicked their butts. They weren’t that big. But they got the jump on me, and I got knocked down to the pavement. Then they went after Amanda.”
“What do you mean ‘went after her’?” I frowned.
“Grabbed her. Punched her in the face. Looked like they might have been trying to drag her into the van. By the time I got to her, she already had her pepper spray out. Sprayed one of them full in the face. Scared the other one enough for him to back off and head for the van.”
“That’s what it took for them to go? Nailing them with some pepper spray?”
“You ever get hit with that stuff? It’s nasty. I punched the other guy a couple of times, but he kicked me in the groin and got away.”
“Oh,” I managed. “So what did they look like?”
“Like I said, Hispanics of some sort. I don’t know, Mexican, whatever, we got ‘em all here. I didn’t get to see their visas. Probably illegals. You know. L.A. and all.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And what happened next?”
“The other guy managed to stumble back into the van. They took off, although the van was weaving all over the road. I don’t know how they managed to drive like that. I made the mistake of putting my hands on my face afterward, and some of that pepper spray wound up on me. It took like an hour of flushing my eye with water before the stinging eased up.”
“Can you describe the van?”
“Just a white van, it might have had the name of a rental agency on it. Maybe Star Rentals. Didn’t even see what model it was. The street was kind of dark, too.”
“So, no robbery attempt,” I mused.
“Nope. Didn’t seem like they were after money.”
“What do you think they were after?”
“Amanda.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”
I started wondering how the conversation had veered off into this direction. Kidnapping an adult is usually rare and usually fails. It requires a detailed plan, complete with how to pick up the money and return the victim without getting caught. Since kidnappings typically involve large ransoms, the FBI often gets involved. And unless the victim is blindfolded, releasing them allows for an eyewitness to provide a detailed description of the culprits. As a result, the majority of kidnapping victims are simply never heard from again, regardless of whether or not the ransom is paid. I always thought there were far easier ways to steal money without the risk of having it escalate into homicide.
“Just how confident are you that this was a kidnapping attempt?”
Angstrom smirked. “How confident can you really be? I mean, I was confident my second wife wouldn’t leave me. But I still made her sign a pre-nup.”
I took this in and felt like shaking my head. I resisted the urge. “You been seeing Amanda for a while?”
“Almost six months.”
“You two serious?”
Wyatt Angstrom gave the hint of a smirk, but then caught himself. “Sure. About as serious as anyone is in L.A. when it comes to dating.”
“Who’d she go out with before you?”
Any further hint of a smirk disappeared at that moment, it was as if some alternative being had reached over with a washcloth and wiped his face clean of the arrogance. He wasn’t expecting the question. His mouth opened and he paused a long moment, so I looked around his spacious office. It was a nice office, with framed posters of old TV shows. One was from the old series, Dragnet, and featured a close-up of a stone-faced Jack Webb. He didn’t look happy, either.
“Amanda,” he began, “has had an on-again, off-again relationship with this guy. Mostly it’s been off. But she’s been screwing him since she was sixteen.”
“She told you this?”
“It came out eventually, mostly in dribs and drabs. She didn’t want to tell me. I don’t blame her. And that’s why I’m a little concerned.”
“You think this ex-boyfriend is behind it?”
“I don’t know. But he calls her sometimes. She’s got this love-hate thing going with him. It extends to her family somehow, she’s been reluctant to get into too many details. The guy isn’t real trustworthy, at least he didn’t strike me as such when I met him.”
“When did you meet him?” I asked.
“Some family event her father had. Maybe a month ago. The guy’s a bruiser, and he was giving me the evil eye all night. Like I had intruded on his territory or something. But I mean, man, it’s just women. There’s a million hot girls in L.A. I don’t know what his problem was.”
“So you talked to Amanda about him.”
“Afterwards, yeah. I figured any boyfriend she was banging at one time wouldn’t be around anymore. And I think she still had feelings for him, although she denies it. He didn’t strike me as her type of guy. I mean, crap, he’s twice her age. But some girls like that. And I guess this Anthony Machado still likes her. He’s got a weird nickname. Moose.”
*
I left the blue glass tower scratching my head. Wyatt Angstrom was like a multitude of entertainment types that sift through Los Angeles. I didn’t know him well, but I knew his kind. They uncovered opportunities, built relationships, and self-promoted exceedingly well. Their relationships with women were more often designed to advance their careers than to find a soul mate. It was obvious he didn’t care much about Amanda Zeal; maybe he had good reason. And since I didn’t have a next move lined up, I did the thing that I always did when I had an hour to kill. Find coffee.
A studio commissary is unlike that of most corporate lunchrooms. There are salad bars, pasta bars, sandwich bars and smoothie bars. There are frozen yogurt machines, with an astonishing number of toppings. There is something for almost everyone. As we had not yet moved past breakfast, they also had a muffin selection that extended beyond most imaginations, and bagels said to have been flown in daily from New York. The coffee stand offered ground beans from multiple countries, and today was featuring a cup of outrageously priced coffee made with beans from a brand called Jamaica Blue Mountain. Studios did what they could to keep employees happy. If anyone asked why a movie ticket in L.A. cost almost twenty dollars, here was one possible reason.
“How is that Jamaica Blue?” I asked a gorgeous young woman wearing a green apron with the Fox TV logo in the center. The barista had shiny auburn hair that tumbled in waves halfway down her back, and displayed a smile that was big and bright and flashy. She looked all of twenty years old, but she also looked like she might have been a contestant in a recent Miss Teen USA contest. I didn’t bother to ask if she was an aspiring actress. Some things are just too laughingly obvious.
“People say it’s fantastic,” she said, but added, “I can’t speak from experience though. I only drink green tea.”
“Ah. Is this Jamaica Blue worth, let’s see here, eleven dollars a cup?”
She smiled again and playfully shrugged. I had no great desire to impress her as a big spender, and even less desire to part with eleven dollars for coffee that might taste remarkably ordinary.
“Well,” I said. “I think I’ll just take the house blend.”
She turned toward the back counter, ground some beans, and did a pour-over, which is little more than sloshing hot water over the coffee and waiting for the mixture to sift through a filter and slowly drip, drip, drip into a cup. The process took about four minutes and cost me three dollars. I sat down at a table by myself, took a pleasant sip, and decided no coffee was worth eleven dollars unless it also came bundled with a full breakfast.
After an hour of combing through my iPad apps, I had learned about what was going on in the world, or at least the world I cared about. The Rams were favored to win their conference championship game on Sunday, Congress was threatening to shut down the government again, and the weather forecast for the next week in L.A. was balmy and warm. At that point, I stowed my device, paid another three dollars for a second cup of house blend, and tried to not let the gorgeous barista notice I was ogling her. The gold ring on my left hand reminded me to not mess up the very good thing I had. So, I sat back down and did some people-watching. The time went by quickly. Grady Pinn arrived at exactly eleven o’clock, wearing a button-down oxford cloth shirt, tailored slacks, and cordovan loafers.
“Oh my word, it’s the Trojan warrior!” he exclaimed, his southern-tinged voice as silky smooth as thirty-year-old bourbon. “Don’t you get up my friend, you look remarkably comfortable.”
I took his advice and remained seated while I shook his hand. It was a warm handshake. Everything about Grady Pinn was classy and effortless. In his fifties, he had a head full of distinguished-looking silver hair, and a permanent tan. He was pleasant to look at and effortless to listen to. Grady was the type of person the gods probably conjured up when they were contemplating how to best construct middle-aged human beings. From an outsider’s view, he had an idyllic life and a career many would kill for. I got the feeling traffic lights turned green for him whenever he drove down the street.
“Thank you for meeting me, Grady. I appreciate it.”
“Not a problem, my friend. I do appreciate, over the past few years, your taking time to speak with me before our broadcasts. You helped me make those USC games better. I’m no football expert, but I learned a lot about how to defend against a jet sweep and a bubble screen.”
I smiled. “It’s mostly about getting the defense in the right position. And knocking people down.”
“Well, you helped me lend some authenticity to the broadcasts. And I got props from my color man, too. Former football players love it when you can throw around terms like a single high safety or shooting the A-gap. Made me sound like I knew what I was talking
about.”
“Happy to help. You still make the broadcasts fun to listen to. That golden voice.”
“Sure,” he said. “So, tell me what brings you to the studio today. I heard you went back into law enforcement. When Johnny Cleary left for the Bears. Don’t tell me you’re looking at another career change.”
“Nope,” I said. “I have no interest in being a sportscaster.”
“Good. This business has far too many amateurs. Mostly former jocks who can’t speak proper English, or talking heads who won’t put in the time to learn the game. It’s a tough world to break into, and a tougher one to do well. A few of us make it look easy, so anyone thinks they can pick up a mike and call a game on TV.”
“That’s somewhat related to why I wanted to talk to you. Tangentially, perhaps.”
“Tangentially? Another word I’ll remember. Well, please go on.”
“Amanda Zeal. I know you worked with her. She was part of your crew covering Pac-12 college games this year.”
In an instant, Grady Pinn’s pleasant expression flipped to something that looked painful. “Yes, she was on our team,” he groaned.
“Not sounding like you had a positive experience.”
“Look,” he managed. “The networks all hire these sideline reporters now. The girls are eye candy. I get it. It drives viewership to have a sexy woman in front of a camera. And they’re often able to buttonhole a coach at halftime and make them want to spend thirty seconds talking about how their team has to stay focused, work harder, blah, blah, blah. But that’s the main purpose. Get viewers to stay on the channel and watch them. Most of those girls are just walking cupcakes.”
“And Amanda … ?”
“She was a treat to look at. And her voice was getting better. But look, you can’t harangue coaches in the middle of the game.”
“Harangue?”
“Yes. Harangue. Or maybe accost. She would get in a coach’s face and press him on why his team wasn’t performing better. Try and pin him down on specifics of what they were planning to do in the second half. No coach in his right mind is going to give up his strategy in a front of a TV audience. And they don’t appreciate being badgered.”