The Ticket Out Page 5

  He could act like he didn’t hear me, but I’d already set the research in motion. I’d called Mark from home and he agreed to call his Industry contacts for information on the former film student Greta Stenholm.

  Barry tapped the folder again. I opened it and checked out a handwritten note on top. I recognized Vivian’s writing and skimmed a couple of sentences: it was cop-groupie gossip about Douglas Lockwood’s love life. Vivian liked the juicy stuff.

  I closed the file, smiling. “I thought you wanted an experienced reporter for this assignment.”

  “I changed my mind. You’re already inside his line of defense, and you have an excuse for maintaining contact. No other reporter would get that kind of access—”

  The telephone interrupted him. Barry ignored it. It rang three times before I said, “Aren’t you going to answer?”

  Barry shook his head. “It’s been ringing all day—every news organization in town wants to talk to us.”

  I’d seen reporters on the street when Lockwood drove me to the House of Pies. A lieutenant had been briefing them, but Lockwood’s presence caused a bigger stir than the murder. He’d referred all questions back to the lieutenant and refused interviews to the on-camera people. I missed the evening news so I didn’t know how the murder, or Lockwood’s reappearance, was treated.

  The phone stopped ringing. I said, “Doesn’t everyone have their hands full with Rampart?”

  Barry said, “Rampart’s getting old, and she was a foxy blond killed in a rich neighborhood.”

  “Good thing we have the exclusive.”

  “You’re not doing her.”

  I leaned toward him. “Scott Dolgin is a typical—”

  “You don’t know anything about Scott.”

  “I know that he’s not news. I want Greta Stenholm.”

  Barry took a deep breath and came on with his tone of patronizing omniscience. “Ann. Doug Lockwood is our only concern now. This newspaper’s mission, one of them, is to get dirty cops off the streets of L.A. I think we can pressure Lockwood into retirement if we make it a big enough issue.”

  I forgot to be diplomatic. I thumped the desk with my fist.

  “Look, yesterday I realized I was sick of my job. You said yourself that my reviews had gotten bitchy, and I was going to ask you for a break. Now I don’t want a break. Now I have an opportunity to write a real blood-and-guts story about Hollywood. I care more about movies than I do about the LAPD—”

  Barry broke in. “You’ve made that clear at editorial meetings.”

  I thumped the desk again. “Because it’s not my fight! I have nothing earth-shattering to add on the subject of police brutality and corruption. I can’t imagine Lockwood will talk to me, or what’s left to say about dirty cops. But I’m not doing him unless you let me do her. If I can’t do her, I’ll—”

  The phone started to ring. Barry lifted the receiver and dropped it back in its cradle.

  I smiled. “—I’ll go somewhere else with two stories that any editor will pay money for.”

  Barry shook his head. I decided it was time for a bluff: I stood up to leave. He grabbed my jacket and pulled me back down. He said, “You’re not getting it. She was murdered at my party—it’s an embarrassment for everyone involved.”

  “I don’t see why. It’s not your fault she crashed the gate.” I brushed his hand off and picked up the Burger King file.

  Barry said, “I don’t want the piece.”

  “Then I’ll call an editor I know at the Times.”

  I started to walk out. Behind me, Barry said, “Wait.”

  I turned around; Barry was tugging at his hair. I stood there and watched him. We’d played brinksmanship before. If Mark was right, and my position with Barry was precarious, I’d find out now.

  A minute went by on the wall clock, and another minute. One minute more and Barry nodded. “But do Lockwood first. I want twelve hundred words by next Tuesday.”

  He waved me out of the office and picked up the telephone. As I shut the door I heard him say, “Scott, it’s me.”

  GRETA STENHOLM had lived a block south of Hollywood Boulevard over by the Chinese Theater.

  I made a left off La Brea and cruised for a place to park. The city had renovated the Boulevard, but her street was residential Hollywood in all its eclectic squalor. Front lawns were worn through to dirt and paved over for driveways. A few bungalows survived, squeezed in by dingy apartments in every style from ’30s Spanish to ’60s Tiki Village. 7095 Hawthorn was a four-story building with mosquelike minarets. Eroded Moorish carvings framed the front door and ground-floor windows.

  I parked outside and walked up the front stairs. They led to a lobby lined with mailboxes, and a long dim hall. The mailboxes were numbered with a black pen. Stenholm’s apartment was number 1. I jiggled the lock on her mailbox. It was old and I thought it might give, but it didn’t. The building manager lived in apartment four.

  I walked down the hall and rang the buzzer to number four. A man cracked the door with the chain on. I could only see a bloodshot eye and a patch of three-day beard. I said, “Greta Stenholm—”

  He didn’t let me finish, “—can go to hell.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  The guy coughed; I smelled cigarettes on his breath. “First, she gets her apartment broken into, and I gotta replace the doorknob. Then after I let her slide on rent, she takes advantage of my good nature and I have to kick her out for delinquency. Then just when I think I seen the last of her, she’s here Saturday stealing change from my candy machines.”

  He started to close the door. I stuck my shoe in the crack. “Wait! When was her apartment broken into?”

  “Last winter.”

  “Was she hurt? Was something stolen?”

  He grunted and leaned on the door. I leaned on it from my side. “When did you evict her?”

  “June.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  He said, “Like I give a rat’s ass?” He kicked my shoe and slammed the door shut.

  I knocked again, and kept knocking. He turned up his TV to drown me out. I walked back to apartment number one and knocked there. I pressed my eye to the old brass peephole. The glass was funky and I couldn’t see inside.

  Someone walked into the lobby from the street.

  It was a short swarthy man. He wore a Hawaiian shirt untucked over white pants, and loafers with buckles. Before I could move, he walked up and rapped at Stenholm’s door. I nearly gagged on the smell of his cologne.

  He said, “You Greta Stenholm?”

  I tried to ease past him. “Yes, I mean, no—”

  He grabbed my arm and pushed me into the utility room. He pinned me to the wall, pulled an envelope out of his waistband, and laid it alongside my cheek. My mind said to kick him, but I couldn’t. My legs froze—I froze.

  He said, “Take it.”

  I couldn’t lift my arm. He jammed the envelope into my coat pocket. I heard the pocket rip.

  “My client says to forget the second part. It isn’t doable.”

  He gave me a shove and let go. That unfroze me. I kicked out and caught his shin. The guy didn’t blink: he raised a fist and slugged me right in the face. My head hit the wall, my knees hit the floor, and the room went black.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I WAS UNCONSCIOUS for a solid half hour. I’d been punched before, and I took a pretty good one, but I’d never been hit that hard ever. When I came to, I couldn’t even sit up. My head spun and I felt hot all over. All I could do was lie there and stare at the brooms.

  I felt a lump pressing my hip and remembered the envelope. I reached for it, bit open the flap, and counted the separate bundles. I handled everything as best I could by the edges. It was slow work, lying on my side. I counted twice to make myself believe it.

  The envelope contained twenty thousand dollars. The money was still in its original bank wrappers. Twenty thousand-dollar bundles in new hundred-dollar bills.

  Twenty thousand bucks in
cash.

  I managed eventually to stand up. Using the broom rack for support, I stuffed the money in my jeans. My head hurt so bad that my eyes watered. I felt my way out of the utility room, wiping the tears off as I went. How I found the car I couldn’t say. How I got home I couldn’t say. Los Feliz wasn’t far from Hollywood but the trip was a blur. I remembered stopping a couple of times to rest.

  Three reporters had staked out the mansion. As I pulled into the drive, they surrounded my car and started asking questions. I told them no comment, go away. They kept at me. I lost my temper and told them to fuck off. The tone turned ugly. One guy threatened to ram my car. I locked the doors and prepared to wait them out. Feeling hot and dizzy, I lay back on the seat and fainted again.

  When I woke up at midnight the reporters were gone.

  I ROLLED OVER in bed and slowly opened my eyes. I was looking at French doors, a balcony, and bright blue sky. The light hurt. I covered my eyes and tried to think where I was. What did I do after I parked...

  It came back to me. I was upstairs in the mansion. I had crashed on the foldaway couch when I realized I couldn’t face the pool house at night. I’d decided not to sleep there until they caught the killer. Or I stopped feeling weird about living where someone had died—if I ever did.

  I uncovered my eyes and checked the time. Early. I wanted more sleep, but I knew I couldn’t.

  I sat up.

  The movement jarred my head. It started to ache. It made my teeth and jaw ache.

  I had dumped my clothes beside the bed. Reaching down, I felt around and grabbed the envelope. I smoothed the blankets and emptied the money out in a pile. I arranged the bundles into two rows of ten. Then I rearranged them to make a G and an S.

  The money proved two things. It proved that she did blackmail someone; it wasn’t just a logical leap based on the spanking picture and her empty wallet. And it proved that the blackmail wasn’t related to her death. You wouldn’t pay her off a day after you’d murdered her.

  But I still had questions. Why would she blackmail someone when she’d sold her script? Why didn’t the goon in the Hawaiian shirt know what Stenholm looked like? What about the last thing he said? What was the second part that wasn’t doable?

  I fiddled with the S and reviewed my options.

  The money put me in concrete danger—as opposed to my hypothetical danger as the hypothetical victim of an incompetent killer. It was impossible to give it back. How much time did I have before the goon realized he paid the wrong woman? How much time before he identified me and came after me? The police were going to get the envelope, but that wouldn’t change anything: the goon would still come after me.

  I patted a bundle. It seemed like a fortune. Twenty thousand dollars was half a year’s salary after taxes. I thought of the Impala with the Kansas plates. What if the research for Stenholm cost money? What if I had to go to the Midwest? I’d lent my sister a lot since she’d moved to L.A.; it had exhausted my savings and I was living from paycheck to paycheck. But I didn’t want to ask for expenses in advance. Barry might use it as an excuse to kill the piece.

  I thumbed the bills of one bundle. One bundle—make it two, to be safe. That would be two thousand dollars for research. It was more than enough for comfort, but not so much that I couldn’t pay it back. I’d think of a way to finesse it with the cops. Lockwood had exposed me as a bad liar, but I’d think of something.

  I packed up the money, got dressed, and went out to the pool house.

  The pool house felt fine in the daylight. In fact, the only spooky part about walking in there was how unspooky it felt. The place was sunny, the cops had cleaned the bathtub, and I’d straightened up after Lockwood had left. Her death had left no visible trace in my house.

  That wasn’t true: I was a trace. I started to laugh but had to stop. It hurt too much.

  I took a long shower, then examined my face in the mirror. The punch had missed my nose and caught me on the left cheekbone. The skin there was greenish yellow and swollen. My left eye hurt, and there was a squishy lump on the back of my head.

  I swabbed the lump, spread arnica cream on my cheek, swallowed four aspirin, and went to the kitchen to make coffee. While it was brewing, I stood on a chair and pulled the xeroxes out of the attic. I stuffed the envelope through the slats, poured some coffee, sat down with the telephone, and went to work.

  First, I left a message for Lockwood to call me.

  Second, I left a message on Vivian’s voice mail. I told her about Stenholm’s apartment and asked her to ask her cop sources about a burglary last winter.

  Third, I called Mark to see what he’d heard from his Industry sources. Something had come up and he’d only made one call. I told him to get cracking. I also asked him to get the guest list for the party from Barry’s assistant. He said I would owe him for this, and I said definitely.

  I put the phone down and opened Barry’s file on the Burger King siege.

  I set Vivian’s juicy note aside for the end. Underneath it was a shorter note from Barry. He listed the subjects that he wanted Lockwood to comment on. Most of them were common sense, as if Barry didn’t trust my basic reporting skills. But one of his suggestions surprised me. He wanted me to ask Lockwood what really happened during the siege. I thought we already knew that.

  The L.A. Times carried the initial story. It was dated Sunday, December 24, 2000.

  * * *

  Off-Duty Officer Slays Gang Member

  Juan Pablo Marquez, 25, a gang member with an extensive criminal record, held Christmas shoppers hostage at gunpoint for two hours in an Echo Park Burger King yesterday. The siege ended when off-duty LAPD Detective Douglas Lockwood, 48, shot and killed Marquez. The hostages sustained no serious injuries. Lockwood suffered a minor gunshot wound.

  According to eyewitnesses, Marquez, a Pico-Union resident, entered the Burger King fast-food restaurant at 1301 Glendale Blvd. at 1:15 p.m. Saturday. He was wearing an overcoat and carrying an old suitcase. He pulled a weapon, later identified as an AK-47 assault rifle, from under his coat and ordered the customers to lie down. He claimed the suitcase contained a bomb. An employee at the drive-through window told a car customer to alert the police.

  An LAPD SWAT team and bomb-disposal unit arrived quickly as LAPD siege experts began negotiating for the release of the some forty hostages.

  At 3:15 p.m., two hours into the siege, witnesses heard shots from inside the restaurant. A single gunshot was fired, followed by a burst of automatic-weapon fire, and a second shot. Hostages ran from the restaurant a short time later.

  An LAPD spokesperson said Det. Lockwood, a veteran with 24 years on the department, was eating lunch when Marquez entered the restaurant. Marquez appeared disoriented and did not respond to Lockwood’s request to surrender. An attempt to disarm Marquez resulted in the gun battle in which Marquez was killed. He died instantly from two wounds to the head and neck. Lockwood sustained a slight injury when a bullet grazed his ribs.

  Nineteen people were treated for minor injuries and shock at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital.

  In a written press release, an LAPD spokesperson praised Det. Lockwood for his “cool thinking under fire,” saying that “Angelenos have forgotten that its police force risks their lives every day to keep the city safe.”

  The LAPD is under investigation by local and federal authorities after the Sept. 1999 revelations by ex-officer Rafael A. Perez of corruption in Rampart Division. Perez is currently serving a five-year sentence for stealing cocaine from an LAPD property room.

  * * *

  I turned pages and kept reading. Lockwood was hailed as a hero; Marquez was treated like a lowlife. He was an 18th Street Gang member, and had weapons and drug arrests as a juvenile and adult. It came out that the siege was not gang related: Marquez’s longtime girlfriend had left him for another man. She was an employee at the Burger King.

  I realized as I read how much I’d forgotten about this particular scandal. Forgotten—or never knew. Ch
ristmas was a film critic's busiest season. We had last-minute Oscar contenders, the big family movies, and year-end wrap-ups to write. My Ten-Best list alone took days to decide. I never knew that, in the beginning, media opinion was on Lockwood’s side. Given the circumstances and the rules of police procedure, he’d done the right thing.

  I came to a brief biography.

  He was an L.A. native, born and raised in Torrance. He’d gone to UCLA and law school, and had passed the California bar but never practiced law. He joined the LAPD instead and became a detective fifteen years ago. His wife was a senior deputy DA for Orange County. They had no children.

  An old head shot of Lockwood in uniform accompanied the piece. He looked thirty years old, and scary in a buzz haircut.

  Then the tide of opinion turned. The Millennium helped turn it.

  A former hostage claimed that Lockwood shot Marquez as Marquez was preparing to surrender. The media went berserk. Marquez went from lowlife to misguided lover boy. Someone discovered that Lockwood once worked a homicide case in Rampart Division. Suddenly Marquez’s criminal record was in doubt; maybe he was another victim of Rampart frame-ups. Calls came for Lockwood’s firing. The pun machines cranked into overtime. Headlines read, BURGER CON CARNAGE and PARKS TELLS A WHOPPER. The Millennium had said nothing while Lockwood was a hero. Now Barry jumped in with a series of editorials.

  Lockwood denied the hostage’s allegations; a dozen witnesses backed him up. The Times discovered that the former hostage was a felony fugitive and reputed 18th Street Gang member. There were scattered attempts to clear Lockwood’s name, but the scandal petered out into messy ambiguities.

  Lockwood went on a three-month leave in May. The media read it as a tacit admission of guilt. The leave overlapped with Perez’s release from jail; that was construed as an LAPD safety move. A short wire item from late July said that Lockwood spent his leave fishing in Mexico.