The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais

  "Possible."

  Pike shrugged and returned to his phone.

  "Or not."

  The next number connected me to a Rite Aid pharmacy, and the ninth with the Auto Club. The tenth number brought me to LAPD's Hollywood Station, but the eleventh was different. A man with the hushed voice of a late-night disk jockey answered on the first ring.

  "Golden Escorts, discreet and professional."

  Faustina had spent twenty-three minutes on the phone with Golden Escorts. I remembered the little throwaway newspaper in his suitcase, the one showing the naked woman with metallic blue hair—the Hard-X Times. I hung up.

  "He had more on his mind than finding me. He called an escort service."

  "Golden Escorts?"

  "You got them, too?"

  "Twice. He called them last Wednesday, then again on Friday. Maybe he thought call girls would know how to find you."

  "Humor doesn't suit you."

  Pike's face was flat and expressionless. Maybe he meant it.

  We checked the call dates and saw that during Faustina's nine days at Home Away Suites, he had phoned Golden Escorts three times. He called them on his second night at the motel, then again on his fifth and ninth nights. The ninth night was yesterday—the night he was murdered. I felt a little pop of adrenaline when I tied the escort service to the date of his death. It felt like a clue.

  I said, "Keep dialing, and let's see what else we get."

  The remaining calls included two more police stations. All together, he had phoned twelve patrol areas out of the eighteen into which LAPD divides Los Angeles. The remaining calls also included three take-out restaurants, a Pep Boys auto parts, two churches in North Hollywood, and the Crystal Cathedral. No one at any of these places recognized his name or remembered his call. Excepting the information number, Golden Escorts was the only number he phoned more than once, and the only escort service.

  When we finished identifying every number Faustina called, I phoned Golden Escorts again. The same man answered in exactly the same way.

  "Golden Escorts, discreet and professional."

  "I saw your ad in the Hard-X Times."

  "Groovy. You need a date for tonight?"

  "Can I get someone to come to my motel?"

  "No problem. We take cash, Visa, and MasterCard, no AmEx, and we offer both male and female escorts for nonsexual outcall companionship. Prostitution is illegal and that's not what we sell. Anything that happens between you and the escort, well, that's between you and the escort. You understand?"

  He gave me the boilerplate in case I was Vice.

  "I understand."

  "Groovy. Tell me where you are, how much you want to spend, and what kind of companion you're looking for."

  "I'm at the Home Away Suites. You know where it is."

  "Like the back of my teeth."

  "Groovy. I'd like the same girl I had last time."

  "You've used us before?"

  "Oh, sure. Three times."

  "Who is this?"

  "Herbert Faustina."

  The line went dead. After three conversations, he knew Faustina's voice well enough to know I wasn't him.

  I called a friend of mine at the phone company and gave her the number. If it turned out to be a cell, we would have to backtrace through the billing address, and all of that could take a long time. If we got lucky, it would be a hard line. We were lucky. Ninety seconds later she gave me their address.

  Groovy.

  13

  Golden Escorts occupied a tiny clapboard house in Venice north of the canals, six blocks from the ocean. The neighborhood was typical of Venice, where microscopic houses were set on lots so narrow they shouldered together like cards in a deck. To the untrained eye, many streets in Venice looked like tenements, sporting broken sidewalks, beach-bum decor, and rent-a-wreck parking, but the cheapest house on the block would go for six hundred thousand dollars. Location was everything.

  The house itself was a Craftsman knockoff sporting a tiny front porch, yellow paint, and a weather vane shaped like a whale. The windows were lit, but women with heavy makeup weren't lingering on the sidewalk and a red light didn't burn over the door. Escort services weren't brothels with prostitutes lying around in negligees; they functioned more like dispatchers for independent contractors—they ran ads, fielded calls, and doled out assignments by phone. Sometimes they provided a driver for the girl, but most times not, and the smaller services were almost always located in a private home or apartment.

  Pike and I parked on the cross street, then walked back to the house like two citizens out for a stroll. Pardy and Diaz would have to hope for cooperation, but Pike and I weren't Pardy and Diaz.

  Pike said, "Give me a minute."

  He waited for a car to pass, then slipped down along the east side of the house and vanished into the shadows. I continued on to the next corner. It was a nice night in Venice. The ocean smelled fresh. Six minutes later, Pike reappeared. I walked back and joined him in front of the house.

  "One man, one woman. Kitchen's in the rear, living room in front, bed and a bath to the right of the kitchen. She's making dinner and he's in the living room with a headset and computer. Looks like they live here."

  "Don't you hate it when people drop by at dinnertime?"

  "They're going to hate it more."

  We waited for two more cars to pass, then went to the front door. Pike stood to the side so he wouldn't be visible when the door opened. You see Joe Pike, you know you have trouble. I put on my best nonthreatening smile, and knocked.

  After I knocked the second time, the door opened, and a man in his early thirties peered out. He had dark hair combed back, a wide face, and a cordless telephone headset. The earpiece was pushed to the side because he had come to the door.

  He said, "What's up?"

  I smiled wider, then pushed him hard in the chest, catching him off guard and shoving him backward. Pike came in behind me. Not particularly discreet, but very professional.

  "Hey, what is this? What are you doing?"

  "You don't have a problem. We just want to talk to you."

  The man backpedaled, pushing out both hands like he was trying to quell a riot.

  "You're the guy who called."

  Pike stepped past him into the living room. The guy with the headset tried to back up so he could see both of us at the same time, but he was already against the wall.

  "Where are you going? Hey, I live here. This is my home. Get out of here."

  "What's your name?"

  "Fuck you. Get out of my house."

  A wallet was in a bowl on a table inside the front door. I found his driver's license and compared him to the picture. Yep, it was him. Stephen Golden, the proud proprietor of Golden Escorts. Criminals amaze me. I dropped his wallet back into the bowl as a woman came out of the kitchen. She had a narrow face with a gap between her front teeth and soft eyes, but she didn't scream or make a scene, either. You don't make a scene when you're afraid of the police. I gave her the encouraging smile.

  "It's okay. The police will be here in a little bit."

  The man said, "That's bullshit. They have some kind of beef with a client."

  "We don't have a beef. One of your clients is dead."

  The woman said, "Oh, that's terrible."

  He snapped at her, his voice harsher toward her than me even though I had invaded his home.

  "Don't say anything. We don't know anything about that. They can't just come in here."

  I gave more of my smile to the woman, like he wasn't in the room with us, just me and her.

  "What's your name?"

  "Marsha."

  He said, "Don't say a goddamned thing."

  Marsha's face had the translucence of murky water: pale skin, faded freckles, and lashless eyes that gave her an innocence she probably did not possess. She wore a Tenacious D T-shirt over shorts, with butterflies tattooed above her ankles. The shirt was cropped and the shorts were low, letting a tattoo peek out
across her lower belly.

  "It's going to be fine, Marsha. Do you know what Stephen does for a living?"

  "Yeah, it's our business. We don't hurt anyone."

  "You his wife, girlfriend, what?"

  "Don't talk to him! It's none of his business!"

  It was just me and Marsha.

  "We live together."

  "Okay, cool. You don't have to be afraid."

  "I'm not."

  A laptop computer was set up on a dinner tray by a club chair in the corner of his living room so Golden could watch TV while he worked. I went over and looked at it.

  "Get away from there! Leave my stuff alone."

  Pike said, "Shh."

  A six-line phone base with an auto-forwarding repeater was on the floor next to the chair, slaved to the computer. A phone directory was set up on the laptop, showing what was probably the names and numbers of his prostitutes. A Telecredit window was open to run Visa and MasterCard charges, so the computer probably held his billing ledgers and records of who earned what. I went back to him.

  "Okay, Stephen, here's what we want. A man named Herbert Faustina was staying at the Home Away Suites up in Toluca Lake—"

  "I don't know anything about that."

  "Three times during the past nine days, Mr. Faustina phoned you—"

  "That's not true."

  "We know because the phone records show he called your number."

  "I run a legitimate business. What happens between—"

  "Faustina called you last night for the third and final time. This morning, at approximately two forty-five, he was shot to death. You see where I'm going with this?"

  Golden crossed his arms and chewed the inside of his lower lip. He shook his head.

  "I'm going to call my lawyer."

  "No. We're not the police, so we're not going to waste time with your lawyer. The police will probably roll by tomorrow. You can call your lawyer when you talk to them, but right now you're on your own. We're going to go see whoever you sent to Faustina."

  "I don't file a W-2 for these people. I got pager numbers, and maybe a cell. I don't even know their real names, most of them, let alone where they live."

  "So page them. Stephen, look, you're going to cooperate because you are now a link in a homicide investigation and so are the three people you sent to Faustina. If you don't cooperate with the police, they will stretch you. If you don't cooperate with me, I'm going to take your computer and all of that stuff over there to West L.A. Sex Crimes."

  His computer probably showed the prostitutes he employed, a history of his credit card transactions that would include the identities of his johns, and possibly even banking and account information that would reveal how he hid his money from the IRS.

  He looked incredulous.

  "You can't steal my stuff."

  "Stephen, please. How are you going to stop us?"

  Golden glanced at Pike again, but now he seemed more thoughtful than afraid.

  "What if I cooperate?"

  "If you don't, I can give your records to the police. If you do, we can make them disappear. You see what I'm offering?"

  I was offering him a way out of a major pimping and pandering bust.

  Marsha said, "Dinner's ready, Stephen. Would you please tell them so they'll leave?"

  Golden glared at her as if he suddenly hated her as deeply as he hated anything, but then he pushed away from the wall and went to his computer.

  He said, "Come over here. I want you to see."

  He dropped into the club chair and used a mouse to open what appeared to be a calendar on his computer. He went to each of the three dates and copied the names of the women he had sent to the Home Away Suites, then opened an address book to show me their entries: Janice L., Dana M., and Victoria.

  "You see? I have the pagers and the phones, but I don't have their addresses. I can page them, but I can't say when they'll get back to me. We're not talking about the most stable people. Sometimes these girls disappear and I never hear back."

  "Aren't they on call?"

  Marsha said, "People have lives, you know? Stephen isn't the only person they work with."

  With. Not for.

  Now Golden looked impatient.

  "Look, you want me to page them right now, I'll page them."

  He stalked back to the phone and punched in a number. When he heard the pager's squeal, he held out the phone as if I could hear it from across the room.

  "See? A tone. I'm paging."

  He tapped in his phone number, then hung up and tossed his headset onto the club chair.

  "She's paged. You guys wanna have dinner? We can page the other girls, then sit here all night waiting for them to call back while they're out sucking dick."

  I looked at Pike, but Pike was immobile. Pike would sit with Golden for weeks if we had to; maybe even forever. Pike would also put a gun to Golden's head and pull the trigger if Golden didn't come through.

  I didn't like not knowing where to find them, and I liked it less because any one of them might have been involved in Faustina's murder. If one of them was linked with the homicide, they weren't likely to call back, and certainly wouldn't cooperate, but Golden seemed like my only way to reach them.

  "What about their last names?"

  "If they gave me a last name, it would be bullshit. You think I file W-2s for these people?"

  He spread his hands again, the universal sign of the man caught in the middle.

  "Look, I'm trying to cooperate here, but all I can do is what I can do. When they call, I'll tell them to talk to you. If you want to page them yourself, go ahead, but all you're going to do is scare them."

  Golden was right. I felt half-assed and caught short. I had blundered into his house exactly like the cowboy Pardy accused me of being, and now I didn't have anything to show for it. I tried to think of something smart to ask, and felt even more half-assed because thinking was hard.

  "Did Faustina pay with a credit card?"

  "No, he paid cash."

  "Which girl saw him last night?"

  "I wrote the names in the order they saw him. That was Victoria. She saw him last."

  "Did Victoria or the other girls tell you about him, like something he said or did?"

  "They don't tell me anything and I never ask. I don't want to know. You probably won't want to know, either."

  "But you spoke with Faustina when he called?"

  "Yeah."

  "What did he say?"

  "You wanna know what he wanted, like did he want a blow job or anal?"

  Pike shoved Golden in the back of the head.

  Marsha said, "Don't be smart, Stephen. You make it worse when you're smart."

  "Did he say where he was from or what he was doing in L.A.?"

  Golden was still rubbing his head.

  "I don't make conversation with these people. I tried to feel him out about what he wanted from the girl—some things cost more than others, and some girls won't do certain things. All he said was she had to be a nice person. Understanding, he said. He just wanted someone he could talk to. That's all he said."

  "Did the girls tell you what he talked about?"

  "I don't give a shit. We agree on a price, and I get my cut. One hour for two hundred bucks. I don't care what they do."

  I thought about Faustina wanting only to talk, and wondered if it was true. Six hundred dollars for three hours of talking was a lot of talking.

  "The man called you three times in less than two weeks. I can see the first call being all business, but you must have developed a familiarity with him, maybe joked about what a good customer he was, something like that."

  "Yeah, I joked around with him a little, but we didn't talk. He didn't have the gift of gab, you know? Me, I like to talk. Him, he just seemed kinda awkward and sad."

  "Did he mention his family?"

  Golden laughed.

  "Some dude calling for a whore doesn't bring up his family. Look, I don't want to be best buddies w
ith these people. I don't give a shit who they are or where they're from. I tie up my phone with one guy, no one else can get through—I'm losing money. Like now."

  I tried to think of something else to ask, but it was clear Golden didn't have anything more to offer. I folded the list of names and put it away.

  I said, "Okay, Stephen. Page them and set it up for tomorrow, then give me a call—"

  I took out a business card and put it in the little bowl with his wallet.

  "You can reach me at this number, and I know that you will."

  Golden's face brightened, surprised that Joe and I were going for it and anxious to get us out of his house. You could almost see the wheels turning behind his bushy eyebrows. As soon as the girls called back, he would warn them, tell them to split town, and then be on the horn to his attorney. He might even leave town himself.

  I said, "You know how I know, Stephen?"

  "Hey, I said I would, didn't I? You're giving me a big break here."

  "That's right. And I'm also taking your computer."

  I closed his laptop, then jerked out the cables. Golden's eyes widened and he lurched forward, but Pike touched his arm.

  Pike said, "Stay."

  Golden froze in place between us. Marsha went back to the kitchen and called from the door.

  "For Christ's sake, Stephen. Dinner's going to suck."

  I tucked his computer under my arm and moved to the door.

  He said, "That's fucking stealing! You can't just come into someone's house and steal their stuff!"

  "I'm not stealing it—I'm holding it hostage. If your girls come across, you'll get it back. If they don't, it goes to the police."

  Pike opened the door, then glanced back at Golden. Pike shook his head, and went out.

  Golden said, "This is bullshit!"

  "Call me tomorrow morning or it goes to the cops."

  "Fuck you, you asshole! Fuck Faustina, too!"

  I stopped, and turned hack to him when he said it. His face paled, and his rage became something soft.

  I said, "What?"

  He shook his head.

  I let myself out, pulled the door shut, and stood on the porch. Pike was in the street, his sunglasses reflecting red like nighttime cat eyes. Inside, Marsha called Stephen Golden to dinner.

  14