Sitting with my ex-wife and daughter, I had a fleeting taste of the life I’d lost, and for a short time I was able to pretend nothing bad had happened, that we were all together and that they still loved me.
But it didn’t last. My phone rang, and a number I didn’t recognize appeared on-screen.
“It’s Sam Larabee,” he said when I answered. “I found the woman who’s been troubling your wife. You’re not going to do anything stupid?”
“Who needs the heat? I’m sure Anna told you the charges I’m facing. I’m an idiot sometimes, but I’m not violent.”
Ha! Farah’s ghost said, and for a moment I saw her one-eyed face.
“I just want to talk to her, and if she won’t listen to reason, I’ll give her details to the cops,” I assured him. “I’m sitting here with my wife and daughter—”
“Ex-wife,” Toni cut in.
“And I swear in front of them I won’t do anything stupid.”
Toni looked puzzled, and I raised my hand to indicate everything would be okay.
“Her name is Jessica Yallop. Twenty-seven. Lives in the Hollywood Hills on Beechwood Drive. Otis will send you her details so we have an email trail, Mr. Collard,” Larabee told me.
“I understand. You don’t have to worry. I appreciate the quick work.”
He grunted and hung up.
“What the heck are you into, Peyton?” Toni asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. “Well, not nothing, but nothing I can’t handle.”
Yeah, right, Walter’s ghost said. You’re a dead man walking.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, getting to my feet.
“Whatever you’re into, Peyton, you should go to the police.” There was so much sadness and resignation in Toni’s voice.
“I can’t,” I replied, and she and Skye didn’t bother trying to conceal their disappointment. My words were as good as a written confession of guilt.
Skye followed me to the back door and surprised me by taking my hand. “You okay, Dad?”
“I’ll be fine, kiddo. I’ll see you around.”
She smiled, but it was a lie writ large.
Toni said nothing as she watched me leave, and I walked away from her place with the uneasy feeling that would be the last time I’d see them. I choked up at the prospect I’d miss the rest of Skye’s life, but if my sacrifice was what it took to ensure her future, I’d make it without hesitation. Did that make me a good man? I didn’t think so. Good men don’t get mixed up with murder.
At least Skye would never have to worry about money, and erasing my deadbeat influence from her life might actually be better for her. There are too many similarities between me and my father, and the worst thing I could imagine would be for Skye to end up anything like me. Frankie Balls would have no reason to hurt Skye if I wasn’t around. He wouldn’t know where the money had gone and wouldn’t be able to extort a dead man. My exit was the only way to keep my daughter safe.
I climbed into the Range Rover and checked my phone to find an email from Otis, giving me Jessica Yallop’s address on Beechwood Drive. It took me an hour to cross LA south to north, and I spent most of it sitting in nose-to-tail traffic on the Hollywood Freeway, watching the lowering sun drop toward the horizon.
Jessica Yallop lived in a low-rise horseshoe-shaped apartment block with rusty balconies that overlooked a small swimming pool filled with greenish water. I parked on the street outside her building and used my phone to google her. I found the profile of a twenty-seven-year-old actress who’d been in a few short films and one low-budget feature. She had sandy-blond hair, delicate features, and clear skin, and reminded me of a Pretty Woman–era Julia Roberts. Her eyes were warm, and there was a longing that I might have imagined because I was desperate for the love and kindness of others.
If she was the mastermind behind the murders, the world was more upside down than I thought. There was nothing about her that suggested she had the funds or the motive to have Walter Glaze, Farah Younis, and Richard Gibson killed, and no obvious connection to the new target, Alice Polmar.
I got out of the car, headed up the path to the 1950s apartment block, and climbed the exterior stairs to the third floor. I walked along the shared balcony, looking for 3F, and when I saw the corroded metal badge with the correct number and letter, I knocked on the door. A moment later, Jessica Yallop opened it.
She was beautiful even without the makeup and lighting of her headshots. Hollywood was full of such beauty, and most of it would be chewed up and spit out by an industry as merciless as it was ambitious.
Jessica tried to slam the door the instant she recognized me, but I stuck my foot out and followed up with my shoulder, barging my way in. She cried out as she stumbled back, and I hurried inside and shut the door behind me.
“Get the fuck out before I call the cops,” she yelled. “Help!”
She tried to run past me, but I grabbed her wrist and held it tight.
“Settle down,” I said. “I just want to know why you’ve been paying me to kill people.”
She froze. I couldn’t have shocked her more if I’d slapped her.
“What did you say?”
She looked at me afresh, her eyes wide with fear.
“Please don’t hurt me.”
“What? I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to know what’s going on.”
I let go, and she backed away. I looked around her tiny apartment. Lots of books, manuscripts, movie posters on the walls. She was in a pair of linen shorts and a black vest.
“You don’t know, do you?” I said.
She sat on her couch by the window that overlooked the balcony and put her head in her hands. “Oh my God. He promised it wasn’t anything illegal.”
“Tell me what you know.”
She glanced up with fear in her eyes. “A guy contacted me through my website. Said he needed someone to deliver packages. Offered me two thousand bucks a package.”
She started crying.
“I knew nothing legal would pay that kind of money, but you know how you con yourself into believing something when you’re desperate. Acting is tough, and I needed a way to make my rent.”
I scoffed and nodded. I was very familiar with the power of desperation.
“You ever meet the guy?”
She shook her head. “He leaves my money and your packages in an old newspaper dispenser on Proctor Avenue in the City of Industry. Sends me messages on a cell he left there telling me when I need to collect.”
She was claiming to be a courier. A cutout to protect my patron’s identity. Her story seemed to stack up. She certainly didn’t look like she had the resources to pull off a sting of highly paid assassinations.
“How did you know my new address?” I asked.
“He gave it to me.”
How the heck did he know? I wondered.
I considered the question and everything else she’d told me in silence.
“Did you really kill people?” she asked after a while.
I didn’t answer, and her crying grew more intense.
“I could go to jail,” she sobbed.
Typical self-centered twenty-first-century thinking. No thought for the poor victims she’d helped erase or their families. I might have committed the crimes, but at least I felt bad about it. Still, her self-interest in avoiding prison would save me the trouble of having to threaten her. She understood our fates were now linked, and her silence was essential to protect herself.
“Do you have the phone number he uses to text you?” I asked. “And the address of the drop?”