13 Hollywood Apes Page 26

  ZAN’s subsidiary, Semke, had left little trace behind. Remington got a hit on the name in a digital archive of alternative presses—just a citation, not the full article but proof that Semke had existed and had been written about, even though the article was almost ten years old. She moved from the state archives to a local library to track down the specific issue of City Pages Atlanta, the rag that supposedly printed the piece. The bound issues were there, but the particular pages Remington wanted had been torn out. It was just one dead end after another.

  She had an impulse to fly back to L.A. What was she looking to do in Georgia, anyway? Construct some sort of biography on a chimpanzee? Trace his parentage and the details of his birth? What earthly good would that accomplish?

  It happened more often than Remington cared to admit, that a break in a case came from something as simple and banal as a telephone listing. The alternative-press archive had included the name of the author of the Semke article. When she checked “Lucas, Emma” in the online white pages, she got twelve hits, but only one in Atlanta.

  “Do you know all the most famous primatologists are female?” was the first thing Emma Lucas said to her, when she and Remington met in a coffee shop near the campus of Emory University. “Jane Goodall, lead chimpanzee researcher. Dian Fossey, lead gorilla researcher. That Dutch woman—I don’t know how to pronounce her name. The lead orangutan researcher.”

  “Biruté Galdikas,” Remington said, slaughtering the pronunciation. “I don’t know how to say it, either.”

  “There’s a bonobo lady, too,” Lucas said. “And they’re mostly all, like, pretty. What do you think is up with that?”

  Emma Lucas sprawled her ample form across the table from Remington, a green tea in front of her. Her short-cropped hair was dyed a shade of red that didn’t exist in nature.

  “Well, anyway, that was just something that occurred to me coming over here to meet you,” Lucas said. “But you want to know about Semke Research, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Remington. She asked if Lucas had a copy of the City Pages story she had written.

  “I’m surprised anybody knows about that, or knows the name Semke,” Lucas said. “They are long gone. A corporation develops any level of liability, poof! They vanish into the legal mists.”

  “I found a citation for your piece on the Web.”

  “That’s how folks do research nowadays,” Lucas said. “Behind a computer. You’re probably the girl with absolutely no dragon tattoos, right?”

  “I don’t have any tattoos at all.”

  “That’s cool,” Lucas said. “I was just at a public pool, and I saw some ancient ladies with some ink. It didn’t look as good as when they had it done, like, a century ago.”

  “You’re still a reporter?” Remington asked.

  “I work as an office manager at a manufacturing association.”

  “But I’m guessing you can take the girl out of journalism but you can’t the journalism out of the girl.”

  Lucas smiled. “I keep my hand in. Like so many worthy things nowadays, you can’t make a living at it. I’m working on a documentary, speaking of impoverished endeavors.”

  “The Semke stuff you did—that wasn’t just sitting behind a computer.”

  “Boots on the ground, baby,” Lucas said, displaying her Doc Martens and giving the boots a stomp. “I nearly got killed. Really. They were out for me.”

  “Who?”

  “Semke kept their research chimps in cages the size of a refrigerator,” Lucas said, shaking her head. “They were injecting them with all sorts of different strains of HIV, hep C, any old virus they could cook up. Back then it was all legal, you know? But it was sure enough diabolical, dude. All sorts of Dr. Moreau–style shit went on.”

  The company was using chimps for AIDS research, Lucas told Remington. Semke contracted to get its animals from a breeding program run out of ZAN International.

  “I got in there and took some photographs,” Lucas said. “Just some low-light shots, but you could see well enough that the conditions weren’t fit for man or beast. It was ugly, ugly, ugly. Babies were sitting in them little cages just rocking back and forth. I couldn’t hardly take the photos, I was crying so bad.”

  “How’d you gain access?”

  Lucas bridled. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “You know, questions like that make me think you’re working for the dark side. It was, like, ten years ago, but I wouldn’t put it past those corporate mothers to have long memories. I’ll wake up some night with some dirtbag intruder’s hand over my mouth.”

  “Did they come after you back then?”

  “Word up they did! Nobody in authority gave a damn about the crimes going down in their research labs, but they were hell-bent on prosecuting me and my crew for felony trespassing.”

  “Anything stick?”

  “PETA sent some lawyers, and we kicked their asses in court.” Lucas lowered her voice to a conspiratorial level. “You know who’s worse than research scientists? The pork industry. They’re frigging vicious. You run afoul of those mothers, your body winds up in a pig manure holding pond in North Carolina. Don’t screw with our sacred ability to bring home the bacon, you know?”

  Remington thought of this stocky office manager–journalist, going up against well-funded corporate operatives who didn’t play fair. David versus Goliath, only with no fairy-tale biblical ending.

  Lucas fished inside her shoulder pack, a stylish red-and-black messenger bag with a metal safety-belt latch serving as a strap buckle. Taking out a batch of papers, she slid a legal folder across the table to Remington.

  “I copied out the original City Pages article for you. There’s some old material in there, too, photos and stuff.”

  Remington thanked her.

  “It was just sitting in my files at home,” Lucas said. “It’s way back in the past for me, you know? I’m, like, kind of flattered that anybody cares. You’re going to be putting it to some good use, yeah?”

  Remington paged through the documents Lucas provided. An image xeroxed on an ordinary piece of paper brought her up short. It was just a half-blurred black-and-white copy of a photograph, but Remington thought she recognized a face.

  “Who’s this?” she asked Lucas, flipping the paper around and sliding it back across the table.

  Lucas glanced where Remington pointed, one face out of a group of people pictured in an outdoor setting. “Oh, man, you are a detective, aren’t you? What made you zero in on him?”

  Remington dug into her own purse and retrieved the two portraits she had been carrying with her. The burn-boss sketch and the fat-slob guy from Gregg Hickler’s thumbtacked photo.

  “Him,” Remington said, sliding the burn-boss sketch alongside the copy of the group photograph Lucas had just given her.

  “I guess,” Lucas said, comparing them.

  “No, it’s him,” Remington said. “This is just a sketch from a police artist I know, but I saw the real guy in the flesh.”

  Remington dragged the group photo back and stared at the burn boss’s face. A little younger, but it was definitely the guy she’d encountered in the burned-over ravine near Odalon.

  “I need a name for this person, Emma.”

  “I’m going to have to get to know you a lot better before I tell you something like that,” Lucas said.

  “I need a name,” Remington repeated.

  “I don’t identify my sources, man,” Lucas said. “Okay, so now you know. He was the insider guy who got me into Semke. And you can understand why I can’t give you his name. One, I promised never to divulge, you know? Two, like, he could get into mortal trouble if certain parties found out. I almost went to jail for not giving it up ten years ago, and I’m sure not going to tell you in casual conversation.”

  Emma Lucas steadfastly refused to name names. “I already went too far with you as it is,” she said. “The society of investigative journalists, which doesn’t exist, is going to withdraw my Daniel Ellsberg awa
rd, which they never gave me.”

  Remington hammered her and hammered her, but she remained adamant. “You’re the police!” she said. “You’re the Man, man!”

  So the visit represented only a partial victory. Lucas allowed her to keep the sheaf of original Semke research, but the journalist wouldn’t ID the burn boss.

  “Beauty and the beast,” Remington said to her as they shook hands and parted in front of the coffee shop.

  “Yeah?” Lucas said, not picking up the thread.

  “Why so many primatologists are women,” Remington said. “Beauty and the beast. It’s one of the oldest stories in the book.”

  “Right, right,” Lucas said. “I guess we’re both members of that club, yeah?”

  —

  Remington returned to L.A. and walked into an ambush. Randy Gosch had been sending text messages to her all day, but she hadn’t bothered to answer. She figured they would meet face-to-face soon enough. Travel-weary but with a new sense of determination, Layla headed into the Malibu Civic Center. Rick Stills was on her before she knew what was happening.

  “Remington.” Stills’s tone was peremptory. “In my office.”

  “Sure, just let me—”

  “Now!”

  The ADA turned and stalked off through the outer office and into his inner one. When she followed him in, he held up his hand as soon as she began to speak.

  “Gosch!” he called. “Get Eric Lerner in here.”

  Lerner was a court stenographer attached to the Malibu office. Depositions, meeting minutes, anything that needed a formal record taken, Lerner was the man. Also present at disciplinary proceedings, thought Remington.

  “Rick,” she began, but Stills shook his head.

  “Wait,” he ordered.

  The two of them sat in silence. Remington tried to read the man’s face. He didn’t look angry or even unhappy. Stills appeared to be meditating on some deep, intractable problem.

  Lerner came in and set up his little machine. How many years would it be until computer-dictation software rendered such human services obsolete? In court, Remington always liked the silent presence of the stenographer, the flurry of fingers at the keys, the comforting idea that all that transpired would forever be fixed in time.

  “Ready?” Stills asked, and Lerner nodded. Stills said the date and time and enumerated the names of those in attendance. This is serious, Remington realized with a sinking heart.

  Stills began as if reciting from memory: “In consultation with Los Angeles County District Attorney Janiece Baez, personnel director ADA Tom Fallon, Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriff’s representative Anthony Solis, this office is placing Detective Investigator Layla Remington on administrative leave until further notice. A disciplinary hearing will be scheduled. Additional action may be taken as our internal investigation warrants.”

  Stills waited until Lerner stopped typing. “Got it?” The steno nodded. For the first time, the ADA turned to Remington.

  “I need your badge and your service pistol.”

  “I’ve got new information on Odalon—”

  “You know, Remington, I inform you that you’re up for a disciplinary hearing and you don’t even ask what it’s about. What that tells me is you know exactly how you screwed up.”

  “Rick—” Remington began, but Stills again held up his hand.

  “You want this recorded?” Lerner asked.

  Both Stills and Remington snarled “No” at the same time.

  “So you have some so-called new information on Odalon. How’d you come by it, Layla? Maybe you reached out to your new friend Ms. Sedgewick?” He watched Remington’s face. “Yes, that’s right. I know all about it. How many times did you two meet? Does the word loyalty mean anything to you?”

  There was nothing for it. Remington dug out her badge wallet and unbuckled her shoulder holster. Folding the leather belt around the sidearm, she laid it and the gold shield on Stills’s desk.

  “Off the record?” Remington asked, still hopeful that she could somehow get through to the man.

  “Off the record, you’re a Judas, and I’m going to let everyone in the department know it. You’re finished. You crossed a line when you colluded with a defense attorney.”

  “We didn’t collude.”

  “You’re lucky I don’t bring criminal obstruction charges.”

  “Angle’s not guilty, Rick. You’re making a mistake.”

  “Just shut up!” Stills shouted. “Just shut your mouth and get out.”

  Remington stumbled out of her chair, passed through the outer office, and headed for the hallway exit. Randy Gosch waylaid her.

  “The charge is consorting with the enemy,” he said in a mock-serious tone. “How do you plead?”

  Then he saw her tears and took her into his arms.

  “He doesn’t give a damn about the truth,” Remington said. She recovered and wiped her eyes dry.

  Randy Gosch gestured toward the ADA’s inner sanctum. “He was pretty livid when he learned about it—he kept talking betrayal. Supposedly, that security guy from the Griffith Park zoo called Deputy Velske, who delighted in passing on the news of your meeting with Sedgewick. You snuck into the place, girl? Just to meet Ms. Pearls-and-Loubies? What were you thinking?”

  “It was a chance encounter,” Remington said, and left the office.

  She didn’t feel as though she could face her father, so she went home to Los Feliz. The use of the U-boat was denied her. She took a car service. Her apartment had a sad, uninhabited feel to it. Between her convalescence at Gene’s and flying back and forth around the country, she had been gone for more than a week. Lucky I don’t have a cat, she thought. If I did, it’d be dead.

  Chilled white wine called to her from the fridge. Remington sat down on the couch with it, brooding. How had she blundered so badly? Rick Stills despised her. Tricia Sedgewick, a woman she loathed from the moment they met, had somehow made herself known as Remington’s ally. The exact opposite of what Remington wanted had come to pass.

  For what? An ape.

  She still had concussion-related headaches. The alcohol didn’t help. Even though she could no longer act as a detective in any official capacity, Remington decided to do some work anyway. She got out an ancient iMac laptop, plugged it in to give it a charge, and opened a blank sheriff’s department Case Investigations Report form. She intended to compile information on her activities in Washington State and Atlanta.

  Remington had returned to L.A. with a bit firmer grasp on Odalon than she had before. The burn boss was a ringer. Previously, he had some sort of association with animal-rights groups, and he went way back with chimpanzees, maybe with Angle himself.

  Sitting on her couch in Los Feliz, she paged through the Semke research Emma Lucas had provided. Remington tried to assemble it and her notes on the Table Mesa visit with Holly Kemp into some sort of coherent narrative for use in the Case Investigations Report she was compiling. Nothing fit. She still didn’t know what she had. Since she was jobless, it didn’t much matter anyway. She was preparing a report for nobody.

  Her phone had been buzzing ever since she switched it out of airplane mode when she landed at LAX. She kept it on vibrate so she could better ignore it. There were a lot of calls from unknown numbers. Somehow reporters from media outlets had gotten hold of her contact information. She would probably have to get a new number.

  Glancing at the smartphone’s screen, though, she recognized a call from her dad.

  “Where are you?” Gene Remington asked.

  “Los Feliz.”

  “And you were going to tell me you were back when?”

  “I’m shagged, Dad,” Layla said. “I haven’t felt this dead in a while.”

  “Tired and fired, I hear,” Gene said.

  “Word gets around, I guess. Actually, I’m on leave pending a hearing.”

  “On leave pending a suspension. I took that package Trish Sedgewick left for you and put it in our safe-deposit box dow
n at Guaranty Trust. I figured they might come gangbusting in here looking for evidence to nail you with.”

  “It’s not that dire.”

  “You haven’t been around town for a while,” Gene said. “With the preliminary hearing in the works, this case is really blowing up. Your former boss Stills is strutting his stuff all over the evening news. Folks are going nuts. And since some of those folks are voters, that means the county D.A.’s office goes nuts right along with them.”

  “I’ve got a great way to avoid all that,” Layla said. “I’m going to go to sleep now for about twelve hours.”

  “When you wake up, come over to the condo. The Maltese Falcon is on TCM.”

  25

  The envelope of legal documents that Trish Sedgewick dropped off at Gene Remington’s Glendale condo revealed why the Odalon apes had to die.

  Earlier in the afternoon, Layla had awakened from her jet-lagged nap. She retrieved the unopened manila envelope from the local bank where her father had stored it for safekeeping. Gene dished up dinner for them, some homemade turkey chili with flour tortillas from their favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican place on Eagle Rock Boulevard.

  With Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon piping away in the background, and her father reciting some of the lines in the movie before they were even said, Layla sliced open the envelope. Inside were copies, not originals, of various legal papers. They didn’t give up their secrets easily. They were couched in the kind of “parties of the first part, parties of the second part” legalese that lawyers use to render their prose impenetrable to anyone outside the profession.

  Amid the welter of verbiage, Layla could discern a legal tangle that ensnared the Norman Dorian Trusts, Hollywood Animal Rescue, the Odalon Animal Sanctuary, and an entity called Trappe Ranch Corporation. They were all caught in a dense web of interrelated entailments, contractual arrangements, and binding agreements.