To Die in Beverly Hills (9 page)

"The answer is still no," she said. "I'm not going to let you look in the apartment. I spoke with an attorney again and he told me you have absolutely no right to go in there."

Carr smiled humbly. "I didn't come for that. I'd just like to ask you a couple of questions. May I step in for a moment?"

She stared at him as if he were a trash-picker. "Questions about what?"

"About Mr. Sheboygan."

"I'm busy right now."

"Sheboygan was shot during the course of a burglary. It's important that I talk with you about him."

"I really don't see what that has to do with me," she said as she folded her arms over the medallion.

"It'll just take a minute."

"No. I choose not to be interviewed. I have a right not to be interviewed if I so choose. Now please go away and don't bother me again." She shut the door in Carr's face.

Carr fished in his pocket for the bedroom photograph of her with Sheboygan. He found it, then rang the doorbell for a long time. As Amanda Kennedy angrily swung open the door he held up the photograph. She looked at it and blushed. Carr shoved the photo back in his coat pocket.

Amanda Kennedy turned and sauntered back into the living room, where she sat down on the sofa. The television was tuned to a soap opera. Following her inside, Carr closed the door softly and sat next to her on the sofa. He could see that she lived alone; the room was very feminine: women's magazines, pastel lamps, an arrangement of dried flowers.

Amanda Kennedy lit a cigarette. "Where did you get that photograph?" she said to the television screen.

"It was found in Sheboygan's car."

"Where was his car?"

"I didn't come here to answer questions," Carr said. "Just ask them."

Amanda Kennedy's face was expressionless. A soap opera couple embraced.

"When did you first meet Leon Sheboygan?" Carr asked patiently.

"I'm the resident manager here. I met him when he moved in. It was about six months ago. He filled in an application. The application was approved and he moved in."

"What kind of a person was he?"

"He never talked about himself," she said in a tone of disgust. "I think he was in the jewelry business. That's all I really know about him. We had a brief...affair...we really never got to know one another."

"May I take a look at his rental application?"

"I don't have it anymore," she said. The man and woman on television alternated between sighing and making emotional statements.

"Who were Sheboygan's friends?"

"Various people."

"What are the names of the various people?"

"I don't remember."

Carr reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the bedroom photograph of the man with the gray-streaked hair. He held it out to her. She glanced at it and back to the TV. "Do you know this man and woman?" he asked.

"That's Lee's friend. He moved out a few weeks ago. The woman is someone he...uh...dated."

"What's her name?"

The TV lovers hugged and kissed. More sighs. The male opened a cardboard door and walked out of the house.

"I don't remember," she said.

"Is there anything you do recall about Sheboygan or his associates?"

She looked at him and shook her head. "I want that photograph. You have no right to keep it."

"I'm very interested in Sheboygan and what you know about him," Carr said. "If you could see your way to being more cooperative, it might save a lot of problems that could develop for you later. As I'm sure you've read in the newspaper, Sheboygan was killed breaking into the home of a federal witness. Unless the matter can be cleared up, it could drag on and on."

"Are you through?"

Carr pulled out the bedroom photograph and handed it to her. She tore it up and crumbled the pieces in her hand. He stood up and walked to the door, opened it and left quietly.

From Amanda Kennedy's apartment, Charles Carr drove directly to the Los Angeles Police Department's downtown headquarters. He parked his sedan in an underground garage and took an elevator to the sixth floor. There, he wound through some corridors to a small office. The door of the office read Pawn Shop Detail.

Six hours later he was still there, sitting at a desk in the corner of the room reading three-ring binders full of pawnshop circulars. The binders he had finished reviewing sat stacked around him on the desk and the floor. He had decided not to replace them in the metal filing cabinets until he had completed them all. God forbid he should get mixed up and waste an hour or more reviewing one of the boring volumes for the second time. Turning page after page of mimeographed sheets bearing rough sketches of stolen pendants, rings, silverware, wristwatches and medallions had given him a headache after only an hour or so.

By three hours his back and butt, as well as his head, ached. Somehow, he developed a second wind. Later, the second wind went away.

Finally, he felt like his entire body had fallen asleep and only his brain was working. The room was hot and he had an urge for a cold beer. He turned another page. A sketch of a star-shaped medallion did not jump out.

It just sat there staring at him.

The detective responsible for the sketch had drawn little arrows pointing to three points on the star. The notation read:
"inlaid diamonds on these points only, victim says they are 1/4 carat.
" Below the drawing and the notation was a printed caption:
"Medallion stolen during West L.A. residential burglary.
See Crime Report L4921368/Victim: Morganthau, Adam." Carr closed his eyes and pictured the medallion Amanda Kennedy had been wearing... It had to be the same one.

Carr snapped the binder release and removed the page from the folder. He carried the page to a copying machine in the corner of the room. Having made a copy, he replaced the page in the binder. It took him almost a half hour to refile the binders.

On his way downstairs to Higgins's office, he stopped at a bank of food vending machines, where he bought a stale candy bar, which he ate in two bites, and a fresh pack of cigarettes.

Early the next morning Carr waited in a dingy visiting room at the L.A. County Women's jail. He lit another cigarette and realized that the pack was almost empty. A bearded young man who looked like an attorney and a fat black woman sat at one of the long tables. They were separated by a face-high clear-plastic partition. Because of the early hour, they were the only ones in the room. In a ceiling corner, a closed-circuit TV camera scanned back and forth.

There was the sound of a hydraulic lock snapping open.

A large steel door in the corner of the room slid slowly into the wall. Amanda Kennedy, dressed in a county-issued blue denim sack dress, walked through the doorway. She stopped and stared at Carr for a moment, then came forward and sat down on the other side of the table.

"I hope I didn't keep you from getting breakfast," Carr said.

"Oatmeal mush," she said. "Oatmeal mush makes me sick." She had neither makeup nor any form of expression on her face. "I didn't know that medallion was stolen."

Carr lit another cigarette. He held the pack above the partition. She shook her head as if he had offered poison.

"You're the one who told the police I had the medallion," she said. "They wouldn't tell me who told them, but I know it was you. You told them to put me in jail. I was up all night being processed. I don't feel well. Although I'm sure this will come as a shock to a person like you, I've been in jail only once in my whole life. I was at a friend's apartment one night. He was an airline pilot and these narcs broke down the door. They said my friend was a heroin smuggler. I hadn't done anything, but they arrested me anyway. Every time I'd try to tell them that I was just visiting, they'd tell me to shut up. I spent three days in jail and I hadn't done anything ... May I ask you a question?"

Carr nodded.

"If someone gives you a gift and that gift turns out to be stolen, is the person who accepts the gift guilty of possession of stolen property?"

"It depends."

She sat back. "I want to see a lawyer."

"Why waste the money? I can give you the same advice he'll give you and without a retainer fee:
Don't talk. Don't say a word to the cops, no matter what they promise you.
There, I just saved you a thousand bucks."

Amanda Kennedy began to pick at her face, then self- consciously stopped herself. "I don't want to go to jail for something I didn't do."

Carr looked nonchalant. "I just stopped by to ask you a few questions."

"And if I don't answer them I'm going to be prosecuted, isn't that right?"

Carr stared at her for a moment.

Amanda Kennedy picked at her face furiously. She folded and unfolded her arms. More picking. "I don't believe in talking about people," she said finally. "It's against my principles."

"Mine too," Carr said. He wondered if he was playing it too hard.

"What if I told you that Lee gave me the medallion? He's dead. What good is information about someone who's dead?"

Deliberately, he reached into his coat pocket and removed the photograph of the man and woman cavorting in Sheboygan's bedroom. He held it up to her. She stared at it without expression. "Who are these people?"

"Friends of Lee's."

"What are their
names?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

Carr stood up. Casually, he removed his sport coat. He hung it on the back of the chair and sat down again.

"I have a brief relationship with a man who lives in one of the apartments I manage," she said. "He gives me a medallion as a gift for my birthday. The next thing I know he's dead and I'm in jail being treated like an animal. Is that fair?"

"What is the man's name?"

"You had them arrest me in order to force me to answer your questions," she said, her voice rising. "Some people would call that coercion. Coercion is against the law."

"If you're innocent, why not just answer my questions and stop changing the subject?"

"It's the principle of the thing. I have principles."

They stared at each other for a while.

"Would it violate your principles if I found the information written on a scrap of paper in that wastebasket?" He pointed to a metal trash receptacle next to the door.

She made a quizzical expression.

"The information would be anonymous. I just found it on a scrap of paper in a trashcan. That way no one is informing on anyone."

Face picking.

"What would you put in your report?"

"My report would reflect exactly that," Carr said, "that I found the information in a trash basket at the County jail."

"What's going to happen to me?"

"The detectives want you prosecuted," he said. "A valuable medallion was stolen in a burglary. It was around your neck. Under the law, you are a receiver of stolen property. I think they can make the case stick. You might end up doing a little time for it. Just a guess."

"And if I answer your questions?"

"Then the charges might be dismissed."