The Murder Book (28 page)

I
got on the computer, typed in “Paris Bartlett” as a keyphrase on several search engines, and came up with nothing.

Next, I tried “Playa del Sol” and its English translation:
Sun Beach
, and connected to hundreds of resort links all over the world. Costa del Sol. Costa del Amor. Playa Negra. Playa Blanca. Playa Azul. Sun City. Sunrise Beach. Excursion packages, time shares, white sand, blue water, adults only, bring the kids. Also, a guy who’d devoted an obsessive site to the old song “
Cuando Caliente El Sol
.” The joys of the information age…

I stuck with it for hours, felt my eyes crossing and broke for a midnight sandwich, a beer, and a shower before returning to the screen. By 2
A.M.
, I was fighting sleep and nearly missed the article in a three-year-old issue of
The Resort Journal
elicited by yet another try at Playa del Sol. This time, I’d logged on to a pay service — a business-oriented data bank that I hadn’t used since last fall, when I’d considered selling a lot of municipal bonds. I clicked my assent to pony up by credit card and continued.

What I got was a rear-of-the-magazine piece entitled “Seeking the Good Life on Distant Shores: Americans Looking for Foreign Bargains Often Find Themselves on the Losing End.” The article recounted several real estate deals gone sour, among them a construction project down in Baja named Playa del Sol: high-end condos peddled to American retirees lured by American-style luxury living at Mexican prices. Two hundred units out of a planned four hundred fifty had been built and purchased. The first wave of retirees hadn’t yet moved in when the Mexican government invoked a fine-print provision of an obscure regulation, confiscated the land, and sold it to a Saudi Arabian consortium who turned the condos into a hotel. The Playa del Sol Company, Ltd., incorporated in the Cayman Islands, dissolved itself and its American subsidiary, Playa Enterprises, declared Chapter 11. The retirees lost their money.

No comment from the president of Playa Enterprises, Michael Larner.

Recalling the obscure business journal references that had come up on my first search for Larner — magazines not in the Research Library’s holdings — I looked for anything else I could find on the former Achievement House director and came across several other deals he’d put together during the past five years.

Larner’s specialty was real estate syndication — getting moneyed people together to buy out incomplete building projects that had run into trouble. High-rise apartments in Atlanta, defunct country clubs in Colorado and New Mexico, a ski lodge in Vermont, a golf course in Arizona. Once the deal was inked, Larner took his cut and walked away.

All the subsequent articles had the rah-rah tone of paid ads. None mentioned the Mexican debacle, Playa Enterprises, or the Playa Del Sol Company, Ltd. Larner’s corporate face was now the ML Group.

No mention of the Cossack brothers, either. Or any of Larner’s fellow venture capitalists, though showbiz and Wall Street affiliations were implied. The only other ML staffer named was Larner’s son, Bradley, executive vice president.

Using “ML Group” as a keyphrase, I retraced all the search machines and obtained the exact same articles, plus one more: a two-year-old stroke job in a glossy rag titled
Southwest Leisure Builder
.

Centered amid the text was a color photo: Larners, father and son, posing on a bright day in Phoenix, wearing matching royal blue golf shirts, white canvas slacks, white smiles.

Michael Larner looked around sixty-five. Square-faced and florid, he wore wide steel-framed aviator’s glasses turned to mirrors by the Arizona sun. His smile was self-satisfied and heralded by overly large capped teeth. He had a drinker’s nose, a big, hard-looking belly, and meticulously styled white hair. A casting agent would’ve seen Venal Executive.

Bradley Larner was thinner and smaller and paler than his father — barely a nuance of his father. Late thirties or early forties, he was also bespectacled, but his choice of eyewear ran to gold-framed, narrow, oval lenses so tiny they barely covered his irises. His hair was that lank, waxy blond destined to whiten, and it trailed past his shoulders. Less enthusiasm in his expression. Barely a smile at all, though to read the article, the Larners were riding the crest of the real estate wave.

Bradley Larner looked like a kid forced to sit for yet another obnoxious family snapshot.

An accompanying picture on the following page showed Michael Larner in an ice-cream suit, blue shirt, and pink tie posed next to a white-on-white Rolls Royce Silver Spirit. To his father’s right, Brad Larner perched atop a gold Harley-Davidson, wearing black leather.

The caption read:
Different generations, but the same flair for the Ultimate Ride.

The Playa del Sol link meant “Paris Bartlett” was likely an envoy to Milo from the Larners.

Warning him off the trail of Caroline Cossack.

Because the Larners and the Cossacks went way back.

The families had something else in common: big deals that often went bad. But all of them managed to stay on top, maintaining the good life.

The Ultimate Ride.

In the Cossacks’ case, inherited wealth might’ve provided a nice safety blanket. Michael Larner, on the other hand, had bounced from job to job and industry to industry, leaving scandal or bankruptcy in his wake but always managing to position himself higher.

That smile, teeth as white and gleaming as his Rolls Royce. A man willing to do whatever it took? Or friends in the right places? Or both.

Back when Larner had bent the rules and admitted Caroline Cossack to Achievement House, her brothers had been barely out of adolescence but already in the real estate business. Larner might have dealt initially with Garvey Cossack, Senior, but the relationship endured well after Senior’s demise and found Larner working for men twenty-five years his junior. Then I thought of something:
Bradley
Larner was about the same age as the Cossack brothers. Was there some link, there? Something that went beyond business?

When searching for school data on Caroline, Milo hadn’t gotten very far with the local high schools. Because everyone was litigation-wary and watched episodic TV and believed cops without warrants were impotent.

Maybe also because Caroline’s emotional problems meant she hadn’t enjoyed much of a school history. But perhaps tracking her brothers would be easier.

The next morning, I was back at the library thumbing through
Who’s Who
. Neither Bob Cossack nor Bradley Larner were listed, but Garvey Cossack had merited a biography: a single paragraph of puffery, mostly what I’d already learned from the Web.

Tucked among all the corporate braggadocio was Garvey’s educational history. He’d completed two years of college at Cal State Northridge but hadn’t graduated. Maybe that’s why he’d bothered to list his high school. And the fact that he’d been student body treasurer during his senior year.

University High.

I checked with the reference desk and found that the library maintained three decades of local yearbooks in the reference section. Uni was as local as it got.

Finding the right volume wasn’t hard. I estimated Garvey’s age and nailed it on the second try.

His graduation picture revealed a full-faced, acne-plagued eighteen-year-old with long, wavy hair, wearing a light-colored turtleneck. Sandwiched between the top of the sweater’s collar and the boy’s meaty chin was a puka-shell necklace. His grin was mischievous.

Listed under his picture were memberships in the Business Club, the “managerial staff” of the football team, and something called the King’s Men. But there was no mention of his being treasurer. According to the Student Council page, the treasurer was a girl named Sarah Buckley. Thumbing through the three preceding yearbooks taught me that Garvey Cossack had never served in any student-government capacity.

Petty fib for a middle-aged millionaire; that made it all the more interesting.

I located Robert “Bobo” Cossack’s headshot one class back. He’d come to photo day wearing a black shirt with a high collar and a choker-length chain. Equine face, hair darker and even longer than his brother’s, a more severe blemish. Bobo wore a sullen expression and his eyes were half-shut. Sleepy or stoned — or trying to look the part. His attempts to grow a beard and mustache had resulted in a halo of dark fuzz around his chin and spidery wisps above his upper lip.

No affiliations below his picture other than the King’s Men.

Also in the junior class was a very skinny Bradley Larner, wearing tinted aviator glasses, a button-down shirt, and peroxide surfer-do that obscured half his face. The part that was visible was as dispirited as Bobo Cossack’s.

Another King’s Man.

I searched the yearbook for mention of the club, found a listing in the roster of school service organizations but no details. Finally, in a breathless account of the homecoming game I spotted a reference to “
the revelry, high jinks (and other good stuff) perpetrated by the King’s Men
.”

An accompanying snapshot showed a group of six boys at the beach, wearing bathing trunks and striped beanies and clowning around with cross-eyed grins, goofy poses, behind-the-head rabbit ears. The beer cans in their hands had been blacked out clumsily. In one case, the Miller logo was still visible. The caption:
Surf’s Up! but the King’s Men crave other liquid entertainment! Partying at Zuma: G. Cossack, L. Chapman, R. Cossack, V. Coury, B. Larner, N. Hansen
.

The Cossack brothers had been high school party animals, and the Bel Air bash a couple of years later was just more of the same. And the link between them and the Larners had been forged on the sands of Zuma, not in the boardroom.

That made me wonder if the idea for secreting problematic sister Caroline might have originated with the boys, not their father. “
Hey, Dad,
Brad’s
dad works at this place for weirdos, maybe he can help out
.”

I searched the yearbooks for mention or a picture of Caroline Cossack.

Nothing.

I drove around the pretty residential streets of Westwood, thinking about Pierce Schwinn and what he’d really wanted from Milo. Had the former detective finally decided to come clean with secrets held for two decades, as I’d suggested, or had he undertaken his own freelance investigation late in life and come up with new leads?

Either way, Schwinn hadn’t been as serene as his second wife believed. Or as faithful: He’d found a confidante to mail the murder book.

As I’d told Milo, Ojai was a small town and it was doubtful Schwinn could’ve pulled off a regular assignation there without Marge finding out. But before he’d married Marge, he’d lived in Oxnard in a fleabag motel. Marge hadn’t mentioned the name, but she had given us the site of Schwinn’s minimum-wage job, and said Schwinn hadn’t owned a car. Taking out the trash at Randall’s Western Wear. Somewhere within walking distance.

The place was still in business, on Oxnard Boulevard.

I’d taken the scenic route because it was the quickest way and I had no stomach for the freeway: Sunset to PCH, then north on the coast highway past the L.A.-Ventura line and Deer Creek Road and the campgrounds of Sycamore Creek — fifteen miles of state land that kissed the ocean and separated the last private beach in Malibu from Oxnard. The water was sapphire blue under a chamber-of-commerce sky, and the bodies that graced the sand were brown and perfect.

At Las Posas Road, I avoided the eastern fork that swoops into glorious, green tables of farmland and up to the foothills of Camarillo and continued on Route 1.

Nature’s beauty gave way, soon enough, to dinge and depression and seventy-five minutes after leaving the house I was enjoying the sights of central Oxnard.

Oxnard’s a funny place. The town’s beach sports a marina and luxury hotels and fishing excursions and tour boats to the Channel Islands. But the core is built around agriculture and the migrant workers whose dreadful lives put food on the nation’s tables. The crime rate’s high, and the air stinks of manure and pesticide. Once you get past the marina turnoff, Oxnard Boulevard is a low-rent artery lined with trailer parks, auto-parts yards, thrift shops, taco bars, taverns blaring Mexican music, and more Spanish than English on the signage.

Randall’s Western Wear was a red barn in the center of the strip, stuck between Bernardo’s Batteries and a windowless bar called El Guapo. Plenty of parking in back; only two pickups and an old Chrysler 300 in the lot.

Inside was the smell of leather and sawdust and sweat, ceiling-high racks of denim and flannel, Stetsons stacked like waffles, cowboy boots and belts on sale, one corner devoted to sacks of feed, a few saddles and bridles off in another. Travis Tritt’s mellow baritone eased through scratchy speakers, trying to convince some woman of his good intentions.

Slow day in the ranch-duds biz. No customers, just two salesmen on duty, both white men in their thirties. One wore gray sweats, the other jeans and a black Harley-Davidson T-shirt. Both smoked behind the counter, showing no interest in my arrival.

I browsed, found a tooled cowhide belt that I liked, brought it to the counter and paid. Harley-D rang me up, offering no eye contact or conversation. As he handed back my credit card, I let my wallet open and showed him my LAPD consultant badge. It’s a clip-on deal with the department’s badge as a logo, not good for much and if you look closely it tells you that I’m no cop. But few people get past the insignia, and Harley was no exception.

“Police?” he said, as I closed the wallet. He wore a bad haircut like his own badge of honor, had a handlebar mustache that drooped to his chin, and a clogged-sinus voice. Stringy arms and stringy hair, a scatter of faded tattoos.

I said, “Thought maybe you could help me with something.”

“With what?”

Sweats looked up. He was a few years younger than Harley, with a blond-gray crew cut, a square shelf of a chin finishing a florid face. Stocky build, quiet eyes. My guess was ex-military.