“Why am I not surprised. What did she do?”
“Mind if I sit down?”
“Have a seat. Sorry about the mess.”
“Not a problem. Thanks.”
Stilwell sat in a chair across from the couch. It was all mismatched furniture that gave the impression of a college apartment, but Galloway was ten years past college age.
Galloway took the couch and picked up a half-full bottle of beer from a coffee table that was crowded with empties and crumpled pages from scripts.
“I’ll ask you again,” Stilwell said, “do you have any idea where Leigh-Anne Moss is?”
“No idea,” Galloway said.
“Do you know where she stays when she’s out on Catalina?”
“Not really. I guess she stays with whatever rich guy she’s banging at the time.”
Stilwell didn’t respond to that at first. Galloway’s tone gave him pause. He now had a direction to go with his questions.
“That seems kind of harsh,” he said.
“Sometimes the truth is harsh,” Galloway said.
“What do you do for a living, Peter?”
“I go to auditions, mostly. I’m an actor. But since the strikes, there’s been like zero production out here. I’m thinking about moving to Atlanta, to tell you the truth.”
“And leaving Leigh-Anne behind?”
“There’s nothing between us, so there’s nothing to leave behind. We broke up a long time ago.”
“But this is the address she put on an employment application.”
“Well, I had nothing to do with that.”
“Do you know what she does on the island? For work, I mean.”
“Same thing she always does. Bartender, waitress — she’d strip too, but I hear there’s no places like that out there. Not officially, at least.”
“What’s that mean? ‘Not officially’?”
“Let’s just say L-A is available for private parties of any kind. Here, there, wherever she happens to be.”
That tone again. Galloway could barely hide his contempt.
“She goes by L-A?” Stilwell asked. “Her initials?”
“Sometimes,” Galloway said. “Like a stage name, I guess you’d call it.”
“Is that how you met? At a club or a bar? Or on a stage?”
“We met when we worked for the same catering company up in Hollywood.”
“When was that?”
“About five years ago. We met and after a while we moved in together.”
“Long commute to Hollywood from down here.”
“We moved down here after we left that job.”
“Left or got fired?”
“I wasn’t fired. I got a part in a movie and quit. She got fired for doing her thing like she always does.”
“Coming on to the clients?”
“Man, you have all the answers. Why bother with the questions?”
“Because it’s my job. So it sounds like she had this... pattern of getting jobs that put her close to people with wealth.”
Stilwell stopped there, hoping Galloway would continue. He didn’t.
“What I’m getting at is, it sounds like she used her jobs to get to people — men — who could help her,” Stilwell said. “Is that what you would say?”
“I think I already did,” Galloway said. “What did she do, rip off one of those old fuckers? You ask me, he got what he deserved.”
“So you knew that she... was this way, had been this way as far back as the caterer. But you stayed together and moved down here?”
“Man, we broke up so many times... but then we always got back together. Except the last time, I guess.”
“You said that was a long time ago, but you also said it’s been a couple months since you’ve seen her. Which is it?”
“I actually didn’t see her. I talked to her. I still let her stay here when she has no place else to go. She’s got a key.”
“Is this a one-bedroom?”
“Yes.”
He drew the word out in a long frustrated tone.
“She sleep on the couch?” Stilwell asked. “Or with you?”
“None of your fucking business,” Galloway snapped.
“Okay, then tell me this. Was that the last time she stayed here, two months ago? That would be, what, March?”
“It was April. But I wasn’t here. I had a gig in Georgia. She called up, said she needed to crash, and I said, have at it.”
“What kind of gig? Acting?”
“You could call it that. I get booked as Deadpool at Comic Cons around the country. It’s good money between the real jobs. I’ve got the same height, weight, and build as Ryan Reynolds.”
Stilwell nodded. He knew Reynolds was a movie star. He and Tash had seen one of his films at the Casino. But he feigned confusion to draw Galloway out. The actor read him and started shuffling through the script pages scattered on the coffee table. Finally, he held up an eight-by-ten photo of a man in a red-and-black costume that covered him from head to toe. He had what looked like two ninja swords strapped to his back.
“That’s me,” Galloway said. “As Deadpool.”
Stilwell nodded again and smiled.
“So, Deadpool is a character?” he said as if just understanding. “How often do you do this?”
“About once a month. I work the circuit. It promotes the movies. It’s good money.”
His saying the money was good twice made Stilwell think it probably wasn’t.
“What about this month?” he asked. “Did you have a Deadpool gig?”
“That was a Comic Cruise. Left out of Tampa.”
“When was that?”
“Like two weeks ago. It was a three-day cruise. Why are you asking about me?”
Galloway had just given Stilwell what appeared to be an alibi for the weekend Leigh-Anne Moss had been fired and — Stilwell thought — murdered. He assumed that the Comic Cruise had been held over a weekend, and two weeks ago would mean two weekends ago. It would be easy enough to check the dates of the cruise and confirm that he’d been on the ship.
“It’s my job to ask questions,” he said. “Let’s get back to Leigh-Anne. Where is she from?”
“Originally Detroit,” Galloway said. “Like everybody else, she came out here to find fame and fortune. But it didn’t exactly turn out that way.”
“Does she have family back there?”
“Well, she has a father back there who started raping her when she was thirteen. And a mother who let it happen. There’s an older brother somewhere but they lost touch after he left home. And that’s about it as far as she ever told me.”
“You were her family — while it lasted.”
“I guess so.”
“But that’s over. Correct?”
“Yes, correct. That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“Well, what I’m trying to figure out is who she’s with now. If I know that, then I can leave you alone and go knock on that door. You understand?”
“I understand but I can’t help you. I have no idea who she’s with. I only know she’s not with me.”
“And that hurts, doesn’t it?”
Galloway shook his head and jumped up from the couch.
“That’s it!” he yelled. “You need to go. Now. I’m not answering any more questions.”
He pointed at the apartment’s front door. Stilwell didn’t move.
“Peter, sit down,” he said. “Please. This is a criminal investigation. You have to understand that you either talk to me here or I take you to the Hall of Justice, where we talk in a room with no windows.”
He waited and Galloway finally sat back down.
“Thank you,” Stilwell said. “Tell me what you know about Leigh-Anne’s job out on Catalina.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Galloway said, “except that she works at a private club.”
“How’d she get the job?”
“I don’t know. She met some guy at a party and he told her about it.”
“A party here or on the island?”