True Detectives (17 page)

“I’m being honest, Reverend. I appreciate you coming all the way out here and doing the same.”

Wohr squirmed. “There is one more thing, Detective. Something Ray said the last time I saw him. Part of that speech about getting his life together. He could see I was skeptical, so he got specific, claimed he was representing people in entertainment.”

“Representing how?”

“I asked him that but he just repeated himself. Representing. Like he was some sort of an agent. Then he brought up Adella, said ‘Remember her? High-class, Arnie. She’s what I’m talking about.’ I said, ‘Ray, if you need money, just come out and say so and stop spinning yarns.’”

Arnold shook his head. “I never talked to him like that, something must’ve come over me. He started using foul language. Jammed his palm right up in my face, said ‘Fill the collection plate, Scrooge.’ That irritated me, I smacked the bills into his hand hard. He made some blasphemous remark, how if the God squad behaved this way, God must be a loser. At that point, I knew he had to leave before I did something I’d regret. I was still smoldering when Sarah told me what happened. It was like lighting a match to my soul. I called my brother, left a message telling him to get help for his perverted impulses, told him I never wanted to see him again. And he’s honored that request.”

“Six months ago.”

“Not to the day, Detective. Give or take.”

Representing
a dead woman.

“Anything else you want to tell me, Reverend?”

Arnold shook his head. “Where’s Ray living?”

“I don’t know, sir.” No sense in a confrontation between the brothers at Alicia Eiger’s crib.

“You don’t have him in custody?”

“No, sir.”

“So he really
isn’t
a suspect.”

“Not at this point.”

“Okay,” said Arnold Wohr, sounding more regretful than relieved.

“Something else on your mind, Reverend?”

“If you do put him in custody, Detective Reed, I’d like to know. So I could visit him. See how I could help.”

B
ack at his desk, Moe distilled droplets of fact from his interview of Arnold Wohr.

Brother Ray’s scumbag image had filled out nicely. No violence on his sheet, but the guy was sexually twisted enough to peep a thirteen-year-old.

The “entertainment” connection Ramone W had bragged about was another nice nugget, tying in to Ax Dement and the Eagle Motel. Sex, dope, or both. Probably both.

Was Wohr’s Industry biz limited to a fringe hanger-on like Ax? Or had he actually networked with serious money types?

With unhealthy appetites.

If Wohr’s reach did stretch to A-list dope fiends like Mason Book, this could get really interesting.

Mountains of money to indulge the
gimme gimme gimme
.

Ramone’s boast of “representing” Adella might mean he really had pimped her. Or he was making himself more than he was.

She had accompanied him to Easter dinner.

With her baby.

Who Ramone showed no interest in.

The creepiest part was Ramone bragging about representing Adella long after her murder. No official violence in his sheet but he was callous enough to exploit her memory in order to cadge money out of his brother.

Arnold and his family had been confused about the relationship between his brother and the surprisingly polite “young lady.”

Because citizens like Arnold and his family had no clue.

Moe thought about the rev’s description of the interaction between Ramone and Adella. No affection, no conversation.

Scooping food off her plate when she went to feed the baby.

Why would Adella, a devoted mom, hang with him?

No reason but money.

The Easter visit had probably been Ramone’s idea of a joke. Bringing high-priced flesh to his devout brother’s house on a sacred day.

Callous
and
mean-spirited.

Toss in Ramone peeping his own niece during a visit to ask for yet more money, and you ended up with a really nasty picture.

Cold, uncaring, sexually impulsive.

Exactly the combo Delaware had listed during the marsh-murder investigation when describing the classic kink-wired, career-criminal psychopath.

Meaning Ramone was capable of
anything
.

Moe fetched himself coffee, drank amid the low buzz of the D-room, visualizing Technicolor flash-frames filled with mind-searing brutality.

Caitlin’s pretty young face, contorted in agony.

Adella Villareal thinking she was a pro but getting the worst kind of surprise.

Two good-looking young women, as different from each other as any two people could be, united in death.

The baby
.

Moe had to get air or he’d start hitting something.

Making his way past half a dozen other detectives, he hurried out to
the hallway that led to Sturgis’s closet-sized office. Race-walking past the Loo’s closed door, he repeated the circuit a couple of times. Got dry-mouthed and itchy-eyed and bought a Coke from the machine before returning to his chair.

Phones continued to ring, men and women with intent expressions talked on the phone, clicked computer keys. Del Hardy caught Moe’s eye and gave a little salute.

Moe half expected him to come over, ask how Aaron was doing.

Waving back, he returned to Adella’s murder book, not expecting to find anything, just wanting to look as preoccupied as he felt.

His eyes kept returning to the photo.

Pretty dead girl caught smiling. All that joy because of a tiny blue-swaddled form.

Gabriel, a tiny bud of humanity, with an angel’s name.

Four grand in Adella’s bank, despite no job. Had the challenges of single motherhood led Adella to work for Ramone W?

Moe thought about how she’d dropped in on her folks with the baby, snuck out soon after without saying good-bye. Not unlike Ramone’s unannounced drop-in at his brother’s.

So maybe the visit had been
Adella’s
idea.

A girl who liked to play games.

Was that why she refused to say who’d fathered the kid? Because Daddy was useless, so why get him involved?

Or just the opposite: Daddy was
real
useful because he was rich and famous, had paid Adella off not to go public.

Then why whore?

Because more was more?

Or whoring had conceived the baby—Moe shut the file to get the pictures out of his head, concentrated on setting up a logical sequence of events.

Adella parties with Rich Industry Guys, maybe at a gig set up by Ramone W She gets pregnant, figures out which R.I.G. is the daddy, asks for money to keep her mouth shut. Gets some.

At the time of her murder, the baby was five months old and she’d
died with 4K in her account. Less than a grand for each month of Gabriel’s existence. Maybe it had taken a while to come to an agreement—two months, for argument’s sake, making two and a half K per month. But that was left over after expenses, say two a month.

Leaving an estimated gross of 4.5K a month—round to
5
. Sixty grand a year. To an Industry honcho, chump change. To someone like Adella, serious money.

Until she gets greedy. Asks for more.

Or maybe she’d accepted an initial lowball offer because the joy of motherhood, hormones, whatever, had numbed her brain.

Or Rich Daddy had promised more somewhere down the line.

Either way, she realizes she’s living in a crappy single, budgeting for Pampers and pablum, meanwhile Rich Daddy’s living large.

House in the hills, private jets, VIP rooms on demand, premium tables at Koi, the Ivy, wherever those types stuffed their faces. Moe was certain Aaron could rattle off the names …

Deciding to cash in big-time, she leans on Rich Daddy.

Becomes a problem.

Call in Ramone W, or someone like him, a psychopathic lowlife capable of anything.

One question: Why wouldn’t Rich Daddy keep her happy by up-ping the support?

Because he’s a narcissistic asshole used to doing things his way, sees no reason why some vagina he pumped who should’ve taken precautions has the right to share The Lifestyle.

Why the hell hadn’t she aborted in
the first
place? Because she’d set out to screw him—literally and financially—from the beginning.

She’ll just keep asking, you ll never be free
.

Better to eliminate the problem.

Two
problems.

The pictures rushed back into Moe’s head. Little blue-swaddled package, moldering somewhere. The rest of the world became background noise as he hunkered down trying to logic out how Caitlin Frostig fit into the picture.

Caitlin had worked at a bar where celebs had once hung out. Maybe that included Ax Dement and/or Mason Book.

Adella’s pimp supplied sex and drugs to Ax Dement. Maybe also to Mason Book.

Maybe, maybe maybe … something missing …

Then it hit him.
Rory Stoltz
knew everyone: Caitlin, Book, and Dement.

Had the All-American boy—ambitious, maybe too ambitious— been sucked into something dark and nasty? Did his adoring mommy sense that about her only child? Did that explain her hostility when Moe cornered her at work?

Rory Stoltz, All-American Walking-Around Guy. Did his duties including passing cash to Adella? Or to a hired killer?

Worse?

If Rory was the glue connecting Adella to Caitlin, this stretched all the way to Mason Book.

How did Caitlin figure in?

Maybe Rory had told her too much and Caitlin, a moral girl, freaked out.

Now
she’s
a problem.

Would Rory go along with offing his girlfriend?

Caitlin was dead and Rory was still working for Mason Book. The world he’d entered, women were to be used. Discarded when no longer useful.

Uh-oh, one little logical obstacle: At the time of Adella’s murder Rory was waiting tables at Riptide, not working as Book’s heel-and-fetch.

Moe thought about that, decided it wasn’t an insurmountable problem. Just because Rory hadn’t been
formally
hired didn’t mean he wasn’t bootlicking the actor. How many crimes had grown out of booze-soaked bar conversation? A whole bunch of wrong-time, wrong-place.

What if Book had sensed something weak-spined about Rory?

Hey, wanna help solve some problems, kid?

What if Rory had
earned
the P.A. job because he’d passed the amorality test?

Passing the test, but flunking life.

♦

Moe logged online and looked up employment agencies in L.A. Narrowed the list to half a dozen that specialized in personal assistants, private chefs, chauffeurs, other industry-type jobs.

An hour later, he’d confirmed that Rory Stoltz had never registered with any of them.

Expanding the search to an additional six agencies, even though they didn’t specialize in high-life gigs, brought the same answer. Same for the Pepperdine student employment office, where Moe’s easy lie about being a lawyer whom Stoltz wanted to work for was believed, no questions asked.

New skill set, he’d never been a good bullshitter, Mom always kidded him about his face being a one-way mirror into his soul. Nothing like on-the-job training.

And maybe the same applied to Rory. Just another California kid hoping for a toehold in the industry, Master Stoltz had learned all
sorts
of new skills.

Stuff you couldn’t put on a résumé.

No agency registration wasn’t proof Rory had been hired because of a relationship begun at Riptide—Moe had yet to place Mason Book and Ax Dement at the bar—but it did add weight to the balance scale.

So let’s assume, for the moment, that Rory had connected, early on, to Ax Dement and Book, and lost his moral footing quickly.

Either because he didn’t have much to begin with, or celebrity, charisma, and wealth were a lot more seductive than cramming for exams and backseat tumbles with Caitlin.

This was a city—this was a
world
—where people got famous for showing up, where sex tapes were career-enhancing, nothing was beyond the pale.

Why not sell out your girlfriend if it meant Something Big?

Moe revisited the screenplay he’d outlined. Turned it over, again and again. Each time, it got uglier. Made more sense.

Now how to prove it?

Focus on the victim.

♦

A film crew was actually shooting in Hollywood, jamming up La Brea between Melrose and Sunset, and the drive to Adella Villareal’s last known residence on Gower took a smog-choked hour.

When Moe finally reached the address, he found it surprisingly un-crappy, a nice twenties-era, six-unit château-type with all sorts of fancy moldings and trim. Painted peach with a burbling fountain out front.

No answers at the three ground-floor units, but no big deal, Adella had lived on the second.

The tenant now residing in her single was a cute young Asian woman in a white coat. A Kaiser Hospital name tag said
Karen Chan, M.D., R-II, Medicine
. Chan looked around eighteen, despite eyes drooping with fatigue as she braced herself in the doorjamb and informed Moe the unit had been spotless when she’d moved in.

“But talk to Mrs. Newfield, next door. She knows about that girl, talked to me about it.”

“What she say?”

“That my ‘predecessor’ was murdered and it was never solved. Like that was supposed to scare me. But the rent’s great and with what they pay residents, no way I’m leaving. Then I found out the girl hadn’t even been killed here, so what’s the big deal?”

“Why would Mrs. Newfield try to scare you?”

“I’m not saying she did, it was more like sharing the anxiety. Like she’s still freaked out. Anyway, I need to get some sleep. Going to be on call again before I know it.”

Moe thanked her and continued up the corridor.

His knock was followed by a strained “Who is it?” through the door.

“Police.”

“Who?”

“Police, ma’am.”

“About what?”

“Adella Villareal.”

Two beats. “Hold on.”

The door cracked an inch. Dark eyes peered out behind a chain.

Moe parted his blazer, showed the badge on his shirt pocket.

“Hold on.” Silver-nailed fingers fumbled with the chain. The door swung open quickly, as if destined for that position. The woman who stared at Moe was his height and broad-hipped. Seventy, seventy-five, with shoe-polish black hair cut in a pageboy. Gray-shadowed brown eyes were a pretty good match to her nail polish. Thickly powdered skin was the color and consistency of wet tissue paper. She wore a pearl-gray kimono printed with mauve fish. Diamond-colored gems strung around a scrawny neck were too huge to be real.

“Detective Reed, ma’am.”

“You’re
new.”

Did he look that green? “Pardon?”

“The first time the cops sent a woman. I was in the hospital with gallstones, my husband talked to her. Totally useless, what with his memory. Leonard said she was pretty, kept going on about it, trying to get my goat. He succeeded. I burned his dinner for a week. She came back and talked to me—the female. Didn’t seem interested in what I had to say.”

Moe smiled.

“I’d have thought,” said the woman, “that she’d be interested, seeing as Leonard’s memory is useless.”

“Did you call to let her know you were available?”

“That’s my responsibility? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“True,” said Moe. “Well, I’m here, ma’am.”

“A new one,” said woman, looking him up and down. “They’re growing ’em young nowadays.”

“I’m interested in anything you have to say, ma’am. May I come in?”

“I’m Ida Newfield. Sure, why not—uh-oh, hold on, wait wait wait. Show me that badge again, along with some printed I.D. You look like a cop, but a girl can’t be too careful.”

After thirty seconds of squinty-eyed, bifocaled scrutiny, Ida Newfield let him into her living room.

He’d expected musty, overstuffed clutter, found very little of anything.

Gray felt walls, matching carpet, one low-slung charcoal leather couch, a chrome-and-glass coffee table, a single black lacquer chest with no handles.