“We checked with the people who installed the home security system here,” Lamp informed me as he drove us out the main gate, past the media horde, in his stylishly dented white LAPD Chevy Caprice sedan. “The keypad on the service gate does indeed have a memory. It was accessed early yesterday morning.”
“How early?”
“At 6:47 am. We talked to Hector Villanueva at his home in Pico Rivera. He swears up, down and sideways that he hasn’t been here since Friday. A neighbor across the street says Hector’s truck hasn’t left his driveway all weekend.”
“Did you check with the young Tab Hunter?”
“If by that you mean the pool man, Gavin Cliff, we did.”
“Is Gavin Cliff his real name?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Sounds bogus to me. Highly bogus.”
“He confirmed that he was here early yesterday morning.”
“Was that the only time the service gate was accessed yesterday?”
“The only time,” Lamp confirmed, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly as he made a left onto Sunset and started in the direction of Bel Air and the Hills of Beverly. Today he wore an olive-colored suit made of something no-iron, a white shirt, striped tie and the same pair of nubucks with red rubber soles that he’d worn yesterday. Unless, that is, he owned two identical pairs and rotated them for proper foot hygiene. “Did Gavin show up this morning?”
“I didn’t see him, but I wouldn’t expect to. It’s Sunday.”
A bright, sunny Sunday, and not yet 9:30. I’d been stropping Grandfather’s razor when Lamp had shown up at the pool house to ask me if I wanted to take a ride. So we were taking a ride. I didn’t know if he was taking me to church or to Du-par’s for a stack of their buttermilk pancakes. I just knew that he seemed a lot more awake than I was. I’d barely managed two hours of sleep after Reggie tiptoed discreetly back to her room at 5:00 am. I had a dull headache and the strong taste of library paste in my mouth even though I’d downed two glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice and a pot of strong coffee. I wore the glen plaid tropical worsted wool suit from Strickland & Sons with a pale green shirt to match my complexion, a blue-and-white polka-dot bow tie and my Panama fedora low over my eyes to shield them from the bright sun. Lulu rode on the seat between Lamp and me, her tail thumping happily. She loves to ride in police cars.
“It may interest you to know,” Lamp said, “that one of the guests who was at Joey’s birthday party yesterday is the registered owner of a black 1988 Pontiac Trans Am just like the one that tried to run you over.”
“And shove Monette off Coldwater Canyon, don’t forget.”
“I haven’t.”
“Well, who is it, Lieutenant?”
“Kat Zachry’s half-brother, Kyle.”
I mulled this over as we cruised our way past the Bel Air Gate at Sunset and Bellagio. Lulu climbed into my lap, planted her back paws firmly in my groin and stuck her large, wet black nose out my open window, her ears flapping in the breeze. “Kyle is Kat’s flunkie,” I said. “He has access to the production offices. Could have typed that fake note from Patrick to me on Malibu High stationery and had a studio messenger deliver it to Aintree Manor. But why?”
“I thought we’d drop by and ask him. Kat rents him an apartment north of Fountain on Sweetzer. She hasn’t left her place in Laurel Canyon since yesterday. Kyle was there with her until he went home late last evening. My people tell me she’s hunkered down there this morning with a network publicist, her agent and the honcho producer of Malibu High. Boyd Samuels showed up there, too. Don’t ask me why.”
“Don’t have to. I can tell you why. Because he smells money.”
Whitney still reigned supreme on the Sunset Strip’s mammoth billboards. And Marky Mark and Kate Moss were still almost, kind of getting it on. But the Strip was eerily quiet on a Sunday morning. Ours was the only car on the road. The sidewalks were empty, clubs and restaurants shuttered. It felt like a ghost town.
“We have some preliminary autopsy results on Patrick,” Lamp informed me. “The blood spatter patterns on the wall and bedspread seem to indicate that he was seated on the bed when Monette hit him with the first two shots. The blood smears on the bedspread indicate that he slid from the bed down onto the floor, where she fired the kill shots straight down through his heart. He bled out right there. All of which backs up her version of what happened. He had a blood alcohol level of 0.23, nearly three times the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle in the state of California. The man was seriously drunk. We don’t know what else was in his system—toxicology will take at least a week—but you saw him snorting coke out on the patio with Lou and Kyle shortly before he went upstairs, didn’t you?”
“I saw Lou slip him some pills, too. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Patrick smoked a doobie on his way to the party. The man was a serious druggie.”
Lamp shook his neat blond head. “Based on his blood alcohol level alone, I’m surprised that Monette didn’t find him passed out cold on the bed.”
“Maybe she did. Maybe she’s lying to us.”
He glanced over at me, frowning. “Where are you going with this?”
“Nowhere. I’m just trying to deal with my disappointment.”
“Over . . . ?”
“I was hoping that you were taking me out for buttermilk pancakes.”
“Sorry, I’m afraid not. We already ate.”
“‘We’ being . . . ?”
“Belinda and me. She’s the lady I’m currently seeing. Really terrific person. She teaches kindergarten in Huntington Beach, makes jewelry.” He showed me the turquoise and silver bracelet on his wrist. “Like it?”
“I do, but I’m reeling a bit. Does your mom know that you date girls?”
“You’re such a rib tickler, Hoagy. Trust me, I’m not the innocent lamb that you make me out to be.”
“Then kindly explain something to me. How is it that you’re not all grumpy, cynical and sour?”
“Because I don’t let the job get to me. When I clock out I put it out of my mind and I enjoy being alive. Sometimes that’s not easy, but it’s what I do.”
“Lieutenant, I admire you.” We rode along the slumbering Strip in silence for a moment, Lulu with her nose stuck out the window. “Did you find out anything from the Beretta?”
“What we expected to find. Four shots fired. One set of fingerprints. Monette’s. The barrel and trigger were clean otherwise.”
“How clean?”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Had the gun been wiped clean before she used it?”
“Actually, it did appear to have been wiped clean.”
“With . . . ?”
“Who knows? A rag or cloth of some kind.”
“Does that tell you anything?”
“Yeah. It tells us that she likes to keep her gun clean.” He glanced over at me. “Our lab people did turn up something a bit unexpected this morning. Blood and tissue from two different blood types under Patrick’s fingernails—Type O and Type A.”
“I don’t suppose you know what Monette’s blood type is, do you?”
“We do. She let us take a sample while she was in custody. Could have refused in the absence of a court order, but she didn’t, even though her lawyer advised her to.”
“And . . . ?”
“Monette is Type O.”
“Meaning the Type O blood and tissue under his nails are hers.”
“Presumably. She does have those gouge marks on her arms.”
“So where did the Type A come from?”
“We don’t know. One possibility is Patrick himself. He was Type A.”
“His own blood and tissue ended up under his nails? Does that typically happen?”
“Blood? Absolutely. If he was clutching at the wound in his side, for instance. But tissue? That’s a big fat no. I’ve encountered heroin addicts gouging themselves when they’re going through extreme withdrawal, but not gunshot victims. Never. Besides, the ME found no fingernail gouges anywhere on Patrick’s body.”
“So what do you make of that?”
“He gouged someone else is what I make of it. Someone with Type A blood.”
“Meaning that someone else was in the room when he was shot?”
“Not necessarily. He could have gotten into an altercation with somebody before he went upstairs. You didn’t happen to notice blood under his nails when he was snorting that coke out on the patio, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“And he went up to the master bedroom suite shortly after that?”
“Correct.” I glanced at him as we rode along. “What are you thinking?”
“That we’ve got something concrete to work with now. I can get a court order to compel everyone who was in that house yesterday, including you, to submit to a thorough physical exam as well as give us blood and hair samples.”
“Why hair?”
“Our people discovered several different hair samples on the bedspread, which may prove valuable if we find a hair that belongs to an individual who had no credible reason for being in that bedroom.” Lamp fell silent for a moment. “I’m also thinking that something happened in there yesterday that we still don’t know about. I don’t believe Monette is telling us the whole story. Do you?”
“Not even maybe.”
“How about you, Hoagy? Are you telling me the whole story?”
“I’m just out here earning a paycheck, Lieutenant. Or trying to.”
“You didn’t exactly answer my question.”
“I gave you the best answer I can.”
He peered over at me, his blue eyes narrowing, before he looked back at the road before us.
We were passing Tower Records and Spago on our left. Sweetzer ran into Sunset around the bend from there just past the ornate white art deco Sunset Tower Hotel. Lamp eased off the gas and made a right turn, taking it slow as Sweetzer made a steep drop down from Sunset, tumbling its way past apartment houses that ranged from new and nice to old and nice to just plain not so nice. Kyle Cook’s building, Sweetzer Court, ranked in the not-so-nice category, although it had probably been splendid twenty or thirty years ago. It was one of those pink two-story Spanish-style stucco places built around a central courtyard. But no one had been taking care of Sweetzer Court for a long time. It needed a decent paint job, unless you consider stained, discolored and peeling a decent paint job. There were red roof tiles missing, more than a few cracked windowpanes and the landscaping had been seriously neglected. The bamboo in the beds out front grew wildly to the rooftop. The jacarandas and oleanders needed to be pruned way back. The lawn, if you want to call it that, was mostly hard bare earth with patches of weeds growing wherever they felt like.
There was a black Trans Am parked out front.
Lamp parked behind it, checking its license plate number against the one he’d jotted down in his notepad. “That’s Kyle’s car, all right. Does it look like the one that tried to run you down in Pacoima?”
Lulu answered for both of us with an emphatic woof.
“He appears to be home. Apartment 2C. Let’s go have a talk with him, shall we?”
We followed a brick path into the courtyard, which had the remains of a dead concrete fountain in its center. A couple of cheap, woven plastic lounge chairs were set around it. The bare ground around them was strewn with empty, greasy pizza boxes and empty, greasy Jack in the Box wrappers and beer cans and cigarette butts. As we strode toward the front door I found the place was summoning up images of the San Bernardino Arms, the faded apartment house where Tod Hackett mooned hopelessly over Faye Greener in The Day of the Locust, the Nathanael West novel that will teach you pretty much everything you’ll ever need to know about Hollywood. Although you’ll be much happier not knowing it, if you want my honest opinion.
Inside the front door there were mailboxes for eight apartments and a downstairs unit that probably belonged to the manager—if Sweetzer Court still had one, which I seriously doubted. The entry hall smelled of cat urine. Or at least I think it was cat urine. So did Lulu, who turned up her nose disdainfully.
The rubber treads on the stairway up to the second floor were worn through. As we climbed I heard the menacing din from somewhere up there of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, a song that had achieved iconic status as the unofficial anthem of bad-boy frat parties, minor league hockey games and skeevy biker bars from sea to shining sea. Axl Rose’s off-key wailing and Slash’s majestically inept guitar licks were not exactly welcome blasting from somebody’s apartment at 10:00 on a Sunday morning. As we started down the hallway toward apartment 2C the music got even louder.
A longhaired young guy who was wearing what I swear were Star Trek PJs was pounding on Kyle’s door and yelling, “If you don’t turn that the fuck down I’m calling the police! You hear me, bro?”
“I’m the police,” Lamp said to him over the blaring music.
“Well, do something, will you?”
“Please go back in your apartment, sir.”
He returned to his apartment across the hall, slamming the door shut.
Lamp knocked on Kyle’s door, even though Captain Kirk had just been pounding on it to no avail. He removed a clean handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers and tried the doorknob. The door was unlocked. Lamp pushed it open. It swung open about eighteen inches before it hit something and stopped. Something was blocking the door.
Make that someone.
One whiff and Lulu was already slinking back toward the stairs with her tail between her legs. She’d had just about enough death for one weekend, thank you very much. I ordered her to come back. She came back, grumbling, and in the three of us went, Lamp using his handkerchief on the doorknob to close the door behind us.
Kyle Cook was lying on his back just inside the door of his studio apartment in a T-shirt and boxer shorts with his unseeing bloodshot eyes bugging out of his head.
Lamp crossed the room to a battered boom box on Kyle’s nightstand and flicked off the music. Blessed silence. Then he returned to Kyle’s body, studying it carefully. “See all of that hemorrhaging in his eyes?”
“Pretty hard to miss it.”
“That’s a good indication he was strangled.”
“Yeah, I surmised that from those red finger marks that go all the way around his throat.”
Lamp bent down and touched Kyle’s arm. “He’s still warm. Hasn’t been dead for more than a half-hour. Whoever did this has much bigger hands than I do, see?” He positioned his in the air around Kyle’s throat for comparison before he glanced up at me, frowning. “Did you just say surmised? I’ve never heard anyone use that word in ordinary conversation before.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Lieutenant. And, just for the record, this is not my idea of ordinary conversation.”
“The knuckles of his right hand are red and swollen, see?” Lamp said, examining it closely. “That means he threw a punch at his killer and connected with hard bone. Whoever we’re looking for will have a bruise somewhere on his face.”
“‘His’ face. You’re positive it’s a man?”
“She’d have to be a strong woman with a mighty big pair of hands.”
“Monette has big hands.”
“Where are you going with this, Hoagy?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
I gazed around at the apartment, which wasn’t much. Just one small room with worn carpeting, a Pullman-style kitchen and very little in the way of furniture. His bed was nothing more than a convertible sofa, currently open. The pillows and sheets were rumpled. There was a nightstand with two drawers. The bottom drawer was pulled open wide and appeared to be empty. Several moving company cartons were stacked in the corner of the room. One of the boxes served as a hamper to hold his dirty laundry. There were no pictures on the walls. No curtains or shutters over the windows, which looked out over an alley that was lined with decoratively colored Dumpsters.
Lamp took a peek inside the small refrigerator. It was empty except for a carton of orange juice and a six-pack of Coors. Then he gave the bathroom a quick once-over before he said, “Not exactly living large, was he?”
“He probably spent most of his time on the Radford lot or at Kat’s place. Just came here to crash when she wanted him gone.” My eyes fell on Kyle’s boom box. “Why the loud music? Woke up the neighbors.”
“But also drowned out the sounds of their voices. If punches were thrown then they must have argued. I wonder what they were arguing about.”
“I have a pretty good idea. And so do you.”
“You’re right, I do. But I value your input. You have an atypical mind.”
“Thank you, I think. I’m guessing that someone didn’t want Kyle talking to you because Kyle could finger him, or her, as the person who hired him to throw that scare into Monette and me with his Trans Am.”
Lamp nodded his head. “Agreed. So who are we looking at for this?”
“Offhand, I can think of two possibilities. One is Kat . . .”
“Kat’s been home all morning. She’s got a media mob watching her house and we’ve got officers watching the media mob. She hasn’t set foot outside of her door. Besides, she’s tiny. No way those were her hands wrapped around Kyle’s throat. Who else?”
“Lou Riggio. Possibly Lou hired Kyle to scare us on Patrick’s behalf. Possibly Patrick told him to do it. Patrick swore to me that he didn’t, but I assumed he was lying to me.”
“Why did you assume that?”
“Because everyone lies to me. It’s what they do. That’s why they pay me the big bucks. It’s possible, I suppose, that it was all Lou’s own idea. I don’t know. I do know that he has big, strong hands.”
Lulu had moved over to Kyle’s body, where she began sniffing at the floor near his right shoulder, snuffling and snorting as she dug her large wet black nose under his T-shirt. Or tried to. He wasn’t exactly budging. Thwarted, she sat back on her haunches and let out a frustrated moan.
“Why’s she doing that?”
“Thinks she’s found something underneath him. Shall we roll him over?”
“Can’t. The coroner goes bananas if we disturb a body.”
“Well, then how about we just give his shoulder a bit of a tilt?”
“Hoagy, you’re a bad influence.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I try.”
“Here, let me . . .” Lamp knelt and grabbed the former Kyle Cook by his hip and shoulder and rolled him a bit.
Lulu wasn’t wrong, not that I for one second thought that she was. Attached to the underside of Kyle’s right shoulder was a wet, sticky Tootsie Pop. Grape by the looks of it.
“Big Lou loves grape Tootsie Pops.”
“Not real bright of him to leave it behind.” Lamp didn’t touch it. Just released his hold on Kyle and settled him back as we’d found him.
“Could be he’s freaking out. His meal ticket got killed yesterday. Plus he takes vast quantities of steroids. He also played defensive tackle in college, don’t forget.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he got hit in the head a lot,” I said as Lulu began to bark at Lamp. And bark.
He frowned at her. “Why is she doing that?”
“She wants you to give her an anchovy as a reward.”
“I don’t carry anchovies on me. I work for the LAPD, not SeaWorld.”
I thanked her for a job well done and told her I owed her an anchovy. I also told her to knock it off.
Lamp went over to that open nightstand drawer and knelt before it, sniffing at it. “We don’t want to touch this drawer until they dust it for prints, but stick your nose in there and tell me what you think.”
I stuck my nose in there and told him what I thought. “It smells like weed.”
He sniffed at it again. “And not just a joint or two either. It smells like he had a whole stash of bricks in here—which Lou made sure he grabbed on his way out the door. I wonder if Kyle was dealing for Lou on the sly.”
“Makes perfect sense.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your drug people think Lou moves a lot of dope on the Radford lot, right?”
“Right . . .”
“He’d need someone plausible to go in and out of the trailers of the Malibu High cast members for him. He’d stick out himself, being a middle-aged, muscle-bound pinhead. Kyle wouldn’t. Kyle had no source of income other than handouts from Kat. We know he did some small-time dealing up in Atascadero. Besides, we know that he and Lou were buds.”
“We do?”
“They got into a sweaty three-way with Trish on the Eartha Kitt sofa yesterday, remember? Men who aren’t buds wouldn’t do that. They’d take turns.”
Lamp looked at me in dismay. “How on earth would you know that?”
“I’m sorry to disillusion you, Lieutenant, but I had some pretty wild times back in my cocaine eighties.”
“I have to call this in.” He glanced around. “Except I don’t see a telephone. He didn’t even have a phone.” His gaze fell upon Kyle there on the floor. Kyle with his bulging, bloodshot eyes. “Not much of a life, was it?”
“That all depends upon your definition of living. Yesterday afternoon he was at a Brentwood mansion snorting coke with a TV star. He probably thought he was living the dream.”
“You’re right, he probably did. Me, I want to die in my own bed with my wife of fifty-plus years holding my hand and my children and grandchildren surrounding me. How about you?”
“I haven’t got a fraction of your courage. I don’t want to die at all.”
“I’d better phone this in from my car.”
We let ourselves out, Lamp closing the door behind us. As we started back toward the stairs, Lulu came to a sudden halt and went in the other direction, her nose to the floor.
“What’s she doing now?” Lamp asked me.
“Following the killer’s scent. I’ll meet you at your car.”
Lulu led me to the other end of the hallway, where a set of stairs went down to the Dumpsters in the alley out back. She followed the scent out to a spot ten feet from the alley door, where she snuffled and sat, her tail thumping.
“Good girl, Lulu. Now I owe you two anchovies.”
We made our way around to the front of the building. Lamp was still calling it in from the front seat of his Caprice. He rang off as Lulu and I got in.
“He parked in back by the Dumpsters,” I informed Lamp. “One of Kyle’s neighbors may have seen him take off.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know. I’ll have some men canvass them.” He gripped the steering wheel in silence for a moment before he said, “Lou’s holding down the fort at Patrick’s cottage on Marmont for the time being. I just checked with our men who are on security detail outside.”
I looked at him curiously. “And . . . ?”
“The big guy went out at 8:45 this morning in his GTO. He returned about forty minutes ago.”
“Did they notice if he had a fresh bruise on his face?”
“They didn’t get close enough to see him. He pulled into the attached garage and went straight in the house.”
“What happens now, Lieutenant?”
“I stop by and personally notify Kyle’s next of kin, Kat, that her half-brother has been murdered. That’s what happens. But it also so happens that Patrick’s place is on the way to her house, so I suggest we swing by and have a quick little chat with Lou first.” He glanced over at me. “Unless you have a problem with that.”
“No problem at all.”
We made our way back up to Sunset Boulevard, hung a right and then took a quick left onto Marmont Lane, where the majestic old Chateau Marmont is nestled in a hillside above the Strip. The Chateau Marmont is the hotel where John Belushi died of a speedball injection in bungalow three ten years back, thereby flushing away one of the five or six most promising careers in the history of show business. Marmont Lane twisted its way past the hotel, became Marmont Avenue and then climbed way high up into the hills past a collection of modern, post-modern and post-post-modern houses that clung to tiny fingernail parings of land for dear life.
The late Patrick Van Pelt’s rental cottage had no front yard to speak of. Just an ivy-covered wall and a closed garage door flush up against the sidewalk. The gate in the ivy-covered wall was of solid wood for maximum privacy. What little I could see of the cottage gave me the impression it had been designed by an architect who’d been heavily influenced by The Jetsons.
The narrow street was crowded with dozens of grief-stricken fans who were dutifully leaving flowers, cards, candles and other mementos outside of Patrick’s wall to honor this great star who had meant so much to them. Celebrity mourners. I’ve never understood people who feel the need to congregate and sob over the death of someone whom they’ve never actually met. I used to be married to a celebrated movie star. I’m a former celebrity myself. Take it from me, celebrities are not who their fans think they are. Patrick certainly wasn’t. The man was a twenty-four-karat shitbird. But these people didn’t know the real Patrick. They only knew the kindly, heroic Patrick whom they’d seen on the small screen. What they were grieving over was a myth, not a man.
There were two LAPD black-and-whites parked outside of the front gate along with a gaggle of TV news crews who were there to talk to the tearful mourners and grab footage of the makeshift shrine they were erecting.
Lamp found a place to park and exchanged a few words with one of the cops in uniform before he buzzed the house from the intercom at the front gate.
After a moment a voice answered, “For the last time . . .” It was Lou’s sandpapery voice. “Will you media people please leave me the hell alone?”
“This is Detective Lieutenant Lamp, Mr. Riggio,” Lamp said into the intercom. “I’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, sure thing, Lieutenant. Sorry about that. I’ll buzz you in.”
Lamp pushed the front gate open when it buzzed. The cop he’d spoken with started up the path toward the front door of the house, his meaty right hand resting comfortably on his holstered weapon. Lamp turned to me and said, “You’d better wait here. There’s no telling what we’re about to walk into.”
I was just about to tell him what a bad idea that was when I heard the electric garage door open and a car’s engine start up with a roar. Then Lou’s vintage gunmetal gray GTO came zooming out of the garage in reverse, sending mourners and cameramen scattering. As he hit the brakes I caught a glimpse of the big man hunched over the wheel—lips pulled back from his teeth in a tight grimace, eyes wide with fright—before he put it in gear and went tearing down the hill.
Lamp made a dash for his Caprice. Lulu and I sprinted along with him and jumped in as he started it up and pulled away. Off we went down Marmont, twisting and turning our way past the Chateau just in time to see Lou hang a screechy right turn on Sunset.
Lamp came to a complete stop at the corner and said, “Okay, this is where you get out. I can’t endanger your safety in a high-speed chase.”
“Lieutenant, I’m the first major new literary voice of the 1980s. Do you honestly think I’m going to die on Sunset Boulevard riding shotgun in an unmarked police car?” Lulu let out a low moan from the seat between us. “Along with my short-legged companion? Get moving, will you? He’s getting away.”
“Fine, have it your way.” Lamp made a right turn, floored it and went after him. “But, I swear, if you get killed, I am going to kill you.”
The Sunday morning traffic on the Strip was still practically nonexistent, which was a good thing because Lou was barreling along at seventy miles per hour right down the center of the boulevard and zigzagging his way over the yellow line into what would have been oncoming traffic if there’d been any oncoming traffic. I wasn’t sure whether he was coked out of his gourd or simply flipping out at the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail. All I know is that he was a full-blown accident ready to happen.
Lamp sped up to within four car lengths of Lou, flashing his lights to no avail, and called in to report that he was in the midst of a high-speed pursuit of a gray 1965 GTO heading west on Sunset toward La Cienega. He provided the license plate number and the name of its driver in a crisp, clear voice. He was very cool under the circumstances. Professional. Emil Lamp was a professional.
As we shot past Doheny into Beverly Hills and the huge billboards changed over to palm trees, I heard the distant sirens of the black-and-whites that were responding to Lamp’s call. Lou was still tearing along at seventy, Lamp remaining a steady four lengths behind him. The Beverly Hills Hotel loomed up ahead in the distance—and the big man was showing absolutely no interest in slowing down despite the oh-so-obvious peril that lay just beyond it.
I felt my stomach muscles tighten. “Please tell me he’s going to slow down.”
“He’s not going to slow down.”
“He has to.”
“He’s not going to.”
“But he’s almost at North Whittier. This is no place to play.”
“Playing? Who’s playing?”
“Lieutenant, I have a terrible feeling that Lou’s going to find out for himself that everyone was right.”
“Hoagy, what in the holy heck are you talking about?”
Lou was closing in on the sharp right bend at North Whittier now, the one that had been made legendary by Jan Berry and Dean Torrence. I held my breath as he tore his way toward it going way too fast. And realized it way too late. He panicked. Tried to swerve left instead of right. Went into an out-of-control skid across the intersection and crashed head-on at full speed into a parked Mercedes on North Whittier.
The crash was so loud that Lulu dove to the floor at my feet, shaking.
The horn on Lou’s GTO started blaring. And kept right on blaring right up until both it and the Mercedes exploded into flames. Lamp pulled over to the side of the road a safe distance away and called it in. Then we sat there in stunned silence, Lulu continuing to shake. I reached down and stroked her.
The big red trucks from the Beverly Hills Fire Department got there in a matter of moments to put out the flames. There was nothing left of Lou Riggio beyond his charred remains. Fortunately, there hadn’t been anyone in the Mercedes, which, it was later reported, belonged to a member of the writing staff of Married with Children who’d been having brunch at his agent’s house across the street at the time of the crash.
In death, Lou Riggio achieved a level of pop cultural infamy that had eluded him in life. He’d been a decent but undistinguished lineman at Troy State, a body builder, personal trainer and low-level supplier of illegal drugs to various show business personalities. As near as the LAPD could determine, he’d also murdered Kyle Cook. But none of that was what made Lou famous enough that his name would still mean something to people twenty years in the future. No, on that bright, sunny Sunday morning on Sunset Boulevard, Lou Riggio achieved a rare and lasting place in American folklore not for what he did but for what he didn’t do.
He didn’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve.
“I don’t want to see Kyle’s body!” Kat hollered at Lamp as she sat there with a small cluster of advisers in the living room of her bungalow on Stanley Hills Drive in Laurel Canyon. “And don’t give me any of your cop bullshit about how I have to because I am really not in the mood right now!”
“There’s a process here, Miss Zachry,” he pointed out politely. “It’s the law, and the law has to be followed.”
“I don’t give a shit about your law! And I don’t want to talk about this anymore! Are you hearing me?”
“Quite well. There’s nothing wrong with my ears.”
Kat’s bungalow was a furnished rental by the look of it. The décor was early Ramada Inn. Patrick had told me that Kat was a total slob who left dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, yet when we’d fought our way through the mob of cameramen and reporters out front and made it inside, we found that the place was neat and tidy. I had zero doubt that it was someone other than Kat who’d done the tidying. My money was on the network’s publicist, a beleaguered-looking young woman with Baba Wawa hair whose name was Rhonda. Kat’s HWA agent, a pint-sized young ferret named Joey Bamber, was there. So was the executive producer of Malibu High, a tanned, pencil-thin woman in her forties named Marjorie Braman, who wore a denim shirt, tan suede pants and red cowboy boots. And so was Boyd Samuels, who stood over by a front window talking on his mobile phone.
Lulu took a quick lap around the place, nose to the floor, before she settled by the front door with a wary look on her face. She doesn’t care for explosions. Never has.
Kat hadn’t exactly seemed shocked or grief stricken. Her only response to the news that her half-brother had been strangled to death was petulant annoyance that Lamp was bothering her about it. She flat out didn’t seem to care. She hadn’t exactly been blown away by the sight of Patrick lying dead in a pool of blood on the bedroom floor at Aintree Manor either. If anything or anyone touched Kat Zachry I hadn’t seen it so far. I was beginning to wonder if she had a heart of stone. I was beginning to wonder a lot of things about her.
She was nibbling on some limp-looking takeout fries from McDonald’s and sipping a Coke through a straw as she sat there on the sofa in her Magic Johnson jersey and gym shorts, her bare feet up on the coffee table. Considering that she was three months pregnant, my feeling was that she’d have been better off with a stack of golden brown buttermilk pancakes and a glass of milk, but don’t go by me. I’d been obsessing about buttermilk pancakes all morning, and being around two dead men in the past hour simply made me crave them even more. My stomach’s a bit funny that way.
“You still haven’t given me a straight answer, Marjorie,” Kat said to her executive producer. Apparently, she was finished talking to Lamp about Kyle’s murder. “What happens now?”
“What happens now,” Marjorie responded quietly, “is that Malibu High will go on hiatus for two weeks so that our writers can construct an off-ramp for Patrick that is tasteful and respectful. The network would like to see his death handled in as dignified a manner as possible.”
Kat peered at her dubiously. “Like how?”
“One idea they were spitballing this morning was that Chip Hinton decides to go surfing during a powerful storm even though the Coast Guard has advised everyone in Malibu to stay out of the water. But Chip wants to catch that one last big wave while he’s still young enough to ride it.”
Kat continued to peer at her. “And . . . ?”
“And he drowns. His body will be found washed up on the rocks.”
“He was shot! You think our audience doesn’t fucking know that?”
“Patrick was shot,” Marjorie countered, keeping her voice soft. She did not wish to rile her nineteen-year-old star. “The network doesn’t want Chip’s departure from Malibu High to draw any attention to what actually happened to Patrick on Rockingham Avenue. They’re quite firm about that, Kat.” She mustered a warm, supportive smile. “Don’t worry about this, okay? The writers will work morning, noon and night until they get it right. They’ll come up with something brilliant.”
Lamp cleared his throat. “Miss Zachry . . . ?”
Kat looked at him in surprise, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “What do you want now?”
“The same thing I wanted before. I need for you to formally identify your brother’s body. It’s an official legal process. You have to do this.”
Kat rolled her big brown eyes at him. “Do I have to do it today?”
“No, tomorrow will be fine.”
“Fine, whatever.” She chewed on another limp French fry. “Where is he?”
“Right now he’s being transported to the county coroner’s office.”
She stopped chewing. “You mean he’s, like, stuffed inside a big plastic bag? Ewww . . .”
“I’ll have someone from the coroner’s office contact you in the morning. Is there anyone whom I should be contacting up in Atascadero?”
“Like who?”
“Any other relatives?”
“None that I want to talk to. They’ll just try to hit me up for money.”
“Were you and Kyle close?” Lamp asked her.
“Not really. We didn’t grow up in the same house together or anything like that. And he was six years older than me.”
“Still, you must find this very upsetting.”
Kat glared at him. “Dude, I’ll do what you want. I’ll identify him. I’ll see that he gets a proper burial. But don’t tell me how I must be feeling, okay? When I moved down here, he tagged along to keep an eye on me. Things were going kind of sour for him up there. He needed a change of scenery. When I got the Malibu High gig, I asked him to help me deal with stuff. Answer my fan mail, run errands. I needed the help and he was family. But once a screwup, always a screwup, right?”
Lamp frowned at her. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“If he didn’t feel like doing something, it didn’t get done, okay?”
“Would you happen to know anything about a business relationship between Kyle and Lou Riggio?”
“Business relationship?” Kat looked at him incredulously. “You’re kidding me, right? They were a couple of dum-dums.”
“So Kyle never said anything to you about doing a job for Lou?”
“What kind of a job?”
“One that required Kyle to tail certain individuals in his Trans Am.”
“I have no idea what that even means.”
“How about drugs? Was Kyle dealing for Lou?”
“Kat, I wouldn’t answer that if I were you,” her agent, Joey, interjected. “Not without a lawyer here.”
“Right.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “What Joey just said.”
Boyd’s mobile phone rang. He answered it and talked into it for a moment before gesturing wildly at me to follow him into an adjoining bedroom, which was as tidy and impersonally furnished as the living room. Lulu followed us in there. She’s very protective of me if I’m alone in a room with Boyd.
“It’s Mr. Harmon Wright,” he informed me in a hushed, reverent voice. “He’s calling from London.”
“What does he want from London?”
“To find out what’s up with our Richard Aintree project.”
“It’s been temporarily kicked to the curb due to a slight death in the family, in case Mr. Harmon Wright hasn’t noticed.”
Boyd murmured something a bit more tactfully worded into the phone, then listened before he said to me, “He considers Patrick’s death a minor tabloid distraction.”
“The minor tabloids may beg to differ.”
“He still wants to know where things stand.”
“We haven’t heard from Richard. Not since Reggie showed up here with the letter he sent her in New Paltz. We’re waiting for him to reach out again. He likes to use express mail. The U.S. Postal Service delivers that on Sunday. Maybe we’ll hear from him today.”
“So you’d say the ball’s in his court?”
“I would, although I try to avoid using that expression whenever possible.”
Boyd reported into the phone and then listened, his eyes widening before he said to me, “Mr. Wright wants to know if there’s any possibility that it was Richard who shot Patrick.”
“I don’t see how. The man’s not even on the same coast as far as we know.”
“Wait, hold on . . .” Mr. Harmon Wright had more to say to him. Boyd listened, nodding, before he said to me, “He wishes to make it clear that he’s not happy with how this is unfolding. He expected more results from you.”
“We’re getting plenty of results. They’re just not the ones we anticipated. But tell him I’ll be delighted to leave on the first plane for JFK if he wants to bring in someone else.”
Boyd gulped at me. “Do you really, truly want me to tell Mr. Harmon Wright that?”
“Boyd, I really, truly don’t care what you tell him.”
“Mr. Wright, Hoagy said that he’d be happy to . . . Hello, Mr. Wright . . . ?” Boyd exhaled slowly. “He hung up on me. That’s not a good sign.” He went over to a front window and peered through the bamboo shade at the media mob that was gathered out on the street. “God, has this project turned to shit or what? I hate it when this happens.”
“Do you?”
He looked at me curiously. “What does that mean?”
“It means that whenever I get involved with you, the body count suddenly starts to pile up faster than I can say Terence Trent D’Arby. It means I should have told Alberta that there was no way I was getting caught up in another one of your toxic scams. If it had been anyone but Alberta, I would have. I am telling you right now, Boyd. If I find out you’re mixed up in this, I will bury you.”
“Hoagy, I had no idea anything like this would happen, I swear.”
“Is that right? You sure zoomed in on Kat awfully damned fast.”
“That wasn’t my idea. Mr. Harmon Wright ordered me to. He has high hopes for her. Keeps telling me how much she reminds him of a young Natalie Wood. And, between us, he is not unhappy that her sleazy brother is out of the picture.” Boyd glanced through the open doorway at Kat sitting there with Lamp and the others. “The police think Lou Riggio killed him?”
“They do. Was Kyle dealing dope for him?”
“How would I know?”
I glared at him in response.
He ducked his head, nodding. “Kyle wanted to make some money of his own so he wouldn’t have to keep sponging off Kat, so Lou put him to work dealing to the kids in the cast along with their assorted friends and hangers-on. They really like to party. Half of them are still wrecked when they show up for makeup in the morning—if they show up. The production’s a total mess. Over budget, late, the works. I’m hearing that the network wants to fire Marjorie Braman and bring in an old-time ball buster to restore order. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they fire everyone in the cast, too. Everyone except for Kat, that is.”
“And you’re saying Harmon Wright knows all about this?”
“Of course. He told me to be his eyes and ears out here. Why, where are you going with this?”
“Nowhere. Just making conversation.”
“Amigo, you are never just making conversation.”
Lamp was on his feet and coming across the living room toward us, pointing at his wristwatch. “I have to get going, Hoagy. You mind?”
“Not at all,” I said, following him back toward the sofa.
“Thank you for speaking with me at this difficult time,” Lamp said to Kat. “We’ll be in touch first thing tomorrow morning in regards to the formal identification. And I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Whatever,” Kat said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Lamp and I went out the front door with Lulu on our heels. The media mobsters descended on us at once, shouting questions:
“Hey, Lieutenant, what’s the mood like in there?”
“What’s she doing?”
“What’s she wearing?”
“Is she crying?”
“What can you tell us?”
“What’s she wearing?”
“I have no statement to make at this time,” Lamp replied crisply.
“Aw, come on. Give us a break . . .”
“How about you, Hoagy?”
“Yeah, give us a break, Hoagy. You’re one of us, remember?”
Just when I thought this day couldn’t get any shittier. “I have no statement to make either,” I said.
And then Lamp turned to me and said, “I suggest we amscray.”
“Excellent idea. Hold on, did you just speak to me in pig latin?”
He didn’t respond—in English or pig latin. Just started elbowing his way through the reporters and camera crews to his car. Lulu and I took off after him, Lulu baring her teeth and growling as we fought our way toward the Caprice and got in. Lamp started it up immediately and pulled away from the mob.
After he’d driven two blocks, he pulled over to the side of the road, shut off his engine and stared straight ahead in taut silence, his jaw muscles clenching and unclenching.
“Care to talk about it, Lieutenant?”
“Not really,” he said tightly.
“Then would you care to listen?”
“To what?”
“What would you say if I told you that I know how you can get this whole case buttoned up in time to take Belinda out for a nice steak dinner tonight?”
“I’d say that you’ve been smoking some of Lou Riggio’s weed. Besides, Belinda’s a vegetarian. She eats tofu. Tastes like wet Styrofoam.”
“Does this mean you don’t want to hear what I have to say?”
“I’m listening.”
“You mentioned that you’ll be wanting blood and hair samples from each and every person who was at Joey’s birthday party. Each and every person who’s still alive, that is.”
“We need to check everyone for fingernail gouges, too. So?”
“So can you assemble them back at Aintree Manor this afternoon? Grab some technicians from the medical examiner’s office and take care of it there?”
“Why in the holy heck would I want to do that?”
“Because I think it might prove to be very useful.”
“Hoagy, have you been holding out on me?”
“Not exactly. I’ve simply been working my side of the street while you work yours.”
Lamp studied me long and hard from across the seat. “You know what happened, don’t you?”
“I believe I may.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“That’s correct.”
“You think you will be sure if I get everyone together at the house?”
“Yes, I believe I will.”
He stared straight out the window again. “Fine. Consider it done.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.”
“But I need to ask you something, Hoagy.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“Am I going to regret this?”
Now it was my turn to stare straight ahead out the window. “Lieutenant, I can assure you that we’re both going to regret this.”