Chapter 31. Isabel, the Assistant
Isabel, the Assistant
PRESENT DAY
We’d almost reached the unmarked door hidden in the middle of the Studio City strip mall when a man appeared out of nowhere and barreled past us, clutching a metal bat. “You son of a bitch!” he screamed as he beat the door and then moved to the window, shattering the glass. “You ruined my life!”
Scout and I froze, staring at the office we’d been about to walk into—but Brooks launched into motion.
Before I could blink, he’d swept me up and carried me to the far end of the sidewalk.
“Don’t move,” he barked, both hands on my face, and the instant I nodded he sprinted back toward the man, drawing his gun.
“FBI—put down your weapon!” Brooks shouted, his voice so commanding it forced my spine straight. “Back away from the building!”
The man with the bat spun. His face was red, his eyes wild. “What the fuck, man? The FBI?” For a second, it looked like he would charge Brooks, FBI be damned, but then he cursed and threw his bat on the ground, where it went rolling into the parking lot.
The unmarked door flew open and a rail-thin man rushed out. “Jesus Christ, Bolero! I already told you, take your problems to your wife. She’s the one who hired me.”
The man with the bat—Bolero, apparently—rushed the thin man, but Brooks threw his body between them and easily twisted Bolero down to his knees. “Don’t move,” Brooks snarled, tucking his gun into the holster at his waist. “And don’t you dare take your problems to your wife.”
The thin man gaped at Bolero on the sidewalk, then at Brooks. “Who are you?”
“Like I said.” Brooks was still catching his breath. “FBI. You should call 911 now.”
The thin man chewed his lip. “How much will you pay me not to?” he asked Bolero. “I know you’ve got a record. You don’t want cops involved.”
“That’s not appropriate—” Brooks started.
“Fuck you.” Bolero spat. “I’ll give you five hundred.”
“Plus the cost of new windows,” said the thin man, gesturing at where the glass now lay in shards.
“Fine.”
“Then it’s a pleasure doing business, you bastard.” The thin man looked at Brooks. “You can release him now.”
With supreme reluctance, Brooks let go of Bolero.
“I’ll be back,” Bolero snapped, then scurried for his bat and took off running.
All four of us watched him retreat.
“I take it this happens often?” Brooks asked.
“Wish I could tell you no.” The man kicked at the shards of glass. “But he’s not the first man I’ve caught cheating on his woman who wanted to turn me into his personal pinata.”
Scout took a step forward. “Then it sounds like you’re the man we came to see.”
It was only then that I realized in the moment of danger, Brooks had left Scout exactly where she stood. On instinct, he’d chosen me.
Nobody ever chose me.
The inside of the private investigator’s office was small, dimly lit—even with a busted-out window—and claustrophobic, overflowing with stuff: metal file cabinets, photography equipment, take-out boxes, busted pens.
The furniture was grimy, but Brooks, Scout, and I took the chairs he offered anyway.
It had taken less than a day for Brooks to track down Rick Flores from the details Lila Baumgarten had given us.
Scout had canceled all of her tour rehearsals so we could meet here in the Valley, infuriating everyone from Haley to her label president, who’d sent us an all-caps email screaming that they were bending over backward for Scout, and she better be grateful.
As her assistant, I was going to have a lot of egos to massage later, but right now I couldn’t care less.
Now that we knew we’d been wrong about Alden and that Georgia’s real killer was still out there, nothing else mattered.
Scout and I had barely discussed her meltdown outside Gino’s, because we didn’t have to.
We didn’t need to talk about how we were going to burn down the world to get our answers.
Some truths were too obvious to say out loud.
Flores crossed his legs and steepled his fingers. “So. What brings you to my fine establishment?” Ever since we’d come inside, he couldn’t stop staring at Scout, like he was trying to see past her wig and sunglasses. Professional curiosity, maybe.
She sat gingerly on the edge of her chair. “Roughly twelve years ago, a woman named Lila Baumgarten hired you to tail a man named Easton Banks. They were both ABS executives at the time. You found evidence Easton was having affairs with girls under the legal age of consent.”
Brooks shifted in his chair. I knew it bothered him that no one, including this private investigator, had ever reported Easton to the police. But we needed Rick to cooperate, which meant keeping our opinions to ourselves.
“Is there any chance”—Scout took a deep breath, and I felt her nerves in my own chest—“you still have anything related to that job? You probably don’t remember that far back, but we can get more specific—”
“No need.” Rick leapt from his desk and strode to one of his filing cabinets, yanking open a drawer. “I’ve been waiting years for someone to walk through that door and make me an offer.”
Scout and I exchanged incredulous looks. “Please tell me you’re serious,” she said.
Brooks twisted in his chair. “You thought someone would be back for dirt on Easton?”
“Not Easton.” Rick seized a fat folder out of the file cabinet and dropped it with a thud on his conference table. “Gabriel Knox.”
The three of us glanced at one another—then, as one, we scrambled for the table.
“Hold your horses.” Rick laid a hand on the folder. “You want what’s in this file, you gotta pony up.”
Bile climbed my throat. Beside me, Brooks stiffened. But Scout stayed cool. “How much?”
“Hmm.” Rick sized her up, trying to take measure of her need, sense its value. “Twenty thousand.”
“What the fuck?” Brooks yelped. “That’s insane.”
“It’s extortion,” I said.
“No, it’s American capitalism,” said Rick.
“Listen, you folks are lucky you got here first. I was about to make Knox’s campaign an offer on this baby.
” He tapped the file. “Can you imagine how much they’d pay to make sure their opponents never saw what’s in here?
He’s a billionaire running for president.
Those are some deep pockets. If anything, I’m cutting you a deal ’cause you seem like decent people, helping with Bolero and all. ”
Brooks snorted, but Scout, after taking a deep breath, said, “I’ll pay.”
I whipped my head to her. “Do you even have that?” The money from Scout’s booming record sales would take ages, maybe even a year, to trickle in.
“I’ll use my savings,” she said, then took out her phone and started typing. “I’m sending an email to my money manager right now. Rick Flores, PI.” She showed him her screen. “See? Now show us the photos.”
Whatever email Rick saw on Scout’s screen must’ve satisfied him, because he flicked open the file.
The first shot was a large color photo, blown up to eight by eleven, of a group of men in suits sunk low into couches in the VIP section of a club.
It took me a second to place the vivid viper green before I realized it was the Serpent Room.
Unease crawled through me. The Serpent was our place.
“Easton, Reese, and Gabriel,” Brooks said, tapping each of them in the photo. “And is that…” He frowned. “Hardy Martin?”
“The actor?” I squinted at the photo, and sure enough, it was a younger Hardy, back when he’d grown out his hair for a string of dramatic roles, trying to put his A-list action star status behind him. “I didn’t know Hardy and Easton were friends.”
“All sorts of people came in and out of their circle,” said Rick, folding his arms. He spoke with a confident ease, like he had a PhD in Easton Banks.
“Sometimes a big-name celebrity or an NFL star would join them for a night, or even stick around for a few months. But Easton, Reese, and Gabriel were the core.” He sighed.
“What I wouldn’t give to have snapped some shots of Reese at the Beverly Hilton.
Could’ve sold those suckers for a pretty penny when his accusations broke. ”
Brooks took a step away from Rick, like the man physically repulsed him. It brought him close enough to me that I could feel the soft hairs on his forearm brush mine.
Scout flipped impatiently through the pictures, murmuring, “So many scantily clad women.” Easton was the focus of the shots, which made sense given the investigator’s assignment, but Reese and Gabriel were in the majority.
It was like touring through the seediest parts of old Hollywood, the version that had existed back when we moved here, before LA had grown its meager moral compass: women crowding the stage at strip clubs, grainy images of sex in darkened hotel suites, the shots obviously taken through open windows, topless women straddling Reese’s lap, Easton licking something off a woman’s inner thigh, Gabriel leading women by the hand into opaque-tinted town cars.
Brooks picked up one of the shots from a strip club. “How’d you get this? Strip clubs don’t allow photos.”
“You’d be surprised how easy it is, actually,” said Rick.
“Keep your surveillance subtle and tip well, and the staff will usually let things slide. Everyone has a price. You just gotta figure out what it is.” Rick shifted on his feet.
“I know these shots seem like your run-of-the-mill CEOs behaving badly,” Rick said, “but trust me, these guys were a different breed.”
I looked up at him as Scout kept flipping. “How do you mean?”