the Prostitutes' Ball (2010) (6 page)

"No, the butterfly collector."

I was losing it.

"I think my dad knows him. He's been here at parties and stuff. I don't pay much attention to shit like that. I got my own life."

"What do you pay attention to?"

"The color of Lindsay's or Paris's undies or the lack thereof." He giggled. Then he touched the bum marks on his T-shirt. "Man, that taze was brutal. My nipples are still stinging."

"Detective Scully, is it really necessary to do this tonight?" Stender Sheedy Jr. interjected.

"Yes it is." I turned to Dunbar. "When was the last time you went to your house on Skyline Drive?"

"I don't go up there. I told you, it's a fucking investment. It's in my trust."

"The Dorothy White Foundation?"

"Yes."

"Who is Dorothy White?"

"My mother. It's her maiden name. They named my dumbass trust after her for some fucked-up reason nobody can ever quite explain." "And you never go up to 3151 Skyline?"

"It's an investment," he almost shrieked. "I don't fuck with that shit. I have people who do that for me." He was becoming very agitated.

Then, apropos of absolutely nothing, he said, "It's fucking Christmas, dude. You know, Christmas?"

"How much cocaine do you do?"

"I'm taking the fifth on that one, buddy," he sneered angrily.

Now Stender Sheedy, sensing my displeasure and his client's jeopardy, stepped forward. "Brooks wants to cooperate, Detective, it's just hard when he has fifty guests."

I turned to Brooks. "Where were you between ten and ten fifteen tonight?"

"He was here," Stender said.

"Yeah," Brooks agreed. "I was right here, asshole."

"The party started at nine thirty," Stender said. "He's got fifty witnesses. He doesn't know anything."

Which had to be the understatement of this entire holiday season.

"Okay. Here's the deal, Mr. Sheedy. You have your client in my office tomorrow morning at nine A
. M
. Have him cleaned up and sober. Otherwise, I'm going to issue a warrant for his arrest as a material witness."

I already knew that this stoned pudgeball wasn't involved in my triple murder, but I had some more questions that I needed to ask him on background. As it was, he was so loaded I'd have to do all of this again anyway, because a statement taken while a witness is under the influence of a powerful drug wouldn't hold up in court. I took out two business cards and handed one to Brooks, the other to Sheedy.

"Where do they make these up, Kinko's?" Brooks said, frowning at the department-issued card.

"I'll find my partner and get out of here," I told Sheedy. "Have him there on time tomorrow."

"He'll be there," Stender promised.

I walked back to the main house and was just heading into the living room when I saw the girl in the green sequined mini come out of the powder room.

"Excuse me, miss. Did my friend just give you his business card?"

"Huh?"

It was a sharp crowd.

"My friend, the handsome African-American in the rust-colored suit. I think he gave you the wrong card. We just got new ones."

She pawed into her purse, her expressive brow furrowed in concentration. She dug through bags of powder, pills, and beauty aids before finding the card and pulling it out.

I looked at it. An expensive gold-embossed number, definitely not from Kinko's. Nifty little picture of a golf flag in the top right corner. Underneath it said:

HOLE IN ONE PRODUCTIONS

PRODUCER & CEO

Chapter
9.

I told Sumner what I'd learned from Brooks and Stender Sheedy in the carriage house as we headed across town to meet with Alexa. Once I was finished, I also gave him a good sanding down over his professional demeanor and investigative methods.

"You were down there passing out your little production company cards to a room full of coked-up agents and D-girls while you were supposed to be working this case with me. I'm trying to be patient, but this shit's gotta stop or I'm gonna make a serious move on you."

"I was on the job, Scully. There's more than one way to prepare Courgettes Provencale."

"Please stop with the cooking metaphors."

"I was in the zone, brother. While you're up in the carriage hous
e w
ith Lord Fauntleroy, I had those freaks in my crosshairs working ground zero, collecting facts."

"If you got something, lets hear it," I said, wondering if maybe I'd jumped too fast.

"I always get something, my man," he shot back.

"Make it great, my man!
"

"Brooks Dunbar is broke," Hitchens began. "What our moonlighting sergeant from Ameritech told us is true. His trust is all locked up. As a result he's a thief. He waits 'til his friends are stoned or passed out then steals credit cards out of their wallets and runs up huge tabs. I learned from one guy that some Russian oligarch's kid got hit for almost two hundred grand on his black AmEx a month ago.

"When his victims start hiring bent noses and talking about his kneecaps, young Brooks takes them to expensive Melrose stores like Louis Vuitton, Fred Segal, and especially this place called Cruel Hearts which is right down from the Ivy. It specializes in expensive S and M leather and jewelry. He got his mother to set him up accounts at these places. To keep his friends from killing him, he buys time by letting them charge expensive stuff on his mother's accounts there. His mother, by the way, is Dorothy White. They named Brooks's trust in her maiden name." I had that last part, but little else.

"Among other things, this kid also owns Eagle's Nest Productions," Hitch continued.

"You shitting me? Wasn't that a huge privately owned TV studio back in the eighties? They used to have half a dozen shows on the air. I haven't heard anything about them for almost twenty years. It explains, I guess, why Stender Sheedy is his lawyer."

"Under Brooks Dunbar's astute guidance, Eagle's Nest now only makes the occasional Paris Hilton Look, Pa, No Bra video. The last one didn't make back its production costs so Stender probably doesn't have to work too hard on that account.

"His art-dealing business consists mostly of stealing a few of his dad s paintings out of the guesthouse so his old man wont notice
-
then fencing them in Melrose Boulevard antique shops." He looked over and smiled. "There's more if you're interested."

"Yeah, I'm interested." I had to admit, he'd done better than I had.

"So his art and movie businesses are both a joke, like Sergeant Cruz says. Nobody likes this kid. He's been cut off by both his mom and dad, which is why he's such a thief. Dorothy Dunbar still thinks little Brooks will pull out of his drug-induced tailspin, but nobody else believes it. They're using him. He's using them. All of this useful intel was obtained by Sumner Hitchens, Esquire, while you were in the carriage house examining a fucking table base."

I didn't respond. When you're right, you're right.

"An apology would be nice," he prompted.

"I'm not gonna apologize to you just because you did your job, Hitchens."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Courtesies of a small and trivial character strike deepest in the grateful heart," he said.

"Who said that? Sure doesn't sound much like Einstein."

"Henry Clay. You should start reading more than department wanted fliers." He snap-shifted the Porsche and we sped on.

Sumner pulled in at a pancake house restaurant located in a strip mall off Mission Road near the medical examiner's building. It was after one A
. M
. I'd called on my cell and knew Alexa would be waiting.

Hitch chirped the car lock and we walked past a space where my Acura was parked.

Inside, as we approached a back booth where Alexa was sitting, I could see a worried look on her face. Before we even sat down I knew she had more bad news for us.

Chapter
10.

"Both of the dead girls were high-dollar Internet prostitutes," Alexa said as soon as we slid into the booth with her. "The blonde was named Chrissy Sweet. Her working name was Slade Seven. The brunette was Paula Morgan, working name Steel Cavanaugh. These were five
-
thousand-dollar dates. They worked for Yolanda Dublin, the Mulholland Madame. This hooker angle is gonna be media catnip so the case just got more sensitive, if that's even possible."

"Doesn't Yolanda Dublin run an Internet site called the Double Click Club?" Hitch asked.

"Right," Alexa said. "And from their pictures on that site, the girls were both gorgeous."

The waitress came and Hitch and I ordered coffee, along with ha
m a
nd eggs and orange juice because we were probably going to be up all night, working through breakfast.

After the waitress left, Alexa continued. "The way her Internet site works, a client gets thoroughly screened by Yolanda first. Then, if you pass muster, you're issued a password which allows you access to the exclusive services section of the site. There, you can scroll the girls' pictures and streaming videos. The rates are listed on each girl's page as a modeling or therapist's fee. If you're a preferred client, once you double-click on a girl, the date is made."

Hitch was writing this down in his journal.

"Detective," Alexa said, and Hitchens looked up. "Hopefully this won't be talked about to third parties operating outside the scope of the investigation."

"What exactly does that mean, Captain?"

"UTA," I said. "Jamie Foxx. Studio development execs."

He smiled at her and nodded. "Me and Shane already been through this," he said, collegially.

"Good." Alexa smiled.

"Anything from Ballistics?" I asked.

"There were nine bullets, three in each body. All of them were 9 x 18 mm Makarov slugs. The most common machine gun weapon that fires those is a Russian-made Bizon. Ballistics says a Bizon uses a standard sixty-four-shot helical mag and can burn through six hundred rounds a minute. According to the people who heard the gunshots, and from the number of brass shell casings we retrieved so far, I think he must have gone through most of that magazine."

"Is Ballistics trying to confirm the weapon?" I asked.

"We're going to test fire a Bizon to see if the ejection striations on the brass are similar," Alexa said. "Tomorrow you guys are going to have to get back out there on the crime scene with CS1 and some metal detectors and find all the stray slugs and brass. We need to know exactly how many rounds he squeezed off."

Hitch looked up with a thoughtful expression on his handsome face. "We can't ignore the idea that this could have been a contract hit and if it was, then we probably have only one primary target. That would probably be Scott Berman, which would make the two other vies collateral damage."

He looked down at the notes he had made in his red leather journal, then clicked his pen and tapped it on the tabletop. "There could be a lot more going on here than we can see on the surface."

That last remark sounded to me like a man still scaring up interesting plot points for Act One.

"There's always that possibility," Alexa agreed. Then she picked up her purse. "I'm gonna take the Acura and go on home. Sumner, will you take Shane back to the office so he can check out a slick-back to drive?"

"No problem."

I left Hitch in the booth and walked my wife outside to the car.

"How's it going with him?" Alexa asked as she unlocked the MDX.

"I'll find my way. We're still circling each other, checking out punching styles."

"I will not look kindly on leaks," she cautioned.

I kissed her and said, "Stop being such a "

"Such a what?" she interrupted, smiling.

"A newly minted, tight-ass captain."

"You wanta talk tight asses, you need to come home," she teased. Then she kissed me again and drove off.

After she was gone, Sumner Hitchens and I sat in the restaurant, finishing our early breakfast without talking.

Tm thinking we need to go badge Yolanda Dublin/' he said as we were paying.

"Yep, that's definitely the next move. Let's go get the Mulholland Madame out of bed. Try and catch her with a head full of cotton."

"I ran her while you were outside. She lives out on the Coast Highway in Santa Monica. 2300. That's up by the Malibu line. The even numbers are on the beach side of the road."

Pricey.

Chapter
11.

The first good thing that happened since I got this damn case was parked in the driveway in front of Yolanda Dublin's multimillion
-
dollar beach pad. It was a new black Mercedes 350 with the partial plate number 4 L M C. The rest of the plate read 292.

"That ride was coming down Skyline Drive when Alexa and I got the call and were going up," I told Sumner.