A Death In Beverly Hills (27 page)

"Lancaster?" Furley had complained. "Why don't we just wait until you come back to LA?"

"Then I'd have to get you a gate pass from the Studio instead of just asking the AD to let you on the location. I'm trying to keep a low profile here. Jeeze, can't you just help me out?"

Furley grumbled some more but eventually gave in.

"Remember, we don't know each other," were Travis's final instructions. Furley wished that that were true.

* * *

"This is pretty cool," Chiappari said, pointing at the beehive of activity in front of them. The crew had laid down a set of wooden tracks right to left across the sand. The director sat behind them, his eyes on a TV monitor which received a picture broadcast from a camera on a little hand car that crew members pulled down the track. The camera's path paralleled the path Travis and his co-star, a devastatingly beautiful girl of about twenty-five named Rachel Cain, would take across the sand. In this scene the girl and Travis were supposed to be hiking across the desert after an escape from the villains. Travis was supposed to act macho but sensitive in a way that caused her to both love and trust him over the space of a few lines of dialog, which the audience would accept, the movie people hoped, in a 'suspension of disbelief.'

It took about an hour to set everything up, then Travis and his co-star began their stroll. Cain had apparently begun her career as a fashion model because she was about five feet ten, easily as tall as Tom Travis and he complained that the dynamics of the story required that his character be more strongly perceived than hers. Two of the crew were ordered to dig a shallow trench in the sand so that on screen Travis's character, Rick Black, appeared to be a couple of inches taller than the girl.

The first take was a long shot which caught both of them from the knees up. Then they did it again with the camera holding tight on Rachel's face. Then they shot it a third time as a close-up on Travis. At the end of the shot a bug buzzed around Tom's face and he insisted they do it again. Finally, about two hours after they had started laying track and clearing a path in the sand, the director had a scene that would be on screen for a total of about twenty or thirty seconds.

The next shot was going to involve a race across the desert to the shelter of the cabin amidst a hail of gunfire from the villains chasing them in a jeep. The director called a break for lunch. Travis had furnished Furley with a publicity shot of the target and Jack stood back and watched the chow line. A large tent, open at the sides, had been set up with long tables and folding chairs inside. A catering van formed the fourth wall and the crew approached the pass-through windows in two lines. The featured cast members had already placed their orders and had their meals delivered to their air conditioned trailers. The Director, AD, and cinematographer huddled together at their own table in the back.

A chalk board listed the menu choices as poached sea bass on Mexican rice with a vegetable medley; grilled pork loin in orange sauce with garlic mashed potatoes with a Caesar salad, and for the unadventurous, hamburgers and fries. Chiappari turned toward the line but Furley gently held him back.

"Let's wait and see what our guy does," he whispered. Reluctantly, Chiappari halted and they slipped to the back of the tent. The target lazily wandered around, slapping shoulders, stopping to chat and joke with various members of the crew. Finally, after almost ten minutes of working the tent he joined the end of the line. A couple of his buddies from the crew entered the line behind him.

"Why don't you get us a couple of burgers," Furley suggested.

"What are you gonna do?"

"I'm going to have a look around while he's eating." Chiappari gave Furley an uncertain look. "Just get me a burger. I'll be back in five minutes." Chiappari looked at him suspiciously but hunger overcame his concern.

"Fine, but I'm getting the pork loin."

Furley had already run a DMV check. The subject owned a '92 Camaro which was parked at the motel. The crew had come out to the location in busses, the stars in their motor homes with teamster drivers. Virtually everyone who didn't have their own trailer had brought a knapsack or sports bag with sunscreen, bottled water, paperback books, extra clothing and anything else they thought they might need. Most of the bags had been left in a corner of the commissary tent, out of the sun. The target had stashed his in the stunt trailer with the guns, blanks, and other similar items. Furley checked the door, found it locked, and headed back to the commissary. Chiappari had a plastic plate with a burger and fries waiting for him.

"Find the can okay?" Chiappari asked loudly.

"Yeah. Thanks for getting this for me." Furley added some ketchup and took a bite. "How's yours?"

"No wonder people like this business. If I had free meals like this every day, I'd blow up like a pig." Chiappari played with his mashed potatoes then asked in a softer voice, "Anything interesting?"

No one seemed to be watching and Furley dipped his head. "We'll do it on the way to his car."

"PC?" Chiappari asked in a whisper.

"It's covered."

The director got three more scenes that afternoon, the escape to the cabin and the shoot-out at the cabin, first inside then outside, and the Assistant Director got the bad guy's half of the jeep chase with the second unit crew. Daylight savings time had recently started and they were able to shoot until almost six before the light got too yellow to match with the earlier scenes. Back in town Furley and Chiappari exited the bus with the last few passengers and kept an eye on the target as he ambled across the lot to his Camaro. He had just unlocked the driver's door when Furley tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hi, you got a second?"

"Do I know you guys?" Barry McGee asked, eyeing Furley and Chaippari suspiciously.

"I'm Jack Furley. This is Bob Chiappari. We were out on location today and I noticed you talking to the guys in the crew."

"Yeah, so what?"

"Bob here is with the Sheriff's department. He was checking out maybe getting a job as technical advisor."

"And you're here to do his talking for him?"

Furley pulled out his badge. "LAPD. I just came along for the fun of it. Bob and me, we're old buddies."

"Tell me your life story some other time," McGee sneered and reached for the door handle. Furley put his palm against the glass and held the door closed.

"As I was saying, Bob and me were looking around, really hadn't been on a movie set before so were looking at everything really close."

"Good for you."

"And we were kind of surprised to see you dealing drugs like that right out in the open."

"What? Are you, nuts?"

"Pretty brazen, wouldn't you say, Bob?"

"I was shocked," Chiappari said with a smile.

"What kind of a cheap ass--"

"Drop the bag. Hands on the roof," Furley ordered, spinning McGee toward the car and lightly kicking his feet back. Chiappari forced McGee's right hand onto the Camaro's roof.

"What the hell--"

"You don't want to be resisting a police officer," Furley said in a soft tone. McGee gave him an outraged stare but stopped trying to pull away. "Frisk him, Bob."

Chiappari slid his hands down McGee's shoulders and under his arms. When he reached Barry's hip pocket he paused and reached inside.

"Well, look what we've got here," Chiappari said in mock surprise, holding up three postage-stamp sized glassine envelops containing a pale yellow powder.

"Boy, that sure looks like speed to me," Furley announced.

"Sure does," Chiappari agreed.

"You planted that!"

"Is that so? How'd we plant your fingerprints on them?"

McGee started to say something, then shut up. The envelopes went into a plastic bag and Furley looked at the sport's bag lying next to McGee's feet.

"He could have a gun in there," Furley announced.

"I'd better check it, just to be safe," Chiappari volunteered.

Furley kept a light pressure on the center of McGee's back while Chiappari pulled the zipper and picked through the bag's contents. In the bottom corner, inside a crumpled white athletic sock, he found a Ziplock bag containing fifteen more glassine envelopes.

"Oh--oh," he said, holding up the bag, "this looks like possession for sale to me." A pair of cuffs appeared out of nowhere and Chiappari pulled McGee's hands behind his back. An instant later the bracelets made their distinctive CLICK-CLICK sound.

"Barry McGee, you are under arrest for possession and possession for sale of a controlled substance, methamphetamine. You have a right to remain silent . . . ." Chiappari recited the rest of the Miranda warning as he steered McGee toward the car. Furley picked up the evidence and McGee's bag and followed behind.

Five or six crew members had paused at the edge of the lot to watch the arrest and when he saw them, McGee began to scream, "That son of a bitch Travis set me up! This is bogus! I'm being framed! Fucking Tom Travis did this to me. These guys are his trained dogs! That shit was planted on me! Fucking Tom Travis set me up!"

McGee's shouts were finally muffled by the SUV's thick doors but McGee continued to lurch around the back seat, kicking and pounding his head against the glass."

"You shut the fuck up or I'm going to duct tape you like King Tut," Chiappari shouted as they headed for the substation.

Furley tuned McGee out and sat back and watched the landscape drift by.

* * *

Katz gave his new partner a long stare. "I don't want any BS here. Between you and me, did you plant that stuff on him?"

"I'm not a crook."

"Is that a yes or no?"

"No," Furley said, slowly and carefully enunciating his words, "I did not plant anything on him and neither did Chiappari. What do you think he was doing wandering around the lunch tent, running for union president? He was delivering drugs. He was smart enough to keep a mental list of who owed him what. He was probably planning on collecting the money the next day when he wasn't carrying, saying that the guy was paying off a bet or something. They were his drugs in his pocket and his drugs in his bag."

"Did they check the envelops for prints?"

"He probably wore gloves."

"So no prints?"

"That doesn't prove anything."

"He got convicted out of Lancaster? How'd that work out for you?"

"It was on my tip from my CI. I got a gold star in my jacket."

"Where's the case now?"

"After a lot of back and forth the guy finally copped to possession and got a year in county jail without time off for good behavior. He got out a couple of weeks ago."

"Is there any way Tom Travis can jam you up on this?"

"It was a clean bust. If anything, I could jam him up if I let it get around that he had narked on the guy."

"That's it, nothing else?"

"I'm a good cop. You got any other questions?" Furley demanded.

"No." Katz paused, then extended his hand. "Okay, you've got my back and I've got yours. Partners."

"Partners," Furley agreed. They shook hands and Furley fired up the engine and pulled the Crown Vic out of the lot.

* * *

Katz stared at Steve Janson and frowned.

"You got any proof this guy you're looking for had anything to do with Marian Travis's murder?"

"Guy?"

"Person," Katz said with a shrug.

"How am I supposed to have any proof if I don't know who
he
is?"

"You should be talking to your client about this."

"And he should be talking to me, but he's worried about looking like low-life pussy snitch instead of a macho hero."

"Then that's his problem, isn't it?" Katz looked at the door. "Unless you've got something else, I've got some real police work to do."

Steve angrily shoved back his chair.

"You don't know what real police work is any more, Simon. You're just like the rest of these humps, one crime, one guy in the slam and everything's in balance even if it's not the guy who did the crime."

"I don't need lessons in ethics from you, Janson."

"That's the sad part, Simon. You sure as hell do. That's the real pisser. You know that. I 'm here trying to get you to do the right thing. That's just pathetic."

"Get out!"

"When you close your eyes tonight, don't think about Tom Travis. You think about Sarah. It's still not too late to save her, you self righteous bastard!"

Steve shoved the back of his chair so hard it tipped over with a crash and he stormed out of the room. He was still angry fifteen minutes later as he was nearing his apartment when his cell rang.

"Barry McGee," Katz's angry voice snarled and then the line went dead.

Chapter Forty-Two

The only unknown vehicle near Travis's house on the day of the disappearance was a black van with the name "Sunshine Pool Service" painted on the side. The detectives checked and confirmed that the Sunshine Pool Service had a scheduled filter cleaning and maintenance appointment that morning for a house at the end of the block. No other strange vehicles were reported for that morning, but most of the domestics had the day off and most of the neighbors were either out of town or visiting friends or out shopping for party supplies. If you wanted to pick a day when a high end neighborhood would be deserted you couldn't do much better than December 31
st
.

Nevertheless, Steve put the Foster Agency to work checking DMV records on every witness or suspect name he could think of and on Monday morning they emailed him the vehicle registrations as of the time of Marian's disappearance for a dozen people including Barry McGee, Robert Garsen, Bobby Berdue, Carey Ebbe, Leslie Wahlberg, Riley Fontaine, even, with a twinge of guilt, Rebecca Minton. He also ordered them build a dossier on Barry McGee. With the DMV list in hand he dove back into the stacks of police interviews with Travis's neighbors.

The cops had been thorough and had canvassed every house, on some occasions returning two or three times until they had talked with everyone who had been in town on the day of the murder. And they didn't limit their questions to the day of the disappearance. They also asked about any unusual vehicles spotted in the neighborhood at any time during the two or three weeks prior to the thirty-first.

A gardener reported seeing a red Camaro parked in front of Tom Travis's house two days after Christmas. That matched Barry McGee's story about being invited over for a drink, a story that took on a whole new meaning when you knew that the reason McGee was out of work was because Tom Travis had set him up for a year behind bars.

I'll bet you thought Travis owed you a favor
, Steve muttered to himself. He hadn't heard from Greg Markham so he assumed Tom was still blocking out the memory of his part in McGee's arrest. Maybe McGee was lying about the friendly drink. Maybe he had been in the neighborhood to case the house for a burglary or vandalism and had made up the story about being invited as a cover in case his car was spotted. At the very least they needed Travis to confirm that he had invited McGee into his house.

There were three other unknown cars mentioned in the Field Interview Reports for the two weeks before the murder: a mid-eighties Camry had been seen the week before that the witness thought "probably" belonged to a relative of the next-door gardener; a silver BMW X7 SUV that had been parked across the street from Travis's driveway for half an hour on the thirtieth, and a red Ferrari, (was there any other color?) slowly drove up and down the street four or five times three days before Marian disappeared.

The cops figured the Ferrari belonged to somebody scouting the neighborhood for a missing girlfriend, looking to see if her car was parked where it wasn't supposed to be. Burglars, hit men and the like generally didn't cruise their target zone in a quarter million dollar red sports car so the cops crossed that one off their suspect list. It didn't match any of the vehicles on Steve's list either. Without a description of the driver or a partial plate it was a dead end.

The witness described the Camry as dirty white with an off-center rear bumper and a cloud of blue smoke pouring from the tailpipe when the driver tried to accelerate. Again, not the type of car a criminal would choose for a job in the top end of Beverly Hills. The cops tracked down the gardener in question who rapidly lost the ability to say anything much beyond "green card." The magic word "
imigracion
" had only more firmly closed his mouth.
Hermano
and
viejo Toyota blanco
had gotten a guilty look but little more. Another vehicle slid off their radar. Again, it matched none of the vehicles on Steve's list. Another dead end.

The last one, the BMW X7, was exactly the kind of car you would expect to see in that neighborhood. It was a miracle anyone noticed it at all. A Beemer in BH was as ordinary as a Civic in the Valley. Except in this case, it did match something on Steve's list. Robert Garsen had bought a new silver X7 two months before Marian had disappeared.

Steve considered just calling him but he couldn't see Garsen's body language over the phone. There were reasons why cops wanted suspects interviewed in the box -- it provided maximum tension and the ability to study their facial expressions and body language.

Steve tracked Garsen down to a lunch-hour workout at the Executive Gym on the fourth floor of his building. An incredibly fit young man in a dark green knit shirt over olive shorts escorted Janson to a Nautilus machine where Garsen lay on his back and pulled down a pair of bicycle handlebars then slowly released them against the tension of a set of weights at the end of a steel cable.

"Mr. Garsen, this gentlemen said he needed to talk with you," the kid said with a nervous smile. The '
I can throw him out if you'd like'
part of the sentence was implied.

"Mr. Janson," Garsen said with a soft grunt and pulled the bar down again.

"I just have a couple of questions. It won't take long."

"It's okay, Jamey," Garsen said, giving the kid a slight nod.

"Yes sir. Call me if you need anything." Jamey headed back to the reception desk as if Janson didn't exist.

"They're protective of their clients' privacy," Garsen said, concentrating on his pulls.

Steve would have figured a guy like Garsen to be decked out in some electric colored Spandex outfit from Celebrity Sports on Rodeo Drive. Instead he wore a plain red t-shirt and blue cotton shorts.

"Fifty," Garsen said with a grunt and let go of the device. "Upper body," he explained as he sat up. "Want to give me a hand with the bar?" Garsen pointed to a padded tube on the floor next to the machine. Steve fitted it into a couple of clasps at the bottom of the bench. "A little lower would be good." Set screws allowed the supports to telescope up and down. Steve lowered them until the bar just touched the tops of Garsen's ankles.

"I may as well earn my answers, I guess."

"Sit-ups are still one of the best exercises for keeping your gut in shape," Garsen explained, then put his hands behind his neck and rose to a sitting position.

"Did you ever visit Marian at her home?" Steve asked.

"I've never been in Tom Travis's house." Garsen exhaled loudly and went back down then up.

"Have you ever visited her neighborhood?"

Garsen rose to a sitting position, then stopped. "Busted," he said, sourly.

"When was that?"

"The day before she disappeared, the 30
th
." Garsen didn't volunteer any further details.

"How long were you there?"

Garsen frowned and glanced at the floor. "I don't suppose you're going to drop this, are you?" He asked, giving Steve an irritated glance. "No, you're not." It wasn't a question. "Okay, let's get this over with. I told you we had had a fight."

"About New Year's Eve."

"About New Year's Eve. First she cancelled our day on my boat. Things went downhill from there. At the end she had said, 'Fine, if you don't want to take me out, I'll go out with Tom. He's my husband after all. Who knows, maybe he'll get lucky, for old time's sake.' And then she was gone."

"And that pissed you off?"

"It made me crazy. Tom was going to get lucky?" Garsen gave Steve an embarrassed smile. "She's cheating on her husband with me, and I'm upset that she's going to sleep with him? Nuts, huh!" Garsen shook his head in disbelief.

"You went over there to . . . ?"

"That's a good question. To tell you the truth, I didn't have a clear idea what I was going to do. One minute I was going to pound on the door and confront her."

"That would have been a good idea," Steve muttered, unable to restrain himself.

Garsen gave him a sharp look, then a smile. "Yeah, real genius-level thinking. Anyway, I parked outside the gate for about half an hour, maybe I thought she might leave and I would follow her and . . . hell, I don't know. She wasn't taking my calls which, of course, made me even crazier."

"After half an hour . . . ?"

"Sanity started to reassert itself. I calmed down enough to realize that I couldn't make her do anything. She was going to do what she wanted to do. I had already left her three or four voice mails so, well, what else was there to do? I figured she'd call me after the holidays and we'd work something out."

"But she didn't?"

"I never heard from her again," Garsen said quietly, a desolated look on his face.

"You didn't go back on New Year's Eve day, maybe follow her to the mall, try to talk her out of sleeping with Tom?"

"I wish I had. Maybe if I had been around nothing would have happened to her. But I didn't."

"Because you figured you'd work it out later?"

"Because trying to push Marian in a direction she didn't want to go only made things worse. If I had tried to bully her into doing what I wanted, I'd have lost her . . . . which I did anyway," Garsen said after a long pause. "It's a fallacy, Mr. Janson, to believe that we can control our lives. Things happen. Chaos theory. If you try to fight that, you'll only make yourself crazy." Steve wasn't sure if Garson was commenting on his own life or giving Steve advice about his. "Anything else?"

Steve paused for a long moment then shook his head. "That's it. Thanks."

"Sure," Garsen said, beginning another round of sit-ups. "Any time."