Free Fall (14 page)

“The REACT team statement was that it was a combination of all five officers present, though Eric Dees, the team leader, took responsibility.”

She took a deep breath. “Mark never told me any of that.”

“How about the name Akeem D’Muere?”

“No.”

“Akeem D’Muere is a gangbanger in South Central Los Angeles. He bosses a street gang called the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys. Lewis Washington’s family dropped their lawsuit because Akeem D’Muere told them that he’d kill them if they didn’t.”

“He didn’t tell me any of this. You think Mark has something to do with these people?”

“I don’t know if these two things are connected or not. Maybe they’re not. Maybe Mark didn’t tell you about Akeem D’Muere because he doesn’t know.”

“He didn’t tell me about any of this.” She was shaking her head.

“This isn’t going to be easy, Jennifer. What we find out about Mark might be a bad thing, just like Riggens said. It might be something that you’ll wish you didn’t know, and what you find out might change forever what you feel about Mark and about you with Mark. Do you see that?”

“Are you telling me that we should stop?”

“I’m not telling you one way or the other. I want you to know what you’re dealing with, that’s all.”

She turned away from me and looked at the pictures on the white Formica table, the pictures that had charted her life from the ninth grade until this moment. Her eyes turned pink and she rubbed at them. “Damn it, I didn’t want to cry anymore. I’m tired of crying.” She rubbed her eyes harder.

I leaned forward and touched her arm. The arm that Riggens had hurt. I said, “Crying is dangerous. It’s wise of you to avoid it this way.”

She said, “What?” Confused.

“First, there’s the dehydration, and then the lungs go into sob lock.”

She stopped the rubbing. “Sob lock?”

I nodded. “A form of vapor lock induced by sobbing. The lungs lose all capacity to move air, and asphyxiation is only moments away. I’ve lost more clients to this than gunshot wounds.”

“Maybe,” she said, “that doesn’t so much speak to the clients as to the detective.”

I slapped a hand over my chest. “Ouch.”

Jennifer Sheridan laughed, forgetting about the tears. “You’re funny.”

“Nope. I’m Elvis.” You get me on a roll, I’m murder.

She laughed again and said, “Say something else funny.”

“Something else funny.”

She laughed again and made a big deal out of giving me exasperated. “No. I meant for you to
say
something funny.”

“Oh.”

“Well?” Waiting.

“You want me to say something funny.”

“Yes.”

“Something funny.”

Jennifer Sheridan threw the stuffed lion at me but then the laughter died and she said, “Oh, my God. I am so scared.”

“I know.”

“I’ve got a college education. I have a good job. You’re supposed to go out a lot, but I don’t do that. You’re supposed to be complete and whole all by yourself, but if I can’t have him I feel like I’ll die.”

“You’re in love. People who say the other stuff are saying it either before they’ve been in love or after the love is over and it hasn’t worked out for them, but no one says it when they’re in the midst of love. When you’re in love, there’s too much at stake.”

She said, “I’ve never been with anyone who makes me feel the way that he makes me feel. I’ve never tried to be. Maybe I should’ve. Maybe it’s all been a horrible mistake.”

“It’s not a mistake if it’s what you wanted.” I was breathing hard and I couldn’t get control of it.

She stared down into her flute glass, and she traced her fingertip around its edge, and then she stared at me. She didn’t look sixteen, now. She was lean and pretty, and somehow available. She said, “I like it that you make me laugh.”

I said, “Jennifer.”

She put down the flute glass. “You’re very nice.”

I put down my glass and stood. She went very red and suddenly looked away. She said, “Ohmygod. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

She stood, too. “Maybe you should go.”

I nodded, and realized that I didn’t want to go. The sharp pain came back behind my eyes. “All right.”

“This wine.” She laughed nervously, and still didn’t look at me.

“Sure. Me, too.”

I backed away from her and went into the entry
hall by the kitchen. I liked the way the tights fit her calves and her thighs and the way the sweatshirt hung low over her hips. She was standing with her arms crossed as if it were cold. “I’m sorry.”

I said, “Don’t be.” Then I said, “You’re quite lovely.”

She flushed again and looked down at her empty glass and I left.

I stood in the street outside her apartment for a long time, and then I drove home.

Pike was gone and the house was cool and dark. I left it that way. I took a beer from the refrigerator, turned on the radio, and went out onto my deck. Jim Ladd was conning the air waves at KLSX. Playing a little George Thorogood. Playing a little Creedence Clearwater Revival. When you’re going to listen to radio, you might as well listen to the best.

I stood in the cool night air and drank the beer and, off to my left, an owl hooted from high in a stand of pine trees. The scent of jasmine now was stronger than it had been earlier in the evening, and I liked it. I wondered if Jennifer Sheridan would like smelling it, too. Would she like the owl?

I listened and I drank for quite a long while, and then I went in to bed.

Sleep, when it finally came, provided no rest.

A
t ten-forty the next morning I called my friend at B of A. She said, “I can’t believe this. Two calls in the same week. I may propose.”

“You get that stupid, I’ll have to use the Sting tickets on someone else.”

“Forget it. I’d rather see Sting.” These dames.

“I want to know who financed the purchase of a place called the Premier Pawn Shop on Hoover Street in South Central L.A.” I gave her the address. “Can you help me on that?”

“You at the office?”

“Nope. I’m taking advantage of my self-employed status to while away the morning in bed. Naked. And alone.” Mr. Seduction.

My friend laughed. “Well, if I know you, that’s plenty of company.” Everybody’s a comedian. “Call you back in twenty.”

“Thanks.”

She made the call in fifteen. “The Premier Pawn Company was owned in partnership between Charles Lewis Washington and something called the Lester
Corporation. Lester secured the loan and handled the financing through California Federal.”

“Ah ha.”

“Is that ‘ah ha’ as in this is important, or ‘ah ha’ as in you’re clearing your throat?”

“The former. Maybe. Who signed the papers?”

“Washington and an attorney named Harold Bellis. Bellis signed for Lester and is an officer in that corporation.”

“Bellis have an address?”

“Yeah. In Beverly Hills.” She gave it to me, then I hung up, showered, dressed, and charged off to deepest, darkest Beverly Hills. Portrait of the detective in search of mystery, adventure, and a couple of measly clues.

The Law Offices of Harold Bellis were on the third floor of a newly refurbished three-story office building a half block off Rodeo Drive and about a million light-years from South Central Los Angeles. I found a parking space between a Rolls-Royce Corniche and an eighty-thousand-dollar Mercedes two-seater in front of a store that sold men’s belts starting at three hundred dollars. Business was brisk.

I went into a little glass lobby with a white marble floor and a lot of gold fixtures and took the elevator to the third floor. Harold Bellis had the front half of the building and it looked like he did very well. There was a lot of etched glass and glossy furniture and carpet about as deep as the North Atlantic. I waded up to a receptionist seated behind a semicircular granite desk and gave her my card. She was wearing one of those pencil-thin headphones so she could answer the phone and speak without having to lift anything. “Elvis Cole to see Mr. Bellis. I don’t have an appointment.”

She touched a button and spoke to someone, then listened and smiled at me. There was no humor in the smile, nor any friendliness. She said, “We’re sorry, but
Mr. Bellis’s calendar is full. If you’d like an appointment, we can schedule a time next week.”

I said, “Tell him it’s about the Premier Pawn Company. Tell him I have a question about the Lester Corporation.”

She said it into the microphone, and a couple of minutes later a rapier-thin woman with prominent cheeks and severely white skin came out and led me through a long common office where secretaries and aides and other people sat in little cubicles, and then into her office, and then into his. Her office held a bank of designer file cabinets and fresh-cut tulips and the entrance to his office. You want to see him, you’ve got to get past her, and she wouldn’t be easy to beat. She’d probably even like the fight.

Harold Bellis had the corner office and it was big. She said, “This is Mr. Cole.”

Harold Bellis stood up and came around his desk, smiling and offering his hand. He was short and soft with pudgy hands and a fleshy face and thinning gray hair that looked as soft as mouse fur. Sort of like the Beverly Hills version of Howdy Doody. “Thanks, Martha. Harold Bellis, Mr. Cole. Martha tells me you’re interested in the Premier Pawn Shop. Would you like to buy it?” He sort of laughed when he said it, like it was an obvious joke and we both knew it. Ha ha.

“Not today Mr. Bellis, thanks.”

Martha looked down her nose at me and left.

Harold Bellis’s handshake was limp and his voice was sort of squeaky, but maybe that was just confidence. An original David Hockney watercolor and two Jésus Leuus oils hung on the walls. You don’t get the Hockney and the Leuus by being sissy in the clinches. “I’m working on something that brought me across the Premier and I learned that you’re an officer in the company that owns it.”

“That’s correct.” Bellis offered me a seat and took
the chair across from me. The decor was Sante Fe, and the seating was padded benches. Bellis’s chair looked comfortable, but the benches weren’t. He said, “I have a meeting with a client now, but she’s sorting through records in the conference room, so we can squeeze in a few minutes.”

“Great.”

“Does this involve Mr. Washington’s death?”

“In part.”

Bellis gave me sad and shook his head. “That young man’s death was a tragedy. He had everything in the world going for himself.”

“The police say he was fencing stolen goods. His family suspects that, too.”

“Well, that was never established in a court of law, was it?”

“Are you saying he wasn’t?”

“If he was, it was unknown to the co-owners of the shop.” Bellis’s smile grew tighter and he didn’t look so much like Howdy Doody now.

I smiled at him. “Who are the co-owners, Mr. Bellis?”

Harold Bellis looked at my card as if, in the looking, something had been confirmed. “Perhaps if you told me your interest in all of this.”

“Mr. Washington’s family implied that he was the sole owner of the Premier, but upon checking, I found that something called the Lester Corporation arranged the financing and carried the paper.”

“That’s right.”

“Since Mr. Washington had no credit history, and was working at a minimum-wage job at the time, I was wondering why someone would co-sign a loan with him for such a substantial sum of money.”

Harold Bellis said, “The Lester Corporation provides venture capital for minority businessmen. Lewis
Washington made a proposal, and we agreed to enter into partnership. That’s all there is to it.”

“To the tune of eighty-five thousand dollars.”

“Yes.”

You co-signed a loan for a man with no formal education, a criminal record, and no business experience, because you like to help underprivileged entrepreneurs?”

“Someone has to, don’t you think?” He leaned forward out of the Sante Fe chair and the Howdy Doody eyes were as hard as a smart bomb’s heart. Nope, he wouldn’t be sissy in the clinches.

I said, “Does Akeem D’Muere own the Lester Corporation?”

Bellis didn’t move for a long moment and the eyes stayed with me. The smart bomb acquiring its target. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss the Lester Corporation or any other client, Mr. Cole. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I understand it, but I was hoping that you’d make an exception.”

The hard eyes relaxed and some of the Howdy Doody came back. Howdy Doody billing at a thousand dollars an hour. “Do you suspect that this Mr. D’Muere has something to do with Lewis Washington’s death?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you suspect someone of criminal activity, you should report it to the police.”

“Perhaps I will.” Elvis Cole makes his big threat.

Harold Bellis glanced at his watch and stood up. The watch was a Patek Philippe that wholesaled out at maybe fourteen thousand dollars. Maybe if you could blow fourteen grand on a watch and keep Hockney originals around for office decorations, you didn’t think twice about giving eighty-five thousand to a total stranger with no credentials and a spotty past. Of course, you didn’t get rich enough for the watch and the
Hockneys by not thinking twice. Harold Bellis said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help to you, Mr. Cole, but I really have to see my client now.” He looked at my card again. “May I keep this?”

“Sure. You can have a couple more, if you want. Pass’m out to your friends. I can use the work.”

Harold Bellis laughed politely and showed me to the door. The thin woman reappeared and led me back through the office and out to the lobby. I was hoping she’d walk me down to my car, but she didn’t.

Outside, my car was still bracketed by the Rolls and the Mercedes, and gentlemen of indeterminate national origin were still going into Pierre’s to buy three-hundred-dollar belts and twelve-hundred-dollar shoes. Slender women with shopping bags and tourists with cameras crowded the sidewalks, and foreign cars crept along the outside lanes, praying for a parking space. I had been inside maybe fifteen minutes and not much had changed, either with Beverly Hills or with what I knew, but I am nothing if not resourceful.