by Dan Ames
What was going on? Porn was everywhere.
“Tell you what,” Mary said. “I’ll come back after you’re done with your session.”
“Yes, we only got through a couple of poses in this session,” Alice said, giggling. She used the air quotes gesture when she said poses and let out a high-pitched laugh. “Round Two will be a bit more creative, I suspect.” She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled again.
Mary looked at her. “You know what, I just stopped by to make sure everything was okay,” she said. “Didn’t know I was going to interrupt some kind of yoga sex party.”
“Oh, Mary, you’re always welcome,” Alice said. “Except now.”
Mary got to the door, but before she opened it, she saw through the living room window a black Chevy Tahoe go around the corner.
“Fuck me,” Mary said. Someone was following her.
“She’s not talking to you, Sanji,” Alice said behind her. “But she took the words right out of my mouth.”
Mary slammed the door shut behind her.
24
Twenty-four
Mary hoped she would catch a break. And she did.
“Yes, I’m in the office,” Oscar Freedham said to her over the phone. “No, I don’t feel like doing you a favor.”
Mary sighed. Why was it always so difficult to get men to do what she wanted? Didn’t they understand she always got what she wanted anyway? Such a time-waster!
“It’s a matter of life and death,” Mary said. “Give me the name and address of the owner of a red Hyundai found yesterday crashed and abandoned at the corner of LaBrea and San Vicente, or a puppy dies.”
“I hate dogs,” Freedham said. “The fewer the better.”
“It’s not a dog puppy, it’s a wolf pup. You like wolves?” Mary said.
“The original ancestor of the dog? If I hate dogs, why would I like wolves?”
Mary sighed again.
“What do you want, Oscar? Another half-dozen drinks? Lunch? Moonlight stroll through the garden?”
“I want you to understand that I work in Vice, not Traffic,” he said. “Don’t you have someone else you can bum a favor from?”
“Let me be blunt, Oscar. My police department bitch, your pal Jake Cornell, isn’t returning my calls. So until he comes to his senses, I’m asking you.”
Now it was Oscar’s turn to let out a frustrated sigh.
“You owe me, Cooper. I’ll text you what I find out.”
“Thanks—” but she heard the click of the phone.
“People just don’t take the time to say goodbye anymore,” she said.
Mary took Oscar at his word and assumed he would come back with some sort of information on the car. A name and an address, hopefully. Which meant she might have another face-to-face meeting with Mr. Fleeing Weedwhacker.
This time, she intended to be a bit more prepared.
Mary drove back to her apartment, changed into jeans, black running shoes, and a black T-shirt.
She went to the gun safe in her bedroom closet, opened it, and took out her prized possession. The Para-Ordnance high-capacity .45 held fourteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. She slid on her nylon shoulder holster, holstered the gun, and put two extra magazines in a pouch on the strap of the holster.
To her ankle, she strapped a smaller holster, and from the gun safe, she brought out a Ruger LCR, loaded with five rounds of .357 Magnum hollow-points. She left the speedloaders in the gun safe. If she burned through fifteen rounds of .45 ammo and five rounds of .357 hollow-points, more bullets would probably be the least of her problems.
She closed and locked the gun safe, went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottled water, then checked her phone.
There was a text from Oscar Freedham with an address, followed by a name.
Lonzo Vega.
And one additional message.
He’s bad news.
25
Twenty-five
The address was in Ladera Heights, a less-than-spectacular area east of the 405.
Mary’s GPS led her to a single-story brick house built by someone without any concerns other than shelter. And even then, their idea of basic shelter was very, very basic.
The front of the house included a dented front door, two small, filthy windows, and a crumbling cement step that had enough holes to guarantee a rat’s nest.
The roof was falling apart, a gutter hung all the way down to the ground on one side, and one-car garage, also falling apart, stood off to the side of the house.
There was no sign of anyone. In fact, Mary thought, there wasn’t sign that anyone had been there in, what, maybe years?
No sign of a Beautification Award in the front yard—how had the committee missed this place?
Mary already had her doubts that this was the supposed home of Lonzo Vega, proud owner of a red Hyundai and possible owner/employee of Sol Landscaping. Most small business owners she knew avoided living in homes that should be condemned. Didn’t reflect well on their brand identity.
Well, let’s just see if this is indeed the Vega residence, she thought.
Mary got out of the car and locked it. She walked up the cracked front sidewalk to the crumbling front step. Looked for a doorbell or a knocker.
Nothing.
She noted the dead shrubs next to the house. If there had ever been actual landscaping here, it hadn’t been much. This was terrible. Terrible as in the never-been-good category. Was it the plumber with leaky pipes story? Or was Lonzo Vega’s address really the home of rodents the size of piglets?
She rapped her knuckles on the cracked, wooden front door. A sliver of half-painted plywood fluttered to the ground.
Somewhere, a dog barked.
And then a sound came from the other side of the door. It was the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell being racked into the chamber.
Mary dove from the crumbling step that fell apart beneath her feet as the wooden door exploded with the sound of a gun booming.
She hit the ground and felt something brush over her, probably shrapnel from the shotgun.
Mary realized that the loose concrete, which gave out underfoot and actually caused her to fall quickly, may have saved her life.
“Fuck,” Mary said. She rolled away from the door, ripped the .45 from her shoulder holster, heard the sound of the shotgun’s slide working again. She glanced back at her car. No way she could get there in time. Her cell phone was in her pocket. Nine-one-one? Not an option.
The shotgun roared again, and Mary felt bits of debris landing on her back and the top of her head. Someone tried to kick the door open from the inside.
Mary considered firing back through the door, but instead she crouched and ran. She nearly stumbled over the uneven ground but made it to the back of the house. There had been movement in the window as she ran by.
She rounded the back corner of the house where another concrete slab lay five feet from the back door.
Before she could decide on her next move, a man crashed through the back door, a short-barreled pump shotgun in his hands.
“Freeze!” Mary yelled.
The man didn’t hesitate. He brought the shotgun to his shoulder and took aim at Mary.
So she shot him.
Three times.
Center mass.
The shotgun exploded as a round went off, but by then the man had fallen backward, and the muzzle was pointed skyward.
Mary circled a small patio with weeds growing through the cracked pavers.
She approached the man. His eyes were wide open. The shotgun was still in his right hand.
If this was Lonzo Vega, she doubted he was the owner of Sol Landscaping. This guy couldn’t be more than eighteen years old, covered with the kind of tattoos that made Mary think of gangbangers.
Mary stepped over the dead man, opened the back door, and stepped inside the house.
It was vacant.
No furniture.
Holes in the walls.
Mary instantly knew two things.
One, this was certainly not the home of a landscaper.
And two.
She’d been set up.
26
Twenty-six
She made the call to 911 herself, figuring in this neighborhood a few gunshots probably didn’t merit notifying the police. Her hands shook a little as she dialed, and she tried to force her heartbeat to slow.
Mary finished the call, disconnected her cell, and paced in the backyard, occasionally going to the front to check on her car.
While she waited, Mary made sure there was no trace that she had actually entered the house.
A quick scan of the surrounding homes, blocked mostly by small, one-car garages and fences, told her witnesses were unlikely.
Mary wasn’t too worried. After all, she’d gotten the address from a police source, so it was in Oscar’s best interest to play this down.
She was positive there was a cell phone in the dead man’s pocket, but every instinct told her not to check it. Eventually, though, her self-discipline gave out. Plus, she hadn’t heard any sirens yet.
She slid her shirt sleeve over her hand and fished out the cell phone that was obviously lodged in the front pocket of the dead man’s jeans.
“Mind if I borrow this for a moment?” she said.
Her stomach turned a bit. Death, and the fluids released, tend to be very unpleasant.
Mary slid the other sleeve down over her fingers and tried to find the call log, using the buttons in an incredibly clumsy method.
Eventually she found the call records, just as the first faint sound of police sirens reached her ears.
She scrolled down.
Although Mary half expected to see Oscar Freedham’s name, it wasn’t there.
However, she was surprised to see a name she did recognize.
Vince Buslipp.
27
Twenty-seven
The questioning didn’t take long. They didn’t need to haul her down to headquarters. Mary was pretty sure one of the investigators had called Oscar Freedham just to confirm that he knew who Mary was and that she had been investigating a case.
It took her an hour or so to answer the questions, and then she was free to go.
Vince Buslipp.
It weighed heavily on her mind.
Suddenly, she desperately wanted to talk to Jake. As hopeless as she knew it was, Mary dragged out her cell phone and tried to call Jake one more time.
It went straight to voicemail.
“You are going to pay and dearly for this, Jacob Cornell,” she said.
Mary negotiated her way back to the 405, and eventually to Santa Monica and Aunt Alice’s house.
She felt confused.
The only person who’d had any idea where she was going had been Oscar Freedham. And a Vice cop as old as Freedham would never set her up this way. There were records between her cell phone and his, witnesses to them talking at the bar.
No, she hadn’t been set up by the cops.
So who?
Who had known where she was going?
The answer was simple.
No one.
So had she been followed?
That fucking Chevy Tahoe had been nowhere around, and it would have stuck out like a sore thumb in that neighborhood.
“Shit,” Mary said.
She hated not knowing the answer. She wasn’t sure if that’s what drove her, or if it just drove her insane.
One way or another, she was going to figure out who wanted her killed. And if that person turned out to be Vince Buslipp, his ass was history.
But it was while she was exiting the freeway that a different idea hit her. In some ways, it made a lot more sense.
It started with the premise that the killer had been planning an ambush.
But what if the ambush hadn’t been for her?
28
Twenty-eight
Mary had spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning despite several glasses of wine and a sleeping pill.
Every time she would close her eyes, she was back at that house, the shotgun spewing out metal and splintered wood.
At six in the morning she called it a night and got out of bed, brewed some horribly strong coffee, and thought about the case.
She knew she was running out of direct leads to Nina Ramirez.
Elyse Ramirez, or whatever her real name was, was dead. Asshole Buslipp was involved, but the direct approach was not going to work.
Trey the agent was no help.
Only one person had shown any sign of cooperating.
The boyfriend, Archer DeLoof.
Mary called him, and after some pressuring, he agreed to talk to her that afternoon. He gave her his address, and after a morning at the office accomplishing very little, she fought her way through traffic, finally arriving at a small house in Los Angeles proper.
Mary rang the bell.
DeLoof answered, wearing jeans, a T-shirt with a light sweater, and a straw hat.
“Come in, I guess,” he said.
“Thank you, I will, I guess,” Mary said.
DeLoof crossed the small living area and went to a small kitchen. He cracked the fridge, grabbed a bottle of Bud Light, and looked back at Mary.
“Want one?” he said.
“Absolutely. Drinking on duty is a strict policy.”
He handed her the beer. She twisted the cap off and held it up.
“To Nina,” she said.
DeLoof ignored her and went to a small table that sat next to the living room couch. He pulled out a chair, sat down, and took a long drink from the beer.
“So have you found her yet?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“So ask your questions, I guess,” he said.
Mary idly wondered if he ended all of his sentences with “I guess.” She imagined him at his own wedding: “I do, I guess.”
“Do you know where Nina is?” Mary said.
“Don’t know, don’t care.” He took three nervous sips of beer in quick succession.
“Why not?” Mary said.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I can tell you still care about her,” Mary said. Actually, she couldn’t. But it sounded good.
DeLoof slumped a little bit.
“I really don’t care, for the most part,” he said. “She wanted to move on to better things, she told me. And after I introduced her to Vince—”
“You introduced her to Vince Buslipp?” Mary said. “And you cared about her?”
“She insisted. Said even though Vince did mostly porn that he might have connections. I think he introduced her to Trey. She kept hinting there was something special they saw in her, and one day, Vince told me he was going to help with her acting career. ” His voice got especially sarcastic on the word “acting.”
“You don’t believe he was on the level?” Mary said.
“Oh, I’m sure he would get her into films. But not the kind she wanted.”
“So porn?”
“Hell yes, porn. What do you think I’m talking about?”
“Maybe you meant Hallmark movies—a woman on the Great Plains falling in love with a Sioux warrior.”
DeLoof drained his beer and got another one.
“Not hardly,” he said. “That was right around the time I started seeing less and less of her. It took her longer to return my calls, then eventually she stopped altogether.”
Mary drank from her beer.
“So how did you and Nina meet?” she said.
He rolled his eyes. “What is this, Dr. Phil?”
“No, it’s Dr. Mary. Just answer the question, Arch.”
“I don’t have to!” he said.
“No, but you want to,” Mary said, “especially if something bad has happened to her. You want to get your story straight as soon as possible.”
“Do you think something bad happene
d?” he said. His eyes were suddenly wide, and Mary now knew that Archer DeLoof still cared about Nina Ramirez.
It was Mary’s turn to shrug her shoulders. She let the silence hang.
“We met at a screening,” he said. “Some horrible action movie a producer gave me tickets to. I told her I was in the film business, we got drunk, and were together for a while.”
“Did you ever meet her family?” Mary said.
“No, she had her own place.”
“Really? At her age?”
DeLoof smirked at her. “This is LA, remember? It was a really nice apartment in Bel Air too,” he said. “I don’t know how she could afford it, but it was pretty cool. We used to hang out at Styx. It’s a club near her place.”
“What else?” Mary said.
“What do you mean ‘what else?’” he said. “That’s it.”
“Come on, there’s got to be more. What was she like? Where did she hang out? Who were her friends?”
DeLoof shook his head. “She loved movies and wanted to be a star, that was it. Movies, movies, movies. I never met her family or any friends.”
“How is that possible?” Mary said. “You said you were an item.”
“She was very private. I wouldn’t hear from her for long stretches of time. Weeks. She wouldn’t return my calls. Then she’d reappear and act like she’d never been gone.”
Mary drank the rest of her Bud Light.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Mary said.
“Awhile ago,” DeLoof answered. “I can’t remember when. I was at a party, a pretty crazy one thrown by a director who’d just signed a three-picture deal with New Line.”
DeLoof’s eyes got a bit wistful.
“And?” Mary said.
“And Nina was there. With Trey and Vince. And let me tell you something, Nina was totally fucked up. Not on booze, either.”
“Was she high on life?” Mary said.
“Not hardly,” he said with a scoff.
