Before she could explain further, Officer Curly appeared. “Got lucky,” he said. “I faxed a request to Germany and someone in the office there spoke English, took pity on me. It helps my last name is Kubertschak. Here’s the deal. This girl doesn’t have what we’d consider a record. She had a boyfriend-” He checked his notepad. “Klaus Reichert, who was a member of a political group in Berlin suspected of ties to arms dealers in Saudi Arabia.”
I swallowed. “But she’s not an arms dealer herself, right? Or part of this group?”
He shook his head. “I’m not clear if the boyfriend even got charged with anything. But someone filed a report, and that’s why her name’s in the computer. Up to you whether that makes her nanny material.”
I thanked him. Joey said good-bye to the officer at the desk, and we hurried out to the parking area, indicated by a fence, where Elliot’s BMW sat.
“Wollie!”
A man stepped out from behind a van next to the BMW. A light went on, and I heard a whirring noise, subliminally familiar. A video camera. I experienced confusion, the instinct to hide warring with my recent training to smile and be interesting.
“How was jail, Wollie?” the voice behind the camera asked. “What’s the charge?”
Joey stepped in front of me. “No arrest, no story,” she said. “No paparazzi. Okay?”
With his free hand, the camera guy reached to move Joey aside, grabbing her arm. Hard. Joey knocked his hand away, then turned and elbowed him in the side. Harder.
He fell against her car and lost his balance. But he held on to the camera, even as it bashed into the BMW on its way to the ground. Joey had her hands up, ready for him to stand and charge. He lay on the ground, blinking. Then he brought the camera to his face and continued filming.
To my right, something flashed. I turned to see a woman in the van, taking pictures.
I grabbed Joey’s arm. “Let’s go.”
Joey didn’t resist. She pointed her keys at the BMW. The man hauled himself up and away from the car as we got in, still filming. The woman in the van snapped pictures.
On the van’s side, I saw the words “P’s Plumbers.”
35
“Sorry,” Joey said. “It just came out of me. I’ve been taking double classes at Krav Maga.” She didn’t look sorry. She looked revved up on adrenaline and danger, red hair all over the place, driving onto the 405 like a maniac. “Body shots,” she said. “We worked on them Wednesday, I took a level-two class by mistake. I think I got his liver. Or maybe he had a preexisting condition, to topple over like that. He didn’t even fight back. I could’ve taken him.”
“Joey, he didn’t want to ‘take’ us. He wanted to take pictures of us. Film us.” I thought about the plumbing van. Could my plumbers and stalkers be-paparazzi?
“Okay, I know. But I reacted, Wollie, I didn’t freeze. It’s one thing to practice, but to react when it really happens-I always think I’m gonna be the deer caught in the headlights.”
I’d never thought of Joey as the deer caught in the headlights. But I noticed the white scar on her cheek and remembered that once in her life, she hadn’t reacted. “Thanks for rescuing me,” I said. “From him. From getting arrested. Sorry you had to resort to blackmail and assault to do it. And I’m extremely sorry about the damage to Elliot’s car.”
“He’ll get over it. Eventually. Okay, so Marty Otis? He’s running an agency within an agency. Green-card marriages. Americans willing to get married and have sex and live with strangers from foreign countries for a year or two for lots of money. Or some money. There’s a sliding scale, based on physical attractiveness.”
I said, “Could this be something Annika stumbled onto and-”
“No.” Joey shook her head. “He never met Annika. He got anonymous phone calls about drug use and some police problem in Germany and he blew them off because he didn’t want to call the host family, file reports, attract attention. Same with her disappearance. This guy’s all about staying under the radar. The agency gives him cover for overseas phone calls and operating expenses, but the au pairs aren’t part of the green-card scam.”
“He just told you all this? And do you believe him?”
“Yes. It’s what I was talking to that cop about. There’s a hierarchy to crime. Homicide detectives don’t go after shoplifters, and on the other side of the fence, Marty isn’t going to get all sweaty over his little green cards if he’s just kidnapped someone. And he was sweaty. So I told him I only cared about Annika and keeping you out of jail, and he relaxed. I was nice. With a little encouragement, people love to talk about their work. Even sleazos.”
I closed my eyes and melted into the heated leather seat. One short night’s work resulting in violence, deception, destruction of property-albeit a plunger-all for a phone number. A doubt assailed me. What if Annika truly didn’t want to be found? What if it wasn’t just a case of her being noble, worrying about me? “At least we know Annika’s not a criminal,” I said. “She’s a bad judge of boyfriends, but that’s it. Well, and she lied on her au pair application.”
“She’s a bad judge of girlfriends too,” Joey said. “She told Britta her dark secret. And Britta told the agency, which left Annika open to blackmail. Deportation. Except that Marty Otis wasn’t blackmailing her. So who was?”
Little Fish, I thought. I had another thought, then, one far less palatable. The FBI.
Biological Clock hadBiological Clock found, for once, a restaurant with class. Etude in Beverly Hills, tiny and chic, was willing to accommodate the show after hours. We got there a half hour late, before things had got under way. I’d never been on the set when not actually working, and I was nervous about my appearance. The disguise Fredreeq had put together for me, glasses and a cloche hat, was in the trunk of Fredreeq’s car, an oversight on everyone’s part. The best I could do at this point was my sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.
The shoot was outside, a garden warmed by standing heat lamps, yet cold enough to justify my hooded head. Still, my appearance was odd. I could tell by the way Etude’s owner turned us away, until Joey identified herself as the show’s producer and asked that I be seated at an out-of-the-way table. There were only nine tables, so out-of-the-way was relative, but to my great relief, no one paid attention to me. The other diners were “fillers,” friends of the owner, and the cast and crew were too preoccupied to notice background players. I might be wiggy from a night in San Pedro, but I could still, apparently, spy.
I turned on my phone and listened to three voice-mail messages from Simon, each one more peremptory than the one before, the third one telling me to follow standard operating procedure tonight and all of them telling me to call him. I turned off my phone. The last thing I needed was to explain the last seven hours to the Feds. I was alone now, Joey having gone to deal with production details, so I began standard operating procedure, checking around for Beverly Hills shopping bags and listening for European accents. Etude did not have a working pay phone, according to my waiter, so I didn’t have to deal with that. Meanwhile, the evening’s couple and expert took their places at a table Paul had lit with a cliplight attached to a tree. A bottle of Takei Sake awaited them.
The contestants tonight were Vaclav and Savannah.
Savannah was a knockout. I’d seen her on television, on the Web site, in TV Guide, and twice in person, but I’d never seen her like this. She looked Old Hollywood, fine-featured and radiant, perfectly made up. Her dress was forties, her red hair swept over one eye à la Veronica Lake. She would have beautiful children. On visuals alone, she had my vote.
Vaclav seemed improved by his close proximity to her. I’d worried that he was too foreign for the TV audience to warm up to, but tonight he seemed dashing and urbane. A lovely, sophisticated couple. I imagined that Savannah had the same improving effect on Henry and Carlito. Not only would viewers want her to reproduce, they’d want her to be their mom.