Sunset Express

CHAPTER 25

I drove south to a Fast-Foto in a minimall on Jefferson Boulevard about six blocks west of USC. A Persian kid was alone in the place, working at the photo processing machine. He said, 'I'll be with you in a moment.'

'I don't have a moment. I'll pay you twenty bucks if you stop what you're doing and take care of me now.'

He eyed me like maybe I was pulling his leg, but he got up and came to the counter. I put the film on the counter between us. 'There are only four exposures on the roll. I've got to make a call. If they're done when I get back, you get the twenty.'

He wet his lips. 'What size?'

'Whatever's fastest.'

I used a pay phone in the parking lot to call Angela Rossi at home. She didn't answer her phone; her machine got it. Screening. 'Detective Rossi, it's Elvis Cole. I think I might have something.'

She picked up before I finished saying it. She sounded tired, but then she probably hadn't slept last night.

I told her where I was and what I was doing and what I had seen. I said, 'Do you want a piece of it?'

'Yes.' She said it without hesitation and without fear, the way someone would say it when they were still in the game.

'I have to show the pictures to Jonna Lester, first. Call Joe. Have Tomsic call Anna Sherman in the DA's office. If this is going where I think, everything will begin to happen very quickly.'

'I'll be ready.'

'I'll bet you will.'

I hung up, then called Jonna Lester. She answered on the second ring, and I told her that I was on my way to see her.

She said, 'But me and Dorrie was just goin' to the mall!'

'Go to the mall after. This is important, Jonna. Please.' The detective stoops to begging.

'Oh, all right.' Long and drawn out and whiny. 'Dorrie wants to meet you. I told her you were really cute.' Then she giggled.

I hung up and closed my eyes, thinking that only twenty-four hours ago she'd found her husband impaled on glass. Man. I called the information operator last, and asked if they had a listing for Mr Walter Lawrence. They did not…

The Persian kid was waiting at the counter when I went back inside. He had the four shots waiting, too. Fast-Foto, all right. He said, 'That's all you wanted?' You could see the Mercedes clearly in three of the four pictures. You could see Kerris clearly enough to recognize him.

'That's all.'

I paid him for the developing, gave him the extra twenty, then drove hard to the freeway and made my way across town to Jonna Lester. She and her friend, Dorrie, were waiting for me in a cloud of hash smoke so thick that I tried not to breathe. Jonna Lester giggled. 'Y'see. I tol' you he was cute.'

Dorrie giggled, too.

Dorrie looked so much like Jonna that they might've been clones. Same shorts, same top, same clear plastic clogs and dark blue nail polish. Same gum. Dorrie sat on the couch and grinned at me with wide, vacant eyes while I showed the pictures to Jonna. I said, 'Have you ever seen this car?'

She nodded and popped her gum. 'Oh, yeah. That's the guy James went to see.' She didn't even have to think about it.

'The man at the Mayfair?'

'Uh-huh.'

'The man who gave James a large paper bag?'

'Yup.'

Dorrie said, 'You wanna get high an' fuck?'

I went to the phone without asking and called Angela Rossi, who answered on the first ring. 'A man named Stan Kerris met with James Lester twenty-three days ago, eight days before Lester phoned the hotline. Stan Kerris works for Jonathan Green. I think we can build a case that these guys have fabricated evidence and set you up.'

Angela Rossi said, 'That sonofabitch.'

'Yes.'