The Detective & the Pipe Girl (17 page)

28

I
was back at my desk, the big slider open, by 9:30 a.m. You know, I actually felt better. I’d taken some blows. But I actually felt good. Like Vonz’s movie
Starlight
, my perspective had been changed. I was now looking at the world through a swollen left eye and a throbbing, pounding, unrelenting headache. But I did have a new idea, and I needed to call Clay Blevins to act on it. And I had made a new decision: Do nothing else on this case without my gun. I’m talking, don’t take a shower without my gun. Which is fine. I should have been operating that way already.

Before I called Clay, I opened up my desk drawer and pulled out the letter Vonz had written to Suzanne. The letter I’d never opened. I sliced it open with a pocketknife, unfolded it, and looked at it.

It read:

Suzanne. I miss you. I want to see you. Call me, Suzanne. I have to talk to you, to tell you something I never had the courage to tell you before. But if you don’t call me, I want you to know that you changed my life forever. It wasn’t just your beauty, your smile, your light. You unlocked something in me that I’d hidden away out of fear. And I’m forever grateful. Call me, Suzanne.

Love, Arthur

You know, not much. I was sorry I’d read it in a way. Invaded the privacy of it. I was a bit embarrassed by it. By my intrusion
and
by the content of the letter. Vonz’s writing, it was nice, direct, sincere, but to a third party this kind of stuff almost always comes across as cheesy. Sentimental. Prosaic. Vonz probably wouldn’t let lines like that in one of his movies. But apparently in his life a little sentimentality was okay. Which I have to say I respect. But, still, reading it gave me the willies a bit. Sentimentality, to people outside the immediate communication, never quite works. It feels
gross
. Suzanne probably wouldn’t have thought so though. Suzanne was
in
the immediate conversation. She probably would have liked it. I put the letter in my drawer and called Clay Blevins.

“Clay, it’s John Darvelle.”

“Did I help?”

That’s what people always wanted to know. People. We’re simple. Did I help? Did I contribute? Am I important and worthy?

That’s all we care about.

“Yes,” I said. “But I need to talk to you again.”

I drove to Clay’s apartment
in Los Feliz. Los Feliz is way east. East of Hollywood, east of Hancock Park. A neighborhood that for years was inhabited by poor people, fringe characters, even small-time criminals. But as the nice, gentrified areas of L.A. got more and more full of people, prices went up and people went looking for new places to live. Not everybody could handle Los Feliz and Silverlake, but the artists could. So the two neighborhoods became artist communities of sorts. And the posers followed soon after. What are you going to do? It happens. These days, these hoods could be described simply as: Hipsterville. Cooler than cool. Radder than rad.

Drowning in irony.

As I pulled onto Vermont, the main drag through Los Feliz, I saw residents, young residents, bopping down the streets. Wearing: Polyester pants, cheap dress shoes, old cardigans, and plaid blazers. Smoking: Old-school pipes and cigarettes out of long extensions.

I saw a guy wearing a brown three-piece suit with a pocket watch. He was probably twenty-three. I pictured a giant, pencil-thin mustache walking down the street with a cane, wearing some seventies sunglasses. I have no idea why.

Los Feliz did still have some genuine charm. Old Spanish-style California buildings. Funky hills and undulations to the landscape. Palm trees somehow right in the medians of the roads. And lots of classic old bars, some of which were frequented by real Los Angelenos.

Clay lived in an eight-plex, one street off Vermont. A mistake of a building built in the sixties or seventies. He opened the door, let me in. Bad carpet, popcorn ceiling. Strange, as one of the reasons this area became chic was because of the old-school Spanish buildings built with big rooms, high ceilings, interesting archways, and hardwood floors.

Not this place. This place could have been in a lower-class neighborhood in Phoenix. The place was fairly trashed, looked like he had a roommate who wasn’t around. I saw a couple pizza boxes next to the garbage in the kitchen. Inexplicably, there was an Eddie Rabbit poster on the wall, Eddie looking pensive and serious.

Clay was all smiles as he welcomed me in, but then he took in my battered face and his smile went to a frown. I pressed on. “Clay, your memory of the blond dude in the Mercedes was very helpful.”

“Excuse me? Excuse me?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Um. What happened to your face?”

“I fell, hiking.”

He laughed. But it was a laugh diluted with fear. It was a laugh that said: Are the guys who did that to
you
going to come after
me
?

“Don’t worry, Clay. No one is going to come after you. Now, I want to ask you something.”

“Yeah?” he said in an unsure way.

“When we were first talking you said you ran into Suzanne once when she was with a friend.”

“I did? No, Suzanne was a total babe! You know how it goes with totally hot babes. They don’t have any friends.”

I laughed. Often true. Not totally true. But in L.A. it could be very true. Some beautiful girl with a lost soul, always, always pursued by some rich guy, then never fosters any friendships—or much of a personality, for that matter.

But I didn’t get that vibe from Suzanne.

Or, wait. Had her beauty and charm just created that illusion? Caused me to give her this magical
real
quality that she didn’t even have? Could be. Ever seen a guy who’s really pussy-whipped, even though the girl is just terrible? You ever see that? You’ve seen that. It’s a horrible, horrible sight. Just horrible. It’s like an actual sickness that you just have to wait for him to heal from. Like he’s got the flu or something.

“I’m kidding, man,” Clay said. Even though he seemed a bit scared, Clay still busted out a routine or two to keep his acting chops sharp.
Hey, you know what I’ve noticed? Hot girls don’t have friends
.

I admired it.

“Yeah, Jenny,” Clay continued. “Jenny was her name. Jenny Bickford. At the Newsroom Café. That’s who she was with that time I ran into her.”

Jenny. I hadn’t written down the name. It happens from time to time.

“She’s a news producer or something. That’s what you said.”

“Yeah. And cute too. Not like Suzanne. Not like I’d let a guy punch me in the face twenty-five times straight if that meant I got to bang her.”

Here we go.

He continued, “But pretty. Real. Come to think of it, in that moment, I kind of had a crush on her. I kind of have a crush on every girl though.”

I knew the feeling.

And then Clay said, “Hey, you want to smoke some weed?”

“I have to run.”

“This shit is good.”

“I believe it. The
shit
these days appears to be quite good.”

“Ohhh, yeah.”

I was about to leave, but I had another question for Clay.

“So, what do you do when you get high, Clay?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re going to smoke some weed when I leave and then what are you going to do?”

“Sit here.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I split.

29

C
alled Ken Booth. I could hear him not smiling or producing any emotion whatsoever over the phone. He found Jenny Bickford quickly. She was a TV producer for a company that produced reality shows and talk shows. She too worked on the Raleigh Studios lot, but the Manhattan Beach location, not the Hollywood location. Damn. I was way east. I now had to go way west, then way south.

So I busted over to the 10, then hit the 405 South, got off on Rosecrans, headed west to Manhattan Beach. Most people say, “Manhattan Beach isn’t really L.A.” The knock being that it’s white-bread, homogenized, Orange County–ish. Full of rich, douchebag USC graduates who party hard, and do Jell-O shots, and pump iron, and have really good bodies and really bad haircuts. That, and successful, rich white people. All that is true. But the thing is, it’s beautiful, on a really nice stretch of beach. And the girls there, the women there, aren’t part of the Hollywood scene. They aren’t heroin chic with smug attitudes and empty bank accounts. Instead, they’re healthy, and they have jobs during the week. And on the weekends, they wear bikinis all day and smile a lot and play beach volleyball. I heard Shaq lived down here when he played for the Lakers. You know why? You know why?

Because Shaq is smart.

I wasn’t going to make it all the way down to the beach. Raleigh Studios Manhattan was closer to the 405. I pulled up to the security gate, and, good news, Ken had actually gotten me a lot pass too. Ken, that’s what I was saying about him. He acts like a friend, he does nice gestures like that. But he never gives any indication that we’re buddies. He didn’t even tell me about the lot pass. I just got there and discovered it. Hey, man, I’ll take it.

I pulled on the lot. Newer than the Hollywood location. And a lot less activity. They used to film some of
CSI: Miami
here, I knew that. A lot of people don’t like that particular
CSI
. Think Caruso is a joke. I will ask you to look at Caruso in a different way.

As a total genius.

I’m serious. I like his mannered, ridiculous, over-the-top vibe. But let’s get back to the story. I’d gotten directions from the gate guard for the building of Pacific Productions, the company Jenny worked for. In the lobby there were big posters of all the shows Pacific Productions produced. Some dumb reality shows,
Moving Back In with Mom
. Seriously. That’s a show they produced. I know, I want to see it too. But they also made a few decent, reasonably intelligent talk shows.
The Danny Baker Show
. Actually liked that one. Sort of a West Coast
Charlie Rose
.

At reception, the freaked-out receptionist—my face was a bit of a train wreck—told me to sit and wait while she got Jenny. After five minutes and three small installments of cold water out of a little paper cup, Jenny appeared. Clay was right. Jenny was cute. The kind of woman people refer to as the “marrying type.” Which is an annoying and patronizing term. But she was indeed the marrying type. That’s how I would probably describe her.

Except there was nothing bland or common about her. She had mystery to her. Black-rimmed glasses, soft brown eyes, and a slight upturn to her mouth at the corners.

I stood as she approached, and we both instinctively moved away from the seating area where I had been to another one a little farther away from the receptionist’s desk. We landed on a black leather couch.

“Hello. How can I help you?” she said.

“My name is John Darvelle. I’m a private detective. I’m looking into the murder of your friend Suzanne Neal, and I’d like to ask you some questions.”

She looked at me. I could tell she was processing the cut above my left eye and my lumpy, bumpy, stitched-up head. “Okay. This is a little . . . surprising. Who . . . who are you working for?”

“Myself.”

She didn’t press it.

“I’ve already talked to the police.”

“Good. I hope they figure it out. I bet they won’t. But I hope they do. Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Let’s go outside on the lot.”

We walked out of the building, out onto the lot, back out into the sun. It wasn’t the Hollywood Raleigh in terms of activity, and it sure as hell wasn’t the Paramount lot in terms of glamour and history. There was no New York street here. This lot was quiet, clean, new. Big white buildings and stages. I guessed there was some filming going on somewhere but it didn’t seem like it. Peaceful almost. No Hollywood tension. And you could smell the ocean. Which is always nice.

We walked sort of aimlessly around. “So, what do you mean you’re working for yourself? No one hired you?”

Shit.

“I knew Suzanne. I met her just before she was killed. And I’m a detective. So, I’m giving it a look.”

She looked at me. “What happened to your face?”

I looked at her with total seriousness, “I cut myself shaving.”

“You shave the area above your eye?”

“Yes.”

She looked at me skeptically. But we continued walking around the generic, sparkling clean lot, and she didn’t seem to have an issue with resuming our chat. I said, “So, how’d you meet Suzanne?”

“I met her at an industry function. A party for
The Danny Baker Show
. I think it was celebrating the one thousandth episode or something.”

“Why was she there? Who was she with?”

“I really don’t know. Girls like Suzanne can go to any party they want. And she knew Danny somehow. We met in the line at the bar, and she was one of those people who you like immediately. Well, you knew her. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“We had fun that night.” She laughed at the memory. “Definitely had a few drinks. And we stayed in touch.”

“Did you know that Suzanne had a relationship with Jimmy Yates?”

“What? The movie star?”

“Yes.”

“No, I didn’t.”

It seemed like she was telling the truth. Because she was surprised, but not
that
surprised. Like, surprised that it was such a big star but also, yeah, Suzanne was a babe, we’re in L.A., shit happens.

“Did you ever go to Suzanne’s condo in Santa Monica?”

“Yes.”

“How did she buy that, do you know?”

I was testing her. Did she
really
know Suzanne? Had Suzanne told her the truth? Which if Marlon the Marlin was correct would be a conversation she would die for if Neese found out. Jenny looked at me with her soft brown eyes. They had feeling in them.

“I don’t know,” Jenny said. “I was a friend, but she didn’t tell me everything. Like how she bought that place. Family money, I don’t know. Suzanne was so . . . warm, in a way. But she had a secretive side. She could engage you and keep you away at the same time, if that makes sense.”

I was going in. “Did you ever think some rich L.A. guy was keeping her comfortable? You know, like a Jimmy Yates? Somebody like that?”

After a pause. “Yeah, it occurred to me. But I never thought about it that much. We were friends, but you know, it’s not like we talked every day. I didn’t really care about where she got her money. I didn’t
want
to give it that much consideration. We just had fun sometimes. Then I’d come back to work on Monday and I wouldn’t really think about it.”

“Did you ever think she might be a prostitute?”

Jenny stopped walking. “What? No. No way. She didn’t have to do that. If Suzanne was going to sell her soul she could have just married somebody. Believe me, she had plenty of opportunities. Like I said, maybe she had some help or whatever. But an actual prostitute? No. Not possible.”

“Who else did she date? I told you about Jimmy Yates. Who are these opportunities you are talking about? Can you think of anyone specifically?”

She paused, briefly, and then said, “She told me she went on some dates with Arthur Vonz, the director.”

“Well, he could certainly afford to buy her a place I would imagine. Or help her out.”

“Yeah. I guess. Listen,” she said. “I didn’t even tell the police that. Maybe it’s no big deal. Suzanne went out with guys all the time. I didn’t give them a list of every guy she ever went out with. They didn’t ask. They didn’t ask me that much really. More just had I talked to Suzanne lately, did she mention being afraid of anyone, did she have enemies, that kind of thing.”

“It’s okay. You answered their questions. But those are some good ones.
Did
she ever mention any enemies? Being afraid of anyone? Scared of what might happen?”

“No, she didn’t. Which is what I told them.”

I looked at her.
The marrying type.
She was really pretty. She, like Suzanne, had a specialness about her. A quality that made
you
feel good. That made you want to get to know her more, know more about her.

I said, “Thanks for talking to me, Jenny.”

She said, without any smile at all, “You might want to be more careful next time you shave.”