“Where did he grow up?”
“He was an orphan. His father was killed in Korea and his mother just dropped him off with the nuns one day when he was about eight and drove away. So he was raised and educated by the nuns. It got him the scholarship to Pomona. He always used to laugh about what the nuns would think if they knew what became of him.” She laughed about it too.
“So how did it come about?”
“I was getting to that. Don was drifting from job to job and I was getting nervous. So one day I see this ad for this motel out in Malibu that’s for sale. I took the rest of my inheritance and put a down payment on it. I figured I could run it and, even if Don never had a steady job, we’d always have a place to sleep.”
“The Starlight Motel?”
“How did you know?” Her eyes went wide with genuine surprise.
I said, “I’ve seen some old pictures of it.” But I was thinking about the film.
“Where?” she asked, nostalgically.
“In Pete Stick’s office.”
Her expression soured. She shook her head and pursed her lips. “I never liked him. But that was no secret.” She kept shaking her head and added, “I was always amazed that he never seemed to go away. He’d disappear, but he’d always come back. He was a chronic disease.”
“You won’t have that problem anymore.” I didn’t smile as I said it, but she took it as a joke and grinned.
“So I’ve heard.” There was no sadness anywhere on her face. “It was Pete who got Don into pornography.”
“How so?”
“Around the time we bought the motel, Don met Pete working at one of the studios. I forget which one now. They were fast friends, and Pete was always hanging around. The two of them had a lot of big ideas about how they were going to make a fortune. Pete was the one who brought the idea of pornography up. The films were cheap and quick to make, and there was a real public market for them back then. You could get them shown in real theaters.”
I listened to her talk. I wanted to ask about Pete Stick, but I knew I needed to get the conversation around to Tiffany Vargas, sooner or later. I said, “What happened to Pete? One of the detectives I talked to said he was in and out of prison from the mid-70s on.”
“Pete was always looking for a way to make money fast. Pete wasn’t interested in hard work. Don became very successful very quickly, and Pete didn’t. With pornography, Don finally found something he could throw himself into and be his own boss. Don was a brilliant businessman with good instincts. Pete wasn’t. So Pete looked for other ways to make money.”
“He was convicted of insurance fraud.”
“A skill he became adept at, I’m afraid, under Don’s tutelage.”
“How’s that?”
She shrugged and smiled. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know anything for sure. In late 1978, the motel burned in a fire. It was terrible. Two guests were killed. I was very shaken by it.”
“Pete didn’t mention that.”
“No, he wouldn’t.” Her smile was flat and cold. “I always assumed, like everyone else, that it was a tragic accident. And it might have been. The upside was that Malibu had become very expensive during those years. Don had taken out a huge policy on the motel. When it was destroyed, Don was in business. Flush with cash. He jumped right into high-end movies. Pete was still broke and working for Don. A few years later, when Pete was arrested for insurance fraud, I put two and two together.”
“Did you ever ask Don about it?”
“Not directly. But when it finally occurred to me, I was just sick about the two people who were killed. It was a young couple. I remember them. I checked them into the motel. They were just getting away for a few days. They’d left their kids with a friend. It was just terrible. Sometimes I’d mention the fire, or that couple, and Don would get very quiet and dismissive of it. You know, it was just a tragic accident, he’d say.”
She let the memories smolder inside her for a moment, and then added, “I was never convinced.”
“No one ever suspected anything? The insurance company?”
“They investigated. They didn’t turn anything up. Besides, to determine it was arson would also have been to determine two murders had been committed. Most arsonists are more careful than that. But then, Don and Pete weren’t professionals.” She smiled and shrugged it off. “Who knows? They determined it was an accident. Maybe it was.”
“So then Pete took up crime and Don made his fortune?”
“I guess. There were a lot of good years after that. Don poured the insurance money into the business. He worked nonstop. I lived a very comfortable life.” She made a gesture at her back yard. “I still do, thanks to my share from the divorce. Every few years, Pete would drift back into our lives. Don would do something to put some money in his pockets. But Pete would always end up back in jail again.”
“But it didn’t last?”
She shook her head and narrowed her eyes. “Then she showed up.”
It was clear who she was, but I asked anyway. “Tiffany?”
“Tiffany Long. The great seducer. Stealer of husbands and destroyer of lives. They should erect a monument to her. She’s very talented.”
Her sarcasm was devoid of humor. “Ed told me it happened very fast.”
“It was incredible. One day Don comes home and says he’s found the next big star, two months later he’s telling me we’re through and he’s taking up with her.” She was more amazed than angry, as though the very thought of it was still baffling even a decade later.
“Ed said he remembers a strange connection between them. That they seemed to enjoy the same things. He mentioned Sinatra, for example.”
She smirked and shook her head, as though the suggestion was ridiculous. “She was trying to steal my husband. And she succeeded. I watched it happen right in front of me.”
“You think it was all a show.”
“It wasn’t that they hit it off because they happened to be interested in the same things. It was that she was interested in whatever he liked to do. It was like she went home at night and studied. She was a complete fraud.” Her voice was rising, climbing from upset to outraged. She stopped herself and took a few breaths. In the brief silence, I caught the heavy scent of the roses drifting over the pool and past us.
The ice in my tea was gone, but I drank the watery brown liquid anyway. The day felt warm for November. I studied Colette’s face as it swam in a surprising morass of emotions. She must have been almost sixty, but she looked younger, as though the tragedies she’d suffered had never broken through to the surface.
Her face animated quickly, and she said, “What was most surprising wasn’t that he was interested in her. I was always sure he had occasional flings with some of his stars. I didn’t like it, but I tolerated it and never made any demands on him about it. Does that surprise you?”
I wasn’t sure if she was asking about his cheating, or her tolerance of it. All I could say was, “I don’t know.”
“It surprised me. When I finally admitted it to myself. When a woman is finally forced to make a hard choice, she’ll often tolerate things she never thought possible. I certainly did.”
She turned her head and looked at the hillside behind the house, thick with California foliage. Palm trees and dense, tropical brush. Birds of Paradise leaping out of the darkness, their flowery heads frozen in time at the tip of their rigid necks. She was thinking of something, searching for words. She spoke with her head in profile.
“I really loved Don. Because of him my life was completely different than I ever would have imagined when I first came out here from Boston.” She turned back toward me, forced a smile. “Maybe that’s silly to say after forty years. Everyone’s life turns out far from what they planned when they were young. I never hated Don because of the business he was in. I tried never to be jealous of all of those women he was around. All the sex and the drugs and the parties. I tolerated a lot.”
She stopped for a momen
t, holding her emotions. “But he broke our agreement.”
After another pause, I asked, “What agreement was that?”
“After all those years he just decided it was over. Just flipped a switch and took up with that trashy little whore. He could have fucked her all he wanted. I wouldn’t have cared, as long as he was discrete and I never had it thrown in my face. But even that wasn’t enough. He just—” She scrunched her face and wiped at her eyes.
She took another moment and composed herself. Then she shrugged again and smiled, donning the dismissive tone of her longstanding rationalization. “Who knows, maybe it was love. Maybe I really am just the bitter ex-wife. Men bore easily. They find new things attractive. And she was certainly new, and certainly attractive.”
“But something made you and Ed both think it was a fraud. Can you remember anything specific that made you think that?”
She shook her head, “It was just everything about her. The way she acted so interested in everything about him. The way she fawned over him. The way she just seemed to know too much about him. She was too familiar. It was just strange.” She made a reach for her glass and then drew her hand back. “Can I interest you in a gin and tonic?”
It sounded good, but I declined. She disappeared into the house and returned a minute later with a fizzing Collins glass topped with a wedge of lime. She spoke as she sat.
“After her own behavior, I’m sure Tiffany was awfully nervous about Brianna Jones moving into the house.” The thought made her smile. She enjoyed the idea of Tiffany in pain. “After all,” she added, “Ms. Jones is very new, very attractive, and very young.”
I had to agree. Her image raced through my head and I felt a flush of heat that had nothing to do with the sun. Colette sensed it, and asked, “You’ve met her? Ms. Jones?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to act like I barely knew her.
“Ed tells me she stands to make out very well with Don out of the picture. All debts being erased and all.”
“That’s what I understand. Although, I also understand that there weren’t any formal debts in place.”
She smiled at that and said, “That’s the lawyer in you talking. There are always debts, even without a contract. Everyone owes something to someone. Don was the kind of guy who liked people to owe him favors. And Don would always collect on them, believe me. Ms. Jones has done well for herself, but she couldn’t have done it without Don. And trust me, her debt would have been repaid, one way or the other. That’s just the way Don operated.”
“But Brianna thought the suggestion that there was anything between her and Don was ridiculous.” She caught the defensive tone in my voice and smiled.
She said, “I just hear what Ed tells me. I don’t know anything, other than what Don was like. I’ve never even met Ms. Jones.”
“But you think there was something between her and Don?” I couldn’t help asking it. I wanted an answer for reasons that had nothing to do with the case.
She chuckled softly and said, “It’s entirely possible they were just using each other. It’s what people do. But I have a good idea who would have won out. Ed tells me Ms. Jones is very careful with her business affairs. Which leads me to believe she was careful with her other affairs as well. Don was always more lucky than careful. And he was one of those men who never understood women, despite building his career on their exploitation. Some men will always let women manipulate them, no matter what their age.” She was talking about Don, but she was smiling at me as she spoke. Her eyes held a mixture of recognition and pity.
I watched her finish her gin and tonic. The angle of the shadows on the pool told me that late afternoon was coming on without me having to check my watch. The shadows wavered on the glassy surface of the water as I wondered who could tell me about Tiffany Long. Where she had come from and why she had come. As Colette showed me out we made small talk—if there’s anything I can help you with, and all that.
I hesitated in her doorway, thanking her for her time, then, as an afterthought, I said, “Oh, and one more thing. Can you tell me how to get to Canoga Park?”
XVII
She told me it was further west and north, deeper into the Valley. I could take the surface streets or the freeway. When I asked her how far it was, she smiled and said, “Less than ten miles, but it could easily take an hour to get there.” You just have to love LA traffic.
Ventura Boulevard was crammed and I plodded along from light to light for what felt like the rest of the afternoon. Eventually, I found myself at the Topanga Canyon cross street. A turn south would take me over the mountain, through the narrow canyon and eventually to the ocean.
But I was going north. I turned up Topanga and the traffic eased. I went under the 101 Freeway, into Canoga Park, passed strip malls, run down apartments, a high school surrounded by high chain link, and felt the relative beauty and luxury of Ventura Boulevard quickly degrade into a city that had seen its better days.
I stopped at a graffiti covered Kentucky Fried Chicken and asked a scared looking kid where the address I was looking for was. He gave me some half-assed directions, watching me nervously from the corner of his eye. Like a guy in a tie and sport coat was going to rob him. Maybe it was the novelty of my outfit that threw him off. I choked down a chicken sandwich in the car while I wandered off into a neighborhood of fifty-year-old houses that hadn’t been painted since the day they were built.
I found the address on a street of one-story ramblers with trampled dirt for yards and sidewalks out front that were cracked and heaved as though the world had tried to shake the street off its back to get rid of it. The gutters were littered with fallen palm fronds, curled and crisp brown, decaying where they’d landed. It was a street where no maintenance was ever done.
I found the address on the background check. The house looked empty, but I’d gotten lucky finding people this way before. The house next door was identical, except for the old man in the lawn chair eyeing me from the slanted, sagging perch of the front porch. A cluster of small children went by on the sidewalk but not because this was a safe neighborhood where kids played freely. These kids had the look of abandonment in their eyes. They roamed because there was no one home to corral them.
I got out and walked up to the door. Through the window, I could see some furniture and boxes, but no people. I knocked and waited. I knocked again. Nothing. No one home, if there was ever anyone home. I stepped back off the porch and stood in the dirt yard, looking at the house. I could feel the old guy next door watching me. I doubted many guys in BMWs, dressed like me, ever came looking for anyone on this street.
After a long thirty seconds, the old guy called out, “Can I help you with something?”
I looked over at him like I hadn’t noticed him before. He wore khaki shorts with smudges of grease on them and a T-shirt that barely covered his huge belly. An American flag stretched across the front of the shirt, emblazoned across the top in gold with the word “Freedom.”
He lit a cigarette and watched me cross the dirt yard toward him. He exhaled and spoke through the cloud of smoke between us. “You looking for someone?”
“Looking for the Longs. Missus Long, if she’s still here.” I used Missus, not knowing if she was married, figuring it only made me look like an inept businessman if I was wrong.
The old guy shook his head, the thin white hair shaking loose as he moved. “Helen Long’s been gone seven or eight years now. Too damned bad too. She was about the last good people left on this street.”
“Do you know where she went?”
He brushed the hair back off his forehead and said he didn’t. Then he ran his eyes over me again and laughed. “Why you trying to find her? You coming to tell her she inherited a million bucks from some old relative?”
His laughter was hoarse from decades of cigarettes, and it broke off with a series of deep, phlegmy coughs. He caught himself, leaned forward, and spat a dark yellow goo into the dirt. He looked at the cigarette with disdain, like
a lover that had done him wrong, and said, “They say these goddamned things’ll kill me. I keep waiting, but I’m still here. Just another fucking rip-off.” He turned back to the porch and settled in a very old lawn chair.
I almost laughed, but held it in. I said, “I’m actually trying to find some information about her daughter.”
He laughed again—this time without coughing—and said, “Which one? Hell, they had about a hundred kids go through that house at one time or another. Most of ‘em white too. Which is more’n I can say for the rest of the mongrels around here.” He reached around behind his chair and picked up a gallon jug of red wine and took a hard swig from it. He set it back down without offering me any. Not that I was interested.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked down the street, shaking his head with grim awareness. “Shit, we moved out here in ‘65, right after the Watts riots. This was about as far away from the fucking niggers as you could get back then. Let them burn their own fucking neighborhood. That’s what I said. So we moved out here. It used to be a nice place. All these houses were practically new back then. But then the spics started sneaking into the country and every damned one of them seemed to move in right next door.” He spat on the ground again and blew out another cloud of smoke.
“Do you recall a daughter of hers named Tiffany? Blonde, very attractive.”
The old guy grinned and said, “Sure, I remember her. Not many women look like that. Especially around here.” He looked over at the house the Longs had lived in and said, “She was fine looking, that’s for damned sure. Probably still is, I’d bet.”
He reached back for the jug again. I could hear the sloshing of the liquid inside as he brought it to his lips. I figured it for half empty and wondered how long ago it had been full. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again and glanced back at the porch of the Long house with a prurient grin.
The Flaming Motel Page 14
