Body Copy (14 page)

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whatever I found out. So I investigated the thing he told me about, and I came to the conclusion that it had nothing to do with the murder. Then he asked me to make sure it didn’t make it into the file or become public information. I said ‘I can’t do that.’ ”

Peterson shifted his eyes down toward the table. “Then he offered me the money.”

Tremaine listened.

Peterson continued, “I’m not a bad cop, Tremaine. Ask Lopez. But we don’t make squat.”

Tremaine said, “What did you find out?”

“That Roger Gale had had an affair.”

Tremaine listened.

Peterson said, “We thought that might be the case—

obviously, that’s Detective Work 101—but we couldn’t find anything. Then, Phillip Cook told me about this woman.

Told me that about a year
prior
to his murder, Gale’s wife, Evelyn, had confronted him about some of his late nights, not coming home, whatever. She was suspicious and pissed off. She even told him that she was going to hire a P.I. to find out what he was up to. He denied everything, she hired a detective. Sure enough, he was seeing a woman on the side.

So Evelyn busts him, and he stops. Well, Phillip Cook told me who the woman was, the woman who the P.I. had caught him with, so I could see if there was any connection to his murder. Phillip wanted to keep Gale’s affair quiet, but he wanted to know if this woman might be involved with the killing. So I contacted her. She was a really nice lady. Probably not the brightest bulb on the tree, but really pretty and nice. Worked as the general manager of a bunch of gyms in L.A. L.A. Fitness or something. You following me?”

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Tremaine nodded and ordered a couple more beers for the two of them.

Peterson continued. “So I met with her. She hadn’t seen Roger Gale in over a year, hadn’t talked to him since he’d called off the affair. She was just a cute girl who managed some gyms. When they were together, there were no promises from Roger Gale about leaving his wife or any of that shit. She wasn’t in love with him, they had just boned a couple times. I looked into her. She was rational. She had found out Roger Gale was dead when she read it in the paper. There were no phone calls, nothing. She had no connection to him anymore. None, for sure. So I left it at that.

If Roger Gale’s affairs were what caused him to be killed, it was by somebody else, somebody that we never found.

This girl didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m positive.”

“Does Evelyn know Phillip told you about the affair?”

“Yes.”

Tremaine said, “What’s the girl’s name?”

Bill Peterson said, “I knew you were going to ask me that.”

“I’m not going to sell you out, Peterson. I already know enough to get you into serious shit.”

Peterson said, “You’re just going to talk to her about this? Not Phillip, not anybody else?”

“You have my word.”

“Her name’s Wendy Leahy. I got her number, too.”

Tremaine dropped Peterson off at his two-bedroom town-house in Dunwoody. Peterson, now drunk and more talkative than ever, yapped the whole way back about life in 134

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Atlanta. Tremaine did his best to pay attention while Peterson went through the entire Atlanta Braves lineup, their batting averages, their chances of being traded. Peterson, now with a little buzz, saying stuff like, “Goddamn Bobby Cox. Walks like a goddamn penguin. Goddamn.”

Now in the little rented Geo all by his lonesome, Tremaine thought about what he had learned. Evelyn and Phillip knew about this affair, in their minds, the only one Roger Gale had ever had, and they’d had it looked into.

Peterson assured them it wasn’t connected to the murder.

So, when the cops were snooping around at the time of the murder, Evelyn and Phillip really resented the affairs accusations, because, to them, he had had only that one, and no one knew about it. This one affair was the reason Evelyn and Phillip were so sure the murder wasn’t about an affair.

So quit embarrassing Mother
, Tremaine could almost hear Phillip saying.

Tremaine got back to his hotel, pretty tired now, buzzed, and full, too. He cranked the AC and just enjoyed the quiet hum of the machine. After a few minutes, he clicked off the light. The flight back to L.A. would come early.

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C H A P T E R 1 9

On the way back from LAX, Tremaine heading home to say hey to Lyle and check his mail, regular and electronic, he noticed in his rearview mirror, in the distance, the silver Crown Vic.

“All right, you’re back. Let’s go look at some stuff,” Tremaine said aloud.

Tremaine, now on the 405, put his blinker on well before he had to get off, giving the Crown Vic time to prepare. Sure enough, the car followed, way back there, a tiny image in the rearview.

Tremaine took the Venice Boulevard exit, then headed west out to the beach.

Next, he drove into Marina del Rey and hung a left on Maxella. The Crown Vic mimicked his moves. Tremaine B O D Y C O P Y

took Maxella to Glencoe, then went left on Glencoe to a warehouse district full of machine and glass repair shops.

Tremaine had gotten one of his surfboards repaired in this district a number of weeks ago, so he was familiar with the goings-on of the neighborhood. Just after he passed Gene’s Glass, the block opened up to a large lot, the frame of a new building going up.

In the front of the building, there were a number of cement trucks bearing the name L.A. Stone in large, red letters on the side. Tremaine pulled the Cutlass off the road directly across from the construction site and the trucks.

Two minutes after he pulled over, the Crown Vic slid by, then stopped at the stop sign about a hundred yards past Tremaine. Tremaine thought, I’ll wait for him to go around the block before I do anything.

But the Crown Vic didn’t round the block. It did go right at the sign, but it didn’t show up behind him. Instead, Tremaine spotted it two blocks ahead, now facing him as it pulled into the driveway of a small office building. The Crown Vic settled into park, the passenger side window of the car facing Tremaine. Tremaine knew, whoever this master of investigation was, he was watching.

Tremaine looked in his glove and pulled out an old camera, not even digital, with no film in it. He got out of his car, held the camera to his eye, and pointed it at the cement trucks. Might as well be wearing a goddamn sign.

After pretending to take a series of pictures, he got back in the Cutlass, cranked her up, and left.

The Crown Vic was not in his sights as Tremaine made his way back to Malibu. No, the guy in the Crown Vic had done his work for the day.

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Home. Tremaine walked in his trailer, barely able to contain his excitement over seeing Lyle. Tremaine shot in the door, smiling from ear to ear, and said, “Hey, Lyle, I’m home!” Lyle didn’t move. Tremaine felt like an old house-wife whose husband had long ago stopped seeing her as anything other than the woman who lived in the house.

Tremaine hung his head a bit and grabbed Lyle’s leash. The noise of the leash didn’t seem to register, either.

After managing to walk Lyle, Tremaine checked his mail, his e-mail, and his phone messages. Then he headed back out into the park, over to good old Marvin Kearns’s trailer. He had to thank him for watching Lyle and, for the first time ever, he was going to ask him for some help on a case.

Tremaine knocked a couple times, but no Marvin. Was he jumping from trailer roof to trailer roof in character as a ninja? Nope, he just wasn’t home. Damn, have to catch him next time.

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C H A P T E R 2 0

That night, at the Lobster, a restaurant right by the Santa Monica Pier that overlooked the Pacific, Nina said, “I like this place. It has a nice feel.”

Tremaine nodded.

Nina said, “You really didn’t have to take me out to fill me in.”

“I like to take my clients out. It’s good for business.”

True, Tremaine did take clients out from time to time.

Especially ones like Nina Aldeen.

“So Roger had an affair.”

“Yes,” Tremaine said.

“You’re sure?”

“I got the information from a pretty good source.”

“Who?”

Michael Craven

“I can’t tell you that. Part of the deal with the source for parting with the information.”

Nina smiled and said, “I understand. I’m not paying you to tell me everything. Just the one thing I want to know.”

Tremaine thought, this one’s a cool customer, respecting him, respecting his job. He looked at her, seeing and feeling now a real familiarity.

But it was different, too, her appearance, now that he was getting to know her. Nina’s face was beginning to change in a way, in the way that once you get to know someone they actually look a little different, even though it’s all the same parts stuck together in exactly the same way.

Tremaine sipped his beer and Nina sipped her wine, and they weren’t exactly looking at each other, they were just relaxing, there was a comfort between them now, the Pacific on one side through the glass, the lively restaurant on the other.

This kind of feels like a date, Tremaine thought. Wonder if she feels that way?

“What about Tyler Wilkes?” she said.

“I don’t know what Tyler Wilkes is up to. He’s not a good guy, I know that much. I’m confusing him right now.

Getting him paranoid. And then I’m going to use his para-noia to find out what he knows.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

She smiled again. “I won’t forget,” she said.

“Neither will I.”

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They ordered lobster—they
were
at the Lobster—and when their orders were in, Tremaine said, “I’ve been thinking about your book. It’s a brave subject.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I mean,” she said. “Not so much for the compliment, but for acknowledging that the subject matter is kind of a tough one to deal with.”

“Like I said before, I know from personal experience.”

She went on. “It’s one of the few things in life I’ve ever done that my whole heart is into. I’m facing my fears, in a way. Just getting it all out and analyzing it. And as painful as it is, I know it’s the right thing to do because I can feel it in my heart. That sounds like a Hallmark card. What I mean to say is, I can feel it in my gut.”

Tremaine nodded. He knew what she meant, he knew that feeling.

“When I talked to John Lopez about hiring you, that’s what he said about you,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“That you did things from your gut. That you didn’t always have a reason other than that.”

“Sometimes that’s the best reason.”

A moment of silence, then Tremaine said, “So, no smart-ass remarks about me from Lopez?”

“Oh, there were a few.”

“Can you remember any?”

“He might have said something about your trailer.”

“What about it?”

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“Something like, ‘If your car breaks down, you can always drive your house.’”

Tremaine laughed and said, “It’s a trailer, not an RV.

Not a bad joke though. I’ll have to get him back for that.”

“Hey, don’t tell him your source. You wouldn’t tell me yours.”

“Fair enough.”

They ate, delicious. They dropped the case talk and got back to books, and, more specifically, her book. Tremaine liked hearing about it, the poetry she put into telling her story. Then, out in the parking lot, Tremaine found himself saying, “Want to take a walk on the beach? Walk off dinner? Tell me more about your book?”

“Yeah,” Nina said. “I’ve lived in L.A. for a while now and I’ve never taken a walk on the beach at night.”

Tremaine had Nina follow him to a spot off the Pacific Coast Highway about halfway between the Lobster in Santa Monica and his trailer park. She pulled her Volvo behind his Cutlass, off the main road onto a little dirt road between the PCH and the ocean. She got out of her car, he got out of his, and they walked toward each other. The ocean was loud but not too loud, the waves crashing into the sand.

“This is a great little spot. How’d you find it?” she said.

“Only the surfers know about it.”

“Someday you’ll have to tell me all about the tour. What it’s really like.”

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sets were on a certain day. It’s like when golfers talk about shots. It’s only interesting to other golfers. And sometimes not even them.”

“What if I started surfing? Would you tell me then?”

“It’s possible.”

“I might hold you to it.”

They took off their shoes and left them by the car.

Tremaine guided her toward the shore, motioning which way to head down the beach. For a minute or two they strolled in silence, all they heard were the waves pounding the sand. And each, independently, not talking about it, watched the big mass of water suck the waves back in after they crashed.

Then Nina said, “You know, when it comes to divorce, everyone’s story is different and the same in a way, too.”

“Yep,” Tremaine said.

“Because no matter what the circumstances, you learn just as much about yourself as you do the other person.”

Did Tremaine agree? Had he been there? Yeah. But he didn’t say it, he just listened.

“Sean and I, we both brought baggage to the relationship. But when you’re in the middle of it, you blame the other person, like their baggage is causing all the problems.

Then one day, if you really look hard, you see your stuff is just as much a problem as their stuff. You’re looking at the other person, but you’re seeing yourself.”

“You’ve got to put that in your book. Just like that.”

“It’s in there, baby. It’s in there.”

Silence between them again, just the waves. Tremaine saw himself in his marriage, that vivid and painful image 143

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in his head again. Tremaine, walking down the beach with Nina but seeing himself driving away from his ex’s house for the last time, never to return.