Authors: P. A. Brown
“But that takes time, right?”
“’Fraid so. Anything else you can think of that
might help now?”
“He worked for a film company. He was some kind of
film assistant. Something to do with continuity. Made sure the actors looked
the same in all the shots.”
“Remember the name of the company?”
“Strong...Strong-something Films. It was kind of a
funny name, I remember that. But what do I know? I’m a Hollywood brat who hates
movies.” He offered David a small smile.
David took his hand in his. “You’re doing great.
I’m sorry any of this happened. I wish it could have been otherwise. Just...
try to remember the name.”
“I know. It’s important.” Chris sighed. “What
happens now?”
David snapped his notepad shut when he realized
Chris was finished. “I try to find this Trevor.”
“Does he know you’re looking for him?”
“I hope not.”
Friday,
10:55 am, Northeast Community Police Station,
San
Fernando Road, Los Angeles
Striding through the door to the
police station locker room, David paused. This time of day most of the staff
were already out on patrol or buried behind mounds of paperwork at their desks.
At his entrance, a pair of new detectives looked
up, and from the looks that crossed their faces he could see that they already
knew. Gossip was like an L.A. firestorm. It came on fast and hot, and until it
was spent no one knew how much damage it would do.
David nodded and headed for his locker. Their
low-voiced whispers reached him, but he ignored them.
His locker had been pried open. Cautiously he
approached.
Some enterprising spirit had used pink nail polish
and painted something on the metal door. It looked like a six-year-old’s idea
of what a flower looked like. Using his notepad to tip the door open, David
knew even before the door opened that it wasn’t flowers they had gifted him
with.
The stench wafted through the narrow room. The two
cops who had been whispering looked up and grimaced. One of them muttered
something, but before anyone else could speak, the outer door flew open and
Martinez strode in.
He saw David and the open locker and froze. He
wrinkled his nose at the smell.
“
Dios
, this some kind of sick joke?”
“You tell me.”
Martinez peered in at the mound of shit carefully
positioned on the top shelf. He furrowed his thick nose.
“I met some smart-ass who said I might find it
amusing if I came in here. I think me and him are going to have a talk about
defining funny. You sure as hell better not think I had anything to do with
that.”
“No,” David said, jerking the door open. It
bounced off the next locker and tried to shut again. “This came from someone
with a finely tuned sense of humor.”
Both David and Martinez glared at the junior D’s.
“Either of you two see anything?” Martinez growled.
“No, sir. No one was here when we came in. Only
Detective Laine came in after.”
The taller of the two eyed David as if they
thought maybe he’d done it himself. They didn’t hide their smirks very well.
“Didn’t see a thing.”
“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” Martinez
muttered. “Get out, and if I hear stories about this circulating anytime soon,
I’ll personally nail your scrotes to the wall. Got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Both D’s scrambled to leave.
“Like that’s going to stop them,” David said.
“Hey, it might slow them down for an hour or two.”
Martinez eyed the ruined locker. “Oh, Davey. How did it come to this?”
David opened his mouth to say something, then shut
it again. When he did speak, it was going to be to tell the truth. Why bother
lying anymore?
“You never fall in love?”
“Jesus, Davey. Don’t say that. Not about this—”
“Why not? I didn’t ask for it to happen. It wasn’t
in my life plan, but it did happen.”
“How the hell can you—love! Jesus, he’s a guy.”
“I noticed.”
“I don’t believe this. You’re a good cop. One of
the best.”
“I can’t be a good cop and a faggot at the same
time?”
Martinez winced.
The door opened again. They both looked up as
Martinez muttered, “It’s like Grand Fucking Central in here.”
Bryan Williams, a D-2 who worked fraud, entered. David
had been wondering when he’d show up. Bryan was the Northeast’s gay and lesbian
liaison officer for the department. David had never said more than a dozen
words to the man.
They nodded at each other warily.
“I hear right, Laine?”
“You heard nothing, Williams,” Martinez said. “Why
don’t you go find another fight?”
Bryan ignored him. He kept coming into the room,
focused on David. “You okay, man?” Then he caught sight of what lay in David’s
locker. “That your sick idea of a joke, Martinez?”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“Knock it off, both of you.” David stomped over to
the nearest paper-towel dispenser and yanked out a wad. Grabbing a garbage
container, he disposed of the ugly mess, including the T-shirt underneath it.
“What are you doing?” Bryan stepped forward. “That
needs to be documented—”
“I’ve got an investigation to run.” David glared
at Martinez. “You can either help or get out of my way. Same goes for you.”
This time he scowled at Bryan. “I’d rather not give idiots of that caliber the
acknowledgment they even exist.”
“They’ll make your life a living hell if you don’t
fight back.”
“Let them try,” Martinez said.
Both David and Bryan turned toward the bristling
Latino.
“Hey, you don’t think I can stick up for my
partner? What the hell kind of cop you think I am?”
“The wrong kind—”
“Later, Bryan.” David pinned Martinez with his
appraising gaze. “I’ve got a work site for our doer, and a possible phone. You
in?”
“I’m in.”
“David—”
“I’m not dropping this, okay? We’ll talk...
later.”
He thought of the fight that was probably coming
over his involvement with Chris and it occurred to him that having some
political clout in his corner might not be a bad idea.
“In fact,” he said. “I’ll call you Monday.”
Bryan looked like he wanted to object, but in the
end he nodded. “Monday.” He glared at Martinez. “I’d better not hear of any
more problems or I’ll have my guys all over it like flies on shit.” He
pointedly looked at the garbage container at David’s feet.
“I’m counting on it,” David said.
Friday,
11:10 am, Piedmont Avenue, Glendale
“Don’t leave the house.” Those
had been David’s last words before he went off to work. Of course he could go
traipsing off, with no thought to what Chris was supposed to do all day. That
David felt protective of him made Chris feel special. That he thought that
meant Chris should be locked up like a princess in a tower left him cold.
He had called the hospital and using David’s name
was able to learn that Des was out of danger, but still too heavily sedated to
be able to talk to anyone. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps next week. No one would
commit.
David had given him no idea when he might return.
What would happen if David found Trevor? That sent a shiver up Chris’s spine.
Was it possible Trevor had been involved in Kyle’s death? In Bobby’s? Had he tried
to kill Des?
It was preposterous. He’d known Trevor how long?
Five, six weeks? They’d almost been lovers. How could he be a killer? Chris’s
mind shied away from the images of Bobby. Of Kyle.
Trevor couldn’t have done that.
Chris prowled the small, one-story bungalow. The
kitchen was spotless; not a dish was in sight on the worn linoleum counter top.
The sink looked freshly scrubbed. The stove was an old gas job that probably
was new around the time the house was built.
He inhaled. The place smelled like David. He
instantly liked it. The chintz curtains over the sink would let in the
early-morning light and the small, plastic-covered table and its painted wooden
chairs had enough room for the two of them to have breakfast and linger over
coffee. Cozy. That was it, the place was cozy. On a shelf above the table a
vintage fifties radio had its dial set to KZLA, a local country station.
The living room wasn’t much bigger than the
kitchen. A battered recliner with a TV tray beside it held the remote for the twenty-seven-inch
Sony occupying center place in the room. A potted Draconia filled one corner of
the room, and a second, non-reclining chair was positioned on the other side of
the TV tray. Both chairs looked well used.
The rest of the room was filled with old-fashioned
radios and gramophones. A Philco console floor model that looked like it might
have been new before television came along stood against the far wall. Chris
ran his hand along the huge wooden Art Deco facade. The off-white walls held
several neatly mounted posters and framed stock shots of classic cars. Buicks
and old Chevies with monster fins and grinning grills looked down on him. He
paused to study a photo of a ’58 Caddy that could probably accommodate his SUV
in its enormous trunk.
He strolled through the back of the house. There
were two bedrooms and a narrow hallway leading to a back door.
The back room where he had put his bags was
cluttered with more old radios and ancient record players in various stages of
repair. He found a stack of 78’s and picked up the top one: Tommy Dorsey with
Frank Sinatra. The next one in the stack was Bill Haley and the Comets.
He put the record back and slipped out of the
room. The second bedroom was clearly David’s. Like everything else in the tiny
house, it was immaculate and filled with old furniture. The double bed was
neatly made.
The cat he had seen earlier lay curled up atop the
covers.
Chris smoothed one hand over what looked like a
handmade quilt. It was old, too, but well tended. “Hey, Sweeney,” Chris said.
“Don’t make yourself too comfortable. Tonight this bed is mine.”
The cat seemed to consider his words, then
stretched one hind leg out and began licking itself. Chris grinned and left the
room.
The back door was locked with a deadbolt, the key
suspended from a wall hook. Chris palmed it, unlocked the door, and stepped out
into a backyard that had seen better days.
Laundry hung from a limp clothesline in the yard
next door. Down the street a car backfired and Chris heard the high-pitched
squeal of children playing.
David kept his house the way he kept himself, neat
and controlled on the inside, inattentive to what the world saw on the outside.
Back inside he retrieved his laptop case from the
spare room and took it into the kitchen. When he opened it up he found Bobby’s
Palm Pilot. After plugging in the laptop and booting it up, he powered on the
Palm. It was dead. He found the power adapter in the laptop case. Leaving the
thing to recharge, he made some configuration changes to his laptop and logged
into his ISP, where he started by checking his email. Becky had sent him
another note about some things she and Yamamoto had already discussed. Chris
downloaded the email to his hard drive so he could refer to it later in Denver.
Then he hunkered down to some serious surfing.
What was the name of Trevor’s film company? Strong
Arm. Strong Box. Strong
something
. He pulled out his Tools CD and played
around, running Boolean searches on random-name choices. He loosed his search
spiders on the Web and left them darting through channels cluttered with the
zeros and ones of raw binary data. Eventually they all came back with whatever
tidbits they had discovered and spread them out before him like a dog
delivering a retrieved ball.
Strong Arm Playing Company. That was it. Had
Trevor used it as a cover for his murderous activity?
Strong Arm Playing Company was no StarFlight
Productions. If they had a database it was beyond the reach of Chris’s skills
to break into it. All he was able to find out beyond the basic particulars was
some contact information and a list of independent producers who pedaled their
wares to Strong Arm on a regular basis.
He started with the phone number and a cover
story. A junior receptionist listened to his first attempt.
“Hi, I have to reach Mr. Trevor Watson. It’s
important.”
He was put on hold and passed to another junior
receptionist. She sounded bored when she took his request.
“What’s this about?”
“Finding Trevor Watson. I know he works there—”
“And why is it important?”
“His mother’s gravely ill.”
He went back on hold. Chris cursed Alexander
Graham Bell while Muzak played in the background.
“Strong Arm Playing Company, may I help you?”
“I hope so—”
The Muzak was back before he could finish. He
tapped his fingers, belatedly realizing he was listening to an easy-listening
rendition of an old Guns ’n’ Roses song. God, what was next? Ice-T rendered
into tuneful elevator music?
“Strong Arm Playing Company.”
“I have to locate a Mr. Trevor Watson. His mother
is dying.”
“Oh, my, that’s terrible,” the woman sounded
genuinely upset. “Who is it you’re looking for?”
“Trevor, Trevor Watson. He works for your company
and this was the only contact number he left us...”
“Let me check, sir.”
This time something ancient by the Beatles. Or was
it Elton John? The concerned woman returned.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Watson no longer works for this
company.”
“Do you have another number where he can be
reached?”
“That information is confidential—”
“His mother keeps asking where he is,” Chris
murmured. “We tell her, Ma, we’re trying to find him. Just hang on, but she’s
so frail...”
“The poor woman...Well, it looks like your brother
last worked here August twenty-first. There’s no mention of other employment.”