Fatal Pose

by Barna William Donovan

  “Oh, boy,” Erika said slowly. “You know, I wish the coroner’s office would have known all this.”

  “Would it have changed anything?”

  “I don’t know. Although this sounds peculiar, it’s not totally out of the question that an extreme diet gone wrong might still have killed him.”

  “It’s not?”

  Another pause on Erika’s side. “I wish we could have done an autopsy.”

  “Could you…I mean the coroner’s office, could they exhume the body for an autopsy?”

  “That would be up to your client. If she demands it, if she has a strong enough case for suspecting foul play.”

  “So could foul play be determined then?”

  “Hold on. Maybe, maybe not. If he indeed was poisoned, it would depend on the substance used. Some poisons might no longer show up in the tissue.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, here’s something to think about: what if he really did die of a contest diet taken too far?”

  “His sister says he might have been threatened.”

  “Okay. He could have been threatened. But could he not have died of a botched diet regimen all the same?”

  She was right. “Of course, he could have.”

  “Look, Gunnar, could we talk about this, the questions of the case and what happened at the contest in greater detail, but later? I just about have to run and see a patient.”

  “Yes, definitely. Thanks.”

  “Let’s do lunch,” Erika asked.

  Was her tone hopeful?

  “I mean, you don’t mind, do you?” she added.

  “No, of course not,” Gunnar said, noticing how his voice couldn’t conceal his anxiety, his anticipation. “How about dinner tonight instead?”

  “I can’t do it tonight. Sorry about that,” Erika replied.

  Gunnar couldn’t tell if her disappointment was feigned or not. But of course, it would make sense if she couldn’t agree to an impromptu dinner date. There was probably someone waiting for her at home.

  “I have to go to a dinner with these pharmaceutical reps,” Erika quickly added. “I can’t get out of it. Let’s try tomorrow, though.”

  “Fantastic! I appreciate it. And it would be great to see you.”

  “You, too. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”

  “Bye,” Gunnar said and shut his phone’s screen off after the line went dead on her end.

  For almost ten minutes after their talk, he couldn’t quite find what to do with himself. He was on a surveillance job. He knew in theory—there were things to do, there were other calls to make—but his mind was hopelessly locked on Erika.

  What was that explanation about the pharmaceutical reps? Why did she try and explain that she didn’t have a date or no one was at home waiting for her? Was she leaving him an open door there?

  Gunnar got up and paced the room. He took a cursory look through the camera aimed at the house next door. His pulse was racing. He couldn’t help but chuckle, laugh at himself. Some tough, hard-boiled, Marine-Corps-trained private eye he was.

  CHAPTER 18

  Gunnar removed a switchblade from his pocket and sliced off the rounded end of his 5 Vegas Corona cigar. He put his lighter to the front of the hard-packed stick of tobacco and rotated the cigar under the flame to light its head evenly.

  After taking a couple of vigorous drags on the 5 Vegas, he scanned the Nikon once more. There was no change in the situation next door.

  He wanted to talk to Kelly Vaughn about the Holt case anyway, so he guessed that she would be glad to hear that all was quiet in Lomita.

  The divorce case Kelly was undertaking here was one of her most taxing efforts, counseling a man in his split from his wife. Kelly said this time, the case involved a family of developers who sought consensus with business partners and uncooperative landowners with the aid of hired gunmen. As patriarch Charlie Crewson’s son-in-law now tried to sever his marital ties to the clan, he had been put on an alleged hit list to keep him from spilling any family secrets gleaned around the dinner table. But from the kind of firearms Gunnar’s targets had been seen keeping in clean working order, he knew that hit list was more real than “alleged.”

  Gunnar dialed Kelly’s office number and got through to her on the second ring.

  “I’m paying you to do my surveillance of Crewson’s men, is that clear?” she said. “I pay you money to sit there and look, not for your buddies to lift weights.”

  “They’re my operatives, and we’re on top of things.”

  “I’m told these men have been brought in from New York, and they’re very good. I need someone level-headed and practical who knows what he’s doing.”

  “I just had Tommy in here,” Gunnar said.

  But Kelly wasn’t quite satisfied with that. “Gunnar—”

  “Level-headed and practical. In the next life, Tommy Novak’s coming back as Mike Brady.”

  “What did you want?” Kelly asked.

  “Remember Brad Holt?”

  “I’m trying to forget that night ever happened.”

  “I’ve been hired to investigate his death, and I need to know what kinds of property he owned around L.A.”

  “Gunnar, that guy was a—”

  “Yeah, he was a bastard, and he made films that are demeaning to women and so on and so forth. I know all that. But don’t even the least of us deserve vigorous advocacy? I thought I saw something like that on your web page.”

  “Who hired you?” Kelly asked dryly.

  “His sister.”

  “Have you known her before this?”

  “Hey, what’s this interrogation?”

  “I’m curious, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, I know her. It’s complicated.”

  “Aha,” Kelly said and paused. “She’s paying you well, I suppose.”

  “Two hundred an hour, plus expenses. So come on, help me out.”

  Gunnar heard Kelly sighing on the other end of the line. The melodramatic effect was there, and it was clear, so he knew Kelly would do what favor he asked of her. Or, more precisely, she would get one of her interns to run a check for him and deduct any computer fees incurred along the way from what she was paying for the Crewson surveillance. He knew Diane’s case could get complicated, and he wanted the basics on Brad Holt as quickly as he could get them.

  “All right,” Kelly said. “What do you want?”

  “Could you take a look at the tax assessor’s records for any mention of what property Holt owned around here? Also, to check on the businesses he ran, could you—?”

  “I know how to find information. I’ll email it to you tonight. But remember, I hired you first!”

  “Kelly, I’m a former almost-professional bodybuilder!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m driven and determined and disciplined and prioritized!”

  “If you say so,” she replied with sarcasm and hung up.

  Gunnar sat alone in the surveillance room for the next five hours following his call to Kelly. It was a few minutes past three when he heard the back door open. Although he knew he should have been in no danger from the sudden interruption, he wanted to offset the soundless monotony by causing a little trouble as he pulled his Sig Sauer P226 pistol and trained it on the newcomer.

  Joey Reigert paused with a flinch just inside the doorway.

  “Just kidding! I knew it was you,” Gunnar said and looked at his watch. His associate was right on time. The enormous man blocking the sun from entering the rear door was, most of the time, very punctual. “But where was that call you were supposed to place before coming in here?”

  However, Joey also ignored entry protocol. He should have placed a call to Gunnar’s cell before entering the room, just to make sure everything was all right in here and he was
n’t walking into a trap. He deserved to be startled for that, Gunnar reasoned. Although Gunnar also remembered that he, too, had forgotten to call Tommy before entering.

  “So you show up at last, Marino!” Joey said in a rigid bass delivery as he slammed the door shut, ignoring the question about entry protocol. “You’ve got a lot of nerve!” The big man stood at a tremendous six foot seven inches tall, and he was bedecked in standard bodybuilder garb. His upper body was covered in a “Foundry Gym” T-shirt with its sleeves cut off, and he wore a pair of faded jeans tucked into well-worn construction boots. Unlike Tommy and Gunnar, though, he came sans a cooler, settling for a duffel bag alone.

  Joey Reigert made his way by personal training sessions during the day, allowing him flexible hours to schedule around his contest training routines. Of the people trying to reshape their bodies into something exotic and supernatural in the Foundry, Gunnar expected Joey to take a crack at breaching the professional ranks the soonest. If he won his weight class in the Southern California Amateur Invitational, he would qualify for the state contest, and victory at the state level meant a WBBF pro card.

  “Come on, Joey, I’m saying sorry from the very depth of my heart,” Gunnar said and replaced the P226 in its holster.

  Joey beamed at him with his chilling, beaty blue eyes glaring just underneath the stringy locks of long blond hair scattered all over his forehead. “You know, this detail is—” he began in a tone that was still ominous.

  Then Gunnar cut in, “The last thing I wanted was to be your charity case.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, having to work for me for free.”

  “Yeah, that’s funny,” Joey said and approached the table. He put his duffel bag down and unzipped it, removing a bottle of distilled water and a stack of bodybuilding magazines. “Look, I don’t like these people. This kinda life you lead, these uncertainties, they’re contrary to the edicts of bodybuilding. Life needs to be distilled to its basic elements. Easy, hard! Good and evil! Great men, clear thinkers, say like Hemingway, knew that.”

  “Relax,” Gunnar said. “They take one look at you, and they’re back on the plane to New York. You’re a formidable guy.” He was amused by Joey’s sudden ruminations. But he also knew that Joey had never read Hemingway, let alone came to those conclusions about his work. Gunnar did remember those exact words in a “personal letter to the readers” by WBBF owner Robert Holbrook in a recent issue of Body and Power.

  “But they’ve got guns, man!” Joey said.

  Gunnar thought it was a pathetic sight. He got to his feet and claimed the Beretta from beside Joey’s duffel bag on the table. Looking the big builder in the eyes, he twirled the gun around his index finger like some gunfighter, then inserted it into the waist of Joey’s trousers. “You know how to use it,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, I just downloaded a new relaxation app. What am I bustin’ my butt in the gym for when these psychos are next door? Mental stress is counterproductive to muscle recovery.”

  Gunnar reached into the right outside pocket of his jacket and presented a pair of one-week guest pass cards to the Olympic and Future Fitness gyms. “Here, I’ve got something better for you than relaxation apps!” Joey put down his water bottle and accepted the gifts. Before he could ask what the occasion was, Gunnar said, “I’m gonna need some help the next couple of days.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Gunnar picked up a horror novel from a small discount bookstore three blocks away from his surveillance position to offer diversion when he had to return to his watch at five in the morning. For now, he needed to check in at his main office at the Foundry Gym in Venice, particularly looking forward to anything Kelly might have turned up on Brad Holt and emailed him.

  The parking lot outside the building was full by this time of the night, and Gunnar could hear the music from the gym’s speaker system thumping inside.

  “Full house tonight, babe, isn’t it?” Gunnar found himself speaking aloud, addressing his question at the billboard overlooking the parking lot. It might have been absurd, he knew, but so much of life around the gym scene was steeped in incongruity.

  The billboard itself was so ridiculously out of place. It carried an ad for the TV-Mature cable reality series, American Centerfold. As the title implied, it was a competition program where nubile young contestants vied for a contract to be a centerfold in a new men’s soft-core porn magazine called Prowl. The billboard featured last season’s winner, Cassandra Hill, looking at once aroused and perturbed, just about a millimeter away from flowing out of a lacy bra. A hardcore bodybuilding gym like the Foundry, especially one catering to a sizable number of female athletes, was hardly the place to find an audience for a show rewarding slinky, passive bimboism.

  Scanning the back jacket of his new book absentmindedly as he walked through the front entrance of the Foundry, Gunnar ignored the lithe form of a woman who appeared several feet in front of him and struck at his head with a fierce, lightning attack. He didn’t see anything coming until a foot wearing a white canvas gym shoe swept past his mouth, hitting the last four inches of the big cigar he had been smoking on and off during the day. Leaving only a swarm of glowing ashes to sprinkle toward Gunnar’s shoes, the cigar got flung away toward the wall of the small administration enclosure to the left of the door.

  “Gotcha, didn’t I?” the sing-songy voice of his attacker came at Gunnar after the startling surprise. “There are competitors in here, buddy boy! Trying to keep pure!” she scolded.

  “Choreographing moves for the next pageant?” Gunnar said and bent over to pick up his cigar. Up until that moment, he had felt guilty for letting Amy argue her way into taking over the rough midnight hours of the surveillance, even as she insisted they worked well for her because she didn’t have a personal training consult until late in the afternoon the following day. The pain issuing from his back as he moved for the cigar dispelled the guilt.

  But, as he came back up, he just missed another wild swing, this time coming from a spinning back kick launched at the top of his head. “What the…?”

  Amy McCambridge bobbed back and forth in front of him, hands clenched into fists and raised in an imprecise defensive move. The gym’s lights played off the slick curves of her Spandex stretch pants that reached just above her knees and the small support top holding her breasts. Her top bore the slogan NATTY 4 LIFE, signifying that she supported natural, or steroid-free, fitness and bodybuilding. Although not a bodybuilder, Amy had the kind of hard, veiny muscle tone that could turn astounded heads. She looked like a gymnast, or maybe the way a healthy adult gymnast would look like, not the anorexic pre-teens one saw on Olympic teams.

  “You gotta do something about that tone!” she said. “Why do I keep putting up with your crap, Marino?” At last, she lowered her arms and let him proceed forward. They both started into the interior of the establishment.

  The late-night crowd in the Foundry was comprised of diehards of every sort. The owners, husband and wife team Mike and Sherry Branigan, were proud of the fact that they attracted the hardcore bodybuilding crowd while turning tidy profits from the yuppies who came to “tone and maintain.” A trio of women and a guy whose hairsprayed coifs were deforming under torrential sweat moved their svelte bodies on the elliptical training machines on the far side of the room. Walking past some of the weight machines, Gunnar and Amy passed a female bodybuilder with long, Rapunzel-like braids working her sweeping triceps with a straight bar coming off the top-rope attachment of a cable-crossover machine.

  “I’m sure that kicking’s gonna be a nice routine,” Gunnar said with ample sarcasm and looked for Amy’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

  “First I sit cooped up in that house for you,” she said, “then I have to listen to you deriding my sport.”

  “Deriding? Who, me?”

  “There are people here who don’t have the genes to build up the kind of
muscles you expect on everyone. That doesn’t make what I do less of a sport.”

  “I’m sure. And the evening gown competition’s just for atmosphere,” Gunnar said, but with a mischievous grin to lighten its impact.

  Amy rolled her eyes. “Marino, what are you really? Like five-hundred years old? They haven’t had evening gown competitions in fitness for like thirty years.”

  Before Gunnar could reply, a loud exclamation rolled their way from the side. “Muscles over mayhem!” they heard Mike Branigan yell as he strutted toward them, his shoulder-length brown hair waving behind him like some whimsical male model’s. “When you’re stared down by a gang of blood lusting thugs, you want some of these on your side!” he said and assumed a double biceps pose. The WBBF pro’s muscles quivered to life and inflated around his oversized tank top.

  Mike had been suffering from a bout of cabin fever ever since he had to pull out of the Sun State contest because of a torn pectoral. The muscle had healed, but not in time to let him train for the event.

  “Actually,” Gunnar said and shrugged, “I’d prefer a .357 magnum.”

  “Or some good moves,” Amy said. “You remember how that big lug Ramon Santana got put out of the Southern Cal Invitational last year by a couple of muggers?”

  “I say a twelve-gauge shotgun’s all the size and technique I’d need,” Sherry Branigan joined the discussion. Mike’s wife had been a moderately successful contestant in the California amateur bodybuilding circuit but lacked some of the genetics needed to build the size that ruled the current pro stages. Soon enough, she opted for business, and they ran the Foundry as a thriving establishment.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Bloodlusting thugs and shotguns?” Gunnar felt he had to say at last. “What are we talking about here?”

  “That prissy little juice bar down the street got robbed over the weekend,” Mike answered with contempt and threw a glance at the yuppies on the cardio machines.