Chapter 18

July 31, 1996

Wednesday morning

Ionly worked a half day that Wednesday. Mostly I did paperwork, making sure all my notes were in good shape for the Larry Wilkes case. Lydia was still ruminating. About what, I had no idea. I'd brought some leftover pizza for my lunch. Around noon, I took out a slice and was about to take a bite, when Lydia came out of her office and said, "Go. Have a great time."

"It's business. I'm not going?—"

"It's a couple hours of business and you're going for two days. Have fun."

Before I got all the way out of the office, I heard her send Karen home, too. She was planning something. I wished I knew what it was.

Ronnie was already at home when I got there. We packed up his two-year old Legend because it got better gas mileage than my Jeep. Not to mention it had comfy leather seats and an air conditioner that turned the car arctic in seconds. Our bags went into the backseat since Ronnie had a traveling office in the trunk. All the forms he needed were in accordion files. Documents pertaining to several million dollars in real estate deals had been signed on his trunk.

We left around one-thirty. I was driving. Ronnie suggested we take 7th Street until it became the 22, stay on that past Garden Grove, the north on the 57 up to the 91, and stick with that until we get to Riverside. With traffic, that leg should take about an hour and a half.

I'd brought Canyon Girl with me and had it in the front seat. I was only about halfway through and really should try to finish before I interviewed Wallace Philburn. On the one hand, I didn't think it mattered; on the other, I didn't want to end up feeling like a kid who didn't do his homework if he figured out I hadn't read the whole book.

I caught Ronnie up on the chapters I'd read and then asked him to start reading with chapter nine. At first, I wasn't sure he was reading the right book. The chapter was about corruption in the Los Angeles police department in the late forties. Eventually, I started to catch on. He was making the case that if the LAPD was corrupt then the Pasadena Police Department probably was too. Corruption by association.

What wasn't clear was what that had to do with Vera Korenko's death. Was he suggesting a police officer killed her? Or the mob? Or basically anyone willing to pay off the police? He wasn't making himself clear.

Ronnie got to the next chapter about the time we were merging onto the 57. This chapter tracked Vera's movements during the last week of her life. Starting with Monday, she worked every day that week. Security National Bank was on Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar. There was a cafeteria nearby where the girls all ate their lunches. According to Georgia Dawson, she and Vera ate there on Mondays and Fridays. The other days they brought their lunches because they couldn't afford to eat out every day.

Georgia couldn't remember whether it was Monday or Friday when Vera told her she was going to Malibu for the weekend with friends. Philburn implied these were friends in the movie business.

"I don't think that's true," I told Ronnie. "Rocky said Vera wasn't much interested in the movies."

"It was true though, if she was going with Patrick and his boyfriend. Ivan was in the movie business. Besides, you don't have to like movies to like movie people."

"Do you like Dwayne?"

"He's not the only person I know in the industry," Ronnie said. "I do actually know some I like."

I asked him to continue reading. At the time, Vera was living a few blocks from where she worked in the rundown Hollywood Hotel. Philburn claimed she'd walk further down the boulevard to either Grauman's Chinese Theatre or The Egyptian most nights.

"Do you think there were any lesbian bars on Hollywood Boulevard?"

"No," Ronnie said. "The bars were in West Hollywood. As Junior has explained a million times, it was unincorporated, so the LAPD didn't patrol there. It was the county sheriff. They were less likely to raid bars, that's how they all ended up there."

"Of course, Rocky said she liked straight girls. There must have been some straight bars on Hollywood Boulevard."

"There was probably a bar in her hotel. But it wasn't okay for women to go into bars by themselves."

"Not nice girls, no. But girls who were in a little trouble. Girls who might have been relieved to find Vera there."

Ronnie frowned at me and went back to reading. Thursday evening, she had dinner with Betty Brooks at a drugstore and read fan magazines they didn't pay for. Betty didn't think anything was wrong with Vera, she seemed pretty normal.

"Do we have to keep doing this?" Ronnie asked. "It's not getting you anywhere."

"No, you're probably right."

"Good," he said, and then popped the soundtrack to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert into the CD player.

Before he could say anything, I said, "No, I am not strapping you to the roof of this car sitting in a giant high heel."

"Spoil sport."

We got to Riverside just after three o'clock. Ronnie had found something on the Internet called MapQuest and had printed out directions to Andrea Grubber's house on Granada Avenue. When we found her house, it was beige with a low fa?ade of phony brick. There was an old-growth tree in the front and a row of scrunchy-looking shrubs along the concrete driveway.

"She's not home," Ronnie said.

"How do you know?"

There was a garage. It was shut so who knew if there was a car inside.

"I'm a real estate agent, I can tell when someone's home."

"That's a telepathic gift that came with your license?"

"Okay, don't believe me."

I opened the car door and went into shock. It had been in the mid-seventies when we left Long Beach; in Riverside it was at least a hundred. There wasn't much humidity though, so it felt more like being dropped into a basket of just-out-of-the-dryer laundry than the strangled, underwater feeling you got in Chicago when the temperature went that high with humidity.

I knocked on the door. Waited. Nothing. After a minute or so, I stepped into the bushes and looked through the front window. There were kids toys all around the living room. Various ages from the look of the toys, from toddlers to grade-schoolers. At least one boy and one girl.

She wasn't home. If she were, the kids would be in the middle of the mess they'd made of the living room. I walked back to the car and climbed in. I started it up immediately so we could run the air. Even after just a few minutes it had gotten noticeably warmer.

"Go ahead, say it. You told me so."

"I wasn't going to say anything." That was clearly a lie.

"She's got at least two kids. I'd say she was picking at least one of them up from school. Do you think we should wait?"

"Hell, no. It's going to be a hundred and twenty in Palm Springs and close to that here."

Someone had been listening to the weather report.

"Should we be doing this?"

"Absolutely. As long as the air conditioner is running. But we shouldn't sit for an hour waiting. We can stop on the way back," he suggested.

I pulled away from the curb and we were on our way to Palm Springs. Once you're out of Riverside, the scenery gets increasingly barren. There's not much to look at but scrubby plants and sandy hills, until you get to Cabazon where there's an outlet mall smack dab in the middle of nothing.

"No," I said, even before Ronnie could ask. He liked buying things at a discount and we did have an entire new co-op to fill.

"Maybe on the way back. If it's under a hundred," he said, agreeing with me.

Hotel El Caliente was located off Palm Canyon on a side street with a dead end. It didn't look like much from the front. There was a strip of parking lot in front that held about ten cars. Through a bougainvillea-covered entrance you went into the courtyard hotel.

We grabbed our bags from the backseat, nearly burning our hands on the door handle. Going through the entrance, we found the registration desk, or rather room, to the left. It was open. There were a couple of chairs and an empty desk. Ronnie rang the bell.

An older man of about sixty came out wearing a pair of too-tight pink shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. He could have been at the commitment ceremony we'd just attended.

Ronnie explained that we had a reservation, and the man said, "Yes, of course. I'm Bart. You are an adorable couple."

"Thank you," Ronnie said, seeming quite pleased. "We think so."

Did we think so? Mostly I felt incredibly lucky, which was not the same as adorable.

"It's fairly quiet right now," Bart said. "You'll want to be on the first floor."

"We do?" I asked.

"Absolutely. There's a mister that makes it possible to sit outside the room. I'm putting you in room five."

I glanced into the courtyard, which was almost entirely pool. The building was two floors, roughly Spanish style—though not as interesting as our co-op. You could reach the second floor via a stairway roughly in the middle. He was right, that floor felt much more exposed to the sun. Room 5 was under the walkway for the second floor and just after the stairs.

"Sounds perfect," Ronnie said. He held out a credit card, Bart poked a few buttons on his computer, and a receipt popped out a printer.

As he stapled a copy of the charge to the receipt, Bart said, "Breakfast is between eight and ten. There will be coffee and Pop Tarts if you're an early riser. Do save some room though, tomorrow I'm doing a chilaquiles casserole. You'll want to try that."

"Thank you," Ronnie said.

"If you want anything just ring the bell. I have a little apartment in the back."

We picked up our bags and walked across the sizzling courtyard to room 5. The mister was going full steam, and we got under the overhang as soon as we could. The water from the mister evaporated so quickly you never felt wet.

I hadn't noticed before, but there was an overweight man sitting outside room 6. When we got close he said, "Hello neighbors." He was completely naked. His legs were crossed, and his belly covered the family jewels. He'd had a couple of abdominal surgeries, which made it look like his belly was winking. Or maybe it was just his attitude.

"Hi," Ronnie said, pushing open the door.

"I hope I'll see more of you later," he said, his eyes glued to Ronnie.

Inside the room, it was neat: the bed queen-sized and well-made, the artwork stereotypically Southwestern. There was a small table and two chairs, nightstands and a dresser. In the back was a decent bathroom. The air-conditioning was on full blast, and I'd guess it was in the mid-seventies.

"This is a clothing optional place, isn't it?"

"Of course," Ronnie said. "Isn't that more fun?"

He opened his suitcase and began putting things into the dresser.

"So, we're going to run around naked?"

"Maybe later. You're not a prude, are you?"

"I'm not sure I like the audience. The way that guy looked at you was first-degree sexual assault."

"Oh, he's harmless. There's not much point going in the pool until it cools down tonight. What do you want to do until dinner?"

It was around four. We didn't really need to eat until sixish. I was still full of leftover pizza and some cookies Ronnie had bought for the ride over. Before I could answer the question, he said, "I think we should go find this Wallace Philburn person and then have dinner after."

"Or…" I said. I'd noticed the bowl of condoms and tiny packets of lube sitting on top of the dresser. We didn't use condoms; we trusted each other enough not to. I suppose that was foolish on Ronnie's part given all the things he didn't know about me—but I knew I'd never hurt him, so I let him be foolish.

He caught my drift and said, "Quickly. I still want to get things done."