Noiryorican Page 10

  When I asked him about Jeannie, he said she was “trouble” and had no further comment. I then asked him if he could shed any light on my client’s injuries.

  “That’s just Ralph,” he told me. “He’s naturally clumsy and worse when he’s drunk.”

  I asked him if he could tell me who my client might have fought with that night. But he said he couldn’t remember a thing.

  “It was one of those historic drinking nights,” he said. “I think you know what I mean.”

  At my office some days later, I sat at my desk looking at my wife’s picture in a broken picture frame. I made a mental note to get a new frame. I then decided to call my friend Lieutenant Mike Saltzman at the police department.

  He asked me if I was okay. I informed him that I was. I told him about the case. He said he would do some checking and call me back.

  When he did, he said, “That club you’re talking about is on our radar. Violations left and right. Keeps opening and closing. Owner’s always in some financial mess, probably deals drugs on the side. And there was an officer in the area who spotted your friend in the alley, not too far from the club, but it was a busy night and he figured he was just a drunk sleeping it off, so he let him alone.”

  I thanked the lieutenant and told him to thank the officer.

  He said, “Hey, if you need anything, you know, besides this, you have to let me know, will ya?”

  I told him that I would.

  I decided then to see Jeannie Lowenstein. The address Mr. Drucker had given me was in Echo Park. She lived in a small apartment building above a fashion store.

  When I rang the bell, a woman answered with a tight voice. “Who the hell is it?”

  I told her who I was and that I was looking for Jeannie Lowenstein.

  The voice said, “Jeannie? Jeannie’s dead.”

  I pressed the talk button. I said, “What happened to her?”

  She said, “She killed herself. Like two weeks ago! Don’t you read the news? What kind of detective are you?”

  I asked if I could come up and speak to her at length. She said, “Absolutely not.”

  I let it go at that and left.

  I got home and made my own dinner again and started thinking. I looked up the incident on the Internet. Jeannie Lowenstein had been an actress with two nonspeaking credits in films. A history of depression. Images of her were of an attractive young woman, brunette, with hazel eyes. She has been found hanging in her room. She had not left a note. This had happened on the morning of July 14.

  I bought another bottle of Solzhenitsyn-brand vodka at the liquor store, along with a six-pack and a pint of Old Grand-Dad. I opened a bottle and sat in my recliner, the one Marianne got me on our tenth anniversary. That had always been my best place to think.

  The testimony of my client and his friends had been inconclusive. The best evidence of what had occurred that night would likely be on the club surveillance tapes. After a good amount of thinking, I decided that I needed to see that evidence, that the tape could be recorded over at any minute, therefore I could not wait another day.

  So I drove to the Rvota club, which was closed at that time, which was after 4 a.m. Knowing that I would have to perform some breaking and entering, and having some experience with same, I brought along a kit that included special tools for the job.

  I had to cut the wires to the electrical system, which was located at the back of the establishment. Unfortunately, the box was too high for me to reach and I did not in fact have a ladder. The garbage dumpster was too full for me to move. I spent some time inside it, throwing out assorted garbage in an attempt to lighten it before I gave up on the seventh or eighth try.

  My car was across the road in a lot. I decided to drive it to the back of the club and back it up against the wall. But the back of the car was too low. I had to park the car in sideways. This was the perfect height, although in the process I had somehow misjudged the distance to the wall and lost my side-view mirror and scratched some of the paint off my door. But I was now able to reach the box, although my hands were slippery for some reason. This caused me to drop the kit on the roof of the car and all over the floor of the parking lot. It took some time to collect it all again. Eventually, I was able to get back on the roof of the car to disconnect the current to the club.

  There was a small bathroom window in the back of the club as well. I smashed that open, cutting my left hand rather badly, and crawled into the ladies room.

  Once there, I easily made my way to the security office, which was locked. I picked the lock with my kit, and inside I found the tapes I was looking for.

  Unfortunately, there were over one hundred tapes. Since there was no electricity and I had only the dim light from my cell phone, I found it difficult to read the dates on the tapes. I had to take them all. This took many trips.

  On my last trip, I lost my balance exiting the window and fell onto the pile of tapes I had made. I put them slowly into the trunk of my car. At this point, it was daylight. I saw that I had unfortunately gotten some blood on the tapes.

  In any case, I drove them home and began watching one after the other until I fell asleep.

  Some days later, I found the tape with the time stamp of the night of the incident. I watched the tape several times to be certain. It was a video of the parking area behind the club, which unfortunately was not well lit. In the video, three men whose figures could only been seen in silhouette were beating up a fourth man. It appeared that they were forcing his arm in a car door and slamming the door.

  I decided to call my client but could not find my cell phone.

  I went to my office and used the phone there. Mr. Mirfield did not answer his phone.

  I then took it upon myself to drive to his residence in Silver Lake. It was bungalow in the Spanish style, with a terra cotta roof and poorly kept bougainvillea bushes. No one answered the front door. I drove around the corner, where I had seen an alley that went behind the houses on the block. I drove down it to my client’s residence. I entered through the back gate. His recycling bin was piled high with bottles. Smirnoff, Skyy, Tullamore Dew, Makers, Sam Adams, Corona, Heineken.

  The knob on the back door had been smashed away. My hands shook as I entered into the kitchen.

  Music, or what young people currently call music, was on a stereo. Only one light was on—in the bedroom.

  I found my client there, naked except for a series of (likely) silk ties tied together and around his throat. One of his hands was on the ties, another was around his genital area. His skin matched the blue of the ties. He was looking up at the stucco ceiling, not seeing anything. His jaw was still wired shut, but his lip was split and there was new bruise on his forehead. The wrist of the hand near his genitals was still in a cast.

  I went to find his phone, searching around. While doing this, I found his computer and on it I found multiple emails from Jeannie Lowenstein. The emails were of a salacious nature. “I love my lips on your body.” “My safe word is ‘Don’t stop, ever.’” Things of that nature.

  At one point, she alluded to the fact that they were “going behind Bob’s back.”

  It took some time to read through all the email. When I woke up, it was dark. Rigor had set in for my client. I found his phone and called the police.

  Lieutenant Saltzman arrived with his men.

  One of them said, “He must have been drinking the bourbon, lieutenant. Half the bottle is gone.”

  The lieutenant said to the officer, “Never mind that. Go door to door and see if the neighbors saw anything.”

  Then he told me he needed to talk to me outside.

  In his car, he tossed my cell phone into my lap.

  He said, “That was found at a club called Rvota. They had a B and E. Officer Kent pulled it out from the evidence, saw who it belonged to. Good thing it was near the Lost and Found box, which was overturned. Whole place was a mess.”

  “Kent is a good man,�
� I told him. “Give him my thanks.”

  “We talked to the manager, a Dragan Stevic. He says you called him that night and yelled at him over the phone. He says he didn’t understand a word you said.”

  I told Mike I did not recall making that call.

  Mike said, “We’re cutting you a lot of slack, Guzman. You were tops back in the day, and you mean a lot to the guys. But you can’t keep going like you’re going.” Then he said, “What happened with Marianne. You have to let it go. It’s been five years.”

  Mike asked me what I was doing in my client’s house, and I told him as much as I felt I could.

  He said it looked like an accidental death. “Self-asphyxiation. Happens more than you’d think in this town.”

  I told him to look at the injuries my client had. He said he had caught more than one john with two broken legs. I told him to look at the medicine cabinet, that with all those painkillers it was unlikely my client could pleasure himself.

  “Maybe that’s why he went too far,” the lieutenant said. “In any case, it’s out of your hands, and your case is done.”

  I asked him about the busted back door lock.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But it’s nothing for you to care about. Did he pay you?”

  “Only six hundred dollars,” I said.

  “Then you have even less reason to care about it.”

  It was raining and the drive home took some time.

  I reviewed the case in my mind as I drove. Ralph Mirfield and his friends claimed to be at Rvota on that Saturday, the 13th, drinking away a heartache. This was understandable. I touched the stuff, but with moderation. Marianne had been the drinker in the family. Four guys, drinking several bottles and taking shots, they said.

  The next day Jeannie Lowenstein had been found dead, having killed herself. There was no note.

  Marianne had loved the drink so much she needed to go to AA. I used to find her passed out when I got home, never in my recliner. I used to pick her up from the bathroom floor, clean up after her whenever I got home late, which happened a lot.

  The case was about four guys who needed a drink. This case was about a woman, who was cheating on her boyfriend, who was unfaithful.

  My wife had committed a kind of adultery. If it had been with just some Tom, Dick, or Larry, I think I could have gotten past it. But she had been with Georgi, Stoli, Absolut, Belvedere, Grey Goose.

  What happened that night? Did a man fall down the stairs? Who was the man getting beaten up in the parking lot? Were the others trying to teach him a lesson? Or were they trying to get him to confess? Was there a drug that made one susceptible to suggestion, open to confession, that also caused memory loss? Or was it just a hunting party?

  My wife had been killed. She had been drinking. I had been following her. Checking on her. Trying to keep track. Making sure she was safe.

  Did Jeannie Lowenstein in fact kill herself? Was she depressed about her career and/or her relationships?

  My wife said she’d been off the sauce. And she was good, hiding it from me. But one night I was driving past the Short Stop, an old cop bar on Sunset, and there was her car in the lot. I waited outside. It tore me up. She had promised.

  When she stumbled out, I followed her. She may have—must have—seen my vehicle behind hers. She proceeded to increase speed. I did same. She turned a corner sharply on Mulholland Boulevard. I did same, at high speed.

  Who was watching out for Jeannie Lowenstein? My client Mr. Mirfield? Mr. Drucker, the rich friend? All of them? Any of them? What about that new car? What about moving to a bigger place?

  I had kept track of where we were. I forgot that the next street was short. I turned, the wheel fighting me. The light ahead had been red, and my wife—Marianne had stopped her car. With the slick roads, I could not stop mine.

  The front of my car impacted on the back of hers. As usual, she had not been wearing her seatbelt.

  Jeannie Lowenstein had hung herself. Had died hanging, a rope around her neck. My client had died of asphyxiation, a rope of ties around his neck.

  Marianne—Marianne’s body—exited the vehicle through the windshield. She was sprawled on the hood of the car.

  When Mr. Mirfield said he wanted to know what happened, Mr. Drucker had recommended me. Because somehow he knew I was cheap. I was available. I was not…not what I once was. And he kept pushing to know what happened, and the others didn’t like me sniffing around.

  To be honest, I had never cared for alcohol, barely touched it. But after the accident, I wanted to know, I needed to know, what the attraction was. What did Marianne find in booze that I couldn’t give her. I found a stash of vodka she kept in the laundry room, under the Christmas things. That was how it started.

  It was then that I remembered I had forgotten to tell Mike about the surveillance tape.

  I showed up at Mr. Drucker’s home that night, around 11 p.m. He came to the door with a glass of white wine in his hand, half filled.

  “I don’t want to talk to you right now,” he said. “My friend just killed himself.”

  I said, “We’ll get to that. First of all, Mr. Drucker, did you and your friends assault Mr. Mirfield outside of Rvota on the night of the 13th?”

  “What are you, drunk? He fell down the stairs. We told you.”

  “There are surveillance tapes of the parking lot.”

  “So?”

  “You knew that Ms. Lowenstein was in a relationship with Mr. Mirfield.”

  “He was my friend. Who just died. My god! Where are you getting this from?”

  At this point, Mr. Drucker began to become agitated. I remembered that I had forgotten to call the cops to come in for the arrest. I had also left my gun in my car.

  I said to Mr. Drucker, “You drugged him that night, which was why he had no memory of how he got hurt. But you also wanted to get even with Ms. Lowenstein, so you killed her and make it appear like suicide.”

  “You’re out of it, man,” he said. “I’m going to call my lawyer.”

  Mr. Drucker slammed the door in my face.

  I then went to wait in my car, which was down the block.

  He emerged from his domicile an hour later. He got into his red European-model sedan and sped down the street. I was sure he was going to see his cohorts, to plan their next move.

  I followed. The roads were slick again. But I couldn’t let him get away.

  He took a few side roads, then he headed for the highway, which was relatively free of traffic.

  He must have seen me in his rear view. He put his foot on the gas. I did the same.

  I couldn’t let her get away. Not again.

  We were approaching a busy area. Up ahead, he could easily lose me. I sped up as much as I could and rammed his sedan from behind. It was not a square hit, so he fishtailed and slammed into a divider. His sedan kept going. An oncoming black SUV plowed into the front of his sedan and crushed it like a beer can against the divider.

  I parked and got out. I slipped on the road and got up again. I saw his body, half out of the sedan. She was dead.

  It was then that I blacked out.

  When I woke up again, I was in the hospital. I was in the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai. I recognized it because my wife had been three times. I recognized the smells of vomit and urine and the mint green paint on the walls.

  I found that I was secured to the bed.

  After a few moments, I realized Lieutenant Saltzman was there.

  “Hey, Tommy,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  I told him I was fine but he didn’t seem to understand what I’d said. He looked at me in a peculiar way.

  “You’ve been here three days,” he said. Then he said, “Listen, we’ve been working on that Mirfield thing.”

  My hands suddenly felt itchy, but I could not scratch them.

  “We got the video you must have been looking for at that club. A guy stumbling down the stairs. We can’t quite
make out the face, but it’s too much of a coincidence. Anyway, that’s how your client, this Ralph Mirfield, got all banged up. We talked to the bouncer and he corroborates the evidence on the tape.”

  I told him he had it all wrong, “All paid off,” I believe I said, but again he just looked at me funny.

  “Your client was calling and calling this woman named Jeannie Lowenstein. Who it turns out committed suicide some weeks back. He paused then he said, “Her career was in the shitter, her boyfriend had broken up with her. You know, the usual Hollywood story. So maybe that’s why your client, uh, got carried away, maybe took his hobby a little too far.”

  I asked him about the back door, and I think he heard me.

  “Also, that back door. Turns out Mirfield broke it himself the morning after of the drinking party. That’s what he told a couple of his friends, so that all checks out.”

  There was a fly buzzing somewhere, making it hard to hear the lieutenant.

  “Listen, this car accident. It’s bad news. But first thing is your health, Tommy. The doctor here says you can’t keep on like this,” he said.

  I told him I didn’t want her to hurt anymore. She had to be stopped.

  “He says you’re a danger to yourself,” he said.

  I just wanted to get home. I wanted to see Marianne. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. I wanted to call a nurse, get her to come over right away, because bugs kept crawling all over his face and onto my skin.

  Back to TOC

  HOW TO KILL A BROWN GIRL (OR BLACK, WHITE, OR HALFSIE)

  Wait until her roommate, her sisters, her bff, her moms, or her lover leaves her co-op.

  Wait until the cop in the cruiser outside is sexting his mami mami. Bring a sandwich.

  Bring protein bars. Bring two bottles of water. Piss in the one you empty.