A Good-Looking Corpse Read online

  “Sorry, man,” I say. “If you’re looking for a new job I’d be happy to pray about it with you? The answer lies in Jesus.” Awkward, the kid mumbles a “no” and leaves me to my work. That sounds like something Ramen would have said, I realize. His schtick is rubbing off on me.

  When I finish and climb into the truck, sweating and exhausted, I am almost alarmed to see I have no missed calls. Still no Ramen. But also none from Mikey, which might be a good thing right now.

  Ivy is at work still but since I’m in Hollywood and her office is just up the road, I decide to pay her a visit. With the truck bed loaded with big black trash bags designated “Biohazard,” I eschew street parking on Selma, and drive into the private parking lot that bisects the property. I’ve never dropped in before but Ivy’s silver Eclipse convertible is nestled in the tiny lot so I know she’s in. I take a vacant spot beside her car, risking that I won’t get towed. If there’s one thing the city of Hollywood is on top of, it’s towing cars.

  The offices of Don Tart, Private Eye take a bit of time and effort to locate. I find myself wandering around a European-style courtyard, impressed by the amalgam of cultures built into the architecture. From a Russian turret to a wishing-well fountain and a lighthouse straight out of fairy tales, the offices don’t fit the typical sleek corporate design of Hollywood. It’s like this quiet little oasis of offices was built into a sort of theme-park location. Next door, a church bangs out four o’clock from its bell tower. I almost expect colorful peasants to come streaming out of the building and burst into a spritely song.

  One the other side of the parking lot, near the Sunset Boulevard side of the complex, I find the private eye’s office in a Mediterranean-themed facade with old-world tiling around the windows. It’s in the shadow of a thirty-foot-high edifice with an enormous spinning globe atop it reading Crossroads of the World. Really it all seems perfectly suited to Don Tart, Ivy’s PI boss. I’d never met the man personally but Ivy’s tales of him were colorful. “Lush,” “horndog,” “egomaniac” and “self-promoter” were just a few of the descriptives Ivy has used in conjunction with her boss . . . and if Ivy is aware of these traits in a person, I know it’s serious. Especially the “horndog” one—Ivy typically has the most amazing ability to be completely oblivious to the manner of dress she chooses and the attention she receives because of it.

  But I didn’t need to know Ivy to know the name Don Tart. “The Private Eye to the Stars,” he endlessly promotes his services on his many, many corny billboards across town. Full of goofy sayings like “Have A Hubba Hubba Hubby?” Or “Let Don Tart Nail ’Em Like They’re Nailing Their Secretary,” the private eye has his picture splashed over Southern California, dominating the landscape like the Offramp Inns used to. As far as fame-whoring goes, it seems like he’s replaced the local ’80s celebrity Angelyne as the billboard poster child of Hollywood. And not to mention his obnoxious late-night commercials that run seemingly nonstop on channel 5. Now even Ivy turns the TV off when they come on.

  But for all her grousing about Don, she loves her work. Our nights in bed together are frequently me listening as she recounts the stories from her day—cheating husbands busted, bail jumpers located, process-serving jobs gone wrong or even straight debt collecting, which, the way Ivy tells it, had Don’s hired henchmen basically doing loan-sharking. Sometimes I even get the unsolicited details about what little chippy Don was bribing to fuck him that week. Yeah, “The Private Eye to the Stars” seemed to have his fingers in a lot of pies. Who the fuck even calls themselves a “Private Eye” anymore? I wonder as I enter the little office.

  “Tom?” Ivy exclaims, startled, forgetting that we parted on bad terms. It’s almost comical to see her at a desk—her big porn-star tits nearly popping out of a low-cut blouse that’s nowhere near “office casual” anywhere else, her sleeve of colorful foliage and spider tattoos running the length of her right arm, and her blonde hair piled into a professional bun with two chopsticks piercing it at extreme angles. For all the eye rolling I mostly do at every fucking thing she has to say, it still gives me a little jolt of excitement to see her.

  “Hey you,” I say, approaching her faux chic wooden desk that is easily a continuation of her messy home habits. An absent front panel allows me and anyone else walking in to get a look far up her bare legs and into the blackness of short skirt beyond. At least she has the sense to cross her legs when she sits. “So this is it, huh?” I glance around the office which seems like it stopped updating itself around the time Miami Vice was on. The front space is tight, but mostly open with only a couch and some Us Weekly magazines on a coffee table sharing space with Ivy’s desk. By the front door, a little coffee bar is set up for the customers who aren’t currently visiting.

  The electric-green door back to the rest of the offices is ajar, destroying any sense of privacy Ivy and I could hope for.

  “Don’t say some asshole comment,” she warns, now remembering that she’s cross with me still. But she’s also a little touched that I’m standing before her, as I’ve dodged numerous offers to come visit in the past. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had a thing at the Roosevelt,” I explain when she pretends to be interested in something on her computer screen, her little pouty lips pushed out in manufactured frustration. I blurt out, “I shouldn’t have made fun of you last night.” She doesn’t bite. I want to ask if she sees herself—psychically—forgiving me anytime soon, but I don’t. It’s weird—a big portion of our relationship is in the little back-and-forth jabs to each other; she usually gives almost as good as she gets, but this one struck a nerve for whatever reason.

  The phone on her desk abruptly rings, making it easier for her to ignore my half-assed apology. “Office of Don Tart, private eye to the stars,” she says pleasantly into the receiver as if nothing bad has ever happened in her life.

  I debate whether I should leave, regroup, and attempt a more heartfelt mea culpa back at the apartment later tonight, but she puts the call on hold to yell back into the recess of offices: “Don, line one! We got a live one!” Returning the phone to the cradle, she looks me square in the eye so I can witness the hurt welled within and says simply, without luster, “Forget last night, it’s fine.”

  “It’s not fine,” I protest, recognizing that I have to step into caring mode before this festers into something bigger. “You’re really upset. And I want to fix that. Or at least try.”

  “How?”

  “What do you know about Travel Town?”

  “Absolute zilch.”

  “Okay, good. It’s this old park my parents took me to when I was little. It’s full of old abandoned trains that you can climb around on. It’s for kids mostly, but like you said, you wanted to see what I liked as a kid. We can go this Saturday.”

  “Halloween is this Saturday.”

  “Sunday, then.”

  Ivy slowly sizes me up and in her eyes I can see that Travel Town isn’t the answer. “I want to meet your parents,” she says.

  “What? No! No way,” I exclaim louder than I should and we both look back toward the open door that hints at the back offices. “They were right to disown me after the Holly Kelly thing, but it still hurts.”

  “If you’re serious about making it up to me, this is what I am asking for.”

  “Look, it was a couple dumb jokes about psychic shit, you’re asking for the fucking moon here.”

  “I think it would be good for both of us.”

  “You clearly don’t understand . . . I haven’t talked to my parents since my trial. Because they didn’t want to. Ahh, can we not have this conversation here?” She’d managed to catch me off guard, something that’s normally hard to do. I am sorry I’ve dropped in.

  Disappointed, she drops back into her chair and crosses her arms, silently staring back at me with her little mouth bunched into a condemning pucker. She isn’t gonna budge on this one.

  “Ivy, doll,” Don Tart yells from the back rooms, breaking up the heavy ai
r that has filled the office. “For chrissakes, don’t bust the guys nuts too bad. You might need ’em for something some day.” Don Tart, a squat, instantly familiar white-haired man with a cancer-baiting tan comes bowling out of the back offices in his equally energetic Tommy Bahama shirt. A borderline impractical gold chain mingles amidst the rolls of furry gray chest hair puffing out of his shirt top. He’s been polished by brazenly inserting himself into the drama of strangers for the last several decades and if he has any shame about eavesdropping on our spat, he doesn’t show it in the slightest.

  “Don Tart,” he says, jovially extending a hand for me to shake, which he then yanks back before I can shake and runs the hand alongside his hair, not actually connecting with it. “Too slow,” he snickers. He then offers it again and I reach for it, reluctantly, but he just retracts it again. “Can we make it three?” he asks gamely, putting it out once more. This time I ignore it but he leaves it hanging out there while staring at me earnestly. Mildly irritated, I give him the benefit of the doubt this time and reach for it. “Zoop,” he says, darting his hand away.

  Finally, fully irritated, I snatch his hand out of the air with my left and hold it in place so I can shake it. “You got me,” he agrees happily, not bothered by my frustration.

  There’s something off about the smoothness of his face in contrast with the wrinkles of his hands and it occurs to me he’s had work done on his mug. It doesn’t look bad, just unnatural. “You must be Tom,” he continues as if all that handshake madness didn’t just happen. “Most days, Ivy thinks the world of you. Makes me jealous.” He gives me the up and down that Ivy gave me a moment earlier. “No offense, Tom-bo.” He chuckles quickly and steamrolls to the hard truth. “But you came up in the deal. This little trixie,” he jerks his thumb aggressively back in Ivy’s direction, “is a knockout. You’re a lucky guy. Quite possibly the luckiest guy.” He pretends to brush some lint off my shoulder, pretends to straighten the collar of my shirt and then slaps his hands together, excited for no real reason.

  I look past the little man and over to Ivy, meeting her eyes. For the moment, a sort of embarrassment has replaced the hardened stone. “I agree,” I say and tack on a “Most days,” to get the PI to laugh and clap excitedly.

  “I’m high on it, today,” he assures Ivy, but looks between us both, apparently unable to talk without gesturing wildly. “I just got a call from Esteban Morales’s lawyer. She wants to file a missing persons on him!”

  “Esteban Morales . . . Why do I know that name?” I ask suddenly, the wheels spinning up in my brain.

  “You probably don’t,” Ivy speaks up. “He’s a TV producer, not exactly ‘your thing.’”

  “He puts out every minority sitcom you see these days; he’s worth a mint! And he’s missing, can you believe such a thing?” Don exclaims, shifting his energy from one leg to the next.

  “I know him!” I yell, realizing. “Well, not really, but he lives next to Mikey Echo.”

  “Echo? Christ! There’s a name I hate to hear. Yeesh!” Don chirps, quickly pacing the office now as he relays the details. “Too soon for the police to take a missing persons themselves, Esteban only disappeared yesterday afternoon. Gardener says he saw Morales’s car leaving the house around three-thirty. A matte-brown 7 Series. Gardener didn’t see the driver. The lawyer says his daughter found his cellphone in the street outside his house when she went by that evening. So that’s a bad sign.”

  “Want me to run the stats?” Ivy asks, now in business mode right along Don.

  “Yeah, hit ’em all. Plates read ‘2 Gorgeous Ass Titties 123.’” Don spits rapid-fire and

  Ivy takes it all down eagerly, and reads it back: “2-G-A-T-1-2-3.”

  “You know Mikey Echo?” I ask the PI as Ivy runs the plate through a service that checks sightings via traffic cameras.

  “Oh totally. His father more so.” Don nods. “The Echos bankroll the entire movie industry. I’ve had a lot of years working around George. George Echo can stop an investigation cold—and has on many occasions.”

  “Tell me more about him—the father,” I prod Don.

  “This town respects the hell out of him, I’ll tell you that. Lots of charity work, lots of philanthropy. George Echo is connected to almost every film that passes through this town—has been in one way or another for the last forty years. And his father was a part of Hollywood before that. Yeah, the Echo name is synonymous with Hollywood.”

  “Nothing weird about him, then?”

  “That kid of his, Mikey, is the one that scares me.” Don shakes his head. “Never met him personally, but his reputation around this town is dangerous. Ugly stuff.” Don looks around conspiratorially as if Mikey might just walk in. “You understand that I’m not one to tell tales out of school, correct? I would not be such a well-respected private investigator if I went around diming out paying customers? Of course, the Echos have never paid me a dime, so . . . I think Echo Junior killed his own mother. Frickin’ matricide, can you believe such a thing?”

  “What makes you say that?” I find myself moving in a little as I ask.

  “Christ, I probably shouldn’t say anything, but it’s the Echos, fuck ’em. Well, back say fifteen years ago or so . . . when I was a young buck, well, a younger buck, heh heh, I ran a wiretap for a client who was interested in getting some collusion dirt on Rich Whitelaw, big name in the public relations trade around here a few years back. Managed to hook into the Whitelaws’ home phone. Not exactly legal, if you can believe such a thing. But I intercept this call from Mikey to Rich’s son, Doug. Chilling stuff, you see. Mikey says he knocked mom down the stairs. He’s real casual about it though, like weird casual. He wasn’t all upset about it, like a teen kid might be. Didn’t feel to me like it was an accident though. It wasn’t anything revealing, he didn’t say she died or anything, just relayed it as a matter of fact in the course of their conversation—two kids talkin’ pussy, cars, booze and that. It wasn’t too big a deal to me then, except Mrs. Echo went missing right afterward and stayed missing. I remember George made a big push to try and find her, he was all broken up about it too, but no one ever saw her again. I’ve always kept that little notion to myself. And everything I’ve heard about the kid since has done nothing but compound my suspicion.”

  I flash back to Mikey showing me the skull in his collection, the chunk of missing bone matter just above the sphenoid. His mom.

  “I never knew what to do with that call—at the time, it wasn’t part of the business I was after, so I didn’t give it to my client.” Don’s manner is still excited and frenetic, but this is the lowest point of his energy. “That little snippet of recorded information has always been a sort of thing I’ve clung to . . . just kept in my vault.” He points to his head to clarify where his “vault” is.

  “Do you have that tape still?” I ask, trying not to show any excitement.

  “Naw, that thing is long gone. I thought about keeping it in case they ever came after me—maybe a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. But there’s not much you can do with a piece of information like that, really. Except be terrified for your life too. Only a fool would try to blackmail an Echo.”

  I want to watch his eyes, to see if they look toward a location that might indicate a physical copy of the tape, perhaps a physical vault somewhere, but the short man is so manic, he’s all over the place as he talks. Instinctively, I believe him.

  Don then turns back to me. “You think Mikey Echo is involved with this Esteban Morales thing?”

  I nod.

  “Forget it then,” Don says, making a gesture of washing his hands. “It’s done. Imma call that attorney back. We’re not taking the case. No point.”

  Chapter 13

  “I thought you were a goner,” I say when I see Ramen standing outside the door to my garage the next morning.

  “I guess it wasn’t my time.” He shrugs. “I was in meetings all day yesterday. Movie premiere on Saturday, you know? Lots of stuff going on. Did I miss a
nything cool?”

  I decide not to tell him about my meeting with Alan Van’s agent to see if he brings it up on his own.

  “Aww Christ, the Roosevelt?” Ramen says, frustrated, when I give him the short version of my previous day’s work. “They had the first Academy Awards there.” Before we get inside the office, he has a grand idea: “Look, Tom, instead of sitting in there, hoping that the phone rings, let’s do something fun.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s go on a murder tour. One of those bus rides where you go by all the crazy and famous L.A. deaths? Let’s do that. My treat. If we get a death call, we’ll hop off and take an Uber back to the office.”

  I want answers for yesterday too, and if there was anything that could get Ramen talking about murder, it was likely more murder. “Fuck it,” I find myself saying. “Let’s go.”

  If I’d have guessed, I’d have thought that the L.A. murder-tour scene is a business built on advance reservations and money, but as it turns out, Ramen casually handing the tour guide a baggie of white crystalline powder from his pocket gets us on “the list” just fine. The bus is enormous, a double decker London-style thing rapidly filling up with tourists and locals who just can’t get enough of the romance that is celebrity death in this town. On the outside, the bus has been painted up violently, in detailed graffiti that I would be hard pressed to admit didn’t belong in some sort of macabre museum itself. Small scenes of terror and supernatural distress from the artist’s twisted imagination joined with the obligatory movie-monster images and real citizens of Los Angeles, including O.J. Simpson and Charles Manson, to create a truly grim vehicle. The words Los Angeles Death Bus are spelled out down the length of our ride in the funky haphazard lettering of the Hollywood sign.