The Detective & the Pipe Girl (18 page)

30

S
o. Suzanne’s friend didn’t know too much, or she wasn’t telling me if she did. That’s the thing. If the girls aren’t allowed to reveal that they are Pipe Girls, then if, if they had ever said anything to a friend, like Jenny Bickford, then the friend sure as shit wouldn’t admit to knowing it either. She’d be afraid for
her
life. Especially if the girl who told her was now in a drawer at the morgue.

Yet, she had been honest with me about Arthur Vonz. She had parted with something that was probably told to her in confidence. Something that she didn’t know I knew. So she had
tried
to help me. I think. Maybe Lane. Parked there again. Guessing at stuff. Yeah, guessing at stuff. But I’m a good guesser.

Back at my desk in my office. Toast had popped by, which always made me happy. I held him for a moment. Pet him. Talked to him a bit. Then I put him right up on my desk, where he quickly let the eyelids drop.

I jumped online and looked at some photos of Danny Baker. At social events. At news events. Stills of him interviewing guests on his show. He had the anchorman face, only a little more tired-looking than most. But he had that classic, handsome, timeless look, but with a touch of California. He was tan, with stylish hair that was just beginning to go gray. And was just a bit longer than your average talk-show anchorman type.

I read up on him. It was easy to find articles all over the Web. And it was easy to find out where this “shameless workaholic” had lunch every day. At a modest little deli in Beverly Hills. Larry King–style. His production offices were in Manhattan Beach, but he taped his show every day in a modest, nondescript building in Beverly Hills. Thus the daily lunch spot.

In the Cobalt, on the road, at the deli.

I ordered the “famous” tuna sandwich, sat down at a corner table with a red and white checked plastic tablecloth, and waited. Damn, the tuna
was
good. I asked one of the people who worked there why it was so good. She smiled and said, “We put little bread crumbs in it. That’s the secret. But don’t tell anyone.”

And then, there was Danny Baker. Just like all the articles said. It’s amazing how many of us are creatures of habit. Myself included. I liked to drink three to four cold, cheap American beers at night and then play a few games of Ping-Pong. Danny Baker liked to come to this little deli and have lunch before heading off to interview dignitaries, politicians, artists, and experts.

He went through the little line, said some pleasantries to the people behind the counter who recognized him, then went outside and sat down at one of the little tables right on Beverly Drive. He got right to work on his, yep, you guessed it, tuna sandwich.

He was midbite when I emerged from inside and sat down at his table right across from him. And then, there I was staring at this face I’d seen a million times on TV. The handsome anchorman face, with the tired lines and the longish hair. Just long enough that you’d go: His hair is kind of long for someone who’s interviewed the president many times. But it’s not so long that you’d go: Were you ever in Whitesnake?

I said, “Don’t worry, I’m not a paparazzo, or some crazy fan. I like your show though. Really one of the best shows on TV.”

I was confusing him a bit—intentionally. You have to. It tends to scare people, catches them off guard. I
do
like his show, quite a bit. That part wasn’t gamesmanship.

I continued, “I have some information that I think you’ll find interesting.”

He was calm. So if he
was
a little caught off guard he wasn’t showing it much. Which annoyed me.

He said, “Is this a tip? Are you a source?”

He took a sip of his icy brown beverage.

“Diet Coke?” I said.

He nodded and frowned a bit, showing a fair amount of confusion.

“I love Diet Coke.” And then, “Am I a source? Well, sort of, in that I have a story for you.”

Now he was nodding, the frown replaced with an engaged look. He eyed me like I was one of his guests. Interested. Or really good at faking it.

I continued, “It’s a story about you, in fact.”

A little shift in his eyes and in his body language. Maybe he was starting to tense up. I was now less annoyed.

“I’m not sure I follow you,” he said.

It really seemed like I was on his show. Sitting across from him. Sitting across from a now leaning-in, more-interested-than-ever Danny Baker.

I thought for a moment, here on
The Danny Baker Show
. I decided to throw out a guess. A dangerous guess. But like I said, I’m a good guesser.

I said, “I know about you and one of the Pipe Girls. Suzanne Neal. Now, what I don’t know is how often you, let’s say, got together with her. And another thing I don’t know is if you know that she is dead.”

His face went white. Adrenaline coursing through his veins—for sure. His whole appearance now
different
. Another astonishing transformation as white-hot thoughts about his career being forever changed or over, about what kind of trouble he might be in, about how his life might never be the same, all at once ramming around in his brain.

Folks, I think my guess was right.

He started to get up and said, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Sit down.”

He did.

“Why are you going to the bathroom?”

“I thought I was about to throw up.”

“Do you still think that?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Take a sip of your refreshing, crisp Diet Coke.”

He did. And then he sat there again. Some color came back to his face. But his mouth hung open just a bit. He looked like he had been stunned, shocked, unplugged.

“Okay,” he said. “What do you . . . What do you want to talk about?”

“Did you know she was dead?”

“Yes. I did. Listen, can we go somewhere else? I come here every day. And . . .”

“I get it. Let’s get in my car.”

The Cobalt was less than ten yards away. We threw out our lunches and walked over to the Cobalt. He got to the passenger side door and hesitated.

I said, “Get in. We’ll just drive to the park a couple blocks away.”

He nodded and got in. I headed to a small public park at the intersection of Santa Monica and Rodeo Drive, less than a three-minute drive. I parked in some shade.

“Do you want to get out?”

Danny shook his head. And then: “Who are you?”

“My name is John Darvelle. I’m a detective.”

I told him I was private, but that the cops were also investigating the case. I told him I was helping them out. Which, in my own way, was true. But also remember: Just the mention of the actual cops was sure to throw him off a bit, to tighten up that sphincter just a touch.

I said, “How did you know Suzanne?”

He took a breath. “I met her at an industry party. She was there with . . . you know, I don’t know who she was there with. It doesn’t matter. She was a beautiful, charming girl. We ended up having some mutual friends and over the years I got to know her a bit. Never that well. But I did consider her a friend. I don’t know what happened at the deli. But suddenly the fact that she’s
dead
just hit me. Oh man. But . . . but . . . what were you saying, Pipe Girl? What is that?”

Okay. Okay. I saw what was happening. Danny wanted to get away from his local deli so he could lie to me. Because he wasn’t sure how I would react, better go someplace private.

Yes. Danny Baker hadn’t admitted anything to me yet. He had reacted in a way that said a lot, but he hadn’t actually
said
anything. He’d only told me that he knew Suzanne Neal and that he knew she was dead.

Hmm. So what was
I
going to do? I was almost certain, no, I was certain, he was a Pipe Girl customer. But the question was: Was now the time to Jimmy Yates him? To force him to tell me he had used a prostitute? To force him to tell me what he knew about Richard Neese?

Wasn’t Danny Baker simply going to tell me the exact same thing that Jimmy Yates had? What was I going to get out of that? More confirmation that Richard Neese ran a ring?

Here I was again.

I needed something that related to the
killing
.

Shit, I had jumped the gun. I had gotten too excited and had prematurely confronted Danny Baker.

I cut the interview.

But I did have one question. “Danny, when was the last time you saw Suzanne?”

“When was the last time?” he repeated.

Jesus. Lying, for sure. I mean, repeating the question? Classic.

“Two months ago. At a premiere party. I think.”

I looked at him for a long time, then said, “Okay.”

I asked for his number. He gave it to me without hesitation.
Yeah, of course, nothing to hide, call me if you need to, no problem
. I drove him back to the deli. He took a deep breath as he was getting out of my car. And this time he looked at me. And he said, “I hope I helped. And that you, or the cops, or whoever gets to the bottom of this.”

But his eyes said, “I know a lot more than I’m telling you.”

I went back to my
office. Okay. Neese is a bad guy. That is for sure. Neese runs a ring. Neese may enforce his ring’s special qualities through murder. Probably does.

Okay.

So here were the questions.

Did Suzanne tell someone, or threaten to tell someone, that she was a Pipe Girl?

Did Suzanne tell Neese she was hanging it up, and
that
somehow led to her murder?

Was one of the men who used the Pipe Girl service somehow responsible for Suzanne’s death?

Those were the questions.

But Neese. Neese was at the center of this story. His form of punishment for squealing was at the center of this story. But I needed something more than a rumor from a guy on a boat named Marlon the Marlin.

That’s when Jenny Bickford called me.

“Hi, Jenny,” I said.

“Hi,” she said.

“What’s happening?”

“Well, I thought of something that might help you.”

31

N
ow, people of the story. I’m a private detective. I bullshit people a lot. And I try to
detect
bullshit a lot. This, whatever it was about to be, felt like something she wanted to tell me before and didn’t. And that usually means it’s worth looking into.

“Great,” I said. “Thanks for calling. What’s up?”

“Well, this may not help,” sounding very casual. Just so casual. “But Suzanne has . . . Suzanne has this friend who you may want to talk to.”

“Okay. What’s her name?”

“Her name is Allison Tarber. And the reason I think she might be helpful is . . . Well, you’re a man, so this might not make sense.”

“Try me.”

“Well, you know when you have a good friend who has a good friend but you and the
other
friend don’t ever really connect?”

“Sure. I know when that happens.”

“Well, that’s the way this is. The three of us were only together a few times, but I just remember that when I was around them it felt like they were in on an inside joke that I wasn’t a part of. That they had another kind of relationship. You know what I’m saying? You know that feeling?”

Yeah I knew that feeling. Everyone knows that feeling. It’s a terrible feeling.

I said, “Yeah. Like maybe this girl Allison has a nice apartment somewhere that someone might have bought her?”

Jenny didn’t respond. She just said. “I don’t know about that. I’m just saying maybe she knows something, or knew a side of Suzanne that I didn’t. I don’t know. Just thought it was something that might help you.”

I thought about Jenny. There was a sincerity to her that you don’t see that often anymore. Like she couldn’t help being a good person.

I love people like that.

“Do you know how to contact Allison? Know where she lives? Where she’s from?”

“I really don’t. You know, we never connected. Like, as friends. But also literally—we never got together or anything. It’s funny, I think I remember her being from Alaska. I don’t know if that helps.”

“It helps. Thanks, Jenny. Call me if anything else pops into your head. Or for anything you might need.”

Long pause. “Yeah, okay, John.”

Normally I might have been
discouraged by this. You could look at it like it was a trail up a different mountain— a trail taking me further away from the epicenter of my story. My case getting diluted. But I had to try. Because I had to get to the
murder
. And, what else did I have right at this moment?

Right. There was that.

Before I called Ken Booth to see if maybe she was an actress, or called Larry Frenette to see if he could look through the paper’s computer, or called Linda Robbie to see if this Allison Tarber had any high-dollar real estate in her name, I decided to do a little amateur-level looking around. Facebook. Google. The way normal people all over the place investigate each other these days.

Facebook. Nothing that looked promising. Google. A few matches but quite frankly none of them looked like I assumed Allison Tarber should look. Because, like you, I’d assumed she was another Pipe Girl. Like Suzanne Neal. And the cool-under-pressure, steely-eyed Rebecca Heath.

Then I tried: Allison Tarber, Los Angeles. And less than a second later I was looking at a link that would take me to an
L.A. Times
newspaper headline. I clicked on the link. And here’s what the headline said: “Hiker in Santa Monica Canyon Falls to Death.”

Hey, Jenny Bickford. Yeah. Looks like this
might
help. Because Allison Tarber is, you know, dead.

There was a brief article dating back just over a year. And a picture next to it of a very young and very pretty girl. The picture looked like a headshot. Probably was. I read the article. It was simple, factual. It said that Los Angeles resident Allison Tarber, an aspiring actress, was hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains, slipped near the top of the trail she was hiking on, and fell about fifty feet into the canyon, hitting her head fatally on the way down.

She had been hiking very near where I’d almost done my last hike ever. Where I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me by two mouth breathers. Where I’d been face-to-face with a black-eyed rattler.

The article didn’t indicate any foul play, any investigation at all. It was pure information.

It was cold-feeling. Clinical. Heartless.

So instead of now going to Ken Booth or Larry Frenette or Linda Robbie, it was back to Elliot Watt. Back to drawers of the dead. Back to the morgue.

I called Elliot. He wasn’t glad to hear from me. He didn’t say, “Hey, John! What’s up, homey?! How’s the Darv doing? Yeah, come on by!”

However, because it was an old case, with no heat on it, he didn’t give me too much attitude. Not a single put-upon sigh. Not a single guilt-trippy speech. He just said, in a flat, bored tone, “Yeah, come by and I’ll give you the file.”

I got to the morgue. Quiet that day. Elliot was sitting behind his desk, hollow-eyed, blue veins showing beneath his clammy alabaster skin. He was reading
Popular Mechanics
.

“
Popular Mechanics
, huh? What
is
that magazine, Elliot?”

He looked at me with disgust. “Darvelle, what does that even mean?”

“I just mean, I bet if you asked twenty people what the content of
Popular Mechanics
is, like what a typical article might be about, nineteen of them would have no clue and the one who did know would be some kind of criminal or degenerate or twisted basement-dwelling weirdo who’s like forty-eight and lives with his mom.”

He said, “I’m sorry, didn’t you come here to ask for
my
help? To have
me
do you a favor? And your way of buttering me up is to blatantly insult me? Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense, John.”

“Right. You have a point. You absolutely have a point. But, seriously. What are you reading? I mean, what article are you reading right now? What’s it about?”

He looked at me, fed up. His big blue bug eyes were half closed. And he conveyed a mixture of boredom, exhaustion, and confusion. He said, “I’m reading an article about a new kind of self-inflating tire.”

“Why?” I yelled. “Why would you read that?”

He didn’t respond. He just put the magazine down, then picked up the case file and autopsy reports for Allison Tarber.

“Here you go,” he said.

“Is this my copy?”

“Yeah, but it’s quiet today. And nobody cares about this case. You can read it here if you want to, in case you have any questions for me.”

See, I told you. Elliot Watt’s cool. Good guy. Wants to help. Fighting the good fight. He’s in the you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-your-back ring of trust—you already know that. But here’s why, specifically, he helps me out. Because one time I helped him in a way that he seems to really appreciate. He came to me some years ago and said, in his words, “I have a favor of the large variety to ask.”

Elliot had this girlfriend. Tracy. I’d met her randomly once. Ran into Elliot and her at a movie theater in Culver City. This girl was very attractive. I know, hard to believe. Now, she was of the goth, pale-skinned, tattoo-on-her-back-of-a-snarling-rabid-hyena variety, but she was legitimately, objectively attractive. Elliot broke up with her because he said she was, again his words, “Fucking nuts, John. Fucking nuts.” So, after he broke up with her, she wouldn’t let it go. Called him and texted him constantly. Stalked him. And eventually threatened to kill him. Now, it sounds maybe even kind of amusing. But as I learned through a quick investigation, Elliot was right about this girl. She was mentally tweaked. And she hated Elliot for leaving her.

Obviously, Tracy didn’t kill Elliot. But she did get a friend of hers named Ollie to further harass him and beat him up. Ollie was tough and mean and he loved Tracy. So he’d take his anger out on anyone she asked him to. Ollie kicked the shit out of Elliot. And afterward, hung around his house and neighborhood and, anytime he had the chance, antagonized him and terrorized him and pushed him around and scared him. Ollie was like a schoolyard bully, but in adult life. And much, much more dangerous.

So, I have this friend who I’ll tell you about at another time in more detail. His name is Clete. That’s actually his name. Clete. He’s from Arkansas. He’s six-four and wiry-strong. He has probably five percent body fat. Maybe less. He’s the toughest person I’ve ever met. Once I was at his house, and he was on the roof of it, actually leaning off the roof of it, to reach over and saw a dead limb off a tree that bordered the house. He slipped and fell, and on the way down crashed very hard into several branches and brick window ledges and then THUMPED on the ground. He got right up, unscathed. He had no injuries. He literally was not hurt at all.

I said, “You all right, dude?”

And he said, “Yep.”

And walked into his house.

Anyway, Clete and I went and found Ollie and, mostly with Clete’s unique use of force, we quickly fixed the Elliot Watt situation.

Ollie walks the earth these days with a scared look in his eye—not to mention a permanent twitch.

Elliot never heard from Ollie, or Tracy, again.

But let’s get back to the story.

I sat down in Elliot’s bleak morgue office and looked at the Allison Tarber case files. The “case” never became a case. Nobody ever suspected anything. It was just a really bad accident that resulted in a really bad head wound that resulted in the worst news there is.

A young person dying.

I looked at the pictures
of the corpse. Another dead, naked, and, before the fall, beautiful young woman. Half her head was caved in. And she had cuts and bruises and slices and gashes down the left side of her body. The other side of her, the right side, was surprisingly unharmed. Amazing in a way—the randomness of a violent fall.

Elliot peered at me from behind his
Popular Mechanics
. He had a look in his eye that said: Would you like my opinion?

So maybe that’s why he’d told me to stick around. Not necessarily out of the goodness of his heart. More: I’ve got a POV on this. I thought, hey, whatever, once again, I’ll take it.

“Yes?” I said to him.

“What?” he said coyly.

“Do you have some thoughts on this? What does the expert say?”

He walked over to me and his demeanor changed from twisted, pale
Popular Mechanics
reader to twisted, weird, but highly confident professional.

“Well, this girl was obviously very banged up. The head injuries killed her almost certainly. Actually the head injuries did kill her.”

“Okay.”

“Look, I took a look at this file before you came over. I’m not going to ask why you’re looking into this girl, or how it might be related to the other girl, I’m just going to tell you what I thought back when she first came in. Basically it’s like this: I always look very carefully at the bodies, because I do my job unbelievably well.”

He said this with no irony. Which I appreciated. False modesty is so boring.

He continued. “Basically I wasn’t just being a nice guy when I said stick around here to read the report.”

I didn’t mention that that had occurred to me. I just listened. Sometimes that’s best.

Elliot continued, “Because I want to tell you what I found, that nobody at the time seemed to think was important or even necessarily accurate. In fact, my boss wouldn’t let me put it into the report because he said it was just a theory. And theories don’t fly here because then the cops spend all this money looking into something that may not even be real when they should be doing other things. You get my fucking drift?”

“I do,” I said. “Let’s hear it. What is it?”

“So I found this one cut right on her left front hip. A gash really. A small chunk of her body missing.”

He pointed to the picture. The cut he showed me was just inside her left hip bone. In a sort of sexy area of the female body. It looked to me a whole lot like all the other cuts on the left side of her body. Indistinguishable from the others as far as I could tell.

Elliot continued, “See, this cut just wasn’t consistent with the rest of her injuries. Now, she had slices and gashes and tears all over her body from falling down into that goddamn gulch. Why people like to hike is beyond my ability to comprehend, by the way. It’s like, walking around on a trail at ten thousand feet with scorpions and mountain lions and cliffs that you can fall all off everywhere. It’s like, are you stupid?”

I thought, not to mention rattlesnakes and subhuman guys who want to kill you.

“But, anyway,” Elliot said. “This cut, this one right here that I’m showing you, was too clean. It was like the fall didn’t cause it. It was like she’d been stabbed with a knife that had a very sharp but not serrated edge. Now, I couldn’t, can’t, prove this and you
could
possibly come to the conclusion that it was just a weird, knifelike rock that stabbed her and took out a chunk of her. That
is
possible in that it’s not
impossible
. But it seemed to me like she had been cut prior to her fall.”

“What do you mean? What are you saying?”

Sometimes my questions weren’t exactly genius.

“I’m saying one way to look at this is that someone cut her before she fell off the cliff. And that someone wisely thought that falling hundreds of feet down a canyon bouncing off rocks and trees would both kill her and cover up the cut. Which for all intents and purposes it did. Not even my boss bought my theory. Which is why I said it
could
have been a one-in-a-million cut that sliced out a section of her body perfectly. It’s just doubtful. Or let me put it to you better, John: It didn’t happen. Now, why cut her here? What would that really do other than hurt like a motherfucker? No clue. Seems pretty random. Maybe somebody trying to scare her by stabbing her in a pretty, you know, private area. No clue.”

I looked at him. Then I looked at the pictures again. Then said, “Thank you for your professional opinion, my friend.”

He nodded. “You bet.”