by David Chill
“I’m around because I was hired to look into a shooting. And to prevent Curtis Starr from getting shot at again,” I pointed out, not adding I had no idea how to do that when I was hired, and probably knew even less about it now. I wondered if Curtis Starr really was behind this. I also wondered if the Differential’s life insurance policy on Curtis Starr paid off in the event of death by lethal injection following a homicide conviction. My guess was that it did not. Knapp looked at me, and I raised my eyebrows back.
“Let’s keep going on this,” he said. “You’re around PCH, talking to Curtis Starr right after his girlfriend gets whacked. And then you’re around Starr’s wife, whom you conveniently found in the Valley, drying out at her sister’s place. And then you’re around Starr at his golf course, maybe figuring out alibis. Yeah, I heard about that. And you’re also around here. Talking to the neighbors, talking to the foreman of the construction crew, talking to that lunch lady in that roach coach. Maybe trying to figure out if you can talk your way into pinning this on someone. You’re around all right. I don’t know what job you’re doing, but you’re always around.”
I looked down again at the empty hole in the dirt where Gavin Yunis had been temporarily laid to rest. I wondered if I had walked over it the other day, but so much of the property had been disheveled by construction, I couldn’t remember. I wondered if Marc Knapp had an IQ that reached 100, which was considered average. The scary part of statistics is that one-half of our population has a below-average intelligence. I knew what average intelligence looked like, and it wasn’t pretty. I looked back up at Knapp and tried not to wince.
“What do you want me to tell you?” I shrugged.
“Well, let’s see. That you’re guilty and part of this scheme. That you’re burdened by guilt and can’t wait to confess. That someone paid you a lot of money to do this.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s a good start,” he replied.
“Gee, Detective. Keep going. I can’t wait to hear what I’m going to say next.”
Knapp shook his head. “I don’t know that you had a role in this. But your ongoing presence on this case raises eyebrows. And people in your line of work aren’t known for being squeaky clean. Especially you. I don’t care if you’re pals with the lieutenant. Things don’t add up here.”
“Let’s pretend for a minute I didn’t do any of this,” I mused.
“Sure. Let’s do that. I’ll also pretend I don’t have two homicides added to my plate this week.”
“Who had a motive?” I asked. “Because I sure as heck didn’t. A week ago, the only contact I had with this family was four years ago, when I tried to recruit Brady Starr to come play football at USC.”
“Go on.”
“Curtis Starr may have had a motive for killing Yunis. Ongoing property dispute, threats made, lawsuits flying back and forth. Seems like their feud was public knowledge.”
“You’re not exactly breaking new ground here,” Knapp yawned.
“Maybe Brady wanted Yunis dead. Yunis was threatening his family. If Yunis was threatening his father, that could be a factor.”
“Could be.”
“But Brady’s about to get drafted and sign an 8-figure contract. As reckless a kid as he is, I doubt he’d want to mess that up. Heat of the moment thing, maybe. But not two murders.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then there’s his wife. Or her twin sister, Jacquie, the one who lives in Van Nuys. That could have set one of them off. Revenge.”
“Okay,” Knapp said, starting to look bored.
“And then there’s the neighbor, Tammy Perino. No indication of a dispute, but she wasn’t happy with all the construction,” I said, leaving out the part about Tammy Perino slamming the door in my face when I questioned her.
“Uh-huh.”
“This girl, Anna,” I continued. “She just broke up with her boyfriend. Wonder what his role was here.”
“Sure. All makes sense. Maybe we should arrest the lot of them.”
“Gee, maybe you should,” I repeated, “just like in an Agatha Christie mystery. But here’s where a lot of this comes unglued. Two murders, both associated with Curtis Starr. His mistress, Anna, murdered along PCH, and his next door neighbor murdered just yards from his house. Why would Curtis kill both his girlfriend and his neighbor within a few days of each other? There’s a connection, but we can’t see it yet. Until we have a clear motive, you have nothing.”
“Still doesn’t rule you out as a suspect.”
“I was home in bed when Anna got shot. You can talk about that with my wife. But one thing I’d like to know is what the sequence was. For Yunis, what was the time of death? Care to answer that question now?”
Knapp rolled that around for a minute, not seeming to enjoy responding to a private investigator’s prickly questions. “Coroner said rigor mortis had ended, which means at least two or three days. Forensics guys confirmed, said the dirt had been there for at least a few days, maybe more. Last time anyone actually saw Yunis was a week ago.”
“And the shots were fired onto the Starr property on Saturday night. Sounds like maybe Yunis got shot right after that.”
“Maybe some gunplay back and forth,” Knapp mused.
I thought about that. “Unless one of the Starrs carried a gun into the Jacuzzi. Not real likely. You think?”
“I dunno. This Curtis Starr character has a bunch of guns.”
“Still doesn’t explain his motive for shooting Anna,” I pointed out.
“You can’t see it? Why a guy might want to get rid of his mistress? Age-old story. Maybe she threatened to tell his wife. Maybe she was blackmailing him. Aside from you, he’s the only one who fits nicely into this narrative.”
“I don’t see him as a clean fit,” I said, not bothering to tell Knapp that Curtis Starr said he had been in the car when Anna got shot, or that he had fled the area immediately afterward. I didn’t owe Starr anything, but I was still trying to sort all of this out. And after talking with Starr at Riviera, I wasn’t all that convinced he had anything to do with this, his biggest crime likely being one of stupidity.
Knapp rubbed his face with his right hand and then looked down at his palm. “I’d be happy if I can clear one case today,” Knapp said. “And unless you’re planning on confessing, we’re taking Curtis Starr in for more questioning. See if we can squeeze anything out of him before he lawyers up.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, shaking my head.
“Be better if he just confessed. Would help move things along.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “That would make things easier on you, wouldn’t it?”
Chapter 11
Our house was very still on Sunday morning. Gail arrived home around 9:30 pm the night before, exhausted, and told me she had cancelled her Sunday morning event. She was scheduled to be at the First AME Church, an African-American stronghold in the West Adams district, near USC. But she wearily said she didn’t have much left in the tank, and wanted to save energy for the final two days of campaigning. She also wanted to spend a little time with Marcus and with me. I poured the two of us glasses of red wine, and we didn’t seem to notice the time until it was a quarter past eleven, and Marcus was still up. He seemed delighted we had forgotten to put him to sleep, and had made no effort to inform us. It was after midnight before Gail and I collapsed in bed, and we lay in each other’s arms until a little before dawn. As was my custom, I rose early, and quietly disentangled myself from my wife.
Our quiet Sunday morning stayed that way until almost ten. Marcus needed the sleep, Gail needed the sleep, and I needed some quiet time to think. I drank six cups of coffee and thought a lot. Unfortunately, none of my thoughts led me anywhere further than making another pot of coffee. My ear still stung, and I thought of putting some ice on it. Gail eventually walked into the den wearing a bathrobe and a warm smile, and she gave me a deep hug.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
I p
ut my head in her arms. “Missed you, too. This has been a crazy time.”
“Almost over. I’m resting today, and then going full-throttle tomorrow. Out the door at six in the morning, I won’t be back until midnight. Think you can manage that?”
“No,” I said. “But I’ll do my best to persevere.”
“It’s hard on Marcus. I’m beginning to wonder if this is all worth it,” she said, a wistfulness seeming to form in her eyes. “I miss you guys. And if I win, this means I’ll be spending even less time with you.”
I nodded. “But we knew that going in.”
“I knew it conceptually. The office is demanding. And that the campaign would be hard. It’s just that … now that I’m living in it, the reality is setting in. It’s not quite what I thought.”
“What did you think it would be?”
She rubbed my shoulders. “More uplifting, I suppose. Having people be as excited as I was about making changes in the way we govern ourselves.”
“And they’re not?”
“The people I’m speaking with, the opinion leaders, the community activists, the pastors, attorney groups, they’re all for change. But they all have their agendas, they all have their personal goals as to what they want city government to do. Which is to make it work better for them. Saying they’ll help get out the vote for me in exchange for favors down the road. It’s not just a wink and a nod, they’re already spelling out their demands. I’m not naïve, I know that’s always a part of any political job, taking care of people who put you there. I’m just surprised it’s this blatant.”
“It’s the world we live in,” I sighed. “Are you having second thoughts? It’s a little late in the game.”
“Yes, I’m well aware.”
“And you know that the most important quality in a leader is not wanting to be one,” I said, showing off a recollection from the one philosophy class I took at USC.
“That’s profound. But no, this is what I’ve wanted. And I’m committed to it. It will be an adjustment. I just need to wrap my head around all of it.”
“If you want to change the world, there are sacrifices.”
“I know,” she said, stroking my arm and then stopping in mid-stroke. “What happened to your hands?”
“Um, yeah. I wanted to talk with you about that.”
“Do tell,” she said, releasing my arm and sitting down across from me. Her face had changed expression, from one of curiosity to one of concern.
“Yesterday. At Jake’s birthday party.”
Gail frowned. “Okay. Chuck E. Cheese, right?”
“Right. The party was fine. Or as fine as you can get at a video arcade with bad pizza. But as we were leaving, some kid got into it with Marcus.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her frown growing bigger.
“Some kid waiting to get inside wasn’t happy about something. Maybe it was the long queue. But he reached out and tripped Marcus. And then Marcus got up and pushed him. The kid’s dad grabbed Marcus, maybe to break up the scuffle, but he grabbed him way too hard for my taste.”
“And you stepped in?”
I took a breath and chose my words. With an attorney for a wife, choosing words carefully mattered. I had thought about how to broach this subject with Gail, and I recognized there was no good way, or at least none that would properly detail how I saw things unfold at the time. I’d also thought of how to talk to Marcus, knowing this was going to have had an effect on him in some way. But again, I came up empty. Saying nothing seemed about as good a plan as any, which is to say, no good plan existed.
“I stepped in,” I began. “I removed the guy’s hands.”
Gail looked down again at the reddened knuckles of my hands. “You removed them how?”
“Well, after he grabbed Marcus, I popped him in the face a couple of times.”
It was Gail’s turn to stop and take a breath. “And I take it he let go of Marcus then.”
“He did.”
“And then what happened?”
“As best as I can remember, someone grabbed me, and wrapped their arms around me. I removed their arms from me as well.”
“All right. And then?”
“Someone else jumped in and threw a punch at me. Caught me on the ear. I defended myself.”
“Oh, my. Were there anymore?”
“Nope. The next person who stepped up happened to be a detective with the Culver City PD. He was off-duty. In fact, he was in line with his kid waiting to get inside, too.”
“But you didn’t punch the detective?”
“No, I certainly did not,” I said, with a measure of pride.
“And how did this detective handle all this?” she asked, trying to process all of this.
“Quite well,” I said. “In fact, after a patrol car came by and everyone had time to sort things out, the police decided not to press charges. Against anyone.”
Gail nodded apprehensively. “That doesn’t mean they can’t do it at a later date.”
“True,” I said. “But when the detective learned I had been with LAPD, he cut me some slack. He also didn’t charge the other dad, the one who started all of this.”
“Ah, the one who started it,” Gail repeated. “And Marcus was nearby?”
“Yeah,” I said glumly, not needing to look closely to see a distinct level of disappointment from Gail. There were few people in my life whose opinions of me mattered, but she was one of them. In fact, she was the most important one. This wasn’t the first time my behavior had disappointed her, and it was painful to witness.
“I don’t need to tell you that was a risky situation. For you and for Marcus.”
“I know that. And I should have controlled myself better.”
“Like we try and tell Marcus,” she said. “Use your words.”
“I’ll try. I really will.”
Gail looked off into the distance. “And the detective let you off as a favor? One cop doing a solid for another?”
“Technically no, but in another sense, yes. There is no formal code per se, written or unwritten. But cops look after each other, and if it comes down to siding with an ex-cop or a civilian, all else being equal, the police will side with the ex-cop. It’s partly human nature. We take care of our own.”
Gail nodded, and I knew she understood, but I wasn’t quite sure she agreed, and she wasn’t tipping her hand. “Was this within L.A. city boundaries?” she asked.
“I’m afraid it was,” I said.
“If I’m City Attorney, and any charges are filed, I’ll need to recuse myself completely. There can’t be even the hint of any conflicts of interest.”
“I understand. But I don’t think there will be any. The other parties could easily be accused of committing a crime as well. There’s still the matter of using a fake badge. That didn’t sit well with the detective.”
Gail let out a sigh. “We’ll deal with it if it comes up. But you really need to be careful. One of these days someone you get into a row with may have a weapon.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Okay, let’s table this for now. But I want to continue to discuss this later. I have concerns. About you. And about Marcus.”
“Fair enough,” I said, eager to move on to a different topic. “Are you going to stay with Marcus today? I may need to go out.”
Gail nodded. “This is about that case from Harold?”
“Yes.”
“How is that going? I heard something from my staff yesterday about a body found in a construction site in Mandeville? Is that related?”
“It is. Victim’s name is Gavin Yunis. A construction crew working on Yunis’s property found the body there. He was the neighbor of the guy I’m looking into, Curtis Starr. Yunis and Starr were having a dispute.”
“Doesn’t sound good for Curtis Starr,” she said.
“It gets worse. The woman who was killed on PCH a few nights ago was Starr’s lady friend that he was, er, seeing outside of his marriage. She was kille
d in Starr’s BMW.”
Gail’s eyes raised. “Really?”
“One could say Curtis Starr is a very unlucky guy,” I mused, choosing my words carefully.
“One could say a lot of things about Curtis Starr right now,” she responded.
“But something about this case bothers me.”
“Just one? What’s that?”
“The whole reason I was hired. Someone fired a shot at Starr last week. He and his wife were in their backyard Jacuzzi. So obviously someone else was doing the shooting. At least that night.”
“The plot thickens.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It can’t get much thicker.”
At that point, the door opened, and Marcus walked in, followed by Chewy. Marcus had a stuffed toy in his hand, a gray-and-white raccoon. He was holding the raccoon’s head in his hand, and Chewy had the raccoon’s tail in her mouth. As Marcus moved, so did Chewy.
“Are you guys playing tug of war?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m winning, but she doesn’t know how to give up.”
“Sounds like that runs in the family,” Gail said, offering a tiny smile. I was glad to see it, but my pleasure was short-lived.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, Marcus?”
“What are all those vans doing in front of our house.”
Gail and I both turned to him. “Vans?” we asked simultaneously, and we walked to the window. Sure enough, outside of our house, there were three news vans, all were setting up for a shoot. And at that point, my phone buzzed. It was an El Segundo phone number.
“Burnside,” I answered.
“Hey, it’s Adam Lazar. Listen, I wanted to be the first to contact you. Looks like you’re famous again. Someone posted a video of this brawl you got into yesterday, it’s gone viral. Big skirmish at a kid’s birthday party. I guess you took out a few guys all by yourself. Great work. But hey. I was just talking with Virgil Hairston, and we finally pieced this together. I didn’t realize your wife was running for City Attorney. Give me a call. I’d like to confirm a few things before we run this story.”
*
Gail and I got dressed quickly, and she stepped outside to speak to the TV crews. She talked about how proud she was of her husband for standing up to someone who might hurt our child. She deflected questions about my past, saying I had been exonerated of all charges. She predicted that nothing would come of this, but if something did, should she become City Attorney, she would recuse herself immediately. I stayed with Marcus until Gail finished, and then it was my turn. I described the incident as a heat-of-the-moment incident, that there was a physical encounter, but no one was seriously hurt, and the police chose to send us all home. One reporter asked how I thought this encounter would affect my wife’s campaign, and I said I hoped it would motivate everyone to go to the polls and punch their ballots. That got a laugh from the reporters, but a frown from Gail as I walked back inside.
