Chapter 96
WE STOOD NEXT to the vending machines, the night doorman saying to Captain Warren, “I told you, I hardly know anything.”
It was one in the afternoon, but Kevin Fogarty smelled of alcohol. When Warren had a chance to run his name, I was pretty sure he’d be looking at a long sheet littered with misdemeanors and outstanding warrants.
Fogarty pulled a bent half of a cigarette from the hip pocket of his shiny slacks, lit up, and when he’d framed his thoughts, he said, “I’m not going into any court to testify against anyone. Just be sure you hear me. I don’t do that. That’s not me. I like to keep a low profile.”
“Go ahead with what you saw,” I said.
Fogarty took a long draw on the cigarette, coughed violently for too long, then: “Like I said, I saw these two guys coming in around ten on Saturday night. They was carrying brown paper bags, so they’d brought their own bar service, I guess. They were with these two women, heavyset. Bleached blondes.
“The four of them seemed like they’d been drinking for a while. They were at the elevator as I was going out on my break. All giggly, like the party was on, something I’ve seen maybe a hundred million times.”
Warren said, “But something was different, right, Mr. Fogarty? You saw something that made you remember them?”
“Like I told you and the other five cops I spoke to, one of the guys was wearing a muscle shirt, no sleeves. He had some tattoos on his arms. They were like stripes going around the biceps and all the way down, and maybe words written above the stripes. He pinched one of the ladies, hard. She yelped, but that’s all I saw. I remember that noise she made.”
There was more smoking, coughing, and encouragement to finish the story before Fogarty continued.
“When you showed me their pictures,” Fogarty said to Warren, “I thought maybe I recognized the guy with the striped tattoos. He has a lot of hair. And a big nose.”
“Did you see them again?”
“No. I came back from my break. There was nothing happening, so I told the girl at the desk to call me if she needed me. I went to an empty room right here on the main floor and I watched TV and fell asleep. When I come out here, at like three a.m., the girl, Ms. Bird. She’s on the floor over there and she’s dead.
“I called 911. I stayed here. I talked to the cops. And then, a little while ago, the boss calls me and fires me. Because I was sleeping on the job. I’m not even mad about that. If I’d been on the door, I would be dead too, right, Captain? I’d be dead too.”
“Tell about the back door, Mr. Fogarty.”
“It was open, okay? The girl had the key. So she musta given it to someone, because the rear service door was hanging open. You got enough? Because I gotta go down to the office for my check.”
“Thank you,” Warren said to Fogarty. “You’ve been a big help.”
We watched the ex-doorman leave through the front door. Then Warren said to me, “I hate those guys, Jack. I hate that they’re in LA, I hate what they’re doing, and I hate that they’re so slippery. I’ll bet we don’t know the half of what they’ve done. It’s their game and they keep getting away with it.”
“I want to see their room,” I said.