Trust Me (6 page)

CHAPTER 11

⍫

Jeff drove up Santa Monica Canyon to San Vicente, heading east toward Pop’s.
His aging Audi was nearly out of gas and the registration had expired, but he figured he could fill the tank later.

It was half past ten and the lot at Pop’s was full—Thursday night was ladies’ night. He parked in the market lot next door and walked back to the entrance of the club. There was a line at the door, people waiting to get their IDs checked and pay to get in. Jeff walked past them to the door.

“Hey, Jeff, come on in.” The bouncer at the door was a big guy, looked like a football player, clean cut and all-American. He also moved—through Gary—a lot of coke for Jeff.

“Hey, Freddie, thanks a lot.” They ran through a series of arcane handshakes that Jeff always hated. “Is Gary here?”

“Yeah, he’s in back at one of the tables. Better hurry in if you still want to eat.” Freddie had seen Jeff race in for dinner at the last moment dozens of times. “Hey, man, is anything happening?” They were still clasped in the last stage of the handshaking routine, and Freddie pulled in to ask this discreetly.

“Maybe, man, check with Gary later on, okay?” Jeff moved toward the inside of the club.

Pop’s was a fixture in Brentwood, a sports bar with a large regular crowd and a magnet for out-of-towners. Most of the regulars were college types or young professionals—a straight crowd, at least in appearance. It was packed tonight, the dart board games already jammed, people three deep around the main bar, and the sawdust floor crowded with people standing, holding their drinks and yelling to be heard.

He pushed his way through the crowd toward the back room, which was darker and slightly less crowded. He saw Gary sitting alone at a booth.

“Hey, man, what’s happening?” Gary gestured a greeting with his Heineken bottle. He had long red hair and a handlebar moustache and looked out of place in the club; he belonged in a rougher place, with pool tables and “Sweet Home Alabama” blaring from a jukebox.

Jeff slid into the booth. “The joint is jumpin’,” he grinned. Already, the night seemed full of possibilities. “So what’s up at your place?”

Gary shook his head, rolled his eyes, and grinned back. “Skippy showed up with the twinbos. I figured I’d let them stay. You know, bird in the hand, right?”

The twinbos were Jeri and Sherry, the twin bimbos. “Shit, Gary, they make Lilah look like Marie Osmond.” Jeff told Gary about the night before at Lilah’s. A waitress came and he ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a bottle of Kirin.

“Listen, Gary, I got something for you, but I don’t want things to get fucked up.”

“Hey, no problema,” Gary said. “I got it under control.”

“Listen,”—Jeff moved in closer to Gary so he wouldn’t have to speak loudly—“I’m going to lay everything I got on you. Can you move it by Saturday?”

“How much is there,” Gary asked.

“An even half-pound, some weighed ounces and a bag full of Xanax,” Jeff told him. “Just move it by Saturday, don’t front any of it, and don’t cut it in case I have to take it back. Okay?”

Gary said “no problema” again just as the waitress came. Jeff started on the burger.

“Best fuckin’ burger in town,” he said with his mouth full.

“No shit,” Gary said as he ordered another beer.

When he had finished the burger and the last of the fries, Jeff drained his bottle of beer and motioned toward the door. “Let’s head out.”

They went to Gary’s Mustang, which was parked around the corner, and drove to the market parking lot. Gary pulled up next to the Audi. Jeff got out, took a quick look around the lot, and got in his car. He handed the bag through the window as Gary leaned across to grab it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeff saw a dark-green Ford sedan pull into the parking lot from the side street exit. It had a big antenna, blacked-in wheel-wells instead of hubcaps, and two men in the front seat. The vehicle turned so that he looked straight into its headlights.

“Shit. GND,” Jeff said, and he released the bag.

He heard it land with a rustling sound. Gary was still stretched across the passenger seat of his car, hand reaching out the window. “Fuck,” said Jeff, “what’s the matter with you?”

The Ford pulled into the spot right next to Jeff and the doors opened. Of all the possibilities to tangle with on the street, Gang and Narcotics Division was the worst. If they smelled fear they knew they didn’t have to treat you like an ordinary citizen.

“So, you going to the beach tomorrow?” Gary asked, loud enough for his voice to carry over to the cops.

Jeff yelled back, “Yeah, I’ll be at the pier playing volleyball at eight,” and he started his car. He heard the Ford’s doors slam shut. He froze, wondering if they would knock on the passenger window or come around to his side where the bag was in plain view on the ground. He heard Gary’s car start.

The cops, two big guys in sports jackets, headed toward the market, ignoring Jeff and Gary. Gary opened the door to his Mustang and, lying across the seat now, picked the bag off the ground and pulled it into his car.

“Fuck you, man, how could you just drop it like that?”

“I thought you had it,” Jeff replied. “Call me tomorrow and let me know what’s happening.”

Gary pulled out of the parking lot. Jeff got out of his Audi and walked back to Pop’s.

He needed a drink. His heart was pounding—he hated those guys. They never went for the “Oh, hello Officer, how can I help you?” routine.

Freddie nodded him in again at Pop’s. He went to the table in the back room and ordered a Jack Daniel’s. It took two more before he felt normal enough to venture out to the main room and see what was happening. Maybe he could still salvage the evening.

⍫

He noticed a woman he used to date sitting at the bar and managed to edge in next to her.

“Hello, Janet.”

“Jeff. Hi. What a surprise.” She smiled.

Jeff said, “Christ, this place is a zoo tonight.” He needed to plant the seed of possibility here, just in case nothing else was happening by last call. Janet brought him up to date on her life since he had stopped calling her. “Well, Jeff, I don’t want to bore you with my hum-drum story. How about you? Your life is always so much more interesting.”

He looked at her and drew a total blank. Nothing was very interesting. His sister was dead and he was drinking in a bar. He was out of money and living in a dump. He was driving a heap and he owed money to the wrong people. “Oh, the usual, you know . . .” He looked at her and shrugged. She looked so pretty, with her dark hair pulled straight back, her smartly tailored jacket, and her breasts pressing against her silk blouse. She had always had such high expectations of him. “Let’s see if we can find a table where it’s a little quieter.”

“Yeah, let’s move. Don’t look now, but there’s a guy across the bar that’s been staring at me ever since I got here. It’s giving me the creeps.”

“You know, it’s funny seeing you here—I was just thinking about you earlier in the evening.”

Several drinks later, he led Janet out of the club. Freddie looked at Janet and gave Jeff a surreptitious thumbs-up gesture. Jeff said, “Why don’t you give Gary a call,” and walked Janet to her car. She drew him to her and they kissed, her breasts pressing against him as she opened her mouth. Jeff closed his eyes and felt himself sway. “Whoa, there,” Janet said, “are you going to be able to drive?” The plan was that he would follow Janet to her place in the Palisades.

“Hey, I’m fine,” he told her, but he wished he hadn’t turned all of the coke over to Gary.

Janet drove him around the corner to his car. They pulled out of the parking lot together, heading back down San Vicente toward the beach. Janet’s place was only a few miles past his apartment.

On the long stretch through Brentwood Janet suddenly raced ahead of him. He put on some speed but the taillights of her car were still receding. He realized that she was probably as drunk as he was. He slapped his face and it felt numb. He had that bad feeling in his stomach again.

The Audi stuttered as it hurtled through the darkened upscale neighborhood. He was doing about seventy but could no longer see Janet’s taillights. The stutter happened again and he began to lose speed. He pumped the gas and picked up some power for a moment, but then the engine quit and he was coasting, out of gas.

“Shit. Unbelievable. Shit.” He hit the steering wheel with both hands. He had pulled over into the bike lane, miles from a gas station. He opened the door to step out but his leg didn’t support him and he rolled onto the street instead. He thought of Janet.
Fuck her
, he thought.
If she hadn’t gone so damned fast she could have given him a ride
.

He stood up and brushed off his jeans. He was only about a mile from the Canyon.

He had only been walking a short time when he heard a car coming up behind him. He turned around and saw a new Lincoln Continental slow down, then stop, in the middle of the street.

The window slid down. “Would you like a ride?” It was a man. He looked small, older. Jeff was grateful and let himself in.

“Where are you headed?” the man asked.

“Canyon, almost to the beach,” Jeff replied.

“Oh, well, that’s lucky. So am I.” Jeff noticed a softness to the man’s S’s. There was a cluster of gay bars in the Canyon. He put his head back on the plush leather headrest and hoped that the spinning would subside. He was glad that the driver didn’t try to make conversation.

When they got to the bottom of the Canyon, he asked the man to drop him off several buildings away from his apartment. He said, “Thanks a lot,” and closed the door. The window slid down again.

“Can I do anything for you?” the man asked.

“No, thanks, I’m all set,” Jeff replied.

“Well, I mean, is there anything you would like?” The man smiled this time.

“Yes,” said Jeff, “I would like to never feel like this again.” He turned away from the car.

“I know what you mean,” the man called out. “I’ll probably be saying the same thing in the morning.”

Jeff watched the man’s taillights fade as he walked the short distance to his apartment and then quickly let himself in. He crossed the dark room to sit at his desk and put his head down on its hard surface. He sat like that, wondering how anyone could wake up at nine at night, almost get busted, run out of gas, and drink until he was sick, all before one o’clock.

He glanced at his phone, which now told him he had sixteen messages. He couldn’t put it off anymore, so he dialed voicemail.

“Jeff, are you there? Jeff, pick up the phone. It’s your dad.” There was a click, then the voicemail recording telling him his options. He chose delete and played the next message.

“Jeff, call us at home, it’s . . .”

The next message was his mother. “Jeff, call us right away. I don’t know where you are but this is very important.” Christ, he thought, I can’t handle it. I need to straighten up just to call them.

The next call was the one he was worried about.

“Jeff, Richard.”
Okay
, he thought,
how pissed off is Richard about his money?
“Listen, man, sorry about your sister. I read about it. But you know what? I need some money tomorrow or you’re in deep shit.”

CHAPTER 12

⍫

Ron Pool woke early Friday morning and considered the day ahead.
He would begin with a bowl of oatmeal and then head over to Griffith Park to run. He had a six-mile circuit that he ran four times a week. Then he would return home and shower, get dressed, drink some coffee, and drive downtown for an interview with a possible witness at the county jail. At lunchtime he would cross town to meet Joe Greiner at the station. The evening was open ended.

At half past noon, Ron headed toward the Westside. It was another hot and humid day in the seemingly endless sweltering summer. He got on the Santa Monica Freeway and turned on the air conditioning.

Work had been uneventful. National elections were coming up in November and there was the usual feeding frenzy as the candidates turned up the heat on each other by plumbing the depths of negative campaigning. He had been given a piece to write on a city councilman who had been caught in a police sting. A policewoman had posed as a hooker, and, within three hours, twelve men had been arrested for offering her money. The councilman, one of the twelve arrested, claimed that he had known it was a sting and was doing his own investigative work on police procedure. Writing it up would be a snap, he thought. Nobody believed the guy, but his audacity was so great and his political entrenchment so solid that no one questioned his re-election.

He took the 405 north to Wilshire and headed west again. He pulled over and parked just past Bundy drive, locked his truck, and put some money in the meter.

The Bicycle Café was one of his favorite places to eat. It was typically Californian, all wood and hanging plants, but he liked the bicycle motif. An antique bike with a huge front wheel hung suspended by wires above the table he chose.

He looked around the restaurant: there were a few power lunchers—men in suits, briefcases at their feet. At a table nearby four businessmen were receiving drinks from the waitress. Ron wondered how they could start drinking in the middle of the day and then walk away from it, go back to work without needing another, and another.

The waitress came over to his table. She was attractive, healthy looking with freckles and chestnut hair.

“Hey, Ron, how are you?” She smiled.

“Really good, Leanne. How about you?” He always liked seeing Leanne. She radiated a quality he liked, a contagious optimism that he was convinced was real and fundamental to her nature.

They talked about running. She was training for a marathon but had a problem with her ankle. Taking some classes at night, history and philosophy; really liked it. She took his lunch order and walked toward the kitchen. He watched as she left; she had runner’s legs, long and slender with powerful calves.

He took pleasure in his meal and decided not to review his notes on the suicide files while he was eating. He had long ago learned that his intuitive faculties worked best when he was feeling balanced—his mind seemed to work more efficiently if he kept things simple.

After he had finished and paid, Leanne came back as he was standing to leave. “I miss our runs together,” she said.

“Yeah, me too,” he replied.

She pressed her lips together and looked down for a moment. “Sometimes I wonder if you ever think of calling.” She looked up at him, her eyes clear and gray, and held his gaze.

“I’m thinking it would be crazy not to,” he told her, and she put her fingertips briefly to his chest to say goodbye.

He drove south on Bundy Drive. Everything north of Wilshire Boulevard was pretty upscale. By the time he got to Santa Monica Boulevard and turned he could feel the change in ambience. A wild-haired man in a pea coat clutched a sleeping bag as he sat at a bus bench and stared at his fingers. Ron wondered if the guy even felt the heat or if he was too removed from sensation to even register discomfort.

Traffic was thick and people were impatient. He stopped at a light; there was one at every block and he seemed to be stuck in an endless line of cars. He heard a loud horn blast directly behind him. A woman in a seedy older Cadillac pulled up on his bumper and the back half of her car blocked the cross traffic. The driver of the first northbound car that couldn’t get past the Cadillac leaned on his horn. Two more horns added to the noise. The woman in the Cadillac inched up behind Ron until her bumper made contact with his. He looked in his rearview mirror and watched her as she honked in short repetitive bursts and motioned to him to move forward. Which of course he couldn’t do—nobody was moving.

There had been a time, he reflected, when this would have made him homicidal. He had chased people on freeways, leaning across his passenger seat to shout obscenities at them through his passenger window, for lesser infractions than the woman behind him committed. He could no longer afford that kind of indulgence. An old-timer in AA had asked him to write a list of all the people that had ever made him angry. The list was so long he realized he had been totally dominated by people and events. “Scary, isn’t it?” the old-timer had chuckled, then adding, “Trouble is, you stay pissed off, you’ll drink again.”

Six blocks and ten minutes later, Ron turned into the parking lot of the West LA police station. In the past fourteen years he had been here many occasions on assignment and it always brought back memories of the times he had spent in drunk tanks. Four in this station alone, twice for drunk driving.

He entered the police station, passing two cops in street clothes as he went in. They recognized him and nodded. A young black woman in uniform talked from behind the counter to an older black man.

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. He’s already on the bus to downtown,” the woman said.

The man shook his head and said, “They told me I could come down here and post bond for him until five. I took time off work, I got the money, I drove all the way over here, it’s two o’clock and now I want my boy.”

The woman simply handed the man a sheet of paper and said, “You call this number right here first thing in the morning. It’ll take that long to get him processed.” She turned her attention to Ron.

“I’m here to see Joe Greiner,” he told her. She asked him to please wait, and then picked up the phone on the desk behind her. As she spoke, the black man said to Ron, “There’s people out there killin’ folks, and these clowns got to hassle my boy.” He walked out the door, still shaking his head.

Joe Greiner appeared in the hallway to the right of the counter and motioned for Ron to follow him. They wound their way through a maze of desks until they reached Joe’s office. It wasn’t really an office but a cubicle, much like his own at the
Times
, only the desk and wall panels were even older. They sat down in the only two seats the tiny cluttered space could hold.

“Hey, buddy, you’re lookin’ fit as ever. Still eatin’ that rabbit food?” Joe liked to give him a hard time about eating salads.

“Joe, you spend two weeks with me and stay out of those Fatburger joints, you’ll never have to grab the flab again.”

“Oh, you seen me do that?” Joe looked down at his belly and patted it.

“Used to do it myself. I got tired of it, though. My back was always going out on me.”

“Oh, right, you got tired of it. So what’d you do? Let me guess—you’re not the Weight Watchers type. Speed? Nah. Binge/purge? Probably not. Hey, I got it. Positive fuckin’ affirmations, am I right? ‘I am thin and my life works on all levels.’” Joe grinned. “Hey, I been meanin’ to redecorate, but my designer’s on strike.”

“Hell, it looks fine to me,” Ron replied. “I’m just happy to be able to leave here without having to pay money.”

It had been several months since he had seen Joe. The piece on the girl’s suicide was based on information the detective had given to him over the phone.

“So anyway,” Joe said, “it’s good to see you again.”

“Yeah, hey, thanks for giving me some time on this.” Ron opened his briefcase and pulled out a notebook and a sheaf of faxes. “Here’s the stuff you sent me the other day.”

“Yeah, here are the files.” Joe gestured toward a stack on his desk. “Now, check this out. This morning I get a call from downtown. There’s this roving drug squad, sheriff’s department. They go on assignment all over the county. Anyway, I get a call from this narco guy, lemme see.” Joe reached for a pad on the desk. “Bill Cox is his name. Says he wonders if I can do him a favor. You follow what I’m saying?”

“This ties in to the suicide files?” He was anxious to see the files on Joe’s desk and didn’t understand this digression.

“Well, stay with me. It seems that this narcotics squad has been after a local dealer—lives out by the beach—name of Jeffrey Fenner. Ring a bell?” Joe grinned.

“No kidding. That’s our girl’s name—Marilyn Fenner. Ex-husband? Family?” Ron was intrigued.

“He’s our jumper’s big brother. Anyway, this guy Cox wants the toxicology report on Marilyn. Says if she jumped with drugs in her system maybe we can bring the brother in as accessory to a crime; you know, furnishing contraband.”

“I don’t get it. What do they want to do?” Ron shifted his weight in the uncomfortable chair.

Joe leaned forward. “Furnishing drugs to someone who commits an act resulting in death can be construed by the courts as murder. They want to scare this guy into cutting a deal and giving up a few of his connections.”

“Can they do that?”

Joe shrugged his shoulders. “Sounds pretty farfetched to me. They can give it a shot.”

“So, have you got a report from the lab?” Ron asked.

“Yeah, and it seems Marilyn had something in her system, but not a street drug. It’s a fairly exotic pharmaceutical, Halcion. Prescription only.” Joe shrugged again. “Coincidence. Don’t see what damn good it does us.” He stood up and patted the stack of files. “So here. Have a seat and rummage through this pile of sad stories. It’s my ass if you’re seen with these. I got a few things to do. I’ll catch you back here in a half hour.” He started to leave the cubicle, but then turned back to Ron. “Hey, almost forgot. I know this is kind of gruesome, but I checked out the photos of the dead girls. You know what, I might be a sick puppy, them being dead and all, but I’m damned if they weren’t all pretty good looking. I mean like model-type good looking.”