“You’d still be a cop.”
“Have you ever seen anyone act normal when they know the cameras are on them? They either kick off or dry up. I can’t do my job with half a TV studio behind me.”
“We can be discreet.”
“Not discreet enough.”
She was losing him. The expression on her face changed from optimistic to hopeful to exasperated in a few short seconds. It was her turn to look out the window to buy time. Somebody had set up a wire cage directly outside Caffè Etc. Not the size of a zoo cage but big enough to house several dogs curled up on the sidewalk. A strange blue-haired girl with more piercings than Madonna sat on a foldout chair in front of a dog bowl full of money. Citrin appeared to take heart from the display. “You see that out there?”
Grant looked at the caged dogs and the woman guarding it.
“Yeah.”
“What do you see?”
He sensed that was a trick question, so he examined the scene carefully. There were five dogs, one big cuddly thing, two medium- sized mongrels, and two midgets that hadn’t walked anywhere in their lives. Glove puppet dogs, like the ones being carried around Hollywood by even stranger creatures with tattoos, spiky hair, and hoops through their noses. Like the blue-haired alien sitting on the foldout chair. Several people looked through the cage and made cooing noises before dropping cash in the dog bowl.
“I see a freak show. Somebody cashing in on a few stray dogs.”
“You think they’re stray dogs?”
He looked again. The dogs looked well groomed and cared for. The midgets looked expensive; the big dog, even more so. Now that he thought about it, the mongrels didn’t look like mongrels at all, just breeds he didn’t recognize. There was a lot of money in that cage. More than was in the dog bowl beside it. The blue-haired girl was still an alien species. Grant put a smile in his voice. “Expensive stray dogs?”
“Abandoned dogs. This is Hollywood. Most pampered dog owners in the world. They get bored; the dog goes out the door. That girl, she runs a free pet adoption service. Sets up on market day because there’re more people who might take one home. Donations help feed the dogs until she finds them a new owner.”
Grant looked at the girl with fresh eyes. “Real life hits La La Land.”
“Reality. Not everything is what it seems.”
He stifled a laugh. “Seagal playing at being a reality cop. You got that right.”
Citrin leaned back in her seat, more relaxed. “You are a real cop. Reality will take care of itself.”
“Discreetly?”
“Absolutely.”
Something was running around in Grant’s head. An unformed idea. Having a TV insider could prove useful. He took a deep swig of coffee and paused while he put his thoughts in order. He spoke slowly. “Hidden cameras. Long-distance zooms. Like that?”
“If that’s how you want to play it.”
“You know all about that covert stuff, then?”
Citrin looked him in the eye and lowered her voice. “I can do very undercover.”
“You got a title?”
“Miss Whiplash.”
Grant laughed. “For the show.”
“It’s got to be The Resurrection Man.”
Grant felt the mobile phone begin to vibrate in his pocket. He took it out and the vibration morphed into an increasing ring volume. He looked at the caller display but didn’t recognize the number. He barely had any programmed in anyway. He was old school and preferred phones attached to the wall.
Citrin watched the pantomime and smiled. “I didn’t see you as a cell kind of guy.”
“A cell is where I put bad men.”
“Cellular phone kind of guy.”
“Used to keep it in my bag.”
“That’s okay—if I wanted to talk to your bag.”
A moment of déjà vu washed over him, and he heard Terri Avellone saying the same thing back in Boston. His carnal thoughts about Robin Citrin made him feel guilty about the woman he’d left behind. Briefly. They weren’t married. They were in different cities. Sex conquers all.
He flicked the Motorola open and answered. “Grant.”
An educated voice spoke briefly. The butler or manservant or whatever he was. Senator Richards wanted to see him immediately. From the sound of it, the senator wasn’t too happy about something. Grant closed the phone without saying goodbye and put sadness in his smile. “Got to go. Sorry. Let me think about the TV thing, okay?”
He left enough money for the coffees and went in search of a cab.
NINE
Grant didn’t understand what Richards was getting upset about, so he simply let the senator blow himself out without saying anything. The sun had moved round the garden since this morning but the view from the study window was just the same. The smell from the flowers had dulled. The lawnmower had stopped long ago. There was a fresh Pepsi on the coffee table, with ice and lemon.
Richards ran out of things to say, so he fell back on his main objection. “You were supposed to be discreet.”
“I am being discreet.”
“Discreet? You were plastered all over the news, getting arrested.”
“I haven’t seen that yet. They show the part where I disarmed two bank robbers first?”
“Yes, they showed that. Very publicly on national TV. Hardly discreet.”
Grant took a drink of Pepsi and set the glass back on the table. He leaned back against the Chesterfield—the most uncomfortable settee in the world, in his opinion—and took a deep breath before he spoke. “Do you know the definition of discreet?”
“I know what it means. Yes.”
Grant kept his voice monotone. Educational. “Careful and circumspect in one’s speech or actions in order to avoid causing offense or revealing private information.”
Richards glared across the coffee table from his position standing behind the desk. The grandfather clock ticked quietly. Birdsong drifted through the partly open window. Grant took his silence as permission to carry on.
“I was very circumspect in disabling two armed robbers and avoiding getting shot. That might have offended you, but, even with twenty-four-hour flying fucking news, it most certainly did not reveal any private information about your daughter or why I am in Los Angeles.”
He took another swig of Pepsi. That was about as angry as he got without hitting somebody. Hitting the senator he’d been sent to protect wasn’t a good career move on his first assignment stateside. Getting that off his chest calmed him down. “Pardon my French.”
Richards chose discretion as the better part of valor, another variation of discreet that he didn’t need a dictionary to understand. Instead he came round the front of the desk and leaned against the corner, one leg draped casually over the edge. Casual leg positioning seemed to be his specialty. His voice was calm and friendly, as if the previous conversation had never taken place.
“In regard to why you are in Los Angeles…have you made any progress?”
Grant crossed one leg over his knee. It didn’t look anywhere near as casual as Senator Richards’ pose, but it kept him from getting up and punching him on the nose. He was acutely aware that he needed to keep one eye on what the senator wanted and one on the real reason he’d been sent here.
“I’ve got a line on the production company. Somewhere down Long Beach.”
The senator nodded as if that meant something when, in fact, he was just saving face and distancing himself from his explosive tantrum. The draped leg looked as if it was uncomfortable, but the pose had been struck for effect, not comfort. To divert Grant’s attention from the feigned casualness, Richards got up and walked to the window. He took a deep breath because it seemed like the thing to do. Grant swiveled on the settee to follow the senator before speaking.
“In the interests of discretion, I assume you don
’t want me storming in there and ordering them to stop.”
Richards looked mildly annoyed at the sarcasm in Grant’s voice. “That’s right. What do you propose?”
“I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire. First thing is to go see the producer. Get a reading on him. See what it’ll take to divert his resources.”
“You mean get him to use a different girl?”
Grant detected a note of disapproval in the senator’s tone. “So long as they’re consenting adults and he’s not forcing anyone, yes.”
Richards turned his back to the window. His shoulders didn’t exactly sag, but they became less rigid. His eyes held a hint of sadness—and was that guilt? “My daughter is a consenting adult.”
“They’ll all be somebody’s daughters. They just won’t all have influential fathers with a reputation to protect.”
“Point taken.”
Richards went to the desk and pressed the call button. The bell sounded deep inside the house. The interview was over. It seemed that was how rich men and US senators dealt with things. Call someone else to do their dirty business. Grant got up but didn’t finish his drink. He’d lost his appetite.
“You want my advice? Go public. Be open and up front. You’re a concerned father. Use it to your advantage.”
Grant said the words but knew they would fall on deaf ears. By protecting the senator, he was also protecting the man who had more to lose by association. If that wall came tumbling down, then more people would be hurt than a headstrong daughter and her family. He didn’t wait for Jeeves to open the door. He went out by himself and slammed the door behind him. He was halfway across the hall when another door opened beyond the sweeping staircase. A husky voice called his name, and Maura Richards waved him over.
The day room was brighter than her husband’s study. Grant reckoned that was partly by design but mostly because of the personality difference. Double Dick was stiff and unbending. Maura Richards was frothy and shapely. She wasn’t so much bubbly as full of life. Not a dizzy blond, a sensuous woman with sandy-colored hair and the curves to match. She wore the same summer dress she’d been wearing that morning. It looked cool and airy and didn’t hide her slim waist and curvaceous figure.
This wasn’t Robin Citrin though, a flirtatious TV woman. This was a woman of substance.
He waited for her to indicate the comfortable patio furniture in the adjoining conservatory before taking a seat on a deep-cushioned wicker chair. Mrs. Richards sat opposite and crossed her legs. The elegant sweep of her calves was a million miles away from Double Dick’s casual leg crossing. She wasn’t striking a pose, she was simply relaxing. Her face didn’t look relaxed though.
“Mr. Grant.”
“Jim.”
“Jim. I don’t know where to begin.”
Her voice was low and husky, as if she’d spent all her life smoking forty a day, but he doubted if she had ever smoked. She looked too healthy. Her skin was tanned and flawless. Her teeth were white, practically obligatory in California, and her eyes green and clear. This woman screamed healthy living and yet her eyes betrayed a darker side, a worry that was eating at her. So, Grant thought, she knows why I’m here.
He kept his voice nonjudgmental. “Mrs. Richards.”
“Maura, please.”
The perceived intimacy of being on first-name terms suddenly felt wrong.
“Mrs. Richards. I think you know exactly where to begin and just what you want to ask me. I’m fine with that. Ask away.”
Her eyes flared briefly. Anger? Excitement? Grant assumed the latter. When you’re a wealthy woman with a powerful husband, people don’t disagree with you very often. This was something different than she’d been used to. Something different was generally more exciting than the norm. Jim Grant most definitely wasn’t the norm. She leaned back in her chair and looked him in the eye. Direct. Unblinking. She appeared to make the decision to trust him.
“I want you to stop my daughter’s self-destructive behavior.”
“You mean stop her sleeping with men on film.” It was a statement, not a question.
“You’ve seen the film. No sleeping takes place.”
“Yeah. The nodding that goes on doesn’t look like she’s tired.”
Her eyes flared again. Maybe he’d overstepped the mark. Maybe not.
“She does a lot more than head nodding. A lot of other things too. I am partly to blame for that. She is headstrong, free spirited—something she gets from me.”
Grant gave her a quizzical look. “You’re not a porn star, too, are you?”
The throaty laugh was pure Lauren Bacall. “Don’t get free spirited mixed up with free bodied. Her career choices come from”—she paused in mid-sentence, taking a deep breath before continuing—“somewhere else.”
If there was something to read into that, Grant missed it. Instead, he focused on the main reason children went off the rails. Age differences in second marriages.
“What happened to your husband’s first wife?”
Mrs. Richards didn’t appear surprised by the question. “She died before we met.”
Grant didn’t apologize for her loss. It was her husband’s loss, not hers. As usual, though, one person’s loss was another person’s gain. “Either your husband’s had a hard paper round or I’d say you’re a lot younger than him.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Not for your husband.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I don’t need to like him.”
“Do you like me?”
Grant smiled but wouldn’t be drawn. “What are you, twenty years younger?”
She uncrossed her legs and stretched one arm across the back of her seat.
“You have a good eye. I am thirty-nine. My husband is fifty-nine. He made his fortune in oil. I married into that. Our daughter arrived around the same time. She is only nineteen, and I want her back.”
Grant saw the concern in her eyes and softened his tone. He wasn’t here to pass judgment on why people got married. It wasn’t something he had any experience of. What he did have experience of was grieving parents. Angelina Richards wasn’t dead, but she was lost to the family. It amounted to the same thing.
The sun was dipping toward the hills that gave Beverly Hills its name. Shafts of orange sunlight angled into the conservatory. For the first time, Grant noticed framed photographs dotted around the windowsills and wicker bookshelves. A smattering of family portraits. Several holiday pictures. A handful of official photos of the senator with various dignitaries. It was the man in the dress uniform and row of medals that caught his attention. The man who was inextricably linked to Senator Richards by virtue of each supporting the other’s election campaigns: Richards to a position on the US Senate, the other to the highest role in modern policing.
The chief of police.
If Richards was torn down in a blaze of scandal, then the police chief would fall with him. The LAPD couldn’t afford another scandal. Too much depended on the force regaining its good name and standing in the community. Too many people would be hurt if LA returned to the chaos that was the riots of ’92. That’s why Grant was sent to extricate the senator from the brown stuff. Get him out of the shit and the LAPD would be out of the shit.
Grant concentrated on the distressed mother. “She won’t stop if your husband asks her?”
Mrs. Richards shook her head. “That would only drive her deeper into this…industry.”
“Would she stop for you?”
She shook her head again, with more sadness this time. “She blames me…for many things.”
Grant had never been married. The deep divisions between mothers and daughters were alien to him. That wasn’t his area of expertise. Healing the rift wasn’t why he was chosen. Closing the operation that was feeding off it was. “Well, let me see what I can do.”
Mrs. Richards leaned forward and put a hand on his knee. The touch was warm; the emotion, cold. A practical manifestation of her plea for help. “Stop her. For me. Please.”
He stood up, and her hand dropped away. She stood too. There was a moment’s awkward silence, then she offered to have him driven to his hotel. Grant shook his head. “That’s okay. It’s a nice evening. I’ll walk down to the Metro.”
Mrs. Richards looked stunned that anyone would choose to travel on the Metro. She compromised with a counter offer. “I’ll have Jeeves drop you at the station.”
Grant stifled a laugh. “That’s his name? Shit, I thought that was just in the books.”
She smiled at him as she led the way through the day room to the hall. “Most things that find their way into books begin their life in reality.”
“True fiction and reality. Story of my life at the moment.”
The manservant or butler or whatever Jeeves was appeared from nowhere and took Grant out the front door. The sun was low in the evening sky. Insects buzzed around in the dying shafts of sunlight. A small car that looked foreign waited at the bottom of the steps. When Grant turned to say goodbye, Mrs. Richards had gone.
Twenty minutes later, he was dropped off on Hollywood Boulevard. Jeeves didn’t offer his hand or say goodbye. Grant didn’t speak either. He was too interested in the big black car that had been following them for the last two miles. The two big guys who’d smiled at him outside the Mayfair Hotel. Grant closed the door, and the little foreign car spun around and headed back toward the wealth and security of the hills.
The big car pulled up across the street. Grant stood on the sidewalk and waited. He’d had enough of this cat and mouse stuff. It was time to find out why Beavis and Butthead were shadowing him.
TEN
There are two golden rules to surviving a confrontation. Number one is avoid getting into a confrontation. Grant didn’t intend to turn this thing into a showdown but was realistic enough to know that it could become one. That led to number two: choose your battleground and don’t allow the enemy to dictate where you fight if possible. It was possible tonight. Crossing the street toward the big black car would give them home advantage.
Montecito Heights Page 5
