Lost Light (4 page)

The untitled film is about a thief who steals a suitcase containing $2 million from the Las Vegas mob and runs to Los Angeles. According to experts, it is highly unusual for real money to be used in film productions, but the film’s director, Wolfgang Haus, insisted on the use of real money because the scenes being shot in the Selma Avenue home entailed a variety of close-ups of the thief, played by Barstow, and the money.

Haus said the film’s script called for the thief to dump the money on a bed and roll around in it, throwing it into the air and celebrating. Another scene involved the thief covering herself in a bathtub filled with the money. Haus said fake money would easily be noticeable in the finished film.

The German filmmaker also insisted that using real currency helped the actors perform better in scenes containing the money.

“If you are using play money, then you are playacting,” Haus said. “We needed to get beyond that. I wanted this woman to feel she had stolen two million dollars. It would be impossible to do it any other way. My films rely on accuracy and truth. If we were to use Monopoly money, the film would be a lie and everybody who watched it would know it.”

The film’s producers, Eidolon Productions, arranged for a one-day loan of the cash and a phalanx of security guards to go with it, police detectives told reporters. The armored car was scheduled to remain on the scene during shooting, and the money was to be returned immediately after filming was completed. The largesse was entirely comprised of one-hundred-dollar bills wrapped in $25,000 packets.

Alexander Taylor, owner of the film’s production company, declined comment on the robbery or the decision to use real money during the filming. It was unclear if the money was insured against robbery.

Police also declined to reveal why Detective Bosch was on the set when the shoot-out erupted. But sources told The Times that Bosch was investigating the death of Angella Benton, who was found strangled in her Hollywood apartment building four days earlier. Benton, 24, was an employee of Eidolon Productions, and police are now investigating the possibility of a connection between her murder and the armed robbery.

In a statement released by her publicist, Brenda Barstow said, “I am shocked by what has happened and my heart goes out to the family of the man who was killed.”

A spokesman for BankLA said that Raymond Vaughn had been employed by the bank for seven years. Formerly he was a police officer who worked for departments in New York and Pennsylvania. Simonson, the injured employee, is an assistant to bank vice president Gordon Scaggs, who was in charge of the one-day cash loan to the movie set. Scaggs could not be reached for comment.

Production of the film was temporarily suspended. It was unclear Friday when the cameras would roll again, or if real currency would be used in the filming when it begins again.

I remembered the surreal scene of that day. The screaming, the cloud of smoke left after all of the shooting. People on the ground and me not knowing if they’d been hit or were just taking cover. No one got up for a long time, even after the getaway van was long gone.

I skimmed through a sidebar story that focused on how unusual it was to use real money—and so much of it—on a movie set, no matter what precautions had been taken. The story reported that the volume of the money took up four delivery satchels and correctly pointed out that it was unlikely that all $2 million would ever be contained in a single camera shot. Yet the producers of the film acceded to the director’s demand that real money be used and that all $2 million be on hand for verisimilitude. But the unnamed insiders and Hollywood watchers quoted in the story seemed to suggest that it wasn’t about the money or verisimilitude or even art. It was simply a power play. Wolfgang Haus did it because he could. The director was coming off of back-to-back films that had grossed more than $200 million each. In four short years he had risen from making small independent films to being a powerful Hollywood player. In demanding that $2 million in real cash be on hand for the filming of the rather routine scenes, he was exercising his newfound muscle. He had the power to ask for and get the $2 million on the set. Just another story about Hollywood ego. Only this time it involved murder.

I moved on to a follow-up story published two days after the robbery. It was a rehash of the first day’s stories with little new information on the investigation. There were no arrests and no suspects. The most notable new information was that Warner Bros., the studio backing the film, had pulled the plug, canceling financing seven days into production after the film’s star, Brenda Barstow, pulled out, citing safety concerns. The story cited unnamed sources within the production who suggested Barstow pulled out for other reasons but was using a personal safety clause in her contract to walk away. The other reasons suggested were her realization that a pall had been cast over the production that could shroud the film’s box-office appeal as well, and her disappointment with the final script, which was finished after she signed on to the production.

The end of the follow-up story swung back to the investigation and reported that the investigation of the robbery and shooting had grown to encompass the murder of Angella Benton and that the Robbery-Homicide Division had taken over the case from Hollywood Division. I noticed that a paragraph had been circled near the bottom of the clip. Most likely by me four years before.

Sources confirmed to The Times that the shipment of money stolen during the robbery was insured and contained marked bills. Investigators confided that tracing the cash may offer the best chance of identifying and capturing the suspects.

I didn’t remember circling the paragraph four years before and wondered why I had—by the time the follow-up had been published I was off the case. I guessed that at the time I remained interested, whether on or off it, and was curious as to whether the reporter’s source had given her accurate information or was simply hoping the robbers would read the story and panic over the possibility of the cash being traceable. Maybe it would make them hold on to it longer and increase the chance of a full recovery.

Wishful thinking. It didn’t matter now. I folded the clips and put them aside. I thought about the trailer I was in that day when it began. The newspaper stories were just a blueprint, as distant as an aerial view. Like trying to figure out Vietnam in 1967 by watching Walter Cronkite at night. The stories carried none of the confusion, the smell of blood and fear, the searing charge of adrenaline dumping into the pipes like paratroopers going down the ramp of a C-130 over hostile territory,
“Go! Go! Go!”

The trailer was parked on Selma. I was talking to Haus, the director, about Angella Benton. I was searching for anything to grab on to. I was obsessed with her hands, and suddenly in that trailer I thought maybe the hands had been part of the staging of the crime scene. Staged by a director. I was pressing Haus, pushing him, wanting to know his whereabouts on the night in question. And then there was a knock and the door opened and everything changed.

“Wolfgang,” a man in a baseball cap said. “The armored truck’s here with the money.”

I looked at Haus.

“What money?”

And then I knew, instinctively, what was about to happen.

I look back at the memory now and see everything in slow motion. I see all the moves, all the details. I came out of the director’s trailer to see the red armored truck in the middle of the street two houses down. The back door was open and a man in uniform inside was handing money satchels to two men on the ground. Two men in suits, one much older than the other, stood nearby watching.

As the money carriers turned toward the house, the side door of a van parked across the street slid open and three armed men in ski masks emerged. Through the open door of the van I saw a fourth behind the wheel. My hand went inside my coat to the gun on my hip but I held it there. The situation was too volatile. Too many people around and in the possible crossfire. I let things go.

The robbers came up behind the money carriers, surprised them and took the satchels without a shot. Then, as they backed into the street toward the van, the inexplicable happened. The cover man not carrying a satchel stopped, spread his stance and leveled his weapon in a two-handed grip. I didn’t get it. What had he seen? Where was the threat? Who had made a move? The gunman opened fire and the older man in the suit, his hands raised and no threat, went down backwards on the street.

In less than a second the full firefight erupted. The guard in the truck, the security men and the off-duty cops on the front lawn all opened up. I pulled my gun and moved down the lawn toward the van.

“Down! Everybody down!”

As crew members and technicians dove for ground cover I moved in closer. I heard someone start screaming and the van’s engine begin revving. The smell of spent gunpowder invaded and burned my nostrils. By the time I had a clear, safe shot the robbers were to the van. One threw his satchels through the open door and then turned back, drawing two pistols from his belt.

He never got a shot off. I opened up and watched him fly backwards into the van. The others then dove in after him and the van took off, its tires screaming and the side door still open, the wounded man’s feet protruding. I watched the van round the corner and head toward Sunset and the freeway. I had no chance of pursuit. My Crown Vic was parked more than a block away.

Instead, I opened up my cell phone and called it in. I told them to send ambulances and lots of people. I gave them the direction of the van and told them to get to the freeway.

The whole while the background screaming never stopped. I closed the phone and walked over to the screaming man. It was the younger man in the suit. He was on his side, his hand clamped over his left hip. Blood was leaking between his fingers. His day and his suit were ruined but I knew he was going to make it.

“I’m hit!” he yelled as he squirmed. “I’m fucking hit!”

I came out of the memory and back to my dining room table as Art Pepper started playing “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” with Jack Sheldon on trumpet. I had at least two or three versions of Pepper performing the Cole Porter standard on disc. On each one he always attacked it, tore its guts out. It was the only way he knew how to play and that relentlessness was what I liked best about him. It was the thing that I hoped I shared with him.

I opened my notebook to a fresh page and was about to write a note about something I had seen in my memory of the shoot-out, when someone knocked on the door.

 

I
got up and went down the hall and looked through the peephole. I then quickly came back to the dining room and got a tablecloth from the cabinet against the wall. The tablecloth had never been used. It had been bought by my ex-wife and put in the cabinet for when we entertained. But we never entertained. I no longer had the wife but now the tablecloth would come in handy. There was another knock on the door. Louder this time. I quickly finished covering the photos and documents and went back to the door.

Kiz Rider had her back to me and was looking out at the street when I opened the door.

“Kiz, sorry. I was on the back deck and didn’t hear the first knock. Come on in.”

She walked past me and down the short hallway toward the living and dining room areas. She probably saw that the sliding door to the deck was closed.

“Then how did you know there was a first knock?” she asked as she went by.

“I, uh, just thought that the knock I heard was so loud it must’ve meant that whoever was out there had —”

“Okay, okay, Harry, I got it.”

I hadn’t seen her in almost eight months. Since my retirement party, which she had organized and held at Musso’s, renting out the whole bar and inviting everybody from Hollywood Division.

She moved into the dining room and I saw her eyes run over the rumpled tablecloth. It was clear that I was covering something and I immediately regretted doing it.

She was wearing a charcoal gray business suit with the skirt below the knee. The outfit took me by surprise. Ninety percent of the time we worked together as partners she wore black jeans and a blazer over a white blouse. It allowed her freedom to move, to run if necessary. In the suit she looked more like a bank vice president than a homicide detective.

Her eyes still on the table, she said, “Oh, Harry, you always set such a nice table. What’s for lunch?”

“Sorry. I didn’t know who was at the door and I just sort of threw that over some stuff I have out.”

She turned to face me.

“What stuff, Harry?”

“Just stuff. Old case stuff. So tell me, how are things down at RHD? Better than last time we talked?”

She had been promoted downtown about a year before I split the department. She’d had trouble with her new partner and others in RHD and had confided in me about it. I’d had a mentoring relationship with her that continued after she transferred to RHD. But it ended when I chose retirement over a reassignment that would have put us back together as partners in RHD. I knew it hurt her. Her organizing of the retirement party had been a nice gesture but it was also the big good-bye from her.

“RHD? RHD didn’t work out.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

I was genuinely surprised. Rider had been the most skilled and intuitive partner I had ever worked with. She was made for the mission. The department needed more like her. I had thought for sure that she would be able to adjust to life in the department’s highest-profile squad and do good work.

“I transferred out at the beginning of the summer. I’m in the chief’s office now.”