by David Chill
“Indeed,” he said. “But it’s going to take some doing to hold Bleeker off. The electorate is in an itchy mood. I’m concerned for Gail. You should put that big donor of yours on speed dial.”
“There’s only so many times you can go to the well,” I shrugged, adding, “but I’m sure you know that.”
“I do. But I wanted to prepare you. Whatever more you can do will yield big benefits next week. For all of us.”
I looked at him and wondered how much he knew. “It’s a little delicate,” I said, testing the waters. “My donor is in a mixed marriage. Their spouse is a rock ribbed Republican. And also not one of your biggest fans”
Arthur Woo gave a chuckle. “Yes. I’m well aware my brother, Justin, ousted Rex Palmer from the governor’s office a few years back. And you recall, I was Justin’s campaign manager. But you’re not asking Ms. Fairborn for a donation to my cause. I’m well-funded. Bleeker’s campaign looks like it will bring out more than a few people who don’t normally vote. America loves a celebrity, and Angelenos more than most.”
“Even if his celebrity status comes from plastering his name on billboards across town.”
“Name recognition means something,” he said, and patted my shoulder before walking back into the throng. Within a few steps, he was approached by someone who wanted to shake his hand and chat. I walked back to where Gail had been, and stood nearby. After a minute she noticed me, thanked the cigar-waving man and his wife, eased over to me, and kissed me on the cheek.
Gail was wearing a light gray business suit with a blue top, and looked tastefully beautiful. I told her she looked lovely, and she smiled and took it in stride.
“This is still very new to me,” she said, with a bit of wide-eyed wonder. “A lot of people know who I am, but I don’t know who they are.”
“I believe that’s called celebrity. Welcome to the stage, Gail Pepper,” I said, not bothering to add that my own moments in the spotlight a decade ago were not pleasurable, fending off the criminal charges that derailed my LAPD career.
“It takes some getting used to. I think I’m doing okay, but there’s a little part of me that has doubts. I feel as if I’ve jumped into someone else’s life.”
I peered at her. “Are you feeling okay?”
“Yes. I’m a little nervous about my speech in a few minutes. I go on after Neil and before Arthur.”
“You’re going to do great. It’s your stump speech. You’ve given it dozens of times.”
“I have. But there’s a lot of media here. And I’m sure you saw the news crew.”
“Let’s hope Neil Handler doesn’t give a rousing speech,” I said. “It’s always easier to follow someone who gives a poor performance. I can go stomp on his foot if you think that would help distract him.”
Gail smiled ever so slightly. “Please don’t. But you’re right, it is a little like a performance. If the person before you puts on a great act, it’s tough to follow.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said.
“Hope so. And by the way, thank you for stopping by Crystal Fairborn’s this morning.”
“I called first, to make sure her husband wasn’t there,” I winked. “Even wealthy lawyers like Rex, guys with more money than they can spend, don’t like to see their money given away to the other side.”
Gail smiled, maybe a little sadly. “Asking people directly for money is one thing I really don’t think I’ll get used to.”
“Can’t say as it comes naturally to me, either. But Crystal’s been very generous. How are you going to spend it?”
“Mostly it will go into our Get Out The Vote push on Tuesday. And some mail circulars. I wish we could afford TV ads like Bleeker, but that’s just out of our price range. And Bleeker has tied up most of the billboards around town. We’re doing what we can. It’s unfortunate Bleeker refused to debate me.”
“Can’t say as I blame him,” I smiled. “I lose every debate I have with you.”
Gail reached for my right hand, and I needed to shift the Coke to my left hand. She squeezed it slightly, applying a little more pressure as one of the organizers stepped to the podium and announced Neil Handler. The councilman, a middle-aged balding man wearing glasses, walked spryly onto the stage and gave a 15 minute speech, punctuating a few words with his fist for emphasis, but it was largely boilerplate and uninspiring. Not terrible, but not uplifting. At that point it was Gail’s turn. The host introduced her to modest applause, and she gave my hand one last squeeze before walking to the podium.
“Thank you,” she said, and made the requisite acknowledgements to everyone who put the event together, supported her campaign, or bothered to show up tonight. She talked about the challenges of running for office as a first-time candidate, and why she was running. Then she turned her attention to Paul Bleeker.
“My opponent,” she said, “thinks anyone with a law degree can be City Attorney. That it’s just a management position, that anyone who understands the criminal court system can do it. But it’s not just about where we are today, it’s about where we’ll be in the future. And the City Attorney is not a manager; they’re a leader. My opponent hasn’t spent one day working as a prosecutor, hasn’t spent one day in the trenches. And I know from experience as a line prosecutor, that if we don’t get the support we need to succeed, it’s demoralizing. Our office has been poorly run the past few years, it’s been understaffed, and plagued with gamesmanship and bad direction. We try misdemeanor offenses at a high rate, while homicide and violent crime cases sit for years. I want to change that. And with your help, we can make a difference. We need leadership. And I can provide it. Far better than a guy who thinks he can buy this office. I think we’re better than that. I think Los Angeles deserves better than that. And it’s why we have to work very hard over the next few days to make that happen. Thank you.”
Gail walked off the stage to polite applause, and came back over to me. I gave her a hug and managed an encouraging nod. It was a good speech, a capable speech, but it wasn’t a great speech or a thunderous one. It was, to a political outsider, a little tepid. But I whispered in her ear that it was an incredible speech. She gave me a cautious look that told me we both knew it wasn’t.
Arthur Woo was introduced, and he bounced onto the stage like he was shot out of a cannon. He grabbed the mike from its stand and began to talk decisively as he walked around the stage. He was very animated and spoke of grand plans and big changes. He emphasized the pressing need to make L.A. a world-class city. He told everyone to dream big and to dream about what we could accomplish together. It was the speech of a seasoned pro, and it was energizing. He finished by urging everyone to work to get out the vote, no matter how much money they had to donate, which was met with some raucous laughter. He thanked everyone for coming, bounced back off the stage, and hurried for the exits, shaking a few hands quickly as he departed. Arthur Woo was a politician who knew how to make both an entrance and an exit.
Gail told me she had to talk to her staff for a few minutes about plans for tomorrow. She said she’d meet me at home, and that I should pick Marcus up at the Parkers. I agreed, gave her hand a squeeze and walked off. As I was walking toward the exit, I noticed a hefty man approach me surprisingly quickly. He looked familiar, but he was not a man who meant harm. Virgil Hairston had never harmed anyone or anything, except perhaps his own arteries, with his appetite for fried foods in large quantities.
“I was betting you’d be here,” he smiled.
“Easy bet,” I said, shaking his hand. “How’s life at the Times?”
“Always busy. You know we’ve moved to El Segundo. Took over an office building one of the defense contractors abandoned. Longer commute for me, but the neighborhood’s better.”
“I would imagine anything’s better than downtown. Stepping over homeless on your way to the office couldn’t have been fun,” I said. “But isn’t it strange to have an L.A. newspaper not headquartered in L.A.?”
Virgil shrugged. “About as s
trange as seeing an L.A. mayoral candidate having a fundraiser outside of L.A. But that’s the world we live in.”
“I saw Adam Lazar this morning along PCH.”
“He mentioned that. Curtis Starr’s wife? Nasty business, getting shot in a car. No good way to go, I suppose. I heard you’re poking around in that one. You find out anything interesting?”
I thought about whether to tell him what I had learned today. I knew Virgil would find out the truth soon enough, and I checked my phone to see if Detective Knapp had called me back. He had not. In Virgil’s world, information was currency, and I had information that was worth something. It was time sensitive though, because once the truth leaked, the currency would shrink to zero.
“Very interesting actually,” I said. “Curtis Starr’s wife is fine. Well, maybe not fine, she was nursing a nasty hangover a few hours ago. But she’s doing a lot better than that woman they found on PCH.”
Virgil looked at me for a long moment. “Interesting, indeed,” he said.
Chapter 8
Gail, clearly intent on becoming the diligent politician, stayed on to mix with her supporters, so I picked Marcus up from the Parkers and carried him home and into bed. He stirred just long enough to ask where we had been and if we had bothered to bring him anything. I told him he was home, and we’d discuss anything else very soon. Soon is a parent’s favorite word. It denotes immediacy without commitment. It gives us wiggle room in the quite likely event our child actually remembers we promised something. With Marcus, there was a very good chance he would.
The next morning I dropped Marcus off at preschool and headed to procure a grande dark roast at a new Starbucks drive-thru. It only took ten minutes in line. I thought of going to the office, but there was probably not much I’d accomplish there. I wasn’t sure where I could accomplish anything, so I decided to take a drive back up to Mandeville Canyon to see if I could speak with Gavin Yunis. If nothing else, it was a sunny day, and the view from atop the peak of Mandeville would be impressive. When I arrived, Yunis’s construction crew was already hard at work, but Yunis was not around. The foreman didn’t seem helpful, and I didn’t blame him. I also suspected he had better things to do than to placate a nosy private investigator. I walked down Banyan Drive and started knocking on doors. I first tried the Starr residence, but no one answered. I moved on to the next house, and someone did. I heard footsteps, the sound of a small dog yapping, and a woman’s voice saying “Shush!”
Tammy Perino was a short, buxom woman in her early 40s, with shoulder-length brown hair, and a wide-cut mouth. She wore black yoga pants and a tight black tank top, cut low enough to suggest significant cleavage, but not too low as to be considered skanky. She was attractive in a sturdy sort of way, in which a form-fitting outfit certainly enhanced.
“Help you?” she asked, opening the door. In her hand was a clear, plastic container that held a dark green drink. In the background I saw a small dog leashed to a closet door handle. The dog neither looked nor sounded happy.
“Good morning,” I said, handing her my card. In neighborhoods like this, homeowners were a little savvy and might well recognize a fake badge for what it was. “I’m wondering if I can ask you a few questions.”
She looked at the card and shrugged. “Okay,” she replied, not bothering to invite me in. I didn’t blame her. I wouldn’t have invited me in, either.
“I’m doing some background investigation on the incident that happened the other night. Gunshots fired. Do you remember this?”
“Remember it? Hell, yes, I remember it. I’m the one who called 911.”
I nodded. “Then what do you think was going on?”
“Nothing good, I can assure you.”
“You know the Starr family?” I asked.
“Sure. And that Gavin Yunis character. I’ve lived here for a damn long time. It was a nice neighborhood until Gavin came in and bought that property across the street. Decided he needed to do a teardown and put up a mansion. Nothing but noise all day long, and sometimes into the night. Curtis was ticked, we’re all ticked. But Curtis was the one willing to confront him about it.”
“You think the shots fired had something to do with Gavin Yunis?”
“I dunno,” she said, taking a swig of her green shake. “Probably. Curtis told me he thought the shots came from Yunis’s property. Wouldn’t have been surprised if Gavin himself was doing the shooting.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked, suppressing a desire to ask what was in the green shake she was drinking. Years ago, someone got me to try a shot of wheatgrass, claiming it was the healthiest drink on earth. It had a similar, curious green color to her shake, and it tasted positively hideous. Whatever curative powers wheatgrass might have had, it left me believing I’d rather die of almost any disease than take another gulp.
“They’ve had a back-and-forth with lawyers. And then there were a bunch of shouting matches. I think Yunis said someone dropped a load of poop on his car. He thought it was Curtis who had done it.”
“And this is all about excess noise?” I asked, feeling a little wide-eyed.
“Noise’ll drive you crazy,” she said emphatically, with a know-it-all air. “Constant noise like we’ve been having? It can get people’s motors running. Lots of back and forth.”
I nodded. “You seem to know quite a bit about what goes on around here,” I mused. “You home during the day?”
“No, I work as a personal trainer, and my hours are irregular. But I know everyone around here. We talk. I like being in the conversation.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering how a personal trainer could afford this kind of pricey real estate, but in L.A. everyone has a unique story. I’m sure Ms. Perino did, too. “Let me ask you something else.”
“Shoot.”
I paused and looked at her. “You heard about what happened on PCH yesterday?”
“Nope.”
“You’ve seen Curtis’s BMW, right?”
“The green one. Hoo-ey. Can’t miss it.”
“Right,” I continued. “A woman driving it the other night was killed in that car along PCH.”
She stared at me. “Hadn’t heard. Who was the woman?”
I stared back at her. “Not sure yet. It may have been an employee. Worked in one of Curtis’s restaurants.”
“Didn’t know that,” she said. “Car accident?”
I shook my head. “Murder,” I answered, watching her carefully.
She froze for a second, stunned, then seemed to snap right out of it. She raised the plastic container again and wordlessly took a long pull, looking at me the whole time. It was almost as if she were at the movies, watching entertainment unfold before her.
“Well, that’s terrible,” she finally said.
“Any ideas who might have been behind this?” I asked, not bothering to mention the police had it chalked up as a robbery gone bad. But the police also had Lauren chalked up as the victim at first.
Her head snapped back. “Why would I know anything about this?”
I put my hand up. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get to what might have happened. You called it in. Gunshots the other night.”
“Yeah, I called. And the police came, they poked around, talked to people. In the end, they did what they always do, which is nothing. Then they left.”
“Okay. But I’m the one trying to do something here,” I said, my exasperation with Tammy Perino, as well as this whole case, beginning to rise. “Anything you might have seen or heard, or even heard second-hand might be valuable.”
“I don’t know nothing,” she said.
“How about taking a guess,” I suggested. “Who else might want to shoot Curtis Starr?”
“Who knows. Maybe one of his girlfriends.”
I peered at her. “That’s interesting.”
“Isn’t it, though.”
“So,” I said, feeling as if I was yanking every word out of her. “Why do you say that?”
&nb
sp; “Look, I don’t want to get involved,” she said, looking around as if she wanted to end this conversation and close the door.
“Sounds like you’re already involved,” I said, trying to keep the door open somehow.
“I’m not involved at all!” she sputtered. “At all. Is that good enough for you?”
“You sure look like you’re hiding something,” I observed.
“Go to hell,” she managed, curled her mouth up into a snarl, and slammed the door hard enough for it to emit a loud bang.
I briefly thought of knocking again and asking if I could use her bathroom, just to see if I could get her head to explode, but I finally decided against it. Enough people disliked me.
I knocked on a few more doors, but either no one was home or no one was answering. I walked across the street to the Yunis property. The foreman wasn’t nearby, and I didn’t ask for him. Instead, I walked onto the construction site; I just wanted to look around a bit by myself. I walked purposefully toward the fence that separated the Yunis property from the Starr’s. No one bothered to stop me, nor ask what I was doing. Most likely, no one cared.
A construction site is often an unholy mess, and this one was no exception. There were exposed pipes, unvarnished slabs of wood, and nails lying around everywhere. A series of black plastic tarps were slung across parts of the home to protect it from the rains of last week, storms that felt to me like they had come down months ago. The sky today was blue and cloudless. The sound of hammers pounding nails permeated the street. I began to understand how Curtis Starr might well have gotten tired of hearing this for months on end. I also understood why there wasn’t much a homeowner could do about it, because construction crews were inherently noisy. Once a permit was issued, they had a right to work. There were no easy answers.
The fence separating the two properties was six feet high and made of redwood. On the Starrs’ side, there was an abundance of red and purple bougainvillea that had grown at least three feet higher than the fence, providing some additional privacy. I noticed an empty crate nearby, turned it onto one side and climbed on top of it. This extra foot provided me with a view into the Starrs’ backyard, albeit somewhat camouflaged by the foliage. Still, anyone pointing and firing a gun onto their property could have easily done so, and done so without being noticed.
