Swim Move

by David Chill

  “Nothing there?”

  “Nope. Kid’s a mover. Said he rented the van to move someone who lived down the street from Amanda. Said a neighbor saw him working and had him come back the next day to move some furniture into storage. Had all the moving equipment, hand trucks, dollies. It added up.”

  “Lives in Compton?” I asked. “Not exactly around the corner.”

  Slick picked up the Vitamin Water and took a long swallow. “Westside real estate,” he said, coming up for air and exhaling a loud breath of enjoyment. “Apartments are pricey around here. Got to make some coin to afford this area. No big surprise he lives somewhere else.”

  “You say he was nervous?”

  Slick peered at me. “What? You really think there’s something else there?”

  “Maybe. It just doesn’t fit well.”

  “You’re over-thinking this.”

  “You mind if I talk to him?”

  Drew Slick leaned back and thought. I sat and waited. Police detectives normally didn’t like P.I.s snooping around their territory. But Slick was considering it. Maybe it was because this was Compton and not Beverly Hills, maybe it was because he had dismissed this mover as a suspect, or maybe it was because I was a former LAPD officer and not someone who got his PI license because he didn’t like working as an insurance adjuster. But in the end, I think he became forthcoming because I gave him some good leads that were actually panning out. Tit for tat.

  “I’ll let you have a call with him. Name’s Alex Solis. I think he lives on Orchard Street in Compton,” he said, and he wrote a phone number down on a slip of paper. “Crappy neighborhood, but hey, it’s Compton.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You find out anything, I’m your first call. Got it?”

  “Sure. By the way, anything come from that Mike White guy? The bookie Moose owed twenty large to?”

  “Yeah, about that Mike White guy,” he said, looking at the ceiling, “We haven’t found him. There’s about fifty Mike Whites in the region. We don’t have the manpower to chase every lead down. Might not be his real name. And even if it were, he might not even live around here.”

  I looked around the office. It was pretty quiet, especially for a police station. I reminded myself this was Beverly Hills. I also debated whether I should detail my morning conversations with a pair of NFL football players who had had a skittish relationship with Amanda Zeal. But Amanda’s name hadn’t been mentioned yet. I wondered if Slick and his team had even bothered to check into her whereabouts. I wondered if there was a Starbucks nearby. I turned back to him.

  “So, any luck in finding Amanda?” I asked.

  Slick gave a shrug of the shoulders. “She’s in the wind. Hasn’t come back to her apartment, we confirmed with her parents. They haven’t seen her, haven’t been able to make contact. Might be in her boyfriend’s apartment, but like I said we’re not kicking any doors in yet. I take it you haven’t come across her.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve talked to a couple of guys who knew her. Seems like she may have money problems.”

  Slick’s eyebrows raised. “Money problems, you say. That’s plenty interesting. Something her and Machado had in common.”

  “Yeah, maybe that was all they had in common. But Amanda grew up in Beverly Hills, her parents are loaded, and she has a job that pays her a bundle. None of this quite makes sense.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve worked this beat for fifteen years. Some people with big houses also have some pretty big debts. Not everything’s the way it seems around here.”

  To that I agreed. And I knew that when it came to money, enough was never enough for some people. Maybe that was the case with Amanda. I had occasionally come across people whose sole goal in life was to collect a pile of money and to see that pile grow and grow, even if they had to steal it. Some people accumulated enough money to secure the next three generations in their line, but they still kept pushing for more. After a while, it stopped being about making enough to live well, it evolved into a game, a pursuit, practically an addiction. They would beg, borrow, or steal money in the hopes of leveraging it to get more. And sometimes people forgot that there were consequences to every action. Mismanaging money with the wrong people could be lethal, and you often didn’t get many warnings. I had a funny feeling Moose Machado would have agreed.

  *

  I found a Starbucks three blocks from the Beverly Hills PD headquarters, parked, and brought in my iPad. There were about a dozen layabouts in there, all by themselves, all huddled over their various devices. I suspect some were unemployed, some were aspiring screenwriters, some were possibly both. I ordered a cup of Guatamala Antigua and waited a few minutes for a young woman to pack up her laptop and get up from a tall barstool. Two seconds after she slid off, I climbed on.

  Calling Alex Solis posed a problem, because if he were involved in any criminal activity, it was unlikely he’d stay on the line for long. I decided I needed a personal visit. The only problem was that I didn’t have his exact address.

  There were five people named Alex Solis living in Compton, but none were under the age of forty, and none of them lived on Orchard Street. There was a strong possibility he might well be living with family, and if so, he’d be flying under the radar. I tried a reverse phone lookup, but that yielded nothing. Finally, I decided to get creative and call the number Drew Slick gave me. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Yo, it’s Ax.”

  “Hello. I’m calling for Alex Solis,” I said in my most bureaucratic voice.

  “Yeah. Who’s this?” he demanded.

  “This is the phone company. We have some unusual charges on your bill. Did you make any international calls today, sir?”

  “Did I what?”

  I looked at the phone for a minute and then repeated myself.

  “No. Why? Someone using my number?”

  “It appears as if that’s the case. Look, if you didn’t make the calls, we can take off the charges.”

  “You damn well better. I ain’t paying for no one else’s calls.”

  “We’re happy to do that, but I just need a little information. Your name is Alex Solis and you live in Compton, California?”

  “Damn right I do.”

  “Please verify your mailing address.”

  “My what?”

  “Your mailing address,” I repeated. “That way we can send you a statement telling you that you don’t have to pay for these charges.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’m at 1891 Orchard. You get that thing off my bill, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I smiled. “We’ll do that posthaste.”

  “Say what?”

  “Right away.”

  The line went dead, but the smile remained on my face, at least until I checked traffic. There were a lot of long red lines on the southbound Largo Beach freeway out of downtown and headed in the direction of Compton. I gave it a long look and then decided my meeting with Alex Solis could wait a day.

  I called the Largo Beach Police Department and left a message for Bart Sokolov. Then I scanned through the internet, first checking the football news and then moving on to politics. Shane Karp’s announcement that he was running for City Attorney did not merit a mention on the home page of the L.A. Times website, but I did see a puff piece on Arthur Woo. The story detailed Arthur’s Ivy League education at Columbia and his numerous accomplishments as an L.A. City Councilman. He deflected questions about his possible run for mayor, and while he heaped praise upon the candidates already in the race, he did not call out any by name. It was mentioned in the article, though, that a leading candidate for mayor was Jay Sutker, the current City Attorney.

  I pulled myself away from the news about sports and politics, and began scouring the web for anything related to a certain Gail Pepper. I spent a good thirty minutes rifling through news, social media, and a variety of search engines. All I learned was that my wife, sparkling as she was in person, had a remarkably dull online presence. She grew
up in Costa Mesa, her father was a high school history teacher, she graduated from UCLA summa cum laude, was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, and played intramural soccer. She earned a law degree from Berkeley, and had made donations to the Downtown Women’s Shelter. She had no Facebook profile, no Twitter feed, and there was nothing on Instagram. I found a few photos from high school that her friends had posted online, and as pretty as she was as a teenager, the photos were more endearing than risqué. The most outlandish thing I could find on Gail was that in college she won a sorority contest for being the girl who ate the most spicy chicken wings in a five minute period. If there was anything unsavory she had done in her life, a political operative was unlikely to discover it. In fact, the most subversive and dangerous act she ever engaged in was most likely marrying me.

  I moved on to Gail’s colleague and possible rival, Shane Karp, and things got a little more salacious. Shane Karp had a lively online persona, mostly posting tame photos on Facebook and judicious tweets on Twitter. A simple Google search only turned up some criminal cases he had worked on as a prosecutor. But it’s often the third and fourth pages of Google search results that lead you to some interesting clues. I jotted down the high school Shane attended in northern California, and the names of his friends and acquaintances. While Shane’s Facebook page had likely been scrubbed clean, one of his friends, Larry Beets, treated Facebook very differently. Photos of alcohol-laced parties and half-naked embraces were common, and Larry was kind enough to have made all six hundred of the lurid photos he uploaded available for anyone to view. Either he didn’t know about the privacy switch or he didn’t care.

  By the time I got to the two-hundredth photo, I hit pay dirt. There were photos of Larry and Shane hugging various girls, their hands plastered over a multitude of private parts, as well as images of them chugging liquor straight out of the bottle. The two looked like they were barely out of their teens, but the caption made it very clear that Larry and Shane were celebrating. A lot. The topper was a photo of a pair of shot glasses filled with amber liquid sitting precariously atop the bare breasts of a nubile, smiling, and most likely inebriated young woman, with the two young men next to her, each with their tongue against a breast to balance a shot glass. There was ostensibly nothing illegal about what they were doing. But these images were clearly not emblematic of a future civic leader.

  I took a screen shot of the photo and sat back. How best to approach Gail with this sort of tawdry bit of excess was not the easiest thing to figure out. To say Gail had better morals and ethics than I did was like saying the sun rose in the east. She prosecuted criminals but always did it by the book. I, on the other hand, investigated a variety of shady characters and made up the rules as I went. Gail and I were an odd match, but ostensibly a logical one. Opposites attract. Yin and yang. She would take the moral high ground, I would stake out the more practical space, which sometimes wound up being in a sewer. But Gail was now entering a world where people’s characters were maligned for sport, and where living a decent life was irrelevant. If you ran for public office you also ran the risk of going up against an unethical rival who would do anything to win. Twisting the truth, misrepresenting facts, or even just making up outrageous claims were an accepted part of politics today. I concluded Gail would never use a photo like this as a means of attack, a method for winning an election. But I also knew she needed to have something in the chamber, just in case. In the event Shane Karp went into gutter mode, she might need to follow suit. Or have someone do it for her. I recognized I had severe limitations in knowing how to work as a political operative. Fortunately, I knew someone who was well-versed in the not-so-subtle art of bare-knuckled political campaigning.

  Arthur Woo’s assistant put me on hold for a few minutes before coming back on the line and telling me the erstwhile city councilman could see me at four o’clock today. I shivered as I imagined what the traffic would be like, but I had ninety minutes to get to Koreatown. Even though the 10 freeway was jammed, there was always surface streets. I packed my iPad and grabbed the rest of my coffee. The things you do for love.

  I arrived at Arthur’s district office on Vermont Avenue, just north of Wilshire. He worked out of a nondescript office befitting a public servant, but it was full of noise and movement, staffers walking up and down the hallways with a sense of urgency and a sense of purpose. Some were having conversations on phones as they walked, others simply moved along quickly. All seemed to be carrying iPads, file folders, or sheets of paper in their hands. All were Korean.

  A thin, pretty young woman with black-framed glasses led me into Arthur’s office. She asked if I would like some tea. I politely declined. She left, closing the door behind her, and I waited for Arthur Woo to stop his intense concentration on a document in front of him and acknowledge my presence. He did, albeit after a good ten seconds.

  “Mr. Burnside,” he said, finally standing and shaking my hand. “It’s good to see you again. And so soon.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine, Councilman. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule.”

  “Have you reconsidered my proposal to head up our security detail? A mayor of this city needs good people around him. You’d be doing your civic duty.”

  I smiled as we both sat down. “I’m sorry, Arthur. That’s not in my immediate plans.”

  “A shame’” he said. “I’ll have to find another way of securing your vote in June. That is, if you’re a Democrat.”

  “I’ll vote for you,” I told him. “And I’m thinking of turning in my independent credentials and signing up for your party.”

  “Wonderful. You’ve seen the light, Mr. Burnside. I’m so happy,” he replied, without smiling or doing anything that seemed remotely close to being happy.

  “I’ve seen no such light, Arthur. And frankly I don’t have a lot of use for either party. But I’ll vote for you whenever you’re running.”

  This time I saw the slightest movement between Arthur Woo’s lips, the slightest crack, the smallest glint of what might have been the start of a smile or simply a trace of intrigue. “This can’t be because of my policy positions,” he observed.

  “It’s not.”

  “I know. I don’t have any.”

  I felt my eyebrows raising. “You don’t?”

  “Not yet. They’ll be released in due time. My plans for remaking Los Angeles into the world-class city it should be. I have big plans. They’ll come out soon enough. No sense rushing things. Elections are a process. You have to let them unfold.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said.

  “But you have triggered my curiosity, Mr. Burnside. Pleasantly, of course. Why would you vote for me without knowing my positions on the issues?”

  “I’ll vote for you because you’re smart, and I don’t think you’d ever do anything that wasn’t smart. I don’t know how you’d transform L.A. if you were mayor, but I doubt you’d do anything to make it worse. But the main reason I’d vote for you is simply that I know you. And you’ll take my calls and you’ll meet with me. I don’t pretend to understand much about politics, but I do know that having access to important people at the right moment can sometimes be a turning point in someone’s life. That life might be mine.”

  Arthur nodded appreciatively. “Of all the reasons for voting for someone, that’s not one I hear often. But it’s one that makes a world of sense. And one day I might need a favor from you, too. We’re all human. And we do have a tendency to take care of those who take care of us. Friendship is a valued commodity.”

  I never really considered Arthur Woo a friend, but in his world, friendship often came with some unique criteria. Friendships in politics were more like relationships, bonding over certain issues, separating over others. There were worse people to have as friends than rising political stars. And the reality was that I liked interacting with smart people. Metal sharpens metal.

  “So what brings you down to our lovely neighborhood today, Mr. Burnside?”

  “I need
a lesson in politics.”

  This time Arthur Woo actually did give a tiny smile. “Well, I suppose you came to the right place. Tell me more.”

  “I’m sure you know that the City Attorney announced his run for mayor.”

  “Ah, yes. The esteemed, Mr. Sutker. Yes, I did see his announcement.”

  “And by running for mayor, Sutker won’t be running for re-election as City Attorney. So there’ll be a spirited campaign for the City Attorney’s office this year.”

  “There will.”

  “My wife Gail is thinking of throwing her hat in the ring. You were right about her, Arthur. She has a level of ambition. You also said you thought she’d be good at it.”

  “I did indeed. And I’m pleased to hear she’s considering it. I hope you’ll encourage her.”

  “I’ve told her I’ll support her in whatever she does. But politics is foreign to me. And I know what it’s like to be in the public eye and for all the wrong reasons. I don’t want her to get caught up in what I was caught up in.”

  Arthur’s expression grew serious. “Your background. That teenage girl.”

  “Yes,” I said, not surprised Arthur knew about me. Arthur Woo’s knowledge ran far and wide and deep. My tenure as an LAPD officer ended unceremoniously, unsubstantiated charges leading me to resign from the police force. I had never committed any of the felonies I was accused of committing, but my name would always be linked with them. And in the end, it was my own rogue behavior that led me down the path toward being terminated. I could accept the public scrutiny that came with my downfall; I did not want Gail to bear that burden, too.

  “The public has a way of discounting things over time, Mr. Burnside. This circumstance that happened to you ten years ago will come up again at some point. Maybe a political rival will float it, maybe a journalist will resurrect it. Gail will need to have a ready answer, and you’ll need to make a public statement. But I can assure you, the media is fickle. The news cycle is constant. There will always be another story to push that off the front page. In L.A. it could be as simple as a rainstorm. And people will forget about it and move on. The public can be very fickle, too. But they are forgiving. Los Angeles is a city of second chances. I’m sure you know that.”