by Owen Thomas
“Yeah. I stayed over every now and then. But I live in Glendale.”
“Have you been to his home since you broke up?”
“No.”
“When you were seeing Zack did you have access to his vehicles?”
“Access?”
“Did he let you drive his cars?”
“I’ve driven them. He let me.”
“On what occasions did you drive his cars?”
“When he was maybe too drunk to drive he would toss me the keys.”
Fuentes nodded approvingly.
“Did that happen a lot that he was too drunk to drive?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. A few times I guess.”
“Have you driven the Escalade?”
Burton touched my arm to stop me from answering.
“Detective, I’m getting an uneasy feeling here. Do you have questions about Mr. West or someone else that she can help you answer?”
“Tilly, did Zack West give you access to his Escalade?”
Burton kept his fingers on my wrist.
“Simply working Zack’s name into the question isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
“We’re off to a bad start, counselor,” she said.
“Yes we are.”
“Tilly, when was the last time you had any access to Mr. West’s Escalade?”
“New rules, Detective. Her name is now Ms. Johns. She is not answering any questions about what kind of access she had to Mr. West’s Escalade. What else?”
Fuentes gave me a smile and a sigh and leaned back in her chair.
“Ms. Johns,” she said. I smiled in acknowledgment. “When you were dating Mr. West, did you ever witness him using narcotics?”
Burton lifted his fingers from my wrist.
“What kind of narcotics?” I asked, stalling.
“Any kind.”
“Like … you mean, over-the-counter…”
“Illegal narcotics. Ms. Johns.”
“I’ve seen him smoke a joint before.”
“Okay. Just the one joint, huh?”
“I wasn’t keeping track.”
“I’m not interested in marijuana. What else?”
“Zack could get some wicked headaches. I know he had medication for that. If I saw him take a pill I guess I just assumed…”
“Medication.”
“Yeah. Medication.”
“What did they look like, these migraine pills?”
“I don’t really remember.”
It went on like this for another ten minutes of bobbing and weaving. The migraine story was absolutely true, but getting me to come out from behind it and actually tell her what she wanted to know was frustrating her and she finally changed up the pitch.
“Okay, Ms. Johns, look, let me just cut through the crap here. I get that you don’t want to rat out your old boyfriend. So rather than you telling me what you know, let me tell you what I know.”
She opened up the manila file and unclipped a photograph from a sheaf of papers. She handed it to me. Zack’s black Cadillac Escalade was on its right side on top of a light pole that wrapped over the top of the cab like a bendy straw. The front end of the Escalade was actually inside the iconic red corner entrance to Whiskey A Go Go. The pavement was a festival of broken safety glass lit by the camera flash.
“About two a.m. Tuesday morning Zack drove this Escalade into that light pole and into, literally, that building. He was traveling west on Sunset at speeds in the neighborhood of sixty miles an hour. He is very lucky to be alive. Officers were at the scene quickly. He was unconscious and covered in his own vomit. An ambulance took him to San Vicente Hospital where he was treated and eventually released into police custody. He blew well above the legal limit on the breathalyzer. A search of the vehicle revealed two sixty-four ounce bags of narcotics packed under the rear seat behind a subwoofer. Amyl nitrate. Methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA. You might know that as E or X or Ecstasy. And also Viagra. It should not surprise you that we take this sort of thing very seriously.
“When questioned as to the ownership of the drugs, Mr. West denied knowing anything about them, suggesting that someone had put them in his vehicle without his knowledge. When asked just who he thinks might have done such a thing, Mr. West indicated that we should talk to you.”
“Me?!” I erupted, almost coming out of my chair. “He said I put trail mix in his rig? No way. I don’t believe that.”
Fuentes’s face acknowledged my familiarity with the slang. She looked at Burton, then opened up the file in front of her and leafed through papers, stopping when she found what she was wanted.
“He said, and I’m quoting: ‘Tilly knows. Tilly knows everything. Talk to Tilly. She knows. Tilly knows all about me.’ So,” Fuentes looked up. “He seems to think you know something.”
“Oh, this is… this is…”
Burton’s hand was suddenly back on my forearm.
“Where was the statement taken?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, where was that statement taken?”
“At San Vicente.”
“Drunk off his ass and spinning on trail mix.”
“I don’t know what was in his system yet.”
“He was a mess. Wasn’t he?”
Fuentes hesitated for a nanosecond. Then she nodded.
“He was pretty wasted. Yeah.”
“Then this statement means nothing.”
“Not so fast...”
“It’s unreliable, Detective. And it’s all you’ve got because before he came out of his purple haze he’d lawyered up. Am I right? And now he’s as tight as a clam.”
“You don’t have to like it counsel, but we are following up on every lead we get.”
“Lead. That’s not a lead.”
“If your client has something to hide, then I guess I can understand not wanting to help the police, but otherwise I’m baffled as to why she would not want not cooperate.”
“She is cooperating,” said Burton. “Here we are, Detective. But if you’re trying to make a case against her then we’re not…”
Fuentes cut him off and turned back to me.
“Were those drugs yours?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he got them?”
“No.”
“Had you ever seen him in possession of narcotics?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Have you ever used narcotics?”
“Don’t answer that,” said Burton.
“No,” I said, ignoring him. “Not like that. Pot. And Valium once. Prescribed.”
“Did you put the drugs in Zack’s Escalade without him knowing?”
“What? No. Why would I do that?”
Fuentes just looked at me, lifting an eyebrow, letting it sink in. It took me a minute to catch on.
“What? Revenge?! You think that just because…”
“You’ve had a tough go of it with Zack recently.”
“Oh. Come on.”
“I understand you’re not happy about the video. Or, what was her name?”
“Of course I’m not happy about … Is that what he’s saying? That I was trying to get back at him for … for that stupid video. And stupid Maria Beckwith? He thinks I stuffed his truck full of drugs and then what? I settled in to wait for him to get into an accident in the hopes it might be searched?”
“Pretty silly, isn’t it?” Said Fuentes, nodding with a smile. She clearly knew that agreeing with me would set me back on my heels.
“Yeah. It’s ridiculous,” I sputtered.
“Less ridiculous is the anonymous tip we received the day before the crash that Zack West was dealing designers at his beach parties.”
“We’re done here,” said Burton, starting to rise with his hand on my arm. I yanked it away.
“And you think that was me?” I asked.
“Was it?”
“No!”
“You have no idea then.”
“No.”
“You know of anyone looking to set Zack up?”
“No. Everyone …” Burton yanked me to my feet. “Everyone likes Zack.”
“Detective, the interview is over. If you have other questions you can…”
“We’re not quite done yet, counsel.”
“Unless you’re arresting her, we’re leaving. Is that what you’re doing?”
“Is that what you want?”
Fuentes and Burton Dalrymple stared at each other across the table. I hung from Burton’s grip.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Fuentes pulled a sheet of paper from the file and handed it to him, looking at me as she did. Burton let me go and took the paper with a sigh. Then he sneered out a laugh.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a search warrant for your house and your car,” he said. “This is ridiculous. What’s your PC? Zack West’s fucked up mutterings? You got a judge to sign-off…”
“File your motions, Mr. Dalrymple. Tilly, where is your car parked?”
I did not answer. I was like an old computer hard drive asked to process too much information at once. My eyes must have looked like spinning colored pinwheels. I was taking a mental inventory of my entire home, room by room, closet by closet, and simultaneously trying to imagine Zack wanting to implicate me in a drug crime or believing that I was pathetic enough to seek that kind of revenge for the video and the philandering with Maria Beckwith. Zack’s words ran in a loop. Tilly knows. Tilly knows everything. Talk to Tilly. She knows. Tilly knows all about me.
“Ms. Johns. Where is your vehicle?”
“It’s in the shop,” I said trying to refocus. “I was rammed.”
“How did you get here?”
“I drove her over,” said Burton, still reading the warrant.
“Are you driving a rental for the time being?”
“Don’t answer that,” said Burton.
“What kind of car is it?”
“Don’t answer that,” said Burton.
“Where is that vehicle now?”
“Don’t answer that. The warrant specifies a Miata. And only a Miata.”
Fuentes handed me a pen and told me to write the name of the body shop on the manila folder. I waited for Burton to approve. He nodded.
“So,” she said, “here’s how this works. I have a couple of officers waiting for a call. They will meet you at your home. They will not enter until you arrive. They will search the premises. You may observe. You may not leave their sight. You may not impede. If you impede you will be arrested. The rest depends on what they find. I will also have an officer go to the body shop. Questions?”
“Where’s Zack?” I asked.
“Not too long ago he was sitting in Hollywood Jail. Sitting on a cot about the size of this table. Waiting for a hearing. I suspect he’s made bail by now.”
* * *
On the ride home, Burton told me that the probable cause for the warrant had to be based on some informant in addition to Zack. He did not find it credible that Zack alone, in his condition, spouting vague statements of the kind Detective Fuentes had shared, would have been sufficient.
“Gotta be someone else in the background. I don’t have any experience with Judge Wheeler, but any judge asked to sign that warrant would know instantly that there will be a lot of attention on this case. I mean, Zack West and Tilly Johns? Felony possession with intent? After all of the tabloid warm up? That’s a high-profile case. He’d be bracing himself for a publicity circus and he’d have to anticipate that you will be well represented. That means probable cause for the warrant will be challenged as a matter of course in the hopes that the evidence they seize in the search can be suppressed at trial.”
“Trial?! Burton, there is nothing in my house. I haven’t done anything.”
“I know, I know,” he said unconvincingly. “I’m just thinking ahead. Don’t mind me. We’ll take this one step at a time.”
I wished I had not shown my anxiety. Burton spent the rest of the drive managing my nerves by trying to take my mind off what was happening. His daughter, Tyler, had just graduated from Marymount, a posh Catholic high school on Sunset that I have driven past a thousand times, wondering what it would be like to be a teenager in that culture. Not the Catholic culture. The Hollywood culture. Burton told me that in the fall Tyler would essentially step across Sunset Boulevard to attend UCLA. He was so proud he was busting. I wondered what it would be like to have a father so proud he was busting.
“What does she want to do with herself?” I asked, not really caring in the least and wanting him to just stop talking.
“She likes biological sciences. I’m pushing for law, but I don’t really care. Whatever makes her happy. Anything but the movies.”
I supposed he had meant to be ironic. He laughed like it was funny.
My cell rang. It was Simon Hunter.
“Tills.”
“Can’t talk, Simon.”
“What’s happening?”
“Can’t talk Simon.”
“What’s the … can you… okay, call me.”
I hung up. The phone seemed perturbed. It buzzed again.
“Christ Simon, what is it?”
“Tillyjohn?”
“Blair. Sorry. I can’t talk now.”
“Is everything…”
I hung up on him.
Two black and white cruisers were in my driveway. Three uniformed officers alighted as we pulled up. They were all stiffly official but polite, referring to me as ma’am in a way that made me feel special and tragic at the same time. In a syllable, the word tipped its hat to the indignity and intrusion of their presence. I unlocked the front door and then waited to follow them in.
They worked their way through the house, room by room, Burton and I hanging in the background. They communicated to each other in short efficient words, punctuated by bursts of static from their radios.
“Couch?”
“Yes. Clean.”
“Behind the far left cushion?”
“Got that. And underneath.”
“Hall closet is clean.”
I followed them into the kitchen.
My heart stopped.
My laptop was still open on the counter, surrounded by the plastic and metal shards of the mangled flash drive. The lobster shears were still on the floor.
One of the officers took a photo of the carnage, including the triangular gouge out of my kitchen wall where the shears had shattered tile and left their mark. I moved in for the computer, suddenly mortified, as if the images I had last seen on the screen were still there for everyone to see.
“Ma’am. Ma’am. You need to stay back by the door. Ma’am.”
I stopped and backed up, backing into Burton, who caught me by the shoulders.
“Looks like…” said one, pushing a latexed finger through the broken pieces.
“That’s a thumb drive,” said another. “A flash drive.”
They weren’t stupid. They were up on the local news. They stood looking at each other for a moment, communicating telepathically.
The video.
Yep.
Seriously pissed off about that video.
Roger that.
Evidence of motive.
Yep.
Oh, baby. Any possible way I can get a look at that fuckin’…
Burton cleared his throat and held up his copy of the search warrant, tapping the description of property to be seized if located. It said nothing about computers or mangled flash drives. The officers turned their attention to the cabinets, looking behind salad bowls and beneath silverware trays, stepping over the lobster shears again and again.
The search produced nothing incriminating. I should have been abundantly confident of that result. And yet, the entire process was for me a nervous, knife’s edge prelude to some horrible revelation of guilt. Every drawer. Every closet. Every cushion. The evidence was there. I just didn’t know what the guilt
was, what the evidence was or where it would be revealed. All I knew was that, somehow, I was guilty and that revelation was inevitable.
One of the officers left while the other two waited in the living room, pretending to look in forgotten nooks and crannies around areas they had already searched. Burton leaned sideways down to my ear.
“He went out to call Fuentes to tell her they came up empty handed and to find out if there is any way they can take the computer. Did you happen save whatever was on that flash drive to the computer hard drive?”
I shook my head. “Never copy porn to the hard drive. I paid attention in Felony 101. They can have the damn thing if they want it.”
When the third officer returned he announced that they were done and thanked us as though we had just served them dinner. We followed them out the door. I hung back in the doorframe as Burton followed them to their cars and collected business cards.
Across the street a man in a red baseball hat was taking pictures through the open window of a black Mustang. The lens was the length of a baseball bat. I stepped quickly back inside and slammed the door cursing under my breath.
I went to the living room windows and peeked through the slats of the blinds. Burton was crossing the street with one of the officers to talk to the man in the car who was busy capping his lens. The officer pointed emphatically down the street. The man started the car compliantly and began to pull away. He paused as a white Volvo sedan trundled past, its driver keenly interested in all the signs of trouble and disturbance spilling from my driveway out into the street. He slowed but never stopped.
He couldn’t have seen me through the blinds. Not as he was moving and when there was so much else to look at. But it didn’t matter. That is my most enduring sense of Angus Mann. There was no hiding from him. He always saw everything.
CHAPTER 51 – Hollis
The suede over-stuffed chair next to the couch, fawn-colored and soft as a cloud, was like an enormous stomach, or a carnivorous baseball glove, or a cup-holder equipped Venus Fly Trap, enveloping him, devouring him like the tawny jaws of a lion, starting with his ass and working its way outward simultaneously in one direction towards his inclined feet and in the other direction along his reclined torso towards his head.
Not that the victim was at all mindful of this slow consumption. That was the brilliance in recliner predation. The victim, lulled by comfort and self-satisfaction, was actually complicit in his own digestion by anesthetizing himself against all sensation that might otherwise warn him he is being eaten alive.
