Love Hambone
Hambone Alexa's Academy nickname. I scrolled down further and read one from Slade to her.
Dear Hambone, Time away from you is agony. This time Watts is the key. I cant be away from my Queen. It's all about lost performance and royalty. Don't make me wait, darling. I've got WYD and plenty of ammo. I'm in the cut, waiting.
Love Dark Angel
They were all like that. Twenty of them. Hers more straightforward. His full of hip-hop sex references, always signed Dark Angel.
Toward the end, I read one posted where the tone was different. It sounded ominous. Actually, it read like a blackmail threat.
Hambone, You better come with everything I asked for NOW. I'm losing patience. You know I'm not kidding. This isn't much fun. You don't come through I'll go to the Old Man. Those are my conditions. You have 24 hours to deliver.
Dark Angel
I couldn't read any further.
As I looked at the e-mails and my vision blurred. All I kept thinking was, Why? How could she betray me like this?
I didn't know what to do. If this file ever fell into the wrong hands, it would become the motive for Slade's murder.
Chapter 28.
I LAY BACK on the stained red bedspread in the Skid Row hotel and tried to come to grips with it. All of the e-mails had been written over the last few months. Had I been too busy with my caseload to give Alexa what she needed? The enormity of her betrayal swept in on me like a black tide, washing pieces of my well-being away with each violent surge.
I tried to examine the past two months, going back to late May, when the e-mails started. Had I sensed anything different between us? Had there been a distance there that might have hinted at this affair with David Slade? And why him? Why some bad seed cop, some unstable psycho who pulled guns on people over lane changes? It just didn't add up.
But one of the things I'd learned as a homicide cop was that human behavior often didn't add up and that the hardest condition to understand is the human condition. I'd seen murders committed over gardening tools; children shaken to death because they wouldn't eat their vegetables. The unpredictability of human behavior was a tragic constant in the criminal justice system.
But despite this, there were some things that I had come to take for granted. Areas where I had finally let my guard down and been at peace. My relationship with Chooch was one, my marriage to Alexa another. I never dreamed of something like this happening. I continued to search for a framework that made sense. I couldn't find one.
But one of the hard lessons all young cops quickly learn is that truth is always subjective. It is colored by point of view and the way we choose to see things. At the bottom line, truth is just opinion and can be viewed differently depending on bias. I was a big loser here, and I didn't know how to deal with that. Worse still, I couldn't scream my anger or disappointment at Alexa. I couldn't demand an explanation or grant forgiveness. She was lying in a coma that she might never come back from.
Time ticked slowly on the old-style digital clock that was bolted to the bedside table in the dingy hotel room. I could hear the little metal numbers flipping over every sixty seconds, changing the readout on the display.
What should I do about this? How do I handle it? How does it change me?
Then I remembered something that had happened when I was twelve and living at the Huntington House group home. I was a point guard on our elementary school basketball team, a ragtag group of orphans in mismatched uniforms. One afternoon, we were playing a game against a rich, private school. We were way behind, getting our asses kicked, and being fouled like crazy under the basket. We were on their home court, with their fathers refereeing, and none of the fouls under the basket were getting called. At halftime, our dejected Huntington House team was sitting on benches in the guest locker room of this expensive private school gym, complaining about how unfair it was and how we'd never win with them cheating like that. Our coach was a tough old duck, and he used to scream a lot when the team was losing. But that afternoon he taught me a great lesson.
"All you guys are doing is bitching about stuff you can't change," our crusty old coach said. "Bitching how this guy's fouling you, or how the refs aren't making the calls. Well, welcome to the real world, boys. If you fret about stuff you can't control, I guarantee you'll always lose."
Then he'd told us that we could only play our game, not the other guy's. It was such a simple concept that it was often overlooked. We went out in the second half and played our game on their court and won.
Alexa was who she was, and whatever choices in her life led her to this, they were hers, not mine. It was out of my hands. It wasn't my game. Despite the overpowering evidence to the contrary, some part of me still prayed it was wrong. Some inkling deep inside still told me that it was. All of it the murder, the attempted suicide, the answering machine confession, and now the e-mails with the damning blackmail note. But it really didn't matter, because I knew I still loved her. The thought that she was lying in a coma and might never recover still devastated me. I knew in that instant that whatever the reasons for all of this, I couldn't let them beat me. I was getting fouled, but if I didn't want to lose, I had to ignore the bad calls and play my own game.
I sat up and looked at the computer. The damning e-mails were still up on the screen. David Slade was dead. Alexa was in a desperate fight for her life. She might have had an affair with him, but I just couldn't believe she would put him in her cuffs and execute him gangland style. Not Alexa. Not the woman who turned my life around and taught me how to love. In accounting, they teach if your balance is off by only a few cents, those few cents might be hiding a much larger error. This balance was off, and that's what I was hoping for.
Broken-hearted, I packed up Alexa's computer. I took one last look back at the faded decor before closing the door. I knew I would carry this ugliness to my grave. I walked out of the hotel and back to the parking lot. As I unlocked my car door, I was sure of only one thing.
This wasn't over.
Chapter 29.
HERE WAS MY predicament:
It was five o'clock and the grace period Mike Ramsey had given me was almost over. I had Alexa's computer, but given the content, there was no way I was turning it over. Going to UCLA at seven-thirty would be risky because if Deputy Chief Ramsey made good on his promise, the PSB dicks could be there waiting for me. That meant I should stay away from that hospital at all costs. At least that was my excuse. But I suspected the real reason I didn't go was because, deep down, I wanted to run from this. I couldn't face Alexa, even in a coma.
Instead, I decided to fall back on police work and see if I could run a surveillance on the white sister. I tried to convince myself that right now that was more important; but it was just cowardice.
At ten to six, I parked a few hundred yards up the road from Stacy Maluga's Malibu estate. I got out of the Acura and walked slowly back to a spot where I could see the hedge-lined, wrought-iron fence that framed the property. I was close enough to the front gate to see the manicured gardens through the big, gold-scripted M, but at the same time was out of range of the driveway cameras. I was pretty sure that KZ and Insane Wayne weren't in the security lounge looking at a wall of video monitors. Those two ace-cool busters were probably drinking Mai-Tais out by the pool with Stacy. But why take a chance?
I found a protected place out of the late afternoon sun and sat on the ground. From this vantage point, I could just barely see the driveway. I opened the little package from ESD and removed Stacy's pager and a small hand-held monitor. There was a short memo attached from the ESD technician who had installed the bug. It contained an inventory list and brief instructions, which I read carefully.
This two-way listening device is a VXT voice-activated room transmitter and is inside a Motorola pager with the number (800) 765-3333. The device has an output power of 20 MW at 100-120 MHz. Range is 1,000 meters. Batt life is approximately twenty-five hours. Inventory List:
1
Motorola Pager (VXT device installed) 1 VXT Radio Receiver with earplug 1 extra 9 V battery pack FOR QUESTIONS: Call Earl Fellows ESD (310) 555-5770
I turned on the receiver unit and set it to the correct frequency, then clipped it on my belt and put the earplug in my jacket pocket.
Since the pager had been stolen off Stacy's home bar, my problem was how to get it back into her purse without causing suspicion. I had a plan for that, which I thought might work.
It entailed following her when she left the mansion. But since I had no idea what her social plans for the evening were, all I could do was sit here and wait.
I tried to keep my mind off what had just happened with Alexa by concentrating on Stacy and Lou Maluga, looking for a possible motive. I began examining Stacy's relationship with David Slade and her estranged marriage with Lou. That, of course, put me right back on Alexa's relationship with Slade and my own marriage. I finally forced myself to stop thinking about it because in the end, my thoughts all came painfully back to Alexa.
At six-fifteen I heard a loud squeaking sound followed by a rattling of metal chain as the huge wrought-iron gate was cranked wide.
I ran back to the Acura and put on a baseball cap and some dark glasses I keep in my glove box. Then I started the engine. I needed to time this just right. I didn't know if the gate had been opened from the house or with a remote while the vehicle was heading down the long drive. I didn't know if it was Stacy or just one of the steroid twins leaving the mansion. That meant I had to get a passing look inside the car as it was leaving the estate. I sort of played the timing by ear and after what seemed like the right span, put the Acura in drive, and pulled away from my parking spot. The idea was to pass the gate just as the car was coming out of the drive and the occupants were looking for cross-traffic. If they were concerned about oncoming cars, hopefully they wouldn't recognize me.
But I blew the timing. I got there thirty seconds too early. A tan Rolls-Royce Phantom with personalized plates that said wht sugr was parked in the drive with the engine idling. Had to be her. I couldn't see the drive because the low afternoon sun had blown out the windshield with reflected light. I had no choice but to keep driving right on past.
About a quarter mile down the road, I spotted a switchback driveway and hung a right, pulling off the road to a spot where I was out of sight of cars passing on Oceanridge Drive. I shifted into park and took my foot off the brake to douse my taillights and waited. If the Rolls was headed to Malibu, it would quickly pass the place where I was waiting. If it was going to L. A. via the Ventura Freeway, it was already headed down the other side of the mountain, away from me.
I waited for three minutes. The car didn't pass. I'd guessed wrong.
"Damn," I muttered, then backed down the drive onto Oceanridge, right into the path of the oncoming Rolls. Whoever was driving honked the horn angrily, swerved out of my way, and continued on toward Malibu. It was low comedy. I couldn't have screwed it up worse if I'd been wearing clown makeup and a rubber nose.
My car had been spotted, but I was out of time and options, so I hung a U and followed. One of the good things about running a tail in a silver Acura is that the car looks like half the iron on the road. It blends in. A Rolls-Royce Phantom, on the other hand, is so wide and tall, it's hard to lose. You can tail one of those parade floats from three or four cars back and still keep visual contact.
The big, elegant car hummed out of Malibu down the Coast Highway. It turned left on Sunset Boulevard, and twenty minutes later I was six car-lengths back, negotiating the twisting turns near Mandeville Canyon. We continued on Sunset past UCLA, into Westwood. Expensive real estate slipped by on both sides of my windows; long rolling lawns fronted big Colonial and French Regency houses. Everybody had a nice gold initial on their wrought-iron gate.
The Rolls turned right off Sunset at Doheny and went down the hill to Santa Monica Boulevard where it pulled into a valet stand in front of a famous L. A. nightclub and old-time music biz watering hole called The Troubadour. The front of the club was painted completely black. It had been a trendy spot for new bands to perform in the eighties but recently the place had gone retro. However, over the last two decades a lot of music acts had been broken on that stage.
I pulled up half a block back and watched Stacy Maluga get out of the Rolls. She was dressed to stop traffic in a sequined dress that ended just below her ass and was cut so low in front it almost exposed her navel. She was wearing four-inch hooker heels and crossed the sidewalk using long stripper strides, the short hem of her dress flipping seductively around shapely legs. She handed her keys to the appreciative valet and disappeared into the nightclub.
The first problem I encountered was the valet decided to leave the expensive Rolls right out front to show everybody who drove by on Santa Monica what a classy joint The Troubadour still was.
I parked the Acura a block away and moved up the street on foot. Even though it looked busy, The Troubadour was not a place you went for dinner. I also figured this early in the evening, Stacy wasn't here scouting music acts because the marquee said the first show didn't start until eight. She was probably meeting someone for drinks. I had made such a memorable first splash at her house, I figured even in my baseball cap and glasses, I couldn't chance going in for a look around. I decided to stick to my original plan and not get greedy.
I waited until the valet stand in front of the nightclub was overloaded. Guys in red jackets were jumping into waiting cars and wheeling them around the corner up the hill on Doheny to the nightclub's parking lot, then running back and jumping into the next idling car.
Once I got the rhythm of it, I figured I would have maybe thirty seconds if I was lucky. When all three valets were away from the stand, I made my move. I speed-walked to the passenger side of the Rolls-Royce, opened the door, leaned in, and jammed Stacy's pager down into the crack between the front seats, pushing it far enough in so it would look like it had fallen from her purse and become accidentally squashed down and hidden. As I was doing this, I heard the slap of tennis shoes on pavement as one of the red-jacketed track stars came running back down the side street. I almost got my head out of the Rolls before he appeared at the corner and saw me still half inside the glitzy tan car.
"Hey, whatta you doing?" he shouted at me.
"Man, would you look at this thing?" I gushed. "Look at that leather, like butter."
"Leave the car alone," he ordered, approaching me angrily.
I needed to give him something else to think about so I said, "Boy, Cadillac really knows how to build 'em, huh?"
"It's a Rolls-Royce, dipshit."
"This is a Rolls?" I said incredulously. "You sure?"
"It says right on the steering wheel. RR that's Rolls-Royce. Whatta you, some kinda moron?"
We were now talking about how stupid I was and not about what my head was doing inside somebody else's car.
"Get away from it," he commanded, so I turned and walked away.
I got in my Acura and found a new parking spot heading the same direction as the Rolls. Then I scooted down in my seat and waited.
At seven o'clock Stacy came out of the club. It had been a short meeting. I watched as she tipped the smiling valet, got into the Phantom and sped away from the curb. I followed.
Halfway down Santa Monica Boulevard, I pulled up directly behind the Rolls at a red light. I could see her clearly through the back window, so I dialed her pager with my cell phone and waited. The light changed, but the pager must have been ringing because Stacy didn't move. The Rolls was still parked at the green light while she began digging around in the seat cushion with her head down looking for it. When she finally raised her head, she held the pager up triumphantly in her right hand. She'd found it.
Then she dropped my bug in her purse, right where I wanted it and powered away, taking a right, heading north back up the hill toward Sunset.
Chapter 30.
IT WAS SEVEN-FIFTEEN. Instead of fulfilling my responsibility to Alexa
and meeting with Luther, I continued following the tan Rolls into Hollywood.
The car turned onto Sunset Boulevard and headed toward the Strip, then pulled into a parking lot behind the old Whiskey A Go Go. Stacy was hitting her share of retro clubs. She exited the car and chirped the alarm, but didn't go inside the Whiskey. Instead, she did her runway strut down Sunset toward a two-story office building in the middle of the next block.
Two exposed upstairs dormer windows relieved the nondescript brown stucco facade and elevated the architecture from boxy to eclectic. Maintenance was slipshod and the building seemed to crouch low in the middle of the block as if trying to hide its faded paint and chipped trim. Tattered and old, the place was a reminder of better days when the Sunset Strip was the place to be.
I parked in the same lot behind the Whiskey and followed her down the street. I was still wearing the baseball cap and glasses as I entered the run-down building, but in a clever shift of disguise, I swung the bill of my ball cap to the back, gangsta-style, and took off my coat, draping it across my arm. I arrived inside the building only two minutes behind her, but the lobby was already empty. She had disappeared.
There was a building registry behind a plate of smudged glass identifying the lucky businesses that officed here. The place had a sweet, acrid smell, like Lysol mixed with pot, and the list of tenants appeared to be mostly music companies. One on the second floor was named Chronic Inc. On the street, chronic is potent, homegrown-style bud favored by marijuana users. Chronic Inc. A rap label? Maybe.
I pulled the earpiece out of my pocket and again looked at my watch. Seven-thirty. Alexa's medical meeting would just now be starting at UCLA with only Chooch in attendance. I pictured Luther frowning, and had a mental flash of my son not understanding why I hadn't called. Because it was all over the TV, both had to know by now that I was a suspect in Slade's murder.
White Sister (2006) Page 14
