“It’s very helpful. Did you ever see anyone threaten her? A man?”
“No.”
“Her diaries . . .”
“Yes, she kept—”
“Have you found them, Detective?” asks Michael Paine, stepping beside Molly.
He reaches out and shakes my hand.
“No,” I say.
“Do you two know each other?” asks Molly.
“Detective Carver was at my house the other day.”
“Oh, yes, you saw Katrina the night she died,” says Molly.
“She wanted me to write a book about her. She said she kept diaries. I asked for them, but she didn’t have them with her. I think she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell her story.”
“Michael’s writing a piece for Vanity Fair,” says Molly.
“The Death of a Ballerina in the City of Angels.”
“Right up their alley,” I say.
“Oh, yes,” he says, “I can see it already. Not the cover. No, she had faded too far for that, but a big spread inside. You know the way they do. Black-and-white photographs like in a masquerade. A shot of the morgue she was stolen from. Her as a child, of course. The prodigy from Russia. The rise and fall.” He pauses. “Actually, it could be the cover.”
“You’ve got it all worked out,” I say.
“I don’t mean to sound that way,” he says. “Her end was sad. As I told you, she seemed agitated that night.”
“Michael’s interviewed me already, Detective.” She turns to him. “I still feel ambivalent about it. It’s so hard to get a life right.”
“We are our complexities and contradictions,” says Paine, smiling like a man in a hunt, drinking Perrier, his eyes, like mine, alert. But he has the charm of a mischievous dog and a confidence that he works hard to keep from becoming condescension. We look to the skyline and beyond, to the fires. I can feel Molly beside me—sense her, as if someone I knew from long ago had returned, and all the intervening years had vanished.
“Yes, Michael, we are complicated, but we can be wonderful,” she says.
“It’s why I write,” he says. “Detective, I doubt we’ll ever see those diaries.”
“It’d be hard to tell a story without them,” I say.
“If you come across them, I’d love a peek,” he says.
I don’t answer. He shakes my hand, nods to Molly, and drifts toward Andreas, who has taken a seat near the violinist.
“I’ve never understood writers,” says Molly.
“He’s done well. I was at his home in Los Feliz. He wanted to write a book about Lady Gaga, but it never came off.”
“She probably couldn’t sit still long enough. I guess Katrina is perfectly suited for Vanity Fair.”
“Your world too.”
“Not so much anymore,” she says, looking to the distant glow. “I’ve never seen a sky like this.”
“They can burn for days.”
“You think someone killed her? Not the pills?”
“I think both.”
“Every time I think of her body being stolen . . . well, I can’t imagine, really. There’s no peace for her.”
“I hate that it happened.”
“It can’t be your fault.”
“It’s my case.”
“You may never know, really.”
“I don’t think about that.”
“I don’t think I’ve been much help.”
“Everything I hear helps.”
She finishes her whiskey.
“Was it hard to give up dancing?”
“Oh, yes,” she says. “I had many injuries. But I was never at the level one needs to be. Katrina taught me that. There are some who are just beyond us, Detective, and all we can do is watch in awe. But I stay close enough to it. I live on the vapors.”
An old man takes Molly’s hand and hugs her. He is crying and grasping a photograph of himself, Molly, and Katrina holding flowers on a stage. I turn away and feel Molly’s hand on my arm, a whisper in my ear. She releases me. I walk and stand near the violinist at the roof’s edge, streets alive below, fires in the hills. I turn to the south—plane lights in the sky, and beyond the flight path, blackness. A gust blows the scarf from Katrina’s portrait. Dancers scurry to catch it, but it lifts, a ripple of color, and is gone. A heel clicks. A woman barely out of her teens steps beside me.
“She wasn’t that special, you know,” she says. “But now we’ve made her a saint.”
“I thought she was one of the best,” I say. “Isn’t that why everyone’s here?”
“They’re here because they want to dance Giselle.”
“The show’s canceled,” I say.
“There’ll be other Giselles, Detective,” she says, staring at the violinist. “See? All the money and choreographers. The air is full of opportunity. Ballerinas look like sparrows, but they can be quite mercenary.”
“You a dancer?”
“Sabine Moritz.”
“Andreas’s company?”
“Two years. San Francisco before that.”
“You have a French accent.”
“Oui.”
“Should I know you?”
“Not at the moment. One day though.”
“Like Katrina,” I say.
“She lost her discipline.”
“She had other things.”
“A spectacular past and an addict’s glamour.”
“You sound like—”
“No,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t give her pills or kill her, or whatever. I was sad for her. A little envious, maybe. It’s a cruel and jealous business.”
“So I gather. Why do it?”
“Cruelty can lead to moments of unforgettable grace.”
“You’re not old enough to come up with that.”
“You’d be surprised what a girl can pick up over the years,” she says through the trace of a smile. “I will be a great ballerina one day.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You should know the world you’re in, Detective, that’s all.”
“Is it so different?”
“Maybe not. But it’s prettier, at least on the outside.”
The violinist plays. Sabine Moritz and I listen. Her hair is short, dark, and crimped, her neck slender and pearled. She seems so young to be so confident and certain. But I suspect that one day I may see her name lit up on a marquee, or in a headline, and be reminded of this night when she stood beside me, thin and sharp as angel hair. She closes her eyes and breathes in the music. I shut my eyes too. Minutes pass without a word. A siren below brings the world back. Sabine turns, nods goodbye, and walks toward the dancers.
I take the elevator down and walk a few blocks to Katrina’s building. The arched windows are dark and empty. Two men on the sidewalk are drumming plastic barrels, and another, all in white, is swaying and whirling like a talisman in a breeze. I stop in the Little Easy. Lenny’s off tonight. I order a drink and go through my notes. Michael Paine may be right. We may never find the diaries. Or the body. Cold case. I hope not. I nod for another drink and watch silent, huddled families on TV. They have lost it all, not that far away, in a place of bright, burning armies. I keep thinking of Andreas Stein, and the way we break down over time, at first without notice and then with sudden clarity. I pay and walk west on Fifth through Pershing Square. I cross Olive to the Biltmore Hotel and into the lobby, past photographs, like the ones on Paine’s wall, of old movie stars with their diamonds and cigarettes, and their confidence that it all might last a little longer, this dream they had found between the ocean and the desert’s edge. I’d love to feel the slight buzz from a cigarette. I haven’t had one in weeks, but I like patting my jacket, thinking I might find a stray. No. I get in the elevator, step out, and follow the numbers. I knock.
<
br /> “I thought I might see you again, Detective.”
“It’s Sam,” I say as Molly opens the door.
It clicks behind me. The curtains are drawn, the room dark. She takes my hand and leads me to the bed. I can hear her breathe. We stand together, still. I feel her, tall and slender and warm against me. Her robe drops. We kiss and lie on the bed. I undress. We don’t hurry, and I think that we’ve only just met but no, I know her, although I don’t, and I pretend, and she pretends, maybe of Katrina in her bed in New York, or a lover long ago in Spain, a dancer like her, young and lean, and I, closing my eyes, imagine Dylan Cross and that night in my apartment when she kissed me in her black dress and heels, and I tasted her wine and she said, ‘Bye, Sam.’ What would it have been like? Molly makes me wonder. Perhaps it was her gaze on the rooftop, the conspiracy in her voice—not her accent, but her echo is like Dylan’s, or close—and the way she moves, taught early that tall girls have their own grace. I don’t know. So much is alive in this dark. Molly gathers and holds me, two strangers in a rented room, making love to different ghosts. She sits over me, caressing my face, and leans and kisses me and rises again, an outline, insubstantial, real, a breath, a slow drawing of air, then release, and she falls to me, and I run my fingers over her back, warm against the night air, and she slides beside me as this moment plays like recurring music, an unspoken memory through our lives. She kisses me.
“I’m glad,” she says.
“You expected me?”
“We both expected you.”
“Yes.”
“The lives of others stay with us.”
“For how long?”
“I suppose forever, or maybe one day they disappear as if we never knew them at all.”
“What time do you remember most?”
“Dancing as a child across the living room.”
“Started young, huh?”
“You have to,” she says. “My mother’s passion became mine. It happens like that, you know.”
“I would have liked to see you dance.”
“Well, then . . .”
She gets up and opens the curtains a crack, laughs, spins twice, and falls, a flash of white, back to bed and beside me again. We are silent for a long while.
“I never know what to do with death,” she says. “I don’t know how you do it. Your job, I mean.”
“It’s when they’re most innocent, even the bad ones.”
“Nothing can hurt them again.”
“Never,” I say.
“What do we do with this night?”
I don’t answer. She presses closer. I hear footsteps and laughter in the hall. Drunken whispers, the scrape of a key card. Then nothing.
Molly is gone in the morning. No trace. No bags, no clothes, no scattered necklaces or rings. Just a note. I won’t forget. I shower and put on a white robe, make complimentary coffee from the minibar, open the curtains, and stand at the window like a man with money, a man who owns things and is setting out on a day of consequence.
Chapter 17
“I got him.”
“Who?”
“The guy.”
“What guy?”
“The Jimmy Krause guy.”
Lily Hernandez is hushed in stakeout-phone voice. It’s her day off, and without asking, she’s decided to help, telling me, “Time’s passing, Carver. You gotta get somewhere on this, or it’s gone. I’m making detective soon anyway. Let’s do it.” She’s already run seven miles and worked the weights, and now she’s in a Burbank bar, watching Jimmy Krause, the name Azadeh’s CI passed along. Lily ran a check on him, pulled his driver’s license, photo, and a rap sheet, which included fencing diamonds and running a chop shop.
“Get here,” she says.
“How long’s he been there?”
“Midway through a beer.”
“Keep an eye on him.”
“No shit, Carver.”
“Why Burbank? Who hangs out in Burbank?”
“Bunch of Warner Brothers types and animators. Hurry.”
I hop on the 101 and arrive forty-five minutes later. My eyes adjust to the dim light of the bar. Lily nods. A happy-hour crowd is drinking margaritas, and someone’s having a birthday party in the corner. Two waitresses, two bartenders, spilled tequila, cut lemons; young white and Asian geeks huddled around a Mac, amazed at an anime character spinning in 3D and resembling a cross between Ant-Man and Catwoman. One of them says, “It’s kinda like a transgender superhero.” Another answers, “Catwoman’s not a hero.” The first guy responds, “Same genre, asshole.” His buddy says, “Too hybrid and ambiguous for me, man. I mean, I don’t know what it is. How do we build an origin story?”
Burbank at twilight. I slide in next to Lily at the bar.
“He’s on his third beer,” she says.
“Alone?”
“Yeah. What should we do?”
“Watch.”
“Order something.”
“What are you drinking?”
“Sprite.”
“Jesus. Who drinks Sprite at happy hour?”
“This is technically work,” she says.
“I’m having a beer.”
“He doesn’t look like a runner.”
“Heavyset. Shaved head, bouncer type.”
“Nice face, though,” says Lily. “My guess, he used to pump iron and take steroids. But he let it go. That’s what happens to a lot of guys. I see them at the gym all the time. They let it go and get beefy. He’s probably slower than the cellist. You could probably catch him, Carver.”
“Screw you.”
Lily winks and smiles.
“You see his rap sheet?” she says.
“Not much of a bad guy. But diamonds mean he travels in certain circles.”
Lily’s wearing jeans, beat-up Cons, and a tight yellow zip-up shirt. A cross on a gold chain, a gift from her dead father, Patrolman Federico Hernandez, killed years ago in a gang war, shines against her light-brown skin. She pushes back her short, black hair, turns, and looks at me as if to say this is how it should be, she and I sitting across from a mystery, wondering how it’s going to go down. It reminds me of the first time we met, standing over Paul Jamieson, naked and rigid in a chair, a thread of lipstick, mascara on his lashes, and Dylan Cross’s knife wound in his heart. Lily said to me that day, “The doer’s a woman, no question. Only a woman could make him up that pretty. That’s a special kind of hate to do to a man.”
Jimmy Krause answers his phone. Puts it down a few seconds later, picks it up again, texts something, puts it down. Sips his beer. The happy-hour crowd is thinning. The door opens. A man in a black suit walks in, taps Krause on the shoulder, leans into him close. They walk out. I follow. Lily pays the bill. Krause and the man get in the back of an Escalade with tinted windows parked at the corner. They head south. Lily comes out, and we run for my Porsche and follow. We’re two blocks behind but have them in sight. They head over the Ventura Freeway and keep south over the Los Angeles River and then onto North Highland, Franklin, and Hollywood Boulevard, heading west toward Beverly Hills.
“Maybe he’s got a pocketful of diamonds,” says Lily.
“Don’t get ahead of things.”
“I smell fumes. You smell fumes?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’ve got to do something about this car, Carver. I get the whole vintage thing, but it needs work. Seriously.”
The Escalade rolls through the gate to an Italianate mansion with a fountain in the courtyard and disappears behind high walls and ivy. The house lights glow soft and yellow. The gate closes. We pass and park across the street about a hundred yards away. Lily calls Dispatch with the address, to see who owns the place. I turn off my lights and roll down the window, breathing in hibiscus and wealth. The night hides us. It’s quiet, clean. A l
ight breeze from the ocean. The name comes back. Mickey Orlov.
“That’s the producer, right?” says Lily.
“Big producer.”
Lily Googles.
“Damn, Carver, this guy’s done a ton of movies. Net worth—get this—two-point-three billion. Got a couple of studios, a few vineyards, owns a fucking castle in Croatia.” The phone lights her face; she scrolls. “He was born in 1948 in a town outside Moscow, long-ass name I can’t pronounce. He turned Mikhail into Mickey, and according to a story in Fortune, he was in the fricking KGB! Only in it a few years, mostly in Western Europe during the Cold War. Got out a long time ago and went into business. When the wall fell, he became an oligarch, although—get this—he doesn’t like being called an oligarch. ‘I’m just a businessman and a producer.’ That’s what he says. Modest, huh? Gimme a break, right?”
“What else?”
“Jesus, Carver, what else ? Really? We’re sitting outside the house of a one-time Russian spy turned movie producer, with a questionable character named Jimmy Krause inside, at a time you’re investigating the death of a Russian ballerina and a Russian cellist. That’s a lot of else.” She scrolls, turns, and looks at me. “Wonder what he wants with a guy like Krause. Orlov doesn’t need to buy stolen diamonds. He probably owns a diamond mine. What do we do?”
“Wait till Krause comes out. Follow him.”
“I gotta pee.”
“Hold it.”
“I don’t think you’re ever a ‘former spy.’ Do you? Once you’re in, you’re in.”
“Like a priest or a cop,” I say.
“Exactly. You know too much about too many things. I’m thinking Orlov is playing every angle. He’s loaded, connected. He must have known Katrina. Her parents too. Hang on.” She types, scrolls. “I put in Mickey’s and Katrina’s names. Nothing. But this is in English. We’re going to have to check Russian sites.” More typing, scrolling. “Just popped his name into images with Putin. Look.” She turns her phone toward me. “Fishing buddies.”
“Let see what plays out,” I say. “We’ll stay on Krause.”
“Could be in there a while.”
Last Dance Page 10