Killer in the Hills (7 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Vista de Las Estrellas motel is on a dark little street in East LA, in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. I grew up a few miles away, and I spent much of my youth in this neighborhood, since most of my high school friends were from here. I learned how to fight here, first on the streets, and later with a trainer named Manny who, at 60 years old, had beaten up a gangbanger who made the mistake of messing with Manny’s granddaughter. Most residents speak little English, many are undocumented, and none of them want any trouble with the law.

The digital clock on the rental car’s dashboard says 4:42 a.m. when I first spot the motel. I have been driving around the east side for hours since I left Zach’s, looking for a place to hunker down and examine the files on the computer and try to figure out what the hell I was going to do next.

Karen hasn’t said a word since I returned to the car and unlocked the handcuffs. She had rubbed her wrist and muttered something I couldn’t hear, then clammed up for the rest of the ride. I kept the cuffs in my back pocket—just in case I needed them again—and decided to keep quiet and wait for her to speak while I looked for a place to spend the rest of the 24 hours I had given myself before handing her over to Melvin. I thought maybe she would grow restless enough to start talking, but I was wrong. She just sat, tugging her hair and staring out of her window. Maybe I had scared her enough to take the fight out of her. Maybe being handcuffed and threatened with the FBI had made her submissive. Maybe she was used to being threatened and hauled around rough neighborhoods by people she didn’t know or trust and she had learned to keep quiet and do as she was told. Or maybe she was smarter than I thought and was just biding her time until she could make a run for it. I made a mental note to be prepared for a sudden move—a grab for the door handle, a thumb in the eye… Keeping her mouth shut was the wisest thing to do, and her silence became more and more nerve-wracking. It was like driving around with a hand grenade rolling around loose on the floor that I couldn’t quite reach.

I drive past the motel, looking it over. It is two stories, twenty or so rooms, and the doors to the rooms open to an exterior walkway. It is clean and well-maintained but easily overlooked, crammed between a body repair shop and a small market, on a narrow street just off of Olympic Boulevard. The vacancy sign is lighted and parking is in the rear, down a crooked alley. I drive around the block more slowly, looking at the cars parked along both sides of the narrow, potholed streets. Finally I spot a mid-sized sedan similar to my rental, parked in front of a vacant lot. I pull up behind the car and park, then turn off the engine.

“Stay in the car,” I say to Karen, who doesn’t respond. I get out and go to the trunk and open it and find a small pouch with a few tools inside. I grab a screwdriver and remove the rear license plate, along with the plastic frame with the rental agency’s name on it. I remove the front plate as well, switch them with the car parked in front of me, then get back in my car and head for the motel. I drive down the crooked alley and park in the darkest spot I can find. With any luck we’ve got at least two or three hours before anybody notices anything amiss and does something about it.

I turn off the engine and reach into the backseat for Zach’s laptop. I turn it on and glance at Karen while the computer boots. She is sitting still, staring out the windshield with no expression. When the computer’s up, I enter the password
Evelyn
and start with a general search of everything on the hard drive, then work my way toward files that might be relevant to Penelope or Karen. I find only the security video I have already seen, as well as the list of cardholders’ names from the people who had paid for the webcam sessions with Karen. There are some news articles about Penelope’s murder and some links to porn sites with several of her alias’s attached. I skip the porn sites—all of them—for now. I don’t have the stomach to look at Penelope’s porn movies right now, and I don’t care to see what sites Zach had frequented. I would let the FBI do that when I turn over the computer to them, which was what I had intended from the start, despite what I told Zach. I search for the name Leukatov and find an article that Zach had saved from the LA Times about Russian and Armenian gangs in Glendale who were fighting over control of electronic fraud rackets and the sex trade in Los Angeles. Leukatov was mentioned briefly as someone the police wanted to talk to, but could not locate. I try a few more random searches but find nothing of interest.

I look up from the computer and stare out at the dirty orange pre-dawn glow above the grimy buildings east of us. The security video would be enough to turn the LAPD’s focus away from Karen, but they would still arrest her and process her because of her prints on the gun. I could call Melvin and a good lawyer right now and show them the video and use it as leverage to drop the charges against her. But even if they merely questioned and released her it would be impossible to keep the whole process quiet. Cops, lawyers, and prosecutors routinely leak to the press, and Karen’s “friends” would know then where she was, and they would be very anxious to get their hands on her,
if
she knows anything about her mother’s murder.

But I don’t know what she knows.

I look at Karen. She is still, her head tilted back against the headrest, her eyes at half-mast as she stares out at nothing. She hasn’t spoken in hours. If I am going to help her I am going to have to get her to talk. But how the hell am I going to do that? She has no reason to trust me. I have nothing to offer her. There is only one thing I can think of, but it’s a gamble. Not a long shot, but a gamble nonetheless.

“Alright,” I say. “You can go.”

She lifts her head and turns to me, her eyes wide and alert.

“What?” she says.

“I want to help you but if you won’t talk to me there’s nothing more I can do,” I say. “So you have a choice: you can go now or I can take you to my friend at the FBI and I’ll get you a lawyer and you can make the best of it.”

“So after all that you’re just gonna dump me here, in the middle of God knows where, or you’re gonna take me to the cops,” she says. Her eyes are angry and her voice is bitter and tight.

“Either that or you talk to me,” I say. “Answer my questions and be honest and tell me everything I want to know. It’s the only way I can do anything for you.”

She makes a dismissive sound and turns away, staring out her window, shaking her head.

I wait.

“It’s not
fair
,” she says.

“No, it’s not.”

“I didn’t
do
anything,” she says.

I wait some more. She grabs the end of her long T-shirt and bunches it up in her fists. But she doesn’t reach for the door handle.

“I can take care of myself,” she says. She is trying to sound tough, but her voice is shaking. “I always have.”

“Your mother’s dead,” I say. “You don’t know for sure who your father is—or if you do and it’s not me, he’s not going to help you or you would have asked to go to him by now. In fact, you haven’t asked to be taken anywhere, so that tells me you have nowhere to go and no one to trust and you’re all alone.”

A small tremor starts in her skinny shoulders and she grips the bottom of her T-shirt.

“And, judging from the kind of people you’ve been hanging with, they’re not the kind of people you should turn to, anyway.”

She starts to cry without making a sound. Her small body shakes and tears run down her cheeks.

“There’s no reason you should trust me either, but I give you my word I’ll help you and I mean it,” I say. I’m the best you’ve got right now.”

“How do I know that?” she says, between spasms of tears.

“You don’t,” I say. “But I’m willing to let you go, and the police won’t do that. And neither will the men from the airport, will they?”

I wait for an answer. She cries and I let her cry for a while.

“You’re only fifteen and that’s too young to be making a decision like this, but it’s what you’re stuck with. It’s not fair, but you’re going to have to do it anyway. My guess is you’ve never had any luck trusting anybody. I’m guessing you’ve been treated pretty badly, so it’s hard.”

“I can take care of myself,” she says again in her tough voice. She swallows a couple of times, forcing back tears. She wipes her face with the sleeve of her fluffy white jacket. Dawn is breaking and the first rays of dim sunlight shine on her wet face.

A small Toyota turns down the alley and pulls into the lot and parks in a space by the service entrance which is marked by a sign which reads
Manager
. A young Latino couple get out of the car and head toward the service entrance of the motel and unlock the door.

“I’m going to see if I can check in early,” I say. “Stay in the car. I’ll come get you once I’m done.”

She looks at me directly.

“Do you want me to go?” she says.

“No,” I say. “I’ll be back for you in a minute and I want you to be here.”

I get out, taking my bags, and leave her in the car.

When I open the door to the service entrance I look back. She is still in the car. I go inside, wondering if I made the right bet. I figure the odds are about 6/5 in my favor.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I startle the Latino couple when I walk into the small front office from the back corridor. The man is turning off the neon sign and the woman is turning on the coffee machine. The night manager, a skinny, twenty-something kid, is heading out the front door. A small TV on the counter is tuned to a Spanish-language station.

“Not open yet,” the man says to me. “Check-in at twelve.”

I smile and explain that I have arrived in town early and need a place to stay. The combination of my Spanish and my offer of a twenty-dollar “early check-in fee” gets me a key attached to a plastic rectangle with the number 4 on it. I give it back and request a second-floor room—partly out of instinct to seek high ground, and partly to avoid any temptation for my young charge to crawl out of a bathroom window. The man hands me a key with the number 15 on it and opens the front door of the motel office. He points up to a room on the corner of the second floor, at the end of the exterior walkway.

I go up the stairs as he watches, head down the walkway, and unlock the door to room 15. I step inside and close the door behind me. The room is clean but tiny: two twin beds separated by a cheap nightstand fill the entire space. The carpet is worn through in several places and the room smells like all motel rooms—a combination of stale air, cheap textiles, and cleaning products. I glance out the window and watch the man go back inside the motel office and lock the door behind him. I put my bags on the bed by the door, then head back out of the room and down the walkway to the stairs.

I walk around the building and find Karen in the car, chewing on the nail of her index finger. I let her out and we go to the front of the building and up the stairs.

“Ew,” she says when she steps in the motel room. She wrinkles her nose and stands there as I sit on the edge of the bed nearest the door and unpack the computer gear.

“Have a seat,” I gesture at the other bed and turn on the laptop.

She hovers over the other bed for a moment, looking down with distaste at the orange polyester bedspread, then folds the spread back and sits on the sheet below. She reaches for the TV remote, which is glued to the nightstand, and turns on the television and starts flipping around the channels. It doesn’t take long.

“No cable,” she says.

I reach over and switch to the Spanish channel and mute the sound. She looks at me.

“Big
Telemundo
fan?” she says.

“Yeah,” I say, and open the file with the security video from the Chateau Marmont. I pause the video on the image of the man who entered Penelope’s suite, and turn the computer toward Karen.

“Do you have any idea who this is?” I say.

She looks at the screen. I see no recognition in her face, but she blinks a few times, and a tiny line forms between her eyebrows.

“Is that from the hotel? Where my mom…?”

“Yeah,” I say. “This man went in the room with your mom and came out alone.”

Karen shakes her head and stares at the dark, blurry image of the man leaving the room.

“I don’t know who that is,” she says.

“You sure?”

“I can hardly even see him,” she says. She sits still, her face dark, her eyes somber. I turn the computer away from her.

“Karen, do you have any idea who might have killed your mom?”

She looks down, shakes her head.

“Did she have a boyfriend?”

She shrugs. “Kinda,” she says. “Her manager. Sal.”

“Sal who?”

“I dunno,” she says. “He was just Sal.”

“Could that be him?” I ask, pointing to the computer.

She shakes her head. “Sal’s taller,” she says. “Bigger. And he has long black hair.”

“You said he was your mom’s manager,” I say. “What did he manage?”

“What do you think?” she says softly, and looks away.

“He was her pimp.”

She gives a slight nod.

“Did you meet Sal through your mom?”

She nods again.

“Did Sal set you up at the apartment? With the website?”

She nods. “It wasn’t a sex site,” she says. “They were using it to get credit card numbers.”

“ID theft?”

She nods.

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Sal was with this gang out of Glendale,” she says. “Armenians, some of them were Russians. I don’t know much about them except they made a lot of money off computer scams and stuff like my website. And porn. Real porn. They were into a lot of stuff. My mom told me some of it, but not everything. She said I could never tell anybody or they’d kill us.”
“Do you think that’s what happened?” I say. “Your mom told someone and they killed her?”

“No way,” she says. “She never would have said anything.”

“Why not?”

“She was scared of them. And she…depended on them. On Sal.”

“For what?”

“Everything,” she says. “Money, a place to live…”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Everything. My mom even got them to take care of me. My mom and I lived with Sal, until I got my apartment. Then I could do pretty much whatever I wanted, as long as I did the site. Sal paid me to do it, so I had my own money. He was gonna get me a car when I turned sixteen, as long as I did the site.”

“Did Sal give you a gun?”

“A gun? No. Why would he do that?”

“You never touched a gun that Sal had?”

She starts to shake her head, then stops.

“He took us shooting once, at this range in Burbank,” she says. “He let me shoot this gun he had.”

“What kind of gun?”

“I don’t
know.
I don’t know anything about guns.”

“When was this? When did he take you shooting?”

“I don’t know. Like a month or so ago, I guess.”

“Do any of these names or numbers mean anything to you?” I show her the list of cardholders who had paid for her private website viewings.

“No,” she says. “I never saw any of that stuff. I just did the site, that’s all. They collected the card numbers.”

I look more carefully at the long list of names and numbers and notice one in particular that appears most frequently—an Amex corporate card with the name
Thoroughbred Exclusives, Inc.
I show it to Karen.

“How about this one?” I say.

She shakes her head. “I never knew who I was talking to. I never saw any of this stuff.”

I take out my pen and notepad and write the name and credit card number down. Then I Google “Thoroughbred Exclusives” and get nothing. I count the number of times the
Thoroughbred Exclusives
credit card appears. When I reach twenty-two, Karen interrupts.

“Holy shit.”

She stares at the TV, where our pictures are onscreen. I turn up the sound and listen to the TV anchor rattling off the facts about Karen and me in Spanish, including the events at the airport. It’s the same station the woman in the motel office was watching.

“What’s he saying?” Karen says.

“He’s saying we have to get out of here, right now.”

I close the computer, gather up our things, and take Karen by the arm and our brief stay at the Vista de Las Estrellas is over.