“You earned your stripes.”
Beth Halperin smiled. “Stripes I earned in the army. Three.”
“You made sergeant.”
“It’s not hard. I ran a kitchen near the Lebanon border. That’s where I met Oded. A guy. He was a lieutenant. After the army, we traveled and he came here to go to engineering school.”
Her hands flew apart again and re-formed as white-knuckle fists. “Then he said bye-bye and I’m here, so I look for a place to cook and go to Sweet James in Canoga Park, Yoli is a waitress and her roommate left her with all the rent so I move in with her.”
“We’re talking a while back.”
“Two years. I’m returning to Israel in August.”
“So you met Marissa—”
“After that. Maybe... twenty months.”
“What can you tell us about her?”
“Nice,” she said.
I said, “But you weren’t close.”
Her lips screwed up. “She is dead, I don’t want to... to say.”
Milo said, “It could help us find out what happened to her?”
“I don’t see — okay, nothing drama but she got more into... being an actress than being a friend. She did it in high school and thought she could do it for a job.”
“Ah,” said Milo. “And that made her...”
“Not here. For all of us.”
“Busy.”
“Yes,” said Beth Halperin. “But more than that. Busy here.” She tapped her head.
I said, “Distracted.”
She was digesting that when the door opened and a beautiful olive-skinned, red-haired woman in a black cowl-necked sweater, black tights, and black flats stepped in and froze.
“Beth? What’s going on?”
“Marissa is dead!”
“What!”
“Dead! They are police!”
Yolanda Echeverria’s black eyes rounded. She dropped her purse to the floor and teetered.
We got up ready to catch her but she remained on her feet. I retrieved the purse and set it down on an iffy table.
“I... don’t understand.”
Milo said, “Why don’t you get off your feet.”
He guided her to the sectional, waited until she’d settled next to Beth Halperin. Then he explained.
She said, “O.D.? She never took anything.”
Beth said, “That’s what I tell him.”
Milo opened his case and produced Joe Beef’s photo. “This is the last person she was photographed with. Do you know him?”
The women looked at each other.
Beth Halperin said, “Maybe the producer?”
Yoli Echeverria said, “That’s what I was thinking.”
Milo said, “Marissa told you she’d met a producer.”
Twin nods.
Yoli Echeverria said, “We told her be careful.”
Beth Halperin said, “I think to myself it is stupid.”
I said, “Stupid how?”
“What?” she said. “All the time she gets nothing except a few extras—”
“Non-union stuff,” said Yoli. “Like no real money.”
Beth said, “Exactly. Then she meets a producer and he’s going to give her an actress job?”
“She was so so happy,” said Yoli. “I didn’t want to burst her bubble.”
“I told her,” said Beth. “She yelled at me. That’s the last time we spoke.”
“Oh,” said Yoli. “Sorry.”
They looked at each other again.
Tears flowed. Lots of them.
We spent a few more minutes, Milo asking the right questions, repeating some of them. Learning only that mention of “the producer” had come up a week before Marissa’s death.
“First time we heard from her in like a week, two, I dunno,” said Yoli.
Beth said, “She is telling us she is right and we are wrong.”
I said, “When’s the last time you saw her?”
Another ocular consultation.
Yoli said, “Two and a half weeks ago?”
Beth said, “About. Before she told us about him. It was an opening.”
“Of?”
“A clothes place,” said Yoli. “Mama Baba on Melrose. She said they needed girls for pictures but when we showed up, they took like one picture.”
“Of her,” said Beth. “Show them.”
Yoli retrieved her purse and scrolled her phone.
One of the images we’d already seen. Marissa at the center, Yoli to the left.
Beth said, “We left fast.”
“Crazy,” said Yoli.
“Stupid,” said Beth. Sharpness in her voice. She realized it and slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Not her fault. It’s wanting something too much. But you don’t do that.”
I said, “Go to openings?”
“No, I mean him.” Forming air quotes. “He say he’s a producer so you just go? He killed her?”
Milo said, “We really don’t know much yet. Anyone else you can think of who might want to take advantage of her?”
“Probably a lot of guys,” said Yoli. “It’s that way anytime you go out.”
“Did Marissa complain about anyone?”
“Uh-uh.” She looked at Beth.
Beth said, “Not to me.”
Yoli said, “We always thought she was fearless.”
“Okay, thanks — do you think Tori and Bethany would have anything to add?”
“Probably not,” said Yoli. “We’ll ask them. If they have something, they’ll call you, what’s your number?”
Milo handed out two cards.
Yoli said, “Homicide. Ecchh.”
Milo said, “How can we reach Marissa’s family?”
“There isn’t one, not really. She never knew her dad and her mom died like... three years ago. Some sort of neurological thing, she didn’t want to talk about it. There’s an aunt, she mentioned an aunt. I’ll see if Tori and Bethany know about her.”
“I’d really appreciate that, Yoli. Thanks for your time.”
We stood.
Beth Halperin said, “At the border I used to hear rockets explode. This is worse.”
—
Out in the car, Milo said, “Fake movie producer, makes sense, everything’s falling into place. When we get back I find out who her phone carrier is, put in the affidavit for the subpoena, see who she talked to before she died, and hopefully come up with a name. Once I get a name, I go back to the databases and if they don’t tell me anything, I recheck with Leary because sleazy is sleazy, you never know, maybe the bastard got busted for something but didn’t get charged.”
Long oration.
He turned to me. “That’s the plan. Comments?”
I was forming the word “None” when his phone rang.
The screen said Petra.
He switched to speaker. “What’s up, kid?”
She explained.
“The plan” was now a thing of the past.
Chapter 6
Detective III Petra Connor had a cool, confident voice and told the story with her usual economy.
Just after twelve noon, Oleg Karkovsky, an off-site manager for a real estate conglomerate headquartered in Las Vegas, had entered one of the eighteen buildings he oversaw in L.A. County. This one sat on Selma Avenue between Sunset and Hollywood, two blocks short of the street’s termination at Highland.
Karkovsky’s destination was a third-floor one-bedroom unit scheduled for inspection of a faulty water heater. The tenant had demanded immediate repair, irate and foulmouthed because of lukewarm showers. Despite being three months behind in his rent.
Karkovsky had knocked, received silence, used his master key to get in. Calling out and receiving no reply, he’d headed for a utility closet off the kitchen. Before he got there, something out on the unit’s narrow balcony caught his eye.
Petra said, “I’m quoting verbatim, you add the Russian accent. ‘The guy’s lying there, I think idiot fell sleep, maybe out there all night. The fools I deal with in Hollywood are worse than in Moscow.’ Anyway Karkovsky opens the slider ready to do a wakey-wake and sees the blood.”