“She didn’t have a name on the guy?”
“No, that was the problem. That was why I didn’t jump all over it. I had a backlog of tips I was assigned and she calls in with this one without a name. I would have gotten to it eventually, but a few days later you put Church’s dick in the dirt and that was that.”
“You let it go.”
“Yeah, dropped it like a bag of shit.”
Bosch waited. He knew Mora would go on. He had more to say. There had to be more.
“So the thing is, when I looked up the card on Magna Cum Loudly for you yesterday, I recognized some of her early titles. She worked with Gallery in some of her early work. That’s what made me remember the tip. So just stringing along on a hunch, I try to look Gallery up, ask around with some people in the business I know, and it turns out Gallery dropped out of the scene three years ago. Just like that. I mean, I know a top producer with the Adult Film Association and he told me she dropped out right in the middle of one of his shoots. Never said a word to anyone. And no one ever heard from her again. The producer, he remembered it pretty clearly ’cause it cost him a lot of money to reshoot the flick. There would’ve been no continuity if he just dumped in another actress to take her place.”
Bosch was surprised that continuity was even a factor in such films. He and Mora were both silent a moment, thinking about the story, before Bosch finally spoke.
“So, you’re thinking she might be in the ground somewhere? Gallery, I’m talking about. In concrete like the one we found this week.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m thinking. People in the industry — I mean, they are not your mainstream people, so there are plenty of disappearing acts. I remember this one broad, she dropped out, next thing I know I see her in People magazine. One of those stories about some celebrity fund-raiser and she’s on the arm of what’s his name, guy has his own TV show about the guy in charge of a kennel. Noah’s Bark. I can’t think of —”
“Ray, I don’t give —”
“Okay, okay, anyway the point is, these chicks drop in and out of the biz all the time. Not unusual. They aren’t the smartest people in the first place. They just get it in their mind to do something else. Maybe they meet a guy who they think is going to keep them in cocaine and caviar, be their sugar daddy, like that Noah’s Bark asshole, and they never show up for work again — until they find out they were wrong. As a group, they don’t look much past the next line of blow.
“Y’ask me, what they’re all looking for is Daddy. They all got knocked around when they were a kid and this is some fucked-up way of showing they’re worth something to Daddy. Least I read that somewhere. Prob’ly bullshit like everything else.”
Bosch didn’t need the psychology lesson.
“C’mon Ray, I’m in court and I’m trying to run down this case. Get to the point. What about Gallery?”
“What I’m saying is that with Gallery the situation’s unusual ’cause it’s been almost three years and she never came back. See, they always come back. Even if they’ve fucked over a producer so bad he had to do reshoots, they always come back. They start at the bottom — loops, fluffing — and work their way back up.”
“Fluffing?”
“A fluff is off-camera talent, you could say. Girls who keep the acts up and ready to perform while they’re getting cameras ready, moving lights, changing angles. Things like that, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
Bosch was depressed after hearing about the business for ten minutes. He looked at Mora, who had been in Ad-Vice for as long as Bosch could remember.
“What about the survivor? You ever check with her on this tip?”
“Never got around to it. Like I said, I dropped it when you dropped Church. Thought we were done with the whole thing.”
“Yeah, so did I.”
Bosch took out a small pocket notebook and wrote down a few notes from the conversation.
“Did you save any notes from this? From back then?”
“Nope, they’re gone. The original tip sheet is probably in the main task force files. But it won’t say more than I just told you.”
Bosch nodded. Mora was probably right.
“What did this Gallery look like?”
“Blonde, nice set — definitely Beverly Hills plastic. I think I got a picture here.”
He rolled his chair to the file cabinets behind him and dug through one of the drawers, then rolled back with a file. From it he pulled an 8 x 10 color publicity shot. It was a blonde woman posed at the edge of the ocean. She was nude. She had shaved her pubic area. Bosch handed the photo back to Mora and felt embarrassed, as if they were two boys in the schoolyard telling secrets about one of the girls. He thought he saw a slight smile on Mora’s face and wondered if the vice cop found humor in his discomfort or it was something else.
“Hell of a job you’ve got.”
“Yeah, well, somebody’s gotta do it.”
Bosch studied him a moment. He decided to take a chance, to try to figure out what made Mora hang on to the job.
“Yeah, but why you, Ray? You’ve been doing this a long time.”
“I guess I’m a watchdog, Bosch. The Supreme Court says this stuff is legal to a point. That makes me one of the pointmen. It’s gotta be monitored. It’s gotta be kept clean, no joke intended. That means these people’ve gotta be licensed, of legal age, and nobody’s forced to do something they don’t want to do. I spend a lot of days looking through this trash, looking for the stuff even the Supreme Court couldn’t take. Trouble is, community standards. L.A. doesn’t have any, Bosch. Hasn’t been a successful obscenity prosecution here in years. I’ve made some underage cases. But I’m still looking for my first obscenity jacket.”
He stopped a moment before saying, “Most cops do a year in Ad-Vice and then transfer out. That’s all they can take. This is my seventh year, man. I can’t tell you why. I guess because there’s no shortage of surprises.”
“Yeah, but year after year of this shit. How can you take it?”
Mora’s eyes dropped to the statue on the desk.
“I’m provided for. Don’t worry about me.” He waited another beat and said, “I’ve got no family. No wife anymore. Who’s going to complain about what I do, anyway?”
Bosch knew from their work on the task force that Mora had volunteered for the B squad, to work nights, because his wife had just left him. He had told Bosch that he found it hardest to get through the nights. Bosch now wondered if Mora’s ex-wife was blonde and, if she was, what it would mean.
“Look, Ray, I’ve been thinking the same things, about this follower. And she fits, you know? Gallery. The three vics and the survivor were all blondes. Church wasn’t choosey but the follower apparently is.”
“Hey, you’re right,” Mora said, looking at the photo of Gallery. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Anyway, this four-year-old tip is as good a place to start as any. There also might be other women, other victims. What’ve you got going?”
Mora smiled and said, “Harry, doesn’t matter what I got going. It’s dogshit compared to this. I gotta vacation next week but I don’t leave till Monday. Till then, I’m on it.”
“You mentioned the adult association. Is that —”
“Adult Film Association, yeah. It’s run out of a lawyer’s office in Sherman Oaks.”
“Yeah, you tight with anybody there?”
“I know the chief counsel. He’s interested in keeping the biz clean, so he’s a cooperative individual.”
“Can you talk to him, ask around, try to find out if anybody else dropped out like Gallery? They’d have to be blonde and built.”
“You want to know how many other victims we might have.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll get on it.”
“What about the agents and the performers guild?”
Bosch nodded at the calendar with Delta Bush on it.
“I’ll hi
t them, too. Two agents handle ninety percent of the casting in this business. They’d be the place to start.”
“What about outcall? Do all of the women do it?”
“Not the top ranks of performers. But the ones below that, yeah, they pretty much go the outcall route. See, the top performers, they spend ten percent of the time making movies and the rest out on the road dancing. They go from strip club to strip club, make a lot of money. They can make a hundred grand a year dancing. Most people think they’re getting a bundle to do the nasty on video. That’s wrong. It’s the dancing. Then if you go below that level, to the performers either going up or coming down, they’re the ones you find doing outcall work in addition to the movies and the dancing. A lot of money there, too. These chicks will pull down a grand a night for outcall work.”
“Do they work with pimps, what?”
“Yeah, some got management but it’s not a requirement. It’s not like the street, where a girl needs her pimp to protect her from the bad johns and other whores. In outcall, all you need is an answering service. Chick puts her ad and her picture in the X press and the calls come in. Most have rules. They won’t go to anybody’s house, strictly hotel work. They can control the class of clientele they keep by the expense of the hotel. Good way to keep the riff-raff out.”
Bosch thought about Rebecca Kaminski and how she had gone to the Hyatt on Sunset. A nice place, but the riff-raff got in.
Apparently thinking the same thing, Mora said, “It doesn’t always work, though.”
“Obviously.”
“So, I’ll see what I can come up with, okay? But off the top of my head, I don’t think there will be many. If there was a bunch of women doing the sudden and permanent disappearing act like Gallery did, I think I would’ve gotten wind of it.”
“You got my beeper number?”
Mora wrote it down and Bosch headed out of the office.
• • •
He was heading across the lobby past the front desk when the pager on his belt sounded. He checked the number and saw it was a 485 exchange. He assumed Mora had forgotten to tell him something. He took the stairs back up to the second floor and ducked back into the Ad-Vice squad room.
Mora was there, holding the photo of Gallery and staring at it in a contemplative manner. He looked up then and saw Bosch.
“Did you just beep me?”
“Me? No.”
“Oh, I just thought you were trying to catch me before I left. I’m gonna use one of the phones.”
“You’re welcome to ’em, Harry.”
Bosch walked to an empty desk and dialed the number from the pager. He saw Mora slide the photo into the file. He put the file into a briefcase that was on the floor next to his chair.
A male voice answered the call after two rings.
“Chief Irvin Irving’s office, this is Lieutenant Felder, how can I help you?”
19
As with all three of the department’s assistant chiefs, Irving had his own private conference room at Parker Center. It was furnished with a large, round, Formica-topped table and six chairs, a potted plant and a counter that ran along the rear wall. There were no windows. The room could be entered through a door from Irving’s adjutant’s office or from the sixth floor’s main hallway. Bosch was the last one to arrive at the summit meeting called by Irving, taking the last chair. In the others sat the assistant chief, followed counterclockwise by Edgar and three men from Robbery-Homicide Division. Two of them Bosch knew, detectives Frankie Sheehan and Mike Opelt. They had also been attached to the Dollmaker task force four years earlier.
The third man from RHD Bosch knew by name and reputation only. Lieutenant Hans Rollenberger. He had been promoted to RHD sometime after Bosch had been demoted out of it. But friends like Sheehan kept Bosch informed. They told him Rollenberger was another cookie-cutter bureaucrat who avoided controversial and career-threatening decisions the way people avoid panhandlers on the sidewalk, pretending not to see or hear them. He was a climber and, therefore, he couldn’t be trusted. In RHD, the troops already referred to him as “Hans Off,” because that was the kind of commander he was. Morale in RHD, the unit every detective in the police department aspired to, was probably the lowest since the day the Rodney King video hit the TV.
“Sit down, Detective Bosch,” Irving said cordially. “I think you know everybody.”
Before Bosch could answer, Rollenberger sprang from his chair and offered his hand.
“Lieutenant Hans Rollenberger.”
Bosch shook it, then they both sat down. Bosch noticed a large stack of files at the center of the table and immediately recognized them as the Doll-maker task force case files. The murder books Bosch had were his own personal files. What was piled on the table was the entire main file, probably pulled out of the archives warehouse.
“We’re sitting down to see what we can do about this problem that’s come up with the Dollmaker case,” Irving said. “I have — as Detective Edgar has probably told you, I am swinging this case over to RHD. I am prepared to have Lieutenant Rollenberger put as many people on it as needed. I have also arranged for the loan of Detective Edgar to the case and you, as soon as you are free from the trial. I want results quickly. This is already turning into a public relations nightmare with what I understand was revealed during testimony today in your trial.”
“Yeah, well, sorry about that. I was under oath.”
“I understand that. The problem was you were testifying to things only you knew about. I had my adjutant sit in and he informed us of your, uh, theory on what has happened with this new case. Last night, I made the decision to have RHD handle the matter. After hearing the sense of your testimony today, I want to task-force this and get it going.
“Now, I want you to bring us up to speed on exactly what is going on, what you think, what you know. Then, we will plan from there.”
They all looked at Bosch for a moment and he was unsure where to begin. Sheehan stepped in with a question. It was a signal that he believed Irving was playing on the level on this one, that Bosch could feel safe.
“Edgar says it’s a copycat. That there is no problem with Church?”
“That’s right,” Bosch answered. “Church was the man. But he was good for nine of the victims, not eleven. He spawned a follower halfway through his run and we didn’t see it.”
“Tell it,” Irving said.
He did. It took Bosch forty-five minutes to tell it. Sheehan and Opelt asked several questions as he went. The only thing or person he did not mention was Mora.
At the end, Irving said, “When you ran this follower theory by Locke, did he say it’s possible?”
“Yes. With him I think he thinks anything is possible. But he was useful. He made it pretty clear for me. I want to keep him informed. He’s good to bounce stuff off of.”
“I understand there’s a leak. Could it be Locke?”
Shaking his head, Bosch said, “I didn’t go to him until last night and Chandler has known things from the start. She knew I was out at the scene the first day. Today she seemed to know the direction we are going, that there is a follower. She’s got a good source keeping her informed. And Bremmer over at the Times, who knows. He’s got a lot of sources.”
“Okay,” Irving said. “Well, aside from Dr. Locke being the exception, nothing in this room leaves this room. No one talks to anyone. You two” — he looked at Bosch and Edgar — “don’t even tell your supervisors at Hollywood what you’re doing.”
Without naming Pounds, Irving was postulating his suspicion that Pounds could be a leak. Edgar and Bosch nodded in agreement.
“Now” — Irving looked at Bosch — “where do we go from here?”
Without hesitation, Bosch said, “We have to retrace the investigation. Like I told you, Locke said it was someone who had intimate access to the case. Who knew every detail and then copied them. It was a perfect cover. For a while, at least.”
“You’re talking about a cop,” Rollenberge
r said, his first words since the briefing began.
“Maybe. But there are other possibilities. The suspect pool is actually pretty large. You got the cops, people who found the bodies, the coroner’s staff, passersby at the crime scenes, reporters, lot of people.”
“Shit,” Opelt said. “We’re going to need more people.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Irving said. “I’ll get more. How do we narrow it down?”
Bosch said, “When we look at the victims we learn things about the killer. The victims and the survivor generally fall into the same archetype. Blonde, well built, worked in porno and did outcall work on the side. Locke thinks that is how the follower picked his victims. He saw them in videos, then found the means of contacting them in the outcall ads in the local adult newspapers.”
“It’s like he went shopping for victims,” Sheehan said.
“Yeah.”
“What else?” Irving said.
“Not a lot. Locke said the follower is very smart, much more so than Church was. But that he could be disassembling, as he calls it. Coming apart. That’s why he sent the note. Nobody would’ve ever known but then he sent the note. He’s moved into a phase where he wants the attention that the Doll-maker had. He got jealous that this trial threw attention on Church.”
“What about other victims?” Sheehan asked. “Ones we don’t know about yet? It’s been four years.”
“Yeah, I’m working on that. Locke says there’s gotta be others.”
“Shit,” Opelt said. “We need more people.”
Everyone was quiet while they thought about this.
“What about the FBI, shouldn’t we contact their behavioral science people?” Rollenberger asked.
Everyone looked at Hans Off as if he were the kid who came to the sand-lot football game wearing white pants.
“Fuck them,” Sheehan said.
“We seem to have a handle on this — initially, at least,” Irving said.
“What else do we know about the follower?” Rollenberger said, hoping to immediately deflect attention from his miscue. “Do we have any physical evidence that can give us any insight into him?”