Private L.A. (21 page)

“Okay, we’re not going there,” I replied, hands up in instant surrender.

“No, we’re not, and let me be the first to tell you, I still don’t have squat on ESH Ltd. It’s a shell company, of course, registered in the Caymans, but all I’m coming up with is a filing agent in George Town, and he’s not answering his phone or returning my calls.”

I thought about Christine Townsend’s promise to look into the company. How long would that take?

“We have anyone on retainer in the Caribbean?”

“I’d be glad to pop over to Grand Cayman in the jet.”

“You’re too valuable here,” I said.

She pouted.

“What can I say? It’s the downside of being supercompetent.”

Mo-bot bit viciously into the last of her Krispy Kreme, gave her computer an order, scanned the screen, swallowed, said, “Carlos San Cielo, Puerto Rico.”

“I remember him, good guy,” I said. “Contact him. Have him fly in there, pay Mr. Registered Agent a visit in person, tell him he represents someone with deep pockets who wishes to form, say, a dozen companies there, but in return, we need a little bit of information about ESH Ltd.”

She looked at me as if she’d caught me with my hand in the Krispy Kreme bag. “But
you
have no intention of forming companies in the Caymans.”

“Your point?” I asked.

Before Maureen could reply, Sci entered the lab, displayed a white iPhone in a plastic evidence sleeve, said, “It’s Malia Harlow’s. Last night it occurred to me that it was the only device with a memory left inside the Harlow house except those doctored security tapes.”

“Okay?” I said.

“I got it going at home and had a look,” Kloppenberg said, rolling his eyes at Mo-bot. “Some of the texts regarding Justin Bieber were a bit over the top.”

“Texts regarding Justin can never be over the top,” Mo-bot shot back. She had a picture of the teen crooner taped to the side of her computer along with a dozen other pop celebrities.

I frowned, checked my watch, and said, “Did you find anything? If not, I’m out of here. I’ve got a conference call with Peter Knight in the London office. He’s up to his waist in some sex scandal that’s breaking in Parliament.”

“Nothing as tawdry as that on Malia’s phone,” Sci said. “And nothing that answers any questions.”

“Too bad,” I said, heading toward the door.

“But I found something that raises questions,” he said, stopping me.

From his breast pocket, Kloppenberg removed a SIM card in a smaller evidence sleeve, donned latex gloves, got it out, and inserted it into a reader attached to one of the lab computers. A second later, a picture popped up on the screen. The photo was date-stamped September 24, roughly a month prior, and showed a group shot that must have been taken on a location set for
Saigon Falls
, with jungle vegetation and a muddy river visible in the background, perhaps the Mekong.

Thom Harlow was in the center of the picture, wearing Vietnam-era US Army fatigues, looking ruggedly handsome and yet sincere, sympathetic, and lovable—traits that had made him a bankable box-office star. Thom’s arm was draped lazily around his wife’s shoulder. Jennifer’s dark hair was pulled back tight, revealing the remarkable bone structure of her face. She wore a white short-sleeved blouse, khaki shorts, and aviator sunglasses. A vintage Nikon camera hung off one shoulder. Her pose, her entire look, said smart, adventurous, and yet oozed mystery and sexuality, traits that had made her an even more bankable star than her husband.

The children sat at their feet, arms around their knees. Malia and Jin were smiling. Miguel was looking off to his right somewhere. Cynthia Maines was there too, standing slightly to the left of the family, carrying a clipboard. Camilla Bronson and Terry Graves were there as well. My attention, however, swung to and held on the only other person in the picture.

Crouched above and behind the children, below and in front of Thom and Jennifer, she was stunningly exotic, mesmerizing in her own way even in the shadow of Jennifer, a woman whom
People
magazine twice voted “Sexiest Woman Alive.” Late teens, early twenties, she appeared to be at least partly Latina and partly Asian, with thick shiny dark hair pulled back in a long braid and skin the color of caramel. Her soft doe eyes seemed to speak of sadness or some hidden wound, making her look entirely vulnerable. But her cheekbones, teeth, and full lips were set hard, as if beneath whatever haunted her, she was built of iron or steel.

“Who is she?” I asked, gesturing at the photo.

“Exactly,” Sci said.

JUSTINE FOUND THE
address Anita Fontana had given her around ten thirty that morning. It was a small pale-blue fiftiesera bungalow on a sleepy side street off Lankershim Boulevard in Burbank.

She knocked at the door. A few moments later, a woman’s voice called softly in Spanish, “Who is there, please?”

“It’s Justine Smith,” she replied. “Anita called me.”

After a moment, she heard a dead bolt thrown. The door opened several inches on a security chain. Maria Toro, the Harlows’ plump cook, looked out. She asked in English, “Are you alone?”

“Yes,” Justine said.

“We think someone watches us,” Maria whispered. “Can you leave? Come back to alley? Anita finds you there.”

Justine was confused, wondered if their paranoia was justified or invented, but nodded. “Give me five minutes.”

She returned to her car as if she’d gotten the wrong address, trying to spot whoever they suspected of watching them, but saw no one and no vehicle that stood out. She drove back to Lankershim, turned left, and then made an immediate left again into an alleyway that ran behind the bungalows.

Anita Fontana stood in the alley by an open gate. She pointed to an open garage door on the opposite side of the alley, and Justine pulled in and parked. When Justine exited, the Harlows’ housekeeper pointed a remote control device at the garage and the door lowered.

Justine followed Anita through the gate into a yard that had seen better times. Untended orchid plants and a riot of cactus and vines crept onto the deck around a pool brimming with algae-green water.

“Who owns this place?” Justine asked as she followed the Harlows’ housekeeper through an open screen door into a dim room furnished with 1960s furniture and a shag rug. A television blared in the corner, cable coverage of the hunt for the Harlows. Jacinta Feliz, the youngest of the Harlow staff, sat on the couch, arms folded, watching Justine as she entered.

“I don’t know this for sure,” Anita said. “How are the girls? And Miguel?”

The housekeeper asked this with a longing in her voice that impressed Justine with its intensity.

“You love them, don’t you?” asked Justine. “Miguel? The girls?”

Anita’s eyes glistened and she clasped her hands. “
Sí
, I love Miguel … all of them. How could I …?” She choked and began to cry.

Maria Toro, the cook, came up beside Anita, put her arm firmly around the housekeeper, looked fiercely at Justine. “We all love the children. Especially Anita. She has no children of her own.”

At that, Anita began to sob and hold herself tight, as if pierced with inner pain. “Sit down,” Justine soothed. “It’s okay, we’ll figure out a way for you to see them, for all of you to see them. Okay?”

“Mr. Sanders, he say no,” Anita wailed. “I ask him. He say no.”

The poor woman was beside herself now. Jacinta Feliz had gone to her side, put her arm around the older woman too.

“You will see those children,” Justine said firmly. “Have you been contacted by the FBI?”

“No, no one,” the cook said. “We come here that same day we see you at the ranch, when they are just gone. We here ever since. Someone brings us food. Ms. Bronson, Mr. Sanders, they say they want to protect us from reporters, say we stay here until these things calm down.”

Justine heard her smartphone chime, telling her she’d received a text. She ignored it, said, “This is America, ladies. Mr. Sanders and Camilla Bronson can’t make you do anything, do you understand? You all have green cards, yes?”

They shook their heads. “We come on temporary visa, ten-month,” said Maria Toro.

“How long have you worked for the Harlows?” Justine asked, surprised.

“Twelve years,” Anita said.

“Eight,” said the cook.

“Four,” said the maid.

“And they never offered to sponsor you to try to get citizenship?” Justine was beginning to doubt the Harlows’ public personas in a big way.

Anita began to cry again, shaking her head. “No, they no do this for us.”

“Did you ask?”

They all nodded. “But Mr. Thom say they already bring in the children, it is difficult to get more through
la Migra
with them as sponsors,” Maria Toro said.

“But he can get you the ten-month work visas?”

“This is not a problem, I think,” Jacinta said.

Justine didn’t know what to make of all of this. On its face, the fact that the Harlows were willing to get the women work visas but not green cards seemed lame, and counter to the Harlows’ reputation. But then again, she wasn’t at all well versed in current US immigration laws, quotas and such.

Anita wiped at her eyes, said, “You can help us?”

“Yes, of course,” Justine said. “Anything—” Her phone chimed again. “Hold on a second.”

She dug the phone from her purse and saw that she’d received a photo from Sci. She opened the file, looked at the group picture, read the text that accompanied it: “Do you know who the young woman front row center is?”

Justine frowned, zoomed in on the woman, a girl, really. Gorgeous. But no, she didn’t recognize her at all. She was about to text back “Negative” when she had a different idea.

“Do you know this girl with the Harlows?” she asked, turning the phone to show the three women.

Maria Toro reached out, took the phone, studied the picture, and shook her head. She handed it to Anita, who looked at the photo with great suspicion but then said, “I no know her.”

“Jacinta?” Justine asked.

The young maid took the phone, glanced at it, hesitated, then shook her head. She walked it back to Justine, who said, “For a second there, you thought you knew her?”

“No,” Jacinta said. “I was just thinking that maybe it was the nanny they hire after we leave and before they go for Vietnam.”

AT ELEVEN MINUTES
to noon that day, Johnson Rollerbladed along Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. He wore white-framed, sequined sunglasses with a built-in fiber-optic camera, pink stretch pants, a platinum-blond wig cut à la Marilyn, and, over a heavily padded bra, a white T-shirt that read “Blonde Ambition.” But for a backpack carrying two suppressed pistols, and four pink sweatbands on each forearm that hid spare clips, he could have been any old drag queen out for a skate on a fine October day.

“Location?” Cobb asked through the earbud Johnson wore.

“Coming onto Londonderry Place, turning north,” Johnson replied, adding a little butt shake to his skate as he passed the patrons sitting outdoors at the Mexican place on the corner, as if he were listening to some throbbing Latin beat, instead of plotting with his coconspirators to commit mass murder.

Londonderry Place climbs steeply north off the Sunset Strip. Johnson cut diagonally northwest across the narrow street to where the opposite sidewalk met a low chain-link fence. He straddle-vaulted it, landed in thick ground cover atop a retaining wall that had been turned into a planter for five palm trees.

Below him was a parking lot. Johnson took it in at a glance, seeing nine vehicles parked there in all, including one he wasn’t expecting. He lowered himself four feet down the wall behind a blue Toyota sedan.

“LAPD cruiser in lot, empty,” Johnson said. He skated out from behind the car, knelt in the wide open, pretended to retie his skates, but took glances at the cruiser and the entry to Mel’s Drive-In. “Mr. Cobb?”

“Take them first,” Cobb said.

“If they’re not outside?”

“Take them first.”

Johnson had been trained since the age of seventeen not only to follow orders, but also to adapt to evolving orders. He was what Mr. Cobb liked to call mission proficient. Johnson called it getting things done.

The diner’s exterior almost exactly matched the one in the seventies movie
American Graffiti
. Mel’s was a chain now, but a good one that attracted tourists and locals alike. The initial plan had Johnson getting the guns out at the far end of the parking lot and then skating around toward the front of the diner and its terrace, which faced the Sunset Strip. But he kept the weapons in the pack for now, skated toward Mel’s, eyes everywhere as he went left at the dogleg in the parking lot and back onto the sidewalk along Sunset heading west.

He took in everyone eating on Mel’s terrace before skating on past Drybar into a second entry to the parking lot. He’d seen a Hispanic couple and their kid, three duffers wearing golf jackets, and two moms with teenage daughters having ice cream sundaes. But no cops.

Which meant they were inside. He glanced down at the Rollerblades, which he’d decided to use because they had originally conceived this as an exterior job—swoop in, execute, and leave.

A new strategy evolved in Johnson’s brain almost instantly. He skated back past the people eating outside, and around into the entry to Mel’s. A startled old woman wearing a green sweatshirt that featured a leaping trout and the words “Thief River Falls Is Paradise” opened the door, carrying a pack of Marlboros. She gaped at him as he rolled past her into the diner, where he caught the full whiff of burgers frying, heard Elvis crooning from the jukebox, came face to face with a cheery hostess, who said brightly, “No blades inside, ma’am, uh, sir.”

Johnson had looked deeper into the diner, seen the two cops, male-female partners, sitting at the counter. A waitress had just served them cheeseburgers and fries.

“Ma’am?” the hostess said, a big grin.

“Oh, honey cheeks, I know,” Johnson said, turning to her and laying on a sweet effeminate accent. “I’ll take ’em off ’fore I eat, but this girl’s gotta pee.”