chapter two

The calendar said october, but autumn hadn’t reached L.A. yet. A wet blanket of heat slapped us hard as we left the building’s air conditioning and walked back toward the car. The sun’s glare turned my contacts black before we’d taken two steps outside the dead woman’s apartment.

Detective sedans are officially unmarked, but unofficially it’s a different story. The ad for Firestone tires “Firestone—Protection to serve you” ran along the side of every sedan in the fleet: corporate tagging. The reflective ads made us as conspicuous as any black and white, but we were stuck with them. When overburdened taxpayers turned down another tax bump, Firestone had coughed up the cash for the city’s new police sedans.

“Three o’clock,” Shin said, checking his glove phone. “Too early for headliners, but we might catch the boss minding the store.” He pursed his lips for a second. “Okay, ikimashoo.” Shin slid his darkened glasses down on his nose and peered at me. His black eyes twinkled. “But, Eddie . . .”

“Yeah?”

“You back me up when I tell the wife the strip club was all business.”

I wagged my head and grinned.

“I can’t wait until you’re married, you bastard.” Shin rubbed his hands together and laughed. “It’s gonna be payback—big time.”

“You’ll have your revenge soon,” I said. “Picked up the ring yesterday. I’ll ask Jo tonight.”

Jo, aka Jocelyn Sloan, was the woman who made me realize the hucksters behind those love at first sight clichés aren’t always lying.

“Women just fall at your feet, don’t they?” Shin said. “I saw Bogardus hit on you back there. Must be nice.”

Cars packed the streets as we headed south towards Sunset. I dodged the ever-present potholes and cracked tarmac. Stuck in gridlock a little further along, Shin put in a call to Vice for background on the Sandy Beaches Gentlemen’s Club.

“Randy Bitches Strip Joint?” Detective Petra Miller’s face appeared on the car’s screen as we inched along in traffic.

“Call girl set up?” I asked.

“Allegedly.” Miller’s hands framed the word with air quotes. When she smiled, Miller’s eyes almost disappeared in her chubby face like raisins in rising dough. “Sandy was an aspiring actress back in the day. Now she caters to big time clients with gutter type tastes—actors, studio executives, businessmen.”

“Why no rap sheet?”

“Good lawyers, bad evidence.” Miller winked.

“This girl Britney who worked for her wasn’t so lucky,” Shin said. “She had a prior from 2039—for soliciting and possession.”

“Probably another ingenue who didn’t make it,” Detective Miller said. “Most of Sandy’s girls get hauled in eventually. For hooking or holding. But none of ’em have turned on her—yet.”

Shin and I turned east on Sunset Boulevard. Traffic started to flow more smoothly. Overhead, white pod-cars shaped like Tylenol capsules hummed along their monorails, ferrying tourists from posh hotels to Rodeo Drive. The interlinked LV Louis Vuitton logo glittered on the side of the white cars: more corporate tagging.

Shin and I thanked Det. Miller and finished the drive to the club. Located on the east side of Sunset, Sandy Beaches Gentlemen’s Club was conveniently sandwiched between a drive-through spray tan boutique and a Dr. Tatt-Off ink removal. The club’s façade was relatively low key and up-market. No flashing neon signs hawked naked girls inside. We parked in the underground lot.

A bouncer with twenty-inch biceps and the hint of a Santa Muerte tattoo peeking over his shirt collar checked I.D. at the door. At his side sat a black pit bull with a spiked collar that flashed the club’s logo.

The club’s less threatening beach motif immediately manifested itself in the central sand box where the girls danced, the inverted beach umbrellas hanging from the ceiling, and the patio loungers, scattered around the club on which clients reclined. Blue light, endemic to all strip clubs because it hid flaws on the skin, gave the feel here of being underwater or surfing in the tube of a perfect wave. Sandy Beaches even pumped surf music with a heightened drumbeat pounding underneath. The thumping bass gave an erotic twist to the otherwise vanilla music. Judging by the clientele, they made a mean umbrella drink too.

The dancers weren’t unattractive, but the best earners wouldn’t be working for hours yet. The Latina with waist-length blue-black hair currently working the pole looked to be nearer forty than thirty.

I glanced round at the clients. A few drunk and cocky college boys, yelling and whistling, were peppered in amongst the silent, bleary-eyed middle-aged guys.

Most of the girls had that hard edge exotic dancers get once coke lines on the mirror start to carve lines on the face. But Britney had been in her late twenties. She’d have had a few years yet before reaching the sell-past age. It made me wonder again why she’d been fired.

The bartender was a burly Black guy in his late 20s, dressed in swim trunks, polo shirt and flip flops. Shin and I approached him, badges out.

The muscles told me he lifted weights religiously. His tats told me where and why. Blue ink from the earliest amateur work had been placed too deep in the skin, giving the tattoo a raised texture like a brand. A pro had re-inked over part of the design, turning it into an armlet of barbed wire. But I could just make out the five-digit number buried under that newer layer of ink–94974. San Quentin has its own zip code.

“We’d like to talk to Sandy Rose,” Shin said as we both reached for our lapels and flicked on the body-cams.

The bartender’s eyes did a slow-motion ricochet back and forth between our faces and the badges as he continued to wipe down the smooth surface of the bar. Peeking out from under the right sleeve of his polo shirt was the tattoo of a gun. Its barrel pointed straight out at me. Next to the gun was printed the initials “BGF.” Unless this Q alum was declaring himself Sandy’s best girlfriend forever, he was a shooter for the Black Guerilla Family. He hadn’t tried to re-ink this little memento. Either Sandy Rose was a charitable citizen looking to help rehabilitate the city’s felons, or she had some pretty serious security.

After a moment, the bartender reached out and flashed a hand signal to the wall sensor on his right.

“Yes, Deshawn?” responded a disembodied female voice. “What is it?”

His eyes darted from the security cams overhead back to us.

In no time at all the owner of the Sandy Beaches Gentlemen’s Club made her appearance, slipping in from a previously hidden doorway in the back wall before the door was once again swallowed up by the seamless wall.

Sandy Rose looked like her name, tanned and delicate as a flower pressed in a heavy family Bible—except for the porn size implants standing at attention beneath her tasteful suit jacket. Her smooth face was flawlessly made-up to look dewy and makeup-free, her dark blonde hair perfectly cut to frame her face. I put her age at an early forty-something.

Sandy’s head barely crested my shoulder, but she moved with authority. She didn’t ask to see our badges.

“Detectives,” she said immediately, smiling as she held out her hand to shake Shin’s and mine in turn. “I’m Sandy Rose. Is there a problem? Our permits are up to date.”

Her hands made me revise my earlier age estimate. Thin-skinned and riddled with thick ropey veins, they vibed a good thirty years older than the perfect, polished face and perky implants.

“It’s about your employee,” Shin said. “Britney Devonshire.”

Sandy’s sherry-colored eyes flickered. At the mention of Britney’s name, those amber orbs glanced up from our body-cams to the security camera overhead. “Former employee,” Sandy said. “I’m afraid we had to let her go.”

“When was that?” Shin asked.

“A week ago, give or take.” Sandy’s upper-forehead puckered while her brows stayed immobile—the botox frown. “Has she gotten into trouble?”

“Why’d you fire her?” Shin smiled his easy-going smile and tapped his fingers to the beat of the music.

“We have a strict no-drug rule, detective. Enforced by random drug tests.” Sandy fiddled with the bracelets on her arm. The golden charms tinkled with an agreeable music of their own. “Britney tested positive for Green Ice. I was sorry, but she left me no choice.”

“So, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear she’d died of an overdose,” Shin said.

“My God.” The news shattered the hard glint of those red-gold eyes. If she was acting, Sandy Rose was more talented than her critics let on.

“I’m sorry,” Shin said, reflexively pulling up a barstool for her. He signaled to the bartender for some water.

“I’m fine,” Sandy said, waving Deshawn away. But her hand trembled a little as she fidgeted with those bracelets again. “We weren’t especially close, detective. It’s just a—shock. I knew she used of course, on account of her test results. But still—she was so young.”

“You said she tested positive for Green Ice?”

“That’s right,” Sandy replied.

“And that was a week ago?” Shin smiled gently. “When you tested her I mean?”

“Yes.” Her voice maintained a steady calm, except for the wariness that crept around the edges.

“Had you tested her before that?”

“When we first hired her a few years ago. Of course, at that time she tested negative.”

“Of course,” Shin said. His glance told me Shin was ready to wind things up.

“When you fired her,” I said, “did Britney seem unusually upset or depressed?” The cat lady neighbor had said Britney wasn’t—which seemed odd.

“No one likes to be fired, detective.” Sandy shifted her gaze to me.

I nodded. “Did she mention anybody who was bothering her? Maybe a customer? You’ve got some pretty heavy-duty security working here.”

“My security team is here to discourage bothersome customers proactively,” Sandy said. “Britney certainly never filed a complaint or raised an issue.”

“Was she causing trouble with the customers or the other girls?” I glanced at the glassy-eyed girl. “Is that why you tested her?”

The Latina with the blue-black hair was watching us with interest as she gyrated round that pole.

Sandy’s chin lifted a millimeter. Then she smiled thinly and shook her head. “Like I said, drug tests are random.”

“Of course,” Shin said in his affable baritone. “We won’t keep you any longer, Ms. Rose.” He turned to leave.

“I didn’t catch your names, detectives,” Sandy said, looking directly at me. “And here I thought I knew everyone from Vice.”

“Detectives Piedmont and Miyaguchi.” I made sure to pronounce every syllable clearly. Sandy Rose wasn’t wearing a glove phone I could tap for contact transfer, so I handed her my card. “Robbery-Homicide.”

The word ‘homicide’ hit home. Sandy’s eyes narrowed to a squint as she stared at the card. Her lips seemed to pale under the neutral lipstick. For the first time, her face looked almost as old as her hands.

“So, the overdose,” she said, “wasn’t accidental? You think Britney was depressed because of—her job—and she . . .” Sandy Rose’s words trailed off into silence.

“Can’t say,” I replied. “The case is ongoing.”

She nodded. “Poor girl. If I’d known she was that close to the edge . . .” Sandy was sitting now, and her eyes were even a little moist. But I felt them burning holes on my back as Shin and I left.

“We’ll probably never know for sure,” Shin said as soon as we stepped outside the club and headed for the underground parking lot. “Accident or suicide, it’s not always clear-cut.”

I didn’t say anything as we flicked off our body cameras. From one hundred feet away the car sensors read our barcodes and unlocked the doors with a chirp.

“You’re not convinced,” Shin said, getting in. “Why? You don’t buy the boss’s story?”

I raised and dropped my shoulders in a shrug. “I buy that Sandy Rose canned Britney and isn’t happy Homicide turned up on her door.”

“But?”

“A strict no drug policy? In a strip club? Half my salary and all of yours says a third of the girls there were high. Why no drug tests for them?”

“Everybody lies,” Shin said. “Sandy probably only tests employees she already wants to can, but makes it just random enough to seem plausible. That way management avoids any potential discrimination charges. You saw the way she eyeballed our cameras and hers.”

“Except, if the Devonshire girl had been using prior to getting fired,” I said, punching the ignition and backing out of the parking space, “where were the fresh tracks on the body? And if she wasn’t using, or causing trouble, why fire a hot young earner when you keep older users on the payroll?”

Shin paused. His chin dipped to his chest in a slow-motion nod. “When’s that autopsy scheduled?”

“Monday.” I drove us back out onto the street.

“Let’s worry about it Monday then,” Shin replied with a heavy sigh. “Log us out. I’m ready for a drink.”