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thai | An LA Crime Story

Peanut Butter Cups

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Fifty-four year old Leland Hays was aging well. But then again, it was LA. In his mind, he was thirty two and after years of Juvederm injections, botox and a chin implant, he looked about forty four. Still hot enough to get cool girls. Right then on the showroom floor of his furniture warehouse, he was bending a boyish young Thai waitress over the end of an antique platform bed he’d just imported from China and slamming her from behind. Then he bent her over an Indonesian loveseat, then a Moroccan chaise until he finally came in her over an oversized ottoman sadly re-upholstered in a purple and gold polyester damask. Not his best piece. He loved antiques. Though these pieces he imported were faux-antiques, they were mostly still beautiful and people in LA paid a decent price for them.

The waitress was quiet the whole time. He liked that. He’d told her that if she was quiet, he’d give her a present. She did make some noise when she unwrapped a peanut butter cup and ate it when she was bent over the chaise but other than that, she was good. He let her pick out a small punched tin Mexican light for her apartment before kicking her out.

Rhea was parked across the street from the loading dock of the Palmetto Street warehouse. Next to it was a little green door under a nondescript sign that read: H&H Imports. She stared at the door, wondering what to do. She still had her badge. She kept it tucked in a kleenex packet in her glove box, hoping she’d be re-instated at any moment. Though she wasn’t supposed to use it, she had. Twice. Once for free valet-parking at the Grove and once for a free Metro ride to Santa Monica. Using it now could really piss Strickland off… if he found out. She figured she had about another twenty minutes to decide; she was sure he’d be over here himself with Dawson pretty soon.

The green street door opened. A young Thai woman hurried out, carrying a Mexican lamp. The woman got in her Kia and drove away. Rhea opened her glove box, unwrapped her badge and got out of her car.

Hays had decided to do some inventory. He was in his office when someone started banging on the street door. He thought maybe the girl had forgotten something. He opened his door still wearing his bathrobe. A woman cop named Porter who smelled like cilantro thrust a badge in his face and wanted to know if he owned a place called Domingos on Cesar Chavez.

He knew she knew the answer so he told her he did. “Why?” he asked her, “What’s going on?”

Before Rhea could answer, Strickland was beside her. Dawson was right behind.

“What the Hell–?” Hays asked.

“There was a fire in the kitchen at Domingos.” Strickland stepped up, shooting Rhea a look and moving in front of her.

Rhea bristled when Dawson added, “We found three bodies. Girls. Probably died trying to get out.”

“Was it bad?” Hays asked.

“Well.” Rhea commented, jostling for relevance, “There’s three dead girls in there.”

“Know anything about them?” Dawson continued, showing Hays a snap of the dead girls. Hays looked quickly and shoved it away, like he’d been dirtied.

“No. No – it’s a bar. We don’t let kids in there. Maybe they’re neighborhood kids who broke in or something and couldn’t get out–”

“Any of your employees have kids they might’ve brought there. Any of your friends?”

“No. Besides, it’s been closed for a couple weeks now–”

“Why’s that?” Strickland asked, trying to get back into it.

“The place was strictly an investment. It used to be packed. Hip types used to come in for a beer and a game of pool after doing their foodie thing on Breed Street. But ever since the city shut down all the taco pushers a year or so ago, the foodies stopped coming around. Business dried up. I opened on weekends for awhile but not recently. I was really never there and frankly, I haven’t even driven by in over a week.” He waved his hand over the warehouse, “Furniture is my main business.”

He stepped aside, allowing them a glance into the warehouse. It was cursory but something caught Rhea’s eye.

“Anyone else have access to Domingo’s, Mr. Hays? A manager, bartender, friend?” Strickland continued.

“I had a bartender but I laid her off when I closed the place. She gave her key back.” Hays told him.

“What’s her name?”

“Ahhh…” he thought for a moment, “Myrna.”

“Last name?”

Hays ran his hand through a shock of sandy blond hair plugs. “I really can’t remember.”

“Want to check your records for us? Give us a name?” Dawson asked. Hays was quiet. “No records?” Dawson pressed.

“She came in, asked for a job. She said she’d work for tips.” Hays smiled, “I’m sure she reported them all. I trust people, Detective… it’s the only way to get through life.”

“Where do you get your product from?” Rhea asked, casually.

“China, Indonesia, Thailand, a little from India, even a little from France.” Hays answered, always the salesman. “You looking for something in particular? We have good price on beds right now.”

Rhea ignored him. She pointed to a spot inside, where a rustic Mexican desk stood. “That. What’s that? Indian?”

“Ahh… Mexican.” Hays answered as Strickland looked back at Rhea. “We get a little of that but not much. Hard to compete with La Fuente and Direct From Mexico. I can give you a police discount. Five percent.”

“Thanks. Let me think about it.” Rhea said, then added “You mind if I take a quick picture?”

Hays stepped aside, gesturing for her to go ahead. As Rhea took her phone out and snapped a picture of the desk, Strickland followed her lead and asked:

“How long have you been in the furniture business, Mr. Hays?”

“Too long” Hays laughed, “A little over thirty years.”

Dawson gave Hays his card and told him to call if he remembered anything.

Hays had one last question, “Let me ask you– do you get rid of the bodies or–”

Dawson explained that they’d handle it and let him know when he could have access back to Domingos. “Might be a week. Maybe less.” He told him. Hays nodded.

As the detectives started to leave, Strickland turned back. “One last thing,” he asked, “You have insurance on the bar, right?”

Hays nodded, “As basic as it gets. I’ll be lucky if they pay for a coat of paint. Believe me, I’m the one losing out here.”

“And the dead girls.” Strickland reminded him.

A smile slid onto Hays’s face like a cat’s second eyelid. “Of course, Detective; goes without saying.” He closed the door.

Rhea held back as Strickand and Dawson walked away.

The two men reached Dawson’s car. It was parked next to Rhea’s. They waited for her to catch up.

“That wasn’t cool, Porter.” Dawson started in on her.

Rhea walked to her car, opened her car doo, paused and turned back to him,

“Say hi to Stacey for me.”

Dawson nodded.

“You’ve been together a long time, yeah?” she asked, lingering; waiting for Strickland to get closer, within earshot.

“Ten years.” Dawson admitted, curious–

“What is she now, almost twenty-six?” Rhea commented. She looked at Strickland, got in her car and drove away.

“What a piece of work.” Dawson muttered after she’d gone.

“You know her story–” Strickland started to defend her; “Sister got taken in Ensenada–”

Dawson shrugged. “Long time ago, yeah?”

Strickland nodded, “We think she was taken by some guy bringing furniture up to LA.

Dawson shrugged again; his arm gestured the myriad of warehouses, half a dozen were furniture importers. “We’ll see what we see.”

Laurel Avenue

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The Laurel Terrace Apartments on the 1500 block of North Laurel Avenue in Hollywood was a 1960’s low-slung building with the requisite palm trees, up-lighting and aqua blue courtyard pool, surrounded by one and two bedroom apartments. Rhea turned into the underground parking. She parked in her spot, walked up a ramp to the courtyard, past the kidney-shaped pool and went to apartment 114. There was a note on the door, folded in half: “Dear Ms. Porter, your rent is past due.” She tore it off and went inside.

Rhea had lucked out with this apartment. It was a decent sized one bedroom with shag carpeting and a big picture window that looked out onto that kidney-shaped swimming pool. She’d first moved in sixteen years ago. It was rent-controlled, so even now, at $1675 it was cheap. Affordable for a single woman on a veteran cop salary. But she’d sent her mom most of her paycheck over the past fifteen years and with the added expense of sex with several young dudes every month and her recent suspension, her cash flow was seriously suffering. For the first time since she’d been off the streets, she felt that familiar pang of panic about having a safe place to sleep.

She poured some leftover coffee over ice and laced it with milk and a few of the packets of Stevia George had given her. She brushed her panic away. If she lost her apartment, she was pretty sure Strickland would take her in again. But it wouldn’t come to that, she told herself. She had a new job to tide her over until… But was it enough?

She sat at her stained formica counter. She looked at her food notes. She tried to concentrate on chorizo and champurrado and San Miguel. She tried to write more. But she couldn’t. Thoughts of dead girls crowded her brain. She shoved the “rent past due” note aside and got down to her real work:

This is what she knew: she knew that there were three dead girls in a dive bar on the border of Boyle Heights. She knew they were Mexican. She knew they were illegals – either smuggled or trafficked. She knew they would not be ID’d, that the department would not pursue it and that their cremated remains would be held for three years then buried in a mass grave in a south east patch of Evergreen Cemetary in Boyle Heights with all the other un-named un-claimed remains that died that year. The grave would be marked “2019”.

Unless… She could ID them. Because in her gut Rhea also knew they were somehow connected to the disappearance of her five- year-old sister twenty-two years ago from a cafe two doors down from Boom Boom Carneceria. She knew she needed to get her ass back down to Ensenada.

Rhea looked at the pictures on her phone of the dead girls. She looked at the picture she’d taken of Hays’s rustic Mexican desk. She googled pictures of furniture from Baja Mexico. There were hundreds of places with tons of desks all over both the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico. She’d expected that – the desk wasn’t in any way unusual. The good news was she could place it in any one of three Ensenada stores that featured rustic items: Fausto Polanco, Sterling and Muebles La Mision. It was a start. She still had a few contacts down there and now she had the time. All she needed was money.

She figured she needed about two hundred and fifty for gas, round trip. Maybe another two hundred for a motel and essentials. She was about eighty bucks short on her rent. So total, she needed just over five hundred.

She went back to her food notes: “dollar tacos. Blue corn. Creamy.” She closed her eyes. She thought, then wrote:

“I sidled up to him in Barragan’s back room, smelling his chorizo with cacique and chipotle cream. Tucked into a mini corn tortilla, at a buck a pop – it was a two-bit writer’s dream. “Give me a bite.” I told him as I downed a swig of my San Miguel, “And I’ll give you a bite of my chicharrones on a pillow of black beans…” She wrote about skin and hands and mouths and juice, toying with it, changing a few words here and there, changing punctuation. She wondered if it was good enough. What if Valdez hated it? What if he fired her before she made a dime?

She was hungry. Again. Still. She opened her bag of Fritos. She took it to her window. As she munched, she looked out. She caught a glimpse of a coyote skulking just outside the courtyard on the far side of the pool.

She slipped out of her apartment and quietly walked toward the pool. She leaned against a palm tree, eating the Fritos, looking for the coyote. She tugged at her T-shirt, pulling the V neck down to flick off bits of salt and crumbs. She looked back up, startled to see Strickland, standing a few yards away from her, looking at her chest where her tugging had highlighted her cleavage. Even in the dim light, she could feel him blush.

What the fuck? she thought as the heat of realization rippled through her. He wanted her? It threw her for a minute. It was weird. I mean, good lord, he’d scraped her off the sidewalk more than once. Pulled her out of a dozen dark nights. Wiped her flu snot. Wiped her ass when when they’d both eaten some bad Chicken Mole on the Day of the Dead. Sure, if she thought about it, he was kind of hot in a James Comey way but he was a second father to her. More than that, he was nice. She didn’t know what to do with this. Neither did he. He looked away. He started to walk away, toward his apartment across the pool from hers. She wasn’t going to let her moment of power go.

“Did you find that bartender? Myrna?” She called after him.

He stopped; shook his head, “Not yet.”

“I’ve got three furniture joints in Ensenada that that desk in Hays’s warehouse could’ve come from.” She told him.

Strickland nodded; kept walking. He was embarrassed and needed to get away from her.

“Weird that Hays is a furniture importer, yeah?”

“Maybe.” he cautioned. “But there’s a hundred in LA, Rhea.” he added, resuming his retreat. She was losing him; losing her window of power.

She followed him. She wouldn’t let up. “There is only one who also owns a bar with three dead Mexican girls in it, at least one of whom has a tie to Boom Boom.”

He kept walking.

“I’m as good as Dawson–”

“Yes.” Strickland acknowledged.

“If I was a man, I’d never have been punished.”

“That has nothing to do with it. Nothing.” Strickland tried to claw back some control.

“Let me back, Strickland.” She whispered into his back.

He was a few feet from his door. She begged, “Please.” He slowed.

“I’m sorry, OK? What I did.” She told him, wanting him to understand, at least a little.

“Look, it’s how I deal, Strickland. That’s all. It’s just how I deal.” she offered. “And the kid was eighteen.”

He reached his door. He opened it. He turned to her, softening a little. She stepped toward him.

“How do you deal?”

He looked at her, hard. He’d known her so long. He’d seen her scared and he’d seen her brave. He’d seen her fight, learn, cry. He’d seen her chase down a lead with no sleep for three days straight. He’d seen her give up. He’d seen her start over. He’d seen her kill. He’d seen her hate. Lord knows he’d seen her eat. But looking at her now, he wondered if she’d ever really seen him.

“I garden.” he answered, a little burned she didn’t remember; she’d seen his garden a thousand times. She’d lived in it.

She realized her mistake. She started to speak. He finished,

“Fix it, Rhea. Fix yourself then come back.” He went inside and shut the door. She heard the deadbolt click shut. His light went on and his shades stayed half-down.

Rhea stood there a moment. Rebuffed, again. What the fuck? “Fix herself?” She took off her shoes. She took off her skirt. She lifted her T-shirt up over her head, baring her breasts. She dropped the t-shirt on the ground. All she had on was a pair of men’s boxers. She slipped those off, paused for moment, facing Strickland’s blinds, then dove into the pool.

Inside apartment #122, Strickland looked out the side of his front blind and watched Rhea swim under the water – rippling, shimmering. Wet. He watched her break the surface. He watched her imperfect beauty glistening in reflected pool light.

He poured himself a short iced tea and laced it with Makers Mark. He hated her right now.

Rhea tread water, watching Strickland’s window. She could feel something besides the water – a vibe. It wasn’t a good one. She swam to the steps, got out, pulled her clothes on over her wet body and hurried to her apartment.

Once inside, she wrapped herself in a towel and sat at the little table by the front window. She looked across at Strickland’s apartment. All his blinds were closed. She knew he was pissed. That wasn’t good. She was messing up right and left; miss-judging, lashing out, blowing every chance she had. Literally. God she hated self-reflection. She needed chili cheese fries. They had some good ones at that Tommy’s on Hollywood and Bronson.

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