Tampa Two, page 11
part #8 of Burnside Series
I took a breath. I didn’t fully know the reason myself. Judy was a teenager, a runaway, a damaged child whose history I knew little about. I was an LAPD cop who should have known better. Mixed together, the combination was combustible.
“I guess it’s because I know what it’s like to have no one in your life you can turn to,” I said. “But some very good people helped me. They didn’t need to. But they did.”
“Did you run away from home, too?” she asked, innocently enough, those big blue eyes evoking sympathy.
“No,” I said. “My mother died of cancer when I was eighteen. I never knew my father, he was killed in a car accident before I was born. I had relatives, but they lived in the Midwest. I was all alone.”
She sat down at the kitchen table. “What did you do?”
“I got lucky. I played football in high school. Over in Culver City. I was good, but not good enough to attract a college scholarship right away. But then one of the players USC had recruited failed to graduate high school. He played safety, just like me. It was June and they suddenly had a football scholarship available. My high school coach reached out to USC and told them my situation. And since most other high school players had committed to other schools by then, SC didn’t have a lot of options either. They looked at my tapes and decided to bring me on board.”
“Wow. So you played football. Were you good?”
“Yeah. But I worked hard and I stayed out of trouble. That was the key. In the back of my mind, I was always afraid something would happen. I’d be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn’t go to many parties. I studied, I played football. And I focused really hard at doing both of these things well.”
“Did you play pro football?” she asked.
“No, I got hurt after my senior year. It never quite healed properly.”
She looked at me curiously, the way a person might look at an animal in the zoo that they had never seen before. It was as if she were trying to figure me out, and struggling to do so.
“I’m still not quite sure how this all relates to me,” she said. “Or why you’re helping me.”
I sighed and turned away from her. This wasn’t going to be easy.
*
Gail texted me she would be coming home late and asked if I could pick up something for dinner. I stopped by the Zankou near my office and bought some rotisserie chicken, along with their garlic sauce, hummus, and the softest, fluffiest rice I had ever tasted. British food for lunch, Middle Eastern cuisine for dinner. In L.A. there was nothing unusual about that, in fact, I didn’t even think about it until I was pulling into my driveway.
I played a round of Leaners with Marcus as we waited for Gail to come home. Leaners was a game I had played as a child. We took a deck of cards, sat across the room, and tried to toss the cards so they would land standing up, or “leaning,” against the far wall. For every deck of cards, we’d managed to get a few leaners, and when Marcus went up 3-2, I had to remember to avoid tying the score. It was, like many things about parenting, a rule I needed to constantly remind myself of. The competitive spirit does not yield easily.
Gail arrived just past 7:30. We ate and tried to get Marcus to tell us about his day, but he was more interested in eating bites of chicken. My day was rarely grist for dinner table conversation, so we mostly talked about Gail’s. Marcus would occasionally ask me what I did, and I’d give a generic response that I was helping people with their problems. The gnarly particulars, such as assaulting people, looking into the activities of prostitutes and investigating homicides, were the sordid details I didn’t like sharing with anyone, much less a 3 year-old.
After dinner, I went onto my computer and checked the locations of the GPS devices I had attached to Trevor and Madison Wynn’s vehicles. Trevor’s car was at an address in Burbank, which turned out to be a gym. Madison’s was inching along the northbound 405 Freeway, most likely she was on her way home. I checked again an hour later, and both cars were now safely ensconced in their house in Studio City.
The next morning, Gail was hurrying to get out the door, and asked me to drive Marcus to preschool, although she didn’t say why. On the way over, he talked about Frankie and he asked me what Antarctica was like, although he still needed help with pronouncing it correctly. I told him it was really cold and mostly covered with snow and ice.
“That sounds like fun,” he said, reminding me that a child’s vision of the world can be idealistic, and that wasn’t such a bad thing at times.
“Your new friend is still planning to go?”
“Frankie, yeah. Hey, Daddy, can I go over to his house today for a play date? Mommy said I could.”
I answered with a long “Hmmm.” But when we arrived at the preschool drop-off area, Frankie was at the front entrance waiting for him. Marcus bounced out of the Pathfinder and ran over to his new friend, and they raced inside together. I was about to pull back out into traffic when a tall, slender blonde woman approached the car and waved to me.
“Oh, hi there,” she called. “Remember me? I’m Brittany.”
“Of course,” I said, scanning my memory quickly. “We met for ramen last week. You’re Frankie’s mom.”
“Right. It’s Francis, actually. Listen, Gail called and said your nanny was out sick today. And the kids have been asking for a play date, so I was wondering if today would be good.”
I hesitated. “Sounds okay, but let me double-check with Gail.”
“Sure,” she said, and handed me her business card, that had the name of a production company on it in raised letters. “Our office is in Venice. Right by the boardwalk. Not far from here.”
She turned and walked over to a black Mercedes, which she unlocked with the push of a remote button. I wasn’t all that comfortable with Frankie or Brittany or especially Antarctica, where we were definitely not going next month. But I also knew the slippery slope, even if it involved a preschooler, of telling somebody who they could or couldn’t have as friends.
I went home and spent the rest of the morning trolling the internet, looking for escort services that might feature Judy or Candy, or any of the girls I saw yesterday in the Hollywood apartment. There were dozens of sites and hundreds upon hundreds of escorts, and I began to wonder just how oversexed L.A. really was. And this cavalcade of scantily clad women didn’t include the numerous streetwalkers who utilized a low-tech apparatus to generate business.
I drove over to Owen Magid’s apartment in Hollywood, but no one answered the doorbell. Nor did anyone respond to the knocking or the pounding. I did encounter a neighbor who yelled at me to knock it off, but when I flashed my fake badge at him, he backed off quickly. I tried a few other neighbors, but no one else was home. I drove over to the Pleasure Cove, but the doorman with the sunglasses and streaked-gray beard told me Candy wasn’t working today. Nothing productive was emerging this morning, although the sun was starting to burn through the cloud cover, and that always felt like a good sign of things to come.
I finally decided it was time for lunch and drove to the Santa Monica Pier to try Honey Roper’s suggestion, Plan Check, a cool, new burger joint. My order came with a fried egg, a special type of cheese, and a few oddly concocted items I could not identify without referring back to the menu. It was a pretty good burger, and while it lacked the comfort-food reassurance of the Apple Pan, it was probably better than the Wagyu burger I had with Gary Wynn the other day. It was certainly cheaper. I wasn’t sure if L.A. was really in the midst of a burger renaissance or just a new way of conjuring up an old favorite. Either way, I had seen the future and was convinced it would come stuffed with candied bacon and ketchup leather.
After my lunch, I took a walk over to 6th and Broadway, and stood as unobtrusively as I could near the front gate of the condo entrance. I looked repeatedly down at my phone and tried to appear as if I were waiting for someone, which I ultimately was, although it was merely any random stranger who happened to be walking in or out of the building. Ten minutes later, a middle-aged man emerged and patiently held the door for me without bothering to ask if I lived there. Thankfully for me, there were still some people who just wanted to be polite.
The 6th floor appeared to be back to normal, and there was no yellow crime scene tape in view. I knocked softly on unit 612, but before I could escalate to rapping and pounding, the door opened and a pretty girl with wavy brown hair stood there looking quizzically at me. She wore a tight t-shirt and volleyball shorts, not unattractive, but not exactly what a call girl would be wearing if she were on the job.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’ll bet you’re Sadie,” I guessed.
Her confused expression grew deeper. “How do you know?”
I put a foot inside the unit in case she tried to slam the door in my face. Pulling out my fake badge, I flashed it quickly and said I’d like to talk for a few minutes. She hesitated, looked down at my foot, calculated there was little sense in resisting, and invited me inside with a shrug of her shoulders.
She closed the door. “I know what you’re going to ask me. But I’m not sure how I can help you.”
“Well, let’s play it by ear,” I grinned. “You never know.”
She sat down cross-legged on the floor. I sat across from her on the couch.
“I know you were here on Saturday night,” I said, and watched carefully as my words sunk in. I was getting tired of people lying to me, and sometimes presenting the bold-face truth can halt dishonesty in its tracks.
Sadie looked at me and processed this slowly. “You know that?”
“Yes. You were in one of the bedrooms, with a client. Tell me about what went on in here in the living room.”
She took a deep breath and let it out, all the while looking down at the floor. “There were a few guys here. And a couple of the girls.”
“And Judy was one of them,” I said, hoping to impart that I actually knew something.
“Yeah, she was there, she asked me to just stay in the bedroom. But the conversation they were having got a little heated so I opened the door a crack. I didn’t know what it was about at first. Still don’t, not entirely. This one really big guy, looked like he was an Indian or something, I think. He was pretty intense. Said this was a one-time deal. If anything went up on the internet, he’d be back and mess people up.”
“Okay.”
“The other guy told him to shut his mouth, and that no one was getting messed up on his watch. Judy actually stepped in and tried to defuse things. It must have worked because people started to leave.”
“And Judy stayed behind. With this other guy. His name was Henry.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I was finished with my client, but when we started coming out of the room, I heard Judy arguing with someone. She must have promised to blow him or something. But the guy wanted straight sex.”
“And how did they settle that little point of disagreement?”
“He smacked her in the face. Hit her pretty good, knocked her onto the couch. Then he jumped on top of her and began taking her clothes off.”
“And what happened next?” I asked.
“Well, I couldn’t very well call 911. And after he hit Judy, I wasn’t going to jump in and break it up. He was big and I’m not stupid.”
“What about your client?”
Sadie shook her head. “He’s a mouse. When Judy started getting hit, he flew back into the bedroom and told me to shut the door. I think he’s married, but still, he wasn’t exactly a profile in courage.”
“And you listened until they were done.”
“I listened while he did her. And every now and then I’d hear a slap and a curse. Then I heard some weird noises and he grunted loudly. I figured he was done. My client insisted I not even open the door until I was sure they were gone. I waited until we heard the door slam, then we came out.”
“And you saw Henry Knapp on the floor,” I said.
“Actually he was still partly on the couch,” she said. I looked down at where I was sitting and made a mental note to get my pants dry-cleaned.
“And then?” I asked.
“And then we stared at him for a second, and my john freaked out. He said he couldn’t be caught here, where was the back exit, all sorts of crazy stuff. I told him no, there’s only one exit. He insisted that he leave first and I wait a few minutes before I followed him.”
“Which you did?”
Sadie shrugged. “Didn’t matter to me. That Henry Knapp guy looked dead to me. Didn’t think he’d get any deader. I waited a minute and then left.”
“So there’s a dead body lying there and you didn’t call the police?”
“Nope, I’m not crazy. I know who I work for, and I’d like to live to see my next birthday. I guess someone else called 911 eventually.”
I thought about this. Rolf Anawak and Judy Atkin were here with Henry Knapp. And Sadie and her client. Rolf left but he could have come back, he sounded pretty angry. Judy had been sexually assaulted. Sadie could have been lying about her role. Or her client’s. But Rolf was dead, Judy was in jail and Sadie wasn’t telling me much. I needed more answers, and they weren’t materializing.
“When a client comes here,” I started. “What’s the process? How does it work?”
“You’ve never done this?” she asked, with the same curiosity that might be displayed for somebody who had never ridden a bicycle in his life.
“Believe it or not, no,” I said.
“Oh. Well, a guy starts by going on our internet site.”
“Which one?’
“They use a lot of them. Changes all the time. But anyway, the john picks a girl he likes and calls to make an appointment and agree on the price. When he comes over, we check him out,” she said, pointing to a window across the room. “If he seems okay, we buzz him in and tell him we’re up in unit number 612.”
I walked across the room and glanced out the window. Looking down, even from the 6th floor, I had an unobstructed view of the front gate and the intercom.
“And you’re looking for what exactly?”
“Mostly making sure it’s just one guy. And that he’s not acting weird. You can only tell so much, but we’ve turned away a few dudes.”
I had an idea. “Give me your cell phone,” I said, in as authoritative voice as I could.
“What?”
“Your phone. I want the number of that client that was here on Saturday. I need to talk to him.”
She considered this for a moment, then pulled out an iPhone in a pink gold case that was studded with rhinestones. She opened it up and began swiping through her phone list.
“Let’s see ... here’s Saturday evening,” she said and showed me the number. I wrote it down and then glanced up at her.
“Just one client that night?”
She shrugged. “We usually get a lot of business travelers. Sunday and Monday evenings book up. Saturday’s not our busiest time. Date night. You know.”
*
Asking Sadie for her client’s name would be a fruitless endeavor, he almost certainly provided an alias; men who buy sex usually don’t even give their real first names. After leaving the condo, I placed a call to the number I lifted from her phone, and after being routed to voice mail, I learned the john’s name was Stuart. I wasn’t sure he’d ever pick up, so I tried to invoke Plan B, but that got derailed when I learned my old pal Captain Juan Saavedra was not in; he was on vacation for the next two weeks. I phoned Roberto De Santos, but he was in a special ops training class. I finally conjured up another idea.
The LAPD’s Pacific Division was on the corner of Culver and Centinela, not far from our home. It was like any other police station: sterile, bureaucratic, and humming with activity. I asked for Detective Rocca’s desk and was directed to it near the back wall. Albert Rocca had a stocky build and his black hair was short and cropped. Wearing a light-blue shirt and a light blue patterned tie, he was leaning back in his chair, phone lodged between his ear and his shoulder, scribbling notes on a pad. He noticed me but did not bother to make any sort of acknowledgement. After a few minutes, he ended the call with a curt “uh-huh” and turned to give me a bored look.
“Help you?” he asked, with a placid demeanor.
“Name’s Burnside,” I said.
“That supposed to mean something to me?”
“My wife is Gail Pepper. She works for the City Attorney. I gather you’ve worked on a case together.”
His expression changed and a smile crossed his lips. “Oh, sure. Gail. Just finished putting a perp away with her. Smart lady. Cute, too. You’re a lucky man.”
“I am indeed.”
“She told me her husband used to be on the job. Out on your own now.”
I nodded. “P.I.”
“I wouldn’t mind doing that one day.”
“It has its ups and downs,” I said. “But don’t discount a steady paycheck and decent health insurance.”
“And a pension,” he smiled. “I’m 16 years in. You know the saying. Do your twenty and take your forty.”
I smiled at the standard cop line. It referred to qualifying for a pension after twenty years and then getting forty percent of your salary for life. If an LAPD officer started early enough and stayed healthy, that pension could extend for a good four or five decades.
“I never made it far enough to qualify for that. I’ll be working until I keel over.”
Rocca took this in. “So what can I do for you, Burnside? It’s a shame Gail didn’t take your last name. But Pepper is pretty catchy.”
“I think she wanted to maintain her own identity,” I said, leaving out my other thought, that she might not want to be publicly associated with a husband who treated the law as a suggestion rather than a set of rules to follow assiduously.
Rocca nodded and said nothing. I continued.
“I was hoping for a favor,” I said. “I’m looking for this guy, his name’s Stuart, no last name available. All I have is a cell phone number. It might be a disposable, but I’ll bet the number can be traced. Just need his last name. An address would be a bonus.”
