“Yeah,” he finally said. “I guess I do.”
Neither of us spoke. Outside, someone honked a horn and cursed in Spanish. I could smell thin, acrid smoke that got stronger and stronger and Malloy and I both realized what it was at the same moment.
“Shit,” I said, as Malloy hurried across the room and stomped out the burning patch of carpet that had been ignited by the smoldering cigarette.
I coughed and waved my hand in front of my face while Malloy fumbled with the window, forcing it open.
“What, are you trying to burn the place down?” I asked.
“Probably not the first time someone set the carpet on fire in this joint,” he replied. “Probably not the last either.”
I laughed but it felt forced. The laugh died in my throat and I wrapped my arms around my body. I felt empty.
Malloy just looked out the window with his back to me. Nothing happened for several minutes, and then his cell phone rang.
“What is it, Didi?” he asked when he flipped open the phone.
His face went still and serious as he listened. Without another word, he handed the little phone to me.
“Didi?” I said.
“Angel,” Didi said. Her voice was choppy and full of static. “I got a couple of dickless wonders with guns over here.” There was a thump and clunk that sounded like she had dropped the phone. “Motherfucker!” she hollered. “Go ahead, hit me again you little shit. Hit me all you want, it ain’t gonna make you grow a dick.”
“Didi!” I shouted. “What the hell’s going on?”
There was more static and then a very young-sounding male voice came on the line.
“Yo bitch, listen up,” he said. “You get your ass over here ASA fucking P or your friend Didi is history.”
I could hear Didi cursing in the background.
“Where are you?” I said. “Didi’s house?”
“Just get here,” the kid said and then the call had ended.
24.
The drive to Didi’s house in Winnetka was tense and silent except for the rush of wind through the broken rear window. I was still reeling from the kiddie porn thing, but there was no room left in my head with all the fear for Didi and the aching guilt for dragging her down into this nightmare.
When Malloy pulled up in front of Didi’s house, I could see a yellow Hummer parked in her driveway, looming over her little Saturn like a giant Tonka toy. The front door was open, just a crack.
Malloy gestured toward the gray Caprice parked across the street. The car was empty. “That’s the same tail that was on Didi when she came by my place.”
“The cops?” I said. “So where are they, inside? Maybe they already saved Didi and we can just...”
The flat crack of a gunshot echoed through Didi’s house, followed immediately by another.
“Goddamn it!” Malloy said, tossing me a gun and swiftly drawing another. “Come on.”
No time to think. No time to do anything but grab the heavy gun out of my lap and follow Malloy.
Inside Didi’s cozy and familiar house, I felt a swift emotional sucker punch, a kind of bone-deep longing for Didi and my former life that was so powerful it made me nauseous. She had this big lacy teddy bear stuffed full of potpourri that sat on a shelf above the television. I always used to tell her that was the dumbest, ugliest thing ever, but she loved it. Now the familiar warm spicy peach smell of that potpourri bear was like a dead lover’s perfume. I was glad it was so dark, because the walls around me were covered with framed photographs and every single one of those photos would have torn my heart out. In the dark they were just squares of glass.
I could hear a commotion toward the back of the house, in the playroom. Didi was like me but even more so: I never liked to actually sleep with anyone, but she took it a step further. She didn’t allow her lovers into her bedroom at all. Didi and I have both been accused of having intimacy issues, but hey, when you show the world your private parts for a living, you need to find other ways of maintaining your privacy. Didi did it by having two totally separate rooms, one for sex and one for sleeping. The room for sex—the playroom, as she called it—was probably originally a rec room or family room of some sort. When she’d turned the little house into her own swinging bachelorette pad, she’d converted it into a groovy love lounge right out of one of her movies, circa 1979.
As I followed Malloy down the narrow hall, the sweet peachy scent was overwhelmed by something more raw and visceral. In the playroom, we entered a scene that would dig its way down into my brain and stay there for the rest of my life.
There were five men in the room. Three were dead and one was working on it.
The guy who was still hanging in there was some tattooed pretty boy who looked like he was in a band that would never get signed. He was in the far corner trying to get up on his hands and knees and not having much luck. He had been shot in the throat and was making weird squeaky sounds that might have been funny but weren’t.
The dead man to his left was well dressed in a Hollywood wannabe kind of way. He was tall and model-hunky and looked familiar. I was pretty sure he was in the business. Judging from the amount of extra weight inside the left leg of his tailored trousers, I’d say it was in front of the camera. He didn’t seem like he belonged in this amateur hour clusterfuck.
The other two dead guys were obviously the plain-clothes cops from the Caprice. One was slumped over the padded love swing, chains clinking like the ghost of Jacob Marley as he swayed gently back and forth. His right shoe had fallen off, revealing a crumpled black sock with a small hole at the end. The hole wasn’t big enough for his whole toe to poke out yet, but it probably would have been by the end of the shift, if he had stayed alive to keep on wearing it out. The other cop was on the floor about six feet from his partner, on his back. A leather wallet with a badge inside lay inches from his open hand.
The one unharmed guy in the room was crouching over the cop on the floor. He looked like he might be a bandmate of the dying pretty boy, also heavily inked, only not as pretty. Probably the drummer. He had what looked like a bloody white club held high over his head like a caveman. When he spotted us, an odd little grunt escaped his lips and he let the weapon drop.
When it hit the floor, the club jumped and started buzzing like an angry hornet, skittering across the carpet and dragging a long white tail behind it. I realized then that it was a vibrator. I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to catch it and turn it off. It was something to concentrate on other than the nightmare around me. I tucked the gun into the back of my jeans and was about to grab the bloody vibrator by the cord and pull the plug out of the wall when Malloy shouted.
“Don’t!”
I jumped, heart revving in my chest.
“Don’t touch anything,” Malloy said through his teeth.
I nodded and bit my lip. The vibrator continued its mindless racket. The guy crouching over the dead cop stared at Malloy with big blank eyes.
“Okay, genius,” Malloy said, drawing a bead between the kid’s wide eyes. “You want to tell me what the fuck happened here?”
“They... I...” was all the kid managed to say before he scrambled backwards off the dead cop and started puking down the front of his trendy faux vintage t-shirt.
“Lovely,” Malloy said. “Looks like we missed this party.”
“Where’s Didi?” I asked. “Didi!”
The bathroom door on the other side of the huge circular bed was halfway open and there was blood on the doorframe.
“Didi!” I called again.
“Hurry up, Angel,” Malloy said quietly. “There’ll be probably be backup soon.”
I ran to the bathroom and pushed the door the rest of the way open with the toe of my sneaker.
Didi was crouching by the toilet, holding one hand over the bowl. There were long streaks of crimson all down the front of her white, marabou-trimmed negligee. Her face was icy pale and sheened with sweat, her lips blue under smeared pink lipstick. The hand she held over
the toilet had something horribly wrong with it, but I couldn’t stand to look too closely. The bowl was full of blood.
“It’s about fucking time,” Didi said. “Will you look at this?” She lifted her hand, or what was left of it. “That little prick shot me in my goddamn hand.”
I ran to her and put my arms around her. She felt cold and slick, like some kind of sea animal.
“They said they were friends of Jesse’s,” she continued, leaning heavily against me. “Chickenshit son of a bitch was too much of a pussy to come himself, so he sends those bozos. I don’t know the two ink monkeys, but the cute guy, that’s Mitch Magnum’s kid. Hung like his old man and just getting started in the business. Christ, what a fucking waste.” She shook her head. “Then those cops showed up and the whole thing went to hell.” She wiped her mouth on her forearm. “Look at my carpet. It’s ruined.”
“Come on, Didi,” I said. “We gotta get you out of here.”
“You cut off all your hair,” she said, patting the back of my head with her good hand. “I don’t know, honey. It kinda worked for Belladonna, but I don’t think I like it on you. It makes you look... too dykey.”
“I’ll grow it back when all this is over, I promise,” I said. “Now come on. Get up off your fat ass and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I can’t, Angel,” Didi said, swallowing hard and pushing her sticky hair out of her eyes. “You go on.”
“I won’t leave you,” I said, grabbing a silky fistful of her negligee. “Come on.”
“Look, honey,” Didi said, gently pushing my hand away. “I can’t go anywhere like this. More cops are on the way, right? They’ll take me to the hospital and get me fixed up. You can’t go with me to the hospital, you’d get arrested.”
“Bullshit,” I said, feeling panic-stricken and desperate. “No.”
“Go on,” Didi said, pushing me away, but there was no strength in it. “I’ll wait here. Maybe that sexy Detective Erlichman will show up and rescue me.” She touched her sweaty hair. “How do I look?”
“You’re a bloody mess, Didi!” I said, my throat clenched almost too tight to speak.
“Yeah well,” Didi replied with a shaky smirk. “At least I got on something nice. Let this be a lesson to you, Angel. Always wear something nice, just in case. You never know when you’ll get taken to the hospital and meet a well-hung doctor.”
I looked down at my loose, unflattering t-shirt and jeans and was suddenly crying.
“Aw knock it off, willya?” Didi said. “I didn’t mean what I said about your hair. It looks okay, really. I just need some time to get used to it, that’s all. Now get out of here already. If you get yourself arrested on my account I’ll kick your ass myself. One handed, even. Go!”
That’s when I knew that she was dying. I could see it in her face, in her bright glassy eyes and tight smile. She had already lost way too much blood. There was no way she was going to make it.
I had always heard the word anguish, but I’d never really understood what it meant until that moment. Didi was the last connection I had to my old life. The last tie to who I’d been before all this. My house and my business were gone, but up until that moment, I could still count on Didi to back me up no matter what anybody said. I’d had no idea how much I needed that until I felt it slipping through my fingers.
“All right,” I said, turning to leave with a cold vacuum under my sternum. I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye or see you later or anything like that so I didn’t say anything more at all.
I paused by the door and looked back. Didi was resting her cheek against the toilet seat, her face turned away from me. I could hear sirens in the distance. What else could I do? I got the hell out of there.
25.
When we got back to the motel, there was no way I could sleep. I felt like I might never sleep again. When I refused to take the only bed, Malloy shrugged and took it himself without comment. He kicked off his shoes, took off his jacket, and put his gun and holster on the bedside table. He was asleep almost instantly, still dressed and on top of the covers. He lay straight as a board, on his back with his hands loosely clasped on his chest like a funeral parlor corpse ready to be viewed by the grieving family. He didn’t snore. The only indication that he was still alive was the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
I just sat in that uncomfortable chair and didn’t think. I waited for the sun to come up.
In the morning, the shit with Didi was on the news. She was already dead in my mind so when the inflatable blonde newslady announced that former porn star Diane Kellick, also known as Didi DeLite, had been shot to death in her Winnetka home, I felt nothing. They showed some old stills of Didi looking foxy back in the day with her blonde Farrah hair and sly smile. She would have been happy to be remembered that way. Handsome Detective Erlichman came on saying that they were currently unsure of the connection between the deceased guitarist of a local band called Smackdown and missing murder suspect Angel Dare. I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“What’s so funny?” Malloy asked, coming out of the bathroom and rubbing the silver stubble on his chin.
“Nothing,” I said. I shrugged. “Everything. I don’t know.”
“We’ve got that address from the drivers license,” he said, putting on his jacket. “You ready to pay Jesse Black a visit?”
“I’ve been ready all night,” I said. It sounded great. I hoped it was true.
“According to his model release,” Malloy said, sipping 7-Eleven coffee as we waited to get on the 101 freeway, “Jesse Black is really Christopher Aaron Mezger. Born February 10, 1986. Currently residing at 1889 Draco Way. That’s up in the West Hills near Bell Canyon Park. Nice.”
I nodded, forcing myself to drink my own coffee, even though it tasted like hot varnish.
“For now, we just scope out the place,” Malloy said. “Watch him and see where he goes. Who he’s got with him. We need to figure out his routine so we can figure out how to get him alone.”
“Right,” I said. My head hurt. I knew it was going to be difficult not to blow the bastard out of his boots the second I set eyes on him again.
Jesse’s house was beautiful and trashed. There were beer cans and discarded clothes and cigarette butts everywhere. Jesse’s Ferrari was parked half on the driveway and half on the front lawn. There were several other expensive cars parked with varying degrees of competence all around the front of the house.
Malloy parked on the other side of the narrow street. As we watched, a pair of girls, one blonde and one brunette, came out the door and wobbled down the walkway. They were built like greyhounds with implants and still dressed in expensive clubwear that was way too slutty for 9AM. You could see they had probably looked pretty good the night before, all made up and displayed under low-watt bar lighting. In the harsh light of day they looked rode hard and put away wet, raw red stubble burn around their mouths and raccoon smears of mascara all around their squinting eyes. Eventually the two of them found their way to a sporty little BMW two-seater and drove away.
Malloy and I waited. Several other young, attractive people came out of the house in various states of intoxication. It was nearly two hours before Jesse made an appearance.
He was wearing black-and-red track pants and a skintight tank top. His face looked pale, hung-over and puffy but he still looked beautiful.
Just seeing him made my heart twist savagely inside my chest. It felt almost like a toxic kind of crush. I wanted to kill him more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.
I might have done just what Malloy told me not to do, might have gotten out of the car and plugged the fucker right there in his driveway, but he had another guy with him. A black guy with a shaved head, an unattractive face and an astoundingly ripped and flawless body. The black guy was also wearing workout duds and it was no stretch to figure the two of them were going to the gym.
Malloy and I followed Jesse through his day and rapidly discovered that he was almost never alone.
From the gym he and his buddy went to a pricey organic health food café called PURE where they met up with three gorgeous, interchangeable blondes. The buddy went off with two of the girls and Jesse took the third. They made a pretense of shopping along Ventura Boulevard and then she blew him a little in the Ferrari in the parking lot of the Bed Bath and Beyond. Jesse dropped her off back at the café and then headed over to a car repair place where he left the Ferrari and was picked up by another beautiful girl, a lush, full-figured Latina with a face like a young Sofia Loren. The caliber of tail that guy was getting was really unbelievable.
The new girl drove him out to the Vixen Video studio in Van Nuys. He dry-humped her for nearly half an hour before she let him out and drove away. He adjusted himself unselfconsciously and headed in to the studio. A few minutes later, I spotted hot Asian newcomer Heidi Ho lugging her gig bag across the parking lot. He wasn’t inside long, just long enough to shoot one quick scene. When he came out, yet another beautiful girl picked him up, this one a tan, athletic fitness model type. She, too, made out with him for several minutes before dropping him back at the garage. Once he had his car back, he picked up a male friend at a coffee shop a few blocks away. The kid looked barely eighteen and extremely anxious. The two of them bought non-fat soy lattes to go and then headed over to a glass office tower on Ventura Boulevard in Tarzana.
“Holy shit,” I said to Malloy as Jesse and his new friend headed into the lobby of the building. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“What?” Malloy asked, frowning.
“That’s the office of Spotlight Escort,” I said. “They hook up clients with well-known male porn stars. A lot of the guys do it, but I never would have guessed Jesse was gay for pay.”
“No shit,” Malloy said. “That’s perfect.”
“Perfect?” I asked. “How do you mean?”
“I mean that’s how we’ll get him.”
26.
We left Jesse and his nervous friend and headed out to Panorama City. Our destination turned out to be a modest house that could have been any house on any working class street anywhere in Southern California.
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