Blue Screen (8 page)

W
E WENT OUT
Sunset from downtown, west toward Bel Air. My driver, Sol Hernandez, looked like Lieutenant Castillo in
Miami Vice,
which was on television when I was in college. The girls I knew in college thought Lieutenant Castillo was hot. Me too.

“Sol?” I said. “Hernandez?”

“Short for Solario,” he said.

We passed Chavez Ravine, where the Dodgers played, drove through Silver Lake and on through Hollywood under a high, hot sun. Even in the least savory neighborhoods there were flowers and trees and the smell of vegetation. The out-of-town weather section of the
L.A. Times
this morning showed Boston with snow, accumulating to three inches.

Sigh.

We went along the Strip in West Hollywood. Sol was blessedly quiet. He did not point out landmarks. In Beverly Hills the greenery intensified, and when we turned into the Bel Air gate past Beverly Glen it felt like I was in Tahiti. We wound uphill until we pulled into the big driveway of a vast, white stucco house with a red tile roof.

“Gerard appears to have done well for himself,” I said.

“Head pimp,” Sol said.

We got out and walked to the front door. Sol had his shield folder tucked into the breast pocket of his cream-colored linen jacket so that the shield showed. I rang the bell. Time passed, and I could sense more than I could hear somebody studying us through the peephole. Then the door opened a few inches on a security bar. A man’s face appeared in the narrow gap. It was tanned. The man appeared bald.

“Sergeant Hernandez, LAPD,” Sol said. “We need to talk with Gerard.”

“You got some kind of paper?” the face said.

“Just a chat,” Sol said.

“So you don’t have no paper says I got to let you in,” the face said.

“We can go get one,” Sol said, “and come back in large numbers and yank all your fucking asses out of here and drive you downtown in a wagon.”

The face grunted in what might have been amusement.

“Jeez,” it said, “I think I wet myself.”

“Tell Mr. Basgall we want to talk about Erin Flint,” I said.

“Who the fuck are you,” the face said.

“Margaret Thatcher,” I said. “Just tell Gerard what I said.”

The tanned face stared at me for a moment. Then the door closed.

“Margaret Thatcher?” Sol said.

“I figured it had more clout than Sunny Randall,” I said.

“I suppose it can’t have less,” Sol said.

In a few minutes the door opened and the guy with the tan stood in it. He was bald and kind of fat, but what my father used to call “hard fat.” He had on a loose-fitting blue sport shirt with big, red flowers on it. It was not tucked in. I could see that he had a gun under the shirt.

“Follow me,” he said.

The house as we walked through it was huge and full of artifacts, and had the lived-in warmth of a shopping mall in West Covina.

“How charming,” I said to Sol. “Tasteful yet inviting.”

He smiled without speaking.

Gerard was waiting for us in the atrium. In the cool, glassed-in space we could look west and see the ocean, and south and east, nearly all of the Los Angeles basin. There was no visible smog today, and the vista was in fact breathtaking.

“Wow,” I said.

“Cool, huh?” Gerard said. “Paid a lot for this view.”

“Lotta whores fucked their brains out for it,” Sol said.

Gerard grinned.

“And were happy to do so,” Gerard said. He looked at Sol.

“You’re Hernandez, the local cop,” Gerard said. He looked at me. “But I’m guessing you ain’t really Margaret Thatcher.”

I smiled.

“Just a ploy to get in,” I said. “My name is Sunny Randall. I’m a detective that Erin hired.”

He was a tall man, tall enough not to look out of place with Erin Flint. And he was well set up, athletic-looking. Tanned, clean-shaven, with dark hair cut very short in a military buzz cut. Two large pictures sat on easels, one in each corner of the atrium. One was of Gerard in some sort of martial-arts outfit, executing some sort of martial-arts move. In the other corner was Erin Flint in her Woman Warrior incarnation, hurdling a lion, wearing few clothes, carrying a short spear, and showing a lot of fabulous skin.

“So what’s up with Erin?” Gerard said. “She okay?”

“A friend of hers was killed, Misty Tyler.”

Gerard nodded.

“Did you know Misty?”

“No.”

It didn’t seem likely he could have been married to Erin and not know sister Misty. But that didn’t have to mean much. Guys like Gerard routinely lied to the cops unless there was some good reason not to. At the moment, I was the cops, and there wouldn’t have seemed to Gerard to be any good reason not to.

“You were married to Erin,” I said.

“Still am,” Gerard said.

“But you’re not together.”

He shook his head.

“Broads,” he said. “Present company excluded, Sunny.”

“Of course,” I said. “Why did you, ah, part?”

“She dumped me. I set her up, gave her money for clothes, for cars, bought her a house in Santa Monica…she saw the chance to fuck some movie producer and off she went.”

I widened my big, blue eyes innocently.

“She’d leave this house?” I said.

“I didn’t have this house when she left.”

“When would that have been?”

“Five, six years ago. I don’t know. Time don’t mean much to me.”

“Who was the producer?” I said.

“Buddy Bollen. Guy made her into Woman Warrior.”

“And you didn’t object?”

“Sure, I objected,” Gerard said. “But hell, Sunny, there’s thousands of women, and just one me. I decided to stick with me.”

“Did you love her?”

“Hell yes, still do.”

“But?”

“But I’m a practical man. Time to move on. I can get my ashes hauled whenever I want to,” Gerard said.

“She work for you?” Sol said.

Gerard looked at Sol blankly for a moment.

Then he said, “’Course she did. I look like a guy runs a shelter for homeless pussy? She worked for me, and so did her sister.”

“Her sister is Misty Tyler,” I said.

“Edith? Yeah. I guess I didn’t know her new name. I give them the best outcalls. Clean guys. Movie guys. No whack jobs, nothing kinky. It mighta been how she met Buddy Bollen. I don’t remember.”

“You should,” Sol said. “You were probably more hands-on then. Than now.”

“I’m outta that business now, Sergeant. You should know that. I run an event-management service.”

“You’re a pimp,” Sol said. “You used to be a small-time pimp, and now you are a big-time pimp. But a pimp is a pimp.”

“Don’t be bitter, Sergeant,” Gerard said. “How about you, Sunny? I could make you rich.”

“In event management?”

“Four, maybe five events a week, a few hours, evening work,” Gerard said. “No heavy lifting.”

I shook my head.

“Enticing offer,” I said. “But I’ll pass. Talk more about Erin and Misty.”

“Love those names,” Gerard said and laughed. “They wasn’t so much when I met them. They were kids. I think Erin was maybe eighteen, dragging her kid sister around. Didn’t know how to look, or talk. Didn’t know anything.”

“How’d you meet?”

“They hustled me at a club in West Hollywood,” Gerard said.

“Tried to pick you up?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Had I ever done two girls at once? Had I ever done sisters?”

“And?” I said.

“Well, truth is I never had done sisters before. But I seen something in them, especially Erin. I mean, she wasn’t much yet, but she already had that bitchin’ body, and I seen potential. One thing I know,” Gerard said. “I know women.”

Sol was standing at the window, watching the bald man with the tan who was standing in the doorway watching Sol. Gerard looked at me as if he could see through my clothes.

He said it again. “I know women.”

“You know whores,” Sol said.

Gerard grinned at me.

“Same thing,” he said.

“So you decided to, ah, represent them?”

“Yeah.”

“And you married Erin?” I said.

“Wasn’t part of the plan, but…” Gerard spread his hands and shrugged. “I got her clothes and makeup and hair and took her places and taught her how to order. Got her a trainer. Hell, I even sent her to college. I mean, she was turning into something.”

“And Misty?”

“The little sister? She trailed along. Everywhere Erin went, there was little sister.”

“And, I don’t mean to be indelicate, Mr. Basgall, but did you have a relationship with Misty?”

“Relationship?” Gerard said and smiled. “What kinda relationship did you have in mind?”

“Did you fuck her?”

“Whoa, Sunny, pretty direct.”

“Did you?”

“Sure,” Gerard said, “I gave her a few pops. But I didn’t love her.”

“You loved her sister.”

“Like I said—did, still do.”

We talked some more, but there was nothing else to learn from Gerard.

O
N THE DRIVE
back downtown, Sol said, “It might have gone better if I didn’t ride Gerard like I did.”

“I don’t think it made any difference,” I said.

“I know better. In that kind of situation you don’t get anywhere antagonizing the subject.”

“Gerard was going to tell us what he told us and nothing more,” I said.

Sol nodded.

“Probably right,” he said.

“You know him before?” I said.

“I used to work vice,” Sol said. “I know about Gerard.”

“Tell me,” I said.

“He turned up in the early nineties—I’m sure he was pimping for a long time before he jumped onto our screen—he was running a high-class call-girl operation on the west side. Girls were all well-spoken, good-looking, well-dressed. No shortage of those out here. He’d find the ones that looked right and clean them up and train them and send them out to only the best clients.”

“No shortage of them out here, either,” I said.

Sol nodded.

“Lotta money out here,” Sol said. “Not many scruples.”

“Nor brains,” I said. “How did he do business. How did he connect the john with the hooker?”

“Mostly hotel staff. Lot of high rollers in a lot of expensive hotels around the west side,” Sol said. “He’d have a doorman or a bellman or a bartender on commission, occasionally a concierge. He had a lot of limo drivers on the payroll, too.”

“No cabbies,” I said.

“No. He wasn’t interested in johns that took cabs.”

“Nice little synergy,” I said. “The best clientele would attract the best girls, and the best girls would attract the best clientele.”

“As long as you kept the discipline,” Sol said. “No blow jobs in cars, no stag shows at bachelor parties, no dirty movies—even if it was quick and easy money. Girl broke the rules, she got beat up and fired.”

“Gerard do the beating up?” I said.

“Sure, early years. Now he has employees.”

“He’s got a number of arrests for assault.”

“Gerard’s a tough guy,” Sol said. “But a lot of the assault busts are in the early years when he was just a street pimp protecting his investment. Beat up a few johns who got out of line with the whores. No jail time.”

“So why do you suppose the OC squad is interested in him now?”

“He’s spreading out,” Sol said. “He runs the upscale call-girl business on the west side and in the Valley. He’s spreading into Ventura County. He’s also, they tell me, trying to expand, maybe spread the whore business, maybe diversify—drugs, gambling. Nobody knows for sure. What they know is he’s got a connection now with a guy named del Rio, who sort of runs things around here.”

“Should I talk to this del Rio person?” I said.

“No.”

“No?” I said. “Just like that?”

“Reason number one,” Sol said. “You annoy him and I can’t protect you; for crissake, Cronjager can’t protect you. Reason number two, your vic got her neck snapped. Three thousand miles away. It’s not his style. He had to have her killed for some reason it would be neat, one bullet in the brain, and no trace of anyone or anything. Mr. del Rio is a dead end, any way you approach it.”

“Maybe he could tell me a little more about Gerard,” I said.

Sol smiled at me.

“You can’t get to see him,” Sol said. “If you could, he wouldn’t tell you anything. If he did, it wouldn’t be true. Forget del Rio.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Besides,” Sol said. “Sooner or later Gerard is going to annoy del Rio. He’s too restless, too ambitious. He’ll do something he shouldn’t have, and he’ll be dead.”

“Like that,” I said.

“Like that.”

We were quiet for a while.

“You know what doesn’t quite work with Gerard?” I said.

“All that chop chop about how he still loves her,” Sol said.

“Maybe it’s true,” I said.

“And maybe it don’t rain in Indianapolis,” Sol said. “In the summertime.”

“So why would he keep saying it?” I said. “It doesn’t fit with the rest of him, you know,
whore
and
woman
are two words for the same thing? I loved her but I banged her sister? That Gerard makes sense. But to admit he still loves a woman who dumped him for another guy?”

“Sympathy?” Sol said.

“From us? He knows better. And even if he didn’t, he doesn’t care about us.”

Sol nodded.

“I know,” he said.

“And the picture?”

“He coulda put it there before he let us in,” Sol said.

“But why would he?”

“Don’t know,” Sol said. “What I know is that slime-bag motherfucker couldn’t love anybody.”

I looked at Sol.

“Is there something personal?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Is it my business?” I said.

“No.”

I smiled and shook my head. We were nearly downtown now.

“So many things aren’t,” I said.