Born To Be Wild

TWENTY-SEVEN

Mary Lisa looked hard at her home phone when it rang that afternoon, afraid it might be the crazy. Most people called her on her cell, not her house phone. And the guy didn’t have her cell phone number. But the police wanted him to call, now that they had her phone tapped. That had been one thing Jack and Detective Vasquez had set up before they’d left the day before. And Jack wanted her to improve upon her security system. Fat chance. She picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Mary Lisa.”

“Yes, who is this?”

“Your favorite paparazzo.”

“There’s no such animal in the universe. Come on now, who is this?”

“Don’t you recognize my voice? I’m the artist who got you on the cover of the Enquirer with your legs looking so fine all wrapped around Bernie Barlow’s waist.”

“Ah, Puker.”

“Puker? You called me Puker.” Outrage sounded in his voice. “You actually called me Puker?”

“If the name fits. Don’t tell me I’m your one phone call from jail.”

“No, no, I’m long out of jail, no thanks to your studio and that security guy, Frank whatever. Doesn’t anybody have a sense of humor anymore?”

“I see. It was all our fault for misunderstanding you. You’re a real jerk, Puker, and you shouldn’t be calling me, there’s a court order-”

“That’s for my corporeal self, not my voice. Listen up, Mary Lisa, I saw a guy in a dark sedan who seemed to be casing you out. He was wearing dark glasses but then he pulled them off to rub his eyes and I saw his face. I didn’t like the way he looked-real hard, you know? I snapped pics before he slid his sunglasses back on. I think he might be the guy you’re looking for.”

Her hand tightened on the phone. He was lying, he had to be, it was what he did. Of course he knew much of what happened-he was there that day, snapping pictures. He could have guessed the rest.

“Mary Lisa?”

“Okay, Puker. Let’s say you saw someone. Where was this?”

“Near the studio, on Fourth and Pine. He was parked, engine idling, wearing a baseball cap. I took some shots of him, telephoto, up close.”

“So you’re calling to give me the pictures?”

“Well, now, that depends, doesn’t it?”

“On what, you jerk?”

“He was a mean-looking guy, Mary Lisa, like he was on a mission-maybe you? Hey, it could be dangerous for me to cross someone like that by giving you these photographs. So I want something in return. All you gotta do is call off the studio, talk them into dropping the charges and forgetting about any lawsuit against me.”

“It’s their decision, Puker, not mine.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Maybe you’re right, maybe it doesn’t fit you, maybe I’ve been wrong and you’re a fine upstanding individual with ethics.” She had to get a grip here. She wondered again if he really did have photos or if he was lying. Probably lying, but she couldn’t take the chance. She drew a deep breath. “Okay, I want to see those photos first, see if they’re any good or even for real, and not one of your schemes.”

“Nah, this is no stunt. I developed the prints and I know what I’ve got. They’re real sharp, Mary Lisa, all three of them. Real sharp. You want to see them, you call off the dogs.”

“I want to see them before I-”

“Before what? Before he kills you?” The line went dead.

Mary Lisa slowly laid the phone back in its cradle, picked it up again, and called Detective Vasquez’s cell phone number. He was tied up so she called his house, where Jack was staying.

Thirty-five minutes later, both Detective Vasquez and Jack Wolf were at her house listening to the recording.

“That’s it,” Detective Vasquez said, pressing the stop button. “It sure sounds like Puker Hodges to me. You have any doubts?”

She shook her head.

Jack stared at her. “There’s got to be a reason why this guy picked you. There’s always a reason, we just have to discover it.”

Daniel said, “She’s not Sandra Bullock, but she’s big enough that people want to know all about her. Puker uses that to make a living.” He drew in a deep breath. “Unfortunately, some of those people mix up the actor and the person, and they become one.”

Jack asked, “How long has this Puker guy been after you, Mary Lisa?”

“Six months or so. I got a restraining order on him. It didn’t restrain him much, but I got it reinstated last week. It seems to me that one day Puker wasn’t on my radar and the next he was in my face.”

Jack grinned at her, something she thought she’d get used to in a year or so. “Puker really didn’t like the nickname you gave him.”

“Nope, you could tell it enraged him. He says his real name is Poker, but that sounds made up too. It’s what he calls himself. Maybe he had a casino dealer for a father, who knows?”

Detective Vasquez said, “We already have quite a file on him. Puker got a good start as a photographer in Wilmington, Delaware, where he got his training and worked freelance for the local newspapers. Then he came out here five years ago, right after he turned twenty-five, and seems to have decided making money beat out having morals any day. He’s been shooting celebrities ever since. So far as we know, he’s never been married, dates occasionally, and has never gotten into any real trouble before. Now he’s in very deep water with this latest stunt at the studio.”

“And now this,” Mary Lisa said. She rose and began pacing her living room. “I want to see those photos. Can’t you make him turn them over, Detective Vasquez?”

“Well, now, Mary Lisa,” said Daniel, slowly rising, “I was thinking maybe Jack and I could pay him a visit and ask him nicely.”

“I want to go.”

“It’s police business, Mary Lisa,” Jack said. “Learn your lines for tomorrow, and we’ll be back later.” He stood there a moment, waiting, knowing she couldn’t let that order simply slide. But she didn’t say anything.

Thirty minutes later, Daniel pulled his Crown Vic out of godawful traffic and up against the curb of an apartment building a dozen blocks east of Santa Monica Pier, not ten miles from Malibu. It was a small, upscale, slightly dated complex, with lots of palm trees and blooming flowers and well-kept late-model cars parked everywhere.

“What do you think, Jack?”

“The guy’s making money. This isn’t low-rent, is it?”

“No. Detective Malloy from Burbank told me the guy’s a pig, lives in this beautiful apartment like it was a dorm, strews pizza boxes and his shorts all over the place.”

Puker’s apartment was on the second floor, on the end. Jack nodded at Daniel, and knocked.

“Yeah? Who is it?”

Daniel said, “It’s the police, Hodges, open up now.”

“Hey, dude, I don’t have anything to say to you guys. Talk to my lawyer.”

Jack said in a pleasant, upbeat voice that would make anyone think twice, “Open the door, Puker, or I’ll make you regret it. I might make you clean your kitchen.”

They heard chains slide off, and the door opened. Puker was wearing baggy low-riding shorts and a ratty dark blue T-shirt. “Yeah?”

“Kitchen’s that bad, is it?” Jack said, stepping forward, forcing Puker back into his apartment. “We’re here to see the photos you took of this guy you claim is Mary Lisa Beverly’s stalker.”

Puker opened his mouth, but closed it when he saw the look on the big man’s face. Then he said, “Hey, dude, you can’t threaten me. I’m a citizen of Los Angeles. Haven’t you guys figured out you can’t go attacking civilians?”

Jack wrapped his fist around the neck of Puker’s T-shirt, raised him onto his toes. “Listen to me, you little puke, I want to see those photos this minute or we’ll book you for extortion and interfering with a police investigation. We’ll get the photos anyway, and you’ll have no chance at all with the studio.”

Puker looked at Detective Vasquez, who was studying his fingernails. He shrugged.

“The photos,” Jack said, and shook him. “Now.”

“I want to call my lawyer, he’ll-”

Jack said in the same pleasant voice, “Last chance, Puker. Really, you don’t want to mess with me or I just might stuff you in your fridge.” And Jack smiled at him, released his shirt and smoothed it, tough since it was so wrinkled.

Puker jumped back, splayed his hands toward them. “Hey, my fridge isn’t all that bad.”

Daniel said, “If you don’t suffocate in the fridge, then I’ll take you down to my jail, let you think things over in a holding cell with a dozen or so other upstanding citizens. How’s that?”

Puker looked undecided, then he belched, shrugged. “All right. Come back here. I made my second bedroom into a darkroom.”

Daniel grinned at the back of Puker’s head as they followed him to his makeshift darkroom.

Puker closed the door and flipped on an overhead red light. The room looked like any professional darkroom Jack had ever seen, everything neatly in its place and well cared for, quite unlike the mess in the rest of the apartment.

“The photos are here.” Puker handed them three color prints, still a bit damp at the edges.

Daniel turned on a lamp back in the living room and studied the photos. “Well, I’ll be,” he said after only a moment. “How about that?”

“What?” Jack asked. “You know this guy?”

“Yeah, I think most everybody at my station knows him.” He turned to Puker. “See how easy it is to be a fine upstanding citizen, Mr. Hodges? Thank you for your invaluable assistance in this case. It’s very possible that Mary Lisa won’t be inclined now to press any charges against you. But who knows? Keep your nose clean.”

Neither man spoke until they were in Daniel’s car, the air-conditioning turned on high.

“Well?”

“Jack, my man, this here is Stuart Clapper, been in and out of prison since the age of thirteen, not very bright, but street-smart. He does coke, sells on the side, sent up for assault a few years ago. I think he beat a rape charge once. There’s a problem though.”

Jack arched a black brow. “Yeah, what?”

“I’ve never heard of him having a thing for any female celebrities.”

“Well, there’s always a first time.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll track down an address for him. We should have time to show his photo to Mary Lisa, see if she recognizes him. Lou Lou too. She’s so sharp it’s scary. She would remember him if he’s been around Malibu.”

“Where does Lou Lou live?”

“She doesn’t make the big bucks Mary Lisa makes, so she lives inland, about four blocks. Not that it matters, she’s at Mary Lisa’s house-along with half of Malibu-most of the time.”

Daniel opened his cell. After a couple of minutes, he said to Jack, “Clapper just finished up ten months of parole. His P.O. only had his last known address. It’s real common, the day the parolees are through, they’re gone. Still, we’ll check.”

They drove in silence, Daniel weaving southeast, through the bleakest parts of central L.A. that had Jack thinking of the fresh sea air in Goddard Bay.

Daniel asked, “What’s with you and Mary Lisa?”

“Nothing,” Jack said. “At least nothing anymore. We had what you might call a meeting of the minds.”

“You groveled, huh?”

Jack laughed. “Yeah, right.”

“Okay, here we are, Sixty-four Kemper Street.” Daniel pulled to the curb, pointed up at a tired, peeling gray four-story building that looked like it was condemned, or should have been. There were air-conditioning units hanging out of a few of the windows, but no fire escapes that Jack could see. “It’ll smell like cabbage in the hallways,” Daniel said. “It always does. I don’t know why that is.”

Jack said, “It’s true in Chicago too.”

It took them thirty minutes to get past the sullen stares and mumbled responses of two of the neighbors and find out from the super that Stuart Clapper had been gone for three weeks as best he could figure, no forwarding address. He’d cleared parole three weeks and two days ago.