by David Chill
“Anyone at the network try and tell her this?”
“Ad nauseam, my friend, but it was like talking to the wall. She was stubborn as a mule. No give in her. But things finally got bad at the Rose Bowl a few weeks ago. I’m sure you remember that game.”
I did. It was a marvelous day, and one I’d remember for a long time. I met Johnny Cleary and his wife there, and I was able to bring Marcus along. USC beat Michigan that day, and after the game, we went down onto the field and my five-year-old son got to meet some of the players. He did a high-five with the USC quarterback, Patrick O’Malley, and was still glowing from the experience.
“I certainly do recall that one. But what happened with Amanda?”
“She started going after the Michigan coach, and some of their fans overheard her yelling at him as their team came out of the tunnel at halftime. Some fans took exception. Mostly some jawing back and forth. But one fan jumped out of the stands and had to be physically restrained. They gave him a security escort out of the stadium, but that’s the type of emotion she evokes in people. And it’s not a good thing.”
“Right,” I agreed, scratching my head. “Then why is she still on air? Like you said, there’s lots of good looking people trying to get into the business. Replacing her couldn’t be hard.”
“Harder than you might think. She’s connected. Someone in management at the Fox network likes her. Might be a boyfriend, who knows. But when our producer tried to make a change, the word came down from up top. She stays. The network thinks she has spunk and adds spice to the broadcast.”
I nodded. “Helps to have friends in high places.”
“Or learn to go low,” he responded dryly, before catching himself. “Listen, it’s the same as when people complained about Howard Cosell back in the day. Or Skip Bayless now. They annoy a lot of viewers, but the viewers tune in to hear them. It becomes must-see TV. What kind of outrageous comment would they utter next. It’s all about getting eyeballs.”
“Show biz,” I concurred, and then followed up with the paramount issue, the one I came to inquire about. “She get any threats?”
Grady Pinn gave me an odd look. “Funny you should ask. Is that why you’re here?”
“It is.”
He pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek, seemingly being deep in thought. It was an actor’s technique, used by people who wanted to give off the impression of deep thinking, but it was also employed by people considering just how to phrase a response in the most delicate of ways.
“We all get threats, you know. Comes with the territory. Criticize a fan’s favorite team and there’s always some goofball out there who’ll be furious. It’s almost always bluster. Nonsense, and usually nothing comes of it. The worries I have are from the guy that gets mad and doesn’t contact us. But the threats we get are typically empty ones. Meaningless.”
“But Amanda’s gotten them.”
Grady sighed. “Yes. And more than a few. If you watch her on the sidelines, you’ll a see some burly guys nearby. Added security. As I said, a few fans have gotten into it with her, mostly yelling, and the network likes the heckling. But they’re aware it might evolve into something more.”
“You say that usually nothing comes of these threats. That’s not so reassuring.”
“No, it’s not. And our team just wants to do a broadcast. No one wants to get caught up in anything beyond that. Do our jobs, cash our paychecks, and go home.”
“You think these threats are just coming from fans venting?”
“Pretty much,” he said, standing up to signal our time had come to an end. “But we’re talking about human beings here. And this is America. You can’t rule anything out.”
“Thanks. This is helpful. Appreciate your taking the time.”
“Not a problem, but I have an eleven-thirty meeting with the crew that’s broadcasting the Rams game on Sunday. They’re aware I know a thing or two about that Goff kid; he used to play up at Cal.”
I smiled. “In three years, he never beat USC. Our defense shut him down.”
“Right. I called a couple of those games. Your boy Johnny Cleary should have taken my advice and stayed at SC. He’s making a lot of money in Chicago with the Bears. But eventually he’ll get fired, because almost all NFL coaches get fired eventually. And as you know, college is special.”
“I agree.”
“And,” he added, casting a more-than-casual glance at the beautiful barista who made my coffee, “you can’t top the women on a college campus. Although a studio lot comes mighty close. I call those girls a side benefit.”
“I call them a walking lawsuit.”
“Well, you know, I like living on the edge.”
“Careful, Grady,” I warned, feeling oddly paternal as I watched my comely barista. “Some of these girls are young enough to be your daughter.”
He smiled. “I’m fifty-five, but I feel twenty-one.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “If that were true, I’d wonder what you were doing at twenty-one.”
Grady Pinn threw back his head and laughed, clapped me on the back, and headed toward the exit. I finished the final bit of my coffee, walked over to the garage, and drove my Pathfinder back out into the real world. I sailed down Pico for a short while, and then I saw the sign for the Apple Pan and decided now would be a good time for lunch. It was early enough to grab a seat at the counter without waiting, and I was rewarded with one of life’s simple but wonderful pleasures. The Apple Pan had been around for over a century. It maintained that old-style charm but still served a hickory burger that was second to none. I had been coming here since I was five years old, and the joint had never changed. I thought about the Amanda Zeal case, and how I was learning a lot but not coming up with good answers. But on the way back to my car, my phone rang, and something on this case changed, and changed dramatically.
“This is Burnside,” I said.
“Mr. Burnside,” came a voice that sounded very familiar, but one I couldn’t quite place right away.
“That’s me. Who are you?”
“This is Detective Slick. Beverly Hills PD. Haven’t spoken with you in what, a day now?”
“Of course. How have you been all this time?”
“I’m all right. Can’t say the same thing for the corpse I’m looking at right now.”
“Oh?” I said warily. “Somehow I’m connected to them. Man or woman?”
“Well, that’s pretty obvious, let me tell you. Don’t need to be a detective to figure that one out. But whoever killed Anthony Machado shot him in the head four times at close range. I’m calling you because we found your phone number on his recent call list. We also found your business card inside his pocket. Any idea how it got there?”
Chapter 4
Amanda Zeal’s apartment building was two blocks off of Beverly Drive, in an ornate, well-designed, and well-maintained building that had a white exterior with curved, black metallic trim on the entryway door. There was subterranean parking, protected by a long gate that was conspicuously open. There were six black-and-white cruisers parked outside, and there was yellow crime scene tape up across the garage entrance. I ducked under it as I walked down into the garage.
Detective Drew Slick was dressed in a dark gray suit and sported a stylish green-and-blue striped tie. He had an unblemished face and a calm demeanor, with his blond hair parted on the side and combed back. He had blue eyes and a square jaw, and could have easily come out of central casting. It had been half a dozen years since I had last seen him, but he looked remarkably the same, and that was oddly reassuring because Drew Slick looked exactly like what a Beverly Hills detective should look like. But he was still a cop, and there was no mistaking the jaded expression on his face. In some detectives, the look is more world-weary. But that was LAPD. This was Beverly Hills, and it came with a touch of sophistication.
“Burnside,” he said, giving me the once-over. “Thanks for coming over so quickly. I always appreciate it when the private s
ector does what I ask them to do.”
I smiled a phony smile. “Whatever you like, Detective. I’m here to help.”
“Well, that puts my mind at ease,” he replied, pointing to a white sheet covering what was once a very large human being. It was about thirty feet away. “This is Mr. Anthony Machado. What I’d like you to help me with is how Mr. Machado came to have your card in his pocket and have your phone number on his call list. That’s the extent of what we have to go on.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah. Right now, all we’ve got is some stiff who lived in a downtown slum came out here and decided to get shot in the head. Oh yeah, and we’ve got you. Maybe you can fill in some details for us.”
“I’ll do the best I can.”
“Sure. Maybe go above and beyond, eh?” he said, pulling out a small notebook and clicking the top of a blue gel pen. “How’d this Machado guy come to know you?”
“We went to high school together.”
“Go way back, huh?”
“Yeah, but until yesterday, I hadn’t seen him since. I got hired by Phil Zellis. Owns a home here in Beverly Hills. You know about his daughter, Amanda Zeal, getting attacked the other night. Guess it happened down the street from here. Phil wanted me to look into it. And he wanted Anthony Machado, who, by the way, we nicknamed Moose, to protect Amanda.”
Drew Slick turned and pointed to the sheet on the ground. “Didn’t do his job real well, now, did he?”
I gave him the palms up sign. “Can’t really tell,” I said. “Maybe he took a bullet for her.”
He pondered this for a moment and then moved on. “Okay. Just how are all these people related? This Machado, Amanda Zeal, and Phil Zellis?”
“Phil Zellis is Amanda Zeal’s father. She changed her name. Works as a sideline reporter for Fox, doing college football games. Phil, Moose and I all played football together. Culver City. About a million years ago.”
“Oh, yeah?” he remarked, suddenly more interested. “You were a football player in college, if I remember.”
“I was.”
“Me, too. I used to play football for UC Davis. Quarterback. But my playing days were probably a lot more recent.”
I felt my hand balling into a fist. “And my playing days were with a school most football fans have heard of.”
Slick chuckled. “We weren’t Alabama.”
“You weren’t even Utah State.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “So, what do you make of that assault the other night?”
“Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Don’t get cute. I read the report. Pretty skimpy. Amanda Zeal and this boyfriend get attacked out of nowhere and then the thugs take off. Not a lot to go on.”
“The thugs left in a rented white van. They think it might have been from Star Rentals.”
“Oh?” Drew Slick said, eyebrows raised. “Didn’t see that in the police report. What else you uncover? This is starting to get interesting.”
I stopped and wondered just how interesting the days of a Beverly Hills police detective normally were. I sensed the answer was not very. In wealthy communities, the main crimes center mostly around home burglaries, with the occasional domestic assault popping up, when some man with more money than sense decides to take out his minimal frustrations in life by slapping his wife around. The opportunity to tackle a murder case should be one that makes a detective salivate.
“Amanda’s boyfriend is named Wyatt Angstrom. Works over at Fox. I saw him this morning. He had a few marks on his face. And his eyes were red from pepper spray. Supposedly got it on him accidentally.”
“Accidentally?”
I shrugged. “Said he must have gotten some on his hands during the tussle. Fighting off the bad guys.”
“You believe in accidents?”
“Nope,” I said, thinking neither did Sigmund Freud.
“Okay, so we got the two thugs from the other night, and we’ve got the boyfriend, the father, and you. Anyone else we need to mix in?”
“Not yet. But there’s Amanda’s grandfather. Used to be on the job, Largo Beach PD.”
“Former cop, huh? Okay. Means he’s almost certain to have access to a firearm. What’s his name?”
“Ed Zellis. I understand he still lives in Culver City.”
“Right,” he said, and closed his notebook. “Again, what do you make of this? Girl and her boyfriend get assaulted by a couple of perps, the dad hires some muscle to protect her, and the muscle goes and gets himself whacked. And the girl’s not around afterward.”
“Maybe someone didn’t want the muscle around. Maybe whoever did it was after Amanda. Maybe she got away and went into hiding. Lots of maybes.”
Drew Slick stared at me for a minute and then walked over to a uniformed officer, who listened to him and then walked into the building. He returned about fifteen minutes later and said something quietly into Slick’s ear. The Detective talked to another officer before he made his way back to me.
“She’s not in her apartment. My guy just ran into a neighbor who said he saw Amanda and Machado leave the apartment together around ten-fifteen, a couple of hours ago. Makes sense. This got called in by someone who found the body a few minutes later. Let me ask you something. Were those two a thing, do you know? They hook up?”
I was mildly impressed. “What I heard is they had some sort of a relationship. Goes back a few years.”
Slick nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yeah, that makes sense. Jealousy, disputes, grudges, this is starting to add up. You say her boyfriend works for Fox? Wyatt Angstrom?”
“Yeah, although I wouldn’t be that quick to judge. I left his office a little before ten o’clock. And it doesn’t explain the guys in the white van.”
“Nope, it sure don’t. But no one’s seen a white van here today. We’ll check the video cameras to be sure. But it’s possible to leave Fox a few minutes before ten and still get here at a quarter after. In fact, the timing is exceptionally good. He could have arrived right when they were coming downstairs.”
“Maybe so,” I acknowledged.
“And I’m not ruling out the dad and the grandpa. What’s the dad like? He got a temper?”
I thought about how to respond. I clearly remembered Phil Zellis and his anger issues, ones that dated back to high school and probably well beyond that. He had little control over his temper, but back then, teenagers settled disagreements with their fists if they couldn’t talk them through. Nowadays a lot of people have guns, and the stakes have risen accordingly. But Phil was the one who brought Moose on, so it made no sense for him to go and shoot Moose in the head a few days later. But a lot of things about this case were making no sense.
“I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I last saw him.”
“Okay,” Drew Slick said. “Anything else you can tell me about this Machado guy?”
“He owed money to some bookie. Goes by the name of Mike White. Not sure if it’s a real name. I don’t know if that helps, but it probably doesn’t hurt.”
“Got any contact info?”
I wrote down the phone number Moose gave me and handed it to him.
“Good,” he said. “What else can you tell me about the dad, this Phil Zellis? You think he knew about Machado and his girl?”
“He never said, but probably not. If he did, he wouldn’t have brought Moose on to look out for his daughter.”
“Uh-huh. So, the dad’s a homeowner in Beverly Hills. But the grandfather’s a retired cop who lives in Culver City, where you guys grew up. Tell me how that happened.”
I smiled. “The son made his money the old-fashioned way.”
“How’s that?”
“He married into it.”
Drew Slick gave a small snort of laughter. “Ain’t that the American dream? Okay, we got a bunch of suspects now. Let’s see where this goes.”
I wondered if I should add that we might also have a missing young woman, Amanda Zeal, who was observed he
ading down into the garage with the victim, but was mysteriously not around after he was killed. There was no sure sign that she was missing; no one had seen her being taken against her will.
“I guess you’ve got it all handled,” I managed.
“Yup. Good leads. Thanks, Burnside. I’m surprised. For a P.I., you’ve been a lot more helpful than I imagined.”
“Let’s just say I find this kind of work interesting,” I said, not feeling especially helpful any longer.
Detective Slick gave me a long look. “Okay. Like I said, we’ve got some suspects to delve into.”
“You forgot one.”
“Oh yeah? Who?”
I gave him a long look this time. “Amanda Zeal.”
*
The afternoon sun shined brightly as I walked out of the subterranean garage. The crack Beverly Hills police force would be investigating the death of Moose Machado, and they were unlikely to require the services of a local private investigator. In fact, they would undoubtedly prefer my not poking around in their business. There was no law against my investigating this crime, but neither was there any substantive payoff. There was however, the glaring issue, the one I was indeed being paid for. Uncovering why Amanda and Wyatt were attacked, and just who had attacked them. That Amanda herself seemed to have disappeared into the wind made this already cumbersome issue even more taxing.
Hopping back into my Pathfinder, I pulled out my iPad and scanned the internet for the address of Phil Zellis. I decided the time was ripe for an in-home visit with my client. Phil and Joy Zellis lived on Coldwater Canyon Drive, in a house that was worth more than I would likely earn in two lifetimes. I studied the photos of their home, nicely provided by a realtor who had listed the property a few years ago and kept it on his website for reasons that went no further than self-promotion. The Zellis’s home was a 9-bedroom, 6-bath monstrosity that probably housed just two people these days, but looked as if it could accommodate a dozen more, and easily at that.