Payoff

by Douglas Corleone

  “Hey, Finder.”

  “What have you got for me, Breaker?”

  “All doors are wide open.”

  “That quickly?”

  “A fifteen-year-old girl? Come on, Simon. All her passwords are the same.”

  “What is it?”

  “E-A-R-F-A-L-1.”

  I sounded it out in my head. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Kati’s infant, Lacey, was screaming her head off in the background.

  “I don’t know, maybe nothing. Maybe it’s a misspelling of the word ‘earful,’ as in she gets an earful from her parents when she misses curfew.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you all right, Finder? You sound—”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  I heard a ping in the background on Kati’s end.

  “You won’t believe this.”

  “Try me,” I said.

  “I just received an instant message inviting me for a session of cybersex.”

  “No kidding.”

  “No kidding,” she said. “And get this—it’s from Sherlock’s ancient AOL account, LawDawg72.”

  “Probably he wants you to know it’s him.”

  “No, Sherlock doesn’t know I know this handle. I hacked into his PC when we first started dating.” She sighed. “He’s testing me, trying to prove I’m cyber-cheating.”

  “You’re trouble, Breaker.”

  Ping.

  “Gotta go, Finder. Sherlock just asked me if I’ve ever taken part in a threesome.”

  “So?”

  “So, let’s just say I have. But he wasn’t involved.”

  “Oh. Well, good luck with that.”

  As I stuffed the BlackBerry back into my pocket, I watched the horizontal bodies of Jason and Jennifer rise up the hill toward the waiting ambulance, sheets covering each of them from head to toe.

  Had I really only arrived in Los Angeles hours ago?

  If so, how many bodies would be draped in white sheets before all this was over?

  My mind drifted back to the Lindsay Sorkin case, and my time in Poland and Ukraine last year. It caused me to shiver.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught a vehicle rounding the bend. The goddamn thing looked like a futuristic bumblebee on wheels.

  One of the cops stepped into the middle of the road and held out a hand, causing the vehicle to stop. The cop went around to the driver’s side, and the driver lowered his window.

  After a moment, the cop turned his head left and right, apparently searching for someone.

  “Christ,” I said when his eyes finally locked on me.

  The cop motioned me over. As I approached, the cop said with a smirk, “Mr. Fisk, your, ah, ride is here.”

  “Christ,” I said again as I went around to the passenger side.

  I opened the door and settled into the softest gray leather on the planet.

  “What the hell is this?” I said to Nicholas.

  “It’s a Bugatti Veyron, sir,” Nicholas said, straight-faced. “Mr. Trenton paid more than three million dollars for it.”

  “Christ,” I said a third time.

  So much for remaining inconspicuous.

  Chapter 15

  Jason Gutiérrez lived in a small blue ranch home on Ellenwood Drive in Eagle Rock. The houses on the block were dark but I could see neighbors peeping out their windows as the three-million-dollar Veyron cruised by.

  “Drop me at the end of the block and disappear,” I told Nicholas.

  “When shall I pick you up?”

  “Never.”

  I stepped out of the Veyron and waited till it rolled away to start my walk. The area behind the row of houses was pitch black, a wooded mess directly behind them. I skirted the edge of the trees, counting the houses as I moved. Jason’s would be the eighth one in from the end of the block.

  The rear of Jason Gutiérrez’s house was as dark as the front, a high silver fence keeping trespassers out. Making as little noise as possible, I climbed the fence and dropped down on the other side, my right ankle politely reminding me that I’d already been in a fairly awful motorcycle accident tonight.

  I waited for the pain to abate, then looked up, pleased by my spot of luck. The sliding glass door was slid open, leaving nothing but a screen door between me and the interior of Jason’s house.

  As soon as I started for the door, however, a series of menacing barks broke the silence, and I broke into a run. From the sound of its bark, the beast was either a Rottweiler or a dinosaur, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out. I made for the screen door as fast as my strained ankle allowed me.

  From the corner of my left eye, I caught the monster rounding the edge of the house and I lowered my head and pushed myself harder, convinced that the damage of the beast’s bite would be far worse than a snapped ankle.

  No time to play with the handle, I flung myself toward the screen and tore it right off its frame. Quick as I could, I leapt back to my feet and slid the sliding glass door into place. The Rottweiler ran full-force into the door and squealed.

  “Sorry, pup,” I said.

  I was sure the Rottweiler would continue barking and biting at the glass now slick with saliva. But the dog simply picked itself up, whimpered, and walked away, its head down as though it were embarrassed.

  I knew the feeling.

  I turned and looked down at the stained carpet and decrepit couch. Jason Gutiérrez had been a starving artist and I couldn’t help but feel for him. Takes a hell of a lot of guts to pursue a life you’ll love at the expense of things like food and clothes and health insurance. In the six years Tasha and I watched Hailey grow up, we’d vowed to support our daughter in whatever she wanted to do in life.

  Tasha’s parents had money—so had my father—and the three of them were miserable wretches all their lives. Not that there weren’t musicians and actors and poets just as foul. But I figure, even if you’re going to walk through life with a heart hard as stone, you may as well sing some songs, put on a play, maybe recite a poem or two.

  The ranch was a single floor with two bedrooms, only one of which couldn’t pass for a closet. The larger was Jason’s room. In it was a double bed with sheets older than me and a small desk that was propped up on one side by yellowed and tattered screenplays. Atop the desk sat a laptop that had probably lived through the Y2K scare.

  I opened the laptop and turned on the power, waited forever as the old boy tried to boot. I’d half expected a telephone modem and was relieved to find the computer was already online. I pulled down Jason’s browser history and scrolled through the dozen Web addresses, nine of which led to amateur porn sites.

  One address brought me to Lycos, which was apparently Jason’s search engine and e-mail network of choice. His e-mail address was already entered and his password was represented by eight black dots, meaning Kati’s services wouldn’t be necessary. I logged right in.

  Jason had a couple hundred e-mails floating around his in-box. Fortunately, most were from Jennifer Channing, presumably the girl who died in his backseat tonight.

  As I scrolled through the e-mails, one subject line immediately grabbed my attention. It was a reply to an ad on Craigslist.

  I opened it. The sender’s Yahoo e-mail address appeared to consist of nine random numbers; I jotted them down but didn’t expect to learn anything from the free account. The body of the message was simple.

  In need of your services for one night. Call (310) 555-5105.

  I took down the number and reached across the desk for Jason’s landline. Was it possible that the kidnappers were still in the dark about what had happened this evening? Would they actually take Jason’s call? I lifted the receiver. Heard a dial tone. Good, Jason had at least been paying his phone bills.

  I dialed the number.

  “The subscriber you have called is not able to receive calls at this time.”

  “All right, then.” I replaced the receiver and entered the number into my BlackBerry so t
hat I could try again later. I still had a bit of a job to do at Jason’s computer.

  I pulled up Facebook, typed in Olivia’s e-mail address, then her password, “EARFAL1.”

  “In,” I said aloud. “You’re brilliant, Kati.”

  Breaking into someone’s Facebook account for the first time is like arriving at a new amusement park. You don’t know where to go first. I was tempted to go through her photos, but in my experience, a picture wasn’t always worth a thousand words. So I began at the top of her Timeline.

  It became clear right away that even her best friends didn’t yet suspect she was gone. The list of Olivia’s gal pals was still fresh in my head.

  There was Bethany, who’d posted on Olivia’s Timeline this morning: We need 2 go shoppingggg. Retail therapy. ☺

  Then there was Lola: Wanna go to the GYM this after noon. C’mon girl its been awhile. Maybe we’ll see U-no-Who.

  Alysia wrote: Don’t freek but I made the appt. I love love love love love love love love you.

  Made the appointment for what?

  Patience is not one of my strong points, and I already felt the itch of frustration in my gut. Without context, everything here was cryptic. And every hour that ticked by decreased my odds of ever finding Olivia alive.

  I clicked on the section marked “Photos,” went straight for the album titled “Cayman Va-cay.”

  Damn. There were hundreds of pictures. If I studied each one, I’d be here till dawn.

  I started scrolling through them. Olivia and the three other girls—Alysia, Bethany, and Lola—on Seven Mile Beach in bikinis; dressed to the nines at nightclubs they were probably too young to get into; poolside with cocktails; sitting down to dinner at five-star restaurants; posing with an iguana the size of one of my arms.

  As I was looking through the photos, Olivia began feeling real to me, like someone I’d known for years. Different from when I looked through a few of the photos Emma had given me. Gazing at all these pictures, this was almost like seeing her and her friends in real time. The bats were already going to work on my gut.

  Finally, a few pictures with boys.

  Now we’re getting somewhere.

  The trip had taken place a couple months back and the photos were uploaded in chronological order. I suspected each girl had brought her own camera, but right now there was no way to know.

  In most of these photos, Lola was paired with a handsome dark-skinned boy who may have been a native to the island. Alysia was with a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who may well have been from California. And Bethany—well, it all depended upon the hour and the night. From the looks of it, Bethany had posed with every guy on the island who looked under the age of forty.

  Olivia didn’t appear to be with anyone. In every photo, she was smiling for the camera but alone. In a couple of the pictures, her eyes were fixed on something or someone just outside the frame.

  Except at this one nightclub. Here it looked as though most of the photos had been cropped. Olivia was always situated on the right end. Someone was apparently standing next to her yet didn’t make the final cut. Definitely a male. In one photo I could see a black shoe, in another a large shadow.

  Then the kicker. A right arm. Either very tanned or brown to begin with, I couldn’t tell. The arm was snaked around Olivia’s thin waist and all I could see was the hand, the wrist, and very little of the forearm. On his wrist was what looked like an expensive gold Rolex, but for all I knew, it could’ve been a fake.

  I continued scrolling. Noticed that the photos seemed to skip an entire day.

  Interesting. I jotted down the date.

  Ten minutes later, I noted the hour. Wondered if it was too late at night to pay a visit to Olivia’s three amigas.

  Chapter 16

  Three dead ends. After returning to the Trentons’ estate to shower and change clothes, I’d asked Edgar for permission to speak to Olivia’s three best friends. I visited each of their houses just after dawn. Each set of parents insisted one of them be able to sit in on the questioning, which made the mission all but impossible.

  Each of the girls claimed not to know anything about the boys depicted in the photos, not even their first names. They’d only spoken to them at the clubs; no one had spent the night with a member of the opposite sex the entire trip. None of the four girls were sexually active, of course. At least not in front of their parents.

  As for the missing day—a Tuesday—Olivia had been ill, which was to say she’d been suffering a five-alarm hangover. The four girls had stayed in two rooms at the Grand Cayman Ritz-Carlton. Olivia bunked with Alysia, Lola with Bethany. But during those missing twenty-four hours, Alysia had crashed with Lola and Bethany because Olivia wanted to be left alone. The girls had dropped by Olivia’s room to check on her several times that day, but Olivia didn’t answer their knocks. However, Alysia had received text messages from Olivia throughout the day, informing her that Olivia was alive though still not feeling so well. The following morning, Olivia met her three friends for breakfast and the trip proceeded as planned.

  The most I got out of any of them was that “U-no-Who” was a personal trainer at the gym the girls went to and the purpose of the appointment Alysia had set up.

  “We were going to get tongue rings,” she told me. In the same breath she turned to her father and apologized.

  Malibu, I decided, was a hell of a place to get answers from teenage girls. I’d much rather question kids in the slums.

  Back at the Trentons’ estate, while icing my strained ankle, I interviewed each of the servants whom Edgar had called in. Manny Villanueva seemed genuinely heartbroken, as did the maid, Karmela Garza. The driver, Nicholas Artenie, was angry with me for having lied to him about the purpose of my visit from the moment I stepped off the plane. The gardener, Raúl Corpas, and the chef, Luis Rivera—neither of whom spoke English—both asked for their attorneys, which didn’t surprise me. They’d seen enough episodes of Nancy Grace en español to know that anyone in the United States can be vilified by a nasty cable news commentator without a shred of evidence pointing in their direction.

  After the interviews, while Raúl and Luis stood outside, waiting for their attorneys, I sat down at the dining room table with a visibly tortured Edgar and Emma and discussed how best to move forward.

  “At this point,” I said, “we’ve got to involve the FBI and the LAPD. The kidnappers have all your money, so there’s no possibility of working with them anymore. It seems clear now that they’re not going to voluntarily give up your girl.”

  “But why?” Emma cried. “I don’t underst—”

  “I know. That’s something I’m going to attempt to figure out. Because once we know the ‘why,’ it may well lead to the ‘who’ and the ‘where.’ And that’s how we’re going to get Olivia back.”

  “So, you’re not leaving us,” Edgar said.

  “Of course not. Why would I? I’ve been working this for less than a day.”

  “I don’t know. I just assumed that once the FBI got involved—”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I won’t be working with the feds. That won’t do anybody any good. They’ve already got the best and the brightest. They don’t need me. They’re going to attack this case from one angle, and I’m going to attack it from another.”

  “How much do you need to continue this investigation? Besides what we’ve given these bastards, Emma and I have a few hundred thousand socked away in a savings account.”

  “Look, Edgar, I’m not motivated by money. But I’m not allergic to it either. There may be a significant amount of travel involved, and airfare isn’t cheap. Neither are hotels. I don’t eat often and I don’t eat fancy, but I do eat. And I drink a hell of a lot of coffee. I’ll also need to rent transportation when I get to wherever I’m going.” I leaned back in my chair. “Speaking of which, tell your neighbor Freddy I’m really sorry about the Ducati.”

  Edgar pushed away from the table and said, “Let me go get you a check, Simon.”
/>   That left me alone with Emma for the first time since I’d arrived in California.

  I said, “Is there anything you left out that maybe you didn’t want Edgar to hear? If so, tell me now. I promise to keep it in confidence.”

  “No,” she said. “Of course not. What makes you—?”

  “How is Edgar’s relationship with his daughter?”

  “Fine. I mean, he spends too much time at the studio, but that’s nothing new. He has no more or less time for her now than he did the entire time she was growing up.”

  “How about your relationship with your husband?”

  Emma hesitated.

  I said, “Any infidelity on either side?”

  She lowered her eyes to the table.

  I said, “Edgar had mentioned a former babysitter of Olivia’s, a Sofía who was ultimately deported after a long immigration battle. When I took a look at her file, I noticed that her face had been scratched out of a few of her pictures.”

  Emma looked up at me, trying to control a slight twitch in her lip. “That would be my handiwork.”

  “Anyone else?” I said. “Anyone more recently?”

  She nodded. “Edgar’s been sleeping with his assistant, Valerie, for at least the past six months.”

  “Does he know that you know?”

  “I think so. Pretty much everyone knows. People who work in the movie industry generally aren’t quiet types.”

  “Any talk of divorce?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you’re considering it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you taken any actions in that regard?”

  She said, “I’ve spoken with a lawyer.”

  “Did you pay the lawyer?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “By check?”

  “No, with cash.”

  “What’s the lawyer’s name?”

  “Ernie Byers in Beverly Hills. He’s the best. He represents all the big agents and entertainment lawyers in their divorces.” She added, “Or their husbands or wives, depending on who gets through his door first.”

  “Is there a prenuptial agreement in place?”