13 Stolen Girls (14 page)

Brandi shrugged. “One of the malls, I guess. She didn't have the use of a car.”

“Which malls did she like?”

“I don't know. We went to the ones in Westlake.”

“How about the Drop, the music club?”

“She wasn't allowed to go there anymore. I think that music, the thrash-metal stuff, that's what made her…” Brandi's words trailed off.

“Brandi had to put it off-limits,” Carla said. “I thought it was bad for Merilee, too. She was too young.”

“You didn't
think
anything,” Brandi snapped. “You weren't really a major part of her life, were you, Mom?”

A painful silence. Carla reached out for her daughter's hand, but the younger woman angrily pulled away. Remington didn't blame Brandi for the attitude. On the Web, a chorus of amateur commentators claimed that Merilee's mother had to be guilty. Brandi had strangled her own daughter, kept her on ice for a month, then revealed the corpse to the police. A cruel and nonsensical theory of the crime.

“Just a few more questions for now,” Remington said. “I noticed from her room that she liked the Rose and Thorn books.”

Brandi gave a bitter nod. “Oh, yeah, big favorites.”

“Have you read them, Detective?” Carla asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, we all have, haven't we? But I sometimes wonder what kind of world we're leaving to our children.”

Brandi spit out a derisive “Christ!” and got up from the table. She stood staring out the window at the yard.

“Just one more question,” Remington persisted. “Your daughter had several tattoos.”

“She would have a lot more if I had let her.”

“Can you tell me about one, the letter ‘k' on her left hand?”

“She was always putting marks on herself.”

“So you didn't notice this particular one, when she might have had it done?”

Brandi didn't answer, just walked out of the room. Remington heard her mount the stairs to the second floor, and a moment later came the closing of a bedroom door.

Carla Kernis gave a wincing smile. “I'm sorry.”

“I'm afraid it's part of my job, talking to people about the worst day of their lives.”

“She blames herself. This has been so awful for us. Just give her time.”

“Of course.” Remington rose and thanked Carla for the coffee.

“I'll show you out.”

They walked together through the empty, silent house.

As she opened the front door, Carla hesitated. “One thing I should say—you're the detective who found Tarin Mistry, aren't you?”

Remington nodded.

“Our Merilee loved that movie. She watched it all the time. She was totally obsessed with Tarin. I think that's why, that night, at the event downtown, you know, that's why Brandi sought you out. Because she felt the kinship.”

Why was it, Remington asked herself, that whenever she asked about the Rose and Thorn books the conversation seemed to turn to Tarin Mistry?

“Hello, Detective Remington? Mr. Monaghan would like to send a car for you so we can squeeze you in for the screen test.”

Pip Pham, girl producer, was on the line again.

Confronted by Pham's voice at a little before 7
A.M.
on a Thursday morning, Layla couldn't manage much more than a “What's this now?”

“A studio slot just opened up today for an afternoon screen test—makeup, hair, wardrobe, the whole package. You are a very lucky person, Detective. In a few hours, you won't recognize yourself.”

Remington didn't feel lucky. She felt tired. She had tried and failed to extract herself from the clutches of
Profiles in Crime
. The PIO for the sheriff's department, Assistant Sheriff Peter Clemetts, thought it was a wonderful idea for her to participate. “You know, this kind of thing usually goes to the LAPD. The sheriff is very pleased for you to have such an opportunity.”

The public-information officer had added that Gus Monaghan was “a great friend of the LASD” who had contributed “very healthy amounts” to the department's “999 for Kids” charity, benefiting a fund for physically and mentally handicapped children.

Remington understood the timing of Pham's offer of a full-blown studio makeover. The Oceana charity benefit was scheduled for that evening at Monaghan's Holmby Hills mansion. She had already cleared her day and was planning on visiting a hairstylist herself. But her sugar-daddy movie producer had more grandiose plans for her.

Once again, the cheerful Ruth Jakes served as her driver. She delivered Remington not to the old Columbia studios where
Profiles
was shot but to the Fox lot in Century City. The car turned off West Pico Boulevard to confront the famous New York set, a block-long collection of facades used in countless movies. From the moment Remington presented her ID and was waved through the studio's front gate, she felt not so much ushered as whisked,
whisked,
into a million-dollar makeover machine.

Fox's hair and makeup studio physically resembled a car wash, a long bin of a building with huge garage doors at either end. The windows were blacked out. Inside, there was nothing of the soothing earth-toned atmosphere of a suburban beauty parlor. Racks of wigs, immense caches of cosmetics, salon chair after salon chair—the place perfectly illustrated an old comment of Oscar Levant's: “Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you will find the real tinsel underneath.”

The director of the effort was the celebrated Brownie Babb, a makeup artist who hosted a reality TV show (
Beauty Boot Camp!
) of his own. “You're a police officer?” Brownie asked, frowning when they were introduced. “Well, that explains a lot, dear ones, doesn't it?”

His crew of a half-dozen assistants giggled. Remington was about to ask him what the hell that was supposed to mean, but one of Brownie's elves stuck an electronic skin-tone monitor in front of her face and they were off to the races. Brownie circled like a boxer examining his opponent.

“Don't fight it,” one of the elves whispered in her ear. “Just lie back and enjoy.”

And there was something mesmerizing, almost intoxicating, about the experience. Remington thought of the “couple-of-la-di-das” makeover scene in
The Wizard of Oz,
when Dorothy and company—Toto, too—were primped and pampered within an inch of their lives.

“No highlights, nothing like that,” she managed to tell Brownie, in between the mud mask and the hot oil. He just laughed at her.

“You don't deny an artist his palette,” he decreed. An elf came in with the tinfoil strips. This was the film business. No customer coddling allowed.

Theoretically, at least, Remington objected to women being treated as arm candy. She had certainly always aspired to be something more than a plaything for men. But she surprised herself. The process proved to be something of a pleasurable ordeal. Toward the end of it, someone out of her line of sight came by and murmured a comment: “Why, she's really very pretty.”

She was under the gun for two and a half hours. Remington expected some kind of salon
voila!
moment at the climax, when she would be presented with a mirror and allowed to shower compliments, wonder and gratitude on her crew of fairy godmothers. It didn't happen. Instead, she was once again whisked,
whisked,
in a golf cart across the Fox lot to wardrobe.

The costume building was old Hollywood all the way. On display in the entry hall was Bette Davis's brown gown from
All About Eve
. Remington didn't get a chance to linger over it.

Inside, the victims were all running around in their skivvies, men and women both. The wardrobe master assigned to Remington, Mr. Regard, had her dimensions calibrated instantly with a newfangled digital scanner. He gave a nod to the past with an unused tape measure that dangled around his neck.

“That's you.” He pointed to a monitor where a mannequin-style body was displayed, its surfaces overscored with crimson contour lines.

Mr. Regard wore a beard and a short ponytail of the kind the Royal Navy would have dipped in tar. He crossed to a garment-summoning mechanism familiar to Remington from her dry cleaners. He punched a few numbers into a keyboard. The racks whirred, emerging from the depths of the building with a succession of matchless outfits.

He proffered a gorgeous tricolor gown to Remington. “A Prabal Gurung knockoff,” he said. “Sandra wore something like this to the Globes a couple years back.”

Sandra? Would that be Sandra Bullock?

Remington thought it much too dressy. “This is for a reality TV show.”

“Really? The work order specified ‘red carpet.' ”

He displayed the document. Sure enough, under the category “Wardrobe,” the computerized printout read, “red carpet glam.”

“I-I don't have the shoes for it,” Remington stammered.

Mr. Regard sniffed. “We don't do shoes, honey. They aren't ever in the shot, anyway. You can wear sneakers, for all they care.”

Remington had a glimmer of understanding that the “screen test” was a charade. She wasn't going in front of cameras that day. Monaghan the puppetmaster was again pulling the strings. He intended to dress her for his own gala.

She left Fox wardrobe wearing the gown with her flatfoot flats. When she approached Ruth Jakes, waiting at the car, the driver shook her head. “I'm sorry, ma'am, this car is reserved for Detective Layla Remington.” Doing a laughable, exaggerated double take, she said, “My lord, it's you!”

“Cut it out,” Remington muttered. She felt light-headed from the high-dose inhalation of hair spray.

When she tried to climb into the front seat, Ruth Jakes insisted on opening the back door for her. “No, no, milady, this one time you shall allow yourself to be driven.”

Gowned and styled, Remington rode the 10 from Century City to the West Side, gazing out on a sunlit Los Angeles afternoon and feeling totally out of place. L.A. was an early-call town, and that meant the formal events started early, too. Monaghan's Oceana benefit kicked off at the unseemly hour of six o'clock.

She barely had time to change her shoes, catch a quick look in the mirror and suck in a shaky breath before Rick Stills called to tell her he had pulled up outside her bungalow. On her way out the door she had an inspired thought to grab an aquamarine silk shawl her mother had passed down to her.

In the flurry of her makeover, Remington somehow hadn't anticipated the moment that Rick Stills would see her in her new glamour guise. It hit her when she headed out of the house, and it hit Stills at the same time. On her approach, Remington had the pleasure of witnessing an almost comical transformation in the man.

He was leaning alongside the luxury sedan he customarily drove, always this year's model. He straightened up. His eyes didn't actually widen and his jaw didn't drop, but the unsettled look on his face was priceless.

Well, Jesus, dude, don't look so surprised
. She had to bite off that comment, and forgo blurting out other self-deprecating remarks, such as “I clean up real nice, don't I?”

All she said was “Hey.”

“You look…sensational.” Swallowing hard.

“Thank you. Courtesy of our host.”

Stills opened the passenger-side door for her. She got in, but he just stood there, looking down at her.

“Let's go, okay? I feel like cotton candy, afraid I'll melt. I'll tell you about it on the way over.”

He snapped out of it and gently, precisely,
thoughtfully
shut the door. When he walked around to get into the driver's seat, Remington allowed herself a small interior smile.

How the one percent lives: An endless line of limos, Rollses, Bentleys, Beemers and Jags waited to enter the Monaghan estate. A track team's worth of valets dashed about along the front driveway. The paparazzi were kept at bay by uniformed LAPD—but not too far at bay. There was also a trio of “official” photographers posted near the door to record the grand entrances.

Rick Stills quickly got over his momentary spasm of bashfulness. He and Remington had a very pleasant ride in from Topanga. Stills had a light touch, a George Clooney touch, mocking the whole idea of a Hollywood gala while at the same time enjoying it. Plus the guy could wear the hell out of a tuxedo.

A couple of times Remington caught him glancing over at her, a half-puzzled, half-pleased expression on his face.
Where had she come from?

She told Stills about her experience in the makeover mill at Fox's Emerald City.

“Now Gus Monaghan's your best friend? Or do you still believe he has something up his sleeve?”

“I just think the guy might be playing a double game, that's all.”

“Don't worry about it. The task force is getting some push-back from the industry, sure. Some anonymous producer got quoted in
Variety
saying we're anti-Hollywood. But it's nothing I can't handle. We were invited to this party, weren't we?”

She was still having second thoughts as the two of them approached the front door of Monaghan's mansion. Rick reached out and grabbed her hand, not out of intimacy but as a gesture of reassurance. The wealthy and famous had flocked. Remington didn't care how tarted up she might be.
These aren't my people,
she thought.

The conviction struck her anew as soon as they entered the three-story-high entry hall. The crowd was whiplash-worthy, necks constantly snapping around at the sight of this or that celebrity. Everyone was there. The mayor was there. Janiece Baez, the L.A. County district attorney, worked the crowd, glad-handing like the woman she was, a politician up for reelection.

But the movie stars represented the night's money shots. As Stills and Remington passed through a leafy interior conservatory and out onto an endless marble terrace, she saw Radley Holt. He moved within a gnat-like cloud of young women. The actor surprised Remington by lighting up as soon as he saw her.

“Detective,” he called out, coming over to Remington and giving her a practiced buss on the cheek. She introduced Stills.

Holt clapped the lawyer on the shoulder. “The task-force director, right?” He turned to his female retinue. “Ladies, be prepared to present your IDs, because this gent is on the lookout for anyone underage.”

The star was kidding, but the half-dozen women with him did appear almost impossibly young.

DiCaprio was there. With his full beard he looked like that other Leo, Tolstoy. Brad and Angelina. Sandra Bullock, whom Remington caught giving the haven't-I-seen-that-somewhere? eye to her gown. It was all too much.

Knowing which side his bread was buttered, Stills pretty much ignored the Hollywood contingent. Instead, he concentrated on the politicos. He was kind and attentive to Remington, but the conversation was too-too inside for her. She detached herself and wandered from the terrace onto the lawn.

Monaghan had installed a massive, semitrailer-size glass tank on the grounds. Inside, a pair of bottle-nosed dolphins swam. Remington wondered at the appropriateness of the arrangement. Oceana promoted healthy seas, yet here were two captives from the sea being displayed for the pleasure of partygoers.

No one else seemed to mind. Guests crowded around the tank. The humans grinned manically at the twin dolphins, which grinned manically back. Occasionally, one or the other of the frisky creatures would rise out of the tank and spit water at the tuxes and the bejeweled gowns. Shrieks of dismayed laughter matched the chittering ha-ha's of the marine mammals.

As she wandered the elaborate gardens, Remington saw Judd Lowe, the bad-boy actor who'd been with Radley Holt at the Farmers Market. She didn't expect to be noticed, but Lowe broke off from a clutch of admirers to join her.

“I have to apologize for the last time I saw you,” he said by way of greeting. “I wasn't fit for public consumption.” He looked a little more bright-eyed that evening.

“I haven't seen our host,” Remington thought to say.

“Oh, Gus hasn't shown just yet. Probably convoying in his caravan. You know he doesn't really live here, don't you? He's got the Zuma Beach place. Plus he just drives around in his limo a lot.” Lowe swung his arm at the sprawling mansion. “This is just his playpen.”

“The Brokedown Palace.”

“You know about that, do you?”

“I've heard tales.”

“This is one case where gossip totally fails. Massive debauchery. Massive.”

“But nothing…illegal.”

“Hmm. I wonder what you would make of it, Detective. You know, consent is such a slippery concept.”

“You think?”

“No. You're right. It's entirely black and white. No means no, right? But ‘yes'—there can be shades of gray there. Some of the latest neurological findings challenge the whole idea of free will.” Lowe burst out with a laugh at himself. “Please don't tell anyone I just said that. You'll ruin my reputation as a lout.”

They strolled together. The mansion loomed above them. Lowe broke out into a few bars of the Dead's “Brokedown Palace.” Then he segued into “Layla.”

“That's you?” he asked. “The Derek and the Dominos song?”

“My mother was a fan.” Remington wanted to steer the conversation back around to their host. “You've been here before, to some of Monaghan's Brokedown Palace affairs, have you?”

“Gus is Gus, you know? I love him like a—well, maybe not like a father, more like a dirty old uncle. But his trip is most definitely not my trip.”

“Massive debauchery,” Remington said, quoting Lowe's own words back to him.

Lowe stopped walking. “Are you interested professionally, say, as a detective? Or, you know, just average normal curiosity?' ”

“I left my sidearm at the office,” she lied. She had a little .25-caliber Baby Browning concealed in her clutch purse. Don't leave home without it.

“Come on,” Lowe said. “I'll show you.”

He grabbed her arm and steered her back toward the mansion. Judd Lowe wasn't the biggest movie star on the planet, or even the most well-known one at the party. But he would do as an entry in Remington's future pantheon of memories.
There was the time that Judd Lowe and I
…

Despite what he had said about Gus Monaghan's trip not being his trip, Lowe found his way around Brokedown Palace effortlessly. He brought Remington to an obscure entrance off a back wing of the house. An unlocked door allowed them access. Remington noticed the total lack of security.
Quit it. You are not on the job
.

“Now I'm going to have to kiss you,” Lowe said, as soon as they passed inside.

And he did. She didn't resist.

“It's required, you know, in order for you to gain entry into the inner sanctum.”

They headed down a narrow hallway that gave out onto the top of a sweeping marble stair. Remington tried to keep her bearings. No one was around. She could hear the thump of music from the terrace, but it sounded far off, filtered through the massive rockpile of a house. The stairs curved downward.

“ ‘Midway through my life's journey…' ”
Lowe read the Dante line painted on the wall in cursive script.

“ ‘I found myself in a dark wood…' ”
Remington murmured.

The lower level featured a spectacular Roman bath complex. A pillared room had a rectangular caldarium in the middle of it. Classical statuary and other art lined the walls. Steam rose from the tiled bath. Farther on were two smaller, square pools of different temperatures, the classic tepidarium and the frigidarium of the Romans. Remington thought it easily the most beautiful and, at the same time, the strangest room she had ever entered.

As the hall had been, and the stairwell and evidently the whole wing, the entire space was deserted. Their footsteps echoed on the marble floors. The cream of Los Angeles society was gathered somewhere above them, while here below lay a fantastic realm out of the third century
B.C.

Lowe didn't linger. He led Remington directly past the baths. “Unless you'd like…?” he asked, gesturing toward the pools.

“Oh, and me without a swimsuit,” she said. Lowe laughed.

At the opposite end of the room rose a massive portal, its cornice emblazoned with Dante's “Abandon all hope” warning, this time inscribed in the original Tuscan vernacular:
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate.”

“Can't fault Gus for class,” Lowe said. He pushed open an oak door that led, Chinese-box style, to a succession of smaller and smaller chambers. A statue half blocked the entryway, a bronze rendering of a satyr, its satyrhood fully erect, an arm raised in invitation.

A plaque on the base identified the figure as the Greek god, Priapus.

Farther along, lit by a single spotlight, stood another statue. Remington gave an involuntary shiver when she saw what it was: a garish, detailed, life-size rendering of Tarin Mistry, done up in the painted ceramic style of Jeff Koons.

As she moved closer, she realized that it was indeed a work of the infamous artist, and thus easily worth seven figures. Koons had portrayed Tarin Mistry in character from the first scene of
Joshua Tree,
striding forward in a long, flowing calico dress and clunky leather boots. Given the present surroundings, Remington found the realism of the piece jarring.

“Gus is obsessed with her,” Lowe remarked casually.

He took a party mask from a rack that held dozens of them, raising it to his face. “I am not me, and you are no longer you.”

Couches, collections of pillows and low-slung Roman-style
klinai
were scattered everywhere. The first room was low-lit and rather gloomy, but Remington had no trouble getting the point of all the artsy erotica. She wandered among the statuary and paintings. Fine oils mixed with more modern pieces. A hologram display showed a young Marilyn pleasuring Joe Schenck. One painting portrayed a hulking male figure with a female crouched at his feet. A title labeled the scene “Corean Master with Slave.”

A huge brushed-steel tablet was affixed to one wall, listing in heavyweight bas relief the sexual peccadilloes of various celebrities.
“Alfred Hitchcock, Elvis: voyeurism,”
it read.
“Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn: hebephilia. Salvador Dalí: prefers solo masturbation to sex
.
Howard Hughes: trichophilia. Ed Wood: angora. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper: orgies
.
James Dean: bisexual.”
At the bottom of the list, the punchline:
“Gus Monaghan: ????”

Still wearing his mask, Judd Lowe tapped the name of Rob Lowe, enshrined in molded steel. “Distant relation,” he said. “Some sort of third cousin a hundred times removed.”

Remington was aware of Lowe watching her reaction as they left the first room and penetrated to the next. She felt as though she were on some narrowing path. One chamber, then another, then the next.

The last room was the smallest, about thirty by thirty feet. The gloom there was deeper. The walls, ceiling and floor were painted red. This was the infamous “scarlet chamber,”
chambre écarlate,
of the Rose and Thorn books.

Lowe lingered in the doorway. “Press the wall,” he prompted her.

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

A panel opened with a smooth click, displaying a collection of riding crops, knouts and whips. Another push, another panel opening to reveal a fantastic collection of cordage, silk ropes, leather stays. Enshrined beneath a spotlight were a pair of mink-lined handcuffs. Pressure on the wall elsewhere moved a heavy wooden chair out into the room. A last panel opened upon an elaborate arrangement that centered on a stylized gynecological table.

“Whoa!” Remington tried, and failed, to keep her tone light.

“This is what you wanted to see, isn't it, Detective? This is the stuff of your imaginings?”

Lowe's mask was still in place, but his voice seemed different. Remington looked back at him. Instead of the angular, hard-bodied young movie star, there stood in the doorway an older, stockier male, wearing the same disguise but clearly not the same person.

Gus Monaghan.

“Hello, Detective. You've been asking around about me. And now here I am.”

Under her breath, Remington cursed Judd Lowe for his betrayal. Luring her down into the bowels of the mansion just to deliver her up to Monaghan.

“Do you play chess, Layla? I have ever since I was a boy.”

“Back in Idaho.”

“The detective does her homework. Righto, back in Idaho. I might have had one of the only chess sets in the state, which is otherwise filled with stupid people and Nazis.”

“Mr. Monaghan, I really think we should have this little talk elsewhere.”

“No, no, I have you exactly where I want you.”

“I'm your guest, and I'm uncomfortable.”

The producer let out a dry cackle. In the full light of day, he might have made for a ridiculous figure, with his Mardi Gras mask and his fireplug stature. The gloom of the chamber made him appear formidable.

“As a boy playing chess, whenever someone moved against me I found it was best if they came to understand that I had been moving against
them
all along. A fog rolls over the chessboard, and even my pawns become warriors. Yes, you are so right, I make my opponents…uncomfortable.”

“It helps the game if you happen to own the board, right?”

Another raspy chuckle from the producer. Remington took a step toward the chamber's doorway. An odd effect: without seeming to move, Monaghan cut off her retreat.