Last Man's Head (19 page)

FORTY-ONE

In spite of
everything else that was going on, Leroy laughed. So Alexandra was now Marisol. He would take book that neither was her real name. He clicked on the Contact button, and typed in a brief message that he liked her picture and was she free later today. Sent the message and sat back.

And waited.

He could hear the sounds of laughter coming from the bar outside. He looked at the screen. No reply.

The door opened and Kenny came in with a cup. ‘Thought you could use some more coffee, Sam,’ he said.

‘My hero, ‘said Leroy, gratefully taking the cup.

‘Any food?’ Kenny asked.

‘No. Coffee’s good for me, thanks.’

Kenny left Leroy alone again. Still no reply. Leroy shrugged: maybe she was with a client. He called up the page for the
Los Angeles Times
, read a few pages, then searched for the
Santa Monica Observer
. He read some of that, until the monitor bleeped. Returning to the site, he saw a pop up announcing a message for him. He clicked on there and saw that Alexandra/Marisol  had replied. She was so thrilled to hear from him, and was he free at six o’clock today?  She could meet him at either The Groves Overlook, just off Mulholland Drive, or, if he preferred a more intimate meeting, she had a luxury apartment not far. He thought her luxury apartment might be preferable to an outdoor location, so replied that he would prefer her apartment. Once he sent his reply, he picked up the coffee, and had two mouthfuls before her reply came through. She would meet him in the parking lot at Denny’s on Sepulveda and Burbank.

He laughed. Firstly, he doubted if Denny’s knew that their parking lot was being used in this way; secondly, how could she think here was not far from the overlook?  He checked the two locations on Google maps: the 405 Freeway passed by both locations.  Only around five miles, but at that time of day, the time taken to make the five mile journey could be anybody’s guess. He arranged to meet her at six in the parking lot.

He arrived at the location just after five thirty. It was still daylight, and would be so for at least an hour and a half. The last thing he wanted was for her to recognise him and run again. He walked into Denny’s, showed his identification to one of the servers, and took a seat in the window, but where he could have a good view of the parking lot.

Five minutes before six, he recognised the battered, undercoated Ford pull in, and reverse into a space. He saw Alexandra/Marisol climb out. She looked around, then went to stand by one of the small conifer trees which stood either side of the pathway to the door, and lit a cigarette.

Leroy stood up, thanked the server as he walked past her, and went outside to meet the hooker. ‘Marisol?’ he asked.

She turned round and smiled at him. ‘Sure is, hun. You didn’t give me your name before.’

‘Sam.’

‘Nice to meet you, Sam. Hey, have I met you before. Your face seems kind of familiar.’

Leroy said nothing. Then the penny dropped.

‘You’re that fucking cop, aren’t you. I thought I -’

Leroy grabbed her by the arm and led her to his car. A couple with two young children were coming up the path. The man looked at Marisol, a slightly worried look on his face. Leroy showed him his badge, and let the family go inside. ‘Shut up, and get in my car,’ he snapped.

‘Get your hands off me, you son of a bitch,’ Marisol protested as Leroy bundled her into his car.

‘I told you: shut your mouth,’ he spat back, as he climbed in next to her. ‘Now, your choice: do you want me to cuff you, or are you going to talk to me like a normal person?’

She calmed down, looking out of the windshield, a look of resignation on her face. ‘What you want to know this time?’

‘The guy I asked about before: Guy Robbins.’

‘Yeah? What about him?’

‘You told me he paid a hundred for a blow job. Is that right?’

‘Guess so. If that’s what I said.’

‘Answer the question. You met him at the overlook, and that’s all that happened?’

‘For a hundred bucks, that’s all that’s going to happen.’

‘No drugs?’

She turned round in her seat and looked at him. This was the first time he had been able to look at her close up. He hadn’t realised how young she looked - around twenty, maybe. Behind the thick make-up and tired, world-weary expression on her face, her eyes were a vivid blue. ‘I told you. No drugs, no nothing. We arranged to meet there. He was very nervous, kept looking out to the main street. I told him how much I charged and for what. He said he only had a hundred bucks on him, so I told him what he’d get for that.’

‘Which was?’

‘Which was a hand job
or some oral. His choice. He chose oral. He only lasted a couple of minutes, then he paid me.’

‘Then?’

‘Then I got back into my car, and left.’

‘Left him at the overlook.’

‘Yeah. Why, was I expected to take him home?’

‘Do you get much work from that site?’ Leroy asked. ‘I mean, a hundred can get a guy much more other places.’

‘Honey, I’m high class.’

‘Oh yes, I forgot; you have a luxury apartment. Where’s that?’

She shook her head and pointed down Sepulveda Boulevard. ‘Motel room two blocks down.’

‘Hm. Very high class.’

‘Whatever. Look, are we going to be long? If this is all you want, I can be earning some cash somewhere else.’

Leroy reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills. He passed them to her, and she flicked through them greedily.

‘There’s two hundred here! Man, I can give you a really good time now!’

‘Take the night off. On me.’

‘Night off? I don’t get it. Don’t you even want to -?’

‘No, I don’t. Go home, wash all that shit off your face and be… How old are you anyway?’

‘Nineteen. Why?’

‘Just wondered. And is your name Marisol? Or is it Alexandra?’

‘It’s Alexandra. Why?’

‘Why did you call yourself Marisol on the site? And change the picture?’

She began to get defensive. ‘Just decided to. Okay? Is there a law against that?’

‘Not against changing your picture or name, no.’

She grabbed the door handle. ‘Anything else you want, pig?’

‘Just one more question. When we spoke last, once we’d done, you went to a house off
Mulholland Drive.’

‘Y-yes,’ she said slowly, suspiciously. ‘You followed me?’

‘Do you know who owns that house?’

‘Don’t know anything about no house,’ she snapped. She pulled open the car door and made to run off. However, the high heels she was wearing prevented her from running too fast, so Leroy was easily able to leap out of his door and chase after her. As she ran through the bushes which separated the lot from the street, one of her heels broke and she tumbled to the ground. Leroy caught up with her, and leaned over her to help her get up. He could not have seen the rock she had picked up while both palms were on the ground: she swung round to her left, holding the rock with her right hand, and caught Leroy on his left temple. With a cry, he fell to the ground, clutching the side of his head. With one broken heel, she staggered out on to the sidewalk, then into the street. Into the rush hour traffic.

As he got up, dazed, Leroy heard a horn blare, a scream, a dull thud, then a screech of brakes. As he got through the bushes and into the street, a small crowd had already gathered around. The sound he had heard was of a bus braking. Behind the front wheel of the bus a trickle of blood was running into the gutter.

The bus doors hissed open and the driver leapt out, hysterical. ‘I couldn’t stop!’ he cried. ‘I couldn’t stop! She ran right in front!’

Leroy crouched down in front of the bus. The fender was dented and he could make out a shape lying still underneath the bus. He turned, looked around and noticed something lying on its side in the road.

A shoe, its heel broken.

FORTY-TWO

Sam Leroy perched
himself on the edge of the table. It was eight fifteen, and he was in the emergency room of the Ronald Reagan Medical Center. The doctor attending to him had just left the room, saying he needed a couple of stitches, and she would be back shortly. As he sat alone in the room, with its white floor and walls, Spartan furnishings and decorations, he watched the silhouetted figures pass the shaded windows. He put his hand up to the wound on his temple and winced as he ran his fingertips across the wound. Although the brick with which Marisol had hit him was not particularly large, it had a jagged edge on one side, and it was with this side that she caused a two inch wound.

It needed a couple of stitches, Dr Lee had said. Not something Leroy was looking forward to. He had undergone numerous such repairs over the years, but having stitches always seemed to be something he dreaded.

Dr Lee returned to the room. She was a petite Chinese woman in her early thirties, and no more than five feet tall. Her black hair was cut into a neat bob. ‘Ready for your stitches, Detective?’ she asked, with more than a hint of amusement at his dread of the needle.

‘Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess, Doctor,’ Leroy replied.

‘Well, you’ll be relieved to know the wound’s not big enough to require conventional stitching,’ Dr Lee said, unwrapping a plastic container. ‘I’m only going to need some steri-strips this time, so I guess you’ve gotten away with it today. Hold still now.’

‘That’s some good news, at least.’ Leroy inclined his head slightly to the right, while the doctor applied four strips, one along the length of the wound, and three across, at each and in the centre

‘They will need to stay in place for five to seven days,’ Dr Lee said as she applied the strips, ‘and try not to get them too wet.’

‘Not too wet?’

‘A shower should be okay, provided you minimise how much water touches them, but don’t go swimming with them on. Do you own a shower cap?’

Leroy looked at her, saying nothing.

‘I’ll take that as a no. So just make sure they don’t get too wet.’

‘Five to seven days? How will I know?’

‘You’ll know. When the wound clearly hasn’t bled for a few days. Check it daily, but don’t take them off prematurely. They will come off of their own accord after seven days.’

‘That’s great. Thanks, Doc. I just -’

The door opened and in walked Lieutenant Perez. ‘Mind if I come in, Doctor?’

Dr Lee looked over her shoulder. ‘Sure. I’m done here.  There you go, Detective. Remember: keep the steri-strips dry.’

Leroy nodded and felt the strips. ‘Thanks, Doc. I will.’ He gave here an awkward smile as she packed up her instruments and left.

Perez watched as she left the room and closed the door behind her. ‘So, you want to tell me what’s going on?’ he asked.

Leroy touched his temple again and winced. ‘I got hit on the head.’

‘I know that.’ Perez stepped over and took a closer look. ‘It hurt?’

‘A bit, yes.’

‘Good.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.’

Leroy said nothing.

‘It wouldn’t have anything to do with that dead hooker down the hall, would it? The one that got hit by a 206 bus?’

‘How did you know to come here?’

‘I overheard the call come in, and thought, “This has got Sam Leroy written all over it.”’

Leroy said nothing. Perez leaned up against the opposite wall and folded his arms. ‘So: you going to tell me?’

‘I managed to get back in touch with one of the hookers Liza Domingo and I saw the other day. It was the one we followed back to the house off Mulholland.’

Perez raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Go on. How did you get in touch with her?’

‘Through the same dating website we used the other day. The same one Guy Robbins used. Before he showed up behind Hollywood Boulevard.’

‘Have you spoken to Bill Farmer about it? After all, it was his case, wasn’t it?’

‘No. I figured, the cases are officially closed. Farmer’s a company man, so he will just accept and move on.’

‘Unlike you.’

‘Lieutenant, they must be -’

‘Connected? Don’t want to know. Cases closed. You are on vacation. So what did this hooker tell you?’

‘Well, firstly, I had trouble picking up on her picture. Her thumbnail on the website was different.’

‘Different?’

‘The picture was different. Same face, obviously – though made up differently, and her hair was styled differently. Same colour – I think. And she was under a different name. Not Alexandra, but Marisol.’

‘So what?’

‘Don’t you think it strange that the day after she gets questioned by the police, she changes her picture and name?’

Perez thought a moment. ‘No, not really. She’s - was – a hooker after all. Probably changed it every day or so. Like a box of cereal changes its design, or a company changes its logo. Rebranding, they call it.’

Leroy shrugged.

‘So,’ asked Perez, ‘when you spoke to her, what did you discuss?’

‘It was only a short conversation.’

‘Before she made you, you mean?’

‘Yeah. Just tried to give me the same story as before, until…’

‘Until?’

‘Until I asked her about the house. That’s when she tried to get away. Said she knew nothing about any house, was out of the car like a bat out of hell, and ran across the parking lot.’

‘Denny’s?’

‘Yeah. She was wearing stilettos and one broke as she was running. She was making for a gap in that row of bushes which separates the lot from the sidewalk. She fell, hit the dirt with both hands. Must have found the stone she did this with.’ He touched his temple again, and winced.

Perez looked around. ‘Jesus, Sam: I thought if you went on vacation, things would have gotten quieter. But it seems…’ He finished mid-sentence.

‘So now what?’ asked Leroy.

‘Now what?’ Perez repeated, standing up from the wall. Well, the hooker’s not going anywhere.  Clearly an 11-79. There’ll be an inquest, I expect, and let’s hope you’re not called to explain why you were chasing her out of some bushes. As for you: I believe I said you were on vacation.’ He took three steps forward so he was a foot away from Leroy. ‘Look,’ he went on, ‘let’s not pussy around. You know why I put you on vacation; I know what you’re going to do with your vacation time. So all I can say is: if you want to waste your time, go ahead. But take care: anything you do is in the capacity of a private citizen.
Entender
?’

Leroy nodded and stood up.

‘So where are you going now?’ asked Perez.

‘I’m going home, to take a long bath, catch up with some sleep.’

‘First bit of sense I’ve heard from you all day,’ said Perez, turning to leave. ‘See you in a week.’

‘See you,’ Leroy replied. Then, after Perez had left, ‘And it wasn’t the 206.’

He looked at the door, as if his eyes were still on the lieutenant’s back.

‘And I’m not wasting my time,’ he added.