The Flaming Motel

XXX


We took a slow pass by the Vargas house and saw that Wilson wasn’t there. The driveway was empty. The moving van was gone. Brianna Jones was gone. All seemed quiet. But the lights were on inside. Whether there was someone there or not we couldn’t tell. But we weren’t going near the place without Wilson. Fortunately, I knew a place to park and wait.

I brought the car into the driveway beside the gatehouse. Then I realized, as I pulled in and saw the black man fold his newspaper and smile at me, that I didn’t know his name. He leaned out of his little window and said, “Hey, hey, you’re getting to be a regular around here.”

“Seems like I’m always looking for a temporary parking place in this neighborhood.”

He looked at Jendrek and Liz and said, “Brought your family, I see.”

I laughed and said, “They’re just hostages.” Then I asked him if we could wait there for a few minutes. He said we could and I turned the car around to face the street and parked it where I had parked before. Almost as soon as I’d shut the car off, my phone rang.

I answered it and Wilson said, “Where are you?”

“Just down the road from the Vargas place.”

“We’re just turning onto Mulholland at Laurel Canyon. Wait ten minutes and then meet us at the Vargas place.”

I said we would and hung up. I rubbed the top of the wood box and couldn’t wait to hand it over to Wilson and be done with the whole thing. Between the photographs and Roger Barton’s identifying James Davis, Wilson would have himself a nice case. And it was only then that it occurred to me that Ed Vargas might even get his inheritance back.

“How do you know the gate guard?” Liz asked from the backseat.

I was still avoiding talk of the party, any subject that could lead to a discussion of Brianna. So I said, “This is where the noise disturbance call came from. This is the guy who told us it was David Daniels who made the call. Apparently he faked a breakdown right here where we’re sitting and asked to use the phone. But he didn’t call for help, he called in the noise disturbance instead.”

That seemed to satisfy her well enough. I heard her lean back against the seat. She didn’t seem interested anymore, which was fine with me. Preferable, in fact. But the less she asked about the evening at the house, the more my thoughts returned to it. I could smell Brianna Jones on her balcony overlooking the city. I could feel her leaning against me. I could have had her. I knew I could have had her, but I hadn’t. I had turned around. Gone home. I’d done nothing wrong. There was no way I could have known where she was taking me when she led me upstairs until we got there. Was there?

It hadn’t occurred to me at the time. But I was drunk. And was that any excuse? Was it worse that I kept thinking about it? Was that as bad as doing it? I told myself it wasn’t. I told myself I’d done nothing wrong. And then I turned the tables.

What about her? Had she restrained herself from Benjamin Cross down in San Diego? I would never know the answer. I never really wanted to know the answer. But if I did know, wouldn’t that ease my guilt about Brianna? Should it? And what about the peep show? The messages exchanged over the Internet? Watching her. Interacting with her. Where is the line between appropriate and not? But I knew better. If you had to ask where the line was you’d already crossed it.

Jendrek yawned. I checked my watch. Ten minutes. I started the car and drove up the road. We eased into the wide driveway to see Wilson and another guy sitting in Wilson’s car. My headlights cut a swath of light across them and up onto the steps of the house. Everything froze for an instant in the stark, caustic light of the halogen bulbs before I killed them and we piled out of the car.

Wilson and the other guy got out too, and we all stood in a cluster between the two cars.

Wilson pointed to the guy that was with him and said, “You remember Chuck Owens? You met him at the warehouse the other night?”

Chuck nodded at me. Now I remembered him, standing by the car, stern-faced, stoic in the garish red and blue lights out in front of the warehouse on Gower. I nodded back at him. It was hard to imagine Wilson with anything resembling a partner. I tried to picture them hitting on waitresses together, but the image didn’t take.

“What have you got?”

I handed Wilson the wood box. “Take these off our hands. They’re the key to the case. Well, these and another thing. You’d better brace yourself.”

Wilson gave me a quit-f*cking-around-and-get-to-it-look and opened the box. “These are her folks?”

“As far as we know. I’m almost certain these are the two people killed in the fire at the Starlight Motel. And I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the fire was set by Pete Stick and Don Vargas.”

Wilson flipped through the pictures and closed the box. “Where did you find them?”

“In her walk-in closet, on her make-up counter.”

“Did the girl let you in?”

He was talking about Brianna. His use of the word “girl” struck me as strange. I nodded that she had.

Wilson glanced at Chuck and then back at me. “You’ll have to show us where you found them. I’d almost rather you just put them back where you got them so we can find them on our own.”

“It wasn’t an illegal search,” I said. “We were let in the house by a tenant. Besides, we’re not police.”

Wilson grunted and handed the box back to me. “I didn’t expect you to find something so good. I don’t want to risk not being able to use it.”

“But you know about it now. It’s not like putting it back is going to change that.” I really didn’t want to hang onto them.

Wilson gave me a long, cool look and then said, “It does if no one mentions it.”

I stared back. So there it was. Un-find the evidence the same way you found it. Another cop game. Another way to work the system. And then I wondered if it mattered at all. Three people were dead. Did the technical issues about how a wooden box was found, and by whom, really get at the problem? Was it protecting something worth protecting? Was it protecting something that even existed anymore? I thought of Jendrek’s arrest, of the evidence James Davis had planted in my car. Reality was malleable. The sooner you figured out how to mold it, the better off you’d be.

“There’s one more thing,” I said.

Wilson gave me a sideways glance.

“The two who died in the fire had two kids. One was Tiffany.”

“And the other is the Daniels kid.”

“No,” I said. “Daniels was too young. Daniels was a foster kid taken in by the same family as Tiffany and her real brother. Her older brother.”

Wilson stared at me.

“Officer James Davis.”

Wilson threw his head back and turned around, “Aw shit, man, don’t tell me that.”

“It’s true, we got a positive ID from the picture you gave us. Next door neighbor out in the Valley.”

Wilson turned and looked up the stairs to the door of the house. A steely grin, as though the process of searching the house, of tormenting Tiffany Vargas with questions and accusations, was the best way he could think of to spend the evening. It didn’t seem right to go in with them, but the prospect of watching Tiffany sweat was too enticing.

When Wilson started up the stairs, Chuck followed close behind. I looked at Jendrek and Liz and shrugged. Jendrek shrugged back. Wouldn’t want to miss the show. Liz seemed more hesitant, but she followed along when Jendrek and I started up the stairs.

Halfway up, Jendrek whispered, “We might get her to say the marriage was a fraud.” He grinned at me. Always on the lookout for a way to break a case.

Wilson rang the doorbell and knocked loudly. “She has to know we’re out here,” he said to no one in particular and stood with his hands on his hips. As we waited, I noticed him tapping his foot and staring down, as if focusing on some problem, some abstraction that had nothing to do with the situation at hand. Then he turned toward me to say something, but stopped himself just before he spoke. The lock in the door was turning.

When she opened the door, she seemed surprised to see us there, clustered on the porch like the Inquisition. She knew Jendrek and me, but no one else. Her eyes flickered from face to face and came to rest on mine.

“Can I help you?” The bright smile and flawless skin would get her nowhere with Wilson, who was already unfolding the piece of paper.

“Ms. Vargas. I’m Detective Wilson with the LAPD. I have a warrant here to search the premises.” He handed her the slip of paper.

She took it from him with a confused expression, like the words made no sense to her at all. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t understand. What is this about?”

She smiled again, but this time it belied a tension in her eyes. There was a measure of fear in her voice that seemed to retreat toward a tentative outrage. She hesitated, her eyes bouncing between the faces and the paper in her hand.

“We have reason to believe there is evidence in this house connected to the murder of Donald Vargas.” Wilson’s voice was cool and flat. No confrontation, no nothing. Just stating facts as if there was nothing else to say.

But her eyes locked on him as he spoke. “Murder?” she repeated. And then laughed, as though the suggestion were plainly ludicrous. “But it was one of your own officers. It’s already been ruled an accident.”

“Ma’am,” Wilson said, cutting her short. “Please step aside and permit us to enter. We won’t be long.” He took an aggressive step toward her as soon as he spoke and she stepped back and out of the doorway as though avoiding Wilson were a reflex. It had to be a textbook move, I thought. Ask for permission and then just walk right in. It made you seem nice and it made the homeowner feel like it was their idea to let you in.

We all filed in behind him. Wilson walked quickly through the tile foyer and stepped down into the great room. His head darted in all directions. Chuck’s too. Checking the place out. Giving it the once over. Looking for obvious signs of trouble and finding none.

“Ma’am,” Wilson called, with his back still to us. “Is there anyone else in the house?”

“No,” she said. Then added—just a moment too late for it to feel natural—“I live alone now that my husband is dead.”

Wilson turned to face the group of us, hands on his hips, standing stout and looking impatient. He nodded his head at me, waving me off to the side, telling me to get the hell out of the way. I descended the short flight of stairs and Jendrek and Liz followed. We stood off to the side by the bar.

Wilson folded his arms across his chest and waited for Chuck to stroll casually over to the doorway leading to the hall. Chuck peeked down the hall, saw nothing, and the turned and stood just inside the room. He gave Wilson a look that seemed to say: ready when you are.

Wilson rolled his head on his neck and I could hear a bone crack somewhere deep between his shoulder blades. It gave off a dull, muffled thump that was perfectly clear in the silence. Tiffany Vargas stood at the top of the stairs dressed in a black suit I imagined she’d worn to Max Stanton’s office—my old office—where she’d looked over his shoulder all day, barking demands about liquidating the estate as fast as he could.

Her blonde hair and tan skin—blue eyes and cover girl body—made her hard to take seriously. It made her hard to view as a threat in any way. She had spent her life perfecting the look of confused innocence, with the furrowed brow and the shrug of the shoulders. What is this about? What’s going on? I just don’t understand, she seemed to be saying without speaking. Just look at me, there’s no way I could do anything wrong.

But Wilson wasn’t going for it. He cleared his throat and said, “Ms. Vargas, do you know anyone named David Daniels?”

She went with the wrinkled forehead again. “Wasn’t he that poor kid who worked for Pete Stick? The one they found dead?”

It was answers like that that would land her in jail. I smiled as she stepped into the trap. I leaned against the bar to watch the show. Wilson went on. “As far as we know, that was his name. Are you sure you don’t have any other information that might help us identify him? Notify his family?”

She shook her head with a quick little movement and said, “Sorry. I wish I could help. It’s terrible what happened, but …” She let her voice trail off. Nice touch.

Wilson scratched behind his head and looked down for a moment. “That’s too bad,” he said, and then looked up, staring her in the eyes, “because it’s come to our attention that he was your brother.”

“Pardon?” She blinked a couple of times like a deer in a spotlight. Then she flashed an embarrassed grin, almost laughing, and said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course you do, Ms. Vargas. You’re the one who got him the job with Pete Stick.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She was fidgeting with her hands now, placing them on her hips, folding them in front of her. Nothing she did with them looked natural.

“Of course you do, Ms. Vargas,” he went on, taking a step toward her. He stood below her at the bottom of the steps and looked up, as if pondering a thought that had nothing to do with any of us, and then he asked, “Was it your idea?”

He was dancing with her, letting her lead, knowing she didn’t know the steps. The question hung in the air. I could almost see the thoughts clicking through her head as she raced for a response. But what could be said other than a total denial? And that’s where she went.

“Was what my idea?” She leaned forward and laughed a little, as though Wilson was crazy, just talking randomly about things that meant nothing to her.

But Wilson said nothing. He just stood there, grinning up at her, staring her right in the face. You know exactly what I’m talking about, his smile seemed to say, you just want to know how much I know.

She waited. But Wilson just stood there, arms folded in front of him. Nothing threatening about it, like he was just hanging around with nothing of interest to do. The silence persisted. She looked over at Chuck, who stood stoic, gruff, as though nothing he was seeing interested him in the least. Then she looked over at the three of us, clustered near the bar like a bunch of lookey-loos at a traffic wreck.

Finally, she leaned back and said, “I thought you were here to search the house.” She held the paper out in front of her, pretending to read it for a moment, then said, “I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about, so I doubt you’ll find anything interesting.” Then she added, with a threatening tone, “And if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go call my lawyer.”

“By all means,” Wilson said. “You might want to have him come over, make sure we do things right.”

She turned and took several steps toward the bar, her eyes on the phone at the end of it. But halfway there she stopped cold, staring at me, looking down at my arms—my hands—bewildered by what she saw there. Her expression took me by surprise and I backed away from the bar, looking where she looked, trying to see what she was staring at. And then I realized what it was as I held my arms out beside me. It was her little wooden box. I was holding it and her eyes traced its movement though the air as I waved it around without thinking.

“I see someone’s already done some searching,” she said.

“So you admit that box is yours?” Wilson asked, the grin on his face growing wider.

She turned on him now, her faced flushed red, her composure gone. “Look,” she began, “I don’t know what in the f*ck is going on here. But I want you out of my house. All of you, I want you out right f*cking now.”

“Ma’am, you’ve seen the warrant.”

“F*ck you and your warrant. This is bullshit. I know my rights. You’ve broken into my house and already searched it. How do I even know you’re a real cop? I want to see some ID.” She was groping for technicalities now.

Wilson pulled a thin leather wallet out of his sport coat and tossed it to her. “Here,” he said, “standard issue, just like other LAPD identification, with which I’m sure you’re familiar.”

She caught it and studied it, not taking his bait. Then she tossed it back to him. “I know my goddamned rights,” she said. But her voice was filled with doubt.

“Of course you do.” Wilson smiled. “I’m sure your brother has explained them to you. We’ll make sure you get all the rights you deserve. You two can discuss them together in jail.”

“Who the f*ck do you think you are?” she yelled. “You don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” Wilson yelled back, taking a quick step toward her, hunched forward, shoulders back like he was ready to lunge. “Let me tell you what I’m talking about, Mizz Vargas. I’m talking about a little girl whose parents were murdered in a fire. Who kept pictures of them in a little box all these years to remind her what they looked like as she endured her abusive foster father in some shitty house out in the Valley. I’m talking about a teenage girl who used to dream about getting revenge on the son of a bitch who ruined her life every time the a*shole who adopted her stuck his finger in her cunt or his dick in her ass. I’m talking about a woman who tracked down the man who did it and stole him away from his wife, convinced him to marry her so she could kill him and inherit the fortune he made from the money he got from the fire that killed her parents.”

He took another step toward her and said, “I’m talking about you, Tiffany Vargas—or should I say, Tiffany Davis?—sister of Officer James Davis, the brother who suffered right along with you all of those years.”

“No,” she yelled back, having lost control now, tears coming down her face. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all.” She wiped the back of her hand across her cheek, smearing a broad swath of mascara toward her ear. “Jimmy found Don. Jimmy was obsessed with finding him. He was the one who wanted revenge.”

“That’s bullshit, Tiffany. Do I look like a goddamned fool?” Wilson took another step toward her, still leaning, still threatening.

“No. No, I swear,” she sobbed, rubbing the pads of her hands in her eyes, as if they could sop up the tears like a sponge. “Jimmy got me to go to some parties where I would meet Don. I went along with it. Flirting. Trying to seduce him. It worked. I wanted to hate him. I wanted to get revenge, but I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t hate him like Jimmy did.”

She stepped down into the room and came over to me, taking the box from my hand and opening it. I took several steps back toward the center of the room. Jendrek and Liz fanned out behind me.

She flipped through the pictures and shook her head. “This is all I know of them. This is the only thing I know. I was only one when it happened. I can’t even remember them. Jimmy was older. It was Jimmy who remembered. It was Jimmy who was angry.”

She went over to the bar and leaned against it, setting the box beside her, open, with the picture of her father on the bed, staring out at her. She held her head in her hands, leaning her elbows on the bar with her back to us. Wilson let her stand there for a minute while we all watched. She shuddered, and the heaving of her back as she sighed was the only movement in the room.

When Wilson spoke again, his voice was softer, but not kind. He said, “But you married him for his money. You married him to get even.”

She turned and let out a long, silent breath that seemed to deflate her entire body. “I suppose I did,” she said, shaking her head. “I must have. But I never hated him. He was always kind to me. Despite the fire, Don Vargas was a decent man. And, after awhile, I learned to enjoy my life.” She waved her hand at the room, as though getting used to the life there might be a difficult thing.

“Is marrying for money so evil?” she asked. “It’s done all the time. What difference does it make that I did it too? I never hated him. I think, after awhile, I even grew to love him, somehow.”

“But you killed him.”

“No,” she said, her eyes wide with shock at the accusation. “No. I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.” She shook her head. “That was all Jimmy. He started extorting money from Don by having Pete threaten to make trouble for him. Threaten to turn him in for murder or something. I don’t know. And then, when Jimmy heard Don was going to transfer the business to Eddie, he went crazy and swore he would never let that happen.”

She turned and looked around the room with a distant haze in her eyes. “That night,” she said, “during the party. I had no idea. I was as shocked as anyone when Don got shot. I couldn’t believe it when Jimmy came in, acting like he didn’t know me, acting like it was just another night on the job.”

“But you never told anyone?” Wilson asked. “You lied for your brother, knowing he’d done it on purpose. Knowing he was a murderer?”

“What was I supposed to do?” She sobbed again. “He’s my brother.” She shrugged and stopped trying to hide her tears. They cut tracks through the makeup on her face, leaving dark droplets on her suit coat as they hung along her chin and then fell free.

Everyone was watching her crumble inward on herself so that no one noticed Ed Vargas come through the open front door until the silence was cut by his short, sharp claps. We all looked up to see him there, strolling and applauding sarcastically.

“Give the woman an Academy Award,” he said. “The performance of a lifetime. Boys!” he shouted, to an imaginary crowd. “You thought she was just a young porno whore, but no, she’s got talent. A real f*cking star, this one.”

He wavered on the stairs, taking them slow, stepping carefully down into the room. Wilson moved toward him, but Ed waved him off and staggered over to the bar where he rested his weight against the polished mahogany. Tiffany backed away.

“Son?” Wilson said. “You okay?”

“Are you my dad?” Ed smiled at him, and shook his sweaty head. “I didn’t think so. No, because my dad’s dead. I was sitting home alone, having a few drinks, and thinking about that. Thinking about how I’m all by my lonesome. So,” he straightened up, the slur evaporating from his voice “I decided to come on over and visit with my dear mammy!”

Then he burst out laughing, leaning forward, away from the bar, and then catching himself quickly before he fell. “My dearest mummy. Dear old mom. A year and a half younger than me.” He grinned at Wilson. “It’s a goddamned f*cking miracle of modern science.”

Ed kept laughing, silently, his mouth wide with nothing but raspy air escaping from his lungs. His face went dark purple and he slapped the bar beside the box of pictures, resting his fingers lightly on top of it. “My mother’s younger than me,” he managed to say. “Ain’t that the damnedest thing?”

Tiffany stepped toward him and spoke softly. “Eddie,” was all she said.

Ed’s eyes locked on her and he stood quickly, almost spry in his movements. “Don’t you Eddie me, you f*cking cunt!” And he hurled the wooden box at her, striking her in the face with a hideous crack! The photographs exploded in a cloud and Tiffany’s head shot back, a spray of blood erupting from her nose.

And then Ed was on her like a cat. Springing from the bar, he knocked her over to the floor, screaming at her, wailing as they slid to a stop near my feet. I backed away as Eddie pulled a revolver from the back of his pants and jammed it in her face. The pictures rained down around them and he grabbed one, mashing it into her bloody face as she shrieked and tried to wriggle free.

“Look at it, you f*cking cunt. Look at this goddamned thing you worthless f*cking whore.” The picture was smeared with blood. She turned her head from side to side, trying to get away but having nowhere to go. “You think Daddy’s proud of you now? His little whore daughter?”

Wilson drew a pistol and shouted. Chuck rushed across the room. But Ed was on top of her; there was no way to shoot just him. No way to risk pulling him off of her with a gun to her head. Chuck hesitated, uncertain; should he grab Ed or not?

Ed pinned her head sideways against the floor by jamming the gun straight down on her temple. “You ruined my f*cking life.” His voice was shrill. Thick with liquor and rage.

He stuffed the picture in her mouth.

I heard her muffled, desperate scream. Saw her eyes dart up to mine for an instant, begging me to help her.

Ed jammed the gun in her mouth, ramming the photograph deep in her throat.

She gagged.

He pulled the trigger and her head erupted in a cloud of blood and bone, spattering across me. But I didn’t move. I didn’t do a damned thing but watch.

Detective Wilson put two clean rounds through Ed Vargas’s back and Ed’s screaming stopped, replaced for a moment by the deafening sound of the gun, and then by a stone-dead silence.

The five of us stood in the stillness, eyes darting from walls to windows, couch and carpet. As though some meaning might be hidden in the very objects in the room, we all looked around, at everything but each other.

Had Tiffany told us the truth? Did it matter? What was truth? The only truth I knew was sprayed across the front of me and would stay there for the rest of my life.