the Forgotten Man (2005) (15 page)

Home Away Suites.

Frederick checked the time. Toluca Lake was less than thirty minutes away. If Payne was down there ratting him out, Frederick would make sure he paid.

Chapter 19

W here Margaret Keyes had met me in an anonymous location, Janice lived near Dodger Stadium and had no problem with me coming to her home. Janice shared an exclusive condominium with her boyfriend, a wealthy Israeli named Sig who wanted to make a name for himself directing gonzo porn ("Sig's family has so much money they shit green."). Janice started talking the moment she opened her door, and talked so much I had to interrupt to keep her on point. Janice started tricking while a senior at an exclusive girls' prep school ("It was nasty, and I LOVED it!"), got implants on her eighteenth birthday ("They were a present from my mom."), and started stripping while a freshman at USC ("It's like getting paid to be me!"). Janice talked so much it was like drowning in a verbal Niagara Falls . She told pretty much the same story as Margaret Keyes, except in her version Faustina had received no phone call - she had stayed for an hour, and was paid two hundred dollars in cash. To pray. Dana Mendelsohn was the last escort on my list, but the first to have visited Herbert Faustina. I didn't expect Dana to tell me anything new. I stopped for an outstanding turkey burger at Madame Matisse in Silver Lake, then sat in my car, searching for Dana's address in the Thomas Brothers Guide. I had just found her street when my cell phone rang. It was Starkey.

She said, "I left three friggin' messages. Didn't you get them?"

I looked at the little window on my cell phone. It showed no messages.

"I've had my phone with me all morning. It didn't ring and it doesn't show any messages."

"I know I got the right number. It's your stupid voice on the message."

My stupid voice.

I hated my cell phone. I was the last person in Los Angeles to enter the Jetsonian world of cellular communications, and I have regretted it ever since. Before I got the cell, everyone asked how I got by without one, and my clients complained. I weakened under the cultural weight of a city filled with satisfied cell users, ponied up, signed a service contract, and was doomed to crappy cell service. I rarely got a signal. When I got a signal, I couldn't keep the signal, or found myself in someone else's conversation. When someone called me, the phone rang sometimes, but not always. When someone left a message, the phone told me when it felt like it, or not at all. Everyone in my life was happy I got a cell phone except me. I wanted to throw it down a storm drain.

I said, "Okay, let's pretend I got your messages, and now I've called you. Why am I calling?"

"I ran Faustina through the system. Nothing came up, which means he doesn't have a criminal record, and he didn't toddle off from a booby hatch."

"Okay."

"I also ran his name through the Social Security roll. The name Herbert Faustina doesn't show. Whoever he is, he doesn't have a Social Security number, which means Herbert Faustina probably doesn't exist. It's an alias."

The Social Security system was off-limits to police without special court orders. Cops couldn't just ask for someone's Social Security information. Starkey had probably used a personal contact, and she would get burned if anyone found out.

"You didn't have to do that, Starkey. I wouldn't have asked you."

"Don't worry about it, but since you're so slow on the uptake let me point out the obvious: I am definitely a woman you want on your side."

"I guess you are."

"I gotta get back to work. Try not to get killed."

She hung up, but left me smiling.

Dana's address led me to a small red apartment building south of Melrose between La Brea and Fairfax on a street without character or charm. It was one of those older areas where single-family homes had been scraped away a house at a time, replaced by four-or six-unit apartment buildings built on the cheap by heirs, retirees, or doctors looking for a positive cash flow. Now the street was lined by small buildings that looked like they had been designed on paper napkins while everyone laughed about how much money they would make. Dana's building looked like a Big Mac carton.

I parked on the street, walked up along a short drive lined with garbage cans, and found her apartment under a set of floating stairs that led to the second floor. Two mountain bikes were chained to the stairs. I rang her bell, then knocked. Loud voices started up inside; a man and a woman arguing whether or not to open the door. Dana wasn't alone. I knocked again.

A tall good-looking man jerked open the door and gave me the dog eye. He was solidly built with a fine neck and thick shoulders, and he knew it; he stood tall in the open door, showing himself off. His hair was high and tight, and he was neatly dressed with two layers of Raiders apparel.

I said, "Dana?"

"I'll Dana you up the ass, you talk trash to me."

Behind him, Dana said, "Please, Thomas, Stephen said I hadda talk to him."

"Stephen don't live here."

"Thomas. Let him in."

A chunky young woman touched him out of the way. She was maybe five four, with peroxide-blond hair, a deep tan, and wide blue eyes that made her seem open and innocent. She was wearing a cropped T-shirt over shorts, with the T-shirt showing large breasts and a gold navel stud. She was about the same age as Janice, but she looked younger; she was a lifetime younger than Margaret.

She said, "This is Thomas. He's not my boyfriend or anything. He's my roommate."

I made him for her boyfriend, and probably her driver. Thomas didn't move far. His hands hung loose at his sides as he leaned toward me to let me know he was ready to unload.

"And what does Thomas do? He drive you to see Faustina?"

Thomas shook his finger at her before she could answer.

"It's not his damned business. You shouldn't talk to him or anyone else about this."

"Stephen said we gotta."

We.

"Fuck Stephen, gettin' us mixed up in this shit. They gonna put this on someone and it gonna be ME!"

Stephen told me he knew nothing about the drivers for his escorts, but apparently Thomas and Stephen knew each other. It made me wonder what else Stephen hadn't told me.

I moved past and looked at their apartment. It was simple and clean, with the living room breaking to the right, and a dining area and kitchen ahead. The dining table had been pushed into the far corner and set up as a desk with a desktop computer and a clutter of notes pushpinned to the wall. The chairs were hung with what looked like camera bags and backpacks. In the living room, a fluffy couch faced a cabinet that held a television, a CD player, and a row of color photographs of Dana spinning around a stripper's pole. She looked pretty good upside down.

I said, "Nice pictures. Is that you?"

"What the fuck you care, is that her in the nice pictures? You think those pictures NICE? You want us to have a little coffee, pass time like we FRIENDS?"

I looked at him. The day had been a slow grind from morning to mid-afternoon with not much to show for it. He didn't like me looking at him, and glowered even harder.

He said, "What?"

Dana came up beside me and pulled at my arm.

"He's scared of the three strikes. He has two convictions."

"Don't tell him nothin' about me, not a goddamned thing."

I understood his fear - if he caught another felony conviction he could go back to jail for the rest of his life.

I said, "No one cares about you unless you know something about Faustina. Do you?"

"No!"

"Then that's all you have to say. The police are going to talk to Stephen. If he tells them you drove and you say you didn't, what's that going to look like?"

"I ain't sayin' nothin' to nobody! I can NOT be part of this!"

Dana's eyes worked up to full-scale tears.

"Stephen said we gotta."

"Fuck Stephen! You leave me out of this and do NOT even mention my name! I don't want to hear my name, not ONE TIME!"

Thomas jabbed the air to show her what one time meant, then stalked around the corner into the dining room. Suddenly, after all the shouting, their apartment was silent. Dana wiped at her eyes and cleared her throat. She spoke softly so Thomas wouldn't hear.

"Stephen says it'll be all right. He said to cooperate."

"This is a homicide investigation, Dana. The police won't be here to bust you - or Thomas. They just want to know about Faustina. You see?"

She glanced to make sure Thomas wasn't listening, then lowered her voice still more.

"Thomas took those pictures. He's a really, really good photographer. We're doing a pay site and he's taking the pictures of me. He's even building the web site for me. He knows all about that stuff."

I nodded, and knew why she told me - all her dreams with Thomas were riding on the hope that Stephen had told her the truth-that everything would be all right.

"Dana, I want you to look at this."

I showed her the morgue shot of Faustina and walked her through my questions exactly as I had with the others. Faustina paid Dana to pray for his forgiveness. He told her nothing about himself and his reasons for being in Los Angeles; they did not have sex; and, when they finished praying, he walked her to the door. During their hour together, he never mentioned where he was from, why he was in Los Angeles, how long he intended to stay, or any other person or place. The only difference with what I heard from the other escorts was that Dana had asked Faustina why he needed to be forgiven. I guess Dana wasn't yet so hardened that she no longer cared.

I said, "Did he tell you?"

"He said for loving too much."

"You asked him why he wanted God to forgive him, and he said for loving too much?"

"Isn't that sad?"

"What or who did he love too much?"

A woman he met once and never saw again? A son he never knew?

"I dunno. I said, how can you love too much? Loving someone is a good thing - you don't have to be forgiven for that. I wanted to make him feel better, you know, but he said love could be terrible, he said love could be the Fifth Horseman and could kill you as dead as the other four, and then he started crying and I felt so bad I started crying, and I put my arms around him because I wanted him to feel better, but he didn't want me touching him like that. He kinda unwrapped me and gave back my hands and said let's keep praying, okay?, asking me real nice, 'cause that's the only thing will make it better, so we kept praying, and I didn't even know what he meant until Thomas told me."

Thomas's voice came quietly from the dining room.

"The Horsemen. She didn't know about the Four Horsemen, so I had to tell her what he meant by the fifth."

He was watching us from the mouth of the dining room. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were war, pestilence, disease, and famine - the four forces that could destroy the world. Herbert Faustina had added love to the list.

Thomas glanced at Dana, then me.

"We don't know nothin' about a murder. She didn't have sex with him or solicit anything, so this ain't prostitution. It ain't against the law to be paid for saying your prayers, am I right?"

"That's right. No harm, no foul."

"So what can they pop me for if I drove her to pray?"

"Nothing."

"All right, then -"

He nodded some more, still circling his commitment, then finally went for the meat.

"All right, he had a brown car."

Dana looked horrified.

"Thomas -"

He stopped her with the finger.

"That asshole Stephen hadda bring me into this, now I got to look out for me. All I did was drive you to pray, and now I'm gonna cooperate with the police and earn my love. You got to give to get, and I will NOT go to prison. This is me, being a good citizen. He had a brown Honda Accord. The left rear hubcap was missing and it had a big dent back there, right by the wheel."

I stared at him, then looked at Dana, but Dana had an empty expression like she didn't have any idea what he was talking about.

"Were you in his car? Did you go for a ride with him?"

"She didn't go anywhere with the man. She finished with the praying like she said, and came out and got in the car - my car - and told me about what they did, the prayin', and that's when I set her straight about the Horsemen. Then we talked about what we want to do, get something to eat or go have some drinks or come home, and she says, hey, look, that's him."

Dana suddenly nodded, as if she only now remembered and saw it clearly.

"That's right. He came outside."

Thomas silenced her with the finger again and kept going. He had made the commitment, he had the floor, and nothing would stop him now.

"So now I'm lookin' 'cause I want to see this stupid john with all his prayin', and there he is. He got into a car and drove away, the brown Honda."

"You see his license plate?"

"No, man, I was too busy lookin' at this goofy asshole, in there crying 'bout forgiveness."