Mallory had done his usual stellar job: Jerry’s Deli pastrami on onion rolls with sides of coleslaw and potato salad. The only thing people in laid-back L.A. tend to be passionately myopic about—other than the interminable Lakers/Clippers debate—is their deli. Factors, Nate & Al’s, Junior’s. Pick one, get an argument. Jerry’s may not be the Carnegie or the Stage, but for my money, it’s as close as you’re going to get on this coast. And the one on Beverly Boulevard across from Cedars-Sinai is open until 4:00 a.m., which in itself is cause for celebration in a city that rolls up the sidewalks after Wheel of Fortune.
While we ate, we small-talked, and after a couple of glasses of wine, I saw Kim start to relax. When we’d wiped the last dabs of mustard off our mouths, she said, “I’d kill for a cigarette, but as you may have noticed, Capt. Black, I came aboard without pockets. Is it too much to hope for that amid all this wretched excess there might be a Benson & Hedges? Or are you one of those California assholes who starts coughing and yelling cop if they see something being fired up that isn’t a joint?”
“Actually, I’d like a cigarette too. And my position on tobacco is pretty much my position on everything that’s legal—and a few things that aren’t. It’s none of my business what you do. I only smoke two or three times a month, but if I wanted to go through four packs a day, as long as I’m not doing it in a nursery school, it’s between me and my butane salesman. I can’t help you with Benson & Hedges, though. When I want a cigarette, I want to taste it. So it’s English Ovals or nothing.”
“Bring ’em on.”
“I should warn you, they’re not filtered.”
“Then it’ll be like when I used to sneak my stepfather’s Camels.”
“Okay, let’s sit outside. I’ll turn on the pool lights.”
It was a beautiful night. Warm and full of stars. We sat, had another glass of wine and smoked. I let her get back to the events of the evening on her own.
“Dante and Tino,” she said. “Who the fuck ever figures you’re going to be kidnapped at Ralphs?”
“When did it happen?”
“About 5:30 this afternoon. The one on Olympic behind the Fox studios. Instead of doing what I usually do, which is park in the open lot in front, the sun was still really hot, so I pulled into the parking garage underneath and took the elevator up. I was in the salad aisle when this woman walked up and said, ‘Excuse me, miss, but is that your silver Mustang downstairs?’”
Kim stopped, seemed to falter. “Jesus, it’s like I’m watching a movie in my head.”
“Sometimes that happens. It’s why it’s usually better to tell a story instead of just answer questions. Now close your eyes and freeze-frame on the woman. Tell me about her.”
She swallowed a couple of times, seemed to work up her nerve, then closed her eyes. “Slender, maybe five-five. Attractive, but not drop dead. Black pantsuit, lime green blouse. Silk, I think.”
“How about her hair?”
“Shoulder-length. And she’s wearing a scarf. Designer. Also lime with red geometrics. Jesus, it’s too fucking hot for a scarf.”
“Don’t get sidetracked. Concentrate on her face.”
“Sunglasses. Those ugly-as-shit Valentinos with the creepy butterflies on the temples. I call them the M. Night Shyamalan Collection.” She hesitated. “Terrible makeup choice too. She’s got olive skin, so her lipstick should be dark. Especially with the lime. But it’s bright pink.”
“Jewelry? Birthmarks?”
“Her ears are pierced, but there’s nothing in them. And her breath smells like cigarettes. Strong ones.” Suddenly, without warning, Kim burst into tears. After a moment, she got herself back under control. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Emotional release. Healthy.”
She took a sip of wine. “After I told her I did have a silver Mustang, she said, ‘I thought I saw you get out of it. It’s none of my business, but some guy in a van ran into it, and he’s down there now leaving a note.’”
“What about her voice?” I said.
“Accented. French, but lower class. Inconsistent with her outfit.” She stopped again and looked at me. “My panties were in a bunch because I’d just gotten my car back from the body shop. Some old fart in Westwood thought the word ‘yield’ meant close your eyes and go for it and almost tore off my bumper.”
Kim was one of those people—mostly women and CIA directors—who can’t tell a story in a straight line. “What did you do?” I prodded.
“I left my cart in the salad aisle and made a beeline.”
“How long were you in the store before she came up to you?”
“Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. I was…”
I interrupted her. “Did she follow you out?”
Kim furrowed her brow, took another sip of wine and finally said, “Yes, she did. When I was getting in the parking elevator, she was walking across the front lot. Hey, her shoes were lime green too. Low heels.”
“But she didn’t get in the elevator.”
Then it hit her. “Shit, she couldn’t have seen anybody hit my car. She was parked on the upper level. What a freaking fucking idiot I am.”
“Okay, now we’ve established that there were at least three of them. Had you ever seen this woman before?”
“She looked kind of familiar, but not like I know her. More like when you see your Starbucks clerk at the dry cleaners. The face rings a bell, but it’s out of context.”
“Like someone who might have been following you earlier, but it didn’t register.”
Kim looked at me strangely. “How do you know so much about this stuff?”
I ignored her question. “Go on.”
“No, I want to know how you know what to ask. Are you a cop?”
“You’ve found me out. And this is the Beverly Hills PD safe house. But we have to be out by noon tomorrow because the chief has it reserved for a lunchtime quickie.”
She got a little irritated at my response, but that was okay. Emotion can help jog memory. I let her stew for a moment, then she calmed down and apologized. “Look, this has been the most traumatic experience of my life, and I know I’m not handling it very well. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I haven’t got a clue who you are.”
“You’re handling it just fine. And for the record, I’m just a private citizen who sometimes helps his friends. Besides, you’re the one who invited herself home with me.”
She lit another English Oval. “These are strong, but good. I need a break. Give me an example of how you help people.”
I gave it some thought. “Okay, last year, a good friend of mine, Shane Davis, a successful home builder, got a very aggressive form of leukemia. The last time we had dinner, he’d just finished running a marathon. Three months later, I was standing beside his hospital bed, and he weighed sixty-six pounds. He died the next day.
“Shane had a wife, Joanne, and four small daughters. He also had a business partner, Merle Street. When Merle realized Shane was dying, he hired a slippery law firm to rewrite the corporate records, then he looted the bank accounts, stopped paying creditors and let them force the place into bankruptcy.
“By the time Joanne called me, she’d lost her house, and she and the girls were living in a transient hotel near LAX, subsisting on food stamps. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened, but it was going to take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to get it through the courts. And even after she won, what was she going to get? A judgment she’d have to try to collect on?”
Kim’s face took on a look of distress. “Are you going to tell me you killed this guy, Merle, because if you are, I salute you, because it sounds like the prick deserved it, but I don’t want to know.”
I shook my head. “What good would that have done? Another corpse, and there still wouldn’t have been any money for Joanne. Besides, it wasn’t equitable. Street was a jerk and a thief, but he didn’t kill Shane. Leukemia did. So I went to see him and asked him to do the right thing.”
“Let me take a wild stab. He told you to go fuck yourself.”
“You must have seen the movie.”
“So what did you do?”
“I called in some watchers.”
“Watchers?”
“People who watch people for a living. They followed Merle everywhere. Took his picture, sent over drinks when he was at a bar, waved to him in church, rode the same planes, went to the movies and sat next to him. They even got a guest membership to his country club so they could play golf and take saunas with him. The only time Merle was alone was when he was home in bed—and then he wasn’t sure.”
“God, that would be creepy having someone invade your space like that.”
“After a while it makes you jumpy. Your mind conjures up things.”
“Is it even legal?”
“Merle didn’t think so, and he tried to convince a judge. So I brought the watchers into court. All twenty-two of them, and they sat there smiling, well-dressed and polite as you please. But there wasn’t a single incidence of blackmail or intimidation Merle could point to. And when the judge asked me how long I expected to continue the ‘watching,’ I told him I’d set up a fund to cover it for five years, then I’d reevaluate. I think he was secretly amused. He told Merle not to waste the court’s time again unless he had something actionable.”
“So Merle figured out you were rich—and powerful.”
“I don’t know about the power part, but yes, by then Merle knew I had considerably more money than he did, which always makes a wealthy man nervous because he knows that nine times out of ten the biggest bankroll wins. About a month later, I got word that Merle was looking for someone to take me out of the picture.”
“Like kill you?”
“Preferably painfully. And though Merle was operating out of his league, every now and then even a blind pig finds an acorn. So rather than risk his stumbling into something stupid, I ratcheted things up. The watchers had learned that his wife, Eve, was on Merle’s case to buy her a Jaguar. She was a regular at the showroom, brought home brochures, and once, she and Merle had had a shouting match in a restaurant where he’d stomped out yelling, ‘If you want a goddamn Jag, get off your goddamn ass and get a goddamn job!’”
“Classy guy.”
“It gets better. Merle had a girlfriend…Babette.”
“Of course, what else could a girlfriend be called.”
“One day while Merle’s at work, Eve answers the door and finds a brand-new British Racing Green Jaguar XK convertible sitting in her driveway, complete with a giant bow and gift card. Unfortunately, it read…”
My Sweet Babette,
For all your patient understanding and warm comfort.
One day we’ll be together forever.
In the meantime, as the ads say, Purrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Love, Merle.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Things moved pretty quickly after that. When Merle called, his voice was trembling. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ I told him that if he ever happened to come across anybody in need of something other than a Jag, maybe he’d be a good citizen.”
“This is fucking great. How much did he send her?”
“Three hundred thousand.”
“What a cocksucker.”
“I thought so too, so the watchers stayed on the job, and Babette got tickets to Paris—again care of Eve. The second check was more generous. One million. But the third, which came right after Eve and Babette got into a hair-pulling contest in Merle’s office lobby, was just right—an additional one and a half million, bringing the total to exactly what he’d stolen from Shane.”
Kim whistled softly. “Two point eight mil. So it was over.”
“Not quite, there was still the matter of the house.”
“Don’t tell me he bought that back?”
“No, another family was living there. So he bought her a bigger one across the street.”
Kim burst out laughing. “And how much of this windfall did you get, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I looked at her and just kept looking. She must have seen it in my eyes. Finally, she got so uncomfortable that her lip started to tremble.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “He was your friend, of course.” After a moment, she asked softly, “Do I qualify? As a friend, that is?”
“You’re getting there, but you need to know that I only help those who tell me the truth. Bullshit can get people hurt—or worse.”
I watched as she took that in, turned it over in her head a couple of times and made a decision. “Okay, where was I?”
“The elevator at Ralphs.”
“Right. When I got down to where I’d parked, I saw a dark blue van sitting behind my car and the guy called Tino standing beside it. I didn’t see anyone else, but I really wasn’t looking. I was just supremely pissed that in a big garage with maybe six or seven cars in it, this clown had managed to hit mine. As I approached him, he looked up with this great fucking concern. ‘Is ziss your car, miss?’
“It was such a half-assed French accent I actually thought he was putting it on…like some goddamn Westwood waiter. So I gave him my best ‘Yes, it’s my car, asshole. And you better have fucking insurance.’
“‘I so sorry,’ he said. ‘I talk on zee phone. And before I know, zee goes crunch.’”
I interrupted her. “‘Zee goes crunch?’ Are you sure those were his exact words?”
“Who the hell would make that up? Is it significant?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but it’s distinctive, and distinctive is always good.” I’d heard Dante speak, and I’d thought I’d heard a slight accent, so it didn’t seem logical that Tino would be putting on a heavier one. It was probably legitimate.
Kim continued. “So I walked around the van to get a look, and sure enough, there was a long scrape on the driver side door. I bent down and ran my finger along it, and as I did, someone came up behind me, slapped an adhesive patch over my mouth and threw a pillowcase over my head. Then another pair of hands grabbed me, and pretty soon, my wrists and ankles were taped so tight I couldn’t move. They put me in the back of the van, and one of them got in with me. Tino, I’m pretty sure. I could hear him breathing.”
She hesitated, and I let her sit for a moment, collecting her thoughts.
“He cut off my clothes,” she said finally. “And he touched me. God, I wanted to scream. But even if my mouth hadn’t been taped, I think I was too afraid. It didn’t go on too long before the other guy said something, and he stopped. Then he rolled me up in some kind of carpet and got back out. The pillowcase smelled like gasoline, so I was trying my best not to vomit when they got in a shouting match. That’s when I heard their names. It was ‘Fuck you, Tino,’ and ‘Fuck you, Dante,’ like some kind of bizarre comedy act.”
“What was the argument about?”
She looked uncomfortable. “About Tino’s molesting me.”
“What exactly did they say?”
“Dante told him to act like a professional. That if he tried anything like that again, he’d kill him. He might have even hit him because Tino went crazy-mad. He screamed, ‘Maybe you watch, you learn zee man way!’”
She fumbled for another sip of wine, hands and glass shaking.
I said, “I know it’s difficult, but the sooner you get it out, the more you’ll remember. And in the for-what-it’s-worth department, most people who’ve gone through a terrifying experience feel better after they’ve told someone.”
She nodded, then blurted, “Wait a minute! And another car came in the garage! I remember praying somebody would see what was happening. But then it faded away.”
“And…,” I said, trying to keep her going.
“Something hit the ground.”
“Loud?”
“No, just…shit, it was my car keys! There’s this big ring on them—you know, one of those gaudy pieces of crap from the car wash that says, ‘Grab Your Brass.’ I got it in a gift exchange. It’s ugly and it’s too big, but it made so much noise whenever I dropped my keys that I left it on.”
“So since Dante and Tino ended up in the van, somebody had probably arrived to drive the Mustang away. What do you want to bet she was wearing lime green and the wrong lipstick.”
“Like I said. I’m a freaking fucking idiot.”
“Nope, you’re like everybody else, completely unsuspecting. It’s why Americans are what we are, but it sure does cost us sometimes. Every cop knows that serial killers, kidnappers, child molesters and all sorts of other bad guys love vans. So they tell their wives to never, ever park beside—or even walk next to—one. Go around the block, go to another store, go home. But stay the fuck away. And if you come out of a place, and there’s one parked next to you, get a security guard or call a cab, but don’t get near a van—ever. And with 95 percent of them, it goes in one ear and out the other. It’s just more husband blah, blah, blah. So if a cop’s wife, who’s had it drummed into her, isn’t paying attention, what do you think everybody else is doing?”
“It gives me the creeps.” Then she exploded. “Fuck, I had everything in there. My phone…my datebook…like maybe fifty CDs…my goddamn dry cleaning.”
“But you’re alive.”
She cooled off immediately. “You’re right. I gotta stop worrying about the pain-in-the-ass stuff.”
I switched subjects. “I know this is a difficult question, but were you—”
“Raped?” she said. “No. Except for Tino’s handjob, it was just like I was a package they picked up. They didn’t even talk to me. We drove for a long time, maybe a couple of hours, mostly on freeway, I think, because we were going fast. When we finally stopped, there was no more light coming through the pillowcase, so the sun must have set. We sat for a while, and I heard planes landing not too far away.”
“Props or jets?”
She thought for a moment. “Both. Smaller ones, not 747s. A little while later, the back door opened, and somebody—Dante, I think—got in with me. He pulled the pillowcase off my head and shined a flashlight in my eyes. Before I could stop blinking, the pillowcase was back on. I heard another voice—a man—say, ‘Okay,’ then the door closed, and I was alone again.”
I looked at her. “So they needed to prove to somebody they had you…or they were making sure they had the right person.”
Kim looked shocked. “You mean somebody paid them to do this?”
I ignored the question. “When you said earlier that you were going to be fish food, what did you mean?”
“As soon as the van started up again, Dante asked Tino if he’d gassed up the boat. Tino said he didn’t have to because there was half a tank left. When Dante heard that, he went ballistic. He started yelling that half a tank would only get them out twenty-five miles, and they needed to go at least fifty to be sure the current wouldn’t pull my body back to shore. He said that they’d have to stop in Catalina and fill up, and he didn’t think he had enough room on his credit card.
“When I heard that, I panicked and started thrashing around. I don’t know why, but I have this almost sickening fear of drowning. And I’m terrified of boats—especially small ones. I must have been making quite a racket, because Dante climbed over the seat and told me to lie still or he’d have to knock me out. I knew it was Dante because he didn’t have that stupid accent. Then he slapped me—hard. It hurt even through the pillowcase.”
“So you went to work on the tape.”
“My hands were in front of me, and during the struggle at Ralphs, I’d broken off four nails on my right hand. The stubs were jagged enough so that if I twisted my hands just a little, I could scratch at the tape on my left wrist.”
I looked at her hand. She’d obviously found a file upstairs, but four of her nails were ground down to her fingertips. She saw me looking and covered her right hand with her left. It was a small thing, but it was the kind of modesty you can’t fake, and I was moved.
She went on, “It was completely dark, and Tino drove with his window open, which let in enough noise so they didn’t hear me when I finally got loose. I was going to jump out right then, but a big semi came up behind us, and all I could think about was being sucked under it and dragged.”
“And then you got lucky, the traffic stopped.”
Kim nodded and burst into tears, and I knew it wasn’t going to be productive to continue. So I said, “How about if we pick this up tomorrow when we’re both a little fresher.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
I walked her upstairs, but when we got to the door of the Toledo Room, she suddenly turned and lunged into my arms. “I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she sobbed quietly. “Please.”
I let her cry for a few moments until she had gotten through the worst of it, then I led her gently to my room. I put her under the covers, silk robe and all, turned out the lights and lay down on top of the bedspread next to her. I reached over and stroked her hair.
“No,” she said. “Not like that. I want you to hold me…I need you to hold me.”
So I got up, slipped out of my shorts and shirt and got into bed next to her. I’m not a prude, but I’ve got this thing about making love to women who are in a fragile emotional state. It can lead to complications and bitter feelings later, and I have the scars to prove it. But like a lot of things, my philosophy looks better on paper than it plays after you’ve had several glasses of wine and you’re naked.
As she came into my arms, I realized that she’d shed the robe and the lace in her hair. She’d left the strand around her neck. So it was just me, Kim York and her tears—and several inches of nuns’ handiwork.
She clung to me for a long time, but gradually her muscles relaxed. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but then she started to move against me. I’m a gentleman, but I’m not a saint, and I responded.
At some point, she turned over and pushed her tight rear end into me. “Do you mind?” she asked. “I want you to work my nipples while you fuck me.”
“You get right to the point.”
“It saves time.”
I had to agree. If people would spend a little more time talking in bed and a little less pretending it’s the Olympics, there’d be a lot more smiling faces and a lot fewer women masturbating after the guy falls asleep. I never quite figured it out. You’re not wearing any clothes, and you’re headed into the most intimate act a man and woman can perform, but somehow you can’t bring yourself to say, “Here, do this.”
She was a lot of girl, and she fit against me perfectly. I kissed her and caressed her and rolled her nipples between my fingers until she was groaning for me to get inside her. I must have done my job, because she had her first orgasm on my way in. Her second came a few moments before my own, and if it was half as intense as the sounds she made, we had done well together.
Afterward, as we lay in each other’s arms, she said, “I’ve never been made love to by this much man before.”
To which I naturally replied, “Shucks, ma’am, it’s not that big.”