Читать книгу Kill the Mother! - Michael Mallory - Страница 6

TWO

“Um…have you gone to the police?” I asked weakly.

“No,” Nora Frost said, deflating somewhat. “If I go to the police, they’ll end up questioning the boys, and I’m trying to spare them the fear. I don’t want them to know they’ve been threatened. I assumed a private detective could handle things more quietly.”

“I see,” I said nodding, glad she had turned the high-beams off. “Do you know who it was who made the threat?”

“If I did, I would go to her myself. No, I don’t know, but I have a suspicion. You see, the boys have been auditioning for a new reality show, and they’re blowing all the other little monsters right out of the room. A few days ago I received a letter telling me if I didn’t stop bringing them to the try-outs I could start preparing for their funerals.”

“And that they’d be cut up?”

“Those were the details.”

“Did you save the letter?”

“Yes. My first instinct was to burn it, but I didn’t.”

“Good. I’ll need to see it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why? Don’t you believe me? You require proof I’m telling the truth?”

“No, it’s not that—”

“Christ,” she muttered, “I can see I came to the wrong detective office.”

“Nora, please, calm down,” I said. “I need to see the letter to see if there are any clues on it that might point to the sender. Ink, handwriting, even fingerprints, if we’re lucky.”

“Oh, yes of course. I’m sorry, Mr. Beauchamp, I guess I’m becoming distraught. It’s just that the boys are all I have. I lost my husband two years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” There was an awkward pause, which I broke by saying: “So, if I understand you correctly, you want to hire me to find out who it is that sent you this threatening letter.”

“Yes.”

“When I do find her…or him…since we don’t know for certain it’s a woman—”

“It’s one of the bitch mothers, trust me.”

“Fair enough, but when I do identify her, I will be obligated to notify the police. As an investigator, I don’t have the power to arrest anyone.”

“As long as she’s out of the way and my babies are safe.”

“My usual fee is fifty dollars an hour.” I waited for the inevitable protest, but it did not come.

“Can I retain you for a lump sum instead?” Nora Frost asked.

“What kind of lump sum are we talking about?”

“Say, ten-thousand dollars for the job, up front?”

I hope the gulping sound that came from my throat was not as audible to her as it was to me. Ten-grand was, what, two-hundred hours? Five weeks work.

“If that is adequate I could write you a check right now,” she said.

I could write a check, too, John Wayne’s voice cautioned inside my brain. Course it would bounce higher than a butte, but…I could write it. The Duke made a good point: I’d learned from experience not to trust every proffered checkbook. “I’ll tell you what, Nora,” I said, trying to sound like William Powell, and failing, “I’ll take a cashier’s check for half, five-thousand, as a retainer, and the rest on completion of the case.”

“Still don’t trust me,” she said. “No matter, I can do that. I can’t go to the bank now, though. I have to get back to wrap the shoot. If I’m not there, they’ll screw it all up.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, why are you shooting a foxhunt scene in an office building in Sherman Oaks? Shouldn’t you be out somewhere like Huntington gardens?”

“You can’t bring a wild animal into a public place without a filming permit, and I didn’t want the hassle of that,” she replied. “So we’re using the studio downstairs.”

“Studio? What studio?”

“It was called Triex.”

I knew that an outfit called Triex Distribution had offices downstairs, but I never knew exactly what they distributed. I saw the guy in charge every now and then, an older man with a perpetual smile and tinted glasses, but he moved out a couple of months ago. “So it’s like a photography studio?”

She gave me a strange, probing look. “It was a film studio,” she said. “You didn’t know about it?”

“No, and I’m a film buff. How ironic is that?”

“Aren’t you too young to be a film buff?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be a video game buff?”

Now cut that out! Jack Benny shouted defensively in my mind. “I come by it honestly,” I explained. “My father is a walking movie encyclopedia. He saw everything on first release and re-release in theatres, and then when home video came out, he started renting and collecting. He even wrote some articles for fan magazines. I caught the bug from him.” The truth was, as a kid I was so pathetically bad at any kind of sports that staying inside and watching movies on TV, or reading about them, became my replacement activity for playing outside. I didn’t mind, and Dad didn’t mind, though between the two of us, we drove my mom a little nuts. “Still,” I said, changing the subject, even if in my own mind, “I can’t imagine what kind of films anyone would make in an office building in Sherman Oaks?”

Nora Frost started laughing. “My god, you really don’t know?” she said. “You can’t even guess?” I shrugged, and she prompted further: “This is the San Fernando Valley, after all.”

Okay, I was missing something, clearly. Then it hit me. “Sheez, a porn studio?” I cried. “Downstairs?”

She laughed even louder. “A helluva fine detective you are! You don’t even know they’re cranking out fuck films right below your feet!”

What could I say? The hard truth I had to face just about every day was that I was not born to be a private investigator. I’m not tough, and I try to avoid mean streets whenever possible. I even try to avoid mildly disagreeable streets. I’ve been in only one fight in my life, in ninth grade, and then I beat my attacker’s fist with my nose so brutally that he had to put a band aid on one knuckle. I, meanwhile, went to the emergency room. But having been laid off three years ago by the Law Offices of Zacharias & Flynn, and finding that no other law firm in town was particularly interested in me, there was precious little else I could think to do. PI licenses aren’t all that hard to come by—in fact, I hear in L.A. they’re easier to get than a building permit—so here I am. A guy’s gotta live.

Or die trying, a voice intoned. Robert Mitchum, ladies and gentlemen. Very mordant, Mitch, very witty; now please go get stoned and leave me be.

I could not so easily wave away Nora’s point. I should have been able to figure out they were shooting shag films down there. If the smile etched on the guy’s face wasn’t enough of a clue, there had been a fairly constant stream of young women hanging around the hallway. Had I really thought about it, maybe I might even have realized that “Triex” is a spelled-out form of “XXX,” the traditional advertising rating for skin flicks. But I just didn’t put X, X, and X together. She’s right; a helluva fine detective I am.

“I really have to get back to the shoot, Mr. Beauchamp,” Nora Frost said, rising and heading for the door.

“Please call me Dave,” I said. For five grand in advance she could call me Hitler McAsshat. “Might I come along? To the shoot, I mean? You could introduce me to the twi…I mean, to the boys.”

“Fine, but haul it.” Nora was back to being all-business.

I closed the door behind me but did not lock it. There was precious little to steal in there anyway. Even if someone cared enough to lift the laptop, the insurance would pay for a newer, better one.

Sheez, I did pay my premium, didn’t I?

While we were waiting for the elevator (I would have preferred the stairs, but it was her choice), I said: “I don’t want to intrude, but the more information I have, the better. You mentioned that the boys’ father died.”

There was a slight pause, before she said, “That’s right.”

“What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“He was killed in Afghanistan. He died fighting for his country.”

“Oh, I see. Again, I’m sorry.”

“I try to honor his memory rather than grieve his death.”

“Do Burton and Taylor go to public school?”

“Are you kidding me?” The elevator dinged, and then the door opened and we stepped in. Nora jabbed the button for the first floor. “LAUSD stands for the Los Angeles Unionized Sewer Department,” she said as the door slid shut. “I wouldn’t let my babies anywhere near a public school in L.A. They’re tutored at home. But since it’s summer now and school’s out, they’re on break. I like to give them the same advantages of common kids.”

The elevator door opened and we stepped into the hallway. The former Triex studio was at the end of the hall; the door was open, and through it I could hear a hubbub of voices. Nora marched straight in and I followed. Inside the suite were about a half-dozen people, all of whom stopped talking and practically snapped to attention at the sight of Nora. Only the fox, frankly, did not seem give a damn.

Instead of the drop ceiling that existed in my office, there was no ceiling in this mini-studio, only a lighting grid. The lights that hung there were focused on a long, semi-circular piece of muslin, on which was painted an English pastoral landscape, filled with hills and hedges, with a stately manor house etched into the background. Two young boys stood in front of it, and between them was the fox, resting comfortably on the floor. They were not identical twins, but rather fraternal. The truth was they did not even look all that much like brothers. One was on the tall side for an adolescent and slender, with sharp features and a focused expression, while the other was slightly shorter, a little rounder, and had a faraway look. What linked them was dirty-blonde color of their hair and their light blue eyes, which gave them a certain coldness that wasn’t conducive to becoming teen idols. Even though they were dressed in classic fox hunting outfits—round, helmet-like hats, red coats, jodhpurs and tall boots—they looked convincingly like a pre-teen version of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

The fox, which was standing in between them actually seemed glad to see me, and strolled over to accept a scritch between the ears. Maybe she wasn’t aware that the bowl of milk I gave her was going to result in grievous stomach troubles. However, Harvey the fox wrangler, the guy in the Jungle Jim outfit who had shown up in my office, suddenly materialized at my side. “Now what do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“He came with me, Harvey, so leave him alone,” Nora snapped. Then turning to the boys, she cooed: “Taylor honey, Burton darling, this is Mr. Beauchamp.”

“Hello,” they said in perfect unison. Okay, so they were twins after all.

“Hey, guys. Having fun?”

They looked at me as though I’d asked a question in a foreign language.

“Must be kind of cool, working with a real fox and all,” I went on.

Taylor, the taller one, said: “It would make a nice pair of gloves.”

“Honey!” Nora shouted. “Don’t make jokes like that!” Turning to me, she added: “They have a unique sense of humor.”

The boys glared back at me with all the humor of a plane crash. I glanced over at Harvey, who looked like he wanted to backhand the little cyborgs, but knew he could not. He was on Mommy’s payroll like everyone else here, including, soon, me.

“All right, talk to me, somebody,” Nora shouted, clapping her hands. “Where are we? Are we finished with this?”

A man dressed in white linen slacks and shirt with a light meter around his neck—presumably the photographer—came up to her. “I think I have what you want,” he said. “Come over to the laptop and take a look.” Nora followed him over to a table on which sat a portable computer and intently examined a slideshow of photos.

“They’re grinning,” she said. “Why are they grinning? This is a serious poster, for Christ’s sake!”

“We took a variety of poses and expressions,” the photographer explained.

“No…no…no…no…Jesus Christ, Jerry, why would you take a picture like that? Burton looks likes a zombie!”

I glanced over at Burton and found myself agreeing with her assessment.

“You’ve been wasting my time and money!” Nora shouted. “You should go back to the fucking DMV!”

Jerry the photographer sighed, and then said: “Just look at the others, Nora.”

Glaring at the laptop like she was trying to burn holes through it with her eyes, Nora snapped: “No! No! No! Hell no! Jesus, God! No! Wait, that’s it. That one there.”

“There are more—”

“Why are there more? You should have stopped after this one and not wasted everyone’s time! This is the one. Look at that…even the fox looks like he’s pleading not to be killed.”

My guess is by that point the fox was pleading to get away from the lights and the noise.

“Put that one on a memory stick and I’ll take it with me,” Nora told the photographer. “All right, everyone, it’s a wrap.”

There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief in the room as the harsh photographic lights were clicked off and the ceiling’s one remaining bank of fluorescents was switched on. Then the small crew set about to breaking down the shoot. A young woman appeared with a box of wet wipes and began to remove makeup from the boy’s faces, while a couple of college-age guys took down the backdrop. In no time at all, the equipment had been removed and the tiny makeshift studio looked like an abandoned office again. Knowing what I now knew, I could only imagine what sort of activities had gone on in here for the past year. That, in turn, led to another question, which I saved for a time when Nora Frost wasn’t so busy. Right now she was handing out checks to people, and something else along with them: autographed glossy photos of the Brothers Alpha. I could tell that the two guys who had taken down the backdrop were having an awful time trying not to laugh out loud as they received their “gift.”

Within minutes, Jerry the photographer and most of the crew was gone. The only one left was a young Latina who appeared to be in charge of the wardrobe, or at least in charge of picking up after the twins, who left their costumes strewn all over the floor of the makeshift dressing room cubicle. “Hurry it up, would you?” Nora said as the woman put the costumes on hangers, with the hats and boots going into large plastic bags, which she started to lug out.

“Can I give you a hand?” I asked her, and she smiled.

I helped the woman, whose name was Rosario, drag the stuff out of the suite and to her van, the back of which was filled with various costume pieces and boxes of accessories. “You must do this for a living,” I commented.

“For small shoots and commercials, mostly,” she said. “This is my second shoot with the Alphas.”

“I hear they’re real up and comers.”

She looked at me with questioning eyes. “What was your name again?”

“Dave Beauchamp. I work in the building here.”

“So you don’t have a connection with the family?”

“Until today I’d never heard of them. Why?”

Rosario looked around to see if anyone was within earshot and then crooked her index finger for me to lean closer. “I’m not a show business veteran or anything,” she whispered, “but as far as I can tell, the only way those two are going to become famous is if they’re murdered.”

“Nora thinks they’re going to be superstars,” I whispered back.

“I know, but she’s the one who wants to be famous and powerful. The whole family gives me the creeps.”

“Why do you keep working with them, then?”

She closed the door of the van. “A job’s a job, particularly these days,” she said, no longer whispering. “Last week I did an infomercial for a guy who claims he’s invented a kind of tea that will cure cancer. Personally, I think I he’s a con man who should be arrested, but a job’s a job, so I worked it.”

“Rosario,” Nora’s voice shouted from behind us, “did you get your check?” We turned to see her standing just outside the building, with the twins behind her, both totally rapt by the electronic game gizmos they held in their hands.

“Not yet, Nora,” Rosario called back.

“Well, hurry up, we have to leave.”

With a sigh, Rosario half-trotted across the parking lot to her, received an envelope (but no autographed 8x10—presumably she had one from her earlier shoot). I followed, but not as rapidly. In fact, Rosario met me half-way coming back. “Like I said, a job’s a job,” she reflected, holding her hand out for me to shake. “Nice meeting you.”

“Same here.”

As Rosario was preparing to leave, Nora Frost was talking on her cell phone. I tried to walk past her, but she held out a hand to stop me from going anywhere. “What do you mean you can’t do it?” she shouted into the cell. “I need you right now, dammit! What am I paying you for? Well, plans have changed, and I have to run somewhere, and I need to get the boys home. No, I can’t! Goddammit, you listen to me, you…oh! We’ll talk about this later!” She cut the line off so forcefully I thought she was going to crush the phone in her hand.

“Problem?” I asked.

“Elena, my assistant,” Nora fumed. “I need her right now, and she says she’s doing something and can’t come! Can you fucking believe that?”

“Well, maybe she is doing something.”

She glared at me. “Nothing she could be doing is more important than the boys’ needs! She knows that! Maybe Rosario can do it.” Still clutching the phone, Nora ran after the van, which was pulling away from the curb, her arms waving furiously as she shouted, “Stop!” Rosario pulled back against the curb and rolled down the passenger side window. I was able to hear Nora asking her if she could take the boys somewhere, and Rosario answer that she had to get the costumes back to the rental house before six or else pay for another day. “Shit!” Nora screamed, turning back and letting Rosario drive away. “Everyone’s against me! I don’t fucking need this!”

“Um, Nora, I have a car,” I said. “If the boys have to get home, just give me your address and I’ll drive them there.”

All of a sudden the world turned Technicolor. The sun came out, the scent of jacaranda filled the air, birds flew by singing sweetly, the atmosphere warmed up, a rainbow filled the sky, and the flowers, if they could have uprooted themselves and danced, would have. And it was all due to Nora Frost. “Ohhhh,” she moaned, placing a hand caringly on my arm and all but tearing up. “Do you know what you are, Dave? A contributor. The first moment I saw you, I could tell you were going to be part of the team.” It was the most remarkable transformation I had seen since Fredric March took his first drink in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “Could you also stay with them until I get back?” she asked.

“I could do that, yes,” I said. “Just give me a moment to lock up my office and I’ll be right with you.” I turned away from her my hero gesture—both hands clasped and held up beside her face, in the best Lillian Gish style—and dashed back inside and up to my office, where I grabbed my laptop and switched off all the lights before locking up and leaving.

When I returned to the parking lot, she handed me a business card for Alpha Enterprises. “The address is on the card,” she said, smiling. The zip code was for Los Feliz, an old Hollywood area of Los Angeles whose aging mansions once housed the likes of Cecil B. DeMille and W.C. Fields. “Thank you so much, Dave.”

“No problem. Are you going to be long?”

“No, no, I just have to run to the bank.” She winked. “You know why.”

“Oh. The boys can’t go with you to the bank?”

Instantly, the sun went back under a cloud and a couple of the singing birds got caught by stray cats. “I don’t want them to know what the money’s for,” she managed to say in a low voice, without moving her lips. “They’d ask, too. They’re so inquisitive.”

I looked over at the twelve-year-olds, who came across about as naturally inquisitive as moss.

“Boys,” Nora called to the twins, “Mr. Beauchamp is going to drive you home. You show him what gentlemen you can be.”

Taylor’s mouth cracked into a grin that would rate the Guinness prize as World’s Smallest, but at least it was an expression.

“I’ll see you in no more than two hours, Dave,” Nora said. “Make yourself at home while you’re there.” She turned and started striding toward a silver Lexus.

“Wait, Nora,” I called, running to catch up with her. “You didn’t give me a key.”

“Oh, God! What a space brain.” I doubted that sincerely, but said nothing as she rummaged through her purse and pulled out a key on a ring that had, unsurprisingly, a photo of the twins encased in plastic. “Here you are. It goes to the bottom lock on the door.”

“All right. See you later.”

After watching her pull out of the lot, I led the twelve-year-olds to my Toyota, which was only a year younger. I had gotten it for my twenty-first birthday, and was managing to keep it going. It was nothing fancy, but it moved. The two looked at it with disdain before crawling in the backseat. “You may have to dig the seatbelts out. I don’t often have passengers.”

“I can see why,” Burton sniffed. “When was the last time you had this thing washed and vacuumed?”

I didn’t answer, mostly because I couldn’t remember. I pulled out and headed down Ventura Boulevard toward the first freeway access street, figuring the 101 East to the 134 East to the 5 South was the quickest way to get to the Los Feliz area, which was just northeast of Hollywood. “You guys want the radio on?” I asked.

“No,” they said in unison.

“Okay.”

We had driven no more than a mile, when I could hear hushed conversation between the two. It sounded like variations of, “You want to ask him?” followed by “No, you ask him.”

“Ask me what, guys?” I volunteered.

Taylor was the one who asked, and my foot involuntarily stomped on the gas pedal, which resulted in my nearly rear-ending the car ahead of me. I stomped on the brake and screeched to a halt. Maybe I’d heard wrong. I must have heard wrong.

No, sport, Errol Flynn’s voice said, you heard right. By the way, he went on, if you’re not doing her, I will!