Killer in the Hills (8 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

As we reach the bottom of the motel’s stairway we pass an open door on the ground floor. The Latino couple are inside one of the rooms, cleaning. The woman glances at us briefly, then goes back to her work. There was no sign of alarm in her face, so I guess that she hasn’t seen us on the news.

We head for the parking lot, get in the car, and drive down the crooked alley. I notice the small market next door to the motel is open. I pull over and park.

“Stay in the car, I’ll be right back,” I say to Karen, then get out and head into the market. I buy some food, soft drinks, two pairs of sunglasses, a Dodgers baseball cap, a big, floppy sun-hat, and a pre-paid cell phone. I pay cash, which leaves me with a little over two hundred bucks. There is an ATM machine by the door, but my visit to LAPD Cyber Crimes has left me paranoid about planting electronic tracks so I skip it. We’ll need more cash, but that will have to be figured out later.

I head back to the car and a bus pulls up and stops for passengers. The electronic destination sign on the front of the bus says COMPTON/INGLEWOOD. I walk around to the rear of the bus, replace the battery in my cell phone and turn it on, then clip the phone inside the right rear wheel well of the bus and get back in the car and give Karen her sunglasses and the big floppy hat and the pre-paid cell.

“I’m supposed to wear these?” she says, wrinkling her nose at the hat and glasses.

“Yes,” I say, and put on my Dodgers cap and sunglasses. I pull out into traffic as she puts on the hat and pulls down the visor mirror and starts adjusting the hat to make it look acceptable.

“Where are we going?” she says.

“East.”

“East where?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Yeah, right,” she says, and snaps the visor back up.

I give her my voicemail number and tell her to turn on the pre-paid cell and dial it. She dials and listens.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Seventy calls?”

“Can you put it on speaker?” I say. “I want to hear them but I don’t want to get pulled over for using a cell phone.”

She fumbles around the phone, looking for the speaker button. I see a sign for the 10 freeway and follow it.

She turns on the speaker and I hear the voicemail greeting and I guide her through the code to get the messages. I don’t want the phone on for more than a few seconds, even though it is pre-paid. I have to assume they are already monitoring calls to my voicemail, but I can put this phone on a bus to San Bernadino and buy another one. And I need to know if Melvin has any more information. The first message is from five minutes ago. Melvin.

“Jack,” Melvin’s voice over the speaker, his voice flat and expressionless, meaning he is furious. “Call me. Right now.” He hangs up.

“Next,” I say to Karen, who hits the button to play the next message.

Nicki: “Jack, where the hell are you—?”

“Next,” I say.

“Jack, Elli again…” Elli Erlacher.
Jesus
. “Listen, dude, I meant what I said in my last messages. You’re jammed up and I can help you, man. This is totally fixable and I can make it happen. I just got off the phone with Tony Salerno—you know Salerno—and we’ve got this covered. I’ve got a place you can go, totally discreet, zero contact with anybody but me so you can sort this shit out, okay? I talked to Howard Swartzman and he’s on board, too, ready to roll the second you give the word. Trust me, this is fixable if you call me right away, before you and the girl get picked up. You gotta call me, man, I can fix all of this, okay? Call me at this number, it’s my cell, nobody answers but me and I’m keeping it with me 24/7. I’m not at Panorama, I’m at home, so no one will hear me talk to you. If you’re paranoid about the phone I’ll be at the last place I saw you, remember? We had drinks there, you know what I’m talking about. I’ll be there at eleven and I’ll be alone. I hope you’re there, man.”

He gives his number, then I hear the click as he hangs up.

“Okay, pull the battery out,” I say.

“You don’t want you hear the rest of them?”

“No,” I say. “Not now. They can track the phone if they’re monitoring calls to my voicemail.”

She pulls the battery out and gives it to me, along with the phone. I see a sign ahead for the ramps to the freeway. I can take the ramp on the right and head east, to God knows where, or the ramp to the left and head west, to God knows where. I think about Erlacher.

“Who was that guy?” Karen says. “He said he could help us.”

“Guy I know.”

“He works for Panorama? The movie studio?”

“More like it works for him.”

“Are we going to go meet him?”

I stop at a red light, staring ahead at the two freeway ramps, my mind racing. East to nowhere, or west to Erlacher? Neither choice feels right.

“Well, are we?” she says.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Seems like a no-brainer to me,” she says.

“No, it’s a Hobson’s choice.”

“What’s that?”

“A choice between what’s available, even if it’s bad, or nothing at all.”

“Is he rich?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he your friend?”

“No.”

“Then why would he do all this to help you?”

“Because he wants something from me,” I say.

“What?”

I don’t respond. I stare at the red light.
East or west?

“Why
wouldn’t
you let him help us?”

“Because I don’t trust him.”

She thinks for a moment. The light turns green and I drive forward, in the middle lane, still undecided.

“Isn’t it like you said to me before? At the motel? When you said you would let me go?”

“How so?” I say.

“You said I had no reason to trust you but that you were the best I’ve got right now,” she says. “Isn’t he the best we’ve got?”

I look at her, then get in the left lane and head for the westbound ramp.

“Yeah,” I say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

We creep through sluggish traffic toward downtown for a few minutes and Karen asks more questions as she eats a pre-packaged turkey sandwich and drinks a soda. The food seems to pick up her mood.

“What is it this guy wants from you so bad that he’ll do all that stuff to help us?”

“This whole thing,” I say. “You, your mom, me—it’s all over the news and will be for long time, probably, and that means publicity and that means money. Book rights, movie rights, whatever.”

“So he’d pay you to write a book or a movie or whatever about everything that’s happened?”

“More or less, yeah.”

“And it’s this big story because you’re a famous writer and you were arrested for murder before and all that stuff, after your fiancée killed herself?”

I look at her.

“How do you know all that?” I say.

“I know all about you,” she says. “I read all of your books.”

“When?”

“After my mom told me you were my dad.”

“When was that?” I say.

“Long time ago. When I was, like, twelve or something. I started reading about you and reading your books and stuff.”

“Did you ever think of trying to contact me?”

“Mom told me I could never do that.”

“Why?”

“Sal would
freak
.”

“Why?”

She shakes her head, like it’s too complicated to explain.

“Those guys are, like, all about secrecy and being under the radar and all that. There was never anybody else around, nobody that wasn’t in their group. Especially no Americans. I wasn’t allowed to even have friends or anything. They all talked to each other in Russian if it had anything to do with business. I never knew anybody’s name, just, like, nicknames and stuff. They all had different ID’s and fake licenses and credit cards. Sal was all paranoid about anybody getting any attention, and you’re famous so there was no way I could ever tell anyone about you. Sal would even get all pissed at me about the way I was dressed and stuff. Like, if I ever wore anything that got a lot of attention out in public he’d bitch me out—and Mom, too. She told me they cut a guy’s head off once just because he tried to use a stolen black card to buy a Porsche.”

“They?” I say. “You mean Sal?”

She shakes her head. She is quiet for a moment, then she says, “Voldemort.”

“He who must not be named,” I say. “You mean Leukatov.”

She nods.

“Tell me about him.”

She turns and looks out her window. She puts the sandwich on her lap and chews on a fingernail.

“Why can’t you talk about him?” I say.

She thinks for a while.

“When I was a little kid, for as long as I can remember, I was told that if I ever said his name I’d be killed,” she says. “Even if I said it alone, to no one. Just saying it out loud would somehow make me dead. You know how you believe stupid shi— stuff like that when you’re a kid and it sticks with you? I still can’t say it.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“No way. No one but Sal ever met him. No one talked about him, and everybody was scared of him. Supposed to be this big, wicked badass. Like in that movie, with Kevin Spacey?”

“Keyser Soze,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says.

“You think Leukatov really exists?”

“I know
somebody
did some wicked bad shit, and everybody always just…knew it was him.”

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” I say.

“Yeah,” she says.

I see the sign for the Hollywood freeway and change lanes.

“So if contacting me would get you killed, how come you came to me last night, in the car?” I say.

“Sal told me to. I don’t know why. My mom taught me to just always do what I was told and even asking a question about it would piss them off. Sal said do it, give you the message I gave you—about not talking to the cops or anything—so I did it.”

“Probably thought sending you would get my attention and I’d keep my mouth shut.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Guess he didn’t think you’d…”

“Kidnap you?”

“Yeah,” she says, and I see her smile for the first time—a sardonic little half-smile.

“It’s not kidnapping if you’re free to go,” I say.

“I know.”

I take the Hollywood freeway. The mid-morning traffic is light. I stay in the middle lanes, trying to remain in a pack of cars, to reduce the chance of being spotted. I haven’t seen any CHP or LAPD, and I’ve kept a constant scan going as we’ve been driving.

“So how much would this guy pay you for the book or movie or whatever?” Karen says.

“A lot.”

“Like, millions?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the f— Why wouldn’t you
do
that?”

“Because it’s blood money. It would be exploiting your mom’s death, and exploiting you.”

“Well then do it and give
me
the money. For that kind of money you can exploit me all you want.”

“Yeah,” I say. “You need to work on that.”

“Work on what?”

“Your willingness to be exploited for money.”

“The stuff’s already happened. My mom’s dead, and I don’t care what people know about me.”

“You might care later.”

“So what? I’d be rich. I don’t see what the big deal is. With that kind of money I could disappear and I wouldn’t have to work for Sal and all that.”

“You think you could outsmart Sal? You think they wouldn’t find you?”

“Not if I had help,” she says, looking at me.

“I’ll help you, but not that way,” I say. “I have money, I don’t need to sell your life story and your privacy and have the whole world think of you as a fifteen year-old pornstar for the rest of your life. Those things may mean something to you later. When you’re older.”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“It has to do with your self-respect—the way you think of yourself and your place in the world.”

“That’s all just bullshit, far as I’m concerned.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s why you need to work on it.”

I see my exit coming up and I get in the right lane. “I’ll tell you more about it later but right now I need to think about how I’m going to deal with this guy.”

“Can I ask one more question?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you trust this guy from the movie studio?”

“Because he’s extremely smart and extremely manipulative,” I say. “He’s probably a sociopath, meaning he has no conscience and he’ll do anything to anybody in order to get more money or more power. That’s why I have to be careful in how I deal with him and that means I have to think things out right now, okay?”

“O-
kay
.”