by Ace Atkins
“She’s no longer blackmailing you?”
“Like I said, Gabby is a very high-strung, passionate woman,” Yamashiro said. “Some statements were made in the heat of the moment. I just want to make sure that you don’t leave this situation still concerned with my private affairs.”
In the console were six neatly aligned bottles of spring water set in cup holders glowing with blue light. I took one and unscrewed the cap. The water promised to have come from an Alaskan glacier but still tasted like tap to me.
“You know she is involved with HELIOS?”
“What’s HELIOS?” he said.
“Really?” I said.
Yamashiro pulled off his sunglasses and tucked them into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He pinched his nose and closed his tired and bloodshot eyes.
“Again, Mr. Spenser, these are personal matters,” he said. “Surely Gabby’s quest for self-discovery has no bearing on your work. And finding that she is indeed alive and well should conclude your services to her family.”
“You would think so,” I said.
“But that’s not the case?”
“Nope,” I said. “I’m on my own mission of discovery. What do you know about HELIOS?”
“I know Joseph Haldorn is very well respected,” he said. “And he’s done a great deal of good for many women in the industry. I heard you made a real ass of yourself at his birthday party.”
“I was supposed to pop out of a cake but got so damn excited, I ended up knocking a couple of his men into the crudités.”
“Yes,” he said. “I heard all about it.”
“Not to be rude,” I said. “But when you enticed me into the backseat of your car, you said something about money.”
His face lit up, feeling himself back in comfortable territory discussing finances. “I want you to be paid for your time.”
“A payoff,” I said. “How old-fashioned, Jimmy.”
“Not a payoff,” he said. “A compensation for your time out here. You became entangled in my personal life and I want to make sure you don’t leave with a bad taste in your mouth.”
“Are you offering me cash,” I said. “Or Listerine?”
Yamashiro pinched the bridge of his nose a second time. I could smell booze on his breath. Scotch. He looked like he’d had quite a bit of it the night before. His suit jacket was rumpled and there was the faint trace of lipstick on his collar. I was relieved he had such a modern and mature arrangement with Mrs. Yamashiro.
He reached into a leather pocket by the door and extracted a white envelope. He handed it over to me, the envelope feeling as thick and heavy as a paperback of War and Peace.
“Are we good?” he said.
I opened the envelope and flicked through a great deal of hundred-dollar bills. I lifted my eyes to him as we headed like a bat out of hell toward Fairfax.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“Which is?”
“Is Gabby Leggett still blackmailing you?” I said. “Or did you come to a financial arrangement with her? Or with her people at HELIOS?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“That’s the entirety of my concern.”
Jimmy Yamashiro gave me a long, hard stare, the kind that would strike fear in the hearts of ambitious producers and coffee-fetchers alike. As I lifted the water to my lips, I tried to make sure my hands remained steady. The water still tasted like tap but was very cold.
“Are we going somewhere?” I said, looking to the driver’s eyes in the rearview. “Or are you just taking me for a ride?”
“I want your word,” Yamashiro said. “That you’re done.”
“Nope.”
“Is the money not sufficient?”
“If it ever got out that I took payoffs to lay off a case, I’d no longer have any cases.”
“This is between you and me,” he said. “Harvey can drive you to the airport.”
“Harvey?” I said. “Damn, that’s funny. He doesn’t look like a Harvey.”
“And what does a Harvey look like?”
“A six-foot tall rabbit,” I said. “Loves martinis.”
I could tell Jimmy Yamashiro, major movie studio CEO, had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. God help us. It was nearly enough to get me to stop believing in the magic of Hollywood.
“So, do we have a deal?”
I tossed the heavy package of money in the space between us. “The answer is no.”
“Harvey,” he said. “Take Spenser back to his hotel.”
“Why do you care if I look into HELIOS?” I said. “Or if I find out if Gabby Leggett was trying to shake you down? Something, for the record, she denies.”
“Just walk away, Spenser,” he said. “It’s best for everyone.”
“For Gabby?”
“For everyone.”
Harvey made a grand, sweeping U-turn at Fairfax and headed back from where we came on Highland. We drove at a brisk pace under a highway overpass. The interior of the car was thrown in and out of shadow like the flickering of a black-and-white film.
“All is fair in love and career moves in Tinseltown.”
“What does that matter?” he said. “Why would you even say something so ridiculous? She was a beautiful girl. I am a rich and powerful man. We had an arrangement. We both had needs. It worked for several months just fine.”
“I think it would matter why you’d be willing to let such an indiscretion go.”
Yamashiro swallowed. He reached into his suit pocket for his eyeglasses. Traffic gathered at the stoplight, and as we sat there, I could hear his slow and ragged breathing. He wet his lips and nodded ever so slightly. The traffic started to flow and Harvey made a hard left turn back to my hotel.
“Please don’t speak to me, Mr. Spenser,” he said. “Or contact me ever again.”
“And here I was thinking this was the start of a beautiful friendship,” I said.
Again, my words didn’t resonate with Yamashiro. So much for the classics.
31
Two empty coffee cups and a half-eaten box of donuts sat on Zebulon Sixkill’s desk. They nestled in nicely along with various downloaded civil suits against Joseph Haldorn, a few Google maps of his properties, and several printouts of background checks from LexisNexis. After my joyride with Harvey and Jimmy Yamashiro, I’d crossed the street and walked upstairs to Z’s office. For more than three hours, we’d perused online records and newspaper stories. The information was voluminous and not surprising.
“So Haldorn is a complete fraud and a phony,” Z said.
“Which makes him what in L.A.?” I said.
“Highly respected.”
I saluted him with my fresh cup of coffee and debated whether to take on the second half of the old-fashioned donut laying on a napkin. I had been told all Californians embraced a healthy lifestyle. And yet I hadn’t so much as tried a kale smoothie.
“Used-car salesman, president of a failed multilevel marketing company,” I said. “No college education we can find. No experience in business, philosophy, or psychology. He’s really worked his way up the self-help ladder. A man from nowhere now rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood elite.”
“Not exactly nowhere,” Z said. “I found a registration to a 2000 Dodge Neon and a mortgage back in Chesterfield, Missouri. Not to mention three ex-wives. Trying to track them down now.”
“Not exactly a man of mystery,” I said. “How about HELIOS? And Haldorn’s right-hand woman, Riese?”
“Unlike Haldorn, she actually does have a Ph.D. from Stanford in psychology.”
“Good thing shrinks can’t resist me.”
“Perhaps they see a man in need.”
“I thought it was my broad shoulders and quick wit.”
Z offered me a dubious glance and lean
ed back into a large leather office chair. He spun from side to side like the captain of an intergalactic starship. Scattered across his desk were several photos of Gabby Leggett in varying states of undress.
Z shuffled through the photos, choosing one carefully and laying it above Haldorn’s many bankruptcies and lawsuits. It was a close shot of Gabby Leggett’s face: the wide, catlike eyes, pert nose, and full mouth. Her tongue was touching the top of her upper lip. Her hair was blond, lustrous, and shiny, falling against shapely freckled shoulders.
“Funny,” Z said. “I leave L.A. to destroy myself in Boston. And Gabby Leggett leaves Boston to destroy herself in L.A.”
“Only you put yourself back together.”
“With some help,” he said. “And it took some time.”
“You think she’s redeemable?” I said.
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Nope,” I said. “Not everyone.”
“Some people do things that put them past that point.”
“When we first met, you thought you had,” I said. “You’d quit believing in yourself.”
“Yeah,” Z said, standing. His left arm hanging tight in the sling across his broad chest. He moved to a tall bookshelf and pulled a football helmet out from among the books, holding it by the battered face mask. “I guess it depends on the company you keep.”
“Joe Haldorn promises mental and spiritual self-improvement,” I said.
“Back on the Rez, when I was a kid, there was a man who called himself White Elk. He sold trinkets and potions to tourists. And although an outsider, he promised he was raising money for a community center for the kids. We believed him. I thought there would be a rec center with basketball courts and a gym. But one day, White Elk just disappeared. And all the money.”
“White Elk?” I said.
“I know,” Z said. “But some of the elders vouched for him. They said his mother was full Cree. But he’d paid them off to say that. No one cared he was phony. We all wanted to believe in what he promised.”
Z was a little taller than me and had a lot more muscle. His black hair was pushed back from his wide, flat face. The scars, although obtained in violence, offered him a lot of character, making him seem older than in his mid-thirties. A photo of him barreling through the offensive line for a touchdown hung above his California state license.
“You’ve done very well,” I said.
Z looked around the spare, cluttered office on the second floor of a strip mall and smiled. “Living the dream,” he said.
“Accept it,” I said. “You’ve built a new life. Through hard work and talent. That’s nothing to scoff at.”
“I don’t know how you’ve done it all these years,” he said. “I’ve spent all morning downloading court records and files and not finding a damn thing to help us. The only interesting details come from a blog that attacks the HELIOS philosophy and teaching. I tried to find out more, but there isn’t any contact information or details of who runs it.”
“Could Jem Yoon find out?”
“Maybe,” he said. “The blog hasn’t been updated in a few months. The last entry had kind of a rambling message about pressure from attorneys that worked for HELIOS. Whoever runs it wants to keep their name a secret.”
“Print out what you’ve got?”
“They don’t get much into the teaching or the philosophy,” he said. “Mainly the blog accuses HELIOS of being a multilevel marketing scam.”
“Sort of a self-help Amway?”
“Members are called Hyperions,” Z said. “Each Hyperion must bring in at least five members to serve and train under them. Those members must bring in five of their own recruits, and so on and so on.”
“Like Fabergé shampoo.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s kept my locks bouncy and smelling great for years,” I said. “You should try it.”
The printer hummed to life and started spitting out pages. Z stood up, grabbed the papers, and handed them to me.
“Call me if you and Team Sixkill find something.”
“Where are you going?”
“Working out,” I said. “Might grab a bite to eat. That’s the joy of having an apprentice.”
“You want me to do your work for you?”
“Nope,” I said. “I want Jem Yoon to do your work and for you to do my work and so on and so on.”
“Like the shampoo.”
“Super shine, super body,” I said. “And my hair smells as fresh as a meadow.”
“Gabby is still in trouble.”
“Yep.”
“And Haldorn may be worse than Yamashiro?”
“I think they may be equally reprehensible.”
“Men like them don’t do men like us any favors.”
“No,” I said. “They don’t.”
He picked up his phone and pressed the button for Jem Yoon. I spotted her contact photo with the bright pink hair. “Behind every great detective is a smart woman who locates a key clue.”
I smiled and shot him with my thumb and forefinger. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
32
Twenty minutes later, Jem Yoon found a name, two addresses, and four phone numbers for a thirty-five-year-old white male named Lee Abrams. My workout and lunch would wait. Both addresses were in Santa Monica. On the fourth phone number, a man picked up.
“Mr. Abrams?”
“Who the hell is this?”
I told him.
“And what the hell do you want?”
“To talk to you about charisma,” I said. “You seem to have a lot of natural talent.”
“Fuck you, man.”
I then told him more about my profession, why I was in the greater Los Angeles area, and what I hoped to learn about HELIOS.
“I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
I then repeated a bit of the information Jem Yoon had passed on to me about IP addresses, geolocators, and the name and brand of his laptop computer.
“Oh,” he said.
“See,” I said. “What do you have to lose?”
“How about my life?” he said.
And hung up.
I called back twice. No answer. I called back a third time. He picked up.
“Come on, man,” he said. “You’re going to get me fucking killed.”
“How about you meet with me live and in person and decide for yourself if I’m sincere,” I said. “I’m good on the phone. But a real charmer in person.”
“Okay, sure,” he said. “You drive up in a black van, snatch me up, and my parents get a nice phone call in a few weeks. ‘Gee, Mr. and Mrs. Abrams, we found your son in a dumpster. How might you pay for shipping?’”
“We make it public,” I said. “Choose a location where I can meet you without a black van in sight. That’s how they do it in the movies. It keeps everyone honest.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Lee,” I said. “I don’t like these HELIOS people any more than you do. Your blog is the best information I’ve found.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “You’re the Hedda Hopper of California cults.”
“You think HELIOS is a cult?” he said.
“Indeed I do, Lee.”
He agreed to meet with me later that afternoon at the Santa Monica Pier. I decided I was a big boy and didn’t need the assistance of Sixkill or Chollo to shadow me. I figured I could make it safe and sound onto the pier to stand toe-to-toe with a dangerous blogger like Lee Abrams.
At a little before six, I found a parking deck on Second Street and headed for the pier. I had on jeans, boots, and a spiffy navy T-shirt with a convenient pocket to hold my Ray-Bans. I put on the sunglasses, ball cap down in my eyes, and walked with the crowd toward the smell of ch
urros, saltwater, and weed.
The big wooden pier jutted out far into the Pacific, crowded with shops and restaurants on one side, culminating in an amusement park with its iconic Ferris wheel. I made it about halfway through the throngs of tourists and onlookers, past the monks in flowing robes selling meditation books, the James Brown cover band offering a funk gospel to the masses, and down toward the agreed meeting spot: Pier Burger.
I had given Lee Abrams my description. He did not reciprocate.
I waited for nearly twenty minutes past our meeting time, without luck. The sun was getting lower and people gathered at the pier railing to watch the surfers paddle into the oncoming waves. A woman in a pink string bikini roller-skated past me. A man wearing jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, and a costume bear head gazed wistfully into the sunset. Ah, California.
Among those gathered to watch the cover band, a skinny, loose-jointed man with matted black hair kept peering over at me. He was medium height and scruffy, wearing a black T-shirt two sizes too big with ragged jeans and black Chuck Taylor high-tops. The shoelaces hung out, dirty and untied.
I leaned against an outdoor table at Pier Burger, watching him behind sunglasses while pretending not to watch him. My furtive abilities often staggered me.
After a while, I watched him hitch a backpack up over his shoulder and walk toward the restaurant. I patiently waited as he ordered something at the window, meandered a bit until his number was called, and then set his tray down two tables over.
“I would’ve bought you a burger,” I said.
“Shit,” he said. He stood and reached down for his backpack.
“Sit down,” I said. “I didn’t mean to spook you. Don’t you want fries with that?”
“I ordered so fast I forgot.”
“Hold on.”
I walked up to the window, ordered a Pier Burger for myself and two orders of fries. I sat back down with Lee Abrams while I waited for my food. Several pigeons had gathered. He shooed them away, and they fluttered up into the air, only to return moments later.
“Persistent,” I said.
