In the Night of the Heat (20 page)

The last time I'd seen Jeanine, she was in Mother's living room—about to jet off to sell her body to a sheik in Bahrain, even in her early fifties. A lifetime ago, in the seventies and early eighties, Jeanine was a television star with top billing on a top show. After cancellation and a popularity slide made her panic, she asked me to introduce her to Mother. She asked
me,
I always told myself. Since then, Jeanine's name had taken her further under Mother's care than anyone else's.

But one glance told me Jeanine wasn't doing business with Mother anymore. Like me, she'd finally broken away. She wore her freedom like a glow.

“They do breakfast all day,” Jeanine said. “My treat.”

Since my only breakfast had been a piece of toast, I opened my menu. I never get tired of steak and eggs. Mel's was bustling, of course, but the lunch rush was perfect cover. In a restaurant where you might run into Johnny Depp, nobody pays attention to the nobodies.

“Sounded like you've got a lot on your mind, darlin',” I said, trying to draw her out.

Suddenly nervous, Jeanine poured herself tea from her small metal decanter. “What are you after, Tennyson? Working for the scum-suckers now? The bottom-feeders?”

“You know me better than that.”

Tabloids. Years ago, while she was on her series, Jeanine had been a tabloid regular; diva blowups on the set, and a messy cliffhanger of a divorce involving her ex's affair with a major actress. But Jeanine sued the
Enquirer
and was awarded a large wad of cash because of a story claiming she was a drug addict, and after that the tabloids left her alone. I've seen Jeanine snort plenty of white powder, but addiction must be hard to prove in court.

Jeanine didn't look coked up now. She looked as sober as a nun.

“Well, you're not working for the police,” Jeanine said.

“Got that right.”

“Who, then?”

“Can't say. I'm doing a favor for a friend.”

“Then what happens?”

“That's up to my friend.”

Jeanine frowned, dissatisfied. “I don't know. I have things I want
to say…but I don't want to air it out for nothing. I want it to mean something.”

“It will.”

“You promise me that?” she said. “And you'll keep me out? Completely?”

“When have I ever betrayed your confidence, Jeanine?”

“Never, thank God.” Her eyes got a pained, faraway look. Remembering. I wanted to tell her she was wasting her time. We can't go backward.

“You remember that day?” she said. “When I saw you at her house?”

Her
was Mother, of course. In public, you never referred to Mother by name—or even by nickname. Mother trained us all well.

“I remember.”

Jeanine fidgeted. “That look on your face…”

I'd been mortified to see Jeanine at Mother's, but I'd tried to hide it. “What look?”

“You know what look—‘She's still doing
that
?' An actor can't fool another actor.”

Busted. “Sorry if I…”

“You really pissed me off, Tennyson. You made me feel like shit, as if you were so damn superior. But it was a wake-up call. That day, I swore to myself that the next time I ran into you, I would say, ‘By the way, I haven't done business with her in a long time.' And now that day is here. It's been almost eighteen months.”

The waiter brought our food fast. We paused just long enough for him to scurry away.

“Congratulations,” I said finally. “But you know I can't judge.”

“You were smart. You got out.”

“It took me some time, too, darlin'. It's hard to walk away.”

“Too hard,” Jeanine said quietly. I didn't doubt it: Jeanine would have been irresistible to men with memories of teenage lust. I'd had Jeanine's poster on my locker, too. Even dressed to be anonymous, she drew stares from men as they passed. Jeanine emitted vibrations.

“So…that look I gave you did it?”

“You were more like the second-to-last nail in the coffin.”

“What was the last?”

“Carlyle.”

I swallowed too fast, almost choking on my first bite of beef. “What about him?”

Jeanine leaned across her folded arms and lowered her voice so much that I had to point my good ear her way. Even so, it was hard to hear her above the restaurant's clamor.

“Two years ago. He called me.”

I forgot my food and started taking notes, keeping my pad in my lap so I wouldn't draw attention to us. “Around the time T.D.'s wife got killed?”

“The same night, Ten.”

My ear roared with my heart's burst of excitement. “What happened?”

Jeanine blinked. Her blue-gray eyes were an open door. “It was late, two in the morning. Money wasn't always involved with C, not after the first few times. Once in a while, he invited himself over. But it wasn't like him to call so late. And he had a rough side, but that night he practically threw me on the bed and power-fucked me. I was still sore the next day. In the middle of sex, he suddenly stopped and looked at me with an expression I'll never forget…”

“Like what?”

“He was all wide-eyed, keyed up on coke. He looked down at me and said, ‘There's no bigger turn-on than shooting someone in the head.'”

All other sound in the diner vanished. I could hear only Jeanine.

“You're sure?”

“How can I forget it? I hear his voice in my sleep. When the news came the next morning about Chantelle Jackson and Arturo Salvador, I almost had a heart attack.”

“Who'd you tell?”

“No one. Not even her.” Mother, she meant. “But she knew something happened. She knew something about Carlyle made me quit. If she'd asked, I would have told her.”

Mother's credo was the paragon of simplicity: Never discuss clients. Period.

Jeanine might have heard Carlyle Simms confess to killing T.D. Jackson's ex-wife, and she hadn't gone to the police. If she had, her prostitution history would have likely become public. Witnesses have plenty of reasons not to talk.

“What else did Carlyle say?”

“I don't remember everything. He was rambling, and it was late. He kept saying
we,
though. ‘Guess we'll see now.' ‘Guess we won't be worried about that shit.' I didn't understand until the next morning. On the news. I was sure he killed them.” Jeanine's voice rose with so much indignation that I shushed her, flashing a plastic smile to an older couple walking past us.

“Was Carlyle with you when the news came out?”

Jeanine shook her head. “He was only there about an hour. Maybe ninety minutes.”

The time of the killings had been estimated at 9
P.M.
, when both men had claimed to be at Carlyle's house watching
Monday Night Football
. Plenty of time for Carlyle to make it to Jeanine's house by two. Murder was a heavy cross for a friendship to bear.

“When's the last time you saw him?”

“That night. Two years ago.”

“Do you have a number for him? An address?” I might always have missed one.

She shook her head. “He called me. That was our arrangement.”

“Anything else?”

She shook her head. Her eyes looked unburdened, but they pleaded with me. “I was too afraid to speak up. Too selfish. Do something with it, Ten. Make it matter.”

“It already matters.”

Across the table, I held Jeanine's delicate hand and squeezed, both apology and solace. I wished I had never introduced her to Mother. I wished we had both known better. Jeanine clasped my hand inside both of hers, almost a prayer position.

“I'm reading scripts again, but I'm afraid to audition,” she said softly. “Or to call an agent, even. I haven't had real representation in a decade. I'm afraid…everyone knows.”

“Some of them will know,” I said. “Audition anyway. Call anyway.”

Jeanine nodded, holding my hand so tightly that she might have been clinging for her life.

DRIVING AWAY FROM MEL'S DINER,
I decided to take my own advice to Jeanine. Nobody, no matter how powerful, was going to force me out of Hollywood. I finally called Len and left a message for him to file a sexual harassment complaint against Lynda Jewell, and to pursue a SAG inquiry into my accident on the set of
Homeland
. I left him Melanie's name and number as my attorney. If Lynda Jewell wanted a fight, she had better gear up.

Round two.

Len's assistant, Giovanni, dutifully took my message, but I could hear him wincing at every other word. “Uhm…Lynda
Jewell
? I'm sure Len will want to, uh…talk to you about…”

“There's nothing to talk about,” I said. “Just tell him I want it done.”

If my prostitution history became public, it was meant to be. Dad was strong enough to handle it—but was Lynda Jewell? She might take me down, but I could take her down, too. All I had to do was find the evidence to prove my case, and I was pretty damned good at that.

There's no bigger turn-on than shooting someone in the head.
Jean
ine's words sapped away my celebratory buzz after my decision to go to war. People like Carlyle Simms don't understand the line between fantasy and reality, between rage and madness. There's a huge difference between wishing we could kill or hurt someone—and acting on it. Carlyle and T.D. had most likely crossed that line once. Had Carlyle crossed it again?

I pulled over at a meter to go through my notes and plan my next move. Ordinarily, I would have called Melanie by then—she hadn't called all morning—but I wanted to bring Melanie real news, not a story she would be eager to dismiss. To Melanie, Jeanine would just be a hooker; far from a reliable source about a man Melanie had known as a brother.

The list of Carlyle Simms's favorite hangouts I had collected from Melanie was long: sports bars, restaurants, and hotels from Palm Springs to Vegas. He had no permanent address of his own, so the man could be anywhere. I decided to start at Ground Zero, his girlfriend's house. Luck had been on my side so far.

Of course, finding Carlyle might not be all that lucky. As I drove toward the address near Leimert Park in the Crenshaw district, I wished I had my gun. Prudence told me to drive home and get it, but home was too far out of the way. So I'd play it cool, I decided. No heroics, no theatrics. Just a few questions. If I could, I would check the place out and see if I could slip in a sound-activated tape recorder on a future visit.

Don't break the law,
I heard my father's voice cautioning me. I didn't want to go down like Anthony Pellicano, the Hollywood private detective convicted for racketeering and a pile of other charges for snooping on celebrities for powerful clients, but I was pretty sure T.D. Jackson's case could take me past the line. I just couldn't let myself get comfortable with the idea.

The neighborhood was occupied by working folks; most of the
driveways were empty. The house where Carlyle reportedly spent most of his time wasn't remarkable on the exterior; a white cement-block house on a street of fairly identical homes except for paint color and level of care. The layout was odd, jutting into the backyard, so I was sure it was larger than the exterior made it look. It had neatly tended rosebushes and a full yard of mown grass, but it was nothing fancy. No wonder Carlyle preferred the Hotel Bel-Air or the Bellagio in Vegas.

I sat at the curb within view of the house for at least a half hour, watching to see if anyone would enter or leave. A single car sat in the driveway, a fairly new rose-colored Toyota Celica that struck me as a woman's car. A bumper sticker on the rear proclaimed the driver's pride at having an honor student at Hyde Park Elementary School. A UPS truck ambled past, driving slowly, but the street was quiet at one thirty in the afternoon. Most people were at work, and the kids weren't yet home from school.

The front door finally opened, and a curvy woman came rushing out with her keys ready. She was in a hurry. If she hadn't been carrying a fussy boy who looked three on one arm, pausing to strap him into his car seat, I wouldn't have made it to her before she drove off. I practically had to leap out of my car and jog across the street.

“Excuse me…” I said, and she looked startled. “Sorry. Is Carlyle around?”

I didn't call him by his nickname; she'd never seen me before, so it was pointless to pretend I was a friend. She slammed the rear car door quickly on the wailing toddler, as if to protect him from me. She might have been a fair-skinned black, or a Latina, or both. She looked about thirty, but she dressed from the Juniors section in low-cut Lycra and tight jeans with studded legs. Naturally, she was gorgeous.

Her green-brown eyes sparked at me, but her face seemed to sink inward. “It's not enough his best friend just died? Ya'll gotta harass
him too? Damn.
No,
he's not around. Just like he wasn't around yesterday. Just like he wasn't around this morning.”

I was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, but she'd pegged me as a cop. At least the police hadn't forgotten about Carlyle after his initial statement on Monday. Maybe they were trying harder than they seemed to be.

Melanie had told me that Carlyle's girlfriend was named Alma Grays. Alma wasn't happy about Carlyle's disappearance either. Her face was painted with too much green eye shadow to hide raw and puffy eyelids. She had been crying.

“Miss, I'm sorry…” I said, adhering to the rule never to call a woman under forty
ma'am.
“But I'm not police. I'm a friend of Melanie's. She wants to make sure he knows about T.D.'s funeral on Sunday.”

Her face softened, and I glanced inside the well-kept car at the toddler. He had a very fair complexion and wispy hair; probably not Carlyle's son, at a glance anyway. Too bad. It was one thing to ditch your girlfriend—another thing to ditch your child.

“I feel for Mel, but she's just as bad,” Alma said. “I don't
know
where he's at. Tell her it's a real bitch for me, too. Three days, and he hasn't called to say if he's dead or alive or what.”

“I'd sure like to help you find him, if you'd let me. She's really worried, too.”

Alma peered at me, trying to discern my intentions. My face was all gentle sincerity.

“Look, I'm in a hurry,” she said. “I was on my way out…”

“Sure, yeah,” I said, rushing to open her driver's side door for her. “I won't keep you. You must feel like the world's come crashing down.”

“Welcome to my life,” she muttered, climbing into the car.

“Does Carlyle take off like this a lot?” It was a risky question, but I was out of time.

“Only lately,” she said. “Everything's…too much. Ever since T.D.'s problem, it's just one hassle after another. And after all that—it ends like
this
?” She shook her head, newly stunned by T.D.'s death. “Yeah, no wonder he's freaked out. C and all the rest of them are probably out drinking themselves to death. Their hero's gone.” She gave a heavy sigh.

I took another chance: “T.D. was a great ballplayer, and God rest his soul—but the brother was high-maintenance.”

Alma laughed ruefully. “That's the damn truth. When it's just me and C and my kids…it's perfect. But if T.D….” she paused, “…
when
T.D.
was
in the mix…nothing but drama. Truly. The phone would ring, and C would be out the door. ‘See you Monday,' and next thing I know, he's in Vegas or New York or somewhere, like they're all still kids. God bless T.D., like you said, but I won't miss the drama. Maybe this is the last time. Maybe C just has to get over it.” She sounded so hopeful, I felt sorry for her.

I could hardly bite back the words:
Was Carlyle really here with you the night T.D. died?
“I guess he was out late with T.D. Sunday…” I ventured instead.

Alma's eyes glazed over. Dead end. The wailing toddler was suddenly muted as she slammed her car door shut.

I tapped on her window. “Will you ask him to call Mel if you hear from him?”

After a baleful look, Alma slid the key into the ignition and cranked her car to life. Her window slid down. “Carlyle's a grown-ass man,” she said. “He'll call her when he's ready.”

Alma didn't pull out right away. She sat there idling, and I realized she didn't want me snooping at her house. She was waiting for me to
leave first. So, I walked down the street to my car. She still waited, so I pulled away first, too. I gave her a honk and a wave as I drove past.

Alma Grays didn't wave back. In my rearview mirror, I never saw her pull away.

I had learned something important about Alma Grays: She might or might not be telling the truth about Carlyle's alibi on Sunday, but she would lie for him. Her eyes had told me.

So, I waited around the corner, hoping I would see her drive past. After thirty seconds, she did. My hands tightened on the steering wheel; instinct told me to follow her. Instead, I drove back to the house, where the driveway was empty. I stared at the tempting house, scoping up and down the street. The longer I sat, the faster my heart raced. I recognized the signs: I might be about to do something dangerous. Or outright stupid. I was itching to let myself in.

When my cell phone rang, I drove off with a squeal of rubber. Saved by the bell.

I picked up without checking caller ID, expecting Len or Melanie. Instead, it was a nasal male voice I didn't know. “I'm looking for…Tennyson Hardwick?”

“You got him.”

“I just got an email from April Forrest.” He said that as if it identified him. When I didn't answer, he went on: “Casey Burnside? I write for the
Times.
She said you have some questions about Donald Hankins…?”

Even an ocean away, April had my back. I had left a voicemail for Casey Burnside as soon as I got off the phone with April, but apparently he'd checked his email first.

I took a breath, trying to clear my head. My heart was still pumping from the idea of breaking into Alma Grays's house. My thoughts were so full of Carlyle Simms, I could hardly remember what I'd
wanted to ask about Donald Hankins. I almost ran the light on Crenshaw.

“If you have a few minutes later, maybe I can drive by,” I said.

“I'm in D.C., and I have five minutes,” he said. “Right now. On the phone.”

As it turned out, that was plenty. In more ways than one, his call came right on time.

 

Burnside asked me polite questions to make sure I wasn't a competing journalist. When I told him I was just doing a favor for a friend, he seemed amused, but it got him talking. I parked at a gas station and took notes, my fingers racing to keep up with him.

“I was new on staff when the allegations came up in '99, and I've never been happy about walking away from that story. My editors said I needed more sourcing, since there were no police records to back up the allegations. There was something to it—I just didn't have the contacts yet to bring it home. Once Hankins announces his governor's run, it might start bubbling up again. These stories usually do. That's politics.

“So here's the way I remember it: There was a real estate deal, a zoning thing. Hankins is hot to push it through, probably a sweetheart deal, but there's opposition from one of these neighborhood groups. Not a bunch of housewives, mind you—most of these people were lawyers. Very savvy. Hankins is used to bulldozing the council, and he's frustrated. I have the minutes from one of the meetings, and Hankins basically called one of these guys an asshole, just not in so many words. A real temper. Anybody could see he was losing his composure.

“Then one of these opposing lawyers ends up at Forest Lawn after his car drives off a ravine out in Hollywood Hills. That takes all the wind out of the opposition's sails, and the zoning goes through a month later, hardly a peep. Then I get a call from the dead guy's wife. She's been looking into the accident, and she claims she's got a guy who can prove there was tampering with the brakes. She'd also been doing some digging on Hankins, and she pulled together a good little case. Circumstantial, but a case. As it turns out, Hankins and the developer's CEO had done business before. Campaign contributions, consulting fees, the whole nine. Different company, five years before, so there were no ethics violations screaming. Still…it doesn't take a leap to see the potential for financial benefits to Hankins after the zoning change went through.”

“There's a big difference between being a crook and being a killer,” I said. “What else did the dead guy's wife have to go on?”

Burnside sounded slightly annoyed. “Don't get ahead of me: I didn't say Hankins got under the car and messed with the brakes himself. But the wife claimed there was a strong-arm guy who paid her husband a visit two weeks before he died, in the parking lot of his office. He told his wife about it, and she remembered after the accident. An African-American.”

“Aren't they always?” I was surprised to hear myself say it aloud. I thought I'd kept that sarcastic thought in my head.

“Hey, I'm just telling you what he told me. The guy was built like a house, she said. It only resonated with me because there'd been a big guy arrested on a trespassing charge two years before that—I think his name was Ronald. Roland. I can't say off the top of my head. A cop told me, and I wrote it down. It was another one of these contentious situations with Hankins, a property dispute in Hollywood, and the other party thought Ronald or Roland had been sent by Hankins to intimidate him. The charges were dropped, so there was nothing in
the police files. Believe me, I checked. But I got the feeling there was something to it.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “The cop I called seemed to know more than he let on. He wanted to talk, but he asked his supervisor first, and I never heard from him again.” I wondered if that supervisor had been my father. Internal politics might have forced Dad to silence his officer.