Harbor Nocturne (23 page)

The FID man repeated it, saying, “Who said anything about him raping a child? What’re you talking about?”

Chester Toles finally replied, “I’ll do any further talking through a lawyer. I think it’s time to retire on my vested pension and go fishing. And if you think you can get the DA to issue on me for tuning up that guy, send your nastygram message to the office of my future congressman in Idaho.”

Chester Toles removed the LAPD badge from his uniform shirt, saying, “I’ll give this to the boss on the way out.” With that, he made his exit, leaving his interrogator sitting alone in the interview room.

Fran Famosa and others on Watch 5 expressed the opinion to Sergeant Murillo that Chester’s court experience earlier that day, and the feelings it had evoked in him, had played some part in whatever happened in the Thai Town alley, involving a cop who, for fifteen minutes in his long career, was not the same apathetic, indifferent slacker they’d known for years.

As to the surprising feeling of sadness they all felt at losing the Unicorn from their ranks forever, Hollywood Nate spoke for many on Watch 5 that day when he said, “Why the hell couldn’t the lazy old bastard have been as hard to find as usual, when they assigned him that goddamn call to Thai Town?”

SIXTEEN

A
l
ittle over an
hour had elapsed before Hector Cozzo arrived at the surprisingly unimpressive house of Mr. Markov on Mount Olympus. Then Hector thought it over and decided that he shouldn’t have been surprised. Everything he’d learned about his boss so far had indicated that Markov was just another player, perched only a few rungs above Hector on the Hollywood hustlers’ totem. And with that thought in mind, he felt emboldened when he went to the front door and rang the bell.

Markov was dressed in a collarless white jersey with black stripes, white linen trousers, and Gucci loafers with no socks. His Elvis do had been recently dyed, and Hector thought he looked Eurotrash faggy.

“You are late,” Markov said with the slight accent that Hector had come to hate.

“There was traffic,” Hector replied, without groveling.

“Come in and sit down.” Markov led Hector into an unremarkable living room that didn’t even have a view.

Hector sat and showed as much attitude as he dared by asking, “Got something to drink?”

Markov looked as though his lowly employee had just slapped him, but he managed to say, with only a hint of a sneer, “The market has not delivered this week’s liquor order.”

“Never mind,” Hector said. “You probably only drink Russian vodka anyways. I’m sick of that potato juice.”

Now there was no doubt about it. Markov could see that Hector Cozzo was being deliberately insolent. But he checked his growing anger and said, “Things are going very badly for us.”

Hector recalled seeing the peg-leg guy and his partner in police uniforms. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You first,” Hector said. “This is your meeting. I guess you’re really pissed off at the way things got off the hook on Saturday night with Basil and Dr. Maurice.”

“You are once again tardy in reporting events to me,” Markov said. “Ivana has already telephoned me with the details of that disastrous evening. Which, by the way, has no doubt cost me the investment from Basil that we need so much.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Hector said.

“It was partly mine,” Markov admitted. “I should never have sent Dr. Maurice there in an attempt to please Basil. Do you suppose he really did operate on that man Kelly, or did he not? I do not fully understand it all.”

Hector said, “The doctor’s a badly bent and drugged-out lunatic. You can’t go with anything he says.”

Markov said, “Well, the entire debacle is water under the bridge. I did not bring you here to chastise you for that. Surely you know that the police have found the body of our missing dancer?”

“Who doesn’t by now?” Hector said.

“When was the last time you saw Mr. Kim?”

“I heard from him a couple days ago,” Hector said. “He’s got lethal anger-management issues. The guy could kill, jist because.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted me to find a certain Mexican dancer for him.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

Markov clenched his jaws. Then his eyes grew darker and, with an ice-pick smile, he said, “Do not toy with me, young man. You will be making a big mistake to do so.”

Hector’s insolence faded and he lost his nerve, remembering that these people had survived in places far removed from his Pedro salad days. He became more conciliatory, saying, “Mr. Markov, I don’t think I oughta get involved with whatever Mr. Kim wants, and I’m not even sure if I oughta keep my job with you.”

Somewhat mollified by the new deference in Hector’s tone, Markov said, “The business down at the Los Angeles Harbor began originally with Mr. Kim freelancing. I did not know about it at first, not until he needed money from me to complete the arrangement. I invested money without fully understanding the nature of my investment. Had I known from the beginning that he was smuggling human beings from Asian countries, I would not have become involved at all.”

Hector no longer believed anything Markov was telling him, but he shrugged and said, “Okay, if you say so.”

“But now you see what has happened, do you not? Mr. Kim has admitted to me that Daisy made certain threats, the kind of threats that would bring the local police and the federal authorities to our doorstep. She made accusations that might bring very serious charges against me and perhaps even against you.”

“Why against me? I didn’t do anything.”

“You talked with Mr. Kim about a street gang, and about having the container robbed from the storage yard, did you not?”

“I jist spitballed with him about the Crips doing a takeover of the security office!” Hector said. “I didn’t actually take any steps. The stupid silverback I was supposed to meet got himself busted, and the whole plan went away.”

“If the authorities find out about those meetings, they might consider it part of a larger criminal conspiracy,” Markov said. “Thirteen people dead? Kim could drag us both into it.”

“Maybe I’m not big enough to play with you people,” Hector said, a bit of a whine creeping into his voice. “Maybe I should jist give you back the keys to the house and go home to Pedro.”

“It is a bit late for that,” Markov said. “How many people are aware that Daisy made certain accusations about Mr. Kim before she disappeared?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Mr. Kim knows,” Markov said. “So why would I not know?”

Now Hector was sure. Markov and Kim were not employer and employee. They’d been partners in everything from the get-go, including the human trafficking that had gone awry.

“Okay, I don’t know who all mighta heard by now,” Hector said. “Every one of them bitches have mouths that never shut. For sure, Violet and the Mexican heard Daisy ranting. After that, Suki and Ivana also heard about it secondhand. And in another couple days they’ll probably be talking about it on the
Today
show,
and maybe Whoopi Goldberg and the rest of them other bitches at that morning hen party will be clucking about it by Friday.”

“There is a difference, though,” Markov said. “With the others it is either hearsay or nothing but the ravings of a grief-stricken girl. A girl who is now dead and cannot prove any of her accusations. But the Mexican dancer knows something more than the others. I believe her name is Lita Medina, is it not? The Mexican dancer can provide what the lawyers call direct evidence. She
saw
something.”

Hector was stunned. “Why do you say that? How do you know what she saw?”

“Because after Mr. Kim learned that Lita had also disappeared the very next day after Daisy did, he persuaded Violet to tell him why Lita ran away.”

Hector’s throat constricted. “Why did she run?”

Markov said, “Because she saw Daisy go away from her apartment with somebody on that day she disappeared. Lita did not identify the somebody to Violet.”

“Who do you think it was?” Hector croaked.

“Do not insult my intelligence,” Markov said.

“Mr. Kim?”

“That would be a reasonable guess,” Markov said. “Now, what I would like to know is, did the roommate Violet also share the same information with
you
?”

Hector took a breath and decided he had to lie. “No, this is the first I heard that Lita saw somebody with Daisy that day.”

Markov looked hard at Hector. “I would hate to think that you keep secrets from me.”

“I tell you, this is the first I heard of it!” Hector lied again. “And I wish I hadn’t. Now I really think I oughta go home to Pedro and leave Hollywood and all its problems to smarter people like you.”

“Do not talk like an idiot,” Markov said.

“Look, Mr. Markov,” Hector said. “If Mr. Kim is . . . somehow
involved
in the disappearance of Daisy, then the cops’re probably gonna find it out sooner or later. Can’t you distance yourself from him? Like, get him the fuck outta all your investments?”

In a rare moment, Markov spoke with what, Hector figured, was something approaching honesty: “Mr. Kim and I have a business relationship that cannot be severed. We must protect each other for mutual economic survival.”

Markov’s ferocious stare was making Hector’s hands sweat. He said querulously, “I don’t know what more I can do for you.”

Markov said, “If Kim were gone, I believe you and I could proceed with business as usual. Except that there would be more for me in your regular collections, and I would share a percentage of it with you. However, Mr. Kim does not intend to leave.”

“You got the wrong guy if you want something like
that
set up!
That
goes way beyond my job description!”

“What are you talking about?”

“About Mr. Kim leaving for good!” Hector said.

“I meant leaving the country,” Markov said. “Not leaving the world.”

Bullshit, Hector thought. I know what you meant. He impulsively lit a cigarette, even though there was no ashtray in the room. Markov got up and went to the kitchen, returning in a moment with a saucer for the cigarette ashes.

He said, “Then we have no alternative other than to protect Kim from arrest, because I greatly fear whatever he might feel compelled to say in order to make a deal with prosecutors. And that would be very bad for me, and I could make it very bad for you by making a plea bargain of my own if I were to be arrested.”

“Are you saying you’d rat me out?” Hector asked. “The cops don’t want a grifter like me! I’m a flunky! I jist take care of a bunch of bitches for you!”

“You conspired with Kim when there were thirteen people alive in that storage container,” Markov said. “Living human beings that you knew about. You did not inform the authorities about those trapped people.”

“They were already dead!”

Markov said, “How do you know exactly when they died? They could have been alive when you first learned about them. They could have been rescued if you had even bothered to call the authorities with an
anonymous
tip. But you did nothing to help them. That is what a federal prosecutor would say. We are all in trouble because of Kim’s stupidity, and that includes you.”

“Well, I’m not hooking up with some Crip to do a job on Kim! I don’t get down with that kind of shit,” Hector said. “It’d be real nice if Kim went to his reward with Buddha, but I can’t make it happen. I got an inner coward that tells me what I can do and what I can’t. And he’s speaking to me right this minute and telling me to get the fuck outta Dodge!”

“Calm yourself, Hector,” Markov said. “You have the ability to protect Kim from arrest, at least for the time being. At least until this search for Daisy’s killer hits a dead end.”

“How do I do that?”

“Find the Mexican dancer, Lita Medina. And give her location to Kim. He won’t be so clumsy and violent next time. If she is no longer a threat to him, then he can be dealt with at some later date. But right now there is no time to waste.”

“You’re telling me to set the girl up for—”

“No, of course not,” Markov interrupted. “I am asking you to do nothing more than find her and tell Kim how to find her. He will pay the girl to forget what she saw. Perhaps he will give her enough money to go back to Mexico and thrive. Then everyone will be happy.”

“But maybe he’ll decide to save the money and jist deal with her like he dealt with Daisy!”

“Hector, we are all facing arrest and trial, and you are talking like a fool,” Markov said. “You found the girl dancing in a strip bar down in the harbor area. You told Kim about her, and he went there and gave his approval to hire her. You picked her up and brought her to Hollywood. You know that much about her, therefore it cannot be hard for you to locate her acquaintances down there and offer them money to tell you where she might be. You are a San Pedro boy, are you not? Just find her and let Kim handle her with money. Are you not being overly concerned? What is she to you but just a Mexican stripper?”

“Gimme a minute to think,” Hector said, smoke sliding from his lips. “I’m starting to lose my shit here.”

“Let me see if I can find you a drink,” Markov said. “Is chardonnay all right?”

“Yeah, anything,” Hector said, and Markov went to the kitchen.

Hector Cozzo was having trouble processing all this information. It was way too much. Now he thought of a dizzying array of things—about the scratches on Kim’s face, for instance. He figured you didn’t have to watch every episode of
CSI
to know that fingernail scrapings might reveal enough DNA material to identify an assailant. And sooner or later, Violet was going to tell somebody
else
what Lita had told her about seeing somebody pick up Daisy in a car. Or maybe Violet would go to the cops herself if there was a reward posted. And that would make the cops go balls out to find Lita Medina, a very important eyewitness. And the Mexican dancer would lead them to the Korean. So Kim looked like he was cooked one way or the other, unless Lita Medina went away and stayed away.

Then he recalled something else Markov had just said: “You picked her up and brought her to Hollywood.” But he hadn’t! Dinko Babich did that job, Hector thought, but Markov doesn’t know about Dinko, and neither does Kim. Hector remembered how Dinko couldn’t take his eyes off Lita Medina even though she danced like an organ grinder’s monkey. Dinko took her to Hollywood, and he might’ve taken her
away
from Hollywood!

And then there was the little matter of the peg-leg guy and his tall sidekick, who happened to be fucking cops. But at this moment there was no way he was going to reveal that bit of information to Markov. Hector figured it meant that their whole enterprise was under police scrutiny and Markov was going to be put out of business soon, no matter what.

He decided that the best course of action was to walk away from this shitstorm ASAP and return to Pedro to hide out for a while and hope for the best. That’s exactly what he’d resolved to do, until Markov reentered the living room with his drink, as well as an offer that changed everything.

“It is a decent chardonnay,” Markov said, “not like the so-called
drinkable
bilge we sell at Club Samara.”