True Detectives (8 page)

Liz had spent enough time with Moe to know that he really was that rare color-blind American. And now maybe, she understood why.

Whatever her effect upon male longevity, Maddy must have been an independent thinker, marrying a black man back when that was still a big deal.

Then a white man from the Deep South …

Maybe growing up with Aaron had made Moe comfortable enough to
resent
Aaron with no fear of the R word coming up.

But still not comfortable enough with Liz to talk about why he couldn’t stand his brother.

Maddy’s house up in the hills teemed with ghosts, but as far as Liz could see, the woman didn’t feel haunted.

Unlike her younger son.

One day, Liz would figure it out.

T
wenty minutes after Aaron found a watch spot across the street from ColdSnake, Rory Stoltz was still in the club.

The line in front hadn’t moved much though desperate types clung to false hope behind the black rope. The white-suited ape in the bowler did his best to pretend they didn’t exist.

Not a paparazzo in sight, but that didn’t account for Stoltz being allowed to park up front and saunter past the bouncer.

Kid was obviously meeting someone inside, but a
Hyundai?

Aaron checked his cell for messages. A couple of trash calls and a text from Liana.

back home safe call tmrw

Motion in front of the club. Rory Stoltz emerged.

All by himself.

Keeping his eyes on the Hyundai, Aaron pulled away from the curb.

Stoltz drove east to Highland Avenue, traveled south to Santa Monica Boulevard, where he headed west.

Making a big loop that seemed pointless … unless he was interested in cruising the heart of the gay hooker stroll.

So maybe this had something to do with alternative lifestyle. But what did that have to do with nearly half an hour in a hetero dive like ColdSnake?

Aaron followed Stoltz as the Hyundai sailed by languid young men and he-she’s in various states of camouflage. Stoltz never even slowed to look at the goods, just kept driving all the way to La Cienega, where he hooked north and got back on Sunset. The Hyundai continued until it was one block east of ColdSnake, then turned left.

One big useless circuit.

This time Stoltz bypassed the scene out front and parked just shy of the alley that ran behind the club. Switching off his lights, but keeping his engine running.

Kid’s playing
some
kind of game.

The logical guess was dope: Rory’s initial stop had been meeting with customers, taking orders. Problem was, the kid had just driven around, not stopping to pick anything up. So maybe the goods had been in the car all the time and Stoltz had spun a yarn about taking a special trip to pick up premium product. Which, of
course
, would cost a wee bit more …

Was All-American boy that clever of a marketing consultant?

Whatever the details, he wasn’t what he seemed.

Moe had missed the boat completely by dismissing the kid so quickly.

Aaron drove two blocks past the Hyundai, circled back with his own lights off. Positioning the Opel in a cozy spot three houses north, he waited for Stoltz to get out of the car.

Kid just sat there.

Five minutes, ten, fifteen.

At seventeen, two figures emerged from the alley and made their way toward the Hyundai.

Two men, tallish. From the shaggy outline of their breeze-blown hair, and the way they walked, white guys.

As they got closer, Aaron saw that one was real skinny, the other beefy. The heavier one seemed to be propping up Slim Jim. Midway to the Hyundai, he paused to look around.

Checking for the cops? Stoltz’s clients came to him?

Easier to rabbit if things got complicated.

Virgin, indeed.

Aaron bounced his eyes between the Hyundai and the two men. Ten feet from the car, Skinny went loose and Beefy’s knees bent as he worked at keeping his pal upright.

Looks like someone doesn’t need any more controlled substance …
as the men approached, the Hyundai’s lights switched on and the brights flashed. Twice.

The signal for
Come and get it, pathetic addicts
.

Beefy walked Skinny straight to the Hyundai, keeping one hand on Skinny’s arm, the other on the passenger door.

It took a while to tuck Skinny’s long frame in the back of the car.

Put your hand on his head and press down, dude. That’s how we do it on the job.

Used
to do it…

Once Beefy had Skinny inside, he straightened, looked to be conversing with Stoltz. Then he slid into the front passenger seat and shut the door.

On-site smoke-up?

Nope, Stoltz drove away.

This time the Hyundai sped north into the heart of Hollywood, turned left on Selma.

Another gay pickup zone. So maybe this
was
a sex thing. Rory with two guys still pretending they were straight?

Aaron’s head spun with possibilities as, once again, Stoltz bypassed corner loiterers, drove to Laurel Canyon, hooked right at the first opportunity, up a narrow, winding side road.

Once the Opel turned onto the quiet street, Aaron squelched his lights. Hoping some random Hollywood Division cruiser wasn’t out trolling for traffic money.

The road turned steep and the Hyundai stressed its four cylinders climbing, zipping around curves, making frequent turns, chugging up brief, obscure lanes lined with darkened hillside houses. No street-lamps; all Aaron needed was a head-on with some idiot on a cell phone descending obliviously.

Rory Stoltz knew exactly where he was going, putting on maximum speed as he spurted along a series of skinny black ribbons of asphalt.

Swinging abruptly onto what at first appeared to be a driveway but turned out to be Swallowsong Lane.

A yellow sign warned
No Outlet
.

Aaron parked just short of Swallowsong’s mouth, cut his engine, jumped out quickly, continued on foot.

Even steeper; it paid to stay in shape.

Big houses here, lots of foliage, high hedges, sports cars under tarps. Night-blooming jasmine sweetened the air. Nocturnal smog wafting up from Hollywood fought that.

Aaron made it to the top just in time to see the Hyundai pass through electric gates.

Iron gates supported by stone posts, lots of Baroque scrolls, medallions, whatever. Aaron peeked through, saw a curving driveway lined with Italian cypress, winding out of view.

Address numerals on the left column.
1001
. He copied down the numerals, returned to the Opel and sat.

Endured two hours of nothing before concluding All-American Boy was unlikely to show himself.

Not a dope deal? Some kind of party?

He drove back home, flipped the lights on at Work Land, looked up the address on his reverse directory, got a phone number.

He’d wait until morning to call Assistant Technical Manager Henry Q. Stokes at the assessor’s office.

Then he remembered that Henry sometimes took work home.

Was the guy an early-to-bed type? If he was, too damned bad. He tried Henry’s apartment in West Covina.

Seven rings before Henry’s voice came through on the other end, thick with fatigue and irritation.

“It’s me.”

“What the—”

“This’ll be more than a Ulysses,” said Aaron. “Two Benjamins, so don’t go bitching.”

“What time is it—oh, shit, it’s two twenty, man. Top of that, you screwed up a dream about Paris Hilton
and
her mom.”

“One oh oh one Swallowsong Lane, Hollywood Hills.”

Henry breathed hoarsely.

Aaron said, “Did you get that?”

“It can’t wait?”

“Two Dr. Franklins sound like it can?”

“You could drive down tomorrow, check it out yourself—”

“That’s always true, and yet I call you, Henry. We’re talking exigent circumstances.”

“More like an exigent expense account.”

“Yours is not to question why, Mr. Stokes.” Aaron repeated the address.

Henry said, “Two twenty for that—are you taping this?”

“Why would I be, Henry?”

“’Cause that’s what P.I.’s do. It’s one thing at work, I use an extension open to everyone. This is my friggin’ home line.”

“I don’t tape.”

“That guy with the Mafia connections, he probably said the same thing.”

“Mafia bullshit,” said Aaron. “Mario Fortuno, he’s a wannabe, Henry. Not to mention a resident of the federal penitentiary at—”

“Exactly,” said Stokes. “Because he taped.”

“I don’t tape my friends, Henry. And what’s the big deal—you’re accessing public records for a small fee. Free enterprise.”

“I’m so reassured.”

“Why would I want
myself on
tape?” said Aaron.

No answer.

“Henry, have we ever had anything but cordial business relat—”

“Yeah, yeah … which is why calling at two thirty in the morning isn’t exactly friendly. I was sleeping, man. That dream …”

“Two hundred’s worth waking up for, my friend.”

“Two plus an additional fifty for fantasy theft.”

“Not a chance.”

“You had to be there, man,” said Stokes. “You think Paris is hot, you should see her—”

“Fine,” said Aaron. “Two Bens and a General Grant.”

Stokes sighed. “I’ll never get the moment back. Hold on.”

Ninety seconds later, he returned to the line, voice clearer. “You’re getting a bargain, dude. And I don’t want to be associated with any part of this. No matter how many dead prezzes show up for the party.”

“Who owns the house?” said Aaron.

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew, why would I be calling
you?”

“Verification,” said Henry.

“I can’t verify something I don’t know, Hank. And as you always remind me, I can always drive down to that moldy archive you guys keep and find out myself—”

“Not exactly,” said Henry. “This case, you drive down and paw through the ledgers what you’re gonna learn is that the deed is owned by a holding company called Malibu Sunset Trust. And that’s
all
you’re gonna learn.”

“You, on the other hand, know that…”

“Aaron, you really need to promise me this isn’t going to go anywhere public. And that you
don’t
tape.”

“I promise,” said Aaron.

“I mean it, dude.”

“I
promise
.”

Henry said, “The tax trail leads from this Malibu Sunset outfit to Vision Associates, Inc., of Beverly Hills to Newport Management Trust, then clear out of state. Seven Stars Management, Las Vegas.”

“Your basic paper chain,” said Aaron. “Now give me a person.”

Henry breathed hard.

“Vegas,” said Aaron. “You’re worried about some mob thing? Don’t sweat it, the place is all corporate now. People in stretch pants and Bermuda shorts lining up at the buffet.”

Henry said, “Lem Dement.”

Aaron checked his own surprise. His mind swelled and pulsed and raced.

Henry said, “Now’m going back to sleep, maybe if I really behave, Paris and Kathy will show up again. Hey, maybe the sister, whatsher-name, will also put her little—”

Aaron hung up and switched off the voice-activated tape recorder.

The Internet could be Aaron’s best friend, but with someone like Lem Dement, overkill could render his computer useless.

A single jab at the
Enter
button flushed out page after page of blogo-crap.

He started with Wikipedia and fanned out.

Lemuel Houston Dement, born in Flint, Michigan, fifty-four years ago, had been raised by a UAW organizer and a Ford Motor secretary, both admirers of Trotsky. Houston and Althea Dement despised capitalism on general principles, loathed their respective jobs in specific, raised their only child with a borderline-paranoid worldview.

Taught that school was just another bourgeois trap, young Lem obliged with chronic misbehavior and rotten grades that belied his IQ. A month after high school graduation he was riveting axle bolts on the Ford assembly line. Ten months of that lit up the
Exit
sign in his head and he gave community college a try. Decent grades enabled a transfer to Wayne State, studying sociology for three years, then transferring to U. Mich-Ann Arbor, where he talked his way into the film school. Once in, he chased women, smoked dope and dropped acid, did minimal work, barely passed.

Cursed with a sluggish metabolism that heaped on pounds, and a face reminiscent of a boiled potato, Dement was compensated with a sour yet strangely appealing charisma that made him moderately successful with women, a gift for dialogue and the ready quip, and, most important, an innate understanding of how to lie with a camera. Nearly thirty and broke, he slept with the right woman and lucked into a gig directing industrial safety training loops.

By day, he shot his close-ups of snarling machinery spliced with stock footage of mangled limbs. Nights were spent on his art: pseudo-documentaries starring friends and neighbors that highlighted the malevolence of Every Corporation.

In a
New York Times
interview, years later, Dement described those days: “I never spent a second in therapy but I sure understood my true motivation: My parents thought what I did was fascist-lackey garbage and I wanted to redeem myself in their eyes. Then they died in a house fire, I was a basketcase for a long time. But in the end, being orphaned freed me.”

Twenty-two months after learning his parents had left more debt than estate, Dement wrote, directed, filmed, and exhibited a docudrama about pollution in Lake Erie at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Maybe it was the deliberately grainy use of black and white, maybe he was just ahead of his time; no one paid much attention to
Brown Water
.

Next came an exposé of an alleged cabal among GM, the Catholic Church, and the Zionist Organization of America.

Half of Dement’s crew quit over that one.

Several lean years followed, during which Dement, pushing forty, married to a former dancer and saddled with a slew of kids, worked as a truck driver and a drywall installer. Then a populist assembly candidate from Flint named Eddie Fixland needed someone to produce campaign commercials on a shoestring budge. Dement got the job by working for free, Fixland won his seat in the House, and though two years of scandal got in the way of reelection, his campaign’s class-warfare ads featuring long shots of dying rust-belt towns and sunken-cheeked retirees living in trailers caught everyone’s attention.

Dement became the go-to guy when you wanted hard-edged
cinéma-politique
. He grew prosperous, moved to a big house in Birmingham, rewrote and reshot his Lake Erie film using a bigger budget: full color, megadoses of the innuendo and hyperbole he’d perfected working for Fixland.

Brown Water
, version II, was nominated for an Oscar. Won a statuette. Lem made a brief, nasty speech, moved to L.A., took meetings,
fielded offers. Using other people’s money, he shot an exposé of emergency room practices spiced with gobbets of gore inspired by his factory-accident flicks.