The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 9.

I told Sumner what I'd learned from Brooks and Stender Sheedy in the carriage house as we headed across town to meet with Alexa. Once I was finished, I also gave him a good sanding down over his professional demeanor and investigative methods.

"You were down there passing out your little production company cards to a room full of coked-up agents and D-girls while you were supposed to be working this case with me. I'm trying to be patient, but this shit's gotta stop or I'm gonna make a serious move on you."

"I was on the job, Scully. There's more than one way to prepare Courgettes Provencale."

"Please stop with the cooking metaphors."

"I was in the zone, brother. While you're up in the carriage house with Lord Fauntleroy, I had those freaks in my crosshairs working ground zero, collecting facts."

"If you got something, lets hear it," I said, wondering if maybe I'd jumped too fast.

"I always get something, my man," he shot back.

"Make it great, my man!"

"Brooks Dunbar is broke," Hitchens began. "What our moonlighting sergeant from Ameritech told us is true. His trust is all locked up. As a result he's a thief. He waits 'til his friends are stoned or passed out then steals credit cards out of their wallets and runs up huge tabs. I learned from one guy that some Russian oligarch's kid got hit for almost two hundred grand on his black AmEx a month ago.

"When his victims start hiring bent noses and talking about his kneecaps, young Brooks takes them to expensive Melrose stores like Louis Vuitton, Fred Segal, and especially this place called Cruel Hearts which is right down from the Ivy. It specializes in expensive S and M leather and jewelry. He got his mother to set him up accounts at these places. To keep his friends from killing him, he buys time by letting them charge expensive stuff on his mother's accounts there. His mother, by the way, is Dorothy White. They named Brooks's trust in her maiden name." I had that last part, but little else.

"Among other things, this kid also owns Eagle's Nest Productions," Hitch continued.

"You shitting me? Wasn't that a huge privately owned TV studio back in the eighties? They used to have half a dozen shows on the air. I haven't heard anything about them for almost twenty years. It explains, I guess, why Stender Sheedy is his lawyer."

"Under Brooks Dunbar's astute guidance, Eagle's Nest now only makes the occasional Paris Hilton Look, Pa, No Bra video. The last one didn't make back its production costs so Stender probably doesn't have to work too hard on that account.

"His art-dealing business consists mostly of stealing a few of his dad s paintings out of the guesthouse so his old man wont notice-then fencing them in Melrose Boulevard antique shops." He looked over and smiled. "There's more if you're interested."

"Yeah, I'm interested." I had to admit, he'd done better than I had.

"So his art and movie businesses are both a joke, like Sergeant Cruz says. Nobody likes this kid. He's been cut off by both his mom and dad, which is why he's such a thief. Dorothy Dunbar still thinks little Brooks will pull out of his drug-induced tailspin, but nobody else believes it. They're using him. He's using them. All of this useful intel was obtained by Sumner Hitchens, Esquire, while you were in the carriage house examining a fucking table base."

I didn't respond. When you're right, you're right.

"An apology would be nice," he prompted.

"I'm not gonna apologize to you just because you did your job, Hitchens."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Courtesies of a small and trivial character strike deepest in the grateful heart," he said.

"Who said that? Sure doesn't sound much like Einstein."

"Henry Clay. You should start reading more than department wanted fliers." He snap-shifted the Porsche and we sped on.

Sumner pulled in at a pancake house restaurant located in a strip mall off Mission Road near the medical examiner's building. It was after one A. M. I'd called on my cell and knew Alexa would be waiting.

Hitch chirped the car lock and we walked past a space where my Acura was parked.

Inside, as we approached a back booth where Alexa was sitting, I could see a worried look on her face. Before we even sat down I knew she had more bad news for us.