Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (7 page)

"Not that I know of. I think she would have told
me that."

I nodded. "Who decided to take out the policy on
her?"

"We both did."

"You and Yulin."

"Yes."

"Whose idea was it to start with?"

Lindqvist watched me very carefully. "Should I
be thinking about my lawyer now?"

"Same answer as before."

She paused. "It was George's idea."

"You have policies on any of your other models?"

"No. We thought about it on a guy a few years
ago, but he moved to New York."

"And on to another agency?"

Another pause. "Yes."

"Any reason you applied for half a million?"

"It seemed like a good number at the time.
Believe me, John, Mau Tim was a rising star about to become a
superstar. There was nobody quite like her. Two years from now, that
policy would have been for two million dollars and every model in the
country would be showing up at test shoots with violet contact
lenses."

"Would she still be worth that to you by then?"

"Mau Tim wasn't going anywhere."

My tum to pause. "I didn't mean to imply that
she was. I just meant since Mau Tim was nineteen now, she'd be
‘past-prime' in another two years."

Lindqvist brought out the good smile again. "You're
very . . . accomplished at this, aren't you, John?"

"I've been doing it a long time. You get lucky."

"First, Mau Tim wasn't going to leave our
agency. She'd heard quite a lot about how you have to go to New York
to hit the megabucks, but she was loyal to us. Second, Mau Tim was an
exception to the rule-of-nineteen. She would have been sensational
for a long time to come."

"All right. Mind telling me where you were a
week ago Friday?"

A darkening. "When Mau Tim was killed?"

"Yes."

The eyes flitted again. "Upstairs? Yes."

"Upstairs?"

"I have the penthouse unit in this building. I
was catching up on some paperwork."

"Alone."

"Unfortunately."

"On a Friday night."

Lindqvist traced an index finger from her throat to
her navel.

"All dressed up and no place to go."

I shook my head. "Anything else you can think
of?"

"Yes. Would you like to have dinner with me
sometime?"

I folded my pad. "That's pretty fast."

"This business moves pretty fast, John."
Her eyes went to the ceiling. "The penthouse has a great deck.
Barbecue for two?"

I stood. "Thanks, Erica, but I'm already taken."

The beaming smile. "The best always are, John.
The trick is learning how to take them away."
 
 

-6-

GEORGE YULIN'S DOOR HALF-OPEN. I RAPPED ON IT. HE
LOOKED up and waved me in before I realized he was on the telephone.
His office was more modest than Erica Lindqvist's. The one window
gave him a view of the alley and parking area of the buildings on the
south side of Commonwealth Avenue. The "codirector's" guest
furniture consisted of uncomfortable director's chairs. His desk had
a fax, calculator, and computer also, but there were dozens of
magazines strewn over it and the floor nearby, most of them with I
guess a fifteen- to nineteen-year-old puckering for the cover.

Into the receiver, Yulin was saying, "Yes,
Melanie, it's George. . . Well, I wouldn't have to be calling you if
you checked in like you were supposed to, now would I? . . . Yes,
well, we all have a rough night from time to time. The trick is not
to let it ruin our days. Or our looks, right? . . . Yes, I've got
something for you. Lingerie catalog, should be lots of — No, your
hair is fine the way it is. Clean-shaven . . . Yes, of course 'down
there, too.' How long have you been living off this dodge, Melanie?.
. . Probably Wednesday next week, maybe into Thursday . . .Yes, well,
how's your period been the last three . . . All right, all right. If
it isn't, call me at least twenty-four before the shoot,
got
it? . . . Yes, love you, too."

Yulin hung up. "The fucking cunt!"

I decided to play along. One of your favorites?"

"You have no idea, Mr. — tell me, now that
you've heard me use foul language, can we call each other by first
names?"

Just like Lindqvist. "Sure, George."

"Well, John, models have egos the size of their
bottoms rather than their brains. They love the glamour and the
travel — when they work, that is, which might be only two or three
days a week. They have time off like a stewardess and get paid like a
company president. Plus all the stroking, the wining and dining,
propositioned by every Platinum Card in sight. But no matter how many
great spreads you get them, a lot of the girls are so unappreciative,
so bitchy, it drives you up a wall."

"Was Mau Tim like that?"

"Mau Tim? Oh, right. No, no, she was pretty
professional, actually. A good kid, if a little quiet."

"Erica led me to believe that Mau Tim was on the
verge of stardom."

Yulin leaned back in his chair, combing the fingers
of his right hand through the grizzly-bear hair over his ear. "Are
we going to play lawyer/witness here, or can you just ask me
questions?"

Maybe Yulin had a little more juice than I thought.

"Erica said something about a file and a book
you kept on Mau Tim?"

"Sure. Just a second."

Yulin left the office for maybe twenty seconds,
coming back carrying a yellow suspended folder and a six-inch by
nine-inch loose-leaf album. He handed me the folder and set the album
on the desk near me. Then he pulled over another director's chair so
we were sitting side by side.

"Why don't you just go through the file, John? I
can give you a running commentary on it."

"Fine."

I opened the folder. There was a cover sheet with MAU
TIM (DANI) and date of birth at the top.
 
Yulin
said, "That's the casting card."

"How come her last name is in parentheses?"

"Because she goes by her first name
professionally. A lot of the girls do."

"Why?"

"They think it's sexier. Also, it keeps the
creeps from finding out who they are and where they live."

Lindqvist had already taken me down that road. I
pointed to a smattering of telephone numbers, some of which had been
lined through and others arrowed in. "What are all these?"

"The places we can reach her. Sony, could reach
her. Sometimes a job will crop up after a model's called in for the
day."

"Why so many numbers?"

"Well, some are out of date. The ones with
arrows are more recent."

"Can you tell me which numbers went with which
times?"

Yulin craned over my arm. "That first number was
her uncle's, I think. He's a lawyer, downtown. The second is Oz
Puriefoy's. He's the photographer who scouted her." Yulin looked
up at me. "Who sent her to us in the first place."

"
Right. But they're scratched out."

"Al1 that means is she got her own place."

"Meaning she used to live with her uncle, then
with Puriefoy?"

Yulin gave me a knowing grin. "Mau Tim was the
sort of girl who could probably live anywhere she wanted."

I said, "You know these numbers by heart?"

"Not anymore. Just the current ones. But you
call them so many times, you remember which one was which, you know?"

I pointed back down to the card. "How about
these two newer entries in the margin?"

"That one's the number at her apartment."
Yulin dropped his voice. "Where she was killed."

"And the number in red?"

"That's Larry Shinkawa."

"The police said he was one of the men at the
party."

"I'm not surprised. Mau Tim and Larry have been
. . . They were a thing for some months before she died."

"He's in advertising, right?"

"An exec at one of the smaller agencies."

"Advertising agency?"

"Right. Berry/Ryder. Just down the street."

"Do you know how they met?"

Yulin gave me a funny look. "I introduced them,
as a matter of fact. At a party we threw at the Cactus Club."

A trendy bar around the corner on Boylston Street. I
went back to the card. Mau Tim's height, weight, bust, waist, hips,
dress size, shoe size, and so on. I picked up from the file a
black-and-white pamphlet the size of a big birthday card. It had a
head-and-shoulders photo of Mau Tim on the cover, an elaborate
necklace around her throat and her first name emblazoned at the
bottom.

Yulin said, "That's a comp, for 'composite
card.' "

"You sent this out as kind of a brochure for
her?"

"Right." Yulin opened it up. Inside were
two more photos of Mau Tim, one in evening wear, one in lingerie. On
the back was a long shot of her in a wool dress and heels, boutique
shopping bags in hand, apparently trying to flag a taxi. Alive, the
most arresting woman I'd ever seen in two dimensions.

Yulin said, "Breathtaking, wasn't she?"

I looked at him.

He blinked and said, "The next thing in the file
is — "

"Just a second. You have a color version of that
photo on the front?"

"Probably in the mini-book. You want to go
through it now?"

"In a minute." I turned the comp card
sideways to pick up the names of the photographers given credit in
the margins.

"None of these was taken by this Puriefoy."

"Oh, no. No, she graduated from old Oz, if you
get my drift."

"I'm not sure I do."

"Oz is a good photographer. With a good eye for
talent, like hitting on Mau Tim, for example. But he's not a great
photographer. She got to be too good for him."

"Can that happen with agencies like yours as
well?"

Yulin clenched his jaw, then relaxed it quickly. "It
can. But Mau Tim knew what we'd done for her. She wasn't going
anywhere we didn't take her."

I looked back into the file. There were some
advertisement photos from newspapers. Only a few months old, from the
dates handwritten on them, but already yellowing. There were also
some studio shots of Mau Tim, with Oz Puriefoy's name as photo
credit.

"What are these?"

Yulin said, "Those are old shots that we rotated
out of Mau Tim's mini-book. See what I mean about Oz's work?"

Mau Tim did look less sophisticated, less well turned
in the face and hair. I couldn't have attributed that to the
photographer as opposed to the model, but then, I wasn't in the
business.

"I don't see any paycheck stubs or tax records
in here."

"That's all on the computer now."

"What did Mau Tim pull down in a year?"

"I could look it up for you, but basically she
went from a thousand a day to two within a few months. Lately we were
getting twenty-five hundred guaranteed."

"A day."

"Right."

"
From which your cut was?"

The jaw clenched again. "Twenty-five percent.
Standard in the industry."

Six-twenty-five a day to Lindqvist/Yulin. "And
how many days a week did Mau Tim work?"

"We could have gotten her six if she wanted, but
usually four, sometimes five. You see, she could pose for one
photographer during the day, another on a small job at night with a
guaranteed half-day rate for the smaller job."

"So be conservative and call it two hundred days
a year. That means she'd earn a hundred and a quarter a year for you
in commissions."

Yulin lifted his chin a little. "No, John. We
earned that money. By placing her in good shoots that paid top dollar
for her."

"Had you placed her in a shoot that day?"

"That . . . ? Oh, you mean the day she died.
No."

"You don't have to look it up?"

"No. I'm positive. She'd told me in no uncertain
terms that Saturday was her birthday. She wasn't working Friday or
the weekend."

"
She call in that Friday?"

Yulin shut his eyes, then said, "Yes. As usual."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning midafternoon."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Two, three?"

"She seem worried to you?"

"No. We talked about a job two weeks down the
line. In Jamaica for a casino. She seemed very up for it."

A knock at the door. Yulin said, "Yes?"

Erica Lindqvist stuck her head in. "I'm sorry to
interrupt, George, but Larry Shin is on the phone from the airport,
and I've got to run. Can you take it?"