Hollywood Taken Read online

  I smiled. “As long as they don’t’ serve Here’s Johnnies, it sounds great.”

  After we said our goodbyes, despite Natalie and Tex continuing to yell at one another, I smiled as I walked back into the house. Life is never what you expect. It might have taken a sex robot and domestic warfare, but I had met a guy. And, I liked him, a lot.

  THIRTEEN

  Zoe Saldana’s heart began racing as she walked away from her friends, not believing what she was seeing. The images on her cell phone were explicit, a video of the one and only time she and her boyfriend had been intimate.”

  “Oh, God,” she mumbled, slumping into a chair outside the cafeteria at Los Angeles City College. “How could this be happening?”

  She felt sick to her stomach and rushed into the restroom, losing her lunch. She then moved to the sink, washing her face and trying to control her emotions.

  Zoe was eighteen, with long dark hair and thick eyelashes framing her brown eyes. Friends had often told her that she reminded them of the actress, Selena Gomez. Now, as she dried her face, Zoe saw none of that resemblance. Her face was red and blotchy, the mascara running down her face. She felt sick again and ran back into the stall.

  After cleaning up, Zoe wandered back outside in a daze, seeing that Manuel was there. They had been dating for six months and she thought they were in love. Now, in an instant, everything had changed.

  “What’s the matter?” Manuel said coming over to her.

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “I feel sick.”

  “Let me take you home.”

  She nodded. When they were in his car, he asked her if she was okay.”

  “Maybe it’s the flu.” She forced a weak smile. “I just need rest.”

  Zoe considered telling Manuel what had happened, but the just the thought of him seeing the pictures made her feel sick again. She glanced at the handsome boy who drove her home. Manuel was her first and only love, the one she had given her virginity to. He was kind and generous, his family coming to this country from a small town in central Mexico.

  But, they were different. Manuel was a citizen, having been born in this country. Zoe had been born in the city of Arcelia, her parents coming to America with her and her brother when she was a baby. She was what some people called a Dreamer. Others called her an undocumented alien, or worse, someone the government should deport. While she had a work permit, her eligibility to be in the country was unresolved. Now this had happened. There was no way she could go to the authorities, and the thought of Manuel and her parents finding out everything made that impossible.

  After telling Manuel she would call him later, Zoe went to her room and locked the door. She braced herself as she again read the message that had been sent with the video of her and Manuel making love.

  My name is Marcus. Do not contact the police or tell anyone about this, or you will die. You must do exactly as I say, or the video of you and your boyfriend having sex will be posted to Facebook, the Internet, and sent to all your contacts. You have been chosen to play a game, and whether or not you survive depends on how far you’re willing to go in the game. This game is called, Prank, and it begins right now. Click on the attached link. DO IT NOW!

  Zoe reached out, hesitated, then clicked on a link as instructed. She heard the voice of the man who called himself Marcus. He spoke to her as if he was right there in her bedroom. It was so unexpected that she was startled, jumping back as she heard his words. He spoke in Spanish and had a simple demand.

  “Quítate toda tu ropa, Zoe. Hazlo ahora!”

  Zoe Saldana set her phone in front of her. Her fingers began working the top button of her blouse as tears poured from her eyes. In a moment, she would be naked, maybe for all the world to see, just as the man had demanded. She had no choice but to play the game. Her life depended on it.

  FOURTEEN

  When I got to work the next day, our morning was taken up with the DA wanting to meet with Leo, Olivia, and me on a prior case that was going to trial. Al spent the morning trying to get a hold of Jason Murray. We asked him about his progress when we returned to the station after lunch.

  “I think the guy’s hiding out, trying to avoid us. His parents are divorced and his mother claims she hasn’t seen him in a couple days.”

  “Did you ask her if she knew anything about our victim?”

  “Yeah, I got a big fat nothing.” He looked at his partner. “Did we get anything from the interpreter?”

  Leo nodded. “I’m supposed to meet with her this afternoon.”

  “I guess that leaves us with doing some follow up with Brook Allman in the meantime,” Olivia said to me.

  “I called the school and found out she has a class at two this afternoon. If we head over to UCLA now, we should be able to catch her after class.”

  “You two go ahead,” Leo said. “I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on.”

  “I guess that means, I’m pushing paper, too,” Al complained.

  Leo looked at him. “Tell you what, I’ll make it up to you by buying you a beer after work.”

  “Swell.”

  As Olivia and I drove to UCLA with Bernie, she mentioned what Leo had said to Al. “Leo doesn’t drink, so I think he’s going to have that chat with Al that he talked about.”

  “He told me as much during a break in today’s meetings, but he doesn’t think his partner’s ready to listen.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” As we got on the freeway, Olivia asked me if Natalie survived the Rod the Bod show.

  I told her about my evening. “It ended with Natalie kicking Tex to the curb, along with his sex avatar. To tell you the truth, I feel sorry for Doris.”

  She chuckled. “And how did things go with...I think you told me his name is Freddie?”

  “That’s his stage name, something he came up with for his walk on role in my friend’s sitcom. His real name is Grant Addison, and...” I smiled. “We’re actually going out for drinks Saturday night.”

  “You’re kidding. So he isn’t as bad as you thought?”

  “He’s nothing like I thought. I found out he’s a computer software expert, and, according to Natalie is worth a small fortune. He’s also pretty easy on the eyes.”

  “Wow. It sounds like you hit the jackpot.”

  “We’ll see. As you know, I’ve had my share of relationship disasters, so I’m determined to take things slow.”

  “And Joe?”

  I shrugged. “We’re just friends, and I intend to keep it that way.”

  The traffic slowed as we turned on Wilshire Boulevard toward the university. Olivia mentioned that she’d talked to Martin. “He wants to get together this weekend and talk things out. I get the impression he wants to try and make a fresh start.”

  “It sounds promising.”

  “We’ll see. If we’re ever going to make a go of it, he needs to accept the fact that I’m a homicide cop. I think that’s probably something that’s killed off a lot of relationships.”

  What Olivia had said, registered with me. While I hadn’t been working homicide when I was married, my ex had never accepted my crazy hours, or the fact that I had a job that he considered more macho than his own.

  “I think it’s just a matter of finding some balance,” I said, trying to be encouraging. “I’m sure Martin being an ER doctor is also stressful. It’s probably all about working together and finding common ground.”

  She chuckled again. “You should be a shrink.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, maybe there’s a TV show called Dr. Kate in my future.”

  After walking Bernie around a courtyard near the Department of Biological Chemistry, Olivia and I caught up with Brook Allman as she was leaving class with a friend. I started to call out to her when I saw her stop and face the young woman. They exchanged words, before the other woman left. I had the impression that her companion might be upset with her.

  We went over, startling her when she saw us.

  “What’s going on?” she
demanded.

  “We just have a few follow up questions to our interview from the other day,” Olivia said. “It will just take a couple minutes.”

  She sighed and nodded before we all walked over and took seats at a table on the courtyard.

  “How are classes going?” I asked just to break the ice after we’d settled in.

  She brushed her dark hair from her eyes. The gesture and her pretty features reminded me of her mother. “Biochem’s is a killer. I’m wondering if I choose the right major.”

  “Give it some time.” I smiled. “If it doesn’t work out, you can always become a cop.”

  She laughed. “Not in this lifetime.” She must have felt embarrassed by her response because she added, “No offense. It’s just not something I’m cut out for.”

  “I understand.”

  Olivia took up the conversation. “We’re here because we’ve learned some things about Anna that we wanted to ask you about. Did your parents mention that we talked to them yesterday about Anna?”

  “Not really, other than I think my dad said something about you coming by his work.”

  “Yes, we also questioned Jason Murray a couple days ago. He told us that Anna used drugs, specifically cocaine.”

  Brook nodded. “He mentioned something to me about that a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sure he was telling the truth, so I didn’t say anything to you.”

  “Jason said Anna used the drug to forget her problems. He also said she was unhappy and wanted to return to the Ukraine.”

  “That’s probably true. Like I told you before, Anna and I weren’t close. She was pretty quiet and not very outgoing, but I could tell she missed her mom by the way she talked about her.”

  Olivia nodded and headed into deeper waters. “There’s also evidence that Anna was physically abused, probably during sex. I know you told us before that she and Jason were just friends, but do you think they could have been involved?”

  “Wow.” Brook let her head fall forward. When she lifted it, she combed her hair with her fingers, brushing it back from her forehead as she sighed. “It’s possible, but I don’t think Anna was attracted to him.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  She nodded. “She said something about him not being her type.”

  “What about other relationships? It’s possible that Anna could have been involved with someone else who was abusing her.”

  Brook was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, I had the impression something we’d said had made a connection with her. “All I know is that sometimes Anna went out late at night. She was secretive about it. I don’t even think my parents knew. Maybe she was meeting Jason and he was...you know.”

  “Forcing her to have sex with him?”

  She nodded.

  “How often did she go out?” I asked.

  “Maybe once or twice a week.”

  “But you have no idea where she was going?”

  Brook shook her head. “No, but I sometimes have trouble sleeping. There was one night when I was up when she came home early the next morning. I think something had happened to her because she was crying.”

  “She was upset?”

  “Yeah, but it was more than that. I asked her if something was wrong, but she said she was fine. I know that wasn’t true because she was holding her stomach. I thought she was in a lot of pain. It’s just a guess on my part, but maybe Jason hit her.”

  FOURTEEN

  We met with Lieutenant Byrd in his office late in the day when we got back to the station so we update everyone on our meeting with Brook Allman. Jenny and Molly joined us. Bernie went over to greet them as they took seats at the table before he settled into a corner.

  Olivia and I went over what Brook had said, including her statement that Jason Murray might have been manipulating her into sex. “She confirmed that Anna was going out late at night, maybe a couple times a week,” Olivia said. “On one of those occasion, she said Anna came home holding her stomach, obviously in pain.”

  “You think Murray was raping her?” Byrd asked.

  I answered. “If it was Murray, I think he was using something against her for his own means. It might be that he was threatening to disclose something from Anna’s past. And, as we know, if he was the one who was physically abusing her, he was careful only to hit her where the injuries wouldn’t show.”

  “I think Murray was the go between,” Leo said.

  “In other words, her pimp,” Al added. “Our victim was prostituting herself, making money to buy a ticket back home.” He motioned to the paperwork Leo had brought to the meeting. “Tell them what the interpreter said.”

  Leo shuffled his stack of papers. “Our interpreter made the death notification late last night. She said our victim’s mother was pretty distraught, but she was able to ask her about her daughter’s background. She said Anna wasn’t happy here and definitely wanted to come home. She also said she thought her daughter was being threatened by someone, but didn’t know any of the details.”

  “And the texts?” Byrd said.

  “The interpreter went through them and plans to give us a complete translation in the next day or two. She was able to confirm that they’re messages, telling Anna when and where to meet someone. While none of them explicitly mentions sex or prostitution activities, the interpreter thought it was likely she was meeting different men.”

  “I rest my case,” Al said.

  Olivia and I exchanged glances before she said, “If Murray was the pimp, why was Anna getting text messages written in...” She looked at Leo. “...was her native language Russian?”

  “From what I understand, it’s an Eastern Slavic dialect, but it’s similar to Russian.”

  Olivia looked back at Al. “Murray certainly isn’t fluent in Russian.”

  Al folded his arms, titling his head to one side as his shoulders went up. “So, maybe there was another player and our boy Murray got a piece of the pie.”

  I was disgusted by the way he phrased things, but decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. I said to the lieutenant, “I think this thing is much bigger than Murray, but he’s definitely the key to knowing what happened.”

  “And, we have no idea where he’s hiding out?” Byrd said, looking at Leo and Al.

  Leo answered. “We’ve gone by his house a couple of times. Mom hasn’t been helpful, but I think he’s still in the area.”

  “Let’s alert patrol, stay on top of it.”

  “Have we been able to talk to Anna’s worker, the one who placed her with the Allman’s?” Olivia asked Leo

  “She’s still backpacking. The agency said she won’t be back for several days.”

  “You think she might have confided in the worker?” I asked Olivia.

  “It’s possible. It stands to reason they would have had a close relationship working through the placement process.”

  Jenny spoke up. “Molly and I got something more on Anna’s phone from CCU. The analyst found some images that were deleted.”

  Molly took over, using her iPad to show us what had been found. “There were three different groups of images, two that are still photos of our victim, and one that’s a video. Fair warning, they’re very graphic.”

  She turned her iPad in our direction. We saw numerous graphic images of Anna Levkin appear on the screen. Several photos were of her posing in the nude, and then a video played. It showed her pleasuring herself with a dildo.

  The room was quiet when the images ended. The lieutenant cleared his throat and said, “Was there any text sent with the images?”

  “Yes, but they’re in Anna’s native language.” She looked at Leo. “I’ll forward them to you, so you can have the interpreter take a look.”

  ***

  “Kate’s back in the pool, as in the dating pool,” Natalie told Nana when Bernie and I got home.

  They were in the living room with Mo, the three of them discussing their upcoming plans for their nude swim in the Hollywood Reservoir.

&nbs
p; “Why don’t you bring your new guy to the BS Challenge, show him what little he’s in for,” Nana said to me, laughing.

  Nana had recently had some plastic surgery that had gone south. She’d then had Botox treatments that made her face look frozen. She could be the elderly poster child for plastic surgery gone terribly wrong. If it had happened to anyone, other than our obnoxious former landlord, I probably would have felt sorry for her.

  I decided I’d had it with her smart-alecky comments and told her, “I’d bring Grant and let him watch you, but it would probably take years of therapy for him to recover.”

  “I look like a woman half my age,” she said with a huff. She stood and looked at Natalie. “Maybe you should give that sex doll to Kate’s new guy. I’m sure she would be a lot more fun.”

  After she was gone, I said, “I’ve about had it with her snarky comments.”

  “She means well,” Mo said. “She’s just got herself a bad case grumpyitis. I think my uncle rubbed off on her.”

  “Speaking of Fred, what’s the latest with him?”

  “He rented a swanky place in a high rise over on Wilshire,” Natalie said. “He said he’s gonna wear silk jammies all that time like that rabbit guy used to wear.”

  Mo must have seen my confusion. “Baby sis means Hugh Heffner.” She sighed. “I’m afraid Uncle Fred’s having a mid-life crisis.”

  “Better make that an end of life crisis,” I said as Otto brought over a tray of appetizers.

  “Dinner will be severed shortly,” he told us.

  “I’ll pass,” I said. “I’m going shopping for something to wear on my date with Grant.”

  No sooner had I said the words, than I regretted them, as Natalie went over and got her purse. “Me and Mo will go with you, ‘cause you need all the help you can get.”

  I glared at her.

  “I just mean, you’ve been out of action for a while. You need something that will blow the circuits in Grant’s computer.”

  After a ten-minute argument, trying to convince them I could managed on my own, I gave up. Otto watched Bernie while we ended up at a place called, Venus Envy, just off Hollywood Boulevard.