2111
LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT
HOLLENBECK STATION
just in case he didn’t know where he’d spent the last few hours. Considering how long the roads were in America, the police station was one of the few buildings with a number on East First. As far as Grant could tell, neither Los Antojitos Café nor Zeeno’s Nutrition opposite had street numbers. The only thing that made them stand out was the big black car parked outside with two big Hawaiians who weren’t Hawaiians smiling at him through the windshield.
Grant held up a hand in greeting. He looked for the second car, but Rodrigo Dominguez wasn’t there. Good. The drug baron had given Grant three days, and this was still only the first. His goons were obviously keeping tabs on him but surely they weren’t the ones waiting to pick him up.
Grant looked each way up the street. There were no other cars parked out front of Hollenbeck Station. He was looking for the minivan, but there was no sign of Robin Citrin and her film crew. Then a car pulled around the corner from North Chicago where it had been waiting and stopped in front of him. Not the NYPD patrol car Grant had last seen him driving but a battered pickup with Special Effects Unlimited Inc. on the door panel.
It was hard to know who to trust in a foreign land, and there was nowhere more foreign than Los Angeles. Grant considered that as the passenger door opened and Chuck Tanburro beckoned for him to get in.
THIRTY-SIX
“I came as soon as I heard. Front desk said you hadn’t been released yet.”
Tanburro let the engine idle as Grant got in the pickup and closed the door. He didn’t appear to notice the black car parked over the road, concentrating instead on his passenger and the police station beyond. Grant was focusing on the bridge two blocks ahead where East First passed under the Golden State Freeway. It gave him something to look at instead of the man who’d sent him to the bank in East Los Angeles. Grant didn’t speak. Tanburro interpreted the silence correctly.
“It wasn’t my fault. I don’t know how it got fucked around.”
A constant stream of traffic flowed along the freeway. The noise was a distant hum, but it seemed to Grant like it was in the background wherever you went in LA. A helicopter hovered over the Los Angeles River Basin in the distance. The river was another inaccurate description since it was really just an extra-wide concrete storm drain with a trickle down the middle that was the river. It was true what they said: nothing in LA was what it seemed.
Including the people you counted as your friends.
The black car pulled away from the opposite curb and drove slowly past the pickup. Two pairs of eyes watched Tanburro and Grant until the car turned left and disappeared up North Chicago. Grant watched the Hawaiians go, then turned to look at Tanburro.
“How come you told me to go to the bank?”
Tanburro looked like he’d been asked a question that had an obvious answer.
“Because you were looking for the girl.”
“But why did you tell me to go to that bank?”
“Because the girl’s card was used at the ATM.”
“And who told you that?”
Tanburro squinted his displeasure at the way this was going.
“Hey. You asked me if I had friends on the force. Well, I reached out to them. And that’s who gave me the heads-up when her card was flagged.”
“And you trust him?”
“He had my back for six years. Yes, I trust him.”
“Bob Snow?”
“Yes.”
Grant stroked his chin as various scenarios played in his mind. None of them explained why a trusted detective would give false information to his former partner in order to get Grant arrested. None of them gave credence to the CSI: NY technical advisor fronting the bad guys or being involved in kidnapping and extortion. That simply didn’t add up.
“Who told him?”
Tanburro shrugged. “I didn’t ask. Assumed he’d been monitoring her details for me.”
“So he’d been asking around?”
“I guess so.”
“Well, guess this: who d’you think warned me to back off in there?”
Tanburro shrugged again. “Surprise me.”
“Chief of Police Sherman Gillespie.”
Tanburro let out a low whistle. Grant watched his eyes and was pleased to see that they registered genuine surprise. Whoever was pulling the strings, he didn’t think it was Tanburro.
“Somebody told him about my visit to the girl’s cabin. The broken window and the blood on the carpet.”
“What blood on the carpet?”
Again, genuine surprise. Grant pressed the point.
“Not many people knew I’d been to the house.”
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell him.”
“Somebody did. And somebody made it official.”
Tanburro narrowed his eyes.
“Somebody with friends in high places?”
Grant was thinking along the same lines but couldn’t understand why Senator Richards would do such a thing if he wanted Grant to be discreet. In any case, the chief had suggested he knew Richards hadn’t reported his daughter missing. None of this made any sense. Grant shook his head.
“I don’t know. Something’s rotten in Denmark.”
Tanburro’s brow furrowed as a fresh thought struck him.
“Why did they arrest you? Being at the bank isn’t against the law.”
Another gap in Tanburro’s knowledge that indicated he wasn’t involved. Grant felt a sense of relief that at least there was one person he could trust.
“They found the girl’s bankcard in my pocket.”
“How’d that get…”
Then Tanburro nodded his understanding. “Palmed it. Sleight of hand.”
Grant nodded. “By somebody who knew I was going to be there.”
He turned to look out of his window at the pink and orange obscenity that was Hollenbeck Station. Beyond that and two blocks north was East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue and the former PLS Check Cashers turned Bank of America. Farther north, across the San Bernardino Freeway and into the foothills, was Montecito Heights. The geometry felt too convenient to be simple coincidence.
“D’you think you can get Bob Snow to check an address without half the LAPD turning up on my doorstep?”
“Check where it is?”
“Check who owns it.”
“Sure I can. Bob’s not the leak. I guarantee it.”
“Good.”
Grant gave Tanburro the address of the party the other night. 1042 Montecito Drive. Tanburro didn’t write it down. Addresses were easier to remember than car numbers.
“I’ll have to call him later. He doesn’t go on shift for a couple of hours.”
“Thanks.”
Grant faced front. The helicopter had lost interest in whatever was happening in the dry riverbed and had drifted off toward the west. No doubt another helicopter would replace it soon, maintaining the record of there never being a clear blue sky above LA without at least one chopper causing a blemish on it.
Tanburro pulled away from the curb toward the freeway underpass.
“Hotel?”
Grant thought about that for a moment, then shook his head. “I need to go somewhere else. Could you run me to Hollywood?”
“No problem.”
The battered pickup with Special Effects Unlimited Inc. on the door panel went through the darkness of the underpass and came out into bright sunshine on the other side. It felt like a symbolic return to the light. Grant was glad he and Tanburro were friends again. In the police service, like the armed forces, your colleagues were your friends and your friends were your brothers. When shit hits the fan, they’re all you’ve got.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Tanburro dropped Grant at Sunset Television & Film I
nc. on North Cahuenga. Tanburro didn’t pull into the parking lot, preferring to park on the street opposite the custard yellow brickwork of Stepan’s Automotive.
Late afternoon sun blazed through the windshield, so they both had their side windows open. Hollywood traffic droned in the background. The lot between Sunset Television and Amoeba Music resembled the hanging gardens of Babylon with its row of cypress trees and pink flowers, no doubt intended to provoke memories of Kenneth Anger’s book Hollywood Babylon, the underground classic about Hollywood’s darkest secrets. Grant wondered what secrets he was going to uncover today.
Tanburro didn’t turn the engine off. “You got your cell?”
“I just got out of my cell. I think I’ll revert to calling it a mobile phone.”
“Nobody’ll understand you.”
“I’ve got it with me anyway.”
“I’ll give you a call about the Montecito Heights address.”
“Thanks.”
Grant opened the door and got out, then leaned in through the opening.
“Be careful who you trust. Tell Snow to watch out too.”
Tanburro nodded. Grant closed the door, and the pickup pulled away from the curb with a gentle roar from the twin exhaust. It turned right on Sunset and headed back toward town. Grant took a deep breath, inhaling the flowery scent that reminded him of Senator Richards’ study, then walked through the gates into the TV studio parking lot. Robin Citrin’s minivan was parked in the bay farthest from the door. Grant was glad. This discussion should involve all of them. With a brief nod toward the cameraman, who was leaning against the minivan, Grant crossed the lot and went through the studio door.
“You getting good coverage?”
They were sitting around the table in L. Q. Patton’s office. Robin Citrin, Patton, and Grant. The blond receptionist had just brought a round of cold drinks and left. Ice clinked the glass as Grant took a drink of orange juice. Patton looked as cool and casual as ever, but it was Citrin who answered.
“Would have liked to see what happened inside.”
“The bank or the police station?”
“We can hack the CCTV from the bank. The station is the mystery footage.”
“The bank’s a mystery too. Manager didn’t set it right.”
“No recording?”
“No.”
“Well. I guess most of it happened outside. We got most of that. And yes, we’re getting pretty good footage. You should get arrested more often.”
“It’s better than getting shot or blown up, I suppose.”
“Like in Boston? Yeah. I should be careful what I wish for. Don’t want you getting shot again.”
There was a hint of compassion in her voice. Patton noticed but didn’t mention it. He clinked the ice in his glass to bring the meeting to order, then put the drink down on the table.
“We can cut the footage together anyway we like. Add a voiceover and some back-story, make it tell whatever story we choose. But like Robin said, I’d like to know what happened in Hollenbeck Station.”
Grant took a cool drink while he considered just how much to tell them. By the time he put the glass on the table, he’d made up his mind. He told them everything about Senator Richards’ daughter and her porn career, including Grant’s visit to the house in Coldwater Canyon Drive and the girl’s bankcard being in his pocket at the ATM. He ended with his visit by the chief of police and the threat to have Grant deported. He briefly mentioned the knife attack in the washroom and the cemetery meeting with Rodrigo Dominguez but kept quiet about the veiled threat toward Citrin. He didn’t see the point in worrying her just yet. He still had two days to sort that problem out.
When he’d finished talking, the room fell silent.
There was a collective clinking of ice as all three took a drink.
Robin spoke first. “Jeepers creepers.”
Patton kept his voice low and even.
“Times ten. When you want to piss somebody off, you don’t aim low.”
Grant didn’t mention that the guy he’d apparently pissed off was the same guy he’d been sent here to protect. In a roundabout sort of way, it didn’t matter because L. Q. Patton had his finger on the pulse anyway.
“Richards campaigned hard to get Chief Gillespie elected. And Gillespie has been very vocal in his support of Senator Richards. The mutual backslapping means they are inextricably linked in the public’s eye. If scandal befalls one, then it sinks them both.”
Grant nodded.
“That’s why I told Richards his best option was to come clean. Being a protective father would show him in a better light than trying to cover it up if he got found out.”
Patton smiled. “You don’t know much about American politics, do you?”
“I don’t know much about any politics.”
“Well, in America, we have a puritan streak. Doesn’t matter to the voters how many countries we invade as long as we keep one foot on the floor and the price of gas down.”
Grant rattled his glass and raised an eyebrow. “The Hays Code.”
“The Hays Code of 1930: ‘No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it, therefore sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil, or sin.’ Before the MPAA rating system came in. Back in the dark old days, you couldn’t have a man and a woman kissing on a bed unless they both had at least one foot on the ground.”
“Origami sex.”
“Kama Sutra could probably work something out. But in American politics, we pretty much stick to the Hays Code. We like our politicians squeaky clean. That means not having your daughter sucking cock all over Hollywood.”
“Didn’t seem to bother Clinton.”
“Getting your cock sucked is different. Lying about it’s what sunk Clinton.”
Citrin kept out of the conversation, preferring to drink her juice and listen.
Grant played devil’s advocate but already knew the answer. “And that’s bad for Gillespie how?”
“Because cocksuckers will bring you down if you’re in public office. The chief of police is a public office.”
Grant shook his head.
“Getting the same way back in England. Chief constables used to rule their forces with a rod of iron. What they said, went. Politicians couldn’t interfere because it would show the police service as being a tool of government and not the impartial guardians of peace that we should be.”
He put his glass on the table.
“Nowadays, any copper gets above inspector and he’s more interested in climbing the political ladder than policing the streets. If chief constables don’t agree with government policy or meet targets, they get replaced. Job’s fucked.”
Citrin felt it was time to show she understood what the men were talking about.
“Having a chief that’s above reproach is even more important now after the riots of ’92. The public image of the LAPD is paramount.”
“And their public image is what a Senator Richards scandal could tarnish.”
Nobody answered because it wasn’t a question. Everyone nodded and they all took another drink of juice. The statement put an end to that line of conversation. Patton changed the subject.
“I’ve been keeping a tag on Zed Productions since you asked about locations for that movie of theirs.”
“The Hunt for Pink October.”
Patton grinned his best James Coburn grin. All teeth and crinkly eyes. “That’s the one. They registered several locations for external shots. Somewhere up in the Hollywood Hills, a few in East LA, a couple of days at the marina at Long Beach.”
Grant leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Tell me they didn’t shoot sex scenes out in the open.”
“I don’t know what they shot out in the open. They only have to register locati
ons, not what scenes they filmed.”
“So, assuming that lot was for establishing shots, where did they film the sex scenes?”
Patton flicked through a sheaf of papers he’d picked up from the table.
“There are three houses they rented for a couple of days each. A boat at the marina they hired for a week. And two private homes donated by their owners.”
Grant’s ears pricked up. “Whereabouts are those?”
“Premises not hired or registered for movie shoots don’t have to be disclosed. All they’ve got to give is the general area for budgeting records in case the IRS comes looking for tax.”
“And?”
The sheets of paper were stapled in one corner. Patton folded the pages back one at a time until he found the relevant entry. “One in East Los Angeles. The other in Montecito Heights.”
Grant took a final swig of his juice, then leaned back in his chair. East Los Angeles, where he’d been arrested at the Bank of America. And Montecito Heights. He thought about the house in the foothills overlooking downtown LA and remembered the decorative arch in the garden that he’d stood beneath with Robin Citrin. The same arch that had been in the background while a gray-haired man had his cock sucked by a teenage girl with stars tattooed on either side of her crotch.
Patton hadn’t finished. “Zed Productions must be moving upmarket, though.”
Grant brushed the previous revelations aside. “How’s that?”
“He’s upped his location budget by some mark for his latest extravaganza.”
Patton ran his finger down the list and let out a low whistle. “They’ve got a permit to close two square blocks downtown tomorrow for a shootout, car chase, and bank robbery.”
“Like the one I saw being filmed the other night?”
“Same but bigger. Stunt crews and vehicles, traffic control, the whole nine yards. More blockbuster than cocksucker.”
“Where?”
Patton read out the location. Grant ran it through the map in his head. It sounded familiar. Then he remembered walking past it on his way to the CSI: NY shoot the other day. Tall buildings and mirrored windows. One building stood out in his mind, and he had to fight back a smile from breaking out on his lips.
Montecito Heights Page 21
