DeLuca pulled over and crept to a stop. Officers Simmons and Lutz pulled up behind. Simmons was an African American, and Lutz was his wiry partner, both in their late twenties. They spread out and marched into the property.
The first thing Martinez noticed was all the trash splayed everywhere, much of it caught in the dried weeds, discarded candy wrappers and Big Gulp soft drink cups. There was none of this the last time she’d been on the property. Wildlife had been known to get into trash receptacles and spread refuse, but this felt different. It was as if the Dillard brothers had stopped using their trash can and the evidence at her feet suggested they lived on a diet of sugary junk food.
Through the trees she could see the unkempt Victorian house and a shiny SUV. What was also different from the last time she’d been there was the double-wide trailer next to the home. It was brand new. She didn’t see any of the impromptu archery targets from last time. Things felt different.
A dog began barking from inside the house.
DeLuca halted and motioned the others to do the same. “Smell that?” he said.
“What?” asked Simmons.
“That odor.”
Sondra caught the scent he was referring to. “Cat piss?” she said.
“Ammonia. Could be a meth lab,” DeLuca said.
She’d suspected the brothers were heavy partyers but never imagined they’d be manufacturing methamphetamine. “All these candy wrappers,” Sondra said, pointing to the trash in the weeds, “the diet of tweakers.”
“What do we do, chief?” Simmons asked.
“Come back another day with our friends from the DEA,” Lieutenant DeLuca said. He gave the double-wide one last look then turned back.
The gunshot startled Martinez.
The tree beside her took the bullet’s impact.
Chips of bark exploded into her eyes. Sondra instinctively dropped down and pulled her Glock—couldn’t see a thing.
Another gunshot. It came from the house. Simmons, Lutz, and DeLuca fired back.
She caught sight of the toolshed they were firing upon a moment before Jerry Dillard made a break for it. Before she could raise her weapon, Jerry was hit. His legs spun out from under him. More shots rang out, the guys still firing for good measure. Face planted in the dirt, Jerry Dillard twitched as dirt kicked up all around him.
Simmons ran up while DeLuca and Lutz trained their weapons on the house. Simmons tossed Jerry’s rifle aside, drove a knee into his vertebrae, and handcuffed him as he squirmed facedown in the dirt.
Her ears ringing, Martinez trained her gun at the double-wide trailer and said, “His brother must be close.”
DeLuca called it in.
Chapter
FIVE
Eddie had to run a few errands before returning to his Venice Beach apartment. First, he dropped by Vidiots, an eclectic video rental store that carried DVD back-titles. The shop had almost gone out of business years ago until some anonymous Good Samaritan infused cash to save the establishment. All of the independent bookstores Eddie used to frequent were long gone so he was grateful a place like Vidiots was still in business. He figured he could dig up a couple of Tami Romans titles there.
“Tami Romans, I remember her,” the young, tattooed clerk wearing a chain-mail shirt said. “My mom used to watch her show Guiding Spirit.”
“What do you think of her?” Eddie asked the guy, testing.
“No opinion, but I don’t have cable, bro. I watch YouTube and Japanese animé mostly. But I guess she’s all right for TV and shit.”
Exactly, Eddie thought. This guy was certainly not the audience for a movie on the Majestic Channel. Eddie was well aware of the trend, a younger generation that doesn’t subscribe to cable, fleeing conventional television like rats from a sinking ship. That’s why, he knew, decent cable license fees had been diminishing so much from year to year. In the back of his mind, Eddie wondered if he should change professions, the trend of entertainment tastes sliding away from television.
But what would I do? What marketable skills do I have?
On the other hand, he knew people had an insatiable thirst for content. Viewers may not be sitting on their couch watching cable TV as often, but Majestic’s audience wasn’t part of that younger demographic. They wouldn’t be viewing movies on their cell phones with earbuds on.
He trusted there was still an audience—still a need. He searched the shelves and found a handful of DVDs featuring Tami in a variety of roles.
Next, he needed to pick up a new shirt to wear to tomorrow’s breakfast. He had not done laundry in two weeks so a fresh shirt was critical. The breakfast meeting was scheduled at Shutters, a trendy beach-chic hotel a mile or so from his one-bedroom apartment. He knew the tab there would be pricey. Eddie hoped that if he didn’t get the job he could expense the meal to Carver Entertainment and, hopefully, they’d process it quickly before the mailman brought his credit card statement.
On the sale rack in Santa Monica’s Banana Republic on the Third Street Promenade he found a hip-looking Western-styled button-down, a Western shirt for a Western. Perfect.
Lastly, he hit the market for a frozen pizza and a six-pack of beer. Since he didn’t have the job yet, Eddie decided not to splurge. The pizza was on sale and his regular Coors Light was just fine. His plan for the evening was to sit down and go through the script to make notes and watch the Tami movies.
His initial feeling was the script was not bad for a first-time writer, but it was, by no means, great. Schoolteacher from back East, Tami’s role, arrives at a remote mining town circa 1880. She turns a rundown barn into a schoolhouse then encourages the children of immigrant miners all working for the mining company to attend. Many of the immigrant families rely on the slave wages the children earn performing their menial jobs. Tami’s character has to make her case and there are a few righteous monologues touting the importance of education. There’s a little romance too, a love triangle. The wealthy outfitter comes courting, but it’s the talented and sensitive blacksmith with a mysterious past who (we discover in the middle of the second act) deserves her love most. Schmaltzy sure, but, What the hell? Eddie figured it might broaden his horizons.
Returning home, he needed a clean environment before he could concentrate. The apartment was hot so he opened windows and went about tossing old Daily Racing Forms and vacuuming potato chips off the carpet, remnants from a party with his stoner neighbors from two nights before. He discovered a container of onion dip under the couch, crusty and discolored. Eddie didn’t remember that item from the other night and wondered how long it had been there.
Next, he cleaned out the refrigerator, tossing out long-forgotten takeout containers and packets of ketchup and soy sauce.
Later, after reading the script again, he fast-forwarded through the different movies he’d rented only watching the scenes with Tami and checked out some of her old TV series available on Netflix. It was clear Tami’s strength was drama, her long-burning reactions and doe-like eyes—always with vulnerability woven into her stoic performance. There was a dreadful romantic comedy from early in her career in which Tami felt miscast. Her comic timing was off.
Most of the frozen pizza and three beers in, he noticed a peculiar trend. In almost every scene, Tami was on the left side of screen with the camera featuring the right side of her face. Going back through the DVDs, it didn’t appear to be a coincidence.
She has a good side.
Eddie noted this detail in his script and wondered if Tami would feel embarrassed if he mentioned it. Do I bring this up? Will it help me get the job?
Bored with the DVDs, he got on the internet to view the Santa Anita race replays. Examining the results, it was probably a good thing he didn’t spend the day at the track because most of his picks didn’t hit the board. Rough estimation—he probably saved fifty or sixty dollars by not placing those bets.
; Maybe my luck is turning around.
Work done for the day, he thought about hitting one of the late-night bars to try to meet girls but he was too broke and didn’t feel like taking a shower and shaving. It was times like this that he felt most lonely—tasks finished for the day and nobody to share his thoughts with.
Someday.
Sitting alone in his apartment, battling his usual loneliness and depression, Eddie finished the last of his beers.
Chapter
SIX
Deputy Sheriff Sondra Martinez hovered over a bleeding Jerry Dillard.
The sheriffs had gone through the property and there was no sign of Nick, Jerry’s younger brother, so Sondra interrogated Jerry for his whereabouts. Jerry refused to answer, cursing through clenched teeth before he passed out. She stayed back in the trees until the rest of the team arrived, followed by agents from the DEA. The paramedics attended to the unconscious Jerry before they hauled him away.
The team broke the heavy lock and entered the double-wide trailer. Sondra followed them in and could see it was clearly a meth lab—heavy ammonia smell, blackened windows, plastic tubs of chemicals. There was an industrial oven with propane tanks below a makeshift ventilation system.
She noted there was nothing mounted on the bare paneled walls other than a velvet painting of Elvis. Martinez hadn’t seen a Velvet Elvis in a long time. A spotlight clamped to the ceiling illuminated the painting as if it were a Rembrandt hanging in a museum. Elvis held the microphone with a stream of tears dripping from one eye. She remembered these souvenirs sold alongside faux sheepskin upholstery covers on gas station corners and hawked by roaming Tijuana vendors to tourists waiting in the long lines in their cars to return to the United States. As a child she’d waited in that line countless times with her family after they’d visited her grandma and cousins over Easter. She’d gazed in wonder at the dayglow velvet paintings of Elvis, Lucha Libre masked wrestlers, and Our Lady of Guadalupe. She remembered the unbearable heat and the smell of exhaust that gave her headaches as a child.
“I’ve always wondered,” she said to DeLuca, “in all these Velvet Elvis paintings, why is he crying? What makes Elvis so sad?”
“Something to do with Priscilla?” DeLuca proposed, deadpan.
“More likely his mom,” Officer Simmons informed them.
“Why’s that?” asked Martinez.
“It’s common knowledge that Elvis was a momma’s boy,” Simmons said matter-of-factly.
“Copy that,” DeLuca affirmed, then added dryly, “a bona fide Memphis momma’s boy.”
“Just the facts,” Simmons returned with a nod.
Martinez could see the guys had the old-school, Jack Webb / Sergeant Friday routine down. “In jailhouse tattoos,” Sondra remembered from her days working the jails, “isn’t a tear the symbol of murder … the mourning of a tragic death?”
“That’s right,” DeLuca said, “for both cholos and the white supremacists.”
Martinez noted, “It’s the only thing on the walls in here, Elvis crying … could it have some kind of significance?”
“Meaning what?” asked DeLuca.
Martinez didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know.”
Having overheard them, Detective Chong piped in. “Velvet paintings were made popular by painter Edgar Leeteg, an American artist living in Tahiti back in the forties and fifties.”
There was a pause as all turned to look at Detective Chong. He gave them an affirmative nod.
“Tahiti?” Martinez said. “I’ve always thought these things came from Mexico.”
This engagement only encouraged Detective Chong, who continued as if he was a professor lecturing to students. “Maybe these days that’s the case, but it started with Leeteg. He painted naked Polynesian women and was known as the American Gauguin. My dad had one of Leeteg’s paintings, but my mom was so embarrassed by it she made him take it down. At first only before guests came over, but then permanently. As a kid, I was fascinated by the thing. Dad claimed it was worth a lot of money.”
“A velvet painting?” asked DeLuca.
“That’s right. A Leeteg.”
“I doubt this Velvet Elvis is worth very much, sir,” DeLuca said.
Simmons stifled a laugh.
Detective Chong turned to the crime scene photographer and said, “Get a shot of the King.”
The tech snapped away.
After they’d coaxed the German shepherd out of the house, the team cleared the home. Like the trailer, the house was new territory for Sondra. The last time she was on the Dillard property, she’d interviewed the brothers on the porch and hadn’t entered.
Martinez was appalled at how disgusting the place was. Clutter was everywhere, yellowed newspapers stacked high. These Dillard brothers were clearly hoarders.
There was a pair of sweat-stained velour La-Z-Boy recliners in front of a giant TV. She pointed out the dog feces on the floor so others wouldn’t step in it.
“In here,” Lieutenant DeLuca said.
The walls were decorated by a Confederate flag and assorted Elvis memorabilia, and multiple rifles and shotguns leaned against the walls. This downstairs bedroom appeared to be their arsenal. Sondra noticed a black hunting bow slung over a cracked vinyl chair.
“This could be our smoking gun,” she said, pointing it out to Detective Chong.
“Good work, Martinez,” he said.
Making sure not to touch anything, she examined the accessories aside the bow, which included a quiver filled with brass-tipped arrows. These arrowheads appeared different than the ones collected at the roadside. Whereas the arrowheads at the crime scene had multiple beveled blades, these were simply sharpened metallic tips. Sondra noticed something else before she said aloud, “There are two of everything here, arm guards, archery gloves … but something’s missing.”
“What?” asked Detective Chong.
“The other bow.”
Chapter
SEVEN
Eddie left early so he could find a parking spot on the street. This was not an easy task so close to the beach, but avoiding the hotel’s valet service was his plan. There was the possibility his breakfast meeting with Tami would conclude outside Shutters Hotel as they waited for their vehicles. He didn’t want her to judge him once the valet guy delivered his beat-up Subaru. Plus, it was yet another expense, another outlay of cash—not to mention the tip. If he didn’t get the job, the fewer receipts he had to submit to Sam Carver the better.
Eddie entered the hotel lobby and rounded a massive floral arrangement. He moved past an array of plush white couches and descended the stairs leading to the beach-level restaurant.
Scanning the tables, he did not see her, so he let the staff know he was expecting someone. The hostess, a petite Asian girl, seated him.
He was ordering coffee just as Tami arrived. He waved, stood, and they greeted each other beside the table.
His first impression was that she appeared older than he’d expected. He figured probably late fifties or early sixties. Who could tell? Tami was smaller than he’d imagined. Her shoulder-length hair hung loose, a salon-enhanced reddish-blond that appeared to have been curled at the ends. Her pale skin had the look of expensive professional treatments and he was pretty sure she’d had some work done. She wore a flowing hippie-styled beach dress, casual yet pricey-looking, and craft jewelry. Eddie was familiar with the look, a cross between flower-child Topanga Canyon and beach-chic Malibu.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
“Likewise,” was her cheerful response, taking his hand and clasping it with both of hers. The overeager waiter pulled out her chair with a saccharine smile. Tami thanked him and said, “I’ll have green tea, please.”
After they were seated, Eddie reminded himself he needed to place the cloth napkin in his lap, table etiquette. He needed to make a good impression.
“Sam tells me you’re a very talented director,” she said.
“That’s nice of him to say that. I think we work well together,” Eddie replied, trying to keep things bright and positive. “It really boils down to the art of collaboration, what I do … what we do, working as a team,” he said, trying to communicate he would be open to her ideas, or at least willing to listen.
Before she could respond, the flamboyant waiter was back with menus, “Good morning,” he said with forced enthusiasm. “And how are we doing this morning?” He obviously recognized Tami.
His overzealousness annoyed Eddie.
“Good morning,” Tami said. “Fine, thank you.”
He informed them about the special, lobster eggs Benedict, and after more irksome pleasantries, he spun on his heels and was off.
Eddie hated the guy.
“I’m sorry, but I must admit,” Tami said, “I’m not familiar with your work.”
“Ah … the scourge of so many of us indie filmmakers,” he half-joked.
“Sam was kind enough to rush over a Blu-ray of your last film, but I haven’t had a chance to see it.”
“We were challenged by a short schedule,” Eddie said. “But we had a really good cast and I’m proud of that little movie.” In truth, it wasn’t a little movie for him at all. It had a far bigger budget than most of Eddie’s endeavors.
Tami said, “Sam insisted we meet, which I am more than happy to do, but as you must know Chris Sanderson is in negotiations to direct.”
What the fuck? Am I even in the running for this job? Is this just a courtesy meeting? Eddie nodded, considered what she’d just said, wondering, Is she testing me?
“Chris is solid,” he said with the best poker face he could muster, “and you’ll be in good hands, but Sam suggested we meet in the event Chris Sanderson is not available. Sam mentioned something about a scheduling conflict?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m confident Sam can move our schedule around to accommodate, but just in case …”
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