Pearls of Asia: A Love Story (12 page)

“Now why would I do that?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll pull down your pants and we’ll see who’s bigger.”

Sensing an unfair fight, Mac handed Diamond his cell phone, and she punched her phone number into his contact list. She then dialed herself up, leaving Mac’s number on her phone. The staff at
Pearls of Asia
had a name for this charade; Mac had just been “diamonded.”

“By the way,” she said while handing Mac his phone. “I saw you talking to Jasmine. You may think she’s pretty and all that, but you should know she’s just a lowlife whore. And she gets clocked everywhere she goes.”

“Clocked?” asked Mac. “Is there a radar gun in here?”

Diamond cackled louder than a lonely rooster. “’You’re a funny guy, you know that? ‘Getting clocked’ is when someone calls you out as a tranny. You know, like when Sheyla walks into a bar and some guy yells, ‘That’s a man.’ It happens to girls like her all the time, but never to me. I always pass.”

“You’re killing me, Diamond. ‘Always pass?’ Even Joe Montana didn’t always pass.”

“I like you, Mac. Are you this funny when you’re lying on your back? ‘Pass’ means you look like a natural woman, like me. You should see how many guys try to pick me up at the grocery store when I’m not wearing makeup. It’s so annoying sometimes. Don’t you think I’m stunning?”

“Like a Taser gun,” answered Mac, pushing Diamond off his lap like a sack of potatoes.

A short Mexican food runner ran up and told Diamond an over-served woman at one of her tables wanted a ‘Blowjob Shot.’

“I love this place,” chortled Mac. “You need to take a vocabulary test before you walk in here. What’s a ‘Blowjob Shot?’”

Diamond placed her bulging bosoms under Mac’s chin and shoved a shot glass in between her over inflated mammary glands. “Here, I’ll show you. You see, I fill this glass full of booze, place it between my breasts, and a customer pays for the privilege of fishing it out with their mouth. Doesn’t it look like fun? We can do it all night at my place if you want.”

Before running off to perform her unique job requirement, Diamond reached between Mac’s legs and gave him a not-so-subtle squeeze to his groin. “Oh Mac, you are happy to see me, aren’t you? Wait here and Dr. Diamond will take care of this as soon as I get back.”

Sheyla witnessed the entire sophomoric episode from across the room while entering drink orders into a cash register. As they were about to pass one another, Diamond addressed Sheyla in Tagalog.
“Akin s’ya maghanap ka ng iba!”
(He’s mine, look for someone else!) Whatever words of wisdom Diamond tried to impart, Sheyla looked straight ahead and completely ignored her. To most of the girls at
Pearls of Asia
, Diamond’s antics were like a comedian’s tired jokes; she needed some new material.

Sheyla glided over to Mac’s chair and said in an amorous song that could have stop a train, “I’m sorry, Mac. I hope you’ll forgive me for not returning your calls.”

“Miss Samonte, if I wanted to, I could haul you down to the precinct right now and throw your pretty little ass in jail for obstructing an investigation.”

Sheyla’s tone went from silk to sandpaper. “I’ve got news for you, Inspector. We both know you’re full of shit. I know the difference between obstructing an investigation and not returning a phone call. Trust me, I’ve dated enough lawyers to pass the bar exam.”

She was right, and Mac knew it. In no time Sheyla returned to her charming self. “So tell me, handsome, what were you and Miss Silicon City talking about?”

“Diamond was giving me a vocabulary lesson. She claims you get ‘clocked’ all the time.”

Sheyla shook her head like a disappointed mother. “She says I get clocked all the time? Oh, please. Who is she kidding? Diamond gets clocked so often she should be doing Rolex commercials.”

Mac took delight at Sheyla’s zinger. “She also says guys hit on her even when she’s not wearing a ton of makeup.”

“Diamond not wear makeup?” responded Sheyla, shocked by such an assertion. “She’d rather be blind than leave her house without false eyelashes. Trust me, Mac, that girl wakes up in the morning wearing makeup. She has to. Diamond never met a mirror she didn’t like.”

“Of course she hasn’t. Tell me, what’s with the heavy metal charm around her neck?”

Sheyla sighed. “She tells customers the ‘D’ on her necklace stands for ‘Diamond,’ but we girls all know better. It stands for ‘Diva,’ which in Tagalog stands for ‘the bitch who is a royal pain in the ass.’ ”

Mac let out a boisterous laugh. He always appreciated a woman with a sense of humor, especially if it could keep up with his own. “Listen, Miss Samonte, I do need to ask you a few questions. Is there someplace we can talk?”

“First off, please call me Sheyla. And second, I don’t have time to talk to you tonight. But I know what you want from me. You see, besides having a lot of lawyers on my speed dial, I’m also a
Law and Order
junkie. You asked me if I knew Paul Osher. Well, I’m not going to lie to you. I do, and I know you’ve got the records to prove it. You also want to know where I was the night his wife was killed. All I can tell you is that I was home alone, and no, I can’t prove it. But it’s the truth. If you want to know anything else, then you can either drag me out of here in handcuffs kicking and screaming, or take me out for brunch tomorrow. Your choice.”

Mac thought he had heard every threat in the book. Being blackmailed with a date was a new one. “First of all, Miss Samonte, I don’t usually address murder suspects by their first name. And I certainly don’t take them out to brunch. It’s not what anyone would call proper police procedure.”

“Oh, so I’m a murder suspect, am I? Sounds exciting. I guess I’ll have to update my Facebook status.” Sheyla slid her arm around Mac’s shoulder. “C’mon, Inspector. It’ll be fun. Don’t get your boxers in a wad.”

“How can you tell I’m wearing boxers?”

“Oh, please. I wasn’t born yesterday,” she said, aiming her eyes at Mac’s .45 caliber erection. “Tell you what, Inspector. I’ll even buy. Plus I promise to tell you everything you want to know about Paul Osher and me. By the time we finish dessert, you’ll be calling me ‘Sheyla.’ That’s my deal. Take it or leave it.” Sheyla leaned over and kissed Mac on the cheek, glancing in Diamond’s direction to make sure the D-cupped diva was watching. She was, and the look on Diamond’s face could have melted dry ice. Like a dog peeing on a bush, Sheyla was marking her territory.

Mac did the math. What was Sheyla hiding from him? What secrets would she spill about Paul Osher? What was that perfume she was wearing?

“What time shall I meet you?”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Sunday, September 14, 2008 - 11:15 am

“Paul Osher, multi-millionaire businessman and husband of murdered KNTV anchorwoman Michelle Osher, said in a statement issued by his attorney that, ‘He learned about his wife’s death while on business in Los Angeles, and he is devastated and vows to cooperate fully with the police to help find her killer.’”

The Wall Street Journal

M
AYES TORE THROUGH JIM
Grisham’s medicine cabinet like a bear hunting for ants. He found over two-dozen prescriptions made out for either Jim or Sonia Grisham, a cornucopia of drugs that could have brought back the Sixties. But Mayes still hadn’t found what he was looking for; a reason to suspect anyone who attended Jim Grisham’s Thursday night soirée.

It was 11:15 on a spectacular sunny Sunday morning. Grisham hadn’t been expecting visitors, but Mayes had a schedule to keep. Just one hour earlier he pounded on the door of a junior assistant district attorney, who took the advice of a large black man pacing in his living room and woke up a judge to issue a search warrant. At that hour of the morning, figured Mayes, size did matter.

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Grisham?” asked Mayes.

“I’m an attorney,” Grisham managed to say between yawns. “And you better find what you’re looking for and get the hell out of here.”

“We’ll leave when we’re done, Mr. Grisham,” responded Mac, rubbing his latex-gloved hand along the top of a living room bookshelf. “Speaking of which, Paul Osher told us you have a key to his apartment. Would you mind showing it to us?”

Grisham walked over to an antique table located underneath a large gold-framed mirror hanging in the entryway. He pulled open a drawer and fished his hand among its contents. “That’s strange,” he said. “It’s always in here. If my wife were home she’d know where it is.”

Grisham’s statement surprised the detectives and momentarily halted their search. “Mrs. Grisham isn’t here?” asked Mac. “Where is she?”

“New York. She left a couple days ago. Friday, to be exact. She said she wanted to visit her college roommate and do some shopping.”

Mayes was more than a little annoyed. “But Mr. Grisham, on Thursday morning you said she was wasted and wouldn’t wake up for a week. Why the quick exit?”

“How the hell should I know?” barked Grisham. “Maybe Bergdorf’s was having a sale.”

Mac picked up a faded photograph of a much younger Jim Grisham and a woman in a wedding gown. Mac at first thought the picture was some kind of joke, because the bride was at least six inches taller than the groom despite his platform shoes. She had a Farrah Fawcett-inspired hairdo, while Grisham wore long hair and faded bell-bottom blue jeans. “Is this your wife?” he asked.

“Yes, back when Sonia was eighteen. That was from our wedding day.”

“Of course it was,” said Mac, who was thrilled he wasn’t around during the Seventies. Watergate and disco made people do things they would later come to regret. “When was the last time you saw her, Mr. Grisham?”

“Sometime after midnight, I think. She said she had to excuse herself from the, uh…. festivities, because she had too much to drink and wasn’t feeling very well. She said she was going to sleep in the guest room because she didn’t want to risk puking up in bed.”

“How considerate of her,” opined Mayes, rolling his eyes. “And she never once mentioned to you that she was flying across the country the next day? What do we look like, Mr. Grisham? Dumb and Dumber?”

“She’s an adult, for crying out loud. Sonia does whatever the hell she wants. Now are you guys almost done?”

“Not even close,” stated Mac. “Mr. Grisham, you uttered some less than flattering remarks about Michelle Osher to us after you learned of her murder. Our captain told us you and she didn’t see eye-to-eye on a few subjects, specifically the issue of gay marriage. Is that the real reason why you called her a ‘first-class bitch?’”

Grisham spent the next several seconds tying and retying his bathrobe, like a boxer preparing for a fight. “I know what you want to hear, Inspector. You want me to say ‘yes’ so you can suspect I had some kind of beef with her, and that maybe somehow our political differences gave me a motive to kill her. Well you just swung and missed.

“The truth is Michelle and I agreed on most issues, just not when it comes to same-sex partners tying the knot. Michelle believed extending marriage benefits to gay couples would increase the number of child adoptions, since God doesn’t allow gay couples to make babies. It was only after an hour-long debate on the topic over a bottle of ’97 Joseph Phelps that Michelle told me she was adopted. After that, I respected her opinion because she had some skin in the game. I would never admit this in public, but she changed my mind, and now I’m a supporter of same-sex marriages. So I had no political beef with her. I just didn’t like her, that’s all. The last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”

Mac stopped what he was doing and scratched his salt and pepper locks. “Wow. You know, I never looked at gay marriage that way. How come you never made that argument, Mayes? You’re the brilliant thinker.”

Mayes paused to reflect before answering. “The truth is, I never looked at it that way, either. Maybe because Pamela and I have two kids, and I’ve still got plenty of bullets left in my pistol, if you get my drift.”

An hour into the search and Mac and Mayes had found nothing. As they were about to leave, Mac peered into a large porcelain vase standing guard near the front entryway. Lying at the bottom was a plastic Fairmont Hotel room key card. Strange, because the Fairmont Hotel was just a block away. Mac turned the heavy vase over and out fell dozens of Fairmont Hotel key cards.

Mac examined the cards, and about half had pictures of the hotel’s newly restored lobby emblazoned on the front. “Some of these were used during the past nine months. They just finished remodeling the hotel last winter. Do you know anything about these, Mr. Grisham?”

“I’ve never seen those cards in my life,” professed Grisham. “I swear on my mother’s grave, I have no idea how they got there.”

Mayes took a card and pointed at the magnetic strip on the back. “You see these strips, Mr. Grisham? Each one of these is encoded with a date and room number. Each one has a story to tell. For all we know they may lead us to our killer. I sure hope you’re not lying to us.”

“When did you say your wife was returning?” asked Mac.

“I didn’t say and I don’t know,” protested Grisham.

Mayes glared a hole through the back of Grisham’s skull. “Find out.”