Heartbreak Hotel

Chapter 32

As we approached West L.A., Milo said, “Millions of bucks at stake makes me jumpy. Ergo hungry. Feel like pizza?”

“Whatever you want.”

“How do you do it? Control the appetite.”

For most of the ride, I’d been thinking about Thalia being snuffed out. Visualizing the details. An excellent suppressant.

I said, “I’ll eat, I just don’t care what.”

A mile later, he said, “Forget pizza, too festive. Something Irish would be appropriately morose — soda bread and boy-yald poday-dos, ey? Then again, that’s why my ancestors left the old sod, so how ’bout Mexican for a compromise?”

I said, “Olé.”

He sped past the Overland exit for the station, got off two ramps later in Santa Monica, and pulled into the parking lot of a fake-hacienda called El Matador. Big, mostly empty room, warm air ripe with cheese and beans and corn chips. Heavy fixtures of not-quite wrought iron, tile floor, clumsy Tijuana furniture. Bullfight posters on the walls — there’s a shock, for you.

We settled in a corner booth. Milo said, “We were right near Boyle Heights, coulda had something authentic, my timing’s off.”

A sweet-faced waitress took our order. Bottle of Tecate and the combo special for him, iced tea and beef fajitas for me.

She said, “With fajitas the pan’s super-hot — legally, we have to warn you.”

I said, “Skillet-chasing lawyers.”

That confused her.

Milo said, “At least someone’s looking out for us.”

She flashed a puzzled smile and left.

He said, “I need to regroup, let’s lay it out. Hoke left Thalia the ruby and maybe other stuff from the heist and she got killed for it decades later.”

“Maybe there wasn’t other stuff,” I said. “The only item noted on Demarest’s report was the ruby. The fact that it was scrawled on the back might mean it wasn’t discovered until after the report was written. Hiding one stone would’ve been easy. Conceal too much of the take and they’d have come looking for it.”

“You’re being therapeutic, right? Telling me there’s only one blingo-o to worry about.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Fine... so the feds got most of the haul and Thalia got to keep the ruby. So, what, she hid it in plain sight, all these years?”

“My guess is she stashed it away, brought it out years later when she felt safe.”

“Something to remind her of Lover Boy.”

“She was a woman with a sense of humor.” Then I thought of something. “Either that or she viewed the ruby as something special. We know she was in charge of Hoke’s burial. On top of his gravestone is a red marble crown. Kind of jewel-like, I saw nothing like it on any other marker. Hoke was a redhead but I’ll bet she was commemorating something else.”

Our drinks came. He drained half his beer. “Goddamn finial on top of a goddamn lamp.”

I said, “Screwed into the fixture. A custom job that someone had to fashion and install.”

He put his glass down. “So, what, I ask around for a hundred-year-old felonious craftsman?”

I fished out my phone, switched to speaker.

Tatiana at Belinda Wojik’s number said, “Doctor’s office.”

“This is Alex Delaware, I was there with Lieutenant Sturgis—”

“Doctor’s busy.”

“Put her on, anyway.”

“She’s busy—”

“We can come down or she can answer a quick question over the phone.”

“Hmnh.”

Moments later, a flat voice: “Hello, this is Belinda.”

One advantage of her personality quirks: no need for small talk. “It’s Alex Delaware, again. Did your grandfather have any hobbies?”

“You think he did something wrong,” she said. “I guess it would bother me if he did. Or maybe not. He was always wonderful to me.”

I said, “Not at all. Did he have any hobbies?”

“Like stamp collecting or pinning butterflies.” A beat. “I used to catch bugs and pin them on a corkboard. Grampa told me it was cruel so I stopped.”

I said, “So no outside interests.”

“No collections,” she said. “He tinkered with antiques, does that count?”

“What kind of antiques?”

“His father was a furniture refinisher so he knew how to fix up furniture. Does that qualify?”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“Grampa was very handy,” she said. “He could cane a chair, put patina on metal, fix handles. He had a shop out back. Am I allowed to ask why you’re inquiring?”

“Just what I said, rounding—”

“Things out. I guess that means something to you, it doesn’t to me.”

“Sorry, but until we learn who killed Thalia—”

“You must be careful. Now that I’m remembering, Grampa also worked with leather. He made me a nice belt. A leather hat for himself and he used to bind his own books in leather. He kept pots of glue and hides in his shop, they smelled. Father wasn’t handy at all.”

I thanked her and hung up.

Milo said, “What made you think of Wojik?”

“I figured it would have to be someone Hoke and Thalia trusted. Jack McCandless was an equally good choice but what’s the chance Ricki Sylvester would talk to us?”

“You knew Wojik would.”

“She’s artless and pretty much a pure soul,” I said. “Honest because she doesn’t know any other way. What she said doesn’t help much but it does firm up the picture.”

“Thelma and the others plotting in Hoke’s best interest,” he said. “There’s a charge for you: aiding and abetting, by way of tinkering.”

He pulled out the British Museum photo. “In this it’s a blob. What’s it like in real life?”

“Big, red, shiny. I assumed it was glass so I didn’t pay attention. No one did until recently.”

“Fifty-seven carats in plain sight. So how would the bad guys know where to find it?”

“Knowing what it looked like would’ve made it easier. An inside person would’ve made it a cinch.”

The food arrived. He ate fast, without obvious pleasure, finished his beer, wiped his mouth hard enough to redden his lips, looked at the photo again. “Some Drancy spawn goes looking for revenge plus a mega-payoff, locates Thalia, verifies this thing is in her room through an inside person.”

“Theoretically,” I said, “it could be anyone who’d been in the bungalow.”

“Any hotel staffer but probably DeGraw,” he said. “Bastard verifies the location of the ruby, walks over to Cinco, tips off the bad guys, and gives them a key. They spend a day or two watching Thalia, knowing her schedule. Come back after dark, snuff her, unscrew the damn thing, and check out.”

“Without paying their bill.”

“DeGraw was full of outrage about that. Duplicitous asshole.”

“All that planning,” I said. “If they’d just settled up with DeGraw, they would have attracted less attention. Same for the show they put on in Creech’s car. But that’s psychopathy. Low impulse control and thrill-seeking.”

I took a few bites of hazardous fajita. “DeGraw would’ve been a good source for the key but I’m thinking someone with deeper knowledge from her grandfather. Who got real defensive after you brought him up.”

“Sylvester. Still got my guys on her, nothing.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if she’s got a safe in her office.”

“The ruby’s with her? Good luck getting access to that.”

Several bites later, he said, “The same itch is still bugging me. If we are talking long-standing family lore and mega-bucks, why take so long to act?”

“Could be changing life circumstances,” I said. “Someone got poor. Or was released from prison and decided to go hunting. Lockup can lead you to all sorts of research. The Internet raped privacy a long time ago.”

“Idle hands,” he said. “So who’s the avenging devil, Waters or Bakstrom?”

“Could be either,” I said. “Or neither and the Drancy descendant is someone who knew a con comfortable with violence about to be released.”

“Blondie and Bakstrom,” he said. “Bonded to Bakstrom more than Waters because ol’ Henry’s better-looking and still alive.”

I put my fork down. “Another changing circumstance would be the arrival of a family member actually willing to do something about it. It’s like terrorism. An entire village might nurse a grudge but not everyone’s ready to wear a suicide vest.”

“Blondie, again,” he said. “What I need to do is find an actual connection between her and either of the cons. Problem is our federal pals in Colorado. The latest is there is no visitors list anymore. Nothing goes back further than a month, ye olde computer glitch.”

He finished his beer, called for another. “You know what really bothers me? Thalia, so helpless, thinking all her needs are being taken care of. It’s like the damn hotel is an accomplice.”

We finished, paid, walked back to the unmarked. As he slid behind the wheel, his phone jangled a text.

He shrugged. “Well, this is possibly not futile.” His arm swung, showing me the screen: Could maybe have something on the h.c. Mel.

“Mel Howe,” he said. “She’s one of our sex crimes D’s.”

I said, “H.c.? Your hard case?”

He laughed. “Good guess. Hot chick. That’s what I’ve been calling Blondie when I asked them to check.”

“Possibly not futile” was enough to get him speeding back to the station.

Detective II Melanie-Anne Howe worked in the big room where every D but Milo operated. Her desk was in the center, neatly organized, as was she: a medium-sized brunette around forty with a round, freckled face, Cupid’s-bow lips, and brown eyes slightly blurred by black-rimmed hipster eyeglasses.

She said, “Sorry for not getting back sooner, I was on vacation, just caught up with my messages.”

“Have fun?”

“Disney cruise with Bob and three kids? Entire week, I got to have two Margaritas and one I couldn’t finish because the baby started throwing up right after she went to bed.”

She wrinkled her nose, picked up a blue folder lying next to her computer.

Thin file; too bad. Milo frowned.

Howe said, “Yup, not much unfortunately — it’s too loud in here, let’s find a place.”

A place was out on the sidewalk where Howe lit up a cigarette. “Basically, I quit. Basically, I cheat. As in three puffs and you’re out, Mr. Winston.”

She demonstrated, dropping the smoke on the sidewalk and grinding it dead with the toe of a medium-heeled pump. “When I got back I found your note and thought maybe. Even though my case never went anywhere and we’re talking two months ago.”

Her hands flexed. “My victim’s memory was hazy in the first place and she was no angel. Officially that doesn’t matter but yadda yadda, we know how it really is, try finding a D.A. wanting to put a stripper on the stand in a he-said-she-said. Top of that, the second time I talked to her, she’d changed her tune completely, shut down and refused to cooperate. I tried a third time and she went AWOL, dead phone, not at her home address or at work.”

I said, “Voluntarily?”

Howe’s eyebrows rose. “Yes, she’s alive and kicking. Literally. Switched from a club in Commerce to one near the airport but I’m not pursuing it.”

Milo said, “New job, new phone. Think she shut down ’cause she’s scared?”

“She is scared, Milo, but not the way you might think. I was gentle with her, woman-to-woman, she was totally into filing charges if it got that far. Then, no dice and she told me why. Something she’d neglected to mention at the beginning: She has a rich boyfriend, some computer geek she gave a lap-dance to, knows nothing about it. In between interviews, she moved in with him, is petrified he’ll find out.”

Milo said, “Lap-dance leads to true love and he thinks she’s a choir girl?”

Howe said, “With a geek, who knows? They can be like raw meat to girls in the know. You’ve probably got a technical term for that, Doctor.”

I said, “Raw-meat-itis.”

Melanie Howe laughed. Then she told us the story.

Vicki Elena Vasquez, twenty-two, performing, variously, as “Fatima,” “Selena,” or “Madrilena,” had arrived in L.A. thirteen months ago after a youth misspent in Texas and Louisiana. Arrests for DUI, shoplifting, and petty theft, but clean since she’d turned Californian and began earning decent money taking off her clothes in sweaty dumps mislabeled as gentlemen’s clubs.

A little over two months ago, after a double shift at the City of Commerce skin-palace, she’d driven to a hipster bar west of downtown called Brave Losers, a place she’d been once before with “other girls, I don’t remember who or when.”

Two Zombies into the early-morning hours, she’d struck up a conversation with a “hot blond chick and a hot dude,” neither of whose names she could recall ever knowing.

Nor could she remember leaving with the couple.

“They roofied me or something.”

She’d woken up in an unknown place at an unknown time, tied to the posts of an unfamiliar bed, with the man’s penis up her anus and the organ of “a fat dude sitting on me” in her mouth. At the same time, the blond woman performed cunnilingus on her “but did it rough, like teeth, she hurt me. All of them did. I thought I was gonna die.”

At that point in the narrative, Melanie Howe’s notes documented, “V is crying and exhibiting signs of extreme anxiety: twitching, blinking, scrunching her face.”

As Vasquez realized what was happening, she tried to protest and was slapped hard in the face. Then someone’s hand, she couldn’t be sure whose, grasped her neck and exerted pressure until she began to lose consciousness.

“I didn’t want to die so I let them do what they wanted.”

The triple rape continued “for a long time,” until the assailants got off her and told her to forget them if she didn’t want to die. The good-looking man then slapped her face several times, the woman pinched her nipples, and the fat man smacked her rear and said, “Nice place to visit but I wouldn’t wanna live there.” She was then blindfolded tightly and pulled into a shower where several hands scrubbed her, “poking and rubbing deep inside everywhere. It hurt.”

Her vision still obstructed, she was dried off. A piece of cloth landed on her shoulder and she was ordered to get dressed. The cloth was the black Zara micro-dress she’d worn to the bar and after much effort she managed to get into it. Her underwear, stockings, and shoes were left behind as she was dragged outside and shoved into the backseat of a car. A silent ride of unknown duration ensued until the vehicle stopped and she was shoved out onto a hard surface.

She lay there woozy, stunned, and terrified until she heard the car drive away and managed to remove the blindfold — her own black stockings. She was in an alley. Her purse lay a few feet away. Two hundred dollars, her share of the cash tips she’d earned that evening, was gone, but her credit cards and cellphone were in place.

“Considerate rapists,” said Milo.

I said, “Smugness. They’re telling her, go ahead, call for help, we couldn’t care less.”

Melanie Howe said, “It did puzzle me, why leave anything? But now that I’m hearing it, you’re probably right, Doctor. Anyway, she 911’d and because it was an alley it took a while to find her.”

Milo said, “Alley, where?”

“That’s the thing, she didn’t know. Dispatch finally got her to use the phone and GPS. East Brentwood, apartment district, Westwood, just north of Wilshire. She got taken to the health center at the U. I was on that night, by the time I got there the rape kit had been done. Totally negative for semen, foreign blood, any kind of fluid. So they used condoms or the shower did the trick. That was a letdown but I was encouraged because initially she seemed to be a good victim, able to describe them enough to work up sketches. Also, the modus was pretty specialized, we don’t see many mixed-gender gangbangs. Between that and how calculated and callous it was, I figured a similar would show up somewhere. Fortunately, the drawings got done. Unfortunately, she changed her mind.”

She opened the file, showed us three faces.

Crude and ill-defined renderings, way below Shimoff-quality and in another context, probably useless. But once you’d seen Gerard Waters’s and Henry Bakstrom’s photos, the connection was easy.

The female suspect was another story, just another proto-blonde. Not as pretty as in Shimoff’s rendering. This artist had drawn her slightly off kilter, probably unintentionally.

Milo showed Howe the mugshots.

She said, “Oh, God. If I’d had these to show her she might’ve stuck with me. Then again, with Geeky in the background, probably not.”

“Think showing them to her now could pull up more info, Mel?”

“Maybe, if you can even get to her, who knows where she’s at psychologically? Any suggestions, Doctor?”

I said, “No harm trying.”

Milo said, “That’s what I like about him, practical.”

Howe said, “If you think it would help, I’m happy to go with you. But I think it could hurt, she associates me with real bad memories and the second interview didn’t go well. Not that I pushed her but she got really hostile, like I was the enemy.”

“After she went AWOL, how’d you find her?”

“She let slip the boyfriend’s first name, Charlie, and figuring he’d been a regular at the club in Commerce, I talked to the owner. Guy didn’t come in anymore, so he was happy to oblige. Charles Ruffalo. DMV shows a face like a spaniel but he drives an Aston Martin and has a house in the hills, the address is in here. Whether or not Vicki’s still with him, I can’t say. If she is, I’d be careful about ruining her relationship, so you might want to make sure the Aston’s not there. So do you want me to tag along?”

Milo said, “I see your point, think I’ll try by myself.”

“Either way,” said Howe. But she sounded relieved. She pulled out a pack of Winstons, bounced it on her thigh.

Milo said, “Thanks, Mel. Maybe it’ll work out for both of us.”

“Appreciate the thought, Milo, but I’m out of it. Vicki’s lack of cooperation, the passage of time, any bruises are healed. Even if I did have my suspects, defense could always claim it was a consensual party. Especially given her occupation and level of intoxication.”

I said, “Even with being dumped on the street?”

“That’s her story. They’ll say they dropped her off and she was fine, wandered into the alley and got mugged.”

“She drove from work to the bar. What happened to her car?”

“Nowhere to be found. If it ever got that far, a prosecutor could threaten to add GTA to the charges but no way that would happen. Defense counsel would say no car, no evidence of theft, plus, losing jurisdiction of her own wheels just proves how intoxicated she was. And guess who the judge would agree with? She really was hammered, guys. Blew a .24 at the hospital with no evidence of any other drug in her system, including Rohypnol. If they roofied her, it could’ve worn off but her vulnerability could’ve come purely from way too much booze.”

I said, “She met them in a bar. Bartender have anything to say?”

“Busy night, loud, crowded, he maybe remembered seeing Vasquez but not the other three. I don’t doubt her, I’m sure it happened, poor thing. And I don’t hold anything against her, it’s her life.”

She studied the mugshots. “Murder suspects. She doesn’t know how lucky she is. So now you get to look for three really bad people.”

“Two,” said Milo. “Found the ugly one.” He described Waters’s crime scene.

Howe said, “The Palisades? Where they dumped Vicki isn’t super close to there but it’s not that far, either. The fact that they picked her up on the Eastside and dumped all the way west was interesting. Now I’m finding it fascinating.”

Milo said, “Their crib is in our jurisdiction.”

“Lucky us,” said Melanie Howe. “Good luck. I’d say give my regards to Vicki but that’s not going to help you.”

We left her staring at a second cigarette, walked back inside the station and up the stairs. When we reached the corridor leading to Milo’s office, he said, “Gottlieb distances himself, she does the same. I’m starting to feel like a leper.”

“Take it as a vote of confidence,” I said. “With you in charge, why bother?”

He groaned. “Oh, man, there’s friendship and then there’s pathological enabling.”

“What am I enabling?”

He shook his head, unlocked his door, settled in his chair hard enough to threaten its integrity. Placing his palms together, he gave a small bow. “Please, Dr. Therapist Sir, no more questions, my head’s gonna explode.”

Leafing through the Vasquez file, he said, “What’s the chance Vicki will supply any relevant info?”

I kept silent.

“I said no questions, amigo. Answers are fine.”

I smiled.

“Monty Lisa,” he said. “Just what I need.”