Devil Wind (Sammy Greene Mysteries) (2 page)

More dead air on the line as the madam considered Miller’s proposal. Twelve thousand was four times the usual fees. Hard to hang up on that. And, it might be an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Sylvie had gotten too cocky lately. Making foolish noises about leaving the fold. Going out on her own. By sending Sylvie to the party tonight, they’d have a chance to search the girl’s flat for the client list she’d stolen. That was another stupid mistake, Ms Sylvie: underestimating Madam Kaye.

“All right,” she said. “It’s a deal.”

The winds gusted soft and warm, a siren song caressing the nubile bodies dancing and drinking by moonlight on the poolside patio of the sheltered Bel Air estate with the movers and shakers of Tinseltown. An exclusive gala of a music mogul who’d just signed a multimillion-dollar record deal—only the beautiful and wealthy were welcome. The deafening beat of the producer’s latest artist’s rap album made conversation impossible. But, truth was, the partygoers were there to be seen, not heard. This event was 10 percent business, 90 percent show.

Two young blondes, sporting identical hairstyles and dressed in identical tight cocktail dresses, sat at a table in a darkened corner cradling flutes of champagne, surveying the scene like hunters stalking their prey. Sylvie adjusted her décolletage to expose more cleavage. “It’s well past eleven. Kaye said he’d be here by ten.”

“You don’t think playing both sides is a little dangerous?” her “twin” wondered, wishing Sylvie hadn’t confided her duplicity.

“Come on, Ana, L.A.’s a rough town and we’ve got a rough gig,” Sylvie replied. They both knew she meant the life of a high-priced call girl. Or “escort” or “working girl” or “whore,” it was all the same. Underneath the city that glittered, there was plenty of grime. Sylvie had long ago accepted that reality. Ana still hadn’t made her peace with it.

“Why are we doing this?” Ana persisted. It was something she’d been thinking about more and more.

Sylvie tilted her head and leveled her blue eyes that glistened from the hit of coke she’d taken before leaving the apartment. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. You’re smart, you’re beautiful. I thought you wanted to be an actress.”

Sylvie ran her tongue over her full, sensuous lips. “I am an actress. People like you and me, we’re survivors. We do what we have to do. Besides, there’s always Plan B. Payless shoes, remember—”

Ana looked away, catching a glimpse of several newcomers just stepping onto the patio and nudged Sylvie with her elbow.

“Shit, that’s him,” Sylvie said, blindly grabbing the designer string purse behind her chair. “At this hour, I’ll be all night. Find your own way home, okay.” It wasn’t a question.

Ana observed her roommate as she shimmied on her Manolo Blahniks toward a swarthy man whose salt-and pepper-hair, though stylishly coiffed, betrayed at least a couple of decades beyond hers. Sylvie flashed a luminous pink metallic smile and whispered something in his ear. When he nodded, she took his manicured hand and led him toward one of the guesthouses where Ana had no doubt they would share a line of high-grade coke—and much more.

Damn. It had been a mistake to come with Sylvie tonight. Still, Madam Kaye could be quite convincing. She’d insisted they both attend, and, so, here they were. Ana scoured the crowd until she spotted a stocky man she’d seen many times on TV standing by the bar—popular Orange County, California Congressman Neil Prescott, reputed to be one of the madam’s occasional and less avaricious clients. Perhaps Kaye was right. The night wouldn’t be a total loss. The congressman would be good for a pair of wheels, and maybe a couple of thou for next month’s rent.

Straightening her dress, Ana rose and reached behind her to grab her own purse hanging from the chair. Slowly, she approached the congressman with practiced modesty, and an unwelcome twinge of regret. This scene was getting old, and, in her mid-twenties, so was she. “Hi,” she shouted over the music, “mind if I join you?”

The politician gave her long blonde hair and well-toned body an appreciative once over, then pointed to the gyrating crowd with a broad smile. “Too noisy. Let’s get out of here. I have a place.”

It was almost midnight when the silver Mercedes drove past the two muscled bouncers manning the gates of the Bel Air estate. The music had been cranked up even louder, the beat reverberating in the abyssal canyon. The party would no doubt go on all night. Ana felt a slight shiver as the wind began picking up strength around them. Was that scent a hint of smoke? Unleashed, the Santa Anas could whip the night into a fiery frenzy. By morning, the streets would be strewn with the victims—dead branches of once beautiful palms, rotting in the gutters that are the shadowy underbelly of Eden.

CHAPTER TWO

Breathless, Sammy Greene sprinted into the radio studio, slid into her seat, and pulled on her headphones at one minute before midnight. She flashed a broad, slightly guilty smile at her producer on the other side of the glass. “Am I late?”

Jim Lodge punched the button for the network feed harder than really necessary. As the sounds of the national news for the top of the hour came in over the loudspeaker, he turned to the window between them with a wry expression. “Bad hair day?”

“Gut gesuked.” Sammy ran her fingers through her disheveled red mop and tossed off her grandmother’s Yiddish equivalent of I’ll say, adding, “I’ve lived through hurricanes and I’ve never seen hot winds like this.”

“Santa Anas,” the producer said.

Sammy reached into her satchel and pulled out notes for her upcoming show. “Aren’t winds supposed to be cold? Wind chill.”

Jim shook his long gray locks and took a sip from a large mug of steaming coffee. He lowered his voice to a hush. “Devil wind.”

“Huh?” Sammy repositioned her mic and leaned over to turn on the small TV monitor she had set up next to her board. She liked to run it muted on the national news networks or C-SPAN to keep up with breaking events while she was on the air.

“They fly from the desert, from Death Valley, and soar over the mountains, bringing the flames of Hell to the denizens of Paradise.” He waved a torn sleeve at the window and the sea of lights beyond.

“How Dante-esque.” Sammy’s colleague, his full beard, ponytail, and ragged togs identifying him in her mind as the last surviving hippie, could get a little creepy at times. “And I thought I’d only have to worry about earthquakes.”

Frowning, Sammy surveyed the gloomy studio, buried within a ratty wood-and-stucco building in the bowels of Canyon City, a wannabe middle-class community just south of Beverly Hills. When she’d begun her broadcasting career, she’d never imagined ending up two years later on the night shift in a tiny shack like this.

She glanced over at the adjacent monitor, now tuned to CNN. High-tech graphics whizzing across the screen cost thousands of dollars—more than a year’s wages at the Washington TV network where she used to work. Despite the low pay and long hours, she’d gladly have stayed there if she could. She’d loved being near the action, especially with an election coming up next year.

Sammy felt no regrets leaving Ellsford University after graduating on the five-year plan in ’97. Her campus radio experience landed her the dream internship in D.C. at the television network and a gig six months later as one of the youngest associate producers for investigative reporter Barry Kane and his show, Up Front D.C. Sammy’d never had illusions about landing in front of the camera. Her frizzy red hair and strong Brooklyn accent didn’t fit the popular Barbie Doll image. She was happy as a journalist pounding a beat, thrilled to be trolling for stories from K Street to the hallowed halls of Congress, catching the scent of corruption hovering over the Capitol.

Maybe she shouldn’t have pushed so hard on the Senator Treadwell story. After all, he was a fishing buddy of the network’s CEO. Still, she never figured she’d get sacked for doing her job. Even the parade to the door through the studio by a security guard escort hadn’t dampened her certainty that another news organization would appreciate her skills in the tenacious pursuit of truth.

Only after months of mailing out résumés and calling on colleagues once counted as friends, did the message sink in. She was persona non grata in Washington. And New York. And Boston. And—

“Los Angeles,” advised her colleague, Vito, one of the few D.C. news pros still willing to lunch with her. “It’s the city of second chances. People don’t care about your past there.”

Ironic. Vito couldn’t have known that some of her past—make that, someone from her past—was in that very city. That was why she’d resisted his offer to contact an old buddy at a tiny, low-budget, low-wattage Pacifica radio station on the Very Left Coast. She’d waited weeks, until every feeler she’d put out had been rejected and her bank account nearly drained, before swallowing her pride and asking Vito to make the call.

Her career in tatters, Sammy had ended up back where she started. In front of a talk-radio mic. Lighting Chanukah candles in ninety-five degree Los Angeles heat. She walked over to the almost empty coffeepot. “Thanks, Jim,” she muttered, pouring the last few drops into a clean cup. Returning to her seat at the board, she began to arrange her notes for Hour One.

She’d scoured the morning papers, bypassing election news and holiday features until she found what she was looking for near the back page of the L.A. Times—a story about a homeless protest encampment, a tent city growing this past month outside the Canyon City Hall, just a few miles from the station. Sammy had come so close to being out on the street herself. She felt passionate about helping the thousands in her new city who could not afford shelter. With Christmas just over a day away, it was time for action. Sammy would try to rally her listeners to offer their aid. She glanced at the clock. Almost five after twelve. “Jim, we ready?”

The producer nodded and began a five-finger countdown to her cue.

A Miles Davis fusion riff filtered through Sammy’s headphones as she flipped open her mic and in a practiced sultry voice announced, “Sammy Greene on the L.A. scene. Turn up the radio, turn down the lights, and cuddle up in bed. That is, if you have a bed, lights, a radio, a home, a roof. Because many Angelenos don’t.”

She shuffled her papers near the mic as a sound effect. “According to the L.A. University Center for Public Research, at least two hundred thousand individuals are homeless in L.A. County. On any given night, half have nowhere to sleep. Women and children make up more than a third of this group; over eighty percent of homeless families are headed by women. Folks, this is a national tragedy. How can we sleep at night when so many men, women, and children in Los Angeles are crying out for help?”

Her cries for help went unanswered, drowned by the incessant beat of the deafening music from the patio outside the Bel Air mansion. The naked blonde in the guesthouse bedroom knew she was going to die. If only she hadn’t taken the wrong purse.

Fahim had gone to the bathroom, leaving Sylvie sprawled on the crumpled sheets, groggy from the Ecstasy and wine they shared. As soon as the door closed, she’d tiptoed out of bed and lifted the Handspring personal digital assistant he’d laid on the night table. Sex was only one part of her job. Kaye expected Sylvie to bring back any client secrets she could find. That’s why the madam had insisted she seek out the Saudi tonight.

Sylvie thought she’d done her part well—scanned the last few e-mails as quickly as she could, then grabbed the phone from her purse, texted the critical information as a short message, and keyed in the phone number to Ana’s cell. Hit “Send,” and the traces would disappear, to be retrieved safely in the morning from her roommate. Sylvie would be back on the bed, pretending to sleep. It wasn’t until the text message boomeranged to the phone in her hand that she realized she had Ana’s cell—and purse.

The minute it took to resend the message to her own number and slip the phone back into the purse was one minute too long. Fahim had grabbed her from behind and shoved her against the wall before she could replace the PDA.

Sylvie didn’t stand a chance as, towering over her tiny frame, Fahim pounded the life out of her, the loud beat of the party’s music masking the fatal blows and her final screams.

“Anybody in there?”

Fahim wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve before opening the front door of the guest cottage a crack.

A uniformed officer was pointing at the Bentley parked behind him. “You here alone?”

Fahim swallowed and nodded.

“Better get this beauty and yourself outta here. We’re evacuating everybody. Fire’s at Mulholland.”

“Fire?” Fahim shook his head to clear it. “Yes, of course. I’ll, er, get my things.”

The officer waved as he left with a last admiring glance at the car Fahim had rented on arrival. “Don’t wait too long. Be a shame if she burns up.”

As soon as Fahim shut the door, he pulled his cell from his pants pocket and, dreading each step back toward the bedroom, dialed a number he’d preferred not to call.

“You’re sure the girl’s dead?” It was same cold tone Miller had used on the plane that afternoon.

“Yes, it was an acc—”

“Name and address,” Miller interrupted, obviously not interested in the circumstances.

Fahim balanced his cell in the crook of his neck as he looked into the silk purse and read off the license: “Anastasia Pappajohn. An address in Santa Monica.”

“Okay, listen carefully.” Miller gave him a road map to get rid of the body. “When that’s done, take off. Get a room somewhere where the cops can’t find you. Just in case.”

“But, I thought—”

“Isn’t that the problem, Fahim? Not thinking.” Miller didn’t wait for a response. “I’ll keep you out of this and clean up your mess, but you owe me, pal. Big time.”

CHAPTER THREE

Prescott turned his Mercedes east onto Sunset Boulevard. “I keep a place in Beverly Hills since I do lots of business in the city. That way I don’t have to fight traffic back to the O.C.”

Ana nodded and sat back in the comfortable leather seat of the Mercedes, closing her eyes. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep up this game. She’d be twenty-seven next month. Over the hill in this market of young and younger. She’d been clean for over a year, but the bills for Teddy’s leg braces alone cost her more than she netted from weeks of work. Kaye saw to it that her girls got just enough take-home to keep coming back for more.