Valley of Vice

by Steve Garcia

  “Manufacturer’s security.”

  Instead, he selected a latch hook and slipped it through the tight space between the window and the molding. With the deft moves of a pro, he latched the door handle and gave it a quick tug. The lock released. He opened the door and pressed the unlock button. “There ya go.”

  Wallace climbed into the front seat while Reyes opened the back door, quickly determined there was nothing of interest, and moved to the back of the car and opened the hatch. He rummaged through the side pockets and checked around the spare tire.

  “It looks to me like he picked this baby up from the Giordanos and drove straight over here. There’s not an empty cup or food wrapper back here,” Reyes said. “Anything up front?”

  “Nothing,” Wallace said.

  “Let’s go talk to the desk clerk.”

  Reyes stepped into the small, dingy lobby. The low-wattage lighting did little to hide the fact that everything was old and cheap. The clerk was a young, black female dressed in the uniform of the Pine Tree Motel, a green vest, white blouse, and black skirt. Her name tag read LaQuisha. The round pin she wore said Ask About FGP!

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m Detective Reyes. My partner”—he turned to look for Phil. She stepped in with a photo in hand—“is Detective Wallace. We were wondering if you might recognize this man.”

  Wallace laid the four-by-five photo of Pearl on the counter.

  “No. I’ve never seen him.”

  “We’re pretty sure that he stayed here. Probably checked in yesterday before two in the afternoon.”

  “Excuse me? If I didn’t see him, telling me what time he came by is not going to help.”

  “Is your manager here?” Wallace asked.

  “You can talk to him all you want but it won’t make the man appear where he ain’t.” LaQuisha picked up the phone and pushed a button. “Mr. Mandusco, this is LaQuisha. Could you come to the front desk, please? The police want to see you. Mm-hmmm.” She smiled at the detectives. “He’ll be right out.”

  Mr. Mandusco came scurrying out of the office to the front desk.

  “Wallace and Reyes, LAPD,” said Wallace. “We were curious if you saw this man yesterday. We believe he was a guest. Your employee said she hasn’t seen him but his car is in your parking lot.”

  Mandusco frowned at LaQuisha. “I recognize him, officer. I can’t recall his name off the top of my head but I remember he was very picky about which room he wanted. It had to be in back. Ground floor. I gave him room ”—he punched a few keys—“eighteen. Yes. Clement Rosen. Room eighteen.”

  “Clement Rosen? Is that the name he used?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure it’s this man?” Wallace asked, pointing at the photo of Bart Pearl.

  “Absolutely. He had a credit card—we require one even if you pay cash, like he did.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a small gray box. Inside were alphabet dividers. He flipped the R tab, reached behind it, and pulled out a charge-card slip.

  “I’d like to take this credit card receipt, please,” Wallace said. “You’ll get it back.”

  “Fine,” Mandusco said, and handed it over. He loosened his tie and undid the top button on his shirt. “Is there a problem? We don’t want any trouble.”

  “You’re fine,” Wallace said. “Mr. Rosen, whose real name was Bartholomew Pearl, isn’t doing so well. He’s dead.”

  “Oh God.” There was a look of panic on his face. “Here? Is he in my motel?”

  “Easy, friend,” Reyes said. “He’s not here, but we do need to take a look in his room if you could give us the key.”

  “I’ll get it,” LaQuisha said. She pulled out a plastic key card and programmed it.

  “Can you tell us anything about Pearl? Did he say or do anything unusual? Maybe ask you to put something in the safe perhaps?”

  “He left a do-not-disturb request,” Mandusco said. “He didn’t want to be disturbed for anything and that included maid service. No cleaning, no nothing.”

  LaQuisha handed Wallace the key card to room eighteen. “Well, thank you all. You’ve been most helpful. The police impound lot will be sending a tow truck to remove Mr. Pearl’s Jeep Wrangler. Um, if he had a room in back, why did he park over on the side?”

  “We’re having the parking lot re-paved. They’re working in the back right now. Guests have to walk through.”

  Reyes was first out of the lobby. He held the door for Wallace, who was already on the phone to the station. “Hey, this is Philippa. Could you check and see if a Clement Rosen reported a stolen credit card? No rush. Leave me a note at the station.”

  “According to the receipt, check-in was at six minutes after twelve,” Wallace said. “Yesterday’s timeline has been fairly tight. Around ten at his apartment. Around eleven at Giordano’s. Here at noon. Dead by early afternoon.”

  Together with Lantz and Martin, they made their way around to the rear of the building.

  “Pearl came here to hide,” said Reyes. “He was going deep, low and out of sight, even covering his tracks by swapping cars. Hell, he didn’t even want the maid coming in. Sounds to me like he was pretty damned scared. So, who would he break cover for to go out and see? Whoever it was, was probably his killer.” Reyes ran the card LaQuisha had given him through the electronic lock. A green light flashed. He pushed the door open.

  “Déjà-fucking-vu.” They stared into the room, which had been turned upside down. Reyes reached around the corner and flipped the light switch.

  Drawers, a straight-back chair, both mattresses, pillows, clothes, paintings, the telephone, and even the Gideon Bible had been hurled into the center of the room. On top of the small mountain was a laundry cart.

  “This guy needs maid service,” said Martin.

  Wallace turned to the uniforms. “Tina, you seal off this room. Tibor, get CSI down here, too.”

  Wallace and Reyes pulled on pairs of latex gloves. Reyes moved to the left, Wallace to the right.

  Reyes picked his way over the carpet to the far side of the pile of debris. A large red stain covered the side of the laundry cart.

  “Phil, I got some blood over here.”

  At the back of the room was a large mirror with a two-sink counter. A door to the left opened to the bathroom. The door to the right was closed.

  Dark stains in the carpet in front of the sink were nearly perfect circles, suggesting somebody was there for several minutes bleeding, but not moving. Wallace looked back toward the cart, then at Reyes. She signaled for quiet, then pointed to the door on the right. She and Reyes pulled out their guns. Reyes nodded. Wallace grasped the knob. She turned it slowly and then, with a push, shoved it open.

  It was empty.

  “Whew,” Wallace said. “Look at the mess in here.” She turned on the lights. The shower curtain was gone. Large smears of blood stained the bottom and sides of the tub. There was a red puddle around the drain. Blood spatters reached a foot above the tub.

  “Pearl didn’t go out to see anyone.” Reyes gestured toward the tub. “I’ll let the crime scene boys give us an official guess, but I think it ended right here. The shooter let him drain and then probably wrapped him in the shower curtain.”

  “Pearl obviously had a pint left in him when he was put in the laundry basket.”

  “Our killer apparently got a little sloppy putting the body in the cart. The curtain must have slipped or filled with blood and leaked out, soaking the bottom corner. Even so, the cart remained good cover to move the body. Unless you were right on top of him, it would look like someone was hauling dirty laundry.”

  “So he loads the body in a truck or car trunk,” said Wallace, “then puts the cart back inside so it won’t be discovered. He takes Pearl’s body to the Green Cheese building and starts the fire. Pearl didn’t know it, but by requesting he not be bothered, he gave his killer time to get away.”

  “Remember how Giordan
o said Pearl thought he was being followed? I’m going to take a guess that he wasn’t being paranoid.”

  Reyes nodded. “This was an execution. One shot to the head.”

  “Remind you of anything?”

  Reyes looked at her without speaking for a few seconds.

  “You don’t think Simons killed himself, do you?”

  “Come on, Sal. It’s exactly the same, isn’t it? And again, no one heard the shot.”

  “Someone else is pulling the trigger. This cop?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think we need to have a patrol at Giordano’s house. In fact, we need to put a guard on Giordano at the station.”

  “At the station? What the hell for?”

  “Pearl said that if the guy who followed him found out that he had visited the Giordanos, their lives might not be worth a damn.”

  “Okay, I understand protecting Rita, but don’t you think Sonny is pretty safe? I mean, he is surrounded by a dozen cops.”

  “Yeah, a dozen good cops,” Wallace said. “And maybe one very bad one.”

  19

  Reyes and Wallace waited until Drake finished photographing the bloodied furniture and the rest of the scene, then worked alongside Withingham’s CSI team as they rummaged through Pearl’s motel room. Forensics dabbed at the blood stains. Each item was inspected, checked for fingerprints and trace evidence, and then returned to its proper place, if possible.

  “Hey, Sal,” Wallace said, “do you think whoever did this found what they were looking for?”

  “Who knows,” Sal replied. “From the spatter, I’d say Pearl was on his knees when he was shot, which suggests that he had at least some dialogue with his killer before the bullet did its work. Perhaps the gunman wanted to know where this thing was.”

  “But he didn’t tell him?”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t ever even here,” said Reyes. “Hell, we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  Withingham laughed. “Molly. Jason. You see why you’re better off in CSI? Detectives tend to get a little unbalanced.”

  Reyes’s eyes wandered through the room for maybe the tenth time. Looked in there. Opened that. Checked that. His eyes caught the corner of the Gideon Bible protruding from under the sheets.

  Reyes picked it up and thumbed through it. A small square item flew from between the pages. “Hey!” Reyes said. “I found something.” He laid the Bible down on the bureau and picked up the little foil pack. “Jesus. Some sick puppy put a condom in the Bible.”

  “I think I can say without fear of contradiction that whoever killed Pearl wasn’t looking for a rubber,” Wallace said.

  “It’s a glow-in-the-dark model. Someone check that for fingerprints.”

  Reyes checked the bathroom next, behind the tank, in the tank, and in the rolls of toilet paper, including the two spares that had been unwrapped, probably by the intruder, and thrown on the floor. The suspect had apparently looked inside each but Reyes wondered if maybe the hidden item was between the sheets. He began unrolling the first roll.

  Wallace walked over to the bathtub.

  “Forensics looked in the drain,” said Reyes.

  Wallace reached up and took off the shower head and began unscrewing. She looked inside, then set the shower head on the edge of the tub.

  “Well, I suppose we could take the drain off the sink, but I can’t believe Pearl brought a pipe wrench with him.” Wallace stopped in the middle of the room. “You know, I wonder…”

  “What? You have something, partner?”

  “We made a couple of assumptions. Maybe they’re backward.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We’ve been assuming Pearl had an enemy and that person killed him. But what if Pearl had something our suspect wanted bad enough to kill him for it? We know the killer tore the hell out of several places looking for something.”

  Reyes cocked his head slightly. “Okay, but we still don’t know if he found it.”

  Wallace smiled and shook her head. “He didn’t find it here. Think about it. Pearl’s apartment was ransacked after this place, if we believe Mr. and Mrs. Scrabble. Pearl must have gone home first to get this item and brought it here.”

  “Or it was at Giordano’s place all along,” said Reyes. “Maybe Pearl picked it up along with the cash and the Jeep.”

  “It may have been the only hope he had of staying alive.”

  “So why didn’t he give it to his killer?”

  “Perhaps he said it was in the apartment. If he knew that this thing was all that was keeping him alive, handing it right over would have been like signing his own death warrant.”

  “Whatever it is must not be too big, then. The killer tore apart mattresses but he also looked through books—which is why they were scattered around the apartment. The paintings were checked, too, so the thing must be slim, not too large, not too bulky. So, where haven’t we looked?” Reyes asked.

  Wallace’s eyes did a tour of the room, and then she snapped her fingers. “The shower curtain rod. It’s hollow.” Reyes carefully stepped into the bloody bathroom and unscrewed the rod. It was hollow—and empty. He shook his head.

  “Damn it,” said Wallace.

  Reyes stood in front of the sink. To his left was the open clothes rack. On the opposite wall was a bracket where the complimentary iron and ironing board should be. Pearl’s killer had checked those and they now lay in the pile. Reyes eyes widened as he realized the coat rack was made from hollow metal tubes, just like the shower curtain. He dug in his pocket, took out his utility knife, and popped out the screwdriver blade.

  Wallace moved closer. She held the rack as Reyes began unscrewing the chrome tubes. He quickly removed the three screws on one end, moved around Wallace to the other end, and removed the remaining screws. As soon as Reyes had the first tube, he held it up like a telescope and looked toward the light over the sink.

  “Bingo.” He jammed his finger into the tiny tube but couldn’t reach the item inside.

  “Let me have it,” Wallace said. She rapped it on the floor several times until the item inside slid out a quarter of an inch. “Got it.”

  A piece of thin card had been rolled tight and then taped. Reyes handed Wallace his knife and she snipped the tape. The card unrolled, revealing two photos. Wallace stared at the first for a few seconds. “Holy shit.”

  She handed it to Reyes.

  A black-and-white image showing a middle-aged man sitting on the edge of the bed. He was leaning backward on his arms. Kneeling on the floor in front of him, performing oral sex, was a younger man. “Holy shit,” Reyes repeated. “That’s Sam Davey.”

  “That it is,” said Wallace. She handed the second to Reyes. It was similar to the first, but this time the owner of Sphinx Construction had a hand on the back of the other man’s head. His face suggested that the encounter was reaching its climax.

  “The first question is,” said Wallace, “who’s the dude on the action end of his dong?”

  “Let’s check the other two tubes.”

  Reyes swiftly undid the screws that held the remaining tubes in place. Each contained more photos. “It’s the freakin’ mother lode.”

  “Sounds like good news,” Withingham said. “We’re done, but do you want those tubes dusted as well?”

  “Doesn’t look like the killer found them,” said Reyes. “But see if you can get a match on Pearl.”

  After all of the different teams had departed, Wallace took another look at the photos. “I wonder if we can figure out where these were taken,” she said to Reyes.

  “I’d like to know who took them,” Reyes replied. “This looks like blackmail. You remember how Davey was so keen to shut his wife up about the city council?”

  “These make a damn fine motive to kill Pearl.”

  “The photos sure as hell explain the frantic searches.”

  “I think we should talk to Mr. Davey again. He might like to see these�
�or not.”

  “Do you want to run out to his house again or have him come in?”

  “Oh, he’s coming in—in cuffs. I’m going to call Siley and ask him to have someone pick him up. I think we’ve seriously underestimated Mr. Davey.”

  20

  Wagner checked his reflection in the car window. Kahn was beginning to think he liked his new look. “Is it me or am I doing all the work? It’s not enough that I have to lure them in, I have to nail them as well.”

  “If you’d follow procedure,” Krajcek said, “you wouldn’t be getting your cool outfit all wrinkled.”

  “Try to move in a little faster next time.”

  “You don’t have any patience,” said Krajcek. “We launch the second we hear a financial arrangement agreed to. You say twenty bucks for a hummer and as soon as he nods, you cuff the guy yourself. We can’t hear a nod, you know.”

  “How much longer do I have to do this? It’s a pain in the ass.”

  “It’s only a pain in the ass if you go through with it,” Kahn said.

  “Jesus. What’s with you? You’ve been throwing out one-liners all night.”

  “What can I say?”

  “Nothing would be good.” Wagner walked back to the corner. He whispered into the iPod mic. “A new shift has arrived. Jeez, I’m starting to look like the Queen of the Corner now. We’re talking butt-ugly competition.”

  “Some of the old pros have regulars,” Krajcek said. “They stand in front of a hotel and go straight up to a room when one of their johns comes by. If enough regulars come, they don’t have to do corner work.”

  “Got it.”

  A thunderous bang hit the car. “What the fuck was that?” Kahn yelled. He turned to his right as he reached for his weapon. Krajcek spun as well. A man bent over and grinned at the officers through the door window.

  “Captain?” Krajcek said.

  Captain Mangan leaned in, his arms resting on Kahn’s door. “Easy guys. Looks like you boys are a bit complacent. Wagner may be out there peddling his ass but you need to be alert. If some hopped-up motherfucker comes looking for an easy mark, you’re gonna catch one in the back of the skull.”