The Detective & the Pipe Girl (5 page)

And then I saw a beautiful blond woman walk out the front door of, you guessed it, Ocean Avenue condo two. She leisurely walked right out the same door Jimmy Yates had come skipping out of.

7

S
he walked right in front of the car parked two cars up from me. I watched her. She crossed the street and headed into the park. She went to the edge of the park, where a low-slung wooden fence provided a little support to lean on—and prevented you from walking straight off the cliff and tumbling down to your death. It was a small fence, decoration, a reminder really. You could climb it easily, step over it or through it, and throw yourself off if you really wanted to. People had. One guy drove his car right through it and headed off the edge into gravity and, of course, pavement. That’s what I heard anyway.

The blonde leaned lightly against the fence and looked out at the ocean.

I grabbed my digital camera, nothing serious, tourist-style, got out of my car, crossed the street, hid behind a tree, and snapped a couple photos of her. Mostly from behind, and a few of the back quarter of her profile. Then I walked over to her.

“Excuse me,” I said.

She turned to me. Suzanne Neal. For sure. And no fear or suspicion in her eyes at the hello of a stranger. Just a smile and some lifted eyebrows to suggest: How can I help?

I said, “Would you mind taking my picture? Want to get a shot with the ocean in the background. I’m visiting.”

“Sure,” she said.

I handed her the camera, then leaned against the fence, getting ready for my close-up.

“Where are you visiting from?” she asked.

“Jacksonville, Florida.”

Pretty good choice, right? A big city, but kind of unexpected. Like there’s no way that’s bullshit. Truth is, my aunt lives there. And I’ve been. My aunt found some trouble once. I’ll tell you about it sometime. But it’s a good, just-off-the-radar, totally believable fake hometown—and I can answer the follow-up questions about it if necessary because I’ve been, I’ve experienced it.

And sometimes there are follow-ups.

Suzanne Neal didn’t have any.

I did the standard forced smile and she snapped the photo. She looked at the camera, at her own work. “Pretty good shot if I do say so myself.”

She smiled at me. And in an instant I knew what Vonz, and maybe Jimmy Yates, were all crazy about. She was beautiful. And sexier than her picture let on. But also real and special and in no way typical. She had a magic in her eyes, and a mischief. But the thing that exploded out of her was the ability to make
you
feel special. Like she really liked you. Like you were the only person who mattered.

Like you were the only person in the world.

You know people like that? You know people like that.

I said, “I’ll be the judge. Let me see.”

I looked at the shot. “Not bad. Take one with me.”

I scooted over next to her and held the camera out pointed back at the two of us. She was game, didn’t mind. I popped off a shot. I looked at the picture. Me with the over-the-top smile, her with the over-the-top, lips-ready-to-kiss, playful sexy look. My eyes stayed on Suzanne.

Her image was heartbreaking.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll cherish it forever. The one of just me, I mean.”

She smiled. I nodded and respectfully headed off. Even though I wanted to ask her to move to Mexico with me and start a family.

“What’s Jacksonville, Florida like?”

Well, well. There
was
a follow-up.

And was this Arthur Vonz affair-having gorgeous young woman engaging me? Me? John Darvelle, P.I.? Yes, friends. Yes, she was.

I turned around. “It’s great. Great town. Sort of has a hidden gem, undiscovered quality.”

“What do you mean?”

Damn. She actually cared. She wasn’t just making conversation.

“Well, it’s in North Florida, so it doesn’t look like what you expect Florida to look like. It has big oak trees and sort of a beautiful Southern look. But at the same time, it’s on the Atlantic. So it does have the Florida sunny beach thing. But it’s a different kind of beach from the rest of Florida. It’s big and wide and pretty great.”

I was overdoing it. Because I wanted to keep talking to her.

“What, are you a travel agent?”

I laughed. “Do those still exist?”

“I grew up in Charlotte. I know exactly what you mean about the Southern beaches and everything. I miss it. I love L.A. I do. But L.A. is . . . complicated. And for some reason it makes you feel lonely sometimes.”

She was right.

I said, “I’ve had a nice visit. Checked out Hollywood yesterday. Had to go to Mann’s Chinese. Santa Monica today. Got a picture with you. Had some good celeb sightings too. Actually . . . you know who I just saw?”

No reaction from her. She just smiled and said, “Who?”

“Jimmy Yates.”

Her smile didn’t leave her face. Her face didn’t stretch into any new configuration. But there was a shift in her eyes. And therefore a shift in her expression. It just happens, you can’t help it. You cannot help it. It’s so subtle, but so obvious. Kind of incredible—human emotion is hard to tamp down.

“Wow,” she said in a very genuine way. “That’s a big one.”

“Now if I can just figure out a way to see Scott Bakula I can go home totally satisfied.”

“Ha. Right,” she said.

I held up the camera. “Thanks again.”

Back in the Cobalt. Found
her. Got a picture of her. Got a picture
with
her. Mr. Big Shot Arthur Vonz would be impressed. Or not. Maybe he knew it wouldn’t be that hard to find her.

I drove back to my office. Opened the big slider, sat behind my desk, let the afternoon sun stream in. Had a quick memory of demolishing Mountcastle in Pong. I had made it hurt and had zero regret. That’s a good feeling. Zero regret. I dialed up Vonz. To my surprise, he answered. I don’t know why that surprised me. Maybe I suspected Mountcastle would intercept the call. Devious fucker.

“Mr. Darvelle,” Vonz said.

“Mr. Vonz,” I said in a way that showed I didn’t like him playing around with my name like we’re old friends.

“What can I do for you?”

“I found Suzanne.”

“That didn’t take long.”

“Often if doesn’t. If the person isn’t hiding.”

“Well, tell me about it.”

I started to, and then he interrupted me. “You’re in Culver City, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I’m leaving on a flight tomorrow evening from the Santa Monica airport. Not too far from your office. Maybe you could meet me there and we could talk? I’d like to talk to you about something. I’d . . . I’d like to give you something.”

The Santa Monica airport was not LAX. This was a small airport for private planes. Props and jets. For aviators and rich people. On the property, there was one pretty big building, the terminal, I guess you’d call it, and a few smaller surrounding structures. The big one housed some offices and a nice, sparse waiting area where you could hang out while your eighty-five-million-dollar jet got all fueled up. The building also housed a popular restaurant, a groovy but upscale California Thai place, Typhoon, with big windows out to the runways so you can watch the planes land and take off. Watching planes land and take off—it’s actually more enjoyable than you’d think. There used to be a sushi joint called Hump that sat high up on the third floor of the building, the top floor, with a little outside patio for, yes, plane viewing. Hump shut down, though—something about selling whale meat illegally. By the way, it wasn’t called “The Hump.” It was just called Hump. I used to say to dates, “I’ll pick you up, we’ll go to hump, and then maybe after we’ll grab some sushi.”

Yeah, I know, it’s not that great. Whatever.

I said to Vonz, “Sure, what time?”

“Let’s meet at Typhoon at five. We’ll have a drink, watch the planes come in.”

See? Even this guy enjoyed it.

“Until then,” I said.

8

I
walked into Typhoon at 4:59. Running a little late, quite frankly. It was on the second floor. Hadn’t been here in a while. Great vibe. Great design. Dark wood everywhere, good lighting, and the whole back wall essentially one big window looking out onto the runway. It was beautiful—planes coming and going up through and down through an orange and purple sky just beginning to darken over Santa Monica.

Vonz was on time, earlier than I even, sitting in a booth at the right side of the big window. The best seat in the house. He looked over at me, grinned, and raised an eyebrow—glad to see me, it seemed. Maybe he was impressed that I took care of his assignment so quickly. Or maybe he was just a charming bastard and that’s how he got you to do what he wanted. The latter almost certainly.

I sat down. Before I said a word he flagged over a waitress. Not tough when the staff is basically staring at you.

A pretty girl said, “Can I get you a drink, sir?”

“I’m having a scotch and soda,” Vonz said.

I said, “I’ll have a Bud Light.”

“We don’t have that here.”

“Do you have any domestic beer? Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light?”

“I’m afraid not. We have an assortment of Thai beers and just one domestic, from a microbrewery in Northern California.”

I almost got up and left.

Here’s the thing. A classy restaurant, a truly sophisticated establishment, has cheap American beer as well as that other bullshit. Almost nothing pisses me off more than when a restaurant tries to raise its sophistication level by only serving Japanese beer or some fucked-up micro brew or, this is the worst, just Amstel Light and Heineken. It’s such an uninspired, middle-class, ersatz mentality to think that sophisticated people wouldn’t want a goddamn Budweiser just because they’re at some restaurant. It’s such a mistake. It betrays such a lack of knowledge about what’s really happening in life. About what it really means to
get it
. About what it really means to be “classy.” Go to Dan Tana’s in Hollywood, go to The Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, go to an old-school New York–style restaurant that understands service and people. Sure, you can get a Heineken, you can get a Beck’s or whatever, but you can also get a cold, crisp Miller Fucking Lite if that’s what you want. Yes, rednecks in Florida drink Budweiser, barefoot in front of their trailers, listening to Edgar Winter and arguing with each other at high decibels before noon. But you know who else drinks Budweiser? Me. And I’ve read a book by Thomas Pynchon. I didn’t understand it, but let’s not split hairs. It makes me a whole lot more sophisticated than most of the assholes in most places.

Except for maybe Vonz. He’s probably read a Pynchon book or two.

I took a breath, looked out the window. I pictured running as fast as I could, crashing through it, and landing on the tarmac two floors down. Then getting up, shaking off the glass, and just quietly, very quietly, walking off.

But I didn’t do that. I took another breath, got my shit together, and looked back at the waitress politely. It wasn’t her fault, after all.

“Gin and tonic then.”

The waitress scurried off.

“You don’t like the beer choices?” Vonz asked.

“I like beer that I can have a lot of. Light and crisp. I’m not interested in drinking a beer that makes me full after one. I’m not interested in drinking a glass of bread.”

Vonz looked at me. He might have been slightly scared. He said, “I like that.” Then: “So. You found Suzanne?”

“Yes.” I told him essentially how I found her. And where she lived. I left out parts I didn’t think he needed to know. Like the Jimmy Yates part. My assignment so far was to find her and that’s what I had done.

“You sure it was her?”

I produced my camera and showed him the picture I had taken of her and the picture I had taken of me
and
her.

“Ha!” he said. “You’re good. A picture of her to show me you found her. And a picture of the two of you to prove to me in an absolutely certain way that the first picture was current and not something you found somewhere.”

“Bingo.”

Our drinks came. I took an enormous sip, half the drink. I was still pissed off about the beer.

I said, “There’s a couple more shots in there if you scroll back.”

Vonz did, to the sort of profile shot that I’d taken before introducing myself, where Suzanne looked out over the cliff toward the ocean. In this voyeuristic, more straight-up P.I.-style shot, there was a pensiveness about her, even though you couldn’t fully see her eyes. You could
feel
something kicking around in her psyche. And as he looked at it, you could see a pensiveness in Vonz’s eyes too. For just a moment, as he took in the picture, this man who was very accustomed to examining images, this man who’d seen them all, was captivated. He was somewhere else—in the movie he’d made from his memories.

Then he looked at me with the sparkle back in his eyes, the Vonzian charm back in his smile. “Did you talk to her?”

“Not much.”

“She’s really special, I think. Beautiful, sure. More beautiful in person. I bet you realized that. But a rare and special energy about her.”

I agreed. But I didn’t say that. I just let him go.

“Well, I’m impressed you found her so quickly. I’d like you to do something else for me. I’ll continue to pay you, of course. I’d just like you to do one more thing.”

I wondered what the one thing was going to be. A message perhaps? I looked at Vonz, thinking, what does he have up his velvet-blazered sleeve? He looked at me, then up and to the right of me, and said, “Hello, lovely.”

I turned to see a very stylish older woman now standing at the head of our table. Just to my left. Mrs. Vonz. For sure. Gina. Appearing out of nowhere like a vision. Looking sleek, sophisticated, hip. Downright decked out. White suit, white hair, tan skin, silver and turquoise necklace. Glamorous. And still foxy. A Helen Mirren quality.

To Vonz: “You and the detective. Meeting again.”

Vonz laughed. “Yes, this is John Darvelle. John, my wife, Gina.”

I stood up and extended a hand.

“Hello,” she said, gripping my hand in a way I could only describe as sexy.

Her hand was cool. She held my grip and looked me over, observed me, with a charming smile.

“I like your look,” she said. “I like your hair.”

It was her way of saying that she liked my
lack
of hair, that she admired, I suppose, that I was losing it but didn’t hide it with a comb-over, implants, a rug, or some other trick. I just kept it short. Zipped it down myself with the half-inch guard on my Oster head shaver every three days. My receding hairline left me with some power alleys up top, a veritable Hair Peninsula on my head. My friend Gary Delmore once used my Hair Peninsula as a facsimile for the state of Florida. He showed a girlfriend of his how to get from Tampa to Miami by tracing with his finger from the middle of my peninsula, Tampa, to the bottom of my peninsula, Miami. I think he even showed her where you would turn off of to visit the Everglades. I just stood there. It wasn’t a great moment for me.

You’re probably wondering, well, what are you going to do when you
totally
lose
your hair up top? Are you going to be one of those guys with a moat of hair wrapping around the sides and back of the head? Like Terry Bradshaw, or Captain Stubing?

Here’s my answer to that: YOU’RE GODDAMN RIGHT I AM.

But let’s get back to the story.

Gina Vonz said, “Yeah, I like your look. Ever thought of going in front of the cameras? Most people who live in L.A. consider it at some point, even if they don’t admit it.”

“Really?” I said. “Have you?”

Vonz chimed in. “She’s been in a couple of my movies, John. Surprised you don’t recognize her.”

Gina said, “Well, it was a while ago. His early stuff. And the parts were pretty small.”

She gave Vonz an affectionate, flirty look to say: You could have given me slightly bigger parts.

“She could have done more, could have been a star, I think,” Vonz said. “Even without my help.”

She smiled at Vonz. They still had chemistry.

“So,” she said to me. “Have you ever been bitten by the acting bug?”

“No,” I said. “And I’ll tell you why. When you’re an actor, your whole life is waiting around for someone else to
allow
you to do the thing you want to do. I’d never do that. My drug isn’t stardom. It’s freedom.”

Gina looked at me.

Then Vonz again said, “I like that.” And then, “John, walk us out to the plane.”

We both downed our drinks and got up. Vonz motioned to one of the waitstaff, who nodded. Guess he didn’t have to pay right then and there. Ah, the life of the elite. Maybe he didn’t have to pay at all. That’s what happens to a lot of these rich guys. They get rich and
then
everyone starts buying them stuff. You ever noticed that? The rich, famous guys getting the free drinks, free dinners, free this, free that? You’ve noticed that.

We left Typhoon, walked down the outside steps to the parking lot, then swung around through a ground-level door that Vonz used a magnetic key fob to get us through. We were now underneath the restaurant. We went through a clean, simple waiting area, then out the door on the other side, and ended up, essentially, right on the tarmac and runways.

Thirty yards away, a gleaming, crisp, white jet, engines humming, slid into our eye line. It stopped, the door opened, the stairs unfolded down, waiting for Vonz and Gina. The jet looked like it had just been just washed, pellets of water visible, which made it sort of glisten and shine. Almost like it had been sprayed down for aesthetic purposes.

Talk about freedom. It looked like a vessel to freedom.

We walked toward the jet.

“We’re going to New York for a couple days,” Vonz said.

“Okay.”

“Some meetings, some restaurants, some real city life.”

Vonz was bullshitting until Gina got on the plane. I just kept walking. We arrived at the jet, the stairs to freedom. Gina trotted on up.

“Be right there, G,” he said.

At the top of the steps, she turned and smiled at him, and smiled and flickered her fingers at me. And then she disappeared.

Vonz, his back to the plane, to the windows, discreetly pulled an envelope out of his blazer.

“Please get this to Suzanne for me.”

He was close to me. Having to raise his voice over the engines, but not much, surprisingly. The engines would prevent Gina from hearing him, but I could hear him fine. I guess that’s what you get for sixty, seventy, eighty mil.

“What is it?” I said.

“Why do you ask?”

“I need to know if it’s something illegal. Occasionally I will do something illegal. Okay, maybe more than occasionally. But when I do it’s because I know what’s happening, and I choose to do it. I don’t know enough about this story yet.”

I grabbed the envelope out of his hand.

“So if this is anything illegal, deliver it yourself.”

He nodded and said, “It’s just a letter that says I miss talking to her and, well . . . John, we had a connection, and, as I’ve told you, hell you know now, there’s something about her. So if she’s through talking to me, I want to tell her just one last time that she’s . . . great. And that I’d like to talk to her from time to time. And that if she ever needs anything to call me. That’s it. I don’t want to send a letter she might not get, or that will come back to my house for my wife to open. And I don’t want to deliver it myself because if she doesn’t want to talk to me, if she feels she needs to end all communication with me, I doubt she wants me just showing up.”

“Stalker.”

“Right.”

“Can I open it and read it? I’ll put it in a fresh envelope to deliver it.”

“Yes. If you need to do that, fine.”

Gina Vonz reappeared at the top of the steps. Like: Let’s go. I held the envelope openly. Always the best way to go. Nothing to hide. Maybe it was just a payment from Vonz.

Vonz turned around and headed up the steps. Halfway, he looked back at me. “Thanks, John.”

I nodded. And Vonz and Gina went in.

Almost instantly, the stairs retracted, the door shut, and the plane began to head out to the runway. So fast. None of that bullshit you get on a regular old flight.

Then I noticed a profile in one of the back windows—Mountcastle. He was already on the plane. He’d boarded with the crew. He wasn’t creepily looking out at me. He was just sitting there, like a good little schoolboy, all buckled up and ready to go. Man, these big shots take their assistants everywhere. So they never have to do
anything
the rest of us do.

Then, just moments after the stairs had been enveloped by the plane, Vonz, Mountcastle, and his wise, glamorous wife rocketed skyward in a zillion-dollar machine, parting the darkening orange and purple sky, the water on the jet of the plane catching sunlight and sparkling, the wings for quick moments looking like they were covered in fireflies.

I followed the plane for almost five minutes until it was a black dot in the distance.

And then I turned and walked back to the Cobalt.