The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (14 page)

I looked up. “Is there something else?”

“Well …”

“Go ahead.”

Suddenly he was crouching beside me. “Mr. Portugal, I … I saw that you’re a very successful actor in commercials, and I’ve recently—”

I stuck out my hand. “Give it here. I’ll let my agent see it. No promises.”

He practically popped with glee. “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He dashed over to the desk, where he’d stashed his photo and resume for easy access, and placed them reverently in my hand. “Mr. Portugal, I just know I can—”

“Kid.”

“Yes?”

“Mr. Portugal is my father.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Joe.”

“Yes, Joe.”

He fluttered back to his seat as a door opened. “Sorry about that,” Claudia Acuna said.

She was a lot better looking when she wasn’t in TV reporter guise. More natural, with just some eyeliner and lipstick. She was wearing flats, snug jeans, a white blouse. Were I single, I would have been instantly attracted to her. Hell, cut the
were I single
. There was something about her that reminded me of Gina. Acuna was taller, more buxom, some years younger. But there was that spark in her eyes, the one that said she didn’t suffer fools gladly, and that if you got on her good side you could count on her, and that she could give you a hell of a time in the sack.

We went back through the door and down a stark hall. “I see you met Keith.”

Who burst through the door behind us. “Your water … Joe.”

“Thanks.”

An obsequious smile, and he was gone.

I looked at the picture.
Keith Colbert
, it said underneath. A competent shot, though it didn’t fully capture those great eyes. “Good-looking kid. Maybe he has a chance.”

“Maybe.”

I caught her scent. I’d known a woman once who wore that scent. I associated it with a misbegotten summer.

We entered a high-ceilinged room where a dozen sloppy desks and half that number of frazzled people were scattered around. She led me to one, pointed to the wastebasket at its side. “You can throw that in there.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I thought you might have taken it to be polite.”

“No. I told the kid I’d show his picture to my agent, and that’s what I’ll do.” She had a bit of a smile on. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Was that a test?”

“What makes you think that?”

“My keen investigative abilities.”

She watched me for a beat or two, broadened the smile. “Yes. It was. And I’m sorry. I just wanted to see—”

“How honest I was?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. It was a lame idea. I apologize.” She sat down, produced a keyring, unlocked her desk. Opened a file drawer, removed several manila folders full of papers, shut the drawer, turned the key, disappeared the keyring.

She stood. Looked at me. “So? Is the apology accepted?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Let’s go somewhere more private. My boss is on vacation. We’ll use her office.”

More stepping down the hall. She moved in front of me to open the office door. I could see the outline of her underthings through the back of her blouse. Something a man never tires of. Yeah, if I were single again …

Stop it, putz. You’re not single, you’re not going to be, and you’re a jerk for even thinking about it. Did you forget that envelope in your sock drawer already?

The office had a desk, a couple of chairs, a small sofa. On the wall, awards and photos. There was a dracaena in the corner, limp and pale. Claudia saw me looking at it. “Right,” she said. “The plant man.”

“Tell your boss it needs more light.”

“I’ll do that.” She sat on the sofa, a black vinyl thing that creaked when she settled herself. I joined her. It wasn’t really a sofa. More of a loveseat.

She opened the first folder, paged through a couple of papers, pulled one out, handed it to me. It was a photocopy of an ad for an X-rated tape called
The High Hard One
. The picture of the box showed a couple of babes wearing baseball caps and unbuttoned jerseys that said
Yan
on one side of their magnificent cleavages and
kers
on the other. The dark-haired one had two baseballs in her hand. The blond held a bat suggestively. One of them was Penelope Pope and the other was Letitia Lawrence, and their unseen co-star was Johnson Johnson. Across the bottom was the punchline to an old joke.
He kissed her between the strikes … she kissed him between the balls.
There was some sales info alongside and under the photo, the price, distributor, that kind of thing.

“Lovely,” I said.

“Either of the women look familiar?”

I brought the page closer. Then tried farther away. I was going to need reading glasses soon. But further examination showed me nothing. “No.”

“It’s Trixie Trenton.”

I inspected the blond more closely. Tapped her picture on the page. “No way.”

“Not her. The brunet.”

Again I looked. I squinted. Then Claudia pulled out a tearsheet from the
Times
, something from the last week’s coverage. There was a photo of Trixie. Suddenly I saw it. The eyes. They were the same eyes. “So it wasn’t just
soft
-core.”

“No.”

“Is she Penelope or Letitia?”

“Penelope.”

“How old is this?”

“It came out in ’97.”

“She must have been pretty young.”

“Nineteen.”

“Are there others?”

“A few.”

I handed the pages back. “So she was a porn star. So what?”

“So nothing. I said I was going to show you some things. I didn’t say they were going to add up to anything.”

“True enough. Why haven’t you used this on the air yet?”

“Why embarrass the girl?”

“Come on. You people love to embarrass people.”

“‘You people.’”

“Local news people.”

“Believe it or not, we do have consciences. At least I do. No one else here knows about this. At least not yet.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“Sources.”

“You have anything else on her?”

“Nothing much. Exercises a lot. Has a shih tzu.”

“I knew that.”

“She’s into that human-potential crap.”

“Right, she was at that Ambiance place right before Dennis got killed. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Who’s next?”

“Do you want to see what I have on you?” She was looking at me in a way that, in my single days, would have had me calculating how to ask her out.

I turned away.“Not unless there’s something I don’t know about.”

“How about your friend Ronnie MacKenzie?”

I had to think about it. What if Claudia had uncovered something less than flattering? What if Ronnie turned out to have an X-rated background too?

And what if she did? “What have you got?”

“Not a whole lot,” she said. “Not much of anything, as a matter of fact. She grew up in Arkansas, which I’m sure you knew. Her father died when she was two—”

“Run over by a semi.”

“A semi? How awful. What I have just says a truck.”

“Makes pretty much the same spot on the pavement. So nothing else before she got to L.A?”

“No,” she said.

“And after?”

“Moved into her cousin Thelma’s house on Madison Avenue in Culver City.”

“Thelma?”

“Yes.”

“She goes by Theta.”

“My name was Thelma, I’d go by something else too.”

“Anything more?”

She checked her notes.“Works out at the Spectrum Club … well-liked on the set … dating a producer on
Protect and
Serve
.”

“Eric something.”

“Stahl.”

“Go on,” I said.

“She’s pretty much, what you see is what you get. Who would you like next?”

“Might as well finish off the cute young things.”

“Samantha Szydlo. Let’s see.” She shuffled papers, brought out a few. “Born December 4, 1974, St. Louis. Grew up there. Went to college at Cooper Union.”

“Where’s that?”

“New York. Small school, art, architecture, engineering. Graduated in ’96, moved to Chicago, then to L.A. in ’98. Had a few group exhibitions. Active in Heal the Bay. Has a small trust fund. That’s pretty much it.”

“Nothing very—”

“Except for the restraining order,” she said.

It took me a second. “When was that?”

“In ’98, in Chicago, a little before she moved out here. There was a man she was seeing. He broke it off. She began harassing him.”

“How?”

“Phone calls, mostly, mixed in with some stalking. Plus going through his garbage. He was another artist. His website got hacked. The police thought she had something to do with it, but never proved anything.”

“Anything violent?”

She scanned the page. “No. Why?”

I looked at her. I flashed on the other woman who’d worn the same perfume. I couldn’t remember her name. But I could remember one hot summer night …

Better you should remember the envelope.

I stood, stepped away, leaned against the desk.“I had lunch with her, the day Dennis died. She wanted to get together and come up with a way to get back at Dennis.”

“Interesting.”

“Some of the ideas were pretty drastic.”

“Violent drastic?”

“Yes. But I thought it was just talk.”

“She’s been in therapy practically since she moved to L.A.”

“Is it working?”

“That I don’t know.”

“I suppose the police know all about this.”

“They must,” she said.

“So they would have talked to her about it.”

“Yes.”

“Grilled her, if they thought they had to.”

“Most likely.”

“So probably this is nothing.”

“Probably. Anyway, her alibi looks good. The roommate.”

“Carrie.”

“Yes.”

“Mike’s girlfriend. That’s Dennis’s father.”

“Yes. The two of them were home watching TV until she left for Dennis’s house. The police got tapes of what they said they were watching and quizzed Samantha. She seems to have watched what she said she did.”

“Or Carrie watched it and filled her in. Or taped it for her.”

“Seems a little far-fetched,” she said.

“I suppose. Even if she was there, it doesn’t say she wasn’t behind it. She could have hired somebody.”

“Took out a contract on Dennis? Seems even more farfetched than Carrie covering for her.”

“More far-fetched than her hiring someone to hack the other guy’s website?”

“Good point.” She switched to another file. “That’s about it on her. On to Sean McKay. He’s—” Her cell phone went off. She answered it. After a few seconds she said, “Now?” Then, “Okay.” She clicked off. “Late-breaking news.”

“High-speed chase?”

“Better. Jumper on the Stack.” The downtown freeway interchange. Four levels of road all atop one another. “We’ll finish later,” she said. “I’ll show you out.”

“Can I use the phone?”

“Sure.”

I found the number in my wallet. Samantha Szydlo’s cell phone. She’d given it to me at Mao’s, “just in case.” I caught her somewhere called Gallery Gaga. She told me she’d be there a while. I told her I was on my way.

Claudia’d listened in. “You work fast,” she said.

“When I feel like it,” I said.

Gallery Gaga was at the end of Washington Boulevard, the last building on the south side before the ocean. As I walked the two blocks from my parking place, the sun disappeared behind a huge mass of gray clouds scudding in from the west. I found the gallery and entered. A tall thin woman with blond hair to her waist asked if she could help me. I said I was looking for Samantha, and her face lit up. She told me how lucky they were to have her and said Samantha was in the back room and I should go back there.

Paintings leaned all along the foot of the wall. The ones on the left were abstracts, filled with big patches of red and green and purple. The kind of thing that, if you hung them upside down, no one but the artist would know anything was wrong. Those on the right were more representational, the stark brown and black figures in each surrounded by auras of pale color and speckles of something that glinted in the fluorescent lighting.

I stopped to check out the pieces along the back wall. I hoped they and not those on the sides were Samantha’s. Then if she asked me what I thought of her work I wouldn’t have to lie. The people were identifiable as people, the vehicles as vehicles, the buildings as buildings. I recognized a couple of the locations. One was the building downtown with the giant basketball players painted on, only it was from some past day when baseball was in season. You only saw the lower halves of the athletes, and standing down at the bottom of the building were four small figures engaged in some activity that kept them clustered around a spot where the wall met the ground.

Another had a woman standing next to a lamppost. In the background on the right was the El Rey Theatre. The woman was dressed in a tight red T-shirt and cutoff jeans. Her hair was short and as red as the shirt. Up the post, barely making it inside the top of the painting, was a sign that said
Miracle Mile District
.

I got the feeling the woman in cutoffs was the only person on Wilshire Boulevard for miles around. That the four figures at the foot of the building populated a downtown that, save for them, was as empty as the one in an after-the-nuclear-holocaust movie.

“You like them?” Samantha asked. She’d come out of the back room.

“A lot.”

“You know art?”

“Not at all. But you know what they say. I know what I like.”

“They do say that.”

“And you probably hear it ten times a day from know-nothings like me.”

A smile. “No more than five.”

“But I really do like them. You get a feeling of, I don’t know, aloneness. Like you dropped these people into deserted cities.”

“Kind of what I try for.”

“They remind me—I mean, they don’t look like it or anything, but the feeling I get—you know that painting
Nighthawks
?”

“Of course. Edward Hopper.”

“Right. Him. That’s the feeling I get.”

“He’s an influence.”

“Who else is an influence?”

“Would you know the names if I said them?”