Safety Valve (Burnside Series Book 4)

by David Chill

  "Well, look who finally turned up!" he exclaimed, taking off his headset and walking over to me.

  I smiled. With Roper there was not much more one could do. "I just got your message," I said. "You only called me an hour ago."

  "Time is money, my friend. "I've been doing damage control all morning. The NFL draft is right around the corner and the timing of this crap is terrible. I have to talk to every single client and reassure them."

  "Sounds like you have a bunch of guys about to get drafted."

  "Drafted my ass," he snorted. "Most of these guys are going the free agent route. If they get drafted it'll be a miracle. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm telling 'em they're on the board for sure, and one or two of them might actually slip in. But the rest won't. It's a numbers game. Only seven rounds in the draft, so only a couple hundred players get picked. My job is to place them as free agents with the clubs where they've got some chance of sticking, even if it's just on special teams. Most of them will get cut, but a couple always seem to make the roster. I gotta keep their spirits up. You believe this? Strongest guys in the world and they're the most insecure wusses you can imagine."

  "You have anyone that might go in the first few rounds?"

  "I got one kid out of Stanford, a left tackle who may go. But when the NFL hears Stanford, they think he's too smart or too soft. Teams are always looking for dirt on guys, any scuttlebutt that makes them nervous about picking them. I gotta convince them otherwise."

  "Good thing you've got a golden tongue."

  "Yeah, yeah, that may not be enough this year. I'm heading down to the spring game at USC on Saturday to check out next year's crop. Got to plan for the future. There were a couple of seniors I was about to poach from another agent, but then this nonsense with Horne comes up. Guys are worried I may go to jail. The draft is next weekend so no one's going to move around until this crap gets worked out. And that means you doing your job properly."

  "Which is?" I asked, eyebrows raised.

  "Getting me off the hook."

  "Ah, that part of the job."

  "Yeah, yeah. I hear the cops hauled you in for questioning too. What'd you tell them?"

  "Not much to tell," I said. "They were mostly interested in why I was spending so much time outside Horne's property the other day. I spoke with April in the morning and then came back later in the day to monitor the house. I saw Gil and April come back."

  Roper's face tightened. "You saw Gil? What'd he say to you?"

  "Nothing, I didn't have the chance. He immediately got into it with April and they were arguing in the driveway. Then April gets back in her car and peels off. Gil marched into the house."

  "You didn't talk to him?" he asked incredulously.

  "I tried. He didn't answer the doorbell. Ten minutes of leaning on it. Nada."

  "So what? You couldn't have just up and left?"

  "I wasn't going to spend all night there."

  "Considering what happened, you probably should have," he said, pointing a finger at me. "I'm paying you a lot of dough."

  "And I'm trying to earn it," I said evenly. "If I knew the two of them were going to be shot to death later that evening, then yes, I think maybe I would have stuck around. But I don't have psychic powers."

  "Yeah, yeah. Everyone's got an excuse," he said disgustedly, looking out the window. "So tell me what you got this week. Who do you think popped him?"

  I took a deep breath. Talking with Roper made me feel like I was always coming up for air. "Right now we're looking at three areas," I said. "Gambling debts, angry football players, jealous women. All of those are on the table."

  "Tell me something I don't know. Horne would bet on when a light would turn red. One time I was leaving for the airport and he hands over 10 bucks and asks me to stop at one of those Mutual of Omaha kiosks. Wanted me to take out a life insurance policy, three hundred grand payout if my plane goes down. Wanted me to name him the beneficiary of course. What a degenerate."

  "That sounds like a losing bet."

  "You think? I just used his 10 bucks to tip the skycap."

  "Definitely a better idea," I agreed. "Tell me something. What do you know about Ted Wade?"

  "Horne's nephew? He helped Horne get most of his clients. Played a little bit in the league, but he wasn't cut out for it. Hey, I didn't even consider Ted. He might be in on this, you think?"

  "Not sure. But the more I dig, the more I start to wonder."

  "Ted's a stoner and he's got mental problems. His dad's a piece of work too. Thought he was grooming the kid for the NFL, but all he did was mess up his head. You hold the reigns too tight, the horse is going to buck after a while."

  "You knew him well?"

  "I know everyone well," Roper said with a dismissive wave of the hand. "Who else you got?"

  "There's a woman at his dealership. Betty Luttinger, his assistant. I think you know Gil was having a fling with her."

  "Of course I knew that. Everyone at the dealership knew that. Half the Westside knew that. The problem here is that Betty Luttinger wouldn't kill a cricket. Much less Horne. That's one of her problems. She'll suffer in silence. Some people are like that."

  That's some problem, I thought to myself. "What do you mean suffer in silence?"

  "Betty was in love with him. Don't ask me why. She was probably good for him too. If he had half a brain, he'd have dumped that gold digging whore he was married to and tied the knot with Betty. But my partner unfortunately didn't have half a brain."

  "There were other women, also."

  "Who?"

  "I'm just starting to dissect that part. He met some of them at the Seaside. Don't have names yet, they seemed to come and go."

  "Uh-huh, look this is all great stuff, my ex-partner was a horny bastard who'd sleep with anything that moved, but I think his situation had to do with money," Roper declared. "Or the lack thereof. I think you need to focus on his gambling debts. You find that big gorilla from A&M? Brendan Webster?"

  "No," I said, pointing out, "you wouldn't tell me who he works for."

  Roper hesitated. "Look these guys are no-nonsense. If they find out it was me who passed their names on to someone in law enforcement, they won't be happy campers."

  "So what? Don't tell me Cliff Roper is scared of something."

  "I'm not scared of jack shit. I just may need to, uh, use them at some point. I don't want that relationship to get, you know, strained."

  "What if they were behind the Hornes getting whacked?"

  Roper pondered the thought. "Be nice if they could slip through the cracks," he muttered.

  I looked at him incredulously. "Look, double murders just don't go away. There's no statute of limitations. I thought you hired me to get to the bottom of this."

  "No, I hired you to help get me off the hook. And I know all about statutes of limitations. And I know about double jeopardy too, so when I'm found not guilty, the City Attorney doesn't get to try me again."

  "You're well-versed in the law."

  "Three years of law school does that."

  "Now that's a surprise," I remarked. Cliff Roper had all the earmarks of someone who attended college at the College of Hard Knocks.

  "Why's that? I'm an agent, I need to read contracts. Law school helped. I never bothered to take the bar, never actually practiced. But I know about the law. Comes in handy."

  "You're just a jack-in-the-box of surprises, you know that?" I said, shaking my head. "Where'd you go to law school, Tijuana?"

  "Hey, hey, hey. No need to get nasty here. I have feelings too, you know."

  I put my head back and took a deep breath. Time to float the bulls-eye question. "Did you shoot Gilbert and April Horne?"

  Roper stared at me. "I don't believe you just asked me that."

  "I need to know."

  "Why do you need to know?"

  "Because if I'm going to keep going down this path, it better be for a good reason. And accepting a big pile of money just isn't a good reason anymore."


  Roper continued to stare at me and then pulled out his iPhone and moved quickly through it. Picking up a piece of paper, he wrote down an address. "Here's where you'll find Brendan. He works for the Rooney Brothers."

  I looked at the paper. It listed the name and address of a bar in the Valley. "What is this?"

  "Geez, do I have to spell everything out for you? It's the Herman Room. Call it their office. You can find them there most days. But you need to be careful how you approach them. They're meatheads and they have a short fuse. Make up a story, but keep my name out of it."

  I rubbed the piece of paper in my hand. "You didn't answer my question."

  "What question's that?"

  "Did you do it?"

  "Do what?"

  "Shoot. The. Hornes," I asked, starting to get a little exasperated.

  Roper looked out the window for a long while before speaking. "I did not shoot the Hornes," he said. "I did not kill the Hornes. I had nothing to do with their deaths. I had nothing to do with the Lindbergh kidnapping or the JFK assassination or the 9-11 attack. I am as pure and innocent as the fucking driven snow. You happy now?"

  I looked at him and gave an approving nod. "Maybe just a little."

  Chapter 13

  I drove out of the subterranean garage in Roper's building and pulled onto Sunset. Sometimes in L.A., your plans are simply dictated by where you happen to be. Traffic is such that if you have a piece of business nearby, you take care of it. And I had some unfinished business in Laurel Canyon.

  Turning onto Lookout Mountain, I drove up about a mile and parked across the street from the Horne residence. I then did a double take at the car parked ostentatiously in the driveway. A bright blue Lamborghini. I waited about 20 minutes in my vehicle before Oscar Romeo emerged from the house, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans and carrying a large envelope. I got out of my car and approached him.

  "Hey there."

  Oscar was about to open the driver's side door and stopped. "Mr. Detective. You get around."

  "As do you, I see."

  "I just had to retrieve some documents," Oscar said, holding up the envelope. "Roper's staff wouldn't help me, they said all of Gil's files had been shipped to his house."

  "What did you need?"

  "Endorsements contracts. My own contract with the Chargers. Things you trust your agent to keep for you. I never actually got a copy of these from Horne after I signed. He said he'd send it, but it never happened. No surprise. He was a lot more interested in getting his commission right away."

  "You have a new agent?"

  "Nope, still evaluating them. I'm going to be a lot more selective this time around."

  "You could have stayed with Roper," I suggested, curious as to where that trail would lead.

  Oscar gave a laugh. "Yeah sure. What do I do when he gets convicted of murder? Not the best time to go under his wing, you know. Plus I got my brand image to consider."

  "Brand image?"

  "Yeah, man. I'm the All-American kid. My father's part African-American, part Italian. My mother's part Samoan, part Mexican. I got a little bit of everything in me. Just like America."

  "So you can't get caught up being represented by a guy on trial for double murder."

  "Man, you got that right."

  "You think Roper did it?" I asked.

  Oscar cocked his head for a moment. "I dunno. Maybe not. Doesn't really make sense, but not a lot of things make sense in this world. Who knows."

  "Sure," I agreed. "Who knows. Hey, I wanted to ask you something."

  "What's that?"

  "Did Gil ever talk to you about being involved in business dealings with Brendan Webster?"

  Oscar cocked his head once more. "He never said much, but Gil was Brendan's agent. I think he was trying to move Brendan into a different career. He also set Brendan up with a side job working for the Rooneys."

  "What exactly do the Rooneys do?" I asked.

  "Little of this, little of that. They handle security sometimes. I also heard they run a bookmaking operation on the side. Brendan made collections for them. Kind of funny he wound up having to collect from Gil. "

  "What would happen if Gil didn't come up with the weekly vig?"

  Oscar gave the palms-up sign. "No idea."

  I turned and looked admiringly at the blue Lamborghini. "Great machine," I said. "I don't think I've ever seen a color like that on a car."

  "Yeah, these cars are the best. The color's custom. That's one of the beautiful things about the Lamborghini. You send them a color chip and they match it."

  "Nice."

  "I once had a Hot Wheels toy car that looked like this. It's pretty cool. Now I can get a real car with the same color. Every kid's dream come true."

  "Well, you earned it."

  "Oh I did. Got more than my share of bumps and bruises and sprains. Funny thing, though."

  "What's that?"

  "A ride like this sets you back almost five hundred, and the trade-in only gets you so much. I was counting on that shoe contract to make up the difference. Looks like I'm gonna need to make All-Pro next season. Then I can go in and renegotiate my deal. Hopefully with an agent who knows what he's doing. Finding a good one's going to be important."

  Five hundred meant five hundred thousand. Half a million dollars for a car. I looked at my eight year old Pathfinder. Nowhere near as sleek or stylish, nowhere near as comfortable, but it got me to and from my destinations. A long time ago I had dreamed of a pro football career, but even back then, the money for the top players wasn't anywhere close to this level. The stakes were a lot higher for these guys now.

  "Good luck with that, Oscar."

  He nodded goodbye, hopped into his grossly expensive toy and turned the engine over. It emitted a low roar, more like the throaty growl than the sound of an internal combustion engine. He pulled onto the road and sped off quickly around the bend.

  I walked down the road and began knocking on doors. Finding a front door was never easy in this neighborhood. The houses were often shrouded by foliage, and the front doors were sometimes behind a locked gate, up a flight of stairs or on the side of the house, not out in front.

  Most of the neighbors I encountered expressed shock at the tragedy of the other night, but knew little about the Hornes and their lifestyle. They said the couple came and went at odd hours, and had a regular flow of visitors; the neighbors would occasionally hear raised voices coming from the house. But nothing that led them to believe it could ever lead to this. I was learning nothing new. And then I met Barry Hamlin.

  Barry Hamlin was the type of Angelino I had expected to find in Laurel Canyon. He had written and sold a dozen screenplays, had made a lot of money, but had never seen any of his scripts actually produced. A real estate agent when the screenwriting wasn't going well, Barry was a stocky, middle-aged guy with a good bit of stomach fat, short, cropped hair and neatly trimmed beard.

  "This area's a nice place to live," he confided. "It'll be nicer now that those people are gone. Not to besmirch the dearly departed, but they weren't the best of neighbors."

  "In what way?"

  "Basically in every way imaginable. They were loud, obnoxious, fought all the time, had loud parties, and people were coming and going at all hours of the night. They didn't respect their neighbors. Hell, they acted like they didn't have any neighbors at all, except when they needed a favor."

  "Bet you got a lot material for a script," I speculated.

  "Oh yeah, for a fact. My office window faces their house, so I saw quite a bit. I just hope someone doesn't do a documentary on them first."

  "Lookout Mountain would be a good title."

  "Ha! You're right, I think I'll steal that one!"

  "Steal away," I said, thinking I could probably write some good murder mysteries myself, but I'm too busy living smack in the middle of them.

  "That's a good one," he laughed. "You probably have a lot of stories to tell. We should sit down sometime. I'm always up for partnering
with someone on a script. Good material's not easy to come by."

  "I'll keep that in mind," I said, and made a mental note to forget it as soon as possible. For a private investigator, discretion is critical and blabbing about confidential matters to a writer would be the ultimate breach of trust. "Anything you can tell me about the other night?"

  Barry struck a pose as he pondered this. "Just like I told the police," he declared. "It was a typical night there. A couple of Porches came and went, some hot women dropped by. And men too by the way, real buff. I don't know how they knew all these people but it was like a modeling agency over there."

  "Anything different about the other night?"

  "Well, sure. About 9:00 p.m. I heard a few pops and their dog started barking. I'd like to shoot that damn thing myself, she just barks for hours when they're gone. But this time there seemed to be a real urgency to her yapping. It was non-stop and she sounded alarmed. I guess someone finally called 9-1-1 just to get her to shut up. But when the police came, they went inside and next thing you know there's a dozen cop cars clogging up the street."

  "You see anyone in particular come or go that night?"

  "It was too dark, I barely made out much. Oh yeah, that Lamborghini that was here earlier today. He was there that night."

  I drew in a breath. "Okay. Anyone else?"

  Barry Hamlin again posed as if he were deep in thought. "No, just the usual," he finally said, and then an angry expression formed on his face as he looked past me. "Aw, shit. Not you again."