Jack grinned at her, something she thought she’d get used to in a year or so. “Puker really didn’t like the nickname you gave him.”
“Nope, you could tell it enraged him. He says his real name is Poker, but that sounds made up too. It’s what he calls himself. Maybe he had a casino dealer for a father, who knows?”
Detective Vasquez said, “We already have quite a file on him. Puker got a good start as a photographer in Wilmington, Delaware, where he got his training and worked freelance for the local newspapers. Then he came out here five years ago, right after he turned twenty-five, and seems to have decided making money beat out having morals any day. He’s been shooting celebrities ever since. So far as we know, he’s never been married, dates occasionally, and has never gotten into any real trouble before. Now he’s in very deep water with this latest stunt at the studio.”
“And now this,” Mary Lisa said. She rose and began pacing her living room. “I want to see those photos. Can’t you make him turn them over, Detective Vasquez?”
“Well, now, Mary Lisa,” said Daniel, slowly rising, “I was thinking maybe Jack and I could pay him a visit and ask him nicely.”
“I want to go.”
“It’s police business, Mary Lisa,” Jack said. “Learn your lines for tomorrow, and we’ll be back later.” He stood there a moment, waiting, knowing she couldn’t let that order simply slide. But she didn’t say anything.
Thirty minutes later, Daniel pulled his Crown Vic out of godawful traffic and up against the curb of an apartment building a dozen blocks east of Santa Monica Pier, not ten miles from Malibu. It was a small, upscale, slightly dated complex, with lots of palm trees and blooming flowers and well-kept late-model cars parked everywhere.
“What do you think, Jack?”
“The guy’s making money. This isn’t low-rent, is it?”
“No. Detective Malloy from Burbank told me the guy’s a pig, lives in this beautiful apartment like it was a dorm, strews pizza boxes and his shorts all over the place.”
Puker’s apartment was on the second floor, on the end. Jack nodded at Daniel, and knocked.
“Yeah? Who is it?”
Daniel said, “It’s the police, Hodges, open up now.”
“Hey, dude, I don’t have anything to say to you guys. Talk to my lawyer.”
Jack said in a pleasant, upbeat voice that would make anyone think twice, “Open the door, Puker, or I’ll make you regret it. I might make you clean your kitchen.”
They heard chains slide off, and the door opened. Puker was wearing baggy low-riding shorts and a ratty dark blue T-shirt. “Yeah?”
“Kitchen’s that bad, is it?” Jack said, stepping forward, forcing Puker back into his apartment. “We’re here to see the photos you took of this guy you claim is Mary Lisa Beverly’s stalker.”
Puker opened his mouth, but closed it when he saw the look on the big man’s face. Then he said, “Hey, dude, you can’t threaten me. I’m a citizen of Los Angeles. Haven’t you guys figured out you can’t go attacking civilians?”
Jack wrapped his fist around the neck of Puker’s T-shirt, raised him onto his toes. “Listen to me, you little puke, I want to see those photos this minute or we’ll book you for extortion and interfering with a police investigation. We’ll get the photos anyway, and you’ll have no chance at all with the studio.”
Puker looked at Detective Vasquez, who was studying his fingernails. He shrugged.
“The photos,” Jack said, and shook him. “Now.”
“I want to call my lawyer, he’ll-”
Jack said in the same pleasant voice, “Last chance, Puker. Really, you don’t want to mess with me or I just might stuff you in your fridge.” And Jack smiled at him, released his shirt and smoothed it, tough since it was so wrinkled.
Puker jumped back, splayed his hands toward them. “Hey, my fridge isn’t all that bad.”
Daniel said, “If you don’t suffocate in the fridge, then I’ll take you down to my jail, let you think things over in a holding cell with a dozen or so other upstanding citizens. How’s that?”
Puker looked undecided, then he belched, shrugged. “All right. Come back here. I made my second bedroom into a darkroom.”
Daniel grinned at the back of Puker’s head as they followed him to his makeshift darkroom.
Puker closed the door and flipped on an overhead red light. The room looked like any professional darkroom Jack had ever seen, everything neatly in its place and well cared for, quite unlike the mess in the rest of the apartment.
“The photos are here.” Puker handed them three color prints, still a bit damp at the edges.
Daniel turned on a lamp back in the living room and studied the photos. “Well, I’ll be,” he said after only a moment. “How about that?”
“What?” Jack asked. “You know this guy?”
“Yeah, I think most everybody at my station knows him.” He turned to Puker. “See how easy it is to be a fine upstanding citizen, Mr. Hodges? Thank you for your invaluable assistance in this case. It’s very possible that Mary Lisa won’t be inclined now to press any charges against you. But who knows? Keep your nose clean.”
Neither man spoke until they were in Daniel’s car, the air-conditioning turned on high.
“Well?”
“Jack, my man, this here is Stuart Clapper, been in and out of prison since the age of thirteen, not very bright, but street-smart. He does coke, sells on the side, sent up for assault a few years ago. I think he beat a rape charge once. There’s a problem though.”
Jack arched a black brow. “Yeah, what?”
“I’ve never heard of him having a thing for any female celebrities.”
“Well, there’s always a first time.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll track down an address for him. We should have time to show his photo to Mary Lisa, see if she recognizes him. Lou Lou too. She’s so sharp it’s scary. She would remember him if he’s been around Malibu.”
“Where does Lou Lou live?”
“She doesn’t make the big bucks Mary Lisa makes, so she lives inland, about four blocks. Not that it matters, she’s at Mary Lisa’s house-along with half of Malibu-most of the time.”
Daniel opened his cell. After a couple of minutes, he said to Jack, “Clapper just finished up ten months of parole. His P.O. only had his last known address. It’s real common, the day the parolees are through, they’re gone. Still, we’ll check.”
They drove in silence, Daniel weaving southeast, through the bleakest parts of central L.A. that had Jack thinking of the fresh sea air in Goddard Bay.
Daniel asked, “What’s with you and Mary Lisa?”
“Nothing,” Jack said. “At least nothing anymore. We had what you might call a meeting of the minds.”
“You groveled, huh?”
Jack laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“Okay, here we are, Sixty-four Kemper Street.” Daniel pulled to the curb, pointed up at a tired, peeling gray four-story building that looked like it was condemned, or should have been. There were air-conditioning units hanging out of a few of the windows, but no fire escapes that Jack could see. “It’ll smell like cabbage in the hallways,” Daniel said. “It always does. I don’t know why that is.”
Jack said, “It’s true in Chicago too.”
It took them thirty minutes to get past the sullen stares and mumbled responses of two of the neighbors and find out from the super that Stuart Clapper had been gone for three weeks as best he could figure, no forwarding address. He’d cleared parole three weeks and two days ago.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Before Star Wars, Mark Hamill played Nurse Jessie’s nephew on General Hospital.
“I’ve never seen this guy before. Lou Lou, have you?”
Lou Lou scrutinized the three photos and slowly, regretfully, shook her head. “This is the guy trying to whack Mary Lisa?”
“That sure makes me feel warm and fuzzy, Lou Lou.”