Blond Cargo (4 page)

“Will do,” Jack said as he turned and walked back toward the café. No one believed a word of it.

Instead of heading back to the inflatable, he turned left through the parking lot and hiked up the road that led to the mobile homes.

By that time the crowd had dispersed, and the woman in question was sitting on her front porch in a wicker chair with her eyes closed, burning what wasn’t already dangerously tanned on her face. One hand was wrapped tightly around a red metal goblet that might have contained iced tea. Long Island iced tea, Jack suspected. The pink lipstick mark on the rim was covered in beaded condensation. She had red hair that had been augmented with red dye and wore a red zip-up Nike workout suit revealing cleavage that demanded to be zipped up another six inches.

Jack rapped on the wooden railway and the woman almost leapt out of her sun-damaged skin. Not unattractive. Just tired.

“I didn’t mean to startle you. I just wanted to ask you a few questions about the accident,” he said.

When the woman’s eyes cleared from the sun blindness and she focused on Jack, she purred, “Come up.” She held out a once-elegant hand. “Maggie Sheffield. And if it was an accident, the woman had to be stoned, dead, or asleep at the wheel,” she noted with a nasality that shattered any notion of elegance.

Jack shook her hand, and she held on for an uncomfortable moment too long.

“Jack Bertolino.”

“You’re certainly easier on the eyes than the other two detectives I spoke with.”

Jack would be sure to share her critique the next time he ran into Gallina and Tompkins.

“You saw the actual crash?”

“I heard it before I saw it. Sounded like a mosquito. Small outboard engine. Old wooden boat. Sat low in the water. When I walked out the door, I could see she was headed for the rocks. Stevie Wonder could have seen the rocks. The tide was out and there was no way she could have mistaken them for sand. I shouted, but it didn’t do any good. I’m still shaking.”

Maggie held out her hand and indeed it betrayed a slight tremor. More booze-induced than from nerves, Jack suspected.

“I can still see that poor girl’s body lying on the rocks. She looked broken.”

“What else did you see?”

“She was naked. I mean, who goes out in a boat at night dressed in nothing but her birthday suit? It’s too damn cold.”

The question was rhetorical, but Jack noted Gallina hadn’t shared that little tidbit. Both women were found naked.

“And then there was that sexy boat that drove away before she crashed,” Maggie said.

“What did it look like?”

“Well, like Don Johnson should have been driving it. Like a jet.”

“A cigarette boat?”

“Yes,” she said, a little too excited. “That’s what they called it on
Miami Vice
. They don’t make TV like that anymore. I used to—”

Jack stopped her with, “Color?”

“Colors,” she said, annoyed he had interrupted her flow. “Three long thick stripes. Different colors but I couldn’t tell you for the life of me what they were. Just different shades of color.”

“Did it look like the two boats were together? Did they arrive together?” Jack asked.

“I couldn’t say, but the girl
was
butt-naked. They couldn’t have missed her. They must have gotten an eyeful, but they sure as hell didn’t turn back to help.”

“Did you see the pilot? Man or woman, how many?”

“Now that I think about it, there were two. Men, I think. It was too dark to really tell, though, and they were already beyond the spillover from the café’s security lights.”

“Anything else you can think of?”

“Not offhand, Detective, but why don’t you leave me your card? If anything comes to mind I’ll ring you up.”

Jack knew he might live to regret it, but he pulled out one of his cards and passed it to Maggie, being careful to keep his fingers away from her snapping manicured nails.

Jack didn’t trust coincidence. Not when two women, both young, blond, and naked, turned up dead on the seashore. Either they’d been enjoying a good time that got away from them, or someone had deliberately sent them to an early grave.

6

Back before noon, Jack laid out the contents of the manila envelope on the kitchen’s center island. Phone bill, no phone. Address of Angelica’s apartment, no key. A short list of her friends, with phone numbers. A quick glance found matches on the phone bill. He’d put those names at the top of his list.

He placed a call to Tommy Aronsohn that went directly to voice mail. He filled him in on the Cardona case before snapping on the television, where all of the local stations were covering the discovery of the second dead woman in the past three weeks. Nothing new was being reported, but it was a story that would get churned because the similarity between the two women was startling. No cause of death was reported for either woman, which Jack thought odd because the second woman appeared to have died when her boat hit the rocks at Paradise Cove. And their identities had yet to be released, which Jack thought equally odd because of the time line at play. Three weeks in was more than enough time to notify the next of kin of the first victim. He picked up the picture of Angelica and understood Cardona’s discomfort. Same age, same hair color, same type. Jack pulled out a yellow pad and started to make lists.

For a privileged young woman, Angelica didn’t have extravagant tastes or shopping habits. The credit cards weren’t maxed out. The last purchase made was at the Macy’s makeup department in Century City on the seventeenth of April. The bill totaled $129. A reasonable sum.

The apartment was paid in full on the first of every month from a Wells Fargo account in Beverly Hills. Vincent paid for the rent and incidentals so that Angelica . . . could do what?

The last personal check she wrote, in the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars, in perfect cursive, was made out to the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, and notated at the bottom of the cashed check was the name Barry Freid.

So that she could become an actress. Ask and ye shall receive, Jack thought. But why didn’t Vincent Cardona know that?

Angelica’s father was a mobster and she was trying to change her persona? Maybe. Maybe she just had a gift. Or a private dream. At least she was studying, Jack thought. From everything he had read, show business was a really tough racket. Maybe she’d suffered a string of rejections, gotten fed up, and taken a road trip.

Jack picked up Angelica’s photograph and was again taken with the intensity behind her green eyes. The girl didn’t seem to have any quit in her.

Three-and-a-half-week trip? Could be, he thought. But no phone calls, no credit card receipts—it just didn’t feel right.

He would get started with his interviews after he had laid out the ground rules to Cardona.

No money would change hands. The police would be brought in if necessary. No guarantee of success. This wasn’t his only commitment. The only outcome Jack demanded was that his debt be paid in full.

It was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition for Jack, who was painfully aware that Vincent Cardona was a man who played by his own book of rules.

The Mafia handbook.

The phone rang, and he saw it was Tommy Aronsohn.

“You have got to be kidding me,” was Tommy’s opening remark. “What did Leslie say?”

Tommy had been a baby DA working lower Manhattan when Jack was cutting his teeth as a rookie narcotics detective. They had run some wild, seat-of-their-pants cases back in the day and were still thick as thieves.

“She doesn’t know yet.”

A deep laugh rumbled from his friend like a storm warning. “You’re dating a deputy district attorney, Jack. There are politics involved.”

“Don’t start, Tommy.”

“A missing person. What the hell. You should be able to clear that up in a few days. When you find the kid you’ll be a hero in the old neighborhood and they’ll treat your mother like a saint.”

“I thought I moved out of the neighborhood.”

“Good luck with that. So FYI, Lawrence Weller chewed off my ear after your undercover operation lit up the airwaves.”

“It’s a gift.”

“But then Larry turned on CNBC and discovered that his stock had ticked up two dollars in after-hours trading. It seems the Street decided he was a proactive manager protecting their investment. Good work, by the way.”

“It got hairy.”

“The fee got fatter. Hazard pay, I argued. He folded.”

“Great. The guys will be happy.”

“There’s more to come. What did I tell you?”

“Hang out a shingle, you’ll keep me busy.”

“I did, I will. Now, when’s the arraignment?”

“Midweek. I’ll spend a couple of days doing prelim on this case before I hit the road again. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

“Keep me in the loop,” Tommy said, and he clicked off.

A large painting of Lee Strasberg was hung high on a maroon wall and appeared to be looking down on the proceedings like a wizened deity.

Jack had entered the lobby of the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, filled with men milling around muttering to themselves. They all looked pretty much the same. Same physical type. A little too much like himself, he thought. It was weird but he shook it off and asked a young, gaunt actor type carrying a pile of papers where he could find Barry Freid. He was handed a few stapled pages of what looked like dialogue of some kind, and told to sign in and get into character. Before he could argue, the door to Studio A swung open and a very worked-up young man, breathing hard, in a full-blown panic, banged out of the studio, pushed through the crowd, and all but ran out of the lobby, slamming the double glass doors behind him.

Another acting career bites the dust, Jack thought.

He took the opportunity to step through the door himself.

A single spotlight shining center stage momentarily blinded him. When Jack’s vision cleared, he could see that he was standing in a round pool of light, on a black stage, in a theater painted entirely in black. Of the ninety-nine seats in the house, only two were occupied.

A long-legged, long-haired man with the bearing of a monk and a round, shiny bald pate that reflected the spotlight was rubbing his temples with such intensity, it looked as if he were trying to keep his head from exploding.

An overweight, attractive thirtysomething woman wearing a black turtleneck sweater, jeans, and black knee-high boots sat next to him. Her pen was poised, presumably waiting for him to utter something brilliant.

“Take it from the top,” was all the man could muster in a tortured voice, not looking up.

“I’m not here to audition,” Jack stated.

The man’s head shot up out of his hands like it was spring-loaded, and he looked at Jack for the first time. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Did you hear that?” he said to the woman at his side. “I believed him. He sounded like a cop.”

“Are you Barry Freid?” Jack asked.

“Guilty,” he said with growing anticipation. “Go on when you’re ready.”

“I’m not here to read.”

“That’s what I told my class last night. Walk into an audition like you own the stage. Like they can’t succeed without you.”

The young woman’s pen was a blur of motion as she notated his every word.

“Did you study with Lee before he passed?”

Barry said
Lee
with a reverence that most men reserved for the Pope.

“No,” Jack said simply.

“Do you hear the way he answered my question?” Barry went on. “Pure, honest, direct, no acting . . . Sandy?”

“Sandy?” Jack asked, like
What the fuck?

“Meisner.”

“No.”

“Perfect, I’ve seen enough. You’ve got the part. You look like a cop; you’re the first actor who walked through the door who sounded like a cop. I can work with you.”

“I was a cop; I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for a girl.”

“I’m confused,” Barry said, his theatrical joy dissipating.

“Angelica Cardona? She’s in one of your classes?”

“I have an Angelica, but the last name is Curtis.”

If Jack were a betting man he’d have placed odds that Curtis was her mother’s maiden name.

He stepped off the stage and held out his hand to Barry, who reluctantly shook it. “Jack Bertolino.”

Jack nodded to the woman sitting next to the director. She returned his gaze, unblinking. The door to the theater banged open and the casting director stuck her head in, confused by Jack’s presence. She checked her list.

“Give me five minutes?” Jack asked Barry, who nodded and waved off the young woman at the door; she clearly did not appreciate being waved off. Jack showed Barry the picture of Angelica that Vincent Cardona had provided. Both Barry and his assistant clucked in unison.

“Angelica is AWOL. Hasn’t been to class in, I don’t know, a few weeks?” he said.

“That’s why I’m here. She hasn’t been seen in close to a month. Her father’s extremely worried. I’m sure you can understand his concern.”

“She never showed up for her final scene. A semester of grueling work for naught.”

“Any idea where she might be?” Jack asked. “I’ve read that the relationship between an acting teacher and their students can be a very personal one.”

“I’m afraid she was a student of limited ability. Not that she didn’t have talent. But whenever it was time to pull emotion from her personal life—we call it emotional recall—and confront her past, she’d block and shut down. Beautiful, but that isn’t enough for this kind of work. I knew very little about her social history outside of class.”

“Did she have any close friends at the institute?”

Barry’s assistant spoke for the first time. “She had a scene partner who was very upset when Angelica did her disappearing act. Carol Williams. She felt betrayed. I don’t blame her. People don’t come here to study because they want to. They’re compelled to.”

“Disappearing act. You think she just took off?”

“It happens,” Barry said. “Students feel overwhelmed. Fear of failure. Fear of success. You don’t?”

“Is Carol Williams here today?” Jack tossed back instead of speculating.

“She had an audition technique class yesterday and she works waiting tables on her off days. It isn’t inexpensive getting this kind of training. That’s why it was so disheartening when Angelica just disappeared.”