Body Copy (19 page)

Tremaine stayed put.

Moments later, Tremaine saw two people leave from the same door the black man had left. A young man and a young woman, an attractive young woman with blonde hair and some serious surgical augmentation. Tremaine could tell from where he was sitting and watching. And he wasn’t that close. The two people got into separate cars.

The man, a yellow VW Golf. The woman, a white Ford Explorer.

Tremaine was interested in the woman. He watched her drive down the alley, right past him. She hit Cornado and went left toward Seventh. Tremaine cranked up the Cutlass, pulled out from his little space by the brick wall, and followed her.

On Olympic now, headed west, Tremaine had the Ford Explorer in his sights, pretty far up there, lots of cars in between them, but he wasn’t going to lose her. Fifteen minutes later, back in Hollywood, the Explorer went through the light at La Brea, so did the Cutlass.

Tremaine followed the Explorer right down a side street, then left, then right, then onto Wilshire. Tremaine thought, this is her home turf. The Explorer pulled into a metered parking space in front of some little shops and restaurants right there on Wilshire. Tremaine got lucky and found a 188

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spot three spaces up from the Explorer. Tremaine watched the woman get out of her car and walk into a Chinese Restaurant, not fancy, take-out style.

Tremaine got out of the Cutlass and stood next to it, waiting. Ten minutes later, he saw the woman exit the restaurant, a bag of Chinese food in one hand, the keys to her Explorer in the other.

Tremaine started walking toward the Explorer. The woman was next to the driver’s side door as Tremaine was next to the passenger’s side door. She clicked the unlock button on her keychain twice. She opened the back door on the driver’s side and put the bag of Chinese food on the back seat of the Explorer. She shut the back door. Then she opened her door and got in. As she was about to put the keys in the ignition, Tremaine quickly opened the passenger’s side door, got in, and shut the door.

The woman screamed. A wild and fearful look pos-sessed her eyes.

Tremaine said, “Calm down. I’m a cop.”

She looked at him, frozen. She had her keys in her right hand, and Tremaine could see there was a small bottle of mace on her keychain.

“Don’t use that mace. Put your keys on the floor. Do it,” he said. “Do it now.”

She did.

The woman was porn-star attractive. Fake everything.

An almost-orange tan, bright-white bleached teeth, and an absurd chest. And wild-eyed, crazy blue eyes that suggested a sexual confidence that was palpable, impossible to miss.

Tremaine said, “I know what you do, I know what your 189

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boss does, and I want you to know this: I don’t care. I don’t give two shits.”

She stared at him. She was scared, but she had an aggression about her. She’d been in sticky situations before.

And she hadn’t said a word since Tremaine had gotten in.

The only sound she’d made was the initial scream.

Tremaine said, “I’m going to pull some pictures out of my pocket and show them to you. I want you to tell me if the people in the pictures have ever been to one of your shows. We are looking for these people. We do not care what you do at your studio. We are just looking for these people. If we cared what you did at your studio, you would be out of business and your boss would be in jail.

You might be, too.”

Tremaine pulled a picture out of his pocket. It was a picture of Tyler Wilkes. He showed it to the woman.

She said, calmly, “Yeah, he came in. I think a couple times. But he hasn’t been in for a while.”

Tremaine nodded. She wasn’t lying, not yet, at least.

Tremaine said, “Now, I’m going to show you someone else. I want you to tell me the same thing, if he’s ever been to one of your shows.”

Tremaine pulled out a picture of Roger Gale and showed it to the woman.

She looked at it, closely, and said, “I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”

Tremaine thought, was she lying because she and the karate studio people were somehow involved with Roger Gale, or was she telling the truth?

Tremaine said, “Is it possible that you might not have seen him but someone else did?”

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“It’s possible, if he just came in once or something. But I doubt it. Most people are repeat customers. There are a couple other girls there, a couple other performers, but we’re all there most days. And we can look in the room at our guests. Even when we’re not performing. And we do.

Look at our guests, I mean.”

Tremaine said, “You’ve never seen this man? Don’t lie to me.”

“If you’re a cop,” she said, “why don’t you shut us down? If it’s so important that you find these guys, what difference does it make to you if you take us down in the process?”

“Like you said,” Tremaine said, holding up the picture of Roger Gale. “Your customers come back. We want him to come back.”

“I don’t think he’s ever come in.”

“We didn’t know that. Now we do.”

“So now that you know that, are we going to get shut down?”

“Not if you keep your mouth shut.”

“About what?” she said. “Our operation or you jumping in my car?”

“Both,” Tremaine said. And he opened the door to the Explorer and got out.

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Tremaine was on the roof of his trailer in Malibu, a beautiful night to be on the roof of a trailer in Malibu. How did all of this stuff connect? His conscious mind wasn’t helping him. Neither was his subconscious mind. He picked up Lyle and put him in his lap. Lyle, being agree-able tonight, not bickering over being moved.

“Who’s telling me the truth, Lyle? And, Lyle, who’s lying?”

Tyler Wilkes wasn’t lying, not under the pressure they put him under. He saw Roger Gale go in that karate studio. Tremaine thought, maybe, just maybe, Roger Gale had gone in there just to use the bathroom, like I had pretended to do. Maybe Gale had just innocently gone into the studio, and Tyler Wilkes reaped the fruits of that ac-B O D Y C O P Y

cident and got himself a peep show or two. Or maybe Gale just went in once or twice for the experience, then never went back. And the girl had missed him.

Or was the girl in the Explorer lying? Was she protecting her boss, her pimp? That guy was tough, intense, Tremaine could see that, it was obvious. Maybe she would lie, even to a guy she thought was a cop, just to protect him. Tremaine thought, were they involved somehow with Roger Gale? But if Gale had gone in there and just seen a few shows, and the karate studio people weren’t involved with him in any other way, why would she lie about it?

She didn’t lie about Tyler. She’d come right out and said, yeah, that guy’s been in here a few times. But, but, was she cool enough under pressure to admit to having seen Tyler Wilkes, but not admit to having seen Roger Gale, if she had indeed seen Roger Gale?

Hmm, Tremaine thought, Lyle on his lap, the beautiful Malibu sky black and dotted with stars above his head.

What do I know? What do I
really
know? That Roger Gale said he had an affair but he didn’t. And that he’d gone into a karate studio in downtown Los Angeles and may or may not have seen a sex show. Tremaine sat there, silent, Lyle, a hot sleeping mound on his lap, breathing, up and down, up and down.

“What’s going on here, Lyle?”

Lyle didn’t answer.

Tremaine’s cell rang, he looked at it, didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID.

“Tremaine,” he said.

“Donald, it’s Heather,” the voice said.

Heather? Oh, Drop Dead Heather. Tremaine thought, 193

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shit, how is it possible that I keep forgetting to call this girl?

Heather said, “We had a deal.”

Tremaine thought, I’m not making this mistake again, and said, “You’re right. What are you doing right now?”

“Driving home from work.”

Tremaine said, “Should we meet at Casa Del Mar, in Santa Monica? Half-hour or so?”

“Perfect,” Heather said. “I can walk there from my apartment.”

“See you soon.”

And when Tremaine walked in to the big, sprawling hotel bar with big windows out to the beach, he did see Heather, immediately, standing at the bar, and he thought, man, Drop Dead Heather is truly the perfect name. She’s a killer, an assassin, big white teeth smiling at him as he approached.

He remembered her now approaching him that day in the parking lot. Walking toward him. The long blonde hair, the body . . . The body that defies physics. The body that made you say, out loud, “How’d they do that?” The body that was skinny in the right places and not skinny in the right places and was about to make Tremaine just run out the door, dive into the ocean, and end it all.

Tremaine could see others in the bar, men
and
women, thinking, who’s the lucky guy? Who’s the guy who gets to have a drink with the bombshell?

Tremaine said, “Heather, you’re looking well.”

“Thank you, Donald.”

It was honestly hard for him to focus. If someone of-194

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fered him a million bucks to add two and two, he might not be up to the challenge.

“What did you do to Tyler?” Heather said. “When he got back the other day, he seemed . . . scared.”

“I just asked him some questions.”

“Well, do that more often. He gave us the rest of the day off, and I went to the beach.”

Heather stepped over to Tremaine and put her arm up against his and said, “See my tan?”

“Pretty good,” Tremaine said. “But I might still have you beat.”

She smiled at him, her eyes smiled, too, and she said,

“You’ve had more years in the sun than me.”

“I was afraid you might point that out.”

They settled into two seats down at the corner of the bar. Tremaine looked around. Tremaine enjoyed a nice hotel bar. And Casa Del Mar was a good one. Big rugs, big chairs, and those big windows out to the beach. And locals came here, too, after work, to see people, wind down, chat a little, maybe do some Westside networking.

“By the way,” Heather said, “what case are you working on? Can you tell me?”

Heather. She was cool. She respected the fact that maybe he didn’t want to tell her, so, because of that, he would.

“I’m investigating the murder of Roger Gale.”

“I remember when he was killed. I was just getting started in advertising. So, does Tyler . . .”

“He has nothing to do with it,” Tremaine said. Then, with a grin, “But I still don’t like him.”

Heather returned the grin and said, “Me neither.”

Tremaine bought them another round, then another, 195

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then another. And then there was that Drop Dead Heather smile again, coming toward him. She leaned in as she said,

“I looked you up online again. Why’d you quit surfing right after you won the title?”

Tremaine said, “It was time.”

Despite her buzz, she didn’t push him, she just said,

“You know, you can buy that video,
Insane Tremaine
, online.”

“That’s a really dumb name.”

“I like it,” she said.

“I didn’t do anything insane on that video. I was just trying to catch waves.”

Heather got off her barstool and stood up in front of Tremaine. He looked at her, standing there in her work clothes, gray pants and a black oxford, unbuttoned a few buttons down. She moved a little closer to him and grabbed his hand. He couldn’t help but look at her, check her out again. The blonde hair, the white teeth, the tan arm touching him.

“Let’s go to my apartment.”

“I’ll race you there,” he said.

They got to her apartment, a really nice place, tucked away on a quiet little street just blocks from the beach. Tremaine had almost forgotten that she was in her early twenties, then he saw the Monet print on the wall.

“I still have that from college. Don’t make fun of me. I needed to fill up some wall space.”

Heather, he thought. Just as I’m about to pin the foolish-little-girl rap on her, she comes up with something like that.

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Then Heather did something that really surprised Tremaine. A genuine surprise, the kind that only comes around a couple times in a lifetime.

She said, “I want to show you something.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Stay right here.”

She walked into the back bedroom, and then, moments later, came back out. She was wearing nothing but a black bra and black underwear.

Tremaine was having some trouble breathing. He said,

“You look terrific.”

She walked closer to him. She was now standing right in front of him.

“Question,” Tremaine said.

“Yes,” Heather said.

“Why are you making this so easy for me? Most guys . . .

no, every guy on the face of the earth would give an arm and a leg—and then another arm and another leg—for this opportunity.”

“I like you,” she said. “I get so sick of guys drooling all over me that I never get to do anything like this. I’m repulsed—sometimes scared—most of the time. When someone comes along that actually plays it cool, I don’t want to miss that opportunity. Because I really like doing stuff like this.”

Tremaine thought, one of the reasons she thinks I’m playing it cool is because I genuinely forgot to call her because of the case. Then he told himself what Heather had told him once: “So.”

Heather unclasped her bra, and Tremaine watched it fall 197

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to the floor. Heather’s big, white smile was gone, she was getting serious. She grabbed Tremaine’s hands and placed them on her breasts.

Tremaine thought for a moment that he’d died and gone to heaven. But that actually came a little later.

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The next morning, Tremaine woke up in the trailer. He’d left Heather’s in the night, a stupid smile plastered on his face for the entirety of the drive back to Malibu. He felt refreshed, the frustrations of the case eased a little. He knew what he had to do next, so he called Lopez and told him what he wanted, and where he wanted to meet, and how much he would buy him in order to get him there.