Scavenger Hunt (22 page)

Chapter 37

The footage from Santa Monica Exotics led every local newscast that evening, with endless replays of Mick Packard getting punched out, the chinchilla clawing at his turtleneck. It was a great TV moment. Now Jimmy understood why Samantha had picked three P.M. for the meeting: Mick Packard wanted to make sure they were able to make the broadcast deadline. He just hadn’t counted on getting his ass kicked.

Jimmy had been standing around for the last half-hour at Napitano’s monthly scavenger hunt party watching the action on the wide-screen in the media room. Everyone was having a good time, cheering and hooting. Rollo did a perfect Howard Cosell impression, and Nino danced around in his peacock-blue pajamas throwing mock punches with his tiny fists. Jimmy felt nothing but disappointment.

He had cast Mick Packard as the angry husband from the moment he saw him at Walsh’s funeral. Cast Samantha as the good wife too. It had been more than a leap of faith; Samantha had admitted having an affair with Walsh, and Packard was a jealous control freak, rumored to be ex-CIA, with the cunning to orchestrate a setup. Jimmy had been wrong. Samantha’s affair with Walsh hadn’t made her special. When he had asked her about being the good wife in the pet shop, she hadn’t understood—she had taken him literally. If Mick Packard had been the husband Jimmy was looking for, he would never have pulled the stunt in the pet shop. The man who had framed Walsh would have been more subtle; Jimmy would have a fatal accident or just disappear.

“Jimmy!”

Jimmy felt arms around him and a sweet-smelling woman kissing him, the pain stabbing through his face from where Packard had hit him. He pulled away and saw Chase Gooding in gold lamé hiphuggers and a belly shirt, blond hair cascading across her bare shoulders, cold as granite and pink to the bone.

Rollo’s eyes were bugging out of his head looking at her.

“Jimmy!” Chase kissed him again, the tip of her tongue banging against his teeth. “You got me on the guest list, just like you said you would! I didn’t think anybody kept a promise anymore, but you did.”

Jimmy disengaged himself from her. “You meet any Scientologists yet?”

“Mission accomplished. Me and Zed somebody are partnered up for the scavenger hunt,” Chase said. “Zed goes to the downtown temple or church or whatever they call it. He doesn’t know Tom Cruise personally, but I tell you, Jimmy, Zed’s so clear and connected, it’s scary.” Chase’s miniskirt showed off the striated muscles of her inner thighs. “Are you with anybody?”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your little friend, Jimmy?” asked Napitano.

“Nino, this is Chase Gooding, an actress. Chase, this—”

“I know who Mr. Napitano is, silly,” said Chase, air-kissing the publisher.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Nino said solemnly. “Good luck in the scavenger hunt.”

“Gosh,” said Chase, flustered now. “I gotta go, or I’m going to blow it for the team. Ciao!” She winked at Jimmy and dashed off.

“What lovely breasts,” said Napitano, watching her run across the marble floor, high heels clippity-clopping. “I hope she wins.”

“You really got a thing with scavenger hunts, huh, Nino?” said Rollo.

“The scavenger hunt is uniquely American—dynamic, creative,
forceful,
” said Nino, blue silk pajamas rippling with every gesture. “It is Manifest Destiny writ in the search for treasure real or imagined, the cultural detritus begged, borrowed, or stolen. You and Jimmy played the game magnificently, as I knew you would.”

“Thanks, man,” said Rollo. He glanced around and tapped his coat. “I got it.”

“Wonderful.” Napitano nodded at the current rerun of the fight at the pet store. “I’ve seen enough of our brave gladiator’s exploits. Let us adjourn to my study for a screening,
molto privato.
”

“Walsh’s rough cut?” said Jimmy.

“Fucking-A
Hammerlock,
dude,” confirmed Rollo.

Napitano led Jimmy and Rollo through the house, parting the crowd with an imperious flick of his hand. Purchased from a child actor whose brilliant career had flamed out a few years after puberty, the mansion was thirty-six thousand square feet of fun and offered two swimming pools, a poker room, an ice cream parlor, a full gym, a batting cage, and a video game center. Nino used almost none of the sports facilities, considering physical exercise a waste of time, but the ice cream parlor was fully utilized, the chocolate syrup flown in weekly from Switzerland. The study was in the farthest wing, where sounds from the party still echoed. Napitano punched in his entry code, shielding the numbers from view, then looked into an aperture on the wall. Retina scan complete, the door clicked open. “Please make yourself at home,” he said as they followed him inside, the gimbaled door closing after them with a slight hiss.

Napitano waved to the red leather sofas facing a flat-screen television and the one-kilo tin of black Iranian caviar within its nest of crushed ice. He poured champagne for all of them.

Rollo slipped a DVD out of his jacket and into the player.

“This movie should be a most useful addition to this article on the late Garrett Walsh that you’ve been spending so much time on, Jimmy.” Napitano sipped his champagne. “I trust it
will
be finished sometime in the foreseeable future?”

“Depends on how far you can see.”

Rollo ignored the champagne Napitano had poured and pulled a can of Mountain Dew out of the small refrigerator built into the wall. “
Hammerlock
’s not finished, but I think you guys are really going to like it. I’ve watched it about twelve times, and I still don’t know where Walsh was going. I was supposed to get a copy of his script notes today from my source at the archives, but B.K. is paranoid.”

Jimmy sat down on the couch. He really
was
interested, not just in seeing a rough cut by a master filmmaker but because Walsh had been having an affair with the good wife while he was making the movie. Maybe there was something in the footage that would give him a sense of who she was.

“Here we go,” said Rollo as the movie started, no titles, no credits at all, just a close-up of Mick Packard’s face, blood trickling from his nose. He looked almost the same as he did on tonight’s newscast. “Packard is really good in this, Jimmy. I was surprised.”

Hammerlock
was the story of a clinically depressed, tough cop, played by Mick Packard, who is manipulated by a shy, seemingly ineffectual killer, sent down blind alleys, chasing his tail in pursuit. The rough cut had major continuity problems—the transitions between scenes were often jumpy and awkward—but Packard was utterly convincing as the desperate cop, gobbling pills, slapping around suspects, a strong man unraveling, trying to cover his fear with bravado, talking out his troubles only with his sister.

The cop’s best lead was a beautiful woman, a waitress who had heard the killer’s gloating voice after he killed his fourth victim, even saw his retreating back when she looked out her window. The waitress and the cop had real chemistry—the actress was Victoria Lanois, and like Walsh, she never did such good work again, but she was the perfect mixture of strength and vulnerability in
Hammerlock,
the attraction between her and Packard’s character made even more powerful by never being consummated. An hour and a half into the movie, drunk and desperate, the cop stops by her house with a droopy bouquet of flowers and finds her dead in the kitchen, the TV blaring.

The scene didn’t work; it was too graphic, particularly for a character the viewer had come to love. Multiple shotgun blasts had blown her head to pieces. Walsh let the camera drift across the blood-sprayed walls, finally coming to rest on her shattered skull.

Jimmy shook his head. Walsh had an ugly imagination.

“Oh my,” said Napitano as the screen went to gray.

“That’s it?” said Jimmy.

“That’s it,” said Rollo. “The last act was never shot. I checked three earlier versions of the screenplay, but they’re completely different. The cop is more of a straight-arrow type, and the waitress doesn’t die—the cop uses her for bait.”

“Was there much of a change in the waitress character from the earlier drafts?” said Jimmy, wondering if Walsh’s deepening affair with the good wife during filming had been reflected in the female lead.

“Not really.” Rollo got up, ejected the DVD, and slipped the case into his jacket. “She was a blonde up until the second rewrite, but that’s—”

“You’re sure about that? She wasn’t a brunette in the first draft?” said Jimmy.

“I’m sure. I remember thinking it was a weird decision. Blondes usually get a rise from the suits, and the—”

“I want to look at every version of the screenplay you’ve got,” said Jimmy.

“The scene of the waitress taking a shower—that was new too,” said Rollo, thinking. “I checked the production notes. It was one of the last things Walsh shot. Gratuitous, maybe, but that blue tile with the mermaids looking over her shoulder as she’s washing her hair—it was kind of hot.”

Jimmy nodded. The scene
was
hot, but it was more than that: It was loving and appreciative too, almost too intimate. He was sorry that Sugar Brimley hadn’t been able to get them into Walsh’s old beach house. If the new owners hadn’t remodeled, Jimmy was certain, absolutely
certain,
that the bathroom would have had a blue tile shower with decorative mermaids.

Chapter 38

“I already left three messages with his service,” said Jimmy. “Do you have
any
idea when he’s coming in to the office?”

“Felix the Cat better not show his face. That twitch blew off two gangbang scenes yesterday and didn’t even bother calling, so if he thinks he’s still got a job here, he’s out of his fucking mind.”

“It’s really important I talk to him.”

“If you got the clap, I have a list of preferred providers.” The Intimate Ecstasy Productions talent wrangler’s voice hardened. “If you got the bug, you didn’t get it on one of our movies, so forget suing—”

Jimmy clicked off his cell phone.

“Still can’t find Felix?” said Rollo.

Jimmy chewed his lip. Felix had been scared at the porn shoot, but he didn’t talk like he was ready to run. Now he was AWOL. “I wanted to ask him some more questions. I’m still trying to locate Stephanie, the agent’s secretary.”

Rollo dropped the VW van into first gear, the engine whining as they drove up the winding road toward the crest of Orange Hill. “He must have gone underground again.”

“Maybe.”

“What’s that mean?” Rollo glanced over at him. “Should I be scared?”

Jimmy didn’t answer.

Rollo edged away from Jimmy, as though that would help.

It was an overcast morning, the sun not making much headway against the haze.

“Screening the rough cut of
Hammerlock
for Nino was the smartest thing I ever did.” Rollo pushed back his glasses. “I just wanted to bring something special to the party—I didn’t expect Nino to bankroll a documentary about the last days of Garrett Walsh. How cool is that?” He hunched over the wheel, trying to see through the dirty windshield. “First time I ever made a movie without having to move a load of laptops.” He glanced at Jimmy. “I can still upgrade that crappy Trinitron of yours. It’s not like I’m retired.”

“That’s a comfort.”

“I got a question, and I want you to take your time answering. Ready?” Rollo took a deep breath. “You think I should bleach my hair?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“What if I got a sports car? Gerardo says he can make me a deal on a slightly warm Porsche. Can’t you see me in a red turbocharged nine twenty-eight?”

“I see you on the way to hairplugsville, grinding the gears all the way.”

“I need
help,
man. You see those women at Nino’s on Saturday night? I was in play a couple times, but as soon as the pussy saw my wheels, good-bye, Rollo. Winning the scavenger hunt helped, but that was last month. You’re good with women. I still don’t know how you nailed Jane Holt.”

“She said I was the only man who could beat her at Scrabble.”

“So I have to beef up my vocabulary if I want to get laid?”

Jimmy shrugged. “I cheated.”

The car crested the top of the hill. An ancient Volvo with a peeling Greenpeace bumper sticker was parked next to Walsh’s trailer. Yellow police-tape streamers rippled listlessly in the breeze. The windows to the trailer were broken, and the door was torn off its hinges. Past the trailer Saul Zarinski waded in the koi pond, a bony intellectual wearing rubber boots, khaki shorts, and a denim shirt.

Rollo parked next to the Volvo and set the handbrake. He reached for his digital video camera, but Jimmy was already out of the van.

The inside of Walsh’s trailer had been trashed, the cheap furniture smashed to splinters, the refrigerator overturned, the cupboards empty, the mattress cut open, stuffing clumped on the floor. Graffiti had been sprayed on the walls: pentagrams, gang slogans, profanity, even a call for the Anaheim High School football team to “go all the way!”

Rollo moved around Jimmy with his camera, making a slow smooth pan of the main room, one knee bent, muttering, “Perfect, perfect,” as he took in the crushed fish crackers and Ding Dongs smeared into the carpet.

Jimmy walked out of the trailer and headed toward the koi pond. He could see the main house higher up the hill, still vacant, its shutters closed, but the lawn was green and freshly mowed. The smell got worse at he neared the koi pond. “Professor Zarinski?”

Zarinski looked up, blinking. He wore surgical gloves, the breast pocket of his shirt was stuffed with pens, and hair was curling around his ears.

“I’m Jimmy Gage. We met—”

“I remember you.” Zarinski wet a pencil in his mouth and wrote in a small notebook.

Jimmy was closer now. A metal screen dangled from the tripod. Something gray and amorphous rested on the mesh, its skin swollen to bursting, maggots wriggling across the surface. Blackflies drifted overhead, their buzzing like static. The stink burned his nostrils, and breathing through his mouth just made him taste it. “What
is
that?”

“Pig.” Zarinski cranked a handle, lowering the pig back into the water. Flies walked through his hair and marched across his eyebrows. “Domestic pig.” He made another notation in his book. “Twenty-four point seven grams less pig than yesterday.”

“Waste of good barbecue.” Jimmy watched a gold-streaked koi poke at the bloated carcass. “This is an experiment?”

“It’s not sadism, I can assure you.” Zarinski splashed out of the koi pond and over toward some thornbushes. He reached into the brush, slid out a hidden stainless-steel device, and checked the dials. “Hydrothermograph,” he said, answering Jimmy’s unspoken question. “Measures ambient air temperature and humidity.”

“What are you trying to prove?”

Zarinski kept writing. “Finally. Someone who realizes that the purpose of an experiment is to
prove
something. You have no idea the foolish questions I’ve had to deal with. ‘Do earwigs nest in your ear when you sleep?’ he mimicked. ‘Do scorpions sting themselves when they’re cornered?’” He looked up at Jimmy. “Entomology is the most disrespected specialty in science.”

“Not by Katz though.”

Zarinski smiled.

“I heard that she and Boone got into an argument in the forensics lab. One of the techs told me it had something to do with you.”

“Detective Katz has been very supportive of my research. I wish I could say the same for Dr. Boone.”

“That’s what you’re doing? You’re challenging the Walsh autopsy?”

Zarinski pursed his lips. “Let’s just say that the man is a very sloppy scientist.”

Helen Katz backhanded the fly in midair, bouncing it off the wall and onto the bird’s-eye maple floor. Then she stepped on it.

The realtor dropped to one knee, wiped up the squashed insect with a pink tissue, and tucked it into the pocket of her navy blue suit with white piping. “Detective, I have a prospective client for the house coming by any moment now.”

“This shouldn’t take long.” Katz saw the realtor glance at her watch and wanted to backhand her too. Skinny-ass broad wearing a thousand dollars worth of clothes on her back—don’t get Katz even started about the woman’s shoes, some matching blue lizard job with an open toe. Regular pedicures on those dainty toes. They probably didn’t even make shoes like that for Katz’s splayed feet. Not that she would wear them anyway. She wouldn’t. “I wanted to ask you about the last time you saw Walsh.”

“I already gave you my statement right after poor Mr. Walsh’s body was discovered—”

“Tell me again.”

“As
previously
stated, it was on the sixth. I checked my Day-Timer.” The realtor sprayed air-freshener around the living room, a vanilla-cinnamon potion intended to make spending a million dollars on a fixer-upper with no backyard seem like a smart idea. “I was showing the Orange Hill house to a nice Brazilian family. It’s an overpriced property, and there hasn’t been much interest—”

“You’re certain it was Walsh you saw?”

“Who else would it have been?”

Zarinski dangled the white maggot in front of Jimmy’s face. “This is a first-stage blowfly larva,
Chrysomya rufifacies.
”

Jimmy stared at the maggot squirming between the thumb and forefinger of Zarinski’s pink surgical gloves. “Vermicelli.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Vermicelli—the pasta. It’s Italian for ‘little worms.’”

“I didn’t know that.” Zarinski looked at the maggot like he wanted to kiss it. “Vermicelli.” He nodded. “Thank you for that delightful factoid, Mr. Gage.”

“I’ve always been interested in bugs.”

“Insects.”

“Right.” Jimmy watched the fat white maggot bending back and forth in Zarinski’s delicate grasp. The grub reminded him of a tourist doing sit-ups.

“Most laypersons find my research disgusting.”

“Sometimes you have to get down and dirty to know what’s really going on in the world.”

Zarinski beamed.

“So you and Boone disagreed over the results of the autopsy?”

“Dr. Boone is an ignoramus.” Zarinski cleared his throat. “Medical examiners depend on data like lividity, organ deterioration, and rigor mortis to estimate time of death, but those measurements are questionable at best with a body half-immersed in water.” He held up the maggot to Jimmy. “This
vermicelli
is the single most precise method of establishing time of death. If Dr. Boone had even a basic understanding of entomology . . .” He leaned over the koi pond and tenderly replaced the maggot on the pig. “Within ten minutes of death adult blowflies are on the scene, feeding on blood or other body fluids, depositing eggs into the body cavities, either wounds or natural cavities like eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The blowflies start the clock. Understand?”

“I’m listening.”

Zarinski nodded. “During the mean temperature range at this time of year, egg-laying on the corpse would continue for approximately eight days. The life cycle of the blowfly—egg to maggot to pupa— takes eleven days. When I arrived on the scene with Detective Katz, I found discarded pupa cases floating in the koi pond. So eight plus eleven—death occurred at least nineteen days prior to your discovery of the body.
That’s
our baseline. The flesh flies arrive three to four days after the blowflies, as soon as the body begins to putrefy. Local weather conditions are critical to determining the onset of flesh flies. This gives us another temporal line for our calculations. Where those two lines intersect is crucial to determining time of death. Are you with me?”

“I’m tagging along as best I can.”

“Good chap. I wish I could say the same for Dr. Boone, but he was threatened by my theory. He actually revoked my privileges at the crime lab.”

“What exactly was your theory?”

“ ‘Forget the fieldwork, Saul, get to the hypothesis.’ I’ve heard that before.” Zarinski pulled out his notebook and tapped a line of figures. “I presented Dr. Boone with my research, and he wouldn’t even discuss adjusting his report. That’s when I redid my experiment.” He pointed at the bloated gray mass bobbing in the koi pond. “One thirty-kilo pig, drugged with the same narcotic mixture found in Walsh’s toxicology results, the dosage proportionate to body weight—”

“Professor, what was your disagreement with Boone?”

“Dr. Boone
estimated
time of death as sometime on the seventh, but my
research
establishes that time of death occurred no later than the fifth.”

“So how does that discrepancy affect Boone’s findings? How does that prove that Walsh didn’t drown, that he was murdered?”

Zarinski looked confused. “It doesn’t prove anything of the kind.”

“You said you and Boone disagreed—”

“Not over cause of death. Cause of death isn’t my area of expertise.” Flies hovered around Zarinski, but he ignored them. “Postmortem interval is my subspecialty.
Time
of death. Boone’s estimate was wrong by at least forty-eight hours.”

“What about Boone’s conclusion that Walsh had drowned?”

“I don’t speculate outside my area of expertise.”

Jimmy stared at the rotting pig bobbing in the koi pond. Zarinski might not speculate outside his expertise, but Katz did. Speculating was her job, and it was Jimmy’s too. She must have figured that if Boone fucked up the time of death, he might have been wrong about the
cause
of death too. He looked over at the professor. “Your time-of-death theory must have impressed Katz. That’s why she got into an argument with Boone last week, wasn’t it?”

“Detective Katz is a fierce advocate of the scientific method. Dr. Boone kept backing up until he tripped over a chair.” Zarinski peeled off his surgical gloves with a snap. “I believe the argument also had something to do with you. Detective Katz kept mentioning your name. She’s quite fond of you.”

“Yeah, I could tell by the way she almost broke my face.”

“Aggressive action on the part of the female is quite common before mating.”

“If you’re a praying mantis maybe, but—”

“Female behavior is remarkably consistent across the phyla,” Zarinski said idly, scooping a black beetle out of the koi pond.

“Jimmy?” called Rollo, coming up behind him. “Whoa, dude. What’s
that
in the pool?”

Jimmy’s phone rang.

“Is this Jimmy Gage?”

“Hi, who’s this?” Jimmy watched Rollo filming the floating pig.

“Carmen. We met at the Healthy Life Café.”

Jimmy heard her cough and imagined the henna redhead with a cigarette propped in the corner of her mouth. “Hey, Carmen, how are you?” He tried to contain his excitement. “Did you find that Christmas card from Stephanie?”

“You sure you’re not a bill collector?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Well, you got a nice face.” Carmen hacked into the receiver. “Went through ten shoeboxes full of cards and magazine clippings before I found it. Stephanie’s address is right there on the back, just like I remembered. Three years ago and it seems like yesterday. Makes you realize how time flies.” She cleared her throat. “I’m thinking of starting some decoupage projects next weekend, getting right on it, no more excuses. You think if I decorated a lampshade for you that you’d use it?”

“At our first interview, you said you saw Garrett Walsh. Now you’re not sure?”

“The person I saw was quite some distance away.” The realtor rooted in her purse. “I—I was showing the view from the second-floor bedroom when I saw him at the far edge of the property. I just assumed it was Mr. Walsh. I never saw anyone else there.”