The Reporter (28 page)

Zahna could pass for Mexican, she figured—she had olive skin, dark eyes, dark hair. She’d get a room, find a job in that overcrowded,
bustling city, perhaps in a shop, and reestablish herself under the identity of a Mexican woman. She spoke some Spanish—she
would buy audiotapes and learn the language fluently, and she would become more proficient as she heard it spoken every day.
She would apply for a Mexican driver’s license, credit cards, insurance, everything in the name of Carla Valdez. In time she’d
find a small apartment, and get a night job singing in one of the city’s hundreds of clubs.

Mr. Pasha came out, carrying the pearl choker and the emerald-and-diamond necklace. He placed a black velvet tray on top of
the glass case in front of her, then set the pieces on it. With his fingers still on the jewelry, he looked up at her intently.
“Where did you say you got these, Miss…?” he asked. She hadn’t said, nor had she given him her name.

“Mrs. Williamson,” she said. “Mrs. John Williamson. They were my mother’s. She’s passed away, and they’re not something I
would wear.”

“But they’re brand-new, hardly been worn.”

“That’s true,” she told Pasha, forcing a smile. “My mother kept them in the safe and rarely wore them. It’s time someone got
some use out of them—I never would.”

She had dressed conservatively in a gray light wool suit, a white blouse with a flared jabot tied primly at her throat, and
black low-heeled pumps.

“Well, Mrs., ahh, Williamson,” Pasha said, “I’m prepared to give you five thousand dollars for this one….” He was fingering
the diamond-and-emerald piece. “And twenty-two hundred for the other. Is that acceptable?”

“Oh, they’re worth
much
more than that,” Zahna said. Actually, she had no idea what they were worth, but her instincts told her not to pounce on
the first deal he offered.

“Yes, they’re worth more,” Mr. Pasha said, “but these pieces
won’t be easy to sell, and we have to make a profit. It’s up to you. Do you want to think about it and come back?”

“No,” she said evenly, “I’ll take it.”

“Fine. I’ll give you a receipt for the merchandise, and you can come by and pick up your check tomorrow.”

“That’s not possible,” Zahna stated unequivocally. “I have to have the cash, now.”

“But it’s our policy to have a second appraisal made by a colleague outside the shop.”

She wondered if it wasn’t really their policy to clear such merchandise with the police, so the cops wouldn’t come around
confiscating it after the store had laid out the bread. She wouldn’t mention that she was leaving town—that would certainly
make him suspicious, if he wasn’t already. She remembered a recent news story involving a ring of merchants operating here
in the downtown jewelry district. A gang of them were sent to prison, convicted on multiple charges, including receiving stolen
goods and laundering major drug money. The LAPD was now closely monitoring these operations for illegal activity, and the
shop owners knew it. Pasha still said nothing; he looked to be sizing up the situation.

In an instant of resolve, she reached for the pieces. “I’ll just take them somewhere else,” she snapped.

“Wait just a moment,” he checked her, again picking up the two necklaces. “I’ll talk to my associate.” He disappeared through
the back door, carrying the goods.

Oh
Jesus,
she thought,
I’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.
But even though there were hundreds of jewelry shops in these several blocks, entire buildings filled with them, she didn’t
have time to run around peddling this stuff. And she knew that if she put them in her suitcase and tried to sell them in Mexico,
they’d bring just a few hundred dollars. Or worse, they’d be stolen from her.

She resisted the urge to bolt and run. Then Pasha and his
goon would know for sure that the jewelry was stolen, and with the heat still on down here, they probably wouldn’t take a
chance on moving it. They’d call the cops immediately, and she’d probably get nailed before she made it out of the building.
She shouldn’t have tried this, but now it was too late.

Mr. Pasha came out front again, with the jewelry in hand. The weasel she’d seen earlier came out behind him and stood at his
side. Pasha made no attempt to introduce him. To her surprise, he said, “We’ll give you cash, right now. But under these circumstances,
we can’t give you the amount that we previously discussed.” He took an envelope out of his pocket. “Here is fifty-five hundred
dollars in hundred-dollar bills,” he said, hanging on to the jewelry and placing the envelope on the velvet tray. And again
he intoned, “It’s up to you.”

She snatched the envelope, and without pausing to count the money, she turned and left.
Jesus, they’re on to
me, she thought. Bypassing the ancient elevator, she raced the six flights down the narrow stairwell, stuffing the envelope
into her shoulder bag as she ran. She burst out the front doors of the building into the harsh sunlight of Hill Street, and
hustled down the sidewalk toward Fifth Street where she’d parked her car.

Rounding the corner, she stopped in her tracks. An LAPD patrol car, lights flashing, was double-parked beside her beat-up
Volkswagen Rabbit, blocking her exit, and two uniformed policemen were standing next to it on the sidewalk.

A
lison Pollock sat at the ornate Georgian desk in her office at the Beverly Hills Hotel, trying to get a cup of tea down. She’d
been able to think of little else but the heinous murder discovered that morning. Paul Farrento, the manager on duty last
night, had called her at home at 6:15 after one of the room service waiters walked in on the body. Alison had dressed hurriedly
and rushed to the hotel.

Farrento had already called the Beverly Hills police. They’d responded in minutes, and were at the bungalow when Alison got
there. Investigators from the sheriff’s department had been called in, Detectives Cabello and Johnson. They talked to her
at length—they wanted to know if she’d been aware of any unusual behavior by any of her staff.

In fact, most of her employees were in shock, from the head chef to the pool attendants to the chambermaids—they were operating
under a cloud of gloom today. Even the guests seemed to her a bit subdued when Alison walked through the lobby and promenade
areas—the murder was all over the news.

Alison thought about Janet Orson. She couldn’t shake the feeling there was something she was missing. They’d had a welcoming
drink on Sunday afternoon, Janet, Alan Bronstein from
Monogram, who’d helped Janet with her move that day, and Alison, along with her fifteen-year-old granddaughter Davina who
was spending the weekend with her. They all sat in a booth in the Polo Lounge, and Janet had mentioned how proud Ali must
be of this venerable old hotel.

“Oh, yes, I’m proud,” Alison had said. “These walls have seen the biggest and the best of Hollywood.” She’d told them that
the hotel was the very first structure built in Beverly Hills, and how back then it was the only building on Sunset Boulevard
between there and the Pacific Ocean. And what had Janet responded? Something that Alison had thought was odd at the time,
but she couldn’t remember offhand.

The killer had clearly known exactly where to find Janet, so it had to be either someone she knew, or someone who had been
able to find out what unit she was staying in. It weighed heavily on Alison’s mind that an employee might have thoughtlessly
given the killer Janet Orson’s bungalow number.

She got up and went out to the switchboard. Treva Jones was working the day shift. The young woman looked up at Alison soberly,
the murder on her mind, too. Alison asked her if she could remember anyone asking for Janet Orson’s room number.

“You know we would never give out that information, Mrs. Pollock,” Treva said.

“Of course I know you wouldn’t,” Alison assured her. “But by any chance, did anyone try to get the bungalow number from you?
Can you remember?” she persisted.

Treva thought for a minute. “Yes,” she said then. “There was a woman who was especially insistent. She said she had an appointment
with Ms. Orson on Wednesday, and she needed to know what room to go to. I told her to just come to the front desk, and we’d
call Ms. Orson, then direct her.”

“Do you remember her name?” Alison asked.

“No, I’m sorry; we’re answering these phones all day long—”

Alison made her promise to tell her immediately if she remembered
anything more about that caller. Also, she asked Treva to question the other two women on the board to find out whether they
had taken any calls for Janet Orson that were at all out of the ordinary.

The woman had an appointment with Janet on Wednesday?
Alison thought as she left the room.
That’s today.
The detectives had asked Alison to let them know if she thought of anything—she would tell them about that call that Treva
took. In their search of the bungalow, they probably found Janet’s datebook. Maybe her Wednesday appointments would provide
a clue.

She headed up the stairs to the lobby to see if things were under control at the front desk, and whether the murder had caused
many cancellations. She was sure there would be some. Up on the street level, the media were swarming everywhere. They were
set up all over the grounds, they were congregating in the lobby with tons of equipment, and they were camped out behind the
yellow crime-scene tape around bungalow 16. Usually, Alison had an excellent rapport with the press. She dealt with them often
because of the many celebrities who stayed at the hotel. Today, they were a nightmare. She had declined to grant any interviews;
she was bent on just staying out of their way.

Suddenly it hit her.
The media!
That was what Janet’s reaction to Alison’s pride in the hotel had been about. Janet had responded that everyone loved the
Beverly Hills Hotel, and she mentioned that a woman who was going to interview her this week had begged to do it here instead
of at Janet’s office because she loved the Beverly Hills Hotel, she’d said. And now Alison remembered what had struck her
as odd. The interview was to be for
radio.
Not television, where the setting mattered, not print, where there was a high priority on getting good photos. Radio! Where
it would sound exactly the same, no matter
where
they did it. Yet she had insisted on doing the interview at the hotel, presumably in Janet Orson’s bungalow.

Alison couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but she did remember
that when Janet mentioned it, Davina piped up that she and her friends listened to her show all the time. “She’s
bad!”
Davina had exclaimed. And when the adults looked at her for an explanation, she told them
bad
means
good.
“She disses everything,” Davina offered by way of clarification, and everybody laughed when the teenager had to explain what
that
meant.

Alison hurried back downstairs to her office. She called Maxi at Channel Six, and got her voice mail. Rather than leave a
message, she called back and asked for producer Wendy Harris. Wendy always knew where Maxi was, even if she was on the other
side of the world.

Wendy came on the line. “Maxi’s chasing around town trying to find out
anything
about Janet Orson’s murder,” she said. “She told me she was going to try to stop by and see you.”

“Yes, she was here,” Alison said. “And now I think I might have something for her. Will you tell her to call me as soon as
she surfaces?”

“I sure will,” Wendy said. “Meantime, I’ll try her cell phone. If you don’t hear from her, she’ll be back here at the station
at least by four for the Six O’clock News.”

It was almost 3:30. Alison picked up Detective Mike Cabello’s card on her desk and dialed the number.

“Cabello,” he barked into the phone. She told him about the woman who had tried to get Janet Orson’s room number from the
hotel switchboard operator yesterday. And about Janet saying that a woman was going to interview her for a radio program today,
and had insisted on doing it at the hotel instead of at Janet’s office. She suggested that they look carefully at Janet Orson’s
appointment schedule for today. Maybe it was the same woman. And maybe the woman
did
find out which unit Janet was in. And waited for her to come back last night.

Z
ahna stopped on the sidewalk, clutching her shoulder bag with the fifty-five hundred-dollar bills inside. About twenty yards
away, one of the LAPD officers was standing behind her car, examining her license plate and writing something down. Crack
cocaine had her mind racing and her heart speeding. The cops hadn’t seen her yet.
Be cool,
she told herself. Then she spied a tow truck hitching up to a car parked several vehicles behind hers.

Abruptly, she turned and started walking in the other direction. The traffic sign posted on the corner of Fifth Street read:
NO PARKING AFTER
3:30
P.M
. Zahna glanced at her watch; it was 3:39. She relaxed. The two policemen were among the corps ticketing
vehicles parked on the downtown streets after the cutoff time, and the tow truck was one of many working the afternoon rush
hour, hauling illegally parked cars out of the way of the oncoming traffic. It was an everyday happening at the start of the
afternoon commute. She’d been caught in it once, and the ticket had cost her $85, plus another $160 to get her car out of
hock from the garage they towed it to.

Zahna walked swiftly back down Hill Street, ducked through Pershing Square across to Olive, then doubled back to Fifth and
approached her car from the opposite direction. Just as she’d hoped, the cops had moved ahead to the next offending vehicles,
and the tow truck had moved off with its haul. She zipped down the street, her keys in hand, snatched the ticket off her windshield,
jumped in her car, and peeled off.

The whole exercise exhilarated her. She felt empowered as she crumpled up the parking ticket and threw it on the floor. “So
long, cops,” she said out loud, as she rolled down Fifth Street toward the Hollywood Freeway. So long, L.A., and good riddance.