13 Under the Wire

by Gil Reavill

  The wife had whispered the correction to her. Karen, flustered, apologized. Ellis, yes, of course. Much more acceptable. Was Ellis really a Hispanic name? She wondered. Karen found the guy very appealing, with a punk-looking blond dye job. The woman resembled her husband to a disconcerting degree. Common wisdom had it that couples grew to look alike the longer they stayed together, but these two hadn’t had time to age into each other.

  Karen gently probed their background. Mexico City, they said, Polanco. A very upscale neighborhood, she knew, like the Brentwood or Beverly Hills of the Mexican capital. Their clothes looked pricey enough. They had been driven up in an expensive Lexus SUV, making the chauffeur wait in the car. Of course, a certain question hovered in the background whenever clients came from south of the border. Drug money? The Realtor was waiting for the Guerreros to say that they would pay for the deposit in cash, packets of hundreds in a canvas duffel bag.

  “The lower floor?” Ellis asked. Husbands were always interested in the basement. They left the wife upstairs. As if he were kicking the tires of a car, the guy actually slapped the walls of the gym/bonus room, as Karen was calling it. The foundation was concrete. What had he been hoping to discover, a secret passageway?

  “We would like to install a safe room on the premises,” Ellis explained.

  Alarm bells rang in Karen’s head. A safe room or panic room—that automatically implied high-level risk. Drug dealers, for sure, or else diplomats, and this guy didn’t look as if he was exactly embassy material. Drug money would be a no-go for the lease. Her heart sank. She saw the prospect of a sale evaporate. Without even being aware of it, her voice turned a few degrees colder.

  She allowed Hermana and Ellis to talk it over between themselves, standing outside beside the pool. The husband stared off over the foothills as the wife spoke. It was always that way, Karen thought. She got on her BlackBerry and called the office, querying the couple’s financial bona fides, communicating her reservations to Donna Hartwick, her mentor and boss at Huntingon Prime Realty.

  Despite her fears, the deal went through with blistering speed. A bank wire transfer of a half million dollars always helps things along enormously. The lawyers did indeed create some sort of lease-to-buy vehicle, the paperwork for which made Karen’s head spin. As best she could tell, the half million would be applied, at a rate of a hundred thousand a month, against the sale. At the end of the five months, if there was no sale the property would revert to the former owner, who would find himself a half million dollars richer.

  Karen really didn’t care. She earned her commission, the largest she had ever received. Thirty thousand, not bad for a day’s work. She felt herself being lofted onward and upward.

  A week after the deal closed, there had come a small hitch. Linda Cummings, of the Granada Hills Homeowner Association, called Karen to complain. There was endless construction going on at the Sesnon Boulevard house, Mexican laborers going in and out at all hours, very disruptive. Since Cummings herself lived right around the corner, Karen knew very well just who was being disrupted.

  It wasn’t really her concern anymore, not since her commission check had cleared. But, on the good-neighbor principle, she drove up to Sesnon one afternoon. Through the cottonwoods on the hillside above the boulevard she could just glimpse Wildermanse, one of the most glorious estates in Granada Hills, if not in all Los Angeles. That was the level of property Karen wanted to handle, and she swore to herself that she would scratch and claw until she was an unchallengeable real estate queen.

  All appeared quiet at the Sesnon Boulevard house when Karen did her drive-by. There was an outlandish pickup parked in the driveway, some sort of monster truck with extra wheels. Its light-green paint job made it look like a Border Patrol vehicle. But Karen was accustomed to wealthy people owning different, exotic rides. The construction activity, as far as she could see, was limited to two parked red wheelbarrows full of dirt and some heavy plastic sheeting stretched over a section of the lower level.

  “Not my problemo, Mrs. Homeowner Association,” Karen muttered. She headed to an open house in Valencia, a nice four-bedroom just off the I-5.

  —

  Remington tried to find a cleaning service to deal with her apartment, but none of them would touch blood, out of fear of contamination with the AIDS virus or hepatitis C. The internet had a listing for a crime-scene cleanup company called Aftermath, Inc. She called for a quote. Since she was a renter, not an owner, she had no insurance that would cover the hefty price tag. She’d have to do the repugnant job herself.

  Standing at the threshold of her apartment, Remington didn’t know where to begin. The LAPD had just released the premises. Leuco Crystal Violet fingerprint dust added a garish effect to the blackened bloodstains on the walls. Every stick of furniture had been wronged and would have to be righted. She did that first, and then got a pail and a cleaning solution and started in.

  Bucket, sponge, bloodstain. The water turned pink, then red, then dark burgundy.

  Parked on the street in front of her apartment was the luxury sedan that had brought her from Wildermanse. The driver doubled as her bodyguard. She had told Brock Loushane she was fine, that she could drive herself, but he insisted. Remington got the uncomfortable idea that assigning her security served two purposes. Protecting her, yes, maybe. But controlling her, surveilling her, that also.

  That morning she had found a navy-blue turtleneck in Caroline’s wardrobe, slipping it on to hide the bruises on her neck. After having got no sleep, she had come down to the dining room at Wildermanse to face Ellis. He wasn’t there, but Brock and Victor were.

  “Layla!” Brock had exclaimed, as if surprised to see her alive. “How are you feeling? What a night, huh?”

  As usual, the old man immediately cut through the guff. “We have something to tell you, young lady, something very important.”

  “Yes?” Remington had known what was coming.

  “This thing you have with Ellis, it doesn’t work for us.”

  Someone else had once told her that something else didn’t work for them. Who? George Sarin.

  “Where is he?” she asked. “Where’s Ellis?”

  “Ellis is elsewhere,” Brock answered briskly. “We’ve relocated him to—”

  Victor broke in. “When I invited you into my home, it wasn’t in order for you to shack up with my son.”

  “No,” Remington said.

  “I’m disappointed in the two of you.”

  “I’ll move back into my apartment this morning.”

  “Oh, not so hasty,” Brock had said. “The danger to you— Our security team is by no means convinced that the threat to the family is past. And, of course, we consider you part of that.”

  Yes, Remington thought, keeping the threat alive meant Graystone Global could continue draining the bottomless Loushane bank account. But she didn’t push the issue. She actually preferred to stay at Wildermanse for now. Not only to be able to see Ellis, and not necessarily because she felt that her life was in danger. She wanted to monitor what was happening in the family. She couldn’t leave the mystery alone.

  Every new development in the Loushane case had been judged to fit into the established theory of the crime. Chicano radicals were responsible for it all. Cindy’s death, well, yes, that connection had been proved by the documents recovered in the Atzlándia raid. Caroline’s death, too. Hadn’t it happened on the Mexican border? Of course it was connected. And the attack on Remington’s apartment as well. The same kind of thuggish sicario was involved there as in the Kappa Kappa Chi attack.

  But to Remington the case resembled a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces. The only way to solve it, as far as the LAPD seemed to be concerned, was to jam the pesky extraneous parts into the puzzle and force them into place. Six people were dead, seven now with the dead body found in Remington’s shower stall. According to the prevailing wisdom, all those deaths flowed from the same source. The police investigators bought into the Chicano radical theory
, the Loushane family bought into it, and the media went along for the ride.

  Remington thought it over as she conducted the gruesome process of cleaning her apartment. From the crime to the suspect…Crimes, plural. She sensed a commonality in all that had transpired. Yes, the killings were linked, but they weren’t linked in the way that the LAPD had configured them. In Remington’s mind, a certain relentlessness characterized the murders. Did that fit with a politically motivated crime?

  Bucket, sponge, bloodstain.

  She was a rookie police—not even a rookie, a cadet. But Remington knew enough about the human heart to understand that frenzy, fury, viciousness of the kind on display meant one of two things. Insanity. Or strong, deep-seated emotions.

  She played with that last one in her mind. Emotional fury implied that the killer and the victim were linked in some intimate way. Spousal murders were notorious for being off-the-hook intense. Nothing could match the ferocious nature of killings motivated by crushed love. Violence within families was often the most potent kind. It was a sad truth of the human character that the majority of murder victims were killed by people they knew.

  There was no kinship here, none that Remington could detect. Raúl dos Santos was not in any way related to Cindy Loushane. She couldn’t figure it. Val Duran—or, as Remington had to remind herself to think of him now, Tino Zaldivar—was indeed linked to Caroline Loushane, but by love, not blood. Simon’s case was a cipher. None of it added up.

  Bucket, sponge, bloodstain.

  She felt that she was making little progress on either of the messes, her apartment or the Loushane case. She knocked off the housecleaning and got on her phone.

  Remington’s father was a police clerk, and one of his duties was negotiating the return of whatever Angelinos happened to die on their visits to Mexico, specifically in Tijuana and Baja California. Such deaths happened more often than one would like to think. There were a lot of clerk-to-clerk communications involved, so Gene Remington had gotten to know a few staffers among the policía municipal, the local Tijuana constabulary.

  She recalled her strange encounter with the souvenir seller in front of Hotel Baja California. What had the man said? “Dos personas murieron aquí, de la misma manera.” During her Spanish-language sessions with Julieta, she had asked for a translation.

  “ ‘Two people died here, in the same manner.’ ” What the hell did that mean?

  Working her cellphone, Remington took a while to reach one of her father’s contacts at the policía municipal. She had to make herself understood to a series of people before finally being connected to Señor Ricardo Vega Quintero of the División de Registros.

  Señor Vega did better with English than she had done with Spanish. “Miss Remington! Hello!”

  There was an elaborate exchange of pleasantries. Vega hoped Miss Remington’s father was well. He understood that her mother had died when Miss Remington was just a child, and he wished that Mona Remington might rest in peace. A motherless child receives the tears of angels, Vega said. Perhaps Señor Remington, her honored father, would marry again. And Miss Layla, she was studying law enforcement. Had she become a member of the illustrious LAPD?

  “Not quite yet,” Remington told him.

  “An honorable profession.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  So.

  So.

  What could he do for Miss Remington? A friend in trouble with the authorities, perhaps?

  “I did have a friend, a boy who was close to our family.” Remington emphasized the word “family,” so Vega wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that she was a fast girl. “He went down to Tijuana and, unfortunately, had a fatal accident.”

  She explained the particulars.

  “Ah, Simon DeYoung Loushane! Some weeks past, correct? Ay, yes, such a tragedy. Mr. Victor Loushane is very well known here, an honored gentleman like your father.” He lowered his voice. “Extremely wealthy.”

  “I wonder…I had heard, señor, that the place, Hotel Baja California…”

  “On La Revo, yes?”

  “Yes. I had heard there was a similar accident there once before.”

  Vega went silent for a beat. “Where did you hear this?”

  She blundered forward. “Perhaps it happened months ago. Another…”

  “Suicidio.” She could visualize Vega on the other end of the line, crossing himself.

  “If I could get some details…?”

  Another pause. “This one, too, is a family friend of yours? So you have friends dying in Tijuana often?”

  “I thought maybe there was something wrong at the hotel. Like it is somehow prone to accidents.”

  “Please, wait. I will put you on hold. Or else provide me with your number, please, if we lose the connection.”

  They lost the connection.

  Remington took up her bucket and sponge again.

  “Meat tenderizer,” said a voice.

  She had left the door of her apartment open to help air it out. Chuck Tester stood in the doorway, alongside the squared-off hulk of Remington’s Graystone driver-bodyguard.

  “Do you know Sergeant Tester?” asked the Graystone guy.

  Remington said that she did, and the guy left them, returning to the big black sedan parked on the curb.

  “I’ve heard that meat tenderizer works well on bloodstains,” Tester said. “Get yourself a bottle of Adolph’s. It’s got enzymes, dissolves the proteins in the blood.”

  “Thanks for all your help,” Remington said.

  “I stopped by the Loushane residence and they told me you were over here. That place is an armed camp. I felt lucky to get out alive.”

  “Me, too.” Tester had brought along a six-pack of longnecks. They sat together on the front steps of the apartment. She was grateful for his presence. It made her feel less lonely.

  “Got yourself some muscle now.” Tester pointed his beer bottle at the black sedan parked out front.

  “Muscle, or a shadow. I get the sense that the Loushanes like to keep tabs on me.”

  “For why?”

  “One of the many things I can’t figure.”

  She asked him what he thought would happen to the case if the Atzlándia evidence proved bogus, as Tester had suggested it might.

  “From what I know of this particular assistant D.A., she’d try to ram it through anyway.”

  “But let’s say the Chicano radical business is fugazi.”

  Tester laughed. “Listen to you, trying to sound all police.”

  “Really, what else could it be if it’s not that? Two, maybe three members of the same family, four if you count the mother. Gruesome, berserk deaths.”

  Tester took a pull on his beer. “Well, there’s some real serious coin there. Like Deep Throat said during Watergate, ‘Follow the money.’ The way I read this business here”—he motioned vaguely toward the interior behind them—“he was hired help, too, same as the Wisconsin killer.”

  They sat without speaking for a while. The sunlight had warmed the bricks of the little square of porch in front of the apartment. Remington realized that since her experience in the desert she could never really consider the sun in the same way again. She detected the malevolence behind the bright face.

  “What’s more important than money?” Tester asked, breaking the silence.

  “Nothing.”

  “There is something. What’s more important than money?”

  Remington mused. “Some people say faith,” she said.

  Tester shook his head. “A smoke screen. What’s more important than money?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I know you think that you know, and sooner or later you’re going to get around to telling me, but you’re just making me come to it myself.”

  “Think of the march of history, Cadet, down through the ages. What’s more important than money?”

  “Jesus, will you quit asking me and just answer your own damn question? I don’t know! Love.”

 
“No. Another smoke screen.”

  “Fear. Hate.”

  “Close. You’re getting warmer.”

  “Screw this.” Tester often challenged her patience. “What?”

  “Think. The single most powerful motivation in human affairs.”

  It dawned on her. “Revenge.”

  “That would be Square B-11,” Tester said. “And that would be bingo.”

  From inside the apartment, her phone buzzed. The Tijuana police guy, Remington thought, calling her back.

  Chapter 20

  A little after two o’clock that afternoon, Remington went out to see the Graystone driver, still parked on Los Feliz in front of her apartment. His name was Scott Sullivan, Sully for short, an ex–Navy SEAL with a tour in Afghanistan under his belt. She asked him if he was all right and if he needed to use the facilities or anything. She hesitated before offering, because the bathroom remained in pretty much the same blood-bombed condition.

  “I’m fine, ma’am,” Sully told her. Ex–Navy SEALs do not pee, he seemed to be saying, they just reabsorb their own urine.

  “I had a rough night, so I think I’m going to nap for a while,” Remington said.

  She took the walkway back up toward her apartment, then veered off and headed around the building to the parking area in the back alley. There she climbed into her Honda and drove east to the I-5. A half hour later, she approached the Church of the Holy Family in the Malibu Hills, actor Mel Gibson’s joint.

  Remington had tried to reach Ellis all morning. It was difficult, since he had stubbornly refused to set up voicemail on his cell. She finally texted him to “meet me at the place we used to meet.” She hoped he would remember that the phrase was code for Gibson’s church. They used to rendezvous there when they were up to no good in high school.

  Now, rolling up to the gates off Mulholland Highway, Remington realized that the place had changed in the five years since she last visited. Gibson’s multimillion-dollar profits from his self-produced film, The Passion of the Christ, had been put to use creating a massive new edifice. Gone was the quaint old rustic chapel at the bottom of the hill. The Spanish-themed temple stood a quarter mile up the canyonside. The gate, too, was different. Formerly, you could just drive right up to the church. Now there was a manned guard booth.