Cut to the Quick

by Dianne Emley

  “Cam Lam. Sure I know him. Great guy,” Caspers said. “Why would I want to ask him about my tattoo?”

  “To make sure it says what you think it says.”

  “I don’t think it says anything. It says ‘crouching tiger.’ ”

  Kissick rose from the table. “Just looking out for you, brother.”

  “Thanks, man, but I’ve got it under control.”

  “I’ll find out who that eight-one-eight number belongs to.”

  “Wait a sec.” Vining wrote a phone number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Kissick. “Another incoming call from a number we haven’t seen before. Call was made yesterday at one-thirty-six in the afternoon. Eight minutes long. Area code nine-three-seven. Where’s nine-three-seven?”

  “I’ll check it out.” Kissick left the room.

  She punched in the number on her department-issued cell phone.

  After it rang several times, a man answered with a gruff “Hello.”

  “This is Detective Vining of the Pasadena Police Department. Who’s this?”

  “With whom would you like to speak?”

  “The owner of this cell phone. Who are you?”

  “I guess I’m the owner now, so you’ve reached the party to whom you wish to be speaking.”

  He was talking loud enough for Caspers and Ruiz to hear. They cracked up.

  Vining’s patience was thin. “And you are?”

  “King Richard,” he responded with gusto and a vaguely British accent.

  Vining played along. “And where’s your kingdom, King Richard?”

  “The Strip, my lady.”

  Something about his speech put Vining in mind of an actor from the old movies she watched at night. Richard Harris or maybe Peter O’Toole. “You mean the Sunset Strip?”

  “The same.”

  “This phone doesn’t belong to you, does it?”

  “They say that possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

  “King Richard, did you steal it?”

  “My lady, I’ve held many an occupation in my day, but I’ve never stooped to thievery.”

  “How did you come to be in possession of this phone?”

  “What if you answer a question for me first?”

  Vining didn’t like the idea of that. “Ask your question.”

  “What do you look like?”

  That sent the men in the room over the edge.

  “King Richard, I really need your help here.” She resorted to the “take pity on the poor police lady” and “you seem like the kind of man who can get me out of a fix” strategies. She suspected he knew he was being played, but he gave her the information she needed.

  King Richard lived on the streets in the Sunset Strip area. He had been foraging through a public trash can, still brimming since the holiday had postponed the garbage collection, when he had heard a phone ringing.

  “And here we are, Detective Vining. It’s our destiny.”

  While keeping King Richard on the phone, Vining wrote a note to Kissick, who contacted the West Hollywood sheriff’s station.

  After a couple of minutes, Vining heard sheriff’s deputies arrive and confiscate the phone without incident. King Richard was a well-known local character. The phone’s sign-on greeting indicated that it belonged to someone named Abby. Helpfully, she had a number in her contacts list labeled Work. Vining caught her there.

  “I thought I’d left my cell phone in the airport bathroom,” Abby said. “I reported it to their lost and found.”

  “A homeless man found it in a garbage can on the Sunset Strip.”

  “Sunset Strip?” Abby exclaimed. “That man stole it. That he-she or whatever he was. Here he was warning me that someone might steal from my bag and he stole my cell phone.”

  Abby relayed the story of her and her girlfriend’s Sunset Strip encounter with the curious man who called himself Jill.

  The tiny hairs on the back of Vining’s neck prickled. This could be the oddball clue they needed.

  “How old do you think he was?”

  “Hard to tell. He had on heavy makeup. Forty?”

  “Height and weight?”

  “Wasn’t real tall and he had on heels. Sandals with heels. And a French pedicure … Short, dark brown wig.” Abby’s voice trailed off as she recalled the scene. “He might have been five foot eight. Not fat, not thin.”

  Vining took notes. “Eye color?”

  “Brown, I think. That reminds me. He had binoculars. He said he was looking at a hawk’s nest on top of a building.”

  “Any scars, tattoos, distinguishing characteristics?”

  “He had tattoos on his arms and shoulders. I don’t remember what they were. But I remember he was ugly.”

  “How so?”

  “Big hooked nose. Old acne scars on his face and neck. And with the makeup on top of it …”

  Vining told Abby they’d return her phone after they’d retrieved any fingerprints from it. She told Kissick, “Our cross-dresser stole Abby’s phone, made the call from the Sunset Strip, and dumped it. Scoville’s office is on the Strip.”

  “I tracked down the owner of the eight-one-eight number,” Kissick said. “Mr. Huan Yu Kang of Panorama City. He thought he lost his phone July twenty-ninth at the Municipal Court in Van Nuys. He was there suing his brother-in-law, who wouldn’t pay fifteen hundred bucks he owed on a truck Kang had sold him.”

  “Small-claims court?” Vining said. “Wonder what other cases they had on the docket on July twenty-ninth. Doesn’t tell us where the sixteen-minute call to Scoville on August first originated. We’ll need a warrant to get the cell site data from the phone company to find out which phone tower the call pinged from. How good is your contact at AT&T?”

  “We’ll see. Want to take a ride out to the Van Nuys courthouse?” Kissick looked at his watch. “We can stop by the hair salon in Burbank where Scoville’s bookie has his shop. And we can get a Cupid’s hot dog when we’re in the Valley.”

  Vining sadly shook her head as she gathered her work materials.

  “Come on, Vining. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  “Tell that to my G.I. tract at three in the morning.” She led the way out the door.

  He followed her to her cubicle. “Take a Zantac. I have some in my desk.”

  “Zantac’s your solution for everything.”

  Leaning in, he said, “Actually, sex is my solution for everything.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Is that a one-size-fits-all solution?”

  “If the shoe fits …”

  She headed out. “Some shoes are more comfortable than others.”

  He thought about that. He didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded good. He followed her.

  As they took off, they drove past the front of the station, where Lieutenant Beltran was having another press conference on the front steps.

  “Beltran in the spotlight,” Vining said. “Our homicides again already?”

  “No. You heard of that ex-con-turned-novelist Bowie Crowley?”

  “Not another guy riding his criminal past to fame and fortune.”

  “Something like that, except I have to admit that this Crowley has literary talent. I’m reading his book. It’s good. Last night, our guys arrested the father of the guy Crowley killed. He’s been stalking Crowley and threatened him at a book signing at Vroman’s. I think he’s already out on bail, so I don’t know what Beltran has to talk about.”

  “Probably likes his name being mentioned in the same breath as Bowie Crowley’s.”

  NINETEEN

  Scoville’s bookie, Bennie Lusk, was not at the hair salon when Vining and Kissick stopped by. They suspected that he never was when cops came calling, slipping out a back door. The salon owner was a nice guy. He and Lusk had attended high school together thirty years ago. Wouldn’t admit that Lusk was a bookie. Said he sold art reproductions out of the back of the shop. The owner claimed not to recognize a photo of Scoville.

&n
bsp; At the Municipal Courthouse in Van Nuys, the detectives photocopied records of the small-claims-court cases heard on July 29. Along with Huan Yu Kang’s case against his brother-in-law, another case heard that day was Alonso Mendoza versus Mark Scoville.

  The detectives called Mendoza and learned that he had sued Scoville for the remaining two thousand dollars due on tile work he did in Scoville’s home. According to Mendoza, Scoville claimed the tiles were laid unevenly and there were color variations in the materials.

  Mendoza brought photos of the finished job to court. He won his case. A few weeks later, he received a check for the balance due from Dena Hale.

  The small-claims-court records proved that Scoville was at the same place the same day that Huan Yu Kang’s cell phone was stolen. Three days later, August 1, someone used Kang’s stolen cell phone to call Scoville and conduct a sixteen-minute conversation.

  While Vining and Kissick were out, Caspers called to say he’d gotten ahold of his buddy with the Las Vegas P.D. The buddy had a buddy in security at the Wynn hotel who was familiar with Scoville. Said he was a high roller, throwing down five figures at a pop.

  By early afternoon, Kissick was finally able to sit down with two Cupid’s hot dogs. Vining joined him at an outdoor table in front of the hot-dog stand with a tuna salad sandwich from a nearby deli.

  He bit into his hot dog, shedding sauerkraut and relish from the overburdened bun onto the wrapper. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  “You missed some mustard.”

  He passed the napkin over his face again.

  She rubbed the errant yellow blob off with her thumb.

  He watched her as she pulled her hand away. “Thank you.”

  She picked up her sandwich. “You’re welcome.”

  Her cell phone rang. It was Doug Sproul at the PPD, calling with the results of the criminal background checks he’d run on the thirty-two people who’d had cases in the Van Nuys small-claims court on July 29, the day Scoville was there.

  “I turned up five with criminal histories, two females and three males. We’ve got DUIs, domestic violence, vandalism, drug possession, and one nice guy was busted for armed robbery and aggravated assault. I’ll do a more thorough rundown on the males. AT&T got back with the cell site data on the August first call made to Scoville on Kang’s phone. It originated from the vicinity of Niland, California.”

  “Originated from Niland?” Vining said for Kissick’s benefit. “Where’s that?”

  “Turns out it’s some burg on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea. Got a population of about eleven hundred people, mostly Hispanic. About fifteen percent are unemployed.”

  “The Salton Sea?” Vining repeated. “Isn’t that out past Palm Springs?”

  Kissick said, “It’s a good hour and a half southeast of Palm Springs, out in the desert. Very strange place.”

  Holding the phone squeezed between her jaw and shoulder, Vining looked through photocopies of the July 29 small-claims-court cases. “Niland, Niland … aha. Defendant Connie Jenkins of Jenkins’s Stop ’N Go Market, Niland, California. Plaintiff: Top-Notch Vending.”

  She read the plaintiff’s description of the complaint. “ ‘Defendant owes me the sum of eleven hundred dollars and eighty-eight cents for product stocked in a cigarette machine at her business.’ Says that Jenkins lost the case. Doug, can you run a DMV on her?” She gave the detective Jenkins’s address.

  She ate her sandwich while Sproul pulled the records.

  Kissick had finished both hot dogs and was scooping up the dropped condiments with a plastic fork. He chased it with the last of a large Pepsi while he reviewed the court documents.

  Sproul came back on the line. “Connie Jenkins is seventy-four years old. Five feet tall. Ninety pounds. Gray over brown. Has a Niland home address. In her DMV photo, she looks like a white-haired grandma. I’ll run her through NCIC and call you back.”

  “She’s seventy-four,” Vining told Kissick. “Why would a seventy-four-year-old woman who lives near the Salton Sea call Mark Scoville on a stolen cell phone?”

  After a while, Sproul reported back. “No criminal history. Owns Jenkins’s Stop ’N Go and a couple of other properties in Niland. Got a six-year-old Saturn vehicle registered to her. Looks like a businesswoman and a citizen.”

  “Thanks, Doug.” Vining ended the call. She said to Kissick, “How long to drive to the Salton Sea? Three to four hours?”

  “Probably, given the time of day.”

  “I bet Connie Jenkins didn’t drive herself to the Van Nuys courthouse. My grandmother wouldn’t drive that far alone.”

  Kissick balled up the hot dog wrappers, got up, and shoved them and the empty drink cup into the garbage. “We could call her, pretend we’re from Top-Notch Vending or something, but we have to be careful not to raise her or anyone else’s suspicions. These calls made to Scoville on stolen cell phones are the first solid leads we have that he’s hiding something. I don’t want to blow it.”

  “Let’s show Kang her DMV photo. See if he remembers seeing Jenkins at the courthouse and if he recalls her being with anyone. A tiny old lady in the company of a transvestite would stand out.”

  “Then let’s take a drive out to Niland. See who’s around, run some license plates. How many transvestites could they have there?”

  “Mark Scoville’s office is just over the hill. Let’s pay him a visit right now.”

  “We can drive to Niland after,” Kissick said. “Traffic will be better then anyway. We need to change into more casual clothes too. Get another vehicle.”

  Vining put on her sunglasses. They were sitting outside and Kissick was already wearing his. She put hers on because she was about to tell him a lie. “Can’t go to Niland today. I have a doctor’s appointment later. I’ve already rescheduled it once.”

  “Oh.”

  She saw his concern. If he was any other coworker, he’d let it go. He asked the follow-up question, showing that he was not just any other coworker.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s routine.”

  “Maybe I’ll take a drive to Niland anyway.”

  “Not by yourself.”

  He got up. “I’ll touch base with the local law. That would be, what? Imperial County sheriffs?”

  “Sounds about right.” She got up too and headed toward the car. She hated lying to Kissick, who was not only her partner but her friend. She’d also lied to Sergeant Early about the bogus doctor’s appointment. She’d booked a flight to Tucson. Lieutenant Donahue had agreed to wait for her that evening to go over the Johnna Alwin case. T. B. Mann had upped the ante. She would match him.

  TWENTY

  Vining and Kissick found parking on Sunset near Scoville’s office. They first walked across the street and down the block to Chin Chin, the restaurant where Abby Gilmore, the tourist from Ohio, had had the conversation with “Jill,” whom she believed stole her cell phone.

  Lunch was winding down, and the patrons, in $300 denim jeans, $200 T-shirts, and everyone looking rumpled, were migrating from their sidewalk tables into high-end vehicles without missing a conversational beat on their cell phones.

  Kissick nudged Vining as they passed beneath a billboard advertising Chanel handbags that had a Marquis plaque on the bottom.

  The Strip’s buildings were lower than one might expect, one and two stories. The older ones were rehabbed to look fresh, and the new ones had been built to look old, but fresh. Some of the designer boutiques didn’t carry women’s sizes larger than ten.

  “Look what they did to Ben Frank’s.” Kissick pointed at Mel’s, a new diner designed to look mid-century. “Ben Frank’s was a classic,” he lamented. “Only in L.A. would they replace a genuine fifties-style joint with a fake fifties-style joint.”

  At Chin Chin, they found a waiter who’d worked the patio on Labor Day. They asked him if he remembered a male patron who was dressed as a woman.

  The waiter gave a dismissive shrug. “This is the Strip, man. M
en dressed as women. Women dressed as men. Androids. Vulcans. Whatever floats your boat. There might have been a guy like that. Yeah, I think there was, but I couldn’t say I’d remember him if I saw him again.”

  Vining and Kissick thanked him and moved past the outdoor tables to stand on the sidewalk.

  “Abby said Jill was looking at hawks,” Kissick commented, peering through his compact binoculars. “I wonder if Jill was spying on Scoville. There’s a rooftop patio on top of his building.”

  Vining had a look through Kissick’s binoculars and tried to tune out two women who were sitting at a nearby table.

  “He’s good-looking in the face but he’s fat. Is it mean to tell him?”

  The Marquis building had smoked-glass windows. The baby blue paint needed updating.

  “There he is,” Vining said. “Scoville’s on the roof, leaning against the wall. Holding a drink cup. Wonder what’s in it.”

  Kissick said, “Mercer and Richards were murdered last Saturday by a cross-dresser. The following Monday, Jill the cross-dresser steals a cell phone to call Scoville. Maybe Jill was concluding business with him?”

  Vining was rankled by the women diners’ conversation.

  “I know body types. He’d look good if he worked out.”

  “Let’s go.” Vining skirted around a man with dreadlocks interwoven with long metallic ribbons that trailed down his back.

  They passed a bookstore with a large display of Razored Soul in the window.

  “There’s your buddy. Hot stuff,” Vining commented, looking at Crowley’s beefcake publicity photo.

  “Does he turn you on?”

  She looked at him with raised eyebrows. “He’s not my type.”

  “What is your type?”

  “What is this heightened sex thing with you lately?”

  “I don’t know. Life’s short.”

  Her comment ended the discussion. “I already knew that.”

  The receptionist in the first-floor lobby was young, attractive, and polished, and probably thought she was skilled at keeping the world away from the inner sanctum of Marquis Outdoor Advertising.

  Vining and Kissick didn’t pause as they sped past her, holding out their shields.