Cold Shoulder (25 page)

Lorraine had underestimated Rosie’s dogged persistence. ‘This cop, he wouldn’t be the one you saw outside the gallery? Captain Rooney? Only he’s on these murders, isn’t he?’

Lorraine made no answer. If d be dark soon and if they were to make the most of what daylight remained they’d better leave.

They drove into the outskirts of Beverly Hills and parked outside a neat row of bungalows on Ashdown Road, a heavily gay area. Men were already parading up and down or gathering on street corners talking. A blonde woman was tap-dancing on a small square piece of cardboard, tap-tapping away, her flowered hat on the pavement beside her.

A car drew up and Rosie got out with her clipboard. Lorraine suddenly felt the adrenalin pumping. She knew he was not the man, which left only one to go. Who had to be the man, if —
if —
she was right.

Rosie returned to the car, smiling. ‘This is better than sticking down goddamned envelopes. Where to next?’

The final address was on the other side of town, on Beverly Glen. With a screech of tyres, Rosie took a sharp right, directly across the traffic.

‘Bastards, it’s my right of way!’ Lorraine clung to the side of the car as Rosie swerved across the road, and steered onto Sunset Boulevard. She peered over to Lorraine. ‘You sure we’re on the guy? This is movie-star territory.’

‘Yeah, it’s off to the right.’

They drove past the Bel Air Gates and took a left onto Beverly Glen. They headed up the winding road, passing the signposts to the Bel Air Hotel. Rosie veered from one side of the road to the other as she glimpsed the magnificent properties on either side of them.

Eventually she pulled up outside a secluded, three-storey house, surrounded by a high wall, a barred gate, and signs warning of guard dogs and electric fences. It was here that Steven Janklow lived, the last name on the list. Rosie got out and crossed the road to look through the gates. A Buick was parked in the drive, alongside an old Mercedes SL 180. She rang the intercom bell at the side of the huge gate. ‘Hi, I am doing market research into computer users and we have a query for a Michael Janklow. Could I please speak to him a moment?’

The phone went dead. Rosie rang again and repeated as much of her rehearsed speech as she could before the phone went dead again. A gardener tending the well-kept lawns walked towards the gates. Rosie smiled and waved at him. ‘Can you gimme a minute?’

He didn’t speak very good English, so she had to ask two or three times if a Michael Janklow was at home.

‘No, no, his name not Michael.’

‘Does he work in computers?’

‘No, he work in big garage, you have wrong man, go away.’

Rosie returned to the car. ‘I think he’s the last guy.’ She repeated what the gardener had said and gave the car registration numbers.

They waited over an hour but only saw the gardener drive out in an old truck, the gates closing automatically behind him. Then they saw a German shepherd dog sniffing and prowling around inside the gates.

Lorraine told Rosie to go home and that they would come back early next morning. She didn’t want Rooney to meet Rosie and it was nearly time for their appointment. She made the excuse that she wanted to work out, so Rosie dropped her off at Fit ’N’ Fast.

Fifteen minutes later Rooney arrived. ‘What you got for me?’ he asked as soon as Lorraine had got into the car.

She hesitated. ‘Well, I’ve been questioning a lot of the hookers. So far nothing much but a couple of them remembered a guy picking them up, real edgy, and I’m trying to find Holly’s pimp to see if he can help. You got anything on a vintage car garage, Santa Monica?’ She talked about one of the girls seeing the cufflinks, that she, herself, had discovered that fifty odd workers might have a pair. ‘What I’m doing is narrowing it all down, taking shots of the workers, taking them round to the girls. It might be your man, then again it might not. It’s costing, though, I had to get a good camera and I gotta pay a friend to drive me around, hire a car.’

Rooney took out his wallet. Lorraine leaned closer. ‘I’d like to talk to this profiler guy. Can’t you swing it for me?’

‘Why do you want to see him?’

Lorraine ran her hands through her hair. ‘Maybe I just want to talk to him. I was always good at piecing jigsaws together and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.’

He folded a hundred and fifty dollars and passed it to her. ‘Take it, but I want those photographs, and in the meantime I’ll do a quiet check on the men who work at this garage, see if there’s anyone with a record.’

‘Do it quietly, Bill. If your man works there, you don’t want to tip him off.’

He grunted.

‘I’ll call you.’ She had her hand on the door handle.

Rooney hesitated, and then muttered grudgingly, ‘I’ll give this Fellows a call. You can see him if he agrees. I’m up against it. Anything, Lorraine, anything, for chrissakes get it to me fast, you know what snot-nosed bastards those FBI agents are.’

She got out of the car and he watched her walking down the street, long legs, tight ass. All the guys had tried to get into her pants but she had never, to Rooney’s knowledge, got it on with anyone of the old team. It pissed them all off that she refused to have a scene with any of them and they had made her life as unpleasant as possible. To her credit she had treated it as a joke, but then she had always been tough.

‘You got any complaints?’ Rooney had asked.

‘No, no complaints,’ she had said, quietly and firmly. She never complained or put any man on the line, even when she found out they were having free fucks from the hookers. She was so tough no one would have believed she would plummet out of control. Rooney wondered now just how long she had hidden her drinking. He had liked Lorraine, admired her tenacity. She had proved her guts too. As he drove Rooney remembered how he and his partner had been called out to an affray in a down-town bar. Neither was prepared to confront the young Mexican holding a waitress by the throat. He’d already knifed two men, everyone was hysterical, and crowds were gathering on the pavement outside.

Rooney called for back-up which arrived in the shape of the young rookie Page, and her beer-gut partner, Brian Dullay. Dullay waddled over to Rooney, bellowing for an update. Suddenly there was a single terrible scream from inside the bar. They needed a decoy: someone to go in the front, distract the Mexican, so they could unarm him from behind. No fucking way, Dullay said. Just as Rooney was about to order him inside, Lorraine stepped forward. ‘I’ll do it. We can’t leave that girl in there,’

While Dullay and Rooney’s partner headed for the escape at the back, Lorraine opened the door to the bar. The terrified girl was held by the deranged barman, a knife already cutting through her neck, blood streaming down her dress. Her legs were buckled, she had pissed in her pants with terror, and her face was stricken, frozen, her mouth open wide.

Lorraine walked in holding her hands above her head. ‘I’m alone, Roberto, just let her go and you and me can talk.’

The man pushed the girl down to the floor and stamped on her head, holding her firm with his foot. He grinned crazily as he lifted the knife. ‘It’s too late, no talk now, no more talk.’

Lorraine held her gaze, never flinching when he switched the knife from his right to his left hand. Then he snatched a gun from his belt and pointed it at her. She stood still, without taking her eyes off him. ‘It’s never too late to talk. Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on?’

‘They kick me out my place, they take my kids, they got no right to do that, I work hard, I pay my taxes, they got no right, I been to the right people, weeks I been goin’ an’ they say it’s okay, nobody can take your place, but they—’

Rooney fired first, then Dullay. The bullet blew the back of the Mexican’s skull apart, his blood and brains splattering Lorraine, his body falling over the sobbing waitress.

The girl clung to Lorraine. Even when the ambulance came she wouldn’t let go, so Lorraine sat with her until the sedatives took effect then slowly stepped out of the ambulance.

Rooney was talking to Dullay as Lorraine approached him. ‘There was no need to kill him,’ she said flatly.

Rooney had glared at her. ‘He would have used this. You got a complaint?’ He had shoved the dead Mexican’s gun under her nose.

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘No complaint.’

Rooney was still thinking about her when he let himself into his home an hour later. He remembered Lubrinski. He was sure there had been something going on between them. They were real close, used to drink together after duty. Thinking of the dark, handsome officer Rooney felt sad. He was one of the best he’d ever come across, bit of a loner but a real man’s man. When Rooney had partnered Lorraine with him, he had expected fireworks but instead she and Lubrinski had formed one of the strongest teams he’d ever had. He wished he had a twosome like them with him now but they only come once in a blue moon. Page and Lubrinski, chalk and cheese and yet…

Lorraine kept on walking after seeing Rooney. Then she took a bus to Sunset and set off towards the hookers’ hangouts and on until she got to the gay quarter. She stopped outside a coffee bar with a few tables planted on the dirty street. She was looking for Nula or Didi but couldn’t find them so asked around for Curtis and was told he would be in the Bar Q further along the stretch. The bar was dark, with music so loud it was deafening. There were only a few customers dotted around, none Lorraine knew, so she sat at the bar and ordered a Coke.

‘How you doing?’ smiled the black bartender. ‘Not seen you in a long while.’

Lorraine grinned. ‘Is Curtis out back?’

‘Yeah, he’s got a game going.’

Lorraine could see a few men in the small pool room. She strolled in and stood sipping the Coke, watching Curtis play with three other dudes in snazzy suits and flash ties. Printed silk was the rage among pimps, reminiscent of Micky Spillane. She knew better than to interrupt, but Curtis looked up suddenly. ‘You want me, sugar?’

‘When you got a second.’

Curtis chalked his cue. As she moved away, he asked one of the players, ‘Who’s that?’

The man couldn’t put a name to the face. Curtis continued the game.

Lorraine went back to the bar and ordered another Coke. A few more customers had drifted in and a bleached blonde with heavy breasts was perched on an end stool, talking to a boy in leathers. She was all of forty, her tight leather skirt up round her crotch. He leaned forward as if hanging on her every word but his eyes were focused on her deep cleavage. Her breasts were pushed up by a wired bra and burst through the clinging Lycra. Lorraine was almost amused to watch the old pro at work. Every move was sexual — she didn’t even reach for her drink without the carefully orchestrated swing of her hips, or opening her legs further, constantly touching her breasts, and licking her thickly painted lips. The boy moved closer, desperate to touch her, and Lorraine waited, knew Blondie would talk money any second. Sure enough, she saw her whisper, then lean back, resting her elbows on the bar, and the boy was hooked.

He passed some bills and the come-on act dropped. Blondie downed her drink, slid off the stool and, arm in arm, they walked out. Lorraine reckoned she’d have a room in one of the motels close by and that the boy was probably a college kid high on grass and desperate to get his rocks off. Well, he would, but he would probably not have reckoned on it being so fast.

Curtis leaned on the bar next to Lorraine. He ordered a beer.

‘You know some friends of mine, Didi and Nula. I’m lookin’ for them, but they’re not on the strip,’ she said.

‘Bit early for them. What do you want?’

‘I’m a friend of Art’s.’

‘You want some videos?’

‘Maybe.’

Curtis suddenly moved close to Lorraine. ‘So you know Didi and Nula.’ He stripped her with his eyes, then focused on her crotch. ‘But you’re not one of them. You want to turn a few tricks?’ he asked casually, as if offering her a drink.

‘No, I want to see them and I don’t like goin’ to their place in case I interrupt a session.’

Curtis tilted his head back and laughed. ‘Not party to that, girlie, not with kids, not my scene.’

Lorraine smiled back. He was relaxing, trusting her, and even more so when a skinny black hooker, Elsa, breezed in and saw Lorraine.

‘Hey, how you doin’?’ she screamed across the bar, then wiggled over and slipped her arms around Lorraine. ‘Long time no see, an’ you cleaned yerself up. Baby, you’re lookin’ great.’

Lorraine was entwined in strong skinny arms and the thick black curly wig tickled her face as Elsa kissed her on the lips. Curtis looked on, as Elsa, still clasping Lorraine tightly, told him how many good times the two of them had had together. She traced the scar on Lorraine’s face with her thumb, its long, hooked, bright-red nail like a claw. ‘Oh, Jesus, do I remember that night.’

‘More than I do,’ said Lorraine.

The barman summoned Curtis to take a call and Elsa perched on a stool next to Lorraine. ‘So, what you been doin’, sugar? I thought maybe you were dead.’

‘No, I’m alive. You want a drink?’

‘Sure, Coke an’ bourbon, if you’re buyin’.’

They carried their drinks to a booth, but Elsa’s attention flitted constantly to the entrance, waiting for a customer.

‘Did you know Holly?’

‘Sure, sweet kid, one of Curtis’s. He’s been cut up bad about it.’

Lorraine led the conversation round to which was Holly’s pitch but Elsa couldn’t remember: she moved about because some of the girls could get nasty and they reckoned Holly was hedging in on their territory. Curtis was small fry: he only had a few girls and was too weak to get heavy with any of the other pimps. He mostly had trannies because nobody else wanted them — trannies and a few young chicks that he screwed more than any john. Holly was his girl.

‘The night she died, did you see her at all?’

‘Nah, I was in the Long Down Motel. I got a room there now.’

Lorraine tried to ask as much as she could about Holly without it sounding suspicious but Elsa would only say that on the night of the murder, it had been real slow for business and any john was picked up fast. ‘You get good nights and bad nights.’