“Said her shift ends at eight.”
“And we’re all about respecting a stripper’s work hours.”
“Respecting the bouncer who let me chum the club with all those hundies you set me up with. We struck pay dirt with the stripper. Now we wait.”
“Frickin’ frickenstein!”
“You wanna huff and puff when I’m not tryin’ to nap?”
“This whole situation is…torture.”
“At last we agree on something.”
Lucky hoped he had snapped a lid on the subject. He craved quiet and sleep. With that baseball cap over his face, he relaxed his shoulders into the seat and yearned for silence. It brought him immediately back to his days as a training officer out of Lennox. Half as a test, the other half out of necessity, he would park across the street from a supermarket to catch a fifteen-minute on-duty cat nap. During which he would demand his trainee keep his mouth shut while keeping a keen count of who exited and entered the grocery chain. After there’d be a pop quiz on the rookie’s powers of observation. How many customers entered and exited, their sex, ages, clothing, and distinguishing behaviors. Lucky would claim to later check the trainee’s answers against the radio car’s dash cam video. But he never did. Or had to. The exercise had already served its dual purpose.
As Lucky drifted off, he tried to disregard Andrew’s restless movements—his shifting in the passenger seat, sighing as he tried to control his anxiety, the rustling of his windbreaker, even the mild beeping of a game he played on his cell phone to pass the time. After some time, Lucky heard the car door open and felt a sudden change of air pressure in the cabin, the shocks of the Crown Vic readjusting for the change of weight, and the door clunking to a distinct close.
Just as it always had, the relief of being alone warmed him. For as long as Lucky could remember, the sound of a door closing on him was often a moment of welcome. He quickly drifted off.
A sharp twist of acute pain woke Lucky. At least that’s how he recalled it. A trigger point two inches below his shoulder blades and just to the right of his spine had erupted into a knife tip that was slightly relieved with a simple posture adjustment.
And then Lucky smelled the chicken.
Popeye’s Louisiana Fried Chicken to be exact. The distinctive aroma filled the space. Lucky’s nose curled and his eyes adjusted to the dark.
“That drool on your mouth,” said Andrew, “from dreaming of strippers or dreaming of dinner?”
“You went out for chicken?” Lucky croaked.
“I was hungry,” said Andrew, sinking his teeth into the skin of a chicken breast. “C’mon. Got dinner for two.”
“Not a fan.”
“A cop that doesn’t eat junk food?” mused Andrew. “You disappoint.”
The alarm on Lucky’s phone chirped. 7:55 P.M. Then as he came to, calculating that he had five minutes until his target stripper’s shift ended, he spotted her already crossing the far side of the parking lot. Between the cars, up against an ivy-covered cinder-block wall, she walked at an athletic pace, a long raincoat, and a woolly cap pulled down low over her purple hair.
His hand switched on the ignition and started the Crown Vic. He kept the headlights extinguished, dropped the auto into gear, and traversed left at an angle that might best intercept her.
“What where?” asked Andrew. “We going now?”
Lucky gestured with his chin, keeping his eyes split between the girl and the front end of the Crown Vic.
“Can’t see what you’re looking at,” said Andrew.
Neither could Lucky. His stripper must have already ducked into her vehicle. Lucky tripped the headlights and turned a hard right toward the back row of the lot. He was looking for a dome light, brake lights, or the telltale white flare of backup lights. Any indication that she might be pulling out of her parking space. Lucky swung another ninety-degree right, his own headlights sweeping and landing on the rear end of a VW Jetta that had just geared into reverse. He sped up. Brake lights flared. The driver of the Jetta waited for the Crown Vic to roll by.
Only the Crown Vic slowed and stopped directly behind the vehicle, effectively blocking the German car from backing out of its space.
“Stay in the car,” reminded Lucky. “And hope she doesn’t have a gun.”
“A gun?” asked Andrew with a burst of surprise.
Lucky popped his door open, allowing the dome light to ignite and possibly reveal some of his features to the girl in the Jetta. He held up both his hands, open and without malice, for her to see in the rearview mirror. Then with a pen flashlight he blazed a beam onto that high-school wallet photo of Karrie Kaarlsen, making certain the driver of the car might clearly see his intentions in her side mirror.
“YOU KNOW HER,” Lucky shouted. “I NEED TO TALK TO YOU, PLEASE.”
He could see her in the mirror’s reflection, a dark shadow in a wool cap, motionless. He could tell her foot was firmly on the brakes because of the red flare from the lights.
“C’MON. I KNOW YOU KNOW THIS GIRL,” Lucky tried to confirm.
The girl cracked her window open to barely an inch and lifted her lips so he could hear her.
“CALLING NINE-ONE-ONE RIGHT NOW!” she warned.
“Good idea,” said Lucky. “Then you can explain to them what you were doing bringing a fifteen-year-old runaway to a strip club.”
Of course Lucky wasn’t certain at all about the assertion. It was a classic bluff. But how the girl played it would answer volumes.
“Or you can give me five minutes and just talk,” urged Lucky.
“You’re not a cop?”
“Not today.” Lucky eased between the Jetta and the car parked next to it, then as much as it hurt, bent a bit at the waist. “Can you see through your rearview mirror? If you haven’t, look…Now see the other guy in the car? Tell me you can see him.”
“What about him?” asked Cherry.
“That’s Karrie’s father.”
“…Who’s Karrie?”
“The girl in the picture.”
“You’re not gonna hurt me?”
“Just wanna talk about the girl.”
Lucky straightened and retreated a non-threatening yard. Took a deep breath. Then was glad to see the Jetta’s door crack open and, behind it, the dancer he had met almost two hours earlier. She was tinier than he expected. Without the stage and a pair of spiked pumps, she was barely five feet.
“Valeriana,” said Cherry.
“Is that your name?” asked Lucky.
“No. The girl in the picture,” she said. “Told me her name was Valeriana.”
Cherry shifted in place, peering past Lucky’s thick frame at the second man in the Crown Vic.
“That really her dad?” asked Cherry.
“All the way from Wisconsin.”
29
Downtown. 8:29 P.M.
Herm needed a girl he could sell. Not just any girl. What he called a Suzy Q kind of girl. American or Canadian. White and assumed to be built from pure apple pie. Classic good looks. From cute to pretty to downright beauteous. A tight body that was already in bloom. Optimal age, fifteen to sixteen. A very simple and profitable recipe. For that, there were always buyers willing to fork over up to fifteen grand in cash.
And in Los Angeles, Suzy Q’s grew like leaves on trees.
Without such a girl, though, Herm would soon cease to manage his almost modest lifestyle. After all, he did keep two homes in pricey Los Angeles. The rent-controlled apartment in West Hollywood and his Valley home improvement project. Without a payable Suzy Q, his healthy construction habit would surely stall. This was his precise thinking when an hour prior, he had stood smack in the middle of the crown molding section in one of the two Home Depots within three miles of his Panorama City address. He paused over his decision to salve his frustration with a little DIY therapy and then left a cart half-stuffed with copper plumbing supplies in the middle of the store.
The trek to the home improvement store had begun as
a distraction to get his brain off of that young photographer known as Gabriel. After succeeding in acquiring a cell phone number, Herm had called, heard the man’s voicemail, and left a neighborly, work-friendly message with his callback digits.
That was hours ago.
And like a spider bite that turns to a nagging itch, the usual distractions were no longer helping Herm shake the urge to redial and redial again until he received a reaction.
My unicorn, he’d begun to say to himself, switching from the to the possessive my.
Now Cherry Pie. Were she still fifteen-years-old, she would have been a ripe Suzy Q. That’s assuming there was an appealing hair color under all that purple.
Forget about unicorns, Herm.
Easier said than done. That’s because unicorns were just that. Unicorns. Rare. Exceptions to the beauty rule. Some might describe it as having to do with a girl’s eyes. Herm had long ago refrained from trying to put an explanation on the unexplainable. Unicorns were unicorns and that was just that. Measurable only in what the flesh market would pony up. And those numbers could sometimes crack the low six figures if his Triad connection could identify the right Asian buyer.
Forget her, Herm. And start the fuck over.
Start over. That meant acquiring a new target. Herm first wondered if he had the patience to hunt and gather via his most recent scam—the casting call. And the answer came in loud and clear from the planning resources of his brain. A decided no. Herm would backtrack to a more time efficient plan with fewer moving parts. Sure, there was a bit more exposure. But Herm was a practiced professional. In his career, he had netted countless teenage girls. And in LA, they were such low-hanging fruit that all a hunter-gatherer needed to do was reach out, grab hold, and snap one right off the ol’ Suzy Q tree.
As Herm saw it, the illegal nightclub scene was like the biggest floating craps game in human history. Venues would open and close in a matter of weeks, only to reappear under different names the next weekend. Most importantly, the location would be changed, making it difficult for under-manned and overtaxed police departments to keep track, let alone, move in and shut down the nightly extravaganzas of music, dance, drink, and illicit drugs.
Enter the world of social media and it was as if a turbocharger had been applied. Not until the actual moment the venue opened for a one-night-only blowout would the address be revealed to the teeming throngs of teens ravenous to escape the confines of their nuclear families and party until dawn.
As much as Herm understood the bones of the illegal club scene, he wasn’t at all clued into the digital side of it all. Thus, he was out of the loop and didn’t know the when and where of the operations. No matter, he wisely reasoned. Temporary clubs still demanded build-outs. Lights and sound and cases upon cases of liquor which required loading into a particular location. He correctly figured that all he needed to do was troll the warehouses on the side streets east of downtown in search of after-hours activity that matched the profile. Once he had marked the spot, he could retire for eight hours, returning at three or four A.M. to prowl for a drugged or drunken straggler, lost from the herd and in dire need of assistance.
And it would be Uncle Herm to the rescue.
It surprised the teen-snatching veteran how quickly he happened upon a club in the process of setting up for the evening. The giveaway was the Ryder rent-a-truck backed up to a large warehouse edged by the rail yard. Most commercial trucks weren’t normally operated by drivers working rigs with a big, red “RENT ME” emblazoned on the side. Pretending to be a curious security supervisor, Herm learned the rolling venue was known amongst the underground scene as House of Hideous Blue.
Helluva name, he thought. No IDs required, twenty-dollar cover, and miles of ten-dollar Red Bull and vodka cocktails. An ATM machine on wheels. Nice business. The more Herm thought about the prospects the roving club might bring him, the less he thought of that strawberry blonde roommate of…what’s her name? Oh, yeah. Cherry Pie, he finally remembered. Lousy handle. As he surveyed the territory, he found plenty of places to lie in wait, with both easy ingress and egress. Who knows? He might even stumble upon a gem to make him forget Miss Strawberry Blonde.
The last thing Herm expected was for Gabriel to finally call him back. But just as he was sitting down to a meal consisting of an old favorite—fried eggs, bacon, and grilled sourdough bread at downtown’s Original Pantry Café—he recognized the number he had copied off of Queenie’s computer screen.
“This is Herm,” he answered, pressing his phone to his ear while inserting his index finger in the opposite ear canal, trying like hell to drown out the sound of the restaurant.
“This is Gabe Roth,” said the voice. “You called me?”
“I did, yes,” answered Herm, trying like hell not to let the surprise to his nervous system play as surprise in his voice. “Thanks for calling back.”
“What can I do for you?” asked Gabe.
“Think I have something of yours,” said Herm. “Slipped under my door but it had your name on it.”
“Really? Don’t have a clue what it could be.”
“Neither do I,” continued Herm. “But it’s big and flat and says ‘rush’ on it.”
“Rush?”
“Don’t have it in front of me. But I think it was an ad agency envelope,” lied Herm. “Recognized the logo.”
“Haven’t the faintest, but…”
“Thought of slipping it under your door but I didn’t want to damage it any further.”
“It’s damaged?”
“Not so bad, I guess.”
“You gonna be over there tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure,” said Herm, truthful this time. It would depend entirely on his luck later that night.
“How about tonight?” said Gabe. “If it’s not too far, I could come to you.”
“Don’t think it could wait?”
“Might be about a gig,” admitted Gabe. “And when they’re few and far between, well, you know what that’s like.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Herm, his plans already shifting beneath him. “We could meet up at the building?”
“The Casting Place?”
“Not far for me,” said Herm. “On my way home, in fact.”
“Meet you there in when? You name it.”
“What time is it?” asked Herm to himself. Though he didn’t need an answer. He had hours before he could begin throwing his net. And meeting up with Gabe was still the priority. If Cherry Pie didn’t have a bead on his unicorn, Gabe just might. All Herm would need was a phone number and he’d be that much closer.
“How about an hour?” asked Gabe.
“Works for me,” said Herm.
“Very grateful,” said Gabe. “Appreciate this, Herm. I’m gonna owe you.”
Owe me? Damn right you owe me.
“See you in an hour,” finished Herm, clicking off with perfect timing. His meal was being served on heavy, white restaurant ware. The fried eggs were still sizzling next to four flat strips of crispy bacon.
“Well alright,” said Herm to himself, quelling the excitement within. “Well, alright indeed.”
30
Negotiating the drive back to Hollywood was awkward at best. Thirty minutes earlier, back in The Rabbit Pole parking lot, Andrew was required to remain anchored in the Crown Vic while Lucky continued to ease Cherry Pie’s concerns that neither man was a pervert or a threat. That it was for Karrie’s own good that Cherry cooperate with the reunification of father and daughter.
“I seriously didn’t know she was fifteen,” Cherry confessed while navigating her VW Jetta over the winding blacktop that was Laurel Canyon Boulevard. “I mean, maybe not legal and not quite eighteen. But close to like seventeen, you know?”
“I get it,” said Lucky from the cramped passenger seat. He checked the side view mirror to make certain Andrew was still in tow, following in the Crown Vic.
“Val’s dad’s a flippin’ tailgater,” observed Cherry.
“Karrie’s dad,” corrected Lucky. “Just so we don’t confuse things. And yeah. He’s kinda close.”
They were on the downhill side of the canyon that connects Hollywood with the Valley. The destination? Dead reckoning for that casting location where Cherry had unknowingly handed off her care of Karrie to some thirtyish photographer guy she thought was named Gabe. The light that night had been sketchy. At the distance from where Cherry had been standing under that sidewalk-busting pepper tree, she couldn’t shape more of a description of the man beyond Caucasian and maybe bearded.
The snaking road was slick with rain and the muddy leftovers from recent rockslides. The last thing Lucky’s aching back needed was to be in a rear-end accident with the heavy Crown Vic at the giving end. He considered having Cherry pull over so he could give Andrew a warning. But since they were merely ten minutes away from the destination, he let it go.
“Kinda feel for him,” said Cherry.
“Feel for who?” asked Lucky.
“Val’s…” began Cherry, before correcting herself. “I mean the dad…Way my mom tells it, my pops wouldn’t have crossed the room to check my temperature.”
“Maybe we’re related,” Lucky deadpanned.
“Seriously. He’s come all the way from Minnesota—”
“Wisconsin,” corrected Lucky. “Not that it matters. Minnesota. Wherever. Still colder than shit there.”
“You from here?”
“Suppose someone’s gotta be.”
“You got the job.”
“What?”
“Dunno. Something I heard. Nobody’s from LA so when you meet someone from here it’s like they’re special or something.”
I got the job.
While Lucky pondered the term, he kept allowing his eyes to wander around the interior. With each sweep of the Crown Vic’s ever-crowding headlights, Lucky would catch a glimpse of something else. So far, he had figured Cherry’s car to be at least ten years old. The leather upholstery was shiny with a couple hundred thousand miles of wear. At his feet, in the passenger footwell, were Power Bar wrappers along with two plastic Frappuccino empties.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 45
