Private L.A. Read online

  Thom Harlow was in the center of the picture, wearing Vietnam-era US Army fatigues, looking ruggedly handsome and yet sincere, sympathetic, and lovable—traits that had made him a bankable box-office star. Thom’s arm was draped lazily around his wife’s shoulder. Jennifer’s dark hair was pulled back tight, revealing the remarkable bone structure of her face. She wore a white short-sleeved blouse, khaki shorts, and aviator sunglasses. A vintage Nikon camera hung off one shoulder. Her pose, her entire look, said smart, adventurous, and yet oozed mystery and sexuality, traits that had made her an even more bankable star than her husband.

  The children sat at their feet, arms around their knees. Malia and Jin were smiling. Miguel was looking off to his right somewhere. Cynthia Maines was there too, standing slightly to the left of the family, carrying a clipboard. Camilla Bronson and Terry Graves were there as well. My attention, however, swung to and held on the only other person in the picture.

  Crouched above and behind the children, below and in front of Thom and Jennifer, she was stunningly exotic, mesmerizing in her own way even in the shadow of Jennifer, a woman whom People magazine twice voted “Sexiest Woman Alive.” Late teens, early twenties, she appeared to be at least partly Latina and partly Asian, with thick shiny dark hair pulled back in a long braid and skin the color of caramel. Her soft doe eyes seemed to speak of sadness or some hidden wound, making her look entirely vulnerable. But her cheekbones, teeth, and full lips were set hard, as if beneath whatever haunted her, she was built of iron or steel.

  “Who is she?” I asked, gesturing at the photo.

  “Exactly,” Sci said.

  Chapter 75

  JUSTINE FOUND THE address Anita Fontana had given her around ten thirty that morning. It was a small pale-blue fiftiesera bungalow on a sleepy side street off Lankershim Boulevard in Burbank.

  She knocked at the door. A few moments later, a woman’s voice called softly in Spanish, “Who is there, please?”

  “It’s Justine Smith,” she replied. “Anita called me.”

  After a moment, she heard a dead bolt thrown. The door opened several inches on a security chain. Maria Toro, the Harlows’ plump cook, looked out. She asked in English, “Are you alone?”

  “Yes,” Justine said.

  “We think someone watches us,” Maria whispered. “Can you leave? Come back to alley? Anita finds you there.”

  Justine was confused, wondered if their paranoia was justified or invented, but nodded. “Give me five minutes.”

  She returned to her car as if she’d gotten the wrong address, trying to spot whoever they suspected of watching them, but saw no one and no vehicle that stood out. She drove back to Lankershim, turned left, and then made an immediate left again into an alleyway that ran behind the bungalows.

  Anita Fontana stood in the alley by an open gate. She pointed to an open garage door on the opposite side of the alley, and Justine pulled in and parked. When Justine exited, the Harlows’ housekeeper pointed a remote control device at the garage and the door lowered.

  Justine followed Anita through the gate into a yard that had seen better times. Untended orchid plants and a riot of cactus and vines crept onto the deck around a pool brimming with algae-green water.

  “Who owns this place?” Justine asked as she followed the Harlows’ housekeeper through an open screen door into a dim room furnished with 1960s furniture and a shag rug. A television blared in the corner, cable coverage of the hunt for the Harlows. Jacinta Feliz, the youngest of the Harlow staff, sat on the couch, arms folded, watching Justine as she entered.

  “I don’t know this for sure,” Anita said. “How are the girls? And Miguel?”

  The housekeeper asked this with a longing in her voice that impressed Justine with its intensity.

  “You love them, don’t you?” asked Justine. “Miguel? The girls?”

  Anita’s eyes glistened and she clasped her hands. “Sí, I love Miguel … all of them. How could I …?” She choked and began to cry.

  Maria Toro, the cook, came up beside Anita, put her arm firmly around the housekeeper, looked fiercely at Justine. “We all love the children. Especially Anita. She has no children of her own.”

  At that, Anita began to sob and hold herself tight, as if pierced with inner pain. “Sit down,” Justine soothed. “It’s okay, we’ll figure out a way for you to see them, for all of you to see them. Okay?”

  “Mr. Sanders, he say no,” Anita wailed. “I ask him. He say no.”

  The poor woman was beside herself now. Jacinta Feliz had gone to her side, put her arm around the older woman too.

  “You will see those children,” Justine said firmly. “Have you been contacted by the FBI?”

  “No, no one,” the cook said. “We come here that same day we see you at the ranch, when they are just gone. We here ever since. Someone brings us food. Ms. Bronson, Mr. Sanders, they say they want to protect us from reporters, say we stay here until these things calm down.”

  Justine heard her smartphone chime, telling her she’d received a text. She ignored it, said, “This is America, ladies. Mr. Sanders and Camilla Bronson can’t make you do anything, do you understand? You all have green cards, yes?”

  They shook their heads. “We come on temporary visa, ten-month,” said Maria Toro.

  “How long have you worked for the Harlows?” Justine asked, surprised.

  “Twelve years,” Anita said.

  “Eight,” said the cook.

  “Four,” said the maid.

  “And they never offered to sponsor you to try to get citizenship?” Justine was beginning to doubt the Harlows’ public personas in a big way.

  Anita began to cry again, shaking her head. “No, they no do this for us.”

  “Did you ask?”

  They all nodded. “But Mr. Thom say they already bring in the children, it is difficult to get more through la Migra with them as sponsors,” Maria Toro said.

  “But he can get you the ten-month work visas?”

  “This is not a problem, I think,” Jacinta said.

  Justine didn’t know what to make of all of this. On its face, the fact that the Harlows were willing to get the women work visas but not green cards seemed lame, and counter to the Harlows’ reputation. But then again, she wasn’t at all well versed in current US immigration laws, quotas and such.

  Anita wiped at her eyes, said, “You can help us?”

  “Yes, of course,” Justine said. “Anything—” Her phone chimed again. “Hold on a second.”

  She dug the phone from her purse and saw that she’d received a photo from Sci. She opened the file, looked at the group picture, read the text that accompanied it: “Do you know who the young woman front row center is?”

  Justine frowned, zoomed in on the woman, a girl, really. Gorgeous. But no, she didn’t recognize her at all. She was about to text back “Negative” when she had a different idea.

  “Do you know this girl with the Harlows?” she asked, turning the phone to show the three women.

  Maria Toro reached out, took the phone, studied the picture, and shook her head. She handed it to Anita, who looked at the photo with great suspicion but then said, “I no know her.”

  “Jacinta?” Justine asked.

  The young maid took the phone, glanced at it, hesitated, then shook her head. She walked it back to Justine, who said, “For a second there, you thought you knew her?”

  “No,” Jacinta said. “I was just thinking that maybe it was the nanny they hire after we leave and before they go for Vietnam.”

  Chapter 76

  AT ELEVEN MINUTES to noon that day, Johnson Rollerbladed along Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. He wore white-framed, sequined sunglasses with a built-in fiber-optic camera, pink stretch pants, a platinum-blond wig cut à la Marilyn, and, over a heavily padded bra, a white T-shirt that read “Blonde Ambition.” But for a backpack carrying two suppressed pistols, and four pink sweatbands on each forearm that hid spare clips, he could have been any old drag quee
n out for a skate on a fine October day.

  “Location?” Cobb asked through the earbud Johnson wore.

  “Coming onto Londonderry Place, turning north,” Johnson replied, adding a little butt shake to his skate as he passed the patrons sitting outdoors at the Mexican place on the corner, as if he were listening to some throbbing Latin beat, instead of plotting with his coconspirators to commit mass murder.

  Londonderry Place climbs steeply north off the Sunset Strip. Johnson cut diagonally northwest across the narrow street to where the opposite sidewalk met a low chain-link fence. He straddle-vaulted it, landed in thick ground cover atop a retaining wall that had been turned into a planter for five palm trees.

  Below him was a parking lot. Johnson took it in at a glance, seeing nine vehicles parked there in all, including one he wasn’t expecting. He lowered himself four feet down the wall behind a blue Toyota sedan.

  “LAPD cruiser in lot, empty,” Johnson said. He skated out from behind the car, knelt in the wide open, pretended to retie his skates, but took glances at the cruiser and the entry to Mel’s Drive-In. “Mr. Cobb?”

  “Take them first,” Cobb said.

  “If they’re not outside?”

  “Take them first.”

  Johnson had been trained since the age of seventeen not only to follow orders, but also to adapt to evolving orders. He was what Mr. Cobb liked to call mission proficient. Johnson called it getting things done.

  The diner’s exterior almost exactly matched the one in the seventies movie American Graffiti. Mel’s was a chain now, but a good one that attracted tourists and locals alike. The initial plan had Johnson getting the guns out at the far end of the parking lot and then skating around toward the front of the diner and its terrace, which faced the Sunset Strip. But he kept the weapons in the pack for now, skated toward Mel’s, eyes everywhere as he went left at the dogleg in the parking lot and back onto the sidewalk along Sunset heading west.

  He took in everyone eating on Mel’s terrace before skating on past Drybar into a second entry to the parking lot. He’d seen a Hispanic couple and their kid, three duffers wearing golf jackets, and two moms with teenage daughters having ice cream sundaes. But no cops.

  Which meant they were inside. He glanced down at the Rollerblades, which he’d decided to use because they had originally conceived this as an exterior job—swoop in, execute, and leave.

  A new strategy evolved in Johnson’s brain almost instantly. He skated back past the people eating outside, and around into the entry to Mel’s. A startled old woman wearing a green sweatshirt that featured a leaping trout and the words “Thief River Falls Is Paradise” opened the door, carrying a pack of Marlboros. She gaped at him as he rolled past her into the diner, where he caught the full whiff of burgers frying, heard Elvis crooning from the jukebox, came face to face with a cheery hostess, who said brightly, “No blades inside, ma’am, uh, sir.”

  Johnson had looked deeper into the diner, seen the two cops, male-female partners, sitting at the counter. A waitress had just served them cheeseburgers and fries.

  “Ma’am?” the hostess said, a big grin.

  “Oh, honey cheeks, I know,” Johnson said, turning to her and laying on a sweet effeminate accent. “I’ll take ’em off ’fore I eat, but this girl’s gotta pee.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Johnson darted by her toward the restrooms. “Sir!” the hostess called after him. “Ma’am?”

  But Johnson paid her no mind as he pushed into the men’s room and let the door shut behind him. Finding an empty stall, he entered, got the guns from the pack, and put it back on. He held the suppressed pistols reversed, butts facing the front, palm to the action, fingers cradling the trigger guards, barrels flush to his lower forearms, a carry that often fooled the best trained of men and women, even if only for an extra moment or two.

  Stepping from the stall less than twenty-five seconds after he’d entered, Johnson said, “Minute thirty, maybe less.”

  “He’s waiting,” Cobb said.

  From that point forward, Johnson did not pause. He pulled open the door, skated past a family of five chatting with the hostess. Dodging around them, he passed between a waitress filling a coffeepot next to the stainless kitchen door and a mom with three Cub Scouts, never heard them giggling at him.

  Rolling now across the gray-green floor, seeing the cops in tunnel vision, Johnson crossed his hands, popped the left gun into the air and let go of the right weapon. He grabbed the guns with opposite hands. Unfolding his arms, swinging the suppressed barrels inward, past each other, and forward, he found the triggers and aimed at point-blank range.

  Chapter 77

  JUSTINE FOUND CYNTHIA Maines just where she’d said she would be: in Burbank, in the cafeteria on the Warner Brothers lot. It was late afternoon and the place was quiet, just a few people having coffee. Justine had not seen the Harlows’ personal assistant since the children were released. She remembered how Maines had been angry, defiant. Now she appeared overwhelmed, sick, almost defeated.

  “What’s happening?” Maines asked as if she couldn’t take any more.

  Justine had called Maines and requested the meeting. But she’d found over the years that understanding up front the state of mind of the person she was interviewing helped immensely during investigations. She said, “Tell me what’s going on with you first.”

  Maines made a disgusted noise and gestured toward the cafeteria window. “Evidently I don’t have an office at Harlow-Quinn anymore. I was told to leave this morning.”

  “By Terry Graves?”

  Maines nodded bitterly. “Camilla and Dave were there too. My God, I’ve known them all for more than ten years. They just cut me off.”

  “You tell this to the FBI?”

  “Of course,” Maines said.

  “And?”

  “They said that’s their prerogative, and then asked me all this stuff that was all BS.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know,” Maines said, throwing her napkin on the table. “About the studio, and whether Warner and the other investors were freaking out, wondering if all the money invested in Saigon Falls is gone. They said the studio execs hardly mentioned Thom or Jennifer, said it was just the money they were interested in, which is fucking depressing, you know?”

  “That all?”

  “No, they asked me the same kind of stuff you did. And about Terry and Camilla, and Sanders, and everyone who works at H-Q.”

  Tears began again. “It’s like I’ve been shipwrecked or something, cut off.” She choked. “I miss Jen and Thom. This is the only job I’ve ever had, and I …”

  Maines wept. Justine sighed, and, wondering about all the hurt that seemed to be going around lately, she moved to the other side of the table to hold the woman.

  Maines said, “I feel helpless. I feel like people are blaming me.”

  “Helpless is a horrible place to be,” Justine said, rubbing her back. “Being blamed for things beyond your control is worse. Dealing with this sort of situation usually involves letting go and focusing on what you can control.”

  Maines stilled, looked embarrassed, grabbed the napkin and wiped at her tears. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “How about helping me find the Harlows?”

  That seemed to offer Maines some hope to grasp because she said, “Anything you want. Any time you want. Same as I told the FBI.”

  “Okay,” Justine said, returning to her seat. “Did you know about the secret passage off Jennifer’s closet, the one that led down to Thom’s editing room and also up to a panic room with a two-way mirror that overlooks their bedroom?”

  Maines looked at Justine as if she’d been speaking Urdu. “What?”

  Justine described in detail what she’d found, including the empty camera brackets, the missing hard drives.

  Maines shook her head.

  “We’re assuming some of the drives had all the footage from the location shoot,” Justine said. “Is that a prob
lem?”

  “No. Everything having to do with Saigon Falls was backed up every day to a server here, and there’s another backup somewhere in Minneapolis. From the ranch, from Vietnam, from here. It didn’t matter. Constant backups.”

  Justine thought about that, set Saigon Falls aside for the moment, dug in her purse for her phone, and showed Maines the picture Sci had sent her.

  “Who is she?”

  Maines appeared momentarily transfixed, looking at the photograph as if wrapped up in another time and place altogether. In a dazed tone, she said, “I forgot her. In all this craziness I completely forgot Adelita.”

  Chapter 78

  THE TWO POLICE officers having lunch at Mel’s Drive-In never knew what hit them, just kind of sagged when the suppressed bullets blew through their skulls and ricocheted off the counter. Officer Kate Rangel slumped forward into her French fries. Her partner, Officer Lance Barfield, drifted off his green stool onto the floor.

  Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” was blasting from the jukebox, covering some of the noise, so Johnson was already ten feet beyond their corpses, looking for his next target—two down, five to go—when one of the Cub Scouts realized what had happened and began to scream.

  Like an infection spreading, more screams echoed as others joined him.

  “The tranny’s got guns!” someone shouted.

  “You bet he does, sugar!” Johnson yelled in that high squeaky voice before pulling the trigger of his right pistol twice, blowing side-by-side holes in the chest of a busboy unfortunate enough to have been clearing a booth in his path.

  Pandemonium swept the diner, patrons and staff all wailing, diving to the floor, ducking beneath tables. Johnson skated calmly through the place toward the exit facing the Strip. A steroidal punk came out low from behind a table, tried to knock Johnson off his blades.

  Johnson shot him left-handed, double-tap to the crown of the skull. The man died and the chaos began anew. Johnson heard pleas for mercy, cries of “No, Please, No!” and the sort of foolish shout-outs to God that their kind always make when people around them get to dying.