Cold Shoulder

by Lynda La Plante

  “Nope. The guy was short and fat and looked like he had a sack of potatoes in the back of his pants …”

  Lorraine grinned, and then looked over the list of names, wondering about her next move. Forty-eight workers, all with cuff links, eight executives all with gold ones—and a few hundred vintage car owners with God knew how many more.

  “He also said that the silver ones were crap and most of them broke after a few outings. He gave me a set for free.”

  Rosie revealed the box and Lorraine snatched it from her. She opened it and knew at a glance that the man who attacked her had worn gold cuff links. She snapped it closed. “Rosie, you are a fuckin’ marvel!”

  Eight names, eight men with gold cuff links. Now she would work on eliminating each one. She knew she had to be careful: if she confronted her attacker she could be in danger. At the same time, she had to be sure; if she gave Rooney bum information he could arrest her, charge her, and have her locked up. She wouldn’t put it past him, especially because he had brought up the shooting incident. It must still lay heavy on him, maybe he felt the guilt he wanted her to feel. Lorraine knew she couldn’t make any mistakes—there was too much at stake.

  10

  The following morning Lorraine could not summon up any energy and had no idea how to snap out of it, so at eight o’clock she took herself off to Fit ’N’ Fast.

  “I just feel so tired all the time,” she complained to Hector.

  He shrugged. “Bound to feel that way, you’ve punished the hell out of your body for years, right? You can’t suddenly force it into feeling fit. Nothing happens overnight, it takes time and dedication.” He agreed to make out a diet and a tough workout program for every other day, including weights, a strict high-carbo diet, and a high-protein drink. Armed with a boxful of new vitamins, Lorraine went home.

  Rosie looked over the array of cans and pills and the charts Lorraine was pinning up. “I’d join you, but I’ve got a built-in resistance to that kind of stuff.”

  Lorraine laughed. “Well, you’re so full of energy you don’t need it. Do you have a camera?”

  “It’s in the pawnshop—been there about seven months.”

  “Can I get it out?”

  “I dunno where the ticket is, and it’ll cost a few dollars. It’s a very expensive model.” Rosie started sifting through her papers and eventually found the pawn ticket: there was a hundred and fifty dollars to pay. Lorraine wondered if she could buy a cheap camera instead.

  “Has it got a zoom lens?”

  “I dunno, there’s all kinds of attachments for it. I never used it so I dunno what it’s got.”

  “So how come you got such an expensive camera?”

  Rosie wrinkled her nose. “Well, to be honest, it wasn’t exactly mine. It was my husband’s and we’d had a big bust up. I think I was loaded, I wasn’t living with him, and, well, to cut a very long story short, I knew he sort of prized it more’n anything, so I—”

  “Took it.”

  “Yeah, I took it. I always thought that if he was nice, I’d give it back. He wasn’t, so … at least I didn’t sell it.”

  “Okay, go get it, I’ll wait here for you. You’d better take this—it’s the last of my stash.”

  Rosie departed, moaning about being used as a gofer, but when Lorraine asked if she had anything better to do, she said, “I guess not, but why do you need it?”

  “To take photographs.”

  Lorraine worked through the telephone directory, matching the names on Rosie’s list. She called each one, checked if they worked at the garage, slowly narrowed down all the wrong numbers, and compiled home addresses. She was still busy when Rosie returned two hours later.

  The camera was a professional fast-slide action with zoom lens. Rosie watched in fascination as Lorraine quickly checked over all the accessories, testing out the viewfinder, attaching the different lenses and grinning in triumph because it even had a laser night shutter: she could photograph at night.

  “How come you know so much about cameras?” she asked.

  “Part of my job. On surveillance we used high-tech equipment and I took a couple of courses—”

  The phone rang. It was Rooney. “You out on the streets? What you doing?”

  “Gimme time, for chrissakes. Like I said, as soon as I have anything, I’ll be in touch. One thing, this Fellows guy, can I get in touch with him?”

  “Why?”

  Lorraine could hear his chesty breathing down the phone. “Just like to talk to him. I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

  “Maybe stay away from him, okay?” Rooney said flatly. “Call me. I need anything you can come up with.”

  Rooney hung up. Why did she want to talk to Fellows? He remembered how intuitive she was. Maybe she’d come across something he’d missed—or was she just ripping him off?

  Bean reminded him that the second-shift team was waiting for their daily briefing. Rooney slowly stood up. “Be right with you.” Bean joined the men in the incident room. When he saw Chief Michael Berillo pass, he hoped he wasn’t going to see Rooney, as that meant keeping everyone waiting, but Rooney appeared right behind the chief.

  He snapped out orders to his men to begin spreading their inquiries to drag clubs and transvestite hangouts. “I want everyone, and this is priority, to check out Norman Hastings’s contacts. Hastings is our main link to the killer because out of all the murders he’s the odd man.”

  There was a loud guffaw, and when Rooney saw the funny side, he snorted. He also divulged that he now had a reliable informant working on the streets who he hoped would soon bring in some information.

  The chief jerked his head for Rooney to follow him to his office, giving a quick pat to his hair as he passed one of the one-way mirrors, never able to resist himself. “Who’s your informant?”

  “She’s a hooker, been arrested a number of times, she owes me a favor. She’s asking around the street girls, the pimps—the ones who won’t talk to us. She’ll be useful.”

  The chief nodded. “So that’s it, is it?”

  Rooney attempted to bluff his way out, saying there’d been the breakthrough with Mrs. Hastings. “Not enough, Bill. I can’t let this continue, I’m under pressure. I’ve had the mayor on me, City Hall. I need an arrest, Bill. There’s seven fucking women dead.”

  The desk phone rang. The chief picked it up. He listened and scribbled on a notepad, which he passed to Rooney. “They just got Brendan Murphy, bringing him across state today.” He underlined the word “state” three times, his face darkening, and then he repeated the name “Bickerstaff,” and put the phone down.

  “Good news, they picked up Murphy, your number one suspect. Bad news is it’s now FBI business since they’ve had to get the documents to bring him back to us. He’s in Detroit. Looks like you’re gonna have to hand over the entire inquiry to a guy called Ed Bickerstaff, you know him?” Rooney swore under his breath. “I don’t like it but I’ve got no option. I’ve even been asked if you’re capable of controlling the case. I’ve gone out on a limb for you, especially since I know you’ll be retiring soon. Bill, if you don’t pull the stops out, you’ll be taking retirement earlier than you expected.”

  Back in his office, Rooney opened a fresh bottle of bourbon and poured himself six fingers, downing it in one gulp before he repeated the dose. Not until his third hit did he relax and feel he could think straight. What possibilities had he missed, or glossed over? The FBI would go through everything with a fine-tooth comb. It pissed him off, even more so as he was sure Brendan Murphy was not their man. He rubbed his chin. This was the most complicated case he had ever worked on and he was nowhere. He had so little that he was almost depending on that whore Lorraine Page to come up with something. He reached for the phone to call her again. There was no answer.

  Lorraine sat with Rosie in the car outside the address of Suspect One from the S & A garage, a Sydney Field. He was their first choice since he did not live too far from Rosie’s. His house was the sam
e vintage as Rosie’s but on Summit, and a lot better maintained. He lived in the ground-floor apartment. When he pulled up outside his house, Rosie got out and asked if he was a Mr. Sam Field. He shook his head. She carried a clipboard. “I’m doing some market research, Mr. Field. Do you work in computers?”

  “No.” He was surly.

  “But you are Mr. Sam Field, aren’t you?”

  “No, Sydney Field. I’m a car salesman, you got the wrong man.” Rosie turned to leave and gave an almost imperceptible nod to Lorraine, who took two photographs. They spent the rest of the evening checking five more names listed from the vintage car garage. It had been a long, tedious afternoon and an even longer night. Six down, two more to go, and Lorraine had not yet seen the man who had attacked her.

  The cost of the car rental and payment to get the camera out of hock meant she was already out of pocket, so the next morning she called Rooney. “I need some more money, Bill.”

  “Give me something first,” he snapped.

  “I’m checking somethin’ out. I’ll have it by the end of the day.”

  “Drop by, I’ll give you a hundred bucks, but this is out of my pocket and I’ll be out of here in forty-eight hours. FBI is taking over.”

  “I’d prefer if we didn’t meet at the station.”

  He swore and then agreed to see her near his Japanese restaurant on Holly Street.

  Lorraine replaced the receiver and turned, knowing Rosie had overheard.

  “What’s going on?” Rosie asked.

  “Just trying to get us some more cash.” Lorraine chewed her lips. “I’m doing this work for an old cop friend, that’s all.”

  “That why we’re taking photographs?”

  Lorraine had underestimated Rosie’s dogged persistence. “This cop, he wouldn’t be the one you saw outside the gallery? Captain Rooney? Only he’s headin’ the investigation into these murders, isn’t he?”

  Lorraine just looked at her for a minute, and then said, “Let’s go.”

  They drove to the outskirts of Beverly Hills and parked outside a neat row of small houses on Ashdown Road, a heavily gay area. The house they were watching was unique only in the blue-and-white-striped awning that shaded its ground-floor windows. Men were already parading up and down or gathering on street corners talking. A blond woman was tap dancing on a small square piece of cardboard, tap-tapping away, her flowered hat filled with coins on the pavement beside her.

  A car drew up and Rosie got out with her clipboard. Lorraine watched her approach a red-haired man and suddenly felt the adrenaline pumping. She knew he was not the man, which left only one to go. He had to be the man, if—if—she was right.

  Rosie returned to the car, smiling. “This is better than licking goddamned envelopes. Where to next?”

  The final address was on the other side of town, on Beverly Glen. Out of all the addresses, this one was underlined because it was in one of the most wealthy residential areas of Hollywood. With a screech of tires, Rosie took a sharp right, directly across the traffic.

  “Bastards, it’s my right of way!” Lorraine clung to the side of the car as Rosie swerved across the road, and steered onto Sunset Boulevard. She peered over to Lorraine. “You sure we’re on target here? This is movie-star territory.”

  “Yeah.”

  They drove past the Bel Air Gates and took a left, ending up by mistake on Stone Canyon Road. The scenery was plusher, a profusion of palm trees and high fences, eighteen-foot-high brick walls hiding some of the houses from view. Many had warning signs, high-tech security signs, signs about dogs patrolling, signs that all said in one way or another, KEEP OUT. They headed up the winding road, passing the signposts to the Bel Air Hotel. Rosie veered from one side of the road to the other as she caught glimpses of the magnificent properties on either side of them. They drove past the entrance of the hotel itself, where they could see a profusion of expensive cars and valet parking attendants jumping to attention.

  “Some place, huh?” Rosie said, making another swerve across the road. Eventually they found themselves on Beverly Glen and the correct address. Rosie pulled up outside a secluded, three-story house, surrounded by a high wall, a barred gate that could easily let through two city buses side by side, never mind a car. The large signs on either side of the barred gates warned of guard dogs and electric fences. The bushes and palm trees were thick and high, and shaded the road, the magnolia and jasmine in such profusion they perfumed the air. It was here that Steven Janklow lived, the last name on the list. Rosie got out and crossed the road to look through the gates. A Buick was parked in the driveway, alongside an old Mercedes SL180. She rang the intercom bell at the side of the huge gate. “Hi, I’m doing market research into computer users and we have a query for a Michael Janklow. Could I please speak to him a moment?”

  The phone went dead. Rosie rang again and repeated as much of her rehearsed speech as she could before the phone went dead again. A gardener tending what she could see from the gates were well-kept lawns walked toward her. Rosie smiled and waved at him. “Can you gimme a minute?”

  His English wasn’t very good, so she had to ask two or three times if a Michael Janklow was at home.

  “No, no, his name not Michael.”

  “Does he work in computers?”

  “No, he work in big garage, you have wrong man, go away.”

  Rosie returned to the car. “I think he’s the last guy.” She repeated what the gardener had said and recited the car’s license plate number.

  They waited a long time but only saw the gardener drive out in an old truck, the gates closing automatically behind him. Then they saw a German shepherd sniffing and prowling around inside the gates. Expensive cars passed by: two Rolls-Royces, a Porsche and a couple of BMWs, two Jaguars, a Lincoln, and Rosie counted four Mercedes. Lorraine checked her watch and decided to call it quits for the day, so they headed for home. Knowing she was to meet Rooney and not wanting Rosie with her, she told her they would come back the next morning.

  “Drop me off at Fit ’N’ Fast,” she told her, making the excuse that she wanted to work out. After Rosie dropped her off, Lorraine waited until she was out of sight before she headed down the road to wait outside the Japanese place.

  Fifteen minutes later Rooney arrived. “What you got for me?” he asked as soon as Lorraine had slid into his car.

  She hesitated. “Well, I’ve been questioning a lot of the hookers. So far nothing much but a couple of them remembered a guy picking them up, real edgy, and I’m trying to find Holly’s pimp to see if he can help. You got anything on a vintage car garage, Santa Monica?” She told him about it, about one of the girls seeing the cuff links, and said that she herself had discovered that fifty or so workers might have a pair. “What I’m doing is narrowing it all down, taking shots of the workers, taking them around to the girls. It might be your man, then again it might not. It’s costing, though, I had to get a good camera and I gotta pay a friend to drive me around, had to rent a car.”

  Rooney took out his wallet. Lorraine leaned closer. “I’d like to talk to this profiler guy. Can’t you swing it for me?”

  “Why do you want to see him?”

  Lorraine ran her hands through her hair. “Maybe I just want to talk to him. I was always good at piecing jigsaws together and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.”

  Rooney folded a hundred and fifty dollars and passed it to her. “Take it, but I want those photographs, and in the meantime I’ll do a quiet check on the men who work at that garage, see if there’s anyone with a record.”

  “Do it quietly, Bill. If your man works there, you don’t want to tip him off.”

  He glowered. “You tellin’ me how to do my job? You? Whatcha think I’ll do? Go in and ask for a fuckin’ claw hammer?”

  “I’ll call you.” She had her hand on the door handle.

  Rooney hesitated, and then muttered grudgingly, “I’ll give this guy Fellows a call. You can see him if he agrees. I’m up agains
t the wall. Anything, Lorraine, anything, for chrissakes get it to me fast, you know what snot-nosed bastards those FBI agents are.”

  She got out of the car and he watched her walking down the street, long legs, tight ass, short blond hair swinging with a bounce. All the guys had tried to get into her pants, but she had never, to Rooney’s knowledge, gotten it on with any one of the old team. It pissed them all off that she refused to have a scene with any of them and they had made her life as unpleasant as possible. To her credit, she had treated it as a joke, but then she had always been tough.

  “You got any complaints?” Rooney had asked.

  “No, no complaints,” she had always answered, quietly and firmly. She never ratted or put any man on the line, even when she found out they were getting free fucks from the hookers. She was so tough no one would have believed she would plummet out of control. Rooney wondered now just how long she had hidden her drinking. He had liked Lorraine, admired her tenacity. She had proven her guts, too. As he drove, Rooney remembered how he and his partner had been called out to a brawl in a known prostitutes’ hangout at Fair Oaks and Orange Grove, where a Mexican waiter had gone crazy. Neither was prepared to confront the young Mexican holding a waitress by the throat. He’d already knifed two men, everyone was hysterical, and crowds were gathering on the sidewalk outside.

  Rooney called for backup, which arrived in the shape of Rookie Page and her beer-gut partner, Brian Dullay. Suddenly there was a single terrible scream from inside the bar. They needed a decoy: someone to go in the front, distract the Mexican, so they could disarm him from behind. No fucking way, Dullay said. Just as Rooney was about to order him inside, Lorraine stepped forward. “I’ll do it. We can’t leave that girl in there.”

  While Dullay and Rooney’s partner headed for the back entrance, Lorraine opened the door to the bar. The terrified girl was held by the hysterical waiter, a knife already cutting through her neck, blood streaming down her dress. Her legs were buckled, she had pissed in her pants with terror, and her face was stricken, frozen, her mouth open wide.