The Flaming Motel

XXI


Wilson told me he’d poke around the office at the end of the day. He knew who stayed late and who didn’t. A guy in the records department was an old friend of his. He figured buying the guy a couple beers and a French dip sandwich at Philippe’s ought to help him get his hands on something. He said he’d get back to me tomorrow and we parted ways on the sidewalk.

I went east on Wilshire. My original plan was to head back to the office and discuss what I’d found at the library with Jendrek. But something kept me driving east. I had the top down and the traffic was moving along. It just felt nice to focus on driving, without dwelling on the thousand different explanations for what might have happened.

As Wilshire curved to the south and became the border between Beverly Hills and Century City, I reminded myself of what we’d been hired to do: keep Tiffany Vargas from inheriting her husband’s estate. Prove her marriage was a fraud. But by the time Wilshire curved back to the east and lead me through the center of Los Angeles, all I could see was a blurry line between the marriage and the murder.

The cop hadn’t made any distinctions when he’d pressed the tip of his nine-millimeter into my temple. Stay out of the Vargas business, period. All of it. Didn’t that mean everything was connected? It usually is. Not that I’m a Taoist or anything, just a victim of logic, and my own relentless need for everything to make some sense. At least in the world around me, if not always in my own life.

So by the time I was cutting through Koreatown, I knew where I was going. Baldwin Hills. Huntington Drive. I had the address in a folder in my briefcase. Maybe David Daniels’s girlfriend would tell me some things she wouldn’t tell the cops.

When I was downtown, I turned north up Spring Street and then east again on Caesar Chavez Boulevard—which is what Sunset becomes as it heads into East LA—and went over the bridge that everyone has seen in a thousand movies, but only Angelinos can identify.

After that, I was lost.

The city seemed to break apart into a series of tiny hills separated by veins of traffic that spider-webbed around them in all directions. I went north for a while, then further east, then back the way I’d come, just in case I missed something the first time through. I knew if I kept going east I’d hit San Gabriel, a dense Chinese community where a cultureless American like me couldn’t even read the street signs.

Eventually, I pulled over next to a street cart piled high with bags of cotton candy, bright colored balloons, and an assortment of gum and candy and churros for sale. The old man pushing it looked like he really hoped I’d buy something. His eyes rolled over my car, as if to suggest I could afford it, and it would be the least I could do. I bought some chiclets and he told me where Huntington was. I tossed the gum in the glove box. I never chew gum.

When Henry Huntington first came to the San Gabriel Valley, Pasadena was a small village with pristine air that had been dried of its ocean moisture by the hills of what is now East LA. It was believed that the dry air was good for the body, and, for a time, Pasadena was the fashionable west coast retreat for many of the county’s wealthiest people. Huntington himself ran an empire from his massive estate, which now houses his Guttenberg Bible, his 150-acre botanical garden, and his paintings, such as the famous Blue Boy. All of it bought with the revenue from his 1100-mile system of trolleys that connected nearly all of Southern California.

The trolleys were almost unimaginable now in traffic snarled Los Angeles, but Huntington’s Pacific Electric, which became Pacific Gas and Electric, was still one of the largest and most powerful institutions in the state. As I headed up the street that bore his name, past the ramshackle houses and nearly dead commercial spaces, it was almost as though all of the wealth of the city had been sucked up that wide concrete corridor and deposited in Henry Huntington’s backyard.

But Huntington wasn’t a bad guy, he was just a rich one. He did leave his huge estate and collection of rare books and art to a public trust. I’d been there and seen it, and it was gorgeous. But it was actually hard to imagine how anyone could ever amass that kind of wealth without doing some kind of evil deed. Fortunes are always built on the misfortunes of others.

I found the cottage in a courtyard of other identical cottages. A cluster of eight freestanding white stucco structures built around a square of grass with palm trees at its edge and a brick path running through it. The path must have run to some garages in the back. The whole place was well maintained. The little houses nothing more than cabins. Small, one bedroom affairs that probably rented cheap in that part of town. But the overall aesthetic was almost serene, especially in contrast to the cars careening down Huntington Drive at fifty miles per hour.

I stood for a few seconds in the courtyard, and then realized that anyone in any of the houses could see me. I figured it for the kind of place old ladies lived, who would probably be at home and looking out there windows every thirty seconds. I checked the address again and went to the door. As I knocked, I realized I didn’t know her name.

There was a shuffling noise inside, followed by an odd and lengthy silence. I could hear it all. Despite their appearance, the cottages had thin walls, windows, and doors. I pictured someone standing inside, just a few feet away from me, knowing I’d heard them and hoping I’d just go away.

I knocked again, and waited. There was no peephole, so I knew that I was nothing but a mystery to the occupant. After a few more seconds, I heard another rustling of movement, as though someone was rummaging through a box, and then I heard the door latch click.

She only opened the door enough so I could see her face. She had the beautiful tan skin nearly every young Latina woman has, unblemished and glowing. Her dark eyes looked out at me and quickly went from concerned to confused.

“Can I help you?” she asked, with no hint of any accent. She could have been a newscaster, with her perfect enunciation.

I wasn’t sure how to say it, so I started with a lie. “I’m trying to find David Daniels.”

Her eyes darted over me, inspecting me. I hadn’t worn a tie or a jacket. I was just some guy in slacks and a button down shirt. “He’s not here,” she said, casually. Though, given what I knew, I could hear a tragic lilt in her voice.

“Do you know where I can find him?”

“No,” she said, with a kind of urgent panic, and then added, “sorry, I have to go.”

As she was closing the door on me, I said, “I had a meeting scheduled with him Saturday afternoon and he never showed up. He never called either. I’m concerned about him. It’s important that I find him.”

That stopped her. She opened the door a little wider so I could see half of her thin, almost juvenile body sticking out from behind the door. She wore a pair of faded jeans and a tattered black T-shirt, as though she was dressed for some kind of laborious work. In the room behind her, I could see cardboard boxes and piles of old newspaper. She’d been working all right. Packing her things. Working at getting the hell out of there.

She studied me from behind the door, as if trying to make up her mind about me. I gave her a confused kind of innocent smile, like I was sorry for the mix up. Finally, she asked, “Are you some kind of cop or something?”

“Me?” I almost laughed at the suggestion. It must have been convincing, because she opened the door the rest of the way and stood there, with her one arm raised up on the edge of the door and the other on her narrow hip. She still seemed to be deciding what to do with me, but I could tell I was winning her over.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m a lawyer. I work for someone who’s interested in a shooting that happened in West Hollywood.”

Her eyes flickered with a mix of fear and recklessness, but she stifled it, and said, “David never mentioned any meeting. He always tells me where he’s going.”

I knew she was lying. She was looking for details, looking to confirm I was who I said I was. So I said, “Well, I don’t know about that. Some guys don’t tell their girlfriends everything they do. All I know is I had a meeting with him at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday at two o’clock. I sat around waiting for him and he never showed. He said he had some information for me.”

I shrugged a little, and then added, “It’s really important that I find out what he knows.” But I knew she knew that. And she confirmed it with a smirk that told me she thought I was an idiot, that I didn’t know a damned thing. She stepped back out of the doorway and motioned for me to come inside.

I stood in a small living room. There was a doorway into a bedroom directly in front of me. To the right was a small dining room, barely big enough for the card table that was in it. Behind that was a kitchen. That seemed to be the entirety of the cottage. Everywhere there were boxes stuffed with household items. The walls were bare. The shelves were empty. Nearly everything was packed.

When I was done looking around, my eyes found her standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a gun in her hand. I jumped at the sight of it, putting my hands up in front of me, as if they could stop anything. “Jesus! Put that thing down.”

But that only made her raise it slightly. She clutched it like it was an extension of her arm, like she was comfortable holding it. “The hell I will,” she said, her voice hot with excitement and anger. “Now you tell me who the hell you are.”

“I told you.”

“Bullshit.”

“Jesus Christ, I’m a lawyer hired by Don Vargas’s son. I met David at the Do Prop Inn on Friday afternoon. Then I saw him again late that night after they found Pete Stick’s body. He told me he knew something important and offered to tell me what it was for ten grand. I showed up with the money, but he never showed.” I could feel my face flush as the words poured out.

She seemed to be parsing my words in her head. Listening to them again to see if they matched what she knew. My eyes bounced back and forth between her face and the tip of the gun. How old was she? Twenty? At most? Youth probably made it easier to kill people. That thought didn’t do anything to comfort me.

Finally, she asked, “How did you find me?”

“Some stoner guy at the Do Prop Inn gave me the address when I went by and asked about David. He said David hadn’t been to work.” I rubbed my palms on my pants and then rubbed them together in front of me. The gun was making me fidget.

“What’s your name?” Her voice was steely, cold. The questions came out with a tone of indifference that scared me.

“Oliver Olson.”

She paused for a second and then kicked one of the wooden chairs at the card table over to me. It slid up against my feet. The cottage was small. She motioned with the gun and said, “Have a seat, Oliver Olson.”

I did. Although I wondered for a second if I could make it out the door, wondering if she would really shoot. What about the little old ladies I imagined in the other cottages? Wouldn’t their presence protect me? Did they even exist? The way she held the gun made me think she knew what she was doing. It was convincing, even if it was just an act. She stayed where she was, hovering in the kitchen doorway, well out of reach.

After a few seconds, I said, “Look, there’s no reason for the gun. I’m not here to hurt you.”

That made her laugh. “Yeah,” she said, “you and every other a*shole who stops by. I’m done taking chances. How do I know you didn’t kill him?”

“Do I look like a killer?” I asked, and then realized my mistake and added, “And who said he was dead?”

“You know he’s dead,” she said.

I didn’t argue. I just sat quiet for a minute, waiting for her to say something. She seemed to be dwelling on the fact that David Daniels was dead, as though she hadn’t had any time to think about it since she’d heard. Then she shook it off, focusing on me again, knowing she didn’t have time to think about it now.

But I spoke before she had a chance to say anything. “Look,” I said, “keep the gun if you want. I’m not going to try anything. I just need to find out if you know anything. I’m afraid that David isn’t the only one who’s going to get hurt before this is over. Has anyone been here, threatening you?”

She didn’t answer, but she looked away for an instant, as if the memory of it were sitting in the corner of the room, somewhere just behind me.

“Was it a cop?” I asked. “Or a guy dressed like a cop?” She didn’t answer, but she focused on me in a new way. Softer this time.

I went on, trying to get her to understand why I was there. “That same cop dragged my girlfriend and me out of our car last night and held a gun to my head. He told me to stay out of the Vargas business. But I don’t know what he meant. I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t stay out of it if I don’t know what to stay out of.”

“You can always leave town,” she said. She wasn’t joking.

“And do what?” I said. “Just run forever?”

“People stop looking after awhile.”

“You hope,” I said. “It depends on what they’re looking for, or what they’re trying to protect. They don’t always stop.” I knew first hand.

She didn’t say anything, but she did take a couple of deep breaths. I could see her relax a little. The barrel of the gun dipped down toward the floor for a moment, before she remembered what she was doing and brought it back up.

“Look, I know David was the one who made the phone call about noise disturbance. I just don’t know why. Do you know?”

She looked surprised by the question and shook her head in response. “I don’t know what he was doing,” she said. “All I know is there was something going on. But I didn’t think much of it until the night Pete was killed.”

“Did you know Pete?”

“I’d met him a few times. We’d gone out to some bars. He’d come over to the house here a few times. He seemed nice enough.”

“But now he’s dead. And David’s dead too. And you and I have both been threatened by a guy who looks a lot like a cop. Don’t you think we ought to figure out what’s happening?”

She smirked and shook her head. “I’m done trying to figure things out. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“Well, if you’re leaving, tell me what you know.” I watched the tip of the gun drop again. She pulled it back up, but it was slower this time. “I know you know something. Just tell me. You’ve got the gun. What the hell can I do?”

That seemed to convince her. Or perhaps it was just the pressure of it all, but for whatever reason, she leaned against the kitchen doorway and said, “I don’t know what they were doing. All I know, is that for the last couple of months, David was bringing home piles of cash.”

“How much?”

“Like ten grand at a time. About fifty thousand in all.”

“Do you still have it?”

She laughed, “Yeah, but it ain’t here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything. I’m just wondering what the cop is looking for.”

“He’s not looking for that. He was just trying to find out what I knew. But I don’t know anything.” She hesitated for a second, and then moved into the dining room and said, “He made sure of that.”

She pulled up the side of her T-shirt, nearly all the way to her armpit. Her tight, tan stomach muscles faded into a deep purple and yellow bruise that ran over her ribs and all the way up her side. I could see the curved bare flesh of the bottom of her breast tinged a sickly green. She saw me studying it, and said, “I can’t even wear a bra. It hurts too much.”

“How?” I couldn’t even finish the question. I wondered if her ribs were broken. I wondered how it was that she was packing her things. The pain had to be excruciating.

“He showed up yesterday in the middle of the day, when everyone else was at work. In uniform. Some other cops had been here late Monday night, not long after they found David out in Malibu. I thought this guy was just here to ask some follow up questions. But he wasn’t.”

She pulled out another chair and sat on the opposite side of the card table. She was still holding the gun, still pointing it toward me, but she no longer seemed serious about using it.

“He stripped me naked and tied me to the bed. Gagged me. These bruises are from his nightstick.” She looked away from me, down at the surface of the table, and added, “I have other bruises too. Other places. But I’m not going to tell you about those. He kept asking me questions. Trying to find out what I know. But I don’t know anything. After about an hour he untied me and told me that if I said anything to anyone, I’d end up just like David.”

Then something caught in her throat and she put her face in her hand, trying to stifle a sob. She spoke again in a high voice, like a child trying to stop her tears with words. “Or worse,” she said. “He told me they’d frame me for something. That I’d spend the rest of my life in jail.”

She wiped her nose with the back of her other hand, leaving the gun loose on the table. Her eyes stared out of her skull at me, glassy with fear and a trembling remembrance. Then her body shook, and she said, “He told me I’d get f*cked in prison a thousand times harder than what he was doing to me.”

And then the dam broke and she held her head in her hands. I took her to the couch in the living room, where she cried for half an hour. She leaned against me. I put an arm around her, but was afraid to touch her, afraid to hurt her in any way as she sobbed and shuddered and seemed to cringe at thoughts she did not share, and I did not want to know. I sat quietly, staring at the empty walls. I didn’t say anything. How could I? And what would I have said anyway?

When she was done, she paused for a second and looked me in the eyes but didn’t say or do anything. She had a look of thanks and appreciation that transcended words. It was just a look acknowledging my compassion, one person to another, in a time of pain and despair. It didn’t need words. It simply was what it was.

She went through the bedroom and into a bathroom in the back. I put the gun on top of a bookshelf, out of reach and out of mind. Then I peeked into the bedroom door to make sure she was okay. I could hear water running in the sink in the bathroom. I studied the stripped mattress on the old bed frame. All of the blankets and sheets were gone, but there was a dark stain in its center. I recoiled at the sight of it. Was it blood or shit or some unholy combination of both?

What had he done to her in there?

I didn’t want to know anything more. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. I lingered in the living room, studying the half-packed boxes on the floor, wondering why she was taking anything at all, why she wasn’t already gone.

A few minutes later, I heard the door to the bedroom creak behind me and I turned to see her standing there, exhausted now. Her face was ruddy and glowing from the release of so much tension but she wasn’t embarrassed, or even emotional. A look of resignation occupied her, as though the cruelty of life had taken what remained of her youth and replaced it with a cold, stoic fatigue.

“There’s something else though,” she said.

“Something he did?”

She shook her head, “Something I didn’t tell him. Mostly because he didn’t ask. But also because David told me never to tell anyone who came around asking.”

“What was it?”

“David was Tiffany Vargas’s youngest brother.”

“What?” The back of my neck tingled and my face flushed.

“He told me when he got the job at the Do Prop Inn. Told me his sister had helped him get it. It was only later, when he started bringing home the money that he told me I could never tell anyone they were related.” She shifted her weight in the doorway and added, “I can’t see that it makes much difference now.”

“But they have different last names.”

“He was adopted,” she said. “Sometimes adopted kids keep their original names. It’s up to them, if they’re old enough.”

“But how did the cops, the real cops, how did they not figure that out?”

“I don’t think they found his mom. I don’t think David even knew where she was. They moved from the Valley out to San Bernardino about ten years ago, when David was still a kid. After high school, David moved back to LA. I don’t think he ever saw her again. She’s long gone now. Dead maybe. Who knows?”

I stood in the center of the small room, trying to put it together. I don’t know how long I stood there with her in the doorway, watching me. She didn’t seem impatient. She just watched, quietly. After a while, I realized there was nothing more to say and that I wasn’t going to figure it all out while I stood there.

I ran my eyes over the boxes and asked, “Where are you going?”

She just smiled and said nothing.

“How can I reach you?” I asked. “I don’t even know your name.”

“You know enough about me already,” she said. “Let’s just keep it the way it is.”