Motive (22 page)

Day four of the surveillance, Milo’s back watching the building on Avenue of the Stars and this time, Grant Fellinger leaves earlier than before, at just before five p.m. Not in the BMW, not in the Challenger. He exits on foot, accompanied by an extremely pretty young Latina wearing a dark suit and pearls.

The receptionist who’d been there the day of Ursula Corey’s murder.

Okay, here we go, finally
.

Too bad, Bonnie Jo, you seem like a nice woman
.

But that big aha! moment dies when two more people join the party, a pair of fortyish women, one blond, the other black with beautifully coiffed gray hair, both wearing well-tailored dark suits.

The party of four walks abreast, waits for the green light, and crosses the boulevard, heading straight for the building where Milo has developed a nice relationship with the parking attendants based on mutual respect and cash.

A dark residential block is one thing, Avenue of the Stars drunk on incandescence is another. And no 928 to give him respectability; today he’s behind the wheel of an LTD that might as well bear signage proclaiming
Unmarked!

He starts the car up and bails out of there, driving half a block before hazarding a backward look.

Fellinger and the three women are entering the structure across the street.

From one office building to another? What the hell?

Milo drives around the corner, parks at a neighboring office structure, and overtips the valet outrageously to buy himself time and space.

Making it to the building Fellinger’s group has entered, he learns
from a sign in the lobby that a restaurant named Gio occupies the top floor.

Said establishment isn’t doing a riproaring business, at least not this early; even the long, ebony bar is mostly empty. Maybe the tenants—mostly entertainment firms—want to get the hell out of there after long days of dickering and swindling.

Or the food sucks.

Whatever the reason, Fellinger and the three women are easy to spot because no one blocks visual access to their corner table with a terrific city view.

Fellinger and the black woman are seated with their backs to the untended maître d’s booth. The other two women face them.

No way any of them will notice Milo; he is standing outside the restaurant, peering through the holes created in a wall of glass pocked artistically.

A waiter brings drinks: two oversized Martini glasses of something coppery-red garnished with fruit salad for the pretty young receptionist and the black woman, what looks to be cola but could be rum and Coke for the blonde.

Fellinger raises an Old-Fashioned glass of something clear—vodka or gin. Clinks all around.

A different waiter brings bread. Fellinger waits until all three women have selected from the basket and either buttered or dipped in what is probably olive oil. Only then does he bite into his roll. What a gentleman.

Menus arrive. Fellinger orders from a wine list. Two bottles, white and red.

Everyone relaxed, happy, chatting without care.

Nice boss, taking the staff out after work.

This could
really
get complicated.

Or worse, he’s
really, really
wrong.

I finished reading the surveillance summaries, put them down.

Milo said, “Fascinating, huh?”

He was at my house, at eleven a.m., sprawled on the living room sofa looking thrashed and discouraged.

“I still think you’re going about it the right way.”

“If you were anything but a shrink, I might take comfort in that.”

He ran his fingers through black strands, trailed down to white sideburns—what he calls his skunk sticks—and plucked idly. “I rechecked every phone company, maybe we missed something and Frankie still had an account. Nada.”

I said, “What if he bought her a disposable and her world became his?”

“Personal hotline? What would stop her calling anyone else?”

“That’s assuming she’d want to. But even if she did, he could always examine her log.”

“You asked Reed to check shops that sell taxidermy and oddities. No luck?”

“He found a couple of places in Venice and Echo Park. Echo Park got me hopeful because it’s not far from Even Odd. But no one had ever heard of Frankie. I followed up myself, tried out-of-town shops—San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Everyone told me I was wasting my time, the stuff can be picked up at flea markets, thrifts, online auctions, general antiques stores.”

He stood. “I’m off to catch some beauty rest. Sorry for spreading all the good cheer.”

“Apology uncalled for. You’re the one sitting in a car all night!”

“Empathy,” he said. “That always come natural to you?”

It had.

I said, “Anything can be learned.”

Day five. Near the end of Moe Reed’s daytime surveillance shift, during the second of two quick sneaks into the parking garage, the young detective narrowly missed coming upon Grant Fellinger and Flora Sullivan.

He was leaving an area just a few yards from where Ursula Corey had been gunned down when inaudible snippets of conversation caused him to duck behind a Buick SUV.

Stocky man and stork-like woman walking together. Aimed again for Sullivan’s white Cayman.

Taking a perpendicular route, Reed jogged around a corner, emerged due west of the Porsche, made sure Fellinger’s and Sullivan’s backs were turned, and hustled behind an SUV.

Different body language from the amiable chat Sean Binchy had witnessed. Reed called in.

“Wouldn’t call it a fight but definitely tense. She said something and got in her car and backed out fast. He didn’t wait around, just left.”

“Who did most of the talking?”

“Definitely Fellinger,” said Reed.

Milo said, “Lovers’ quarrel?”

“Guess it’s possible, L.T., but it seemed more business-like. Whatever they have going on could be falling apart, at some point we might be able to wedge them apart.”

“Wouldn’t that be peachy, Moses? You doubling on Fellinger tonight?”

“No, Sean takes over and you’re on Sullivan,” said Reed. “At least according to my schedule.”

Milo checked his own book. “You’re right, congrats on a night off. Got a hot date?”

“Sir, at this point any date’s fine with us.”

“I’m ruining your social life?” Milo laughed. “Sorry, go have fun.”

“The job’s fun, too,” said Reed. “More so if I didn’t need a bladder.”

On day six, Milo phoned at three p.m.

“Someone finally misbehaved. Want to guess who?”

“Easy odds,” I said. “Fellinger.”

“Shit, you’re no fun. Last night around eight Sean followed him and Mrs. F. to LAX. Ol’ Grant schlepps her luggage, hugs and kisses her and escorts her into the terminal. Then he goes to dinner. Want to guess where?”

Rising excitement in his voice made those odds easy, too. I said, “Century City shopping mall.”

Silence.

“I’m wrong?”

“
No. You. Are. Right
. If you’ve got that good of a Ouija board, why the hell can’t you solve the case for me?”

“No big deduction. He got into it with Deirdre Brand there. I figured he might consider it part of his turf.”

“Right … okay, whatever, he had pizza and beer at a touristy place but no obvious hunting of humans ensued. He just stuffed his face and emptied a mug then drove to the Norman Hotel on the Strip.”

“Don’t know it.”

“Yeah, you do. Used to be a grungy tiki-motel-type dive called the Islander, now it’s a hipster hub, painted white, upside-down signage.”

“That one,” I said. “Rock stars and actors who last a season.”

“No paparazzi according to Sean so maybe even the C-list has moved on. Anyway, you wouldn’t figure a place like that for a guy of Fellinger’s age and looks, right? However, turns out there’s another group that frequents the place.”

“Working girls.”

“They congregate at the bar wearing mini-dresses and trawling for clients. Our man Grant didn’t take long to rent
two
lovelies. Light-blond and dirty-blond, per Sean, he said together their ages maybe added up to Fellinger’s.”

I said, “Did they seem to know Fellinger?”

“Not that Sean could tell. Brief chitchat, Fellinger pays for a room with cash, rides up to the fifth floor. The girls finish their Cosmos and do the same. Sean drinks root beer and gets all nervous about what’s going on up there, figures he’ll give it forty-five minutes then hazard a look. At forty-one, both girls are back in the lobby, leave the hotel and walk up Sunset. Fellinger appears fifteen minutes later, gets his Challenger from the valet, and drives west. Sean’s choice is either talk to the girls or stick with the surveillance. He follows Fellinger home, nothing else happens all night. I know it’s not profound but it confirms that Grant’s a bald-faced phony. Moment his wife steps into the security line, he’s thinking playmates.”

“If he can fool his own wife that easily, Kathy and Frankie would be no challenge.”

“And one more thing, Alex: Sean said both the working girls had tattoos. Maybe it means nothing, lots of people ink up nowadays. But it got me thinking about Frankie. Maybe
that’s
what turns him on. That’s when I realized I hadn’t checked the other victims for skin work, so I went back and re-read the autopsy reports. Not a dot on Kathy, but Deirdre had some prison ink, no surprise. And guess what: Classy Ursula
had a tiny inscription in blue above her left shoulder blade. Pathologist listed it as ‘Chinese characters,’ no translation. I got the coroner to email it to Jim Gee, he’s a robbery D at Hollenbeck. He had no idea but emailed his mother and she said it was some sort of prayer for prosperity. Anyway, three of my victims have endured the needle. Am I making too big of a deal out of that?”

“It’s worth considering. Going to try to find the working girls?”

“Sean’s going back to the Norman tonight, see what he can learn. Meanwhile, my night on Sullivan defined stultifying, she was home all night. The guy in the chair’s definitely her husband. Gary Sullivan, also an attorney, now retired. His name came up in our files but not as an offender, as a victim. Nine years ago a drunk driver rear-ended a row of cars at a red light near the Staples Center after a Lakers game. Sullivan got hit hard, his spine was shattered. Flora stuck with him; from what we’ve seen, she takes good care of him, is nothing but a dutiful wife. You still see her as worth watching?”

“Think pleather and a tense chat with Fellinger.”

“Thought you were my friend.”

I said, “Here’s proof I am: spent a chunk of today calling antiques dealers and thrift shops. No one knew Frankie by name and her description didn’t ring any bells.”

“No one knew Frankie,” he said. “Guess that was the point.”

For the next two days, I visited thrift and antiques shops within a mile of Frankie DiMargio’s garage-apartment in Mar Vista. That encompassed a slew of establishments in Culver City, mostly on Washington Boulevard’s newly gentrified design strip. Frankie’s photo sparked nothing from proprietors and clerks.

The same went for tattoo parlors I found in the neighborhood. When the owner of one shop asked what I did for a living and I said, “Psychologist,” he said, “I can ink Freud’s face on your ass.”

“No thanks,” I said.

He smirked. “Afraid of pain?”

“Too repressed.”

None of the detectives was successful locating the prostitutes Grant Fellinger had picked up at the Norman. Not one to dither during his wife’s absence, Fellinger repeated the pattern at two other Strip hotels, settling for one woman per night. Moe Reed managed to corner the hooker from the second night, a girl who looked like a high school sophomore and had obviously fake papers saying she was twenty-five. She yawned a lot and described Fellinger as “just a john, nothing crazy.”

“Meaning?”

“Suck and fuck, what do you think? I’m not saying nothing more on advice of counselor.”

Reed said, “Counselor, huh? Like in summer camp?”

The girl stuck out her tongue and kept her extended middle finger close to her thigh as she wiggled up the Strip.

On day eight, Fellinger picked up his wife at the airport and took her to dinner at the Hotel Bel Air.

As the couple dined on Wolfgang Puck creations, Flora Sullivan was having sex with a man in a Rolls-Royce.

The site of the tryst was a quiet stretch of Hudson Avenue, near the Wilshire Country Club, a short walk from Sullivan’s manse on June Street.

Milo told me about it, sitting in the garden between Robin’s studio and our house, tossing pellets to the koi. Telling his tale with utter lack of salaciousness and a whole lot of weariness.

A week-plus of brutally disrupted sleep and little to show for it but garden-variety infidelity.

“She leaves her house just before nine wearing a loose dress and
sandals, circles her own block a couple of times, passes a neighbor walking a dog, makes chitchat, heads back, I’m ready to nod off. But she continues to Hudson and stops at a car parked under a big tree. Black Rolls-Royce Ghost, you can barely see it. Flora lets herself in and stays inside for nearly half an hour, gets out smoothing down her dress. As she’s putting on lipstick a guy exits the driver’s side and walks over to her. Around her age, only thing I could make out was a light-colored shirt and dark pants. The two of them get all huggy and kissy and gropey and then he gets back in the Rolls and drives away and she walks home. The Rolls tags trace to Leon Andrew Bonelli, San Marino. Big-time real estate development, his online bio puts him at Boalt law school the same time as Flora and her husband.”