The Rabbit Factory (30 page)

"Divide and conquer. We both have the same learning curve, and there's too much work to do for the two of us to be doing it together." "Flip a coin," I said. "Winner flies to New York on the corporate jet and interviews Eeg. Loser gets to stay in L.A. and tell half-truths to the FBI." "Hey, if you think flying back and forth across the country in one day is first prize, you take New York," Terry said. "I'd rather suffer the FBI and still get home in time to have dinner with my girls." "Deal," I said. "Let me call my travel agent." I called Brian Curry who had been waiting to hear which one of us was going and how soon we could leave. "I'll have a car pick you up at 5:30 tomorrow morning," he said. "You'll be wheels up out of Burbank at six." "Don't I have to check in an hour and a half before flight time?"

"No, and if you're late, they'll wait. Is there anything special you want to order for breakfast, lunch, or dinner?" "You mean like a kosher meal?

"I mean like anything."

"No, I'll take pot luck. Just don't forget that reading mate

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The Rabbit Factory

il you promised me." Now that we were positive we were aling with a crime against Lamaar, I had asked Brian to pull gether as much backgrounder information on the company he could find. "It's already on the airplane." I could practically hear him nning.

I called F.X. Falco in upstate New York. I had spoken to him rlier, filled him in on the latest murder, and told him to make re Eeg didn't skip town before someone from LAPD got there. ťw I gave him my flight details. "A friend of mine is an ATE at Stewart. I'll be watching you id from the tower," he said. "See you tomorrow." The next call was to Kemp Loekle. When Joanie and I first ited the house, our landlord sent Kemp over to repair the shing machine. Then Joanie hired him to build shelves in the indry room, then in the closets, and in no time flat she spted him. Kemp is forty-five and single, and a good part of life revolves around women, beer, and motorcycles. Most ortant he loves dogs. He's particularly nuts about Andre, i he dogsits whenever I'm in a bind. His machine picked up. Sunday night. Kemp probably had beefy mitts wrapped around a babe, a bottle of Beck's, or handlebars of his 1980 Yamaha 1100 XS. "It's almost an ique," he always tells me.

"So are you," I always answer back.

I left Kemp a message outlining his tour of duty as Andre's staker. Then I dialed Big Jim. "I'm calling from the phone in Squad Room," I said, which was my way of letting him >w we'd have to talk in code. "So, how is that mangy dog :> came crawling home the other night?"

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Marshall Karp

"I got him on a short leash," Jim said. "Glad to hear that. I'll be out of town on a case, but if the dog tries to run away or do anything stupid, call me." "Hey, if the dog tries to run away," Jim said, chuckling, "I may just put him out of his misery myself."

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jL I already waiting. Actually it was a car and a half; a T t stretch Lincoln with a back seat big enough to have

Its own zip code.

1The driver held the rear door open and said a polite good

_ morning. I picked up a slight European accent. I sat back, and he glided the car silently up and over a dark, dewy Laurel Canyon toward Burbank Airport.

Captain Ted Sheppard was waiting for me on the tarmac. He was fortyish, tall, and had the classic square-cut jaw that always gives me added confidence in any pilot's flying ability. His face was copper colored and smooth shaven, except for the sole patch of blond hair under his lower lip. "I'll give you the fifty cent tour," he said as he escorted me up the steps of the twin engine Gulfstream IVSP. I know enough about planes from hanging out with Big Jim to calculate that we were fifty-cent louring an aircraft that cost upwards of thirty mill.

"Seats fifteen," he said. "You could've invited fourteen iepds."

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In the forward cabin were two single seats upholstered in tan and gray leather, and a matching three-cushion divan. The mid cabin had a grouping of four more leather chairs, two on the left, two on the right, each pair with a polished burl cherry wood table between them.

"Captain, you're spoiling me for coach," I said.

"Hell, I'll spoil you for first class. And there's no need to call me Captain," he said, removing his navy blue uniform jacket. Underneath was a crisp, white short-sleeved shirt with blue-I and-gold epaulets on the shoulder. On his left breast pocket the words 'Air Rambo' were embroidered. Below that was a colorful logo--Rambunctious Rabbit flying upside down in a biplane. "As you can see, we're a lot more informal than the other air lines. Call me Shep."

He opened the door to the aft cabin. "This is your confer ence room." The chairs in the conference grouping were green leather, which picked up the color of the dark green squares on the plush maroon carpeting.

"Food, liquid refreshment, and rest room facilities are back here," Shep said, as we made our way aft into a compact galley I caught the early-morning smell of fresh coffee and cinnamon buns, plus an extremely provocative scent, which turned out !< belong to an equally provocative woman. "This

is Sig," Shep said, pointing in the direction of I hi coffee, the buns, and the perfume. "She can feed you, hook you up to the Internet, darn your socks; you name it, she'll do II And if she can't figure it out, we'll land and pick up somcl >< >il who can.">

Sig was the flight attendant grown men dream about. I Ml thick, red hair had that lustrous shine you see in shampoo (Ś ml

The Rabbit Factory

mercials, but never in real women standing less than an arm's length away. She wore a starched white blouse and a navy skirt that were just tight enough and short enough to show off enough of her kickass body to make me want to see more.

"My socks are fine," I said, "but I could use some of that coffee."

Sig poured some into a paper cup that had the Rambo logo on it. "I can't use the good china till after we're airborne," she said.

"Which will be in less than five minutes," Shep said. "Why don't you grab a seat? Actually, you're our only passenger today, so feel free to grab them all."

He headed for the cockpit, and I settled into one of the leather chairs in the front cabin. Take-off was effortless. I've been on corporate jets before, so unless I get invited to fly on Air Force One, I'm not that easy to impress, but I did get a kick out of the fact that the announcements from the flight deck were aimed directly at me.

"Good morning again, Mike," Shep said ten minutes into the flight. "We'll be cruising at 37,000 feet, smooth air all the way. Estimated time of arrival is 2:44 p.m. If there's anything you need, just holler. Enjoy your breakfast, and thank you for choosing Air Rambo."

Sig brought me coffee, a basket of pastries, six different jams, and three kinds of butter. She was walk-right-past-any club-bouncer gorgeous, one-step-ahead-of-you efficient, and she left behind a light trail of perfume that wafted up into my brain and immediately started working its way south. I wondered how many times I could push the Call button before she realized all I really wanted was to get her within sniffing distance. Whatever I might still be going through over the death of f

my wife, my hormones were officially out of mourning.

The breakfast menu had no fewer than twenty items on it. I ordered the egg white omelet with spinach and mushrooms. Sig went back to the galley and I pulled out my notes on the man I was flying across country to interrogate. I had read the case file on Eeg a dozen times, but I had to read it again. I was like the hungry man who keeps going back to the same empty refrigerator thinking that some tasty delight will suddenly appear.

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Daniel Sven Eeg was born in L.A. in 1947. A sister, Inge, was born the year before. His father, Lars, had been in the Army with Dean Lamaar and wound up in the Inner circle at Lamaar Studios. Danny was a Hollywood kid who went into the biz after college. He made good money writing for TV, mostly cop shows. Got married at thirty and divorced four years later. A few years after that, he knocked up a twentytwo-year-old actress wannabe, Barbara Schneiderman, a.k.a. Honita Storm, and they had a son, Colby.

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Eeg was fourteen when his father got squeezed out of Lamaar. They paid Lars some blood money, and he tried to make a go of it as a serious artist. He flopped and a few years later started working at a small studio doing TV cartoons. Steady Work, but a big comedown from his heyday at Lamaar. Then he developed Parkinson's. It escalated to the point where he couldn't draw.

One night in '85 he comes home, pulls his car into the 'gnrage, and leaves the motor running. Not only does it kill Lars, ihut the fumes leak through to the kitchen, catch a spark from

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the stove, and boom, the house gets leveled. Lars's wife sur-1 vived the blast and moved to Albany, New York, to live with her daughter. Two weeks after Lars blew himself to Kingdom Come, j Danny's girlfriend ran off. She and Eeg's son haven't been heard from since.

At this point Eeg was pushing forty and going through his own mid-life career meltdown, so he follows Mom to Albany. He got a job teaching high school English and found a law firm to sue Lamaar Studios on contingency, but the Lamaar lawyers have successfully tied up the lawsuit in the justice system since the get-go. When Eeg's mother died in 1991 he decided to leave the hectic city life of Albany and move to the relative peace and quiet of Woodstock.

He got involved in the local Democratic party, was elected to Town Council and got reelected three times. His bank accounts showed no unusual deposits or withdrawals that would indicate he was paying off a string of hired assassins to settle his legal battles with Lamaar. The deposit of $50,000 made nine months ago turned out to be an advance on a book he is writing.

I folded my notes and set them down on the seat next to me. Seconds later Sig came down the aisle with a brown leather briefcase. "Mr. Curry said you'd be reading this," she said, "but we also have today's newspapers, the latest magazines, and ai selection of DVDs, CDs, and video game cartridges."

"I'd better pass on the entertainment and do my home' work," I said. "Just curious. Sig--is that short for Sigourney?"

"Signilda. It's Swedish," she said flashing me a friendly skies smile that would make John Madden abandon his cross-country tour bus and become a Frequent Flyer. "I'll be back in a few

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The Rabbit Factory

minutes with your breakfast."

The briefcase weighed about ten pounds. I'm a slow reader, hut I've learned the fine art of skimming. By the time I skimmed llirough the first few pounds I realized it had a pro-Lamaar Ť.lant. There was a history of the company; another on Familyl,ind; and several travel books on Lamaar's vacation spots. Each line painted a rosier picture than the last. Even the three-inch 11 ilck binder on the ongoing court battle with Eeg about royalty

IHhts featured newspaper articles and letters that made Lamaar 3ok like an innocent victim. I read, ate breakfast, flirted with Sig, took a nap, had a snack Hud read some more. By the time Shep announced that we were on our approach I had waded through the bulk of it, and I didn't feel any better briefed than your average tourist who's

I planning a trip to Familyland. Lamaar was a multi-billion-dollar player in the cutthroat world of show business, yet based on the material Brian gave liii?, nobody had ever written an unkind word about them, liveryone except Eeg adored them, and there was no reason

I anybody would want to hurt them, their employees, or their Inns. I called Terry and got his voicemail. I could have tracked him (li >wn, but I just left a message that the flight was lovely and that I j had wasted the better part of six hours sifting through corpofNle propaganda. "As far as I can tell," I said, "this is the one of hIIic world's finest organizations, and you and I should do everylliiug in our power to see that no further harm befalls them."

I looked out the window at the longest runway I'd ever

Hgrrn. It was clear and dry, but the patches of ground around it

Were covered with a light dusting of snow. All I had to keep me

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warm was a summer-weight blazer. I had forgotten that springtime wasn't the same in upstate New York as it is in Southern California. Shep was right on the money. We touched down at Stewart Airport in Newburgh at exactly 11:44 L.A. time. I didn't bother setting my watch ahead.

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f""CHAPTER 60

"Ś X. Falco was your basic tall, strapping, handsome Italian Fj law enforcement officer. He had a commanding pres.M ence, a manly handshake, and the foresight to bring me I Nome cold-weather gear. "You're dressed for the tropics," he said, handing me a navy blue parka. "It's thirty-five degrees, and it's even colder up the mountain where Eeg lives." A white cruiser with a big red Sheriff across the doors was

tjlarked in the loading zone. When we got within shouting range Of the two airport cops who were directing traffic Falco yelled out, "Thanks for not towing my car, officers!" One cop laughed; the other flipped him the bird. "Poker buddies," Falco said, as we got in the car. "Guess which one is on a losing streak." we headed north on the New York State Thruway. The trees were still bare, some of them with a crust of snow clinging to leir branches. Falco was in his early forties and closing in on his twenty w years, which is when most cops bail out and look for a healthier

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means of employment. But I got the feeling he could be a lifer. He loved being a cop, and he bombarded me with questions about what it's like to work Homicide in L.A.

"We don't get the high-profile cases like your Robert Blake or your OJ. murders," he said. "We get a lot of body dumps with the hands chopped off so there's no prints. Sometimes it's the mob, sometimes the drug trade, although these days that's , one and the same. I think the big difference between you and me is that you spend most of your time trying to figure out who the murderer is, and I spend most of my time trying to find out who the fuck the dead guy is."™