L.A. Bytes

by P. A. Brown

  “I want to see if I can catch her outside of work.”

  “Think she might be involved?”

  88 P.A. Brown

  “Don’t know. Terry seemed kind of protective of her. I know he was lying about her skill level.” Chris shrugged. “It probably doesn’t mean anything.”

  David parked near the employee lot. He dropped his visor down and slid on his sunglasses before popping his door open.

  “I’ll be right back.” He indicated a tiny saltbox with a broken sign that said Café Fresco across the street. Other signs claimed chilaquiles and huevos revueltos served all day. “Feeling brave?”

  “Sure,” Chris said. “Cream and—”

  “Sugar. I know.”

  “So much for the mystery.”

  Chris slid his seatbelt off and pushed his seat back. He scanned the parking lot that was already half-full. A bus braked to a stop several car lengths in front of him and disgorged a dozen passengers. Laura wasn’t among them.

  David passed the coffee through the open window. “Anything so far?”

  “No sign of her— Hold on...”

  A banged up black Cavalier pulled up ahead of them. Laura emerged from the passenger’s side. Her uniform hugged her hefty frame. Tendrils of dirty blond hair piled atop her head had pulled free and clung to her pale skin.

  Chris shrank down in his seat, but Laura never looked their way. She bent down and spoke to the driver, then swung around and headed for the entrance. Chris opened the car door and climbed out, meaning to talk to her privately. But before he stepped onto the curb, Laura was surrounded by a half a dozen women, several of them in outfi ts like hers. The group entered the hospital together. Chris returned to the car. David grinned at Chris’s dismay.

  “You need to be quicker there,” David said.

  Chris stared at the Cavalier. “Think that’s her husband?”

  David shrugged.

  L.A. BYTES 89

  The Cavalier jerked away from the curb with a belch of oily smoke. There was a car that wasn’t going to pass its next emission test. Chris glanced at the hospital entrance again, then back at the Cavalier. He wasn’t going to get to talk to Laura today, but maybe he could fi nd out something about her anyway.

  “Follow him.”

  “What?” David asked. “Why?”

  “You doing anything else right now?”

  “That’s no reason.”

  “Just follow him. Please.”

  David shrugged, but put the Chevy in gear and rolled out after the Cavalier. The two-car caravan turned south on Columbus Avenue then east on Colorado. After nearly ten minutes of trying to keep the vehicle in sight, they followed the Cavalier onto a side street. It turned into the lot of an old post war three story walkup that had fallen on hard times.

  David drove past, turning right on the next street, pulling a quick U-turn once they were out of sight. He parked across the street from the apartment building. They watched the driver jump out and trot up the cracked sidewalk.

  The fi gure turned toward them. There was something familiar about that face. Where had he seen it before? Shoulder-length brown hair, prematurely thinning on top, framed a square face that looked sallow in the late October sun. The man wore a faded denim shirt, jeans and black sandals. He looked to be in his twenties.

  The door was propped open. Inside were nine mailboxes set in arched openings. It might have been a nice Spanish-style building at one time, but now it was a faded, water-stained memory.

  Through the open door they could see the driver pull a handful of fl yers out of a bottom mailbox and passed through a second door.

  “Okay, Sherlock,” David asked. “What now?”

  90 P.A. Brown

  Chris offered an “I don’t know, I’m winging it” shrug even as he struggled to remember where he had seen this guy before. The memory remained fi rmly locked away in his skull. He hopped out of the car and trotted across the empty street. In the front apartment next door, a newer four story building, a tiny furred face peered around a lace curtain and let loose an explosion of high-pitched yaps.

  He glanced back; David had climbed out and was standing beside the two-toned Chevy. Behind his shades his gaze was inscrutable, but Chris sensed his amusement. There were worn nametags on each of the mailboxes.

  There were three names on the bottom mailbox: C. Than, R.

  Diego and H. Bolton. The mystery man wasn’t Asian or Latino, so he had to be Bolton. He stared at the door Bolton had gone through. Damn, he knew that name and that face. Who was this guy?

  Back at the car, he slid in beside David, who lowered his sunglasses and peered at him over the rims. “So,” he said. “Was that productive?”

  Chris wasn’t paying attention. “Can you run those plates?”

  The glasses came off completely. David’s eyes were fl at, the cop gaze Chris hated.

  “In case you’ve forgotten,” David said. “I’m taking a little bit of a forced vacation here. Running plates is not exactly on my can-do list.”

  Not exactly a fl at-out no, either. Chris fl ashed a smile. “What about Bryan?”

  David sighed. “I’ll call him when we get home.”

  § § § §

  Bryan arrived half an hour after they got back home. David led them out to the backyard.

  The garden David had taken over from Chris’s benign neglect was redolent with scented geraniums and California poppies.

  Deep blue lobelias in pots ringed the stone patio. A low hedge L.A. BYTES 91

  of delicately scented rosemary separated the drought-resistant ground cover from the fl agstone patio. A pair of cypress trees that matched the two in the front of the house fl anked the rose arbor and provided shade. Two pepper trees fi nished off the patio décor. In the back of the sloping yard pale, dense night-blooming jasmine crowded against the back fence.

  Sergeant sprawled out on the fl agstones in the middle of everyone.

  Chris handed Bryan a glass of wine and sat beside David on the glider. Bryan sat across from them in one of their newly purchased Adirondack chairs.

  “The car is registered to a Herb Bolton,” Bryan said. “That name mean anything to you?”

  Chris frowned. The name did sound familiar. Just like Bolton’s face had. He stared across the rosemary hedge at the bottlebrush tree that still sported fuzzy red spikes. A fl ick of movement drew his restless gaze; a green and scarlet Ste. Anna’s hummingbird fl itted from the neighbor’s yard and disappeared around the side of the house.

  He sat upright so quickly David sloshed wine down the front of his T-shirt. “Bolton! I knew there was something about that name. Wait here—I’ll be right back.”

  He hurried inside, heading straight for his home offi ce where he logged in and got online.

  He Googled Herb Bolton and as an afterthought, Hellraiser.

  If his memory, which had a knack for holding on to the most useless trivia, was right, he defi nitely knew this guy.

  “Aha, I was right,” he murmured when the screen came back with several hits for both names.

  Bolton had been a very bad boy a few years ago. The old headlines gleefully spilled the whole sordid story.

  Hollywood man runs wild on other people’s money and Hacker scores big, loses bigger.

  92 P.A. Brown

  Chris printed off several articles and carried them out to the patio. David and Bryan were deep in conversation and only broke off when Chris sat back down beside David.

  “Find what you were looking for?” David asked.

  “More. Take a look.” Chris handed one article to David and another to Bryan. “Herb Bolton stole a whack of credit cards from some online store. He used the cards to accumulate quite a pile of goodies. Mostly computer equipment, though I understand he treated himself to a trip to Mexico. By the time the Feds rounded him up, he’d spent nearly thirty thousand dollars.”

  “Outside of the equipment seized, none of it was recovered.”

  David read through
the short news article. “Says here he didn’t go to Mexico alone, but they had no luck fi nding any accomplices.

  Bolton wasn’t talking.”

  Chris and David shared a glance. Then they looked at Bryan.

  “There should be records of his traveling companion,” David said. “They would have been subpoenaed.”

  Bryan was nodding. “I’ll see what I can dig up. Case is a little stale, though. If they suspect his traveling companion was involved in the credit card theft the case against him—”

  “Or her,” Chris amended, suspecting he knew exactly who had traveled with Bolton.

  “Or her,” Bryan continued. “The theft charges would still be open. We could fi le if we had a suspect. Who are you thinking of?” When Chris didn’t answer Bryan persisted. “Well? I need a name if this is going to go anywhere—”

  “Can I get back to you on that? I promise I’ll tell you, once I know for sure.”

  Bryan had to leave it at that, though Chris could tell he wasn’t impressed. At least David didn’t give Laura up.

  § § § §

  Bryan left shortly after, promising again to look into the Bolton case. He admonished David to keep his nose clean. “This L.A. BYTES 93

  mess will be cleaned up without your input. You’ll only cloud the issue if you get involved.”

  David assured him he wouldn’t.

  Once Bryan drove away, Chris retreated to his home offi ce where he worked through his email. After half an hour he emerged and found David in the media room watching college basketball, drinking a Bud.

  Chris leaned down to buss his lips. “I gotta go back to Ste.

  Anne’s. I shouldn’t be more than a few hours. Late supper?

  Hamburgers?”

  David wasn’t much of a cook, but he wielded a mean spatula.

  He glanced at the Rolex Chris had given him for his fortieth birthday. “Seven good?”

  “I’ll call if it’s not.”

  It ended up taking nearly six hours but by the time he and Terry wrapped up, they had tracked back on all the areas the hacker had touched and either verifi ed the integrity of the data or were able to replace it with good backups. By the time he returned home the color was long gone from the western sky and the lights up and down the hill ringing the Silver Lake and Ivanhoe reservoirs were on. Light shivered off the placid water.

  David fi red up the gas barbecue and the patties were in the fridge. Within minutes of Chris’s arrival the aroma of searing beef fi lled the small patio.

  Chris grabbed a quick shower, made a salad and by nine-thirty they were seated at the kitchen table, chowing down on mesquite-fl avored burgers and drinking beer.

  Chris spent all day Saturday at Ste. Anne’s. He barely sat down to dinner when his pager went off. Yet another client trying to deal with something their onsite techs couldn’t handle. The next ten minutes Chris shoveled food in his mouth while he listened to the technical manager try to explain what was going on.

  When he hung up he threw an apologetic look at David. “You mind?”

  94 P.A. Brown

  “Hey, it’s your job,” David said, even though Chris could tell he did mind.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He didn’t return until after midnight. On his way home he swung by the hospital, but neither Terry nor Laura were there.

  He was tempted to drive by Bolton’s house but it was already late.

  His own house was dark and David was sound asleep, one arm thrown over his head while he snored softly. Chris crawled in beside him and was lulled asleep by the gentle sound of David’s breathing, Sweeney’s soft purr and Sergeant’s snores.

  § § § §

  Bryan called at six the next morning. The sound dragged Chris out of a deep sleep. It always amazed Chris how David went from dead sleep to wide-awake. He fi gured it was a cop thing. He still beat him to the phone.

  Chris swung around to face David. “Bryan. He’s got some information on Herb Bolton. He didn’t want to talk on the phone. He’ll be here in an hour.”

  David glanced at the bedside clock and groaned when he saw the time. “Couldn’t he have waited for lunch?”

  “Come on, lazy bones.” Chris snatched the sheet off David’s shrinking fl esh. “Get dressed. This could be important.”

  “Not as important as a good night’s sleep.”

  “Let’s see what he has to say before we decide that.”

  David gave up the argument. How could he beat that kind of logic?

  While David made coffee, Chris got out an assortment of muffi ns and arranged them on a tray in the microwave. By the time Bryan rang the front doorbell the coffee was perked and the food warm.

  They sat around the kitchen table. Bryan set a thin fi le folder on the table beside his plate before reaching for a blueberry muffi n.

  L.A. BYTES 95

  “This is all I could get without raising eyebrows. There’s probably more, but this might prove useful in answering some preliminary questions.” He shrugged, buttering his muffi n. “It’s a place to start.”

  “Before this goes any further I want you to know you don’t need to do this, Bryan,” David said. “I—we—really appreciate all your help.”

  Bryan’s face grew almost as red as his hair. “Yeah, well, there’s not enough of us as it is. I’m not going to let one of the good ones get railroaded by the department’s bull-headed beliefs.”

  “Thanks all the same,” David said. “We owe you.”

  “I’ll collect, too.” Bryan grinned. “That’s one more reason to keep you around. Can’t collect if you’re off the force.”

  “Let’s see what you’ve got,” David said.

  Bryan opened the folder and slid sheets of paper across the table to both Chris and David. “There’s a good chance your doer did this sort of thing before. In fact Fraud has a strong suspicion he stole as much as a hundred grand, but all they could nail him on was the thirty. Not a bad haul for a twenty-year-old, either way.”

  “Any idea who he hung with?” Chris tried reading the police and court reports, but couldn’t get past the fi rst few dense lines.

  “That’s here somewhere... Ah, here we are. The second ticket to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico was in the name of Traci Lords.” Bryan grinned. “Think he meant the actress?”

  “In his dreams,” Chris said. “Mexico? Any idea what he did while he was there?”

  “Funny you should ask.” Bryan dug out more paper. “Fraud got him good on that. He used a string of stolen cards—maybe he fi gured the Mexican cops were hicks.” He nodded when Chris offered him more coffee. “Now let’s see... they booked a room at the Radisson Casa Grande. It’s no Beverly Hills Hotel, but it ain’t cheap.” Bryan glanced down at his paper. “They ordered a lot of room service, but Bolton did take the time out to do 96 P.A. Brown

  some sightseeing. And a little hacking, just to keep his hand in, I guess. Apparently he tried to hack the Casa’s database—after a few more credit cards, I guess. He got caught, barely made it out.

  Feds were waiting for him when he hit LAX.”

  “And the girl wasn’t with him?” Chris asked.

  “Her return ticket was never used. The Feds suspect they split up and she found her own way back. He wouldn’t give her up, no matter how much they pushed.”

  “Let’s push again. Find out if Laura lives with him now. Talk to some neighbors, see if she was there three years ago.”

  “Laura?” Bryan asked.

  “I think the offi cers in charge of the investigation would have already done that,” David said.

  “Maybe, but no one knew about Laura then, did they?” Chris said. “I think I need to go back to Ste. Anne’s and talk to these people. If Terry doesn’t like it, that’s too bad.”

  “You’re going to go snooping around the hospital?”

  “Who the hell is Laura?” Bryan demanded. “How does she fi t into this case?”

  “She might be Bolton’s partner. We thin
k they live together.”

  “And you want to start spying on these people based on the fact they might be lovers?”

  “You’d think it was plenty if we could prove she went to Mexico with Bolton,” Chris said.

  “You can’t follow people around until you fi nd what you want.

  Do the words stalking and harassment mean anything to you?”

  “I’m not stalking anyone.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish that the cops didn’t? David has no authority right now!”

  “It still makes sense,” Chris insisted.

  “What do you expect to fi nd?” Bryan snapped.

  L.A. BYTES 97

  “See who remembers them around the neighborhood. People might fi nd me easier to talk to than cops—no offense.”

  So they told Bryan everything they knew up to that point, which wasn’t very much. Armed with the new information, Bryan left, promising to keep in touch.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Monday, 5:50 pm, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles Monday, after a weekend spent avoiding reporters, getting caught in traffi c on the way home from a checkup at his doctor’s didn’t improve David’s temper, even if he had been given a clean bill of health. When he fi nally thumped through the front door and stripped off his jacket, it was nearly four o’clock. Chris was still bent over his laptop.

  David grabbed a Bud, which he sucked back while he studied the screen Chris stared at intently. He caught the name Hellraiser.

  “Something new?”

  Chris frowned. “You mean besides being harassed by reporters?”

  David laughed. “Comes with your new notoriety. Anything else?”

  “Well, I have been digging around on Bolton. I was right, this guy’s done this scam a lot—he’s got quite a reputation in the cracker community. His tag is Hellraiser.”

  “And...?”

  “He steals credit card numbers. Sometimes he posts them online so everyone can have a go at them, other times he uses them himself.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “I can’t fi nd anything to suggest she’s involved in any online scams.” Chris got up from his desk, put his hands on the small of his back and stretched. Something creaked. “Jesus, I hate it when that happens.”