The Wedding Guest Read online

  He scrolled. “Don’t care about their taste in music or movies, let’s check out their social life.”

  Active social life, a couple dozen male and female friends, plus sibs, nieces, nephews, and a pair of middle-aged mothers.

  Jameson R. Farquahar was an associate at a law firm in Encino. James Johnson listed himself as a personal trainer.

  That made Johnson more likely but close to a hundred men by that name lived in the Valley, so Milo switched his phone to speaker and tried Farquahar’s office.

  Closed on Sunday, nothing beyond general voicemail.

  “Okay, tomorrow’s a new day—uh-oh, the optimism flu must be catching. I’ll find him one way or the other, starting with his true love—say ten a.m., here? I’m figuring to leave soon after.”

  * * *

  —

  Monday, I was back in my corner as he sat belly-to-desk and phoned the law firm.

  Mr. Farquahar was in a meeting.

  Identifying himself, he asked the secretary if she had a number for “Mr. Farquahar’s friend, James Johnson.”

  “The police?” said the receptionist. “I can’t believe James is in trouble.”

  “He’s not in any sort of trouble but he may have information that can help us.”

  “Help you?” said the receptionist.

  “A former friend is a victim.”

  “A victim?” said the receptionist.

  Milo let his mouth go slack and his head go off-kilter. “Of a serious crime, ma’am.”

  “Serious?”

  “It would be great to talk to James.”

  “Talk? I guess I can call him. Then he can decide. Let me call you back.”

  Click.

  Moments later, Milo’s desk phone rang. A soft, boyish voice said, “This is James.”

  “Lieutenant Sturgis, here. Thanks so much for getting back, Mr. Johnson. This is about a woman who danced at a club where you did security.”

  “Eileen—my husband’s secretary—said someone’s a victim.”

  “Unfortunately the woman was murdered.”

  “Oh, my God,” said James Johnson. “Who?”

  “A dancer named Kimby.”

  Silence.

  “Mr. Johnson—”

  “I don’t believe I ever worked with someone named Kimmy. I used to do a lot of club security but not for a while.”

  “Kim-bee.” Milo described the dead girl.

  Johnson said, “What club are we talking about?”

  “The Aura.”

  “Oh, that one. We’re talking over a year ago, Lieutenant. Year and a half…Kim-bee? There might’ve been someone called Kim-ba.”

  “We were told Kimby but maybe.”

  “Told by who?”

  “The owner of the club.”

  “The Egyptian…Ronny Salami,” said James Johnson.

  “Salawa.”

  “If you say so. He wasn’t around much. I’m surprised he remembered my name.”

  “Actually, he wasn’t clear on it.”

  “How’d you find me, then?”

  “He called you Jimmy and described you as someone who probably lifted weights. Turns out one of our detectives thought he might know you from The Iron Cage.”

  “I’m never Jimmy, I’m James. We talking the Viking?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Moses the Viking,” said Johnson. “Late twenties, blond, humongous lats, bi’s, and tri’s? He’s the only cop I know of at The Cage.”

  “That’s him.”

  “The Viking is a monster. One-handed pull-ups, when he two-hands he puts like a hundred fifty around his waist. I like him as a spotter because he can lift more than me, I feel safe.”

  “I hope you don’t mind him telling us your name. This is an unsolved homicide and we’re still working on identifying the victim.”

  “No, it’s fine. The Viking’s cool. The Aura, huh? I thought the place closed down.”

  “It did—it’s complicated, sir. Any chance we could meet? At your convenience.”

  Silence.

  “Sir?”

  “Like an interrogation?” said James Johnson.

  “Nothing like that, just a brief chat so I can learn as much as possible about my victim.”

  “Why would I know about her?”

  “We’re looking for everyone who worked with her.”

  “Kimba,” said James Johnson. “Maybe Kim-bee but I’m still thinking Kim-ba…what I can tell you…if it’s who I’m thinking of—she always seemed different.”

  “How so?”

  “Like she felt she shouldn’t have been there. That’s about it.”

  “Could we meet anyway, sir?”

  “What for?”

  “Sometimes people’s memories are jogged.”

  “I don’t think mine will be.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Johnson, but this woman died in a particularly nasty way and unless we can identify her—”

  “Fine, okay, if it’s super quick. I just finished a client in Beverly Hills, got one coming up in Brentwood, I can give you a few minutes.”

  “If it’s convenient for you to stop by, we’re in West L.A. between Beverly Hills and Brentwood.”

  “Come to a police station? No, no, I don’t think so. Last time I experienced a police station was when I was in college and went up to Bakersfield with the strength team for a competition and got picked up for walking while black.”

  “Sorry—”

  “Not your fault, I’m just saying. You want to talk, you come to me.”

  Milo said, “Happy to, sir.”

  “Well,” said Johnson, “there’s a little park on the corner of Whittier Drive and Sunset, I was planning to have a snack, anyway. But I can’t stay long.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “Kimba…I’m pretty sure that was her name.”

  * * *

  —

  The park was petite, lush, green, beautifully tended, maybe twice the size of nearby front lawns on Whittier Drive. Traffic on Sunset whizzed by. The air was warm and inviting. As we drove up, two squirrels stopped their frenzied mating and scampered off chittering.

  Milo murmured, “Love abounds.”

  Several years ago a Hollywood publicist had been gunned down while waiting for a red light at the Whittier–Sunset intersection, the shooter a lunatic on a bicycle who’d botched robbing her and avoided capture by blowing his own brains out.

  Other than that, a peaceful spot.

  A black Porsche Macan was parked on the west side of Whittier. A huge man in a white tee, shorts, socks, and sneakers sat cross-legged on the grass drinking from a bottle of something opaque and brown. He noticed us right away and gave a hesitant wave. By the time we reached him, he was on his feet, a tower of toned, sculpted muscle. A shadow of dark hair sheathed his head, neat and clipped.

  Milo extended his hand. James Johnson regarded it for a second before accepting. My hand is decent-sized, with long guitarist fingers. Johnson’s grip was an enveloping blanket of warm meat that covered it completely. Soft, though. Aware of his own strength.

  He settled back down on the grass. The brown stuff in the bottle looked like unfiltered apple juice.

  Milo and I settled facing him.

  James Johnson said, “Yoga class begins. Namaste. Actually, that’s for the end.”

  Milo grinned. “Again, thanks for taking the time, Mr. Johnson.”

  “Wait before you thank me, Lieutenant, nothing in my memory has jogged. I didn’t hang with any of the girls, it wasn’t that kind of place. You did your job and went home.”

  I said, “As opposed to other clubs.”

  “Some places develop a—I guess you’d call it a social system. The ones that seem to last.”


  “Not The Aura.”

  Massive shoulders rose and fell. “Total dive, the Egyptian wouldn’t spend a penny more than he had to. No benefits, everyone was an IC—independent contractor. You got paid in cash and not always on time. I didn’t stay long. No one did.”

  “Including the girls?”

  “Especially the girls,” said Johnson. “The clientele was basically shabby old guys who didn’t tip.”

  He uncapped his bottle and took a long swig. The look of apple juice but the aroma that filtered out was closer to vegetable soup.

  I said, “Were there any problems with specific customers?”

  “Nothing beyond a few harmless drunks. Overall boring, it was all I could do to stay awake,” said Johnson. “I stood out in front and another guy did the back door and then we’d reverse. Front was losers arriving drunk, back was losers leaving drunk. If they were obviously impaired—falling over—we’d call them a cab, but mostly Salami told us to mind our own business. The guy just didn’t care.”

  “No fights to break up?” said Milo.

  “None that I had to deal with. We’re talking sad wimpy guys who didn’t even catch on to watered-down booze. It was depressing.”

  Milo said, “Who was the other bouncer?”

  “I worked with a bunch of them,” said James Johnson. “Like I said, people came and went. Good security’s in demand, at solid places you get full benefits plus serious gratuity potential if there’s people wanting you to VIP ’em. No way Salami could hold on to serious staff.”

  I said, “No VIP lounge at The Aura.”

  He laughed. “Not hardly.”

  “Salawa said there was a bouncer named Del something.”

  “DelRay Hutchins. You guys follow the Olympics?”

  “Some of it.”

  “DR powerlifted on the 1990 team. Guy could dead close to eight hundred pounds, back in those days he could’ve qualified for one of those World’s Strongest Man competitions. Not anymore, Eddie Hall just went eleven hundred pounds. But Eddie’s Eddie and who wants to bulk up to four-hundred-plus and wear a breathing machine?”

  Milo said, “Del worked with you for how long?”

  “Maybe the last couple weeks I was there,” said Johnson. “Nice person. There were also some foreign guys—Russians, Finns, Croats, a massive dude from Morocco, an Israeli into that Krav Maga. Mostly older dudes, doing it part-time for a retirement gig, can’t tell you their names. Soon as I found out the Roxy was hiring, I got the heck out of there. Door work wasn’t my main focus, anyway. After a couple of years at Cal State L.A. and the weights team, I transferred to Tulane and got to defensive tackle. The NFL would’ve been nice but not with my injured ACL.”

  He massaged the back of one leg. “The goal was to get myself a high school coaching thing or build a career as trainer. I ended up with training, best thing ever happened.”

  He checked the time on his phone. “Five more minutes. Brentwood client’s a producer’s wife with an eating disorder. She is not into waiting.”

  Milo said, “What can you tell us about Kimba?”

  “Good looking, quiet, like I said, not putting on any sexy moves onstage—basically she’d get up and fake it. Can’t blame her, the losers coming in there weren’t exactly stuffing Benjamins in g-strings.”

  I said, “Going through the motions.”

  “Minimal motions,” said Johnson. He got to his feet with astonishing speed and grace, rounded his back. Letting his arms sag, he sidestepped to the right, the left, then back.

  “The shuffle, you know? Like guys who can’t dance but they’re with a hot girl who can so they try to be part of it? That was her. Back and forth.”

  He sat back down and took another swig of vegetable matter.

  I said, “Low-key and quiet.”

  James Johnson thought about that. “Not unfriendly-quiet. More like…reserved. She’d come in and say hi but she wasn’t like the others.”

  “Not a lot of reserved dancers.”

  Johnson smiled. “I did it long enough so I can generalize. Girls like that, they’re basically show-offs—exhibitionists. Same deal with actresses—some of the dancers still think they can become actresses.”

  I said, “Look at me, look at me, look at me.”

  “Exactly. Look at my body, look at my sexy face, look at my moves. Kimba wasn’t into that—oh, yeah, she dressed different, too. I’m not talking her stage stuff. What she wore when she arrived.”

  He smiled. “Guess that’s what you meant by jogging the memory.”

  I said, “What were her street clothes?”

  “Baggy sweaters, jeans, running shoes. No makeup, hair in a high pony. Okay, here’s something—another jog. She carried a backpack instead of one of those big fake designer things the other girls were into.”

  “Did her being different lead to conflict?”

  “Not that I ever saw. But like I told you, I am not the expert, here. She definitely didn’t hang with the other girls. In between shifts, the rest of them would be drinking or smoking or on the phone or doing their nails, whatever. Kimba would go into a corner, take a book out of her backpack, and read. Or she’d write something in a book, like a diary.”

  “Maybe a puzzle book?”

  “Hmm,” said Johnson. “Yeah could’ve been a Sudoku, crossword, word search, something like that. Jamie—my husband—gets into bed with one of those numbers thing and…” He mimed a giant yawn and grinned. “So, yeah, maybe. I wasn’t paying close attention.”

  He took another look at his phone. “Two minutes.”

  I said, “What car did Kimba drive?”

  “Some compact, Toyota, Honda, they all look the same to me. Gray, maybe? Or brown? Or blue? Honestly, I wasn’t paying attention. Now I really have to go.”

  He stood, took car keys out of a pocket, and faced the Macan.

  Milo said, “Just one more thing, sir. Do you have DelRay Hutchins’s number handy?”

  “No reason I would. What I can tell you is I think he moved to Lancaster. He got himself a high school football thing.”

  Milo thanked him again and handed over his business card. “Anything else comes to mind, sir, please call.”

  “Sure. Kimba a victim. Man, that’s sad. Where did it happen?”

  “At The Aura.”

  “She went back there? Why the heck?”

  “Good question, sir.”

  “Wow,” said James Johnson. “Life’s short, man, it’s short.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  Three public high schools in Lancaster. DelRay Hutchins didn’t work at Lancaster, Eastside, or Antelope Valley. Same for half a dozen religious academies in the area.

  I said, “Maybe he didn’t score a high school gig.”

  Milo nodded. “Time to dial down.”

  Moments later, the utterly uncurious receptionist at Piute Middle School said, “Coach? Let me try to find him.”

  A few beats later, Milo had finished a brief conversation with the fifty-three-year-old former powerlifter/AFL footballer/bouncer now training tweens in the fine art of collision.

  No, Hutchins had never worked with a Kimba or a Kimby but maybe there was a girl named Kimmie-Lee who matched the victim’s physical stats? Don’t hold him to it.

  Milo said, “Anything you remember would be useful.”

  “There’s not much,” said Hutchins.

  His hazy recollections jibed with James Johnson’s: quiet girl, stuck to herself, no problems with anyone he’d ever noticed, yeah, he’d heard The Aura closed down, why in the world would she return to “that trash dump”?

  He was able to give Milo the numbers of two other dancers at The Aura (“friends of mine, no problem telling them I told you, they love me”).

  * * *

  —
<
br />   Anja “Catwoman” Przdowek and Brooklynne “Slinky” Baker roomed together on the western rim of Los Feliz. Both had arrests for minor drug possession and, in Slinky’s case, for prostitution, twice.

  They came on the phone simultaneously, giggling about being questioned by a “murder detective.” Both proclaimed their “total adorable love” for Hutchins. “We don’t see DR much since he moved but when he lived in Hollywood, he was kinda like a father to us.”

  Neither of them had other than a faint remembrance of the girl they recalled as Kimmy.

  Quiet, stayed to herself.

  Catwoman said, “Not mean-quiet, like shy-quiet.”

  Slinky did recall “two bizarre things.” Kimmy didn’t drink or smoke and she liked to read.

  “Like a nerd,” said Catwoman.

  Milo said, “What did she read?”

  “Like I’m gonna notice? You notice, honey?”

  Slinky said, “Like I’m gonna notice? It’s like she wasn’t there, sir.”

  Milo said, “Staying in the background.”

  “Yeah,” said Catwoman. “Not a star, that’s for sure.”

  “Do you have numbers for any of the other girls who worked with her?”

  “Negative,” said Slinky. “Them bitches come and gone. Me and Cat are a couple.”

  “Got it.”

  “Hope you do. We’re in love!”

  Shared laughter.

  Milo said, “You guys have been helpful. Anything else you want to say?”

  “She had no chest,” said Slinky. “Don’t want to yelp her cold, not especially now with her all murdered, but to be honest, sir, she had leetle boobarellas and was a totally non-dancer. But I’m not saying she was nothing. Her butt was nice and her face was hot.”

  “Hot face,” agreed Catwoman. “I am totally dis-amayed that anyone would hurt her.”

  “Find out who did it,” said Slinky, “and fuck him up.”

  Milo hung up. The phone receiver landed with a horse-hoof clop. Out of a jacket pocket came another plastic-wrapped panatela. Again, he rolled it between his palms, creating tobacco dust. He does that more often, now, rarely smokes.