Flipping Out (24 page)

'There
are a few things we'd still like to look into,' I said.

'Perhaps
you didn't get my drift. Let me spell it out for you,' he said. 'N-O.'

'No?'

'As
my good friend and classmate from the academy, Frank Faluotico, is fond of
saying...and I quote...'When dead bodies stop piling up in LA, you can go back
and take another look.' But since we've got fresh ones coming in every day,
finish the paperwork and move on to the next assignment.'

He
turned around and walked out the door.

'Do
you realise that he only came back here to check up on us?' I said. 'He walked
in, got in my face, tore me a new one, and walked out.'

'I
couldn't believe it,' Terry said. 'All these years I thought he only had a
hard-on for me.'

Twenty
minutes later Gaffney called. 'There's an Italian restaurant on Melrose between
Alta Vista and Poinsettia. It's called Angeli.'

'You
buying?' I said.

'Sorry,
guy,' he said. 'We're not eating there. We're just sitting in a van half a
block away, gathering incriminating evidence on some lying, cheating bastard
husband who is eating there.'

'Where
are you parked?'

'Northwest
corner of Poinsettia. It's a white Chevy Express tricked out to look like one
of those cable TV vans.'

It
was easy to find. But even if there had been a dozen white vans parked on that
corner, we could have picked out Gaffney's. The logo on the side said it all:
Fidelity Communications.

Inside,
the van was part living room, part CNN control booth. Gaffney and an assistant
were at a command console, staring at a cluster of monitors. He took off his
headset and pointed to two leather chairs. 'Have a seat. It's not easy to stand
up in this place. Good to see you guys.'

'What
are we watching?' Terry said, pointing at one of the monitors.

'Same
old soap opera crap. Rich Hollywood asshole, cheating on his devoted wife, who
will in the very near future wind up with all of the children, half of the
money, and none of the asshole. We've got one camera in the van pointed at the
restaurant window. You can't see much detail, but I still get a clean picture
of the couple I'm tailing.'

'You're
lucky they sat at that table,' I said.

'Let's
just say the hostess is lucky I paid her a hundred to sit them at that table.'
He smiled. 'But then you knew that, didn't you?'

'Actually
I did, but I don't know how you're getting that close-up on the other monitor.
Where's the second camera?'

'There's
a couple at the next table. Friends of mine, Matt and Daniella Smith. She use
to work vice for LAPD, but she left to become a pastry chef.'

'Vice
and pastry,' Terry said. 'Your buddy Matt is a lucky guy.'

'Anyway,
Daniella's purse has a pinhole camera and an omnidirectional mic. We just sit
in the van and record it for posterity. When the target and the bimbette leave
drunk and horny, they'll go back to her apartment, which we've already wired.'

'How
do you know ahead of time where they're going?'

'Cell
tap,' he said. 'Did I mention that Matt is a supergeek? So, how can I help you
boys?'

I
pointed at the young guy sitting at the console listening to the dinner chatter
at Angeli on his headset.

'That's
my assistant, Todd Hoza,' McDonough said. 'You can trust him. His nickname is
Iwazaru.'

'If
only we spoke Japanese,' I said.

'You
know the three monkeys - see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil? They have
names. Iwazaru is the one who speaks no evil. Todd sees and hears a lot of
funky shit, but his lips are sealed.'

'Even
so, Gaff...'

'I
get it,' he said. 'This is hush-hush police business. Top secret.'

'Actually,
this is not a department call. Terry and I are flying under the radar, which make
it hush-hush personal business.'

'No
problem,' he said. He pulled the headset away from Hoza's right ear. 'Hey, desk
monkey, what's happening?'

'He's
starting with the grilled eggplant. She's having the roast beet salad.'

'Besides
that. Any friction? Any bickering? Any anything?'

'No
sir. They're happy as clams,' Hoza said. 'Which is what I would have ordered.'

'You'll
have to settle for pizza. Albano's is across the street. Bring us back a large
pie. You guys OK with mushrooms and extra cheese?'

'That's
fine,' Terry said. 'Just tell Iwazaru to speak no pepperoni.'

'All
right,' McDonough said, once Hoza was gone, it's just the three of us under the
Cone of Silence. You want to talk about that multiple homicide you just
cracked, right?'

'You
knew most of the principals,' I said.

'That
Sorensen dude always struck me as weird,' Gaffney said. 'Kinky weird, but not
shoot-you-upside-the- head weird.'

'We
have a few questions about Nora Bannister,' I said.

'Nice
woman. Damn shame.'

'Why
did she pay you ten grand?'

'She
didn't.'

'Gaff,
according to her financial records—'

'Mike,
I know the money came from Nora's checking account, but she wasn't the client.
Marisol Dominguez was.'

He
blindsided me. '
Marisol
was your client?'

'She
hired me to tail her old man.'

'You
were following Tony? Why?'

'The
usual. WDS.' He smiled, knowing I'd never figure it out. 'Wandering Dick
Syndrome. It's my bread and butter.'

'There's
an unfortunate metaphor,' Terry said. 'Question: if Marisol hired you, how come
Nora paid you?'

'Lot
of wives want to spy on their hubbies, but they don't want to get tripped up by
writing cheques from the joint checking account. So they funnel the money from
an outside source. In this case, Martin Sorensen worked it out with Marisol.
The way I understand it, she was going to pay Nora back from her profits in
their real estate deal. It happens a lot. Somebody hires me, somebody else
makes the payments. Whatever. If the cheque clears, the van rolls.'

'What
reason did Marisol give you for following her husband?'

'You
gotta understand that some of these angry babes don't always tell you the whole
truth and nothing but the truth when they hire you,' he said. 'But in her case
she told me he asked for a divorce. She had no idea why, so she hired me to
find out who he's banging.'

'And?'

'As
far as I could tell, nobody.'

'Nobody?'
Terry said. 'Maybe you just didn't catch him.'

'Hey,
Detective, I can smell sex from a hundred yards away.'

'There's
some more imagery I could do without,' Terry said. 'I wasn't saying you
couldn't catch him. I'm just saying Tony is smart. Maybe he saw you shadowing
him.'

'He
didn't. Ever. And I dogged that guy on and off for a full month. Tony Dominguez
wasn't banging anyone,' Gaffney said. 'Including his old lady. Which, between
you and me, was his loss. She was one hot tamale.'

'Do
you know the other two cops whose wives got murdered?' Terry asked. 'Drabyak
and Knoll.'

'No,'
Gaffney said. 'The only cops' wives I worked for were Marisol Dominguez and
yours. But I gave your old lady her money back, because I followed you for a
week, and I realised you couldn't find your dick with a flashlight and a pair
of tweezers.'

'All
right, all right,' Terry said. 'I take it back. You're the world's greatest
hound dog hunter.'

'I'm
glad you came around to my way of thinking,' Gaffney said. 'I'd bet my license
that Tony Dominguez wasn't having an affair. That said, he was up to a lot of
strange shit, but him being a cop, I could never tell if it was
personal-peculiar or just the kind of covert ops you gotta do on the job.'

'Strange
shit like what?'

'Like
meeting people on the sly. But who knows? It could be cop stuff. Like when you
go out to pump a CI, you don't sit down for coffee at Starbucks. You sneak off
and talk in private.'

'Can
you give us a specific?' I said.

'I
can do better than that. I can give you a pound of specifics.' He opened a
drawer in the console and pulled out a folder.

'This
is a log of all the places I tailed Tony to. It's an interesting collection of
venues,' he said, 'but none of them look like a romantic tryst.'

He
swivelled in his chair, tapped on a keyboard, and a printer started humming.
'I'll run you off a copy. If it helps you guys, good. I'm not one of those guys
who gets all hung up on that client-confidentiality shit. Especially since my
client is dead.'

He
reached into a drawer and came up with a handful of DVDs. 'And if you really
want to knock yourselves out, I've got video on Tony Dominguez.' He handed them
over to Terry. 'You watch him, Detective Biggs, and tell me if I missed any
secret girlfriends.'

'All
this plus pizza,' Terry said. 'We should come here more often.'

'Thanks,
Gaff,' I said. 'You've been a big help.'

He
smiled, and I could make out the wrinkles that were slowly encroaching on his
baby face.

'I
don't think so,' he said. 'I saw your reaction when I told you Marisol hired me
to tail Tony. You're trying to dot your i's and cross your t's for the
department, but for some reason you're off the clock tonight and flying solo.
Now I give you this new information, and instead of tying things up in a neat
little package, it opens up a whole new can of shit. But whether I helped or
not, it's always a pleasure to work with you guys. Plus, you know what they say
in the surveillance biz: one hand washes the other.'

Terry
pointed at the monitor. The guy Gaffney was tailing had dipped his finger in
his wine and touched it to the girlfriend's lips. We watched as she leant in
and sucked it off.

'And
seeing the kind of sleaze you have to deal with,' Terry said, 'I'll bet your
hands need a lot of washing.'

'Gaffney
is right,' Terry said, as we drove home.

'You
mean that crack about you not being able to find your dick with a flashlight
and a pair of tweezers?'

'Cute.
No, our boss is pacing the halls with a Case Closed stamp in his fist, and we
keep coming up with new information that says something stinks, keep it open.
First, Charlie tried to get over on us, now it looks like Tony was lying
through his teeth about being the happiest married man in the kingdom.'

'And
if you go back over your notes, I'm sure you'll find Nora lied, Marisol lied,
and Martin lied. That's what people do,' I said. 'They lie to cops. Didn't we
just lie to Kilcullen? Hell, I do it every time I tell you you're funny.'

'You're
right,' he said. 'Those DVDs of Gaffney following Tony will take us forever to
wade through. Why don't I just toss them out the window?'

'That's
one option,' I said.

'You
got a better one?'

'We
could run them over to Muller's house and get him started on looking at them.'

'Call
him, and tell him we're on the way.'

I
called Muller's home number. His wife, Annetta, answered.

'Robert's
not home,' she said. 'He's got a gig tonight. He's playing at Spazio on Ventura
Boulevard.'

When
he's not hacking computers or pretending to conjure up the dead, Muller plays
jazz piano. He's not just good, he's good enough to play at Spazio, one of the
top jazz supper clubs in the Valley, maybe even all of LA. As luck would have
it, it's in Sherman Oaks, about two minutes from Terry's house.

He
was finishing up a set when we got there. We told him what was going on, gave
him the DVDs, then ordered a couple of beers and sat through his next set. It
was a great way to unwind from the day.

We
got home at eleven. Marilyn and Diana were in the kitchen eating ice cream.
Actually, Marilyn was eating. Diana was keeping her company.

'You
OK?' Terry said.

Marilyn
waved a spoon at him. 'Nothing a half gallon of Rocky Road can't cure.'

'What's
bothering you - I mean, besides the obvious?'

'Do
you think Martin would have killed me next?'

'I
don't know, baby. I don't even know why Martin killed Marisol.'

'Maybe
she figured out that he killed the others,'

Marilyn
said. 'And once he realised she was on to him, he had to shut her up.'

'Her
husband is a cop,' Diana said. 'If she suspected Martin, she would have told
Tony.'