by Ace Atkins
“Flying rats,” he said.
“I would assume if you met me that you checked me out.”
He took a larger mouthful of hamburger than necessary and chewed, a thick wad in his right cheek. He was so skinny he appeared to not have eaten in days. His eyes darted up and down the pier as he ate.
“And you realize my questions about HELIOS are legit.”
He nodded some more and put down the burger. My number was called, and I quickly returned with a heavy tray. The flock of pigeons had doubled in number.
“They like fries,” he said.
“Wish I had my dog with me,” I said. “She’s a pro at scaring off the competition.”
Abrams ate some more, polishing off the burger and wiping his mouth with a napkin. He looked directly at me and said, “Everything I read about you was in Boston,” he said. “Why the hell are you out here?”
I told him about Gabby Leggett.
“I don’t know her,” he said. “Haven’t heard the name. But that sounds about right for HELIOS. Haldorn likes them young, blond, and beautiful. If they have money, so much the better. Does Gabby Leggett have money?”
“Some,” I said. “But not the kind of money you mean.”
“I got onto those people a couple of years ago,” he said. “I write sometimes for a free newspaper in Venice. There was a woman who called into our offices one day and told this wild story about her daughter, a decently known TV actress, being abducted into a cult.”
“And you were a bit dubious?”
“At first,” he said. “Sure. I met with her and we had coffee and the whole thing sounded like pretty wacky stuff. I’ll let her tell you more if you meet her, but at some point, all of this stuff starts making sense.”
“What’s her name?”
“The daughter is Bailee Scott.”
Before taking a bite of the burger, I offered an elegant shrug.
“The Totally Awesome Cami?”
“Sorry,” I said. “My TV only gets ESPN and Turner Classic Movies.”
“You didn’t miss much,” he said. “It was a show on the Disney Channel a few years ago. Bailee played a teenage girl with secret superpowers. It’s mainly about her balancing school, boys, friends, and fighting crime.”
“I often have to balance my love life with fighting crime,” I said. I pushed the untouched french fries over to him. “It’s not an easy task.”
He selected one and took a bite.
“And where is Bailee now?”
“Dead,” he said.
I looked at Abrams as he chewed. He stared back at me, swallowed, and nodded.
“When?”
“Little over a year ago,” he said. “It was ruled an overdose. Her family thinks different. From what I understand, Bailee had gotten pretty high up in HELIOS. Right below the woman who helped him start the whole thing.”
“The psychologist?” I said. “Riese?”
“Exactly,” he said. “I’m impressed. You know more about these people than you think.”
“I’ve met her daughter,” I said. “And I read your blog. All of it. So you believe it’s a front to make money?”
“Yep.”
“Are these people dangerous?” I said. “I believe they may be working with a crew of local thugs who afford protection for Haldorn.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “But I do know Haldorn is a certifiable and dangerous nut.”
“Is that why you haven’t gone public?”
“I published a piece two years ago, and we got sued for ten million dollars,” he said. “The legal fees bankrupted the paper. Other people who’ve tried to do the same get scared off from telling the truth. I don’t know how, but Haldorn has unlimited legal resources to shut down anyone who speaks out against HELIOS.”
“Can I meet your source?” I said. “Bailee Scott’s mother?”
I took another fry and tossed it onto the ground. A dozen or more pigeons fluttered onto it and flew off with it onto the boardwalk. One of the workers from Pier Burger came out with a broom and scattered the rest as I finished the burger.
“She’ll talk,” he said. “She loves to talk.”
“I love to listen.”
“The only problem will be shutting her up,” Abrams said. “And some of what she says is a little out there. She believes the whole thing is some kind of sex cult. She says she has proof that Haldorn is grooming his own private harem. I think Haldorn is a fake and a phony, and greedy as hell. But I’m not sure about the stranger stories I’ve heard about HELIOS. They’re all so damn private, and their former members flat-out won’t speak to me. It’s very, very difficult to know what goes on beyond those empowerment seminars.”
“What’s Bailee’s mom’s name?”
“Charlotte,” he said. “She was an actress, too. Lot of B movies. Stuff you’d see late at night on Skinemax. She was Miss July sometime back in the eighties. Really beautiful and sweet woman. But this thing with Bailee, it’s consumed her. Her whole house is like some kind of war room to take down HELIOS.”
I nodded. When I looked up, the pigeons had returned, eyeing the remnants of burgers and fries. I admired their persistence.
“War room sounds interesting,” I said. “Where do you sign me up?”
“Venice,” he said. “I’ll give her a call.”
“And you’ll vouch for me?”
He nodded and picked up his cell.
33
Charlotte Scott lived in a small Craftsman-style house that looked as it had been constructed by Bilbo Baggins himself. It appeared original and very period, with a low-pitched roof, intricate carved brackets, and stone work, paths, and chimneys. She greeted Lee Abrams warmly at the door with a kiss on both cheeks. For me, she stood back and studied me like a stray dog that had just knocked over her trash can.
“I’m not so sure about this, Lee,” Charlotte said.
“Have to trust someone,” Lee said. He shuffled onto one foot and then another, hands deep in his saggy jeans.
“I don’t trust anyone,” she said. “Look at him. He looks like one of those goons they send to follow me around.”
“They follow you?” I said.
“Don’t talk to me, mister,” Charlotte said. “Not until I’ve decided what I’m going to do.”
Charlotte Scott had one eye closed and the other trained on me. She was redheaded and intense-looking, as many redheads tended to be. Her hair was long, running down her back and spilling across a very amble bosom. The latter being displayed in a white lace camisole number with acid-washed jeans. It had been a few years since I’d seen acid-washed anything.
“Does he know about Bailee?”
“Yeah,” Lee said. “I told him.”
“And?”
“I’m very sorry about your daughter,” I said. “My client is concerned for her daughter as well.”
She didn’t speak, only turned and walked through the door, leaving it open. Lee Abrams shrugged and gestured me inside.
The furniture matched the home, with a grouping of Stickley chairs and wrought-iron lamps with Tiffany-glass shades. I imagined the home to be subdued and elegant at some earlier point. But it was hard to tell with the stacks of boxes and dry-erase boards set about her living room. The back doors were open, letting in a cool evening breeze that fluttered long white curtains.
“How do we know you’re not one of them?” she said.
“Would you like me to recite Keats while performing a one-armed push-up?”
“I don’t know what the hell that would prove,” she said.
“Intelligence,” I said. “Determination.”
“Sure,” she said. “Go for it, big-time Boston private eye.”
I hit the floor with one arm behind my back while extolling the virtues of a Grecian urn. I c
ranked out a fast ten and then just for the hell of it went for twenty. I finished and hopped up from my knees.
“That was lovely,” she said, walking toward me.
“The push-ups or the poems?”
“All of it,” she said. “I like him, Lee. He has pep.”
Scott was a little heavy, with tired green eyes and skin so white it seemed to lack any pigment at all.
“And you’re really a private eye?” she said. “Or is that a gag to get me talking?”
I looked to Lee Abrams and he raised his shoulders and showed the palms of his hands. I reached for my wallet and showed her my license.
“He’s real, Charlotte,” Abrams said. “And better than that, he’s willing to listen. Cops won’t even do that.”
“What’s in it for you?” she said. “I lost my daughter to that rotten son of a bitch.”
“Haldorn?” I said.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare say that man’s name in my presence.”
“If it makes any difference, I put a damper on his birthday party last night,” I said. “I tossed one of his guards into a nice table of appetizers.”
“It makes a difference.”
She invited me into the living room and we all sat. My chair faced the wall and a six-foot-tall oil painting of a much younger and much skinnier Charlotte Scott. In the painting, she sat at the edge of an antique velvet chair and wore nothing but a pendant.
The real-life Charlotte Scott reached for a pack of Virginia Slims and fired one up. I looked from her to the painting and the painting back to her. You’ve come a long way, baby.
“It’s okay to stare,” she said. “You shouldn’t feel bad about it. Or pervy. It’s beautiful. It’s fucking art.”
“That’s nice to hear.” I worried that staring too hard at the painting was akin to looking into the bright headlights of an oncoming truck.
“Thirty years ago, I had the best set of tits in L.A.,” she said. “James Caan told me that at the mansion during the Midsummer Night’s Dream party. Before he told the next Playmate that. And all of them that followed. All I got out of it was five thousand bucks and an introduction to every casting couch in town. Of course, that’s how I met my first husband, Rick, that unholy prick. He was a producer on a few of my movies.”
“And he was Bailee’s father?”
“Last month she turned twenty-nine,” she said, tapping the long ash of the skinny cigarette. “So beautiful. A truckload of talent. More than anyone, I blame myself. I should’ve stopped her. I should’ve marched right into that goddamn compound, grabbed my little girl by the hand, and gotten her the hell out of there.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Do you?” she said. “How could you? Do you have kids, Mr. Spenser?”
“I don’t have biological children,” I said. “But I have two young people I care for like my own. A boy—now a fine man—and a tough, smart young woman.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s something. And you’d do anything in the world for them?”
“You better believe it.”
“I would’ve done the same for Bailee,” she said. “If I’d known everything, I would’ve shot Haldorn right in his Johnson. Would you like to see a picture of her?”
I nodded. Charlotte Scott stood up and padded off on bare feet to the kitchen and returned with a studio head shot. Bailee Scott had been a doe-eyed girl with a lot of big, bouncy blond hair caught in a glossy frame. The photo said Bailee Scott, The Totally Awesome Cami.
“That was the good old days,” she said. “Before she accused me of stealing her residuals and ruining her life. All of that junk started as soon as she got in with those HELIOS people.”
“How did she find HELIOS?” I said. “Or did they find her?”
Lee Abrams leaned forward in his seat and rubbed his hands together. His right knee shot up and down with nervous energy as he looked from me to Charlotte Scott. He’d thrown on a threadbare flannel shirt over his black T-shirt. The material so worn it looked like cheesecloth. His face was gaunt, bony, and hard as he rubbed his unshaven jaw.
“One of the actors on her show recruited her,” she said. “I didn’t think much of it at first. Why would I? They called themselves an executive training course and this was like three, four years after they canceled her show. She talked about them helping harness her talent to direct, maybe produce. It all sounded fine and positive up to the point I noticed she was writing checks. A shit-ton of checks to those people.”
“How much?”
“Last I knew, it was nearly a hundred grand,” she said.
Charlotte stubbed out the cigarette and started a new one. A warm breeze blew through the open doors, which overlooked a curated rock garden. The air smelled salty and warm. She’d lit several candles that had been placed around the room and within the stone fireplace.
“The more questions I asked, the more defiant she got. She finally moved out and in with those creeps. I knew from the moment she talked about Phaethon this and Phaethon that.”
“Wait,” I said, holding up my palm. “Who or what is a Phaethon?”
“Fucking Haldorn,” she said. “Fucking Joseph Haldorn only goes by Phaethon to his HELIOS people. They aren’t allowed to call him anything else. He may look like a stumblebum with the brushy beard and the long hair, but behind those walls and among his HELIOS jeepers creepers, he is Phaethon. Numero Uno. He wears a goddamn white robe, sandals, the works. Jesus Christ Superstar.”
“But can he turn water into wine?”
“No,” she said, blowing out some smoke. “But he can turn bullshit into money. A lot of goddamn money.”
“I was hoping you could explain a little more how that worked.”
“You’ve got to understand, everything they do there, everything the member is supposed to achieve, is about getting closer to Phaethon,” she said. “You work your way up the ladder, paying out the fucking nose, and recruiting anyone who will listen, until you get into the inner circle.”
“How far did Bailee get?” I said.
Charlotte took out the cigarette and looked to Lee and back to me. She didn’t speak but only held up three fingers. I looked to Lee Abrams and he nodded.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” I said. “How did she die?”
Charlotte got up again and walked back to the open kitchen and returned with a very large box. She placed it on top of the coffee table and slid it toward me. “There,” she said. “There you go. That’s all that’s left of my little girl. Autopsy results. Coroner’s inquest. Letters from medical experts from all over the country. According to L.A. County, Bailee died of a drug overdose. But that’s absolute bullshit. My daughter may have been naïve, she may have followed the wrong people, but she didn’t take drugs. Somebody shot her up with heroin and left her for dead.”
I looked to her. I didn’t say a word.
“That’s what happens when you try to leave,” she said. “I have four different medical examiners that spotted signs of restraint and starvation and dehydration. Haldorn and HELIOS kept her locked up tight for nearly two months before they decided to kill her. My whole life now is about trying to get someone, anyone, to fucking listen to me.”
I reached for the box, flipped through the file headers. I noticed one labeled BRANDED. I slipped out the file and flipped through several 8x10 photos of a crude-looking scar that resembled the sun. I looked over at Lee Abrams and then over at Charlotte Scott.
“Haldorn’s signature,” Scott said.
“Does he brand all of them?” I said.
“Only the special ones,” she said. She blew smoke from her nose.
“Why?”
“Why does anyone brand anything?” she said. “To prove ownership.”
I held the photo in my hand. “Can I take these?”
“No
,” she said. “But you can copy what you like.”
I reached for my cell phone and began to select a few files.
“It won’t matter,” she said. “Nothing matters to the prosecutors or the cops. They don’t believe you. They’ll think you’re crazy and not hear a word you’re saying.”
“I can be very persuasive.”
“It’s gonna take a lot more than that and one-armed push-ups, stud,” she said. “To take down Haldorn and HELIOS, you’ll need a goddamn army.”
34
Traveling the twelve miles from Venice to Hollywood took me an hour and a half.
At the hotel, I debated whether a beer or a workout would put me in a brighter mood. I opted for both. I did forty-five minutes on the treadmill with a quick circuit on the machines and then headed up to my room to shower. I planned to meet Z later for dinner, to trade information on what we’d learned that day.
I changed into a fresh pair of dark green chinos and a black polo and took the elevator back to the Loews lobby. As I saddled up to the bar, I found out my lodging wasn’t a well-kept secret. Nancy Sharp was waiting for me, perched atop a barstool and enjoying an extra-large martini with several olives.
“What are the chances?” I said.
“Pretty good,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour. I was worried you’d left a back way without your car.”
“You have people watching me.”
“Or maybe just me.”
My eyes darted around the lobby as she took a sip of the martini and grinned. Sharp looked nice. Nicer than I’d ever seen her, in a black silk top with small straps over her shapely shoulders. Her silver hair complemented her tan skin and crinkly hazel eyes. Her legs looked long and strong in a pair of expensive jeans, and her arms reflected a woman who worked out. Or did a lot of yoga.
“You went to a lot of trouble,” I said. “All you had to do is call.”
“Would you have met with me?”
“Sure,” I said. “After speaking with Gabby, I’m more committed than ever to joining HELIOS. I want to be the best investigator that I can possibly be. Use those untapped portions of my brain.”
