The Detective & the Pipe Girl (14 page)

“Well,” I said. “I would agree with the crazy part. It just seems like there are a lot of holes. Beyond the quality control. Beyond getting the girls to be quiet. You think there’s a market out there for people to pay 100K or whatever to get laid? I mean, look, these guys can sneak around if they’re careful. Go to Vegas. Get a pro. Get a rub and tug. Or do what most people do. Jerk off, go for a run, and move on.”

Marlon smiled at me, a twinkle now in his hardened eyes. That’s the thing about these mob guys. A lot of them are charming bastards. “Look, John, you’re a good guy. You’re a smart guy. I know you’re just keeping the conversation going so I’ll keep telling you what I know. You’re good at that. But I bet you right now you’re saying, ‘Yeah, I can see the market. I can see the business model working.’ Look, in this country, in this puritanical fucking country, how many rich guys have you seen throw two, three, four
hundred million dollars
down the drain because they were banging the nanny or the maid or the masseuse? I’m not talking throwing their money down the drain willingly. I’m not talking paying the other woman to keep her temporarily quiet. I’m talking about losing everything, all of their money, their entire position in society, all of their endorsements, all of their movie deals, all of their whatever, because they just couldn’t help themselves and they got caught. They just couldn’t keep their dick in their pants and as a result it all goes away. Rich guys, celebs, politicians, athletes, judges, fucking presidents. They make the stupidest moves. Because they don’t have a risk-free alternative. They do the dumbest things. And they lose fortunes, careers, legacies, everything. History, literally world history, goes down the drain. Pussy has more power than anything else on the planet.
Anything
. And these guys on TV say, ‘Oh, so-and-so
wanted
to get caught, thought he was invincible, was crying out for help, is addicted to risk.’ On and on. Bullshit and more bullshit. Look, wanting to get caught? Wanting to no longer be a congressman or a beloved movie star? Wanting to go on fucking
Leno
and grovel and apologize for a chance,
a chance
, to reenter the game at a much lower position? Wanting to run for office again someday and
lose
? That’s true one out of every thousand times. Maybe. But most of these guys, they want a hot piece of ass to sit on their face, spin, and give them a nice massage afterward. And then they want to go back to making movies or making laws or making tons of fucking money running the world. And the truth is, most of these guys want to go back and hang out with their goddamn wife and family. They actually are pretty happy. They don’t want to lose that either.”

Okay, he had a point.

Marlon grabbed another beer out of the cooler sitting right next to him and popped it. He sat back, moved into a position more worthy of pontificating. “I always thought. If you could figure it out. You know, like I said, choose the right girls. Take care of business in the right way when you had to eliminate one of them. I thought, yeah, a very good idea, a very
big
idea. Do it right, and you could make fuck-you money. I often wondered if it was really going on out here. And if it was, could I take it back to the city. But I’m out of that whole business now, as you know. I’m done and I’m on my fucking boat.”

“Let me ask you this, Marlon. Straight up. Do you think the Pipe Girls are real? I mean, you make a hell of an argument. Don’t get me wrong. But do you really think they exist? Right now, in present-day L.A.? Or, like you said, do you think it’s just a rumor?”

“Well, John, by the very definition of the business plan, very few people would know about it. And those who do know, the girls and the carefully selected clients, don’t talk about it. I mean, the system is designed to be silent. To be air-fucking-tight. Right? So how would anyone outside of that small circle know? You know? The very fact that there’s a rumor means the system is breaking down. Which means the Pipe Girls probably don’t exist.”

“Okay. So you think it’s bullshit?”

He took a big gulp of his new, fresh cold beer. And his tired, tan face stretched into an enormous grin. “Oh no. I think it’s true. Rumors are always true, boy.”

23

W
ell, I wanted to talk to Jimmy Yates again. See if Mr. Superstar could tell me anything more than he did when he was petulantly sipping a smoothie at Fred Segal. I didn’t like that guy. Yeah, I wanted to talk to him again. I wanted to punch him too. I’d definitely do the former, hopefully the latter.

But I needed just to think a little bit. You have to do that sometimes in life. You just have to
think
. From Marlon the Marlin’s I drove just slightly south back to Carlsbad and swung a right off the PCH into the Tamarack beach parking lot. I have to tell you, this part of the country, yes, it has that Southern California magic that L.A. has, but the glow here is even more present. It’s otherworldly, other-planetary almost. These little seaside towns built in succession between San Diego and L.A., one two three four. Del Mar. Carlsbad. Oceanside. Encinitas. All right next to, right on top of, beautiful, uncrowded, dramatic stretches of beach, of ocean. Not the insanity of L.A. and not the vapidity of San Diego. Something else. Total Southern California for sure, but almost small-town America too, only right on the Pacific. With hills and cliffs and verdant, bright California flora. You almost can’t believe these little towns exist. Almost can’t believe they haven’t
become
San Diego or Los Angeles themselves. No, they had stayed pretty small. Had kept their personality. Their charm. The hills tumbling down to white sand, and in the afternoon, almost purple sand. And big green waves rolling in right at you. And the sky, the sky that as the day gets older becomes burnt orange and purple and wispy-white with clouds. And a feeling that as you watch the sun slide behind the horizon you too might get sucked into wherever the orange ball was going. I’m telling you. Gorgeous. Mesmerizing. Bewitching.

Right now? Four-thirty on a Wednesday. The sun starting to set. The air starting to cool. That orange glow starting to appear above the ocean. That purplish-pink look to the sand.

The beachside parking lot I pulled into was pretty empty. A few surfers in the break gliding around on waves, a few surfers in the lot changing into board shorts or back into street clothes.

And me sitting in my Cobalt trying to figure out what to make of all this stuff.

I thought: Maybe it would ease my mind to get out in the ocean. From inside the Cobalt, it looked so refreshing, rejuvenating, cleansing. There was a surfboard rental shack in front of me and to the left. And I had a bathing suit in my trunk. I got out, got the suit, got back in my car. Then I took my pants, shoes, socks, and underwear off, about to put my bathing suit on. For a few seconds I was the guy in the public beach parking lot with a shirt on and no pants, sitting in his car looking down at his dick. Yep, to anyone else I was a twisted pervert sitting in a shitty little car half naked. I thought: Jeez. I should start furiously masturbating just to fully complete the story. Don’t worry, I didn’t do it. Instead, I quickly put my suit on, got out, walked over to the surfboard rental shack. Then rented what the tan, probably high guy told me was a “fun shape” board. Paid, went back to my car, hid my keys, removed my shirt, walked down to the break.

I had surfed a couple times in my days in L.A., could paddle the board, could sit on it out in the water like you see people do. Could I actually ride a wave? Not really. I waited for a lull in the waves and plunged in. Man, cold. But I was right. After a minute, it felt amazing. It really did. I paddled out to where some of the other surfers were.

A few waves came rolling in. Excitement shot through me as they moved toward me. I turned the board toward the shore and paddled as hard as I possibly could. The waves just seemed to rise and fall underneath me and then go away toward shore. Usually with a surfer on them making it look so annoyingly easy.

And then: A big one. I was going to catch this if it killed me. Now, right now, it was on top of me. I didn’t really have to paddle this time. This one just took me. I was now going what felt like a million miles an hour down the face of a moving monster. For a second, for one second, I felt a freedom I’ve never felt before. Okay, Darvelle, time to hop up on your feet. I sprang up. And then I defied, I think, the laws of physics. I was instantly thrown forward. The board went one way, I went the other. Then I started half somersaulting, half cartwheeling
across
the face of this wave. I was a disaster in a bathing suit. And then, whoaaaaaaa. I went way up, then way down. Thump. On the ocean floor. I literally didn’t know which way was up. I’d been under for a few seconds, it felt like a few years, when I started spastically writhing and struggling to get to the surface, to get some air. Finally, finally, finally, through no actions of my own I popped up out of the water.

“Huuuuuuuuuhh,” I gasped, filling my lungs. Holy shit. I was almost at the beach, way in from where I had fallen. I was looking toward the shore, when I instinctively jerked around to look out to sea. My fun shape board was coming at me. Fast. Right for my face. Which it hit. Right above my left eye. I thought I’d known pain in my life. I was wrong.

Less than ten minutes after I had paddled out I was back in the Cobalt. I had a golf ball on my head now. It was big and I could already see it turning black and purple.

But something had happened out there. Despite my total inability to ride a wave, something, yes, something was now occurring to me.

I pulled out my phone and opened the picture of the pyramid on Suzanne Neal’s ankle. And I looked at it. Again, this is it:

I turned it ninety degrees to the right. Like this:

And then I began to deconstruct it. And instead of seeing it as one shape, I began to see it as two shapes
within
one shape. The first one was this:

It was a P. An abstract P.

And the second shape was indeed the whole figure, but it was in my mind one part of two. It was still this:

Only now I realized that the top right line, the one that goes from the very top of the figure down and to the right to connect with the horizontal line, doesn’t actually connect with the horizontal line. It almost does, but it doesn’t. And so this figure was a G. An abstract G.

PG.

Pipe Girl. I thought: Oh man, really? Was that crazy story Marlon the Marlin told me true? Or am I making this up, am I seeing this P and this G because I
want
it to be true? Am I turning this stupid pyramid into something that’s not really there?

And that’s when I realized my surfing injury had rattled loose something else, another thought that had been in my head waiting, I think, for me to find it.

I cranked up the Cobalt and drove up the 5 to the 405 to the Mulholland exit to Neese’s house. And I sat there looking at his horrible gate. The one I’d looked at so many times. With the crisscrossy metal copper design. And in that design, hidden amid all the other horizontal and vertical lines, was the same pyramid a dead Suzanne Neal had on her ankle.