The Detective & the Pipe Girl (24 page)

I didn’t answer. I was still looking at Vonz’s back.

“Mr. Darvelle?” Mountcastle said.

Mountcastle was in my periphery, but I was keeping my eyes on Vonz.

I saw Vonz’s left eye in the reflection of the window. He wasn’t looking out onto his beautiful patio, he was watching me. Watching me in the reflection. Watching me like he had from the beginning.

I looked at Mountcastle. He was pulling something out of his bag with his left hand. Yes, a gun. Then back at Vonz, who was pulling something out of his right blazer pocket. Another gun.

Vonz whipped around, pistol in his right hand, trained on my chest. I grabbed Mountcastle’s left wrist, twisted it, and yanked him toward me. His hand dropped the gun, and as I pulled him, his body responded instinctively. He moved toward me quickly, his feet dancing, responding deftly, like always.

I positioned Mountcastle in front of me.

Vonz didn’t have time to call off his shot.

He pulled the trigger and a bullet went right into Mountcastle’s chest.

Right in his heart—where it stayed.

Before Vonz could pull the trigger again, I raised my gun and put a hollow-point bullet through his forehead. And now, the window that he’d just been pretending to look out was no more. The bullet had come out the back of his head and exploded through it, sending slivers flying out, catching the sun now shining through the rain clouds and stabbing the bright grass beneath. Only the window’s edges remained and they were no longer transparent, no longer any kind of portal to the colorful flowers and foliage outside. No, the edges were bright red and opaque with the liquid insides of Arthur Vonz’s skull.

The blood began to move down the sharp shards still hanging on to the frame.

And then:

Mountcastle dropped.

Vonz dropped.

I stood, and watched them die.

40

N
ine days later I was back at my office. Here’s what had transpired since I stood over those two dead bodies on the floor of Academy Award–winning director Arthur Vonz’s office.

I called Ott and told him to come to Arthur Vonz’s house—right away. I told him that two people were dead, and he didn’t need to hear much more. He put Neese and White Streak in a holding cell, then came to Vonz’s house with an entire investigation team.

Ott looked at the scene, taped it off, and told everybody not to fucking move. He then pulled me aside and said, “Talk.”

I told him my version of the story. Slowly. Clearly. Calmly. He listened. He didn’t rush me, he didn’t interrupt. When I finished he nodded, then ordered his people to sweep the scene.

And then I went down to the LAPD, to give Ott and his superiors the full story again. I told them exactly what had happened step by step. I got some crazy looks. But as my story progressed, and after a couple days of investigation, the LAPD began to realize that I wasn’t the crazy one—Vonz was.

Because the plane story checked out. Mountcastle hiring the second detective checked out. And the gun that killed Suzanne Neal checked out. Turns out it was bought in a pawnshop in Indio, California. The proprietor of the pawnshop, a man named Glen with a tattoo of a target in the center of his forehead, described the person who had purchased the gun as “A pale big blobby guy. Kind of looked like a little kid in the face.”

Arrogance. That’s what Vonz and Mountcastle had had. They never assumed anyone could track the killing back to them. They never thought anyone would ever be talking to Target on His Forehead Guy. So when it came to the purchase of the smoking gun, they were sloppy. Two sloppy moves. The cabs and the gun. And as a result, they were both dead.

The problem then became Neese. Because while he didn’t kill Suzanne, I believed, and Ott eventually believed, that he did kill Allison Tarber.

Or at the very least ordered her to be killed.

So, based on my information, Ott reopened the Allison Tarber case. And guess what? Her mom knew where she got a certain tattoo. And the tattoo artist confirmed that it was the PG pyramid. And then Ott took another look at the evidence gathered at Allison’s accident scene. Sure enough, in the residue found under her fingernails there was more than just the dirt and the dust of the Santa Monica mountains. There was some of White Streak’s DNA. Turns out, at some point during White Streak’s despicable act Allison had clawed at his skin just enough to get a tiny bit of it under her nail. When confronted with this, White Streak ratted out Richard Neese for a shorter sentence.

They always do.

White Streak was arrested for murder. Neese was arrested for murder, for organized crime, and for running a prostitution ring called the Pipe Girls.

Eventually, White Streak would get twenty years. Neese would get life.

For the record: Prostitution was never the issue. I never hated Neese for that. What I hated him for was enforcing his system through threats and murder. For that he needed to go down. And he did.

Now. I want to tell you a few other things before we end the story. Specifically, two quick stories about women.

First, about a week after
Neese and White Streak got arrested I was at home one night chilling out back by my pool drinking a Budweiser and listening to some relaxing, melancholy Leonard Cohen. “So Long, Marianne.” My doorbell rang. I opened the door to see Linda Robbie, real estate badass, cougar to the core.

I said, “Linda, please, come in.”

She was wearing a beautiful khaki-colored trench coat and high heels.

She said, “Do you have any white wine?”

I said, “You know, I think I do.”

I uncorked a bottle and poured her a nice cold, crisp glass.

She took a sip and looked me in the eye and said, “I helped you a lot on this case.”

“Yeah, you did,” I said.

She undid the belt on her trench coat and it dropped to the floor. She was wearing a bra that barely contained her enhanced chest and a tiny, and I mean tiny, thong. She looked amazing.

“I think I helped you so much that I’m entitled to a demand or two,” she said.

I nodded and replied, “What did you have in mind?”

She said, “Do me.”

I walked over to her and kissed her on the lips. It felt good, better than expected. Then I did a deep knee bend so that my face was right in line with the front of her minuscule thong. I wrapped my arms around her ankles, grabbed her trench coat that was on the floor behind her, and stood up.

I was now essentially hugging her, her coat in my hands behind her. I wrapped it back around her and tied it in the front.

“It seems like we’re going backward.”

“Linda, I can’t do this. Not now anyway. I’d like to. I’d really like to. And maybe someday we’ll get our chance. But I met somebody special during this case. And I’m going to see her soon. And if you were her, you wouldn’t want me to sleep with another beautiful woman right before I saw you. Right as I was just getting something started with you. Right?”

“Dammit, Darvelle. I wanted you to squeeze my tits and slap my ass. Not appeal to my heart.”

I laughed.

“But you’re right. I wouldn’t want you to sleep with someone as beautiful as me, right before you saw me.”

I thought: That line actually makes sense. Sort of.

Linda said, “Call me if it doesn’t work out. The second it doesn’t work out.”

She threw back her wine and left.

And the second story happened
just today. I was sitting at my desk. The big slider was open. The sun was coming in, the breeze, with a just a hint of chill. Just a hint of colder weather on the way. It was perfect—a beautiful golden Los Angeles afternoon. I picked up my phone and called Nancy Alvarez.

“Yes?” she answered.

“Remember me?” I said. “You made me promise to never forget you. But can you say the same? Have you forgotten me?”

“Hmm. I see your name here on my phone but it’s not ringing a bell.”

“Can I take you to dinner tonight, gorgeous?”

“You got lucky when you beat me in Ping-Pong.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

And then her voice softened and she said, “I’ll be ready.”

Now. The story’s almost over,
but not just yet. There’s a few more things I want to tell you. There’s one last chapter before I let you go.

41

I
sat at my desk after hanging up with Nancy. I was feeling good, excited to see her, excited for my date. And then I just sat there thinking. My feet up on the desk. My eyes looking out the slider. The golden light fading. The golden light going to gray. I was thinking about the case I’d just closed. About the journey I’d been on. About how so often you don’t know something for sure until you really, really look. But the thing was, now that my investigation had come to a close, I did know some things for sure. And that was a good feeling. And, sitting there, I realized I knew
other
things for sure too. Yes, I do know that there are some other things in life that I believe to be absolutely true. I want to tell you about a few of them. So here goes.

If you ever almost die you will realize how much you want to live.

You have no control over what physical or intellectual gifts you are given. But you have total control over how hard you fight.

When you’re one hundred percent sure of something, there is a possibility, a great possibility, that you are wrong.

When you take off in an airplane at dusk and you can just start to see the twinkle of the lights in the city below you, and the plane is rocketing skyward, and the horizon line is going from a blue-purple to a dark blue, no matter where you are headed, there is a sense of promise.

I’ll take John, John Paul, Robert, and Jimmy over John, Paul, George, and Ringo any day.

If you ever find yourself standing outside a crowded restaurant in the hot sun on the weekend waiting to be seated for
brunch
, it may be time to rethink things.

When professional Ping-Pong players stopped using thin, dimpled hard paddles and started using thick, slick soft paddles, the sport gained some rubber, but lost some soul.

If you can learn to keep a secret you will be among a very small select group of people.

When you go see your favorite band live and they do the
acoustic version sung a cappella
of your favorite song to try and make it special, it isn’t special. It’s a bummer.

And lastly, the hunt. The Hunt. The Hunt to solve The Problem. When you are on the hunt, when your mind is locked into a search for
the answer
, it can be anything, a math problem, where your lost wallet is, where your destination is, trying to determine the first thing you need to do, trying to get the final touches just right, trying to figure out who, just exactly who, killed a beautiful young girl in Santa Monica, when you are on the hunt, you are in a different and special place. When you are on the hunt, your mind and your body and your consciousness are
engaged
. And that is good. When you are on the hunt to solve the problem, that special place is in fact a higher place. My friend, you are connected to a powerful and empowering force. And the things that trouble you, or fill you with anxiety, or stress you out, go away. They disappear because you have killed them with your absorption. When you are
not
on the hunt, you are the one who is dying. You are not unleashing your focus on the world. So false and phony and pedestrian troubles enter your mind and try to confuse and weaken you. But when you are on the hunt, that never happens. Because you are dialed in. Locked in. Living. Yes. You are alive. The hunt is connection and commitment. It is energy and power. It is passion and love. Yes, the hunt. The Hunt. When you are on the hunt, you are happy.

THE END

Acknowledgments

O
n the professional front:

A big thank-you to Michael Signorelli, a top-shelf editor and a believer from the beginning. And another big thank-you to Erica Spellman-Silverman, an agent who knows what she’s doing and calls it like she sees it.

Also, thank you to Tara Carberry, Hannah Wood, and Amanda Ainsworth.

On the personal front:

Thanks to my mom, my sister, Priscilla, and my brother, Rich. I’m lucky to have you as my family.

About the Author

MICHAEL CRAVEN
is an award-winning advertising writer and creative director, and is the author of a previous mystery,
Body Copy
. He grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, lived for many years in Los Angeles, and now lives and works in New York City.

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Cover design by Jarrod Taylor