Killer in the Hills (9 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Karen polishes off her turkey sandwich, a bag of pretzels, an apple, and two Cokes while I make my way toward Santa Monica Boulevard and think.

She was right about having no one but Elli to trust. I had cut off all contact with everyone I knew in LA after my fiancée’s death—all of the drinking pals, girlfriends, Hollywood people—everyone I knew from that time of my life was either dead or completely disconnected from me. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and sooner or later we’d be picked up. I’m certain they’ve already got the car, the license number, everything. We’ll have to ditch the car right away, but we don’t have time right now. I glance around, reflexively looking for cops as I reach Santa Monica Boulevard and turn left.

I am heading for the Formosa café in West Hollywood—the last place I saw Erlacher. I have plenty of time to get there by eleven. The smartest thing would be to stick the car someplace safe—along with Karen—and get near the Formosa early and wait to see who shows up. If Erlacher shows up alone I could call him from the pre-paid cell and tell him to change locations, just in case there was any chance his offer to me had been arranged by Melvin or LAPD as a trap. Erlacher had already called two notorious fixers—Salerno, a P.I., and Swartzman, a lawyer. And if either Salerno or Swartzman show up at the Formosa I’m in trouble. Both of them are media hogs and they’ll leak everything to their publicists in a heartbeat and everyone will assume Karen is guilty by association. Lawyering up with Swartzman makes you Claus Von Bulow hiring Alan Dershowitz; and having anything to do with Salerno means you have something terrible to fix, or hide, or pull off. It would be like hanging a great big “GUILTY” sign around Karen’s neck—not to mention mine. The mere fact that Erlacher was tight with them was a bad indicator.

The hardest part will be divining the truth from the bullshit when Elli makes his pitch. He will offer the world. He will swear on his mother that he will make every single problem evaporate and I will become wealthy beyond my wildest dreams and achieve immortality and seventy-two virgins will serve my every whim. All I need is safe sanctuary for a few hours and a chance to think up a plan to clear Karen before I arrange a private meeting with Melvin, an attorney, and, eventually, Karen herself. Erlacher will have something in place to trap me just in case I take advantage of his help and then renege on the deal. A contract? No, too dumb, too easy to break. A threat is more likely. Carrot and stick. Safety and money are the carrot, but what will the stick be? What will he threaten me with? Exposure? Turning us over to the cops? But then he’d lose all leverage. It will be something worse, somehow. He had set up his former boss before—the liaison with an underage girl—and he could certainly set us up, too, making Karen and me look even more guilty than we already do.

The Formosa comes into view, a few blocks ahead, and I start thinking about where I’m going to stash the car. And Karen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I park the car in the underground parking lot at a strip mall, then take Karen down the block, to the loneliest, most desolate spot I can think of in Los Angeles—the Hollywood Public Library. We are the only patrons there when we walk in, unless you count the homeless guy who straggled in before us to use the bathroom.

We head toward a cubicle deep in the back of the stacks, near the restroom. I grab a copy of Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
for her to read—or pretend to read—as we walk through the stacks.

“You’re kidding, right?” she says, when I hand her the book. She puts it back and searches the shelves and finds a copy of my first book,
Killer.

“I’m flattered,” I say, as I steer her toward a cubicle.

“It’s the best one of yours,” she says.

“What’s wrong with the later ones?”

“They’re just not as good,” she says with a shrug, then sits at her cubicle and opens the book.

“Stay here,” I say. “Don’t go anywhere except the restroom, if you have to. If I’m not back in thirty minutes, call this number.” I scrawl Melvin’s number on a scrap of paper and give it to her.

“Don’t talk to anyone else,” I say. “Only Melvin. He’s my friend and he’ll help you if something happens to me. Don’t leave the library. If I don’t come back, ask the librarian if you can use the phone in here. Tell her it’s an emergency. Alright?”

She is looking at my photograph on the inside of the book jacket.

“Alright?” I say again.

“All
right
,” she says. “You look older than this picture.”

“That’s because I am.”

I leave her there, as she begins reading the book, then head out to make the six-block walk to the Formosa, wondering
what the hell did she mean, my later books aren’t as good?

The rain has stopped but the streets are still wet. Occasionally the sun breaks out from between the thick, dark clouds that scuttle low overhead, promising more rain. I weave through residential streets until I see the Formosa ahead, at the end of the block. I take out my pre-paid cell and pretend to talk on it, hiding my face as I turn the corner and walk away from the Formosa, across the block. I can see the café behind me, reflected in the shop windows as I pass by. I am twenty minutes early, and my guess is Erlacher will arrive early as well. I reach the end of the block and, while I’m waiting for the light to change, I see a sleek black BMW sedan pull up in front of the Formosa and park. Erlacher gets out, alone, and heads into the café.

I put the battery in the phone and call my voicemail and jot down Erlacher’s number. I hang up and dial the number and step around the corner where I can’t be seen.

“This is Elli.”

“Come back out and turn right and walk down the street,” I say.

“Where are you?” he says. I wait for a moment, then I see him walk out and look around.

“Turn right and walk down the street,” I say. “Just stay on the phone and keep walking.”

“Where to, Jack?”

“I’ll tell you when you get there.”

I watch him walk for a block or so. I see no cops, no follow-cars, no SWAT team rushing out of the Formosa behind him.

“You alone, Jack?”

“Just keep walking.”

He nears a Mexican restaurant I know, tucked between a boutique and a small office building.

“Go into the Mexican place,” I say. He reaches the restaurant and stops. I step back into the doorway of an antique shop and watch through the glass as he looks around for me, then goes inside. I head toward the restaurant.

“Take a booth in the back,” I say. “Stay on the phone until you see me.”

“Okay.”

Thirty quick paces and I’m inside the Mexican place. I see Erlacher in a booth in back, phone at his ear. I pull the battery out of my phone and slide into the booth across from him.

“Hey, man,” he says, extending his hand, his face expressing deep concern. “How ya doin’?”

“Give me your cell,” I say.

“What?”

“Your phone,” I say. “Give it to me.”

He gives me his phone and I check his most recent calls made and received as he waits, looking me over with his small, ferrety eyes. I see no numbers that mean anything to me, then I open his phone and take out the battery and a waiter comes up to us.

“What can I get you?” the waiter says.

“What do you want, Jack?” Elli says.

“Not gonna be here that long,” I say.

Elli orders chips and soft drinks and the waiter goes away. Elli looks at me.

“You okay?” he says.

I nod. His tiny gray eyes scan me—my eyes, my face, my clothes. It’s hard to imagine what’s going through his head, but I can tell he’s thinking at about two hundred miles an hour, trying to assess me while giving away nothing. There is something feral about him, like he’s coiled, ready to strike, even though he’s trying his best to appear relaxed and sincere. He never looks directly at me, even when he speaks. He is my age, but he could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. His face is long and narrow, his skin tanned and toned, without a line or wrinkle. He has a tall forehead elongated by a receding hairline of carefully shaved stubble that matches the carefully shaved stubble of his salt-and-pepper goatee. He is wearing designer jeans and a black T-shirt and artfully torn Converse tennis shoes with no laces and no socks. If it weren’t for the $100,000 Franck Muller wristwatch and the polished manicure you might think he was a low-rent hipster selling weed out of his car.

“Where’s the girl?” he says.

“Someplace safe.”

He searches my eyes for a second, then leans forward for the pitch.

“I got a jet,” he says, his eyes steady on me now. “Mine, not the studio’s. It’s at Burbank, fueling right now. It can take you and the girl anywhere you want, all you have to do is say the word.”

“Can’t leave town,” I say. “It’ll just make things look worse. I need a car and a place in town to lay low for a few hours and I need you to keep your mouth shut and stop calling fixers or anybody else.”

“You got it,” he says.

The waiter brings the chips and drinks and I eat, realizing that I am starving. The last meal I had was last night at the Hotel Molique, where I had barely touched my dinner. Elli opens his wallet and thumbs through a stack of credit cards. He hesitates for a second, then gives the waiter a platinum Amex. The waiter leaves with it, then Elli slides his keys over to me.

“Take my car,” he says. “The big brass key on the ring is the key to the front door of my place in Malibu. I’ll phone ahead and have the guard open the gate for you. I won’t mention your name. I’ll tell my housekeeper to expect you.”

“No housekeeper,” I say. “Want the place to ourselves.”

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll call her and tell her to split, and leave the alarm off.”

“And what do you want for all this kindness, Elli?” I say.

“Just wanna help an old pal, bro,” he says, with a facsimile of a smile.

“Uh-huh,” I say, taking the keys. “What’s the address?”

“You can’t see the address from the street,” he says. “It’s just north of the Colony, right on the beach. You’ll know it when you see it.”

“How?”

“It’s the big one,” he says with a smirk that makes me want to slap him.

“Alright, listen: you talk to nobody,” I say. “No lawyers, no media, no fixers, no Fat Zach…”

Something changes in Elli’s face. He sits back.

“Oh,” he says. “You haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

“Fat Zach’s dead,” he says. “Somebody shot him in the head last night. Tossed his office. His assistant found him this morning.”

Shit
.

The waiter returns with the check.

My prints…on the desk, the chair…and God knows where else…

Elli takes a gold Mont Blanc pen from his T-shirt pocket and signs the check. I glance down at the credit card—the platinum Amex he hesitated to hand over to the waiter.

It’s a corporate card, and the name of the corporation is
Thoroughbred Exclusives, Inc.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Nice ride,” Karen says when I collect her at the library and we get in the BMW. I pull out into traffic on Santa Monica.

“Don’t get used to it,” I say.

“Why not?”

“Hang on, I need to make a quick stop,” I say.

I stop at a liquor store and buy another pre-paid phone. A beat-to-hell pickup truck is parked next to the BMW when I come out. I put the old pre-paid phone under some gardening tools in the back of the pickup, then get in the BMW and continue east on Santa Monica.

“Where are we going?” Karen says.

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Are we going to the movie guy’s place?”

“No.”

“Why not? Isn’t he gonna help us?”

“No.”

“Isn’t this his car?”

“Yeah.”

“So he gave you his BMW and you don’t call that helping us?”

“I need to think for minute,” I say.

She makes a big show of sighing and sitting back in her seat. I drive for a block and she leans forward and turns the radio on and starts dialing around the stations. I reach over and turn it off. She makes an impatient little snort and sits back again.

“I need a minute,” I say.

“Whatever,” she says. She looks out her window, fingering the beads in her hair, her leg bouncing.

I decide not to tell her about Erlacher’s credit card. Partly because the news might confuse or scare her, and partly because it has confused the hell out of me. I scan around for cops as we cross Highland.

Think.

If the simplest explanation was the correct one, it was clear that Erlacher’s interest had nothing to do with movie rights, and everything to do with Karen. He had frequented her site, and was now eager to fly her off on his private jet to God knows where, for God knows what reason.

The simplest answer was sex, of course. But getting involved with her at this point would be an extraordinarily reckless thing to do. And Erlacher was not reckless. Career, money, and power are all that matter to him, as far as I know. But I don’t really know the guy, or anything about his personal life. I remember that he had been married, then divorced very quickly. I vaguely recall him complaining about alimony payments to a woman he had only been married to for a year or so.

A better explanation for his behavior was that he was terrified his visits to Karen’s site would become public. He had destroyed his boss’s career by arranging a liaison with an underage girl, and now he would face a ruined career—and maybe worse—for a similar thing. I have no idea what legal penalties he could face, but the slightest
possibility
of jail time for consorting with a minor on the internet would no doubt compel him to fuel up a fleet of aircraft, let alone a single jet. But Erlacher knew the kind of people who could fix a problem like that—maybe.

Still, something wasn’t clicking. Anyone could have used that credit card to visit Karen’s site. The smartest thing Erlacher could do was stay as far away from her as possible, and deny everything if his visits to her site were ever made public. Karen had said she didn’t know who she was talking to, so she wouldn’t be able to identify him.

If Karen was telling the truth.

I look at her as she stares out her window, leg bouncing, mouth drawn down in a pout.

If she was lying, then what
is
the truth?

Time to call Melvin.

We pass Normandy, then Vermont, and I turn right on Hoover. When we get close to Rampart I start looking around for an enterprising young man who might want a new $100,000 BMW.