Guilt (26 page)

“Start surveillance on the place?” Out came his pad. “You remember the address?”

“No, but it’s easy to find. Coldwater north, about a mile past Mulholland on the west side of the road there’s an unmarked private road that leads up to a gate.”

“Your research included driving up there?”

“I’m an empiricist.”

“Some rep called you, huh? Wouldn’t it be something if it was Wedd?”

“It would,” I said.

“You’ve already thought about that.”

I wished him well, got out of the car.

He said, “Hooray for Hollywood.” Roared away.

M
y research on Premadonny had involved more than I’d let on to Milo.

After the call from the stars’ rep, I’d picked among millions of Web citations. Bios composed early in their careers aired bins of dirty laundry. Everything subsequent was P.R. pap programmed as carefully as a laugh track.

Clips from their films left no question about their physical perfection. A Renaissance artist would’ve submitted to indignity, if not outright torture, in order to paint them.

Prema Moon came across as a competent, occasionally impressive performer who could amplify or lower her sexuality as if equipped with an erotic rheostat. The only mention she made of her children was on a press release announcing her “hiatus from film work in order to concentrate on being a full-time mom.” Donny Rader lent his support to that move, calling his wife “the ultimate earth mother, protective as a mama lion.”

Rader’s acting was surprisingly one-note. His default mannerisms
were the slow, theatrical lowering of hooded eyes and the tendency to slur his words.

The man who’d requested the appointment had begun talking in a choppy, agitated delivery but had shifted quickly to mumbly diction.

I replayed a few of Rader’s clips, heard the same elisions, over and over. If not identical to the man on the phone, awfully close.

Had it been a worried father phoning me about his child but choosing to hide that fact? Because A-list celebs weren’t supposed to do things for themselves?

Or was there a deeper motive for the deception?

Whoever the “representative” was, he’d skated away from naming the child in question, assuring me I’d find out soon enough then hanging up. His tension had been notable, and that could mean an especially worrisome problem.

I’d keyworded
premadonny children
.

Millions of hits on the parents but almost nothing on the kids.

An image search pulled up a solitary photo gone viral: a shot taken a few months before in New York of Prema and her kids attending a Broadway Disney musical.

Red-velvet, gilt-molded walls in the background supported the caption’s assertion that the group had been photographed in the theater lobby. But the space was otherwise unpopulated, which was odd for an SRO hit, and the lighting was dim but for a crisp, klieg-like beam focused on the subjects. Maybe Prema and her brood had been let in early. Or they’d arrived on a Dark Monday in order to be posed as carefully as a Velázquez royal sitting.

I studied the shot. Prema Moon, wearing a conservative, dark pantsuit that set off cascades of golden hair, stood behind the four kids. The lighting was gracious to her heart-shaped face and her perfect chin and her beyond-perfect cheekbones.

The oldest child, a boy of ten or eleven, had fine features and ebony skin that evoked Somalia or Ethiopia. A doll-like Asian girl around eight and a grave Asian boy slightly younger flanked a platinum-haired,
pouting toddler with cherubic chubby cheeks and dimpled knuckles.

All of them were dressed in matching white shirts and dark pants, as uniformly clad as parochial school students. No names provided, just “Prema and her pretty quartet.”

“Pretty” was an understatement; each child was gorgeous. All but the youngest smiled woodenly. The collective posture, again excepting the toddler, was military-rigid.

Prema graced the photographer with the faintest smile—just enough parting of moist, full lips to imply the theoretical possibility of mirth. Her eyes refused to go along; laser-intense, they aimed at some distant focal point.

No physical contact between her and her progeny; her arms remained pressed to her sides.

I searched the kids’ faces looking for anything that might tell me whom I was scheduled to see. Not much of anything emotion-wise, which in kids meant plenty was going on.

Intrigued about what I’d encounter once I got behind the gates of the compound, I logged off.

A day or two after the cancellation, I remained curious. Then my calendar booked up the way it usually does and I was concentrating on murder victims and patients who actually showed up.

Now, nearly two years later, I drove home, curiosity re-ignited.

This time the computer was a bit more cooperative and I found a couple of hundred references to the children, including their names.

Kion, thirteen.

Kembara, eleven.

Kyle-Jacques, eight.

Kristina, four.

But not a single image. The theater-lobby shot had been expunged.

A closer reading of the citations proved disappointing. All of them discussed how zealously Premadonny protected their progeny’s privacy. A few snarky types bemoaned the couple’s “CIA approach to parenting,”
but most of the chatterers and bloggers and gurus of gossip were supportive of the attempt to prevent the children from becoming “grist for the paparazzi mill.”

Maybe so, but there was another reason for isolating children.

Milo was concentrating on Melvin Jaron Wedd’s link to the compound on Mulholland Drive. My mind was going in a completely different direction.

I made some coffee, added foamed milk and cinnamon, brought a mugful to Robin’s studio.

She put down her chisel and smiled. “This is becoming a regular thing.”

Blanche’s little flat nose quivered as she inhaled the aroma. I fetched her a bacon-bone from the box Robin keeps at hand. She took the treat from my fingers with her usual delicacy, trotted over to a corner to nosh in peace. Robin sipped and said, “You even girlied it up for me, what a good boyfriend.”

“Least I can do.”

“You owe me for something?”

“Cosmically, I owe you a ton. When you call Brent Dorf a second time, my gratitude will blossom further. Ask if I can talk to him in person about Premadonny. If he has nothing to offer, maybe he can refer me to someone who does.”

“You actually suspect those two of something?”

“It hasn’t gotten that far, but a murder victim worked for them and maybe so did a prime suspect. Toss in Qeesha D’Embo, who could be victim or suspect, and it’s well beyond interesting.”

“Weird goings-on behind the gates,” she said. “Maybe they just hired the wrong people.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but all of this has stirred up something that happened a couple of years ago.”

I told her about the canceled referral, my suspicion that Donny Rader had tried to hide his identity. “Back then my gut told me there was a serious problem with the family. Now I’m wondering if that meant a child disturbed enough to hurt a baby.”

She put her cup down. “That’s horrible.”

“Horrible and worth covering up. Prema Moon gave up her career and recast herself as a devoted, protective mother. Both of them have. Can you imagine the repercussions if it turned out they’d raised a murderous child? Even if the baby’s death was accidental—kids horsing around, something unfortunate happened—that kind of disclosure would be disastrous. Any mother would have good reason to go to the cops. But Qeesha D’Embo was no stranger to deceit and working the angles, so she might’ve put a serious squeeze on. We know she had conflict with Wedd, assumed it was a romantic issue. But Wedd could’ve been Premadonny’s paymaster, so maybe the problem between them was business.”

“She wanted more, he said no, she’s dead, too.”

Her nails pinged the coffee mug.

I said, “Sorry to pollute your day.”

“I’m fine—the car scam, Alex. Why would Premadonny stoop to insurance fraud?”

“That could’ve been Wedd improvising so he could pocket the payoff money.”

“Or he really is the only bad guy and they had the misfortune of hiring him. What exactly does he do for them?”

“Don’t know, the agency’s clammed up.”

“A murderous child,” she said. “How old are the kids?”

“Four, eight, eleven, thirteen.”

“So the oldest,” she said.

“Most likely.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Nothing, they’ve all been swept out of sight, I’m talking utter invisibility. There are good reasons for keeping your kids out of the public eye. But there are also bad ones.”

“Protecting a homicidal thirteen-year-old.”

“Protecting the alternative universe that created a homicidal
thirteen-year-old. Rob, when I come across unusually secretive, isolated families, there’s almost always major pathology at play. The most common factor is abuse of power—a cult-like situation. Sometimes that stops at eccentricity. Sometimes it leads to really bad things.”

She drank more coffee, placed the mug on her desk. “Okay, I’ll call Brent right now.”

“Thanks, babe. Let him know I need him because he’s dialed in.”

“Brent’s all about being Mr. Inside, that’s the perfect approach.” She smiled. “But of course you knew that.”

B
rent Dorf had just left for New York on business. His assistant claimed a return date hadn’t been set but promised to deliver the message.

Robin said, “Brent’ll be interested in what I have for him, I’m counting on you, luv.”

She hung up.

I said, “Luv?”

“Charles is British and gay but he likes flirting with girls. Brent’s gay, too, for that matter. But he has absolutely
no
interest in girls.”

She laughed. “I can just imagine him and Milo taking lunch at the Grill on the Alley.”

“They allow polyester?”

“On alternate Tuesdays.”

“We haven’t been there in a long time.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever been there.”

“There’s another reason to go,” I said. “Tonight sound good?”

“You’re in the mood?”

“For time with you, always.”

“Meaning you’re tired of thinking.”

I told her that’s not what I meant at all and that I loved her and went back to my office.

Dinner was a two-hour respite and when we left the Grill shortly after ten p.m., I felt loose and content. The night air was clean and warm, an invitation to walk. Rodeo Drive’s around the corner from the restaurant and once the tourists go to bed, it’s a peaceful stroll. Robin held my arm as we strolled past windows showcasing stuff no one could afford. We made it home by eleven.

Making love was a great next step in the quest for distraction but when you’re compulsive and addicted to the bad stuff, you inevitably return to that dark place. I lay next to Robin as she slept peacefully, unanswerable questions eddying in my head.

The following morning, as she showered, I took Blanche outside for her a.m. toilette and retrieved the paper from the driveway. Leafing through, I came across Kelly LeMasters’s follow-up story on the park murders.

Page 10, maybe five hundred words, but she’d scored above-the-crease placement.

Milo had lured her with the promise of something juicy but nothing close to that appeared in the article, leaving LeMasters to play with human-interest filler: the mystery trajectory that had taken Adriana Betts from church-girl to murder victim, the impact of two Cheviot Hills murders upon affluent citizens.

Adriana’s sister, Helene, and the Reverend Goleman were quoted but their comments were no more revelatory than their station-house interviews. The sad mystery of a “strewn infant skeleton” was noted as was the “eerie parallel” to the bones found under Matt and Holly Ruche’s cedar tree. Nothing about the park baby’s racial makeup or parentage.

Milo’s name didn’t come up until the final paragraph, where he was described as “a veteran homicide detective left baffled.” The piece ended with an “anyone with information” message and his landline.

I figured he’d be busy all morning fielding leads, was surprised when he phoned at nine.

“Taking a break from the tipsters?”

“Got Moe and Sean on that, I need to roll. Just got a call from Floyd Banfer, Jack Weathers’s lawyer. He wants to meet, an hour and a half, B.H. parkway, corner Rexford.”

“Right near City Hall.”

“Banfer’s serving papers at BHPD, said he’d walk over.”

“He’s suing the police?”

“Some sort of workers’ comp deal on behalf of a fired officer. Nothing, he assured me, that I’d find objectionable.”

“What’s on his mind?”

“He wouldn’t say but he’s definitely antsy, Alex. I like that in attorneys. Makes them seem almost human.”

Milo and I arrived at ten twenty, found a bench on the north side of the parkway with a clear view of the Beverly Hills government complex. The original city hall is a thirties Spanish Renaissance masterpiece. The civic center complex built fifty years later tried to work deco and contemporary into the mix and ended up looking tacked on. A degraded granite path, Chinese elms, and lawn separated us from Santa Monica Boulevard. Traffic howled in both directions. An ancient man accompanied by a husky attendant inched a walker past us. A trio of Persian women in Fila tracksuits bounced by chatting in Farsi. A young woman who could have been a Victoria’s Secret model if the company raised its standards raced past all of them looking miserable.

Directly in front of us was a six-foot-by-ten-foot mound of lumpy chrome-plate.

Milo said, “What the hell is that?”

“Public art.”

“Looks like a jumbo jet had digestive problems.”

At ten twenty-six Floyd Banfer exited the police station, crossed the street, and headed toward us. When he arrived, he was flushed and
smiling, a compact man with a peanut-shaped head, bright blue eyes, and the kind of white stubble that Milo calls a “terrorist beard.”

“Punctual,” he boomed. “Nice to be dealing with professionals.” Compact man with an expansive bass voice.