The Burning Plain (37 page)

“Sorry, folks,” Odell said. “You’re going to have to connect the dots for me here.”

“Two days before the lineup Gaitan goes to a single building in a neighborhood that’s already been canvassed and finds the only eyewitness who swears she saw Bob Travis in the alley the morning Alex’s body was dumped there,” I said to Odell. “Is a picture beginning to emerge?”

Odell chewed thoughtfully, swallowed. “You’re saying she was a plant?”

I nodded. “She had to be.”

“Gaitan put her up to it?”

“No,” I said, “that’s too risky, even for him. It’s one thing to drop drugs or a gun or plant fiber evidence, that’s your word against a defendant’s, but suborning perjury from a civilian witness is pretty damn unpredictable. If she breaks, it’s all over for him.”

“Who planted her then?” Odell asked.

“Asuras,” I said. “We already connected her to him through Josey Walsh.”

“We connected her to Josey Walsh,” Serena said. “To be precise.”

“Come on, Serena, the path to Asuras is obvious.”

“Serena’s right,” Odell interjected. “You have to be careful the conclusions you jump to, Henry. I don’t know that I want to follow you except that the woman disappeared.”

“That bothers me, too,” Serena said, “because it was obvious from the condition of her apartment that she wasn’t planning on being gone for long.”

Odell sipped a tumbler of Diet Coke, belched softly. “They found that other girl in Griffith Park.”

“Katie Morse?”

He nodded. “Good place to bury your mistakes.”

“Isn’t that the first place the cops would look?”

“Only if they have a reason to look.” He pulled his notebook out of his shirt pocket and scribbled a note. “You want me to find out about the bombing, Serena?”

She nodded. “Here’s the picture of the guy Henry thinks might have been involved,” she said, handing him an envelope. “Maybe your deputies could walk it around the neighborhood? I can’t get any cooperation.”

He took the envelope. “I’ll take care of it.”

“What does this mean Odell? You in?”

He shrugged. “I’m curious, that’s all. This is strictly off the books.”

Two days later, there was a message on my machine from Odell when I came home from court: “LAPD found Joanne Schilling in the park. Two shots through the back of the head from close range. From the state of decomposition, it looks like she was probably killed sometime in the last two weeks. They buried her fast. The grave wasn’t much more than a couple of shovels of dirt. I’m at the station.”

I called him back.

“Where was the body?” I asked him.

“Down a ravine in the gay cruising part of the park.”

“Wasn’t Katie Morse’s body found in that area?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Not far. Must be the perp’s favorite spot.”

“Or a familiar one,” I said. “Any way to connect her killing with the other murders?”

“She was shot with a service revolver,” he said.

“What? A cop’s gun?”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “One of ours.”

“Is there any way to trace it?”

“There’s eight thousand cops in the county.”

“How about narrowing it down to the one named Gaitan?”

“Is that how you figure it?” Odell asked.

“Don’t you?”

He was silent for a moment. “Tell you the truth, Henry, I don’t know what to think. But it sure complicates your theory that Asuras is our killer.”

“Gaitan’s on the take from him, so he shot the woman. What’s hard about that?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he rumbled, as to an errant child.

“What? Cops don’t kill people.”

When he spoke again, I heard the unimaginable in his voice—doubt. “Not like this, Henry. This is first-degree murder. Say what you want about Mac, he thinks of himself as a cop, first and last. He’s never done anything for strictly private gain. Why would he start with murder? It don’t add up.”

“Maybe Asuras made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“There you go jumping to conclusions again. You’re going to jump yourself off a cliff,” he said sharply.

“Huh?”

“You still can’t connect this woman to Asuras, much less that he ordered a hit on her, but you’re ready to take Gaitan to a jury.”

“She is connected, through Walsh, through Donati,” I said, beginning my litany.

“I know the speech,” he said impatiently. “Save it. I want you to think about what you’re saying, son. According to you, Asuras is responsible for what, five murders? Suborning a veteran cop? Framing an innocent man? Unless you start backing this up, it’s crazy talk, that’s all.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I’m not the people you have to convince. As far as the department is concerned, Travis killed those men, he’s dead and the case is closed. The two women, they’re LAPD’s problem. You want the sheriff to reopen the investigation, you need more and better than what you’ve got.”

After I got off the phone with Odell, I surveyed my situation and discovered, to my chagrin, that he was right. The threads connecting Asuras to the murders were fragile: a history of sexual violence, gossip, the threat of blackmail, a movie plot, a hearsay document, a contract signed by an underling. In desperation, I took a legal pad and made six columns, one for Asuras and the others for his putative victims, Amerian, Baldwin, Jellicoe, Morse, Schilling. Beneath each name, I wrote down everything I knew about that person. Then I combed my files to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. When I finished, I went over the columns carefully, searching for an overlooked connection, a fresh lead. The fourth time through, my eye fell upon the words
ex-agent
in the Asuras column and
’
70
s actress
in Schilling’s column. Agent, actress. A match. I called the Screen Actors Guild.

Joanne Schilling had last been represented by an agent named Carson Kahn. He listed his address as Beverly Hills, but his office, in a building on the southeast corner of San Vicente and Wilshire, fell several blocks short of its ambition. From the outside, the building was imposingly stark, but once inside the starkness revealed itself to be nothing more than cheap and hasty construction. Everything about the place screamed
8o
’s tax shelter. The hallway carpeting was coming apart, wires dangled from the light fixtures, the walls were apparently made of cardboard and held together with staples. The offices were occupied by enterprises like Pounds Away, Inc. and Scott Alan, Ph.D., Aesthetician and Electrolysist. There were, needless to say, many, many production companies and casting agencies. There were even more empty offices which, having never been inhabited, were not even haunted by the shades of former tenants, just lifelessly vacant.

Carson Kahn shared a suite with a half-dozen other agents. Their receptionist’s perfectly rounded, gravity-defying breasts were a tribute to modern science. She smiled encouragingly as I leafed through six-month-old issues of
People
and Variety, while Kahn kept me waiting to impress me with how busy he was.

“Is he on the phone?” I asked her, fifteen minutes into my wait.

She glanced at her bank of blinking lights. “Gee, no. Sorry.”

Thirty minutes later, I asked, “Is someone with him?”

“Don’t think so,” she said, tilting her head pertly. “I guess he’s in there doing, whatever.”

I skulked back to the couch, which was upholstered in a vaguely Southwestern plaid, to match the vaguely Southwestern lamps and carpet, and read another article about the travails of Sarah, Duchess of York. At two o’clock, exactly one hour after our appointment, he emerged from his office, a bony, middle-aged man with hair implants and bags beneath his brown, doggy eyes.

“Mr. Rios?” he said, looking me over, as if mentally casting me for the role of lawyer. He extended a soft, damp hand. It was like shaking a wad of used Kleenex. “Come on back. Honey, hold my calls will ya?”

“Yes, Mr. Kahn,” she squealed, with such patent campiness I gained sudden respect for her intelligence.

Kahn’s office was furnished with blonde Nordic furniture that could either have been very expensive or purchased at Ikea. His walls were covered with the obligatory framed movie posters, presumably of movies his clients had appeared in. I didn’t recognize any of the titles. I sat down across the yellow expanse of his desk in a slightly elevated chair that gave me an unavoidable view of his hair plugs.

“So, Rios? That’s Mexican, right? You’re a lawyer? What can I do for you?” he gusted.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Kahn. I’ll be brief. I have some questions about one of your clients, Joanne Schilling. You probably know she was murdered.”

“Joanne,” he said. “I read her obit in the
Times
. A tragedy. But wha’cha gonna do? This city?
Meshuganah.
Am I right?”

“Yes, a tragedy. She was a great talent.”

He looked at me to see if I was baiting him, and when he was satisfied I wasn’t, offered a tepid, “A real star.”

“How long have you been her agent?”

He shook his head. “I took her on what? Six, seven months ago, as a favor. Before that, she hadn’t been represented in a long time.”

“A favor to whom?”

A glint of feral menace appeared in the doggy eyes. “What’s it to you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I represent her estate.”

“Her estate? Ha!”

“There was some money,” I said, confidingly.

“Yeah? How much?”

“I can’t say. Attorney-client privilege and all that. I’m surprised you didn’t know, since I assumed she earned it from work you got her.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I understand she had quite a career in the seventies.”

“I know,” he said. “She showed me her clippings. Lots and lots of clippings.”

“This money,” I said. “I’ve got to figure out where it came from and whether she paid taxes on it.”

“Sorry. If she was getting money, it wasn’t from me.”

“You said you took her on as a favor for someone. Maybe that person could help me. Who was it?”

“Duke Asuras,” he said with pride.

“The head of Parnassus? How did he know her?”

“He was her agent when she was working,” he replied.

“Back in the seventies?”

“Yeah, like that. The lady had some problems, he wanted to help her out. He sent her to me.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Well, no, not personally. The guy runs a fucking studio. I got a call from an exec who told me Duke would be grateful if I helped get her career back on track.”

“Any luck?”

“I got her a couple of parts,” he said. “Small parts, TV. Hey, she’d been out of the business fifteen years, dead drunk most of it. She wasn’t looking her best, either. Then the bitch turned on me, dragged out the clippings, said the parts were too small and started turning them down. She was a real piece of work, that one.”

“Why did you continue to represent her?”

“Because for the first time, I’m getting my calls to Parnassus returned the same day I made them.”

“You have no idea how she supported herself.”

He shrugged. “It had to be Asuras.”

“Why would he give her money?”

“Who knows? I figure he was shtupping her back when he was her agent. He bumps into her, feels sorry for her, tries to help her clean up her act. For old-times sake.”

“Who knew Asuras was such an easy touch,” I said, falling into the agent’s cadences.

“Asuras? A prince,” Kahn said fervently. “A great man, a leader of the industry. You seen his grosses?”

The Hollywood equation: success equals character.

“Thanks,” I said, getting up to go. “Listen, do you remember the name of the executive at Parnassus who asked you to represent Joanne Schilling?”

“Yeah, yeah, some stuck-up bitch. Talks like she’s got a dick in her mouth.” He flipped through his Rolodex. “Josey Walsh.”

I met Serena for dinner at Galaxy Burgers, a fifties diner in Silver Lake, midway between my house and her office. The restaurant looked like two concrete pie plates stuck together and encircled by a band of round, nautical windows. To create the illusion the building was hovering, it sat on a raised platform disguised by shrubs. The metallic silver paint had long ago faded to gray and was adorned by gang graffiti. Inside, the floorboards were visible beneath a shredded electric-blue carpet. Rips in the red vinyl booths were repaired with electrician’s tape and the white Formica tables were stained with forty-odd years of spilled food and drink. In a couple of old photos by the bathrooms, the waitresses were shown in their original form-fitting, high-collared Judy Jetson spacesuit uniforms, but the waitresses had been replaced by waiters as the neighborhood got tougher, and they wore grease-stained black trousers and short-sleeved white rayon shirts with clip-on black bowties. The food was only passable, but the menu boasted a “bottomless cup of coffee” and no one cared how long you occupied the booth. Galaxy Burgers was a favorite of derelicts and slackers and I liked it, too, because the spaceship that never quite got off the ground was one of my private metaphors for LA. Plus, when they said bottomless cup of coffee, they meant it. A coffee-hound’s heaven.

I was already in my favorite booth when Serena came in, her fair sunburned skin, yuppie pinstripes, athletic stride and perky lesbian hair causing a commotion among the skulking regulars who clung to their booths like spiders to their webs.

“Jesus, Henry,” she said, surveying the room. “Is this where you find your clients?”

“You’re the one who insisted on meeting at a neutral spot.” I handed her a grease-stained menu. “Have whatever you want, I’m buying.”

“I’ll eat at home,” she sniffed. “You said you found something.”

I gave her a summary of my meeting with Carson Kahn, concluding, “Josey Walsh is the key. Have you talked to her again?”

“She won’t budge,” Serena replied. The waiter appeared with a coffeepot and filled our cups. “She said she told me everything she knows about Joanne Schilling.”

“Did she know Schilling had been murdered?”

Serena sipped the coffee, made a face, put the cup down. “I broke the news to her. It rattled her for a second, but then she went back into denial mode.”

“Did you point out that while she claimed Schilling needed a place to stay, she was paying rent on an apartment in the Valley?”