The Butcher of Beverly Hills Read online

  Lenore looked up from her scorecard and waved to us. I assumed it was Lenore, but only knew for sure when she spoke. I recognized the husky nasal drawl. “Hello, girls. Be right with you.”

  She totaled up their scores and handed the paper to her neighbor, a woman with a Hermès scarf wound around her face.

  “I don’t know how,” the woman said, “but you’ve been cheating, Lenore.”

  Lenore hiked a bony shoulder. “Sore loser.”

  “We’re all sore, duckie!” another one quipped, then they all burst out laughing, their cackling following us as we left the room and all the way down the hall.

  When we got to room 308, Lenore turned and dismissed Alphonse with a curt nod.

  “Will Madame be needing anything?” he asked, ever the eager toady.

  “Later,” she snapped. He bowed and disappeared.

  Lenore attempted to smile at us. “Thank you for coming, girls. I really need your help.” She put her key card in the lock and pushed open the door. Something dashed out of the room, tan-colored and sleek, the size of a large rodent. It ran straight through Lenore’s feet and spun around.

  “Rat!” Terry yelled.

  I jumped back, slamming into the wall, my heart pounding in my chest. I hate rats. Hate the idea of rats.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Lenore said, bending at the waist to scoop it up. “It’s Paquito. How’s my precious?” she cooed at him.

  It was a dog. A rat dog.

  He’d had fur at one point in his life, judging by the brown and white mane encircling his neck. But his puny torso was now completely hairless, revealing a rib cage the size of a Cornish game hen’s.

  “Jesus,” Terry said, peering at the diminutive pup. “What’s wrong with him, mange?”

  “Poppycock,” Lenore said, bussing him on the head. “He’s in the pink of health. Pomeranian pups always lose their coats at six months. It’s called the puppy uglies.”

  The ugly puppy stared out from the crook of Lenore’s arm—round eyes popping from the terror of being tiny and helpless—and quivered like a plus-size vibrator with a lifetime battery. He was barely larger than Lenore’s hand, sporting a baby-blue rhinestone collar and matching muzzle. With the bald body, electrified mane, and face mask, he looked like some sort of Frankendog.

  “You leave him in the room by himself?” I asked.

  “I can’t take him to the game, he makes the other girls nervous,” Lenore said. “Angela Pillsbury says he reminds her of a miscarriage she had in fifty-eight.”

  Terry rolled her eyes at me, and I shrugged back. We followed Lenore into the room, where she sat on the bed, placing Paquito on her lap and snapping off his muzzle. Freed from the constraint, he barked several times in rapid succession—Yapyapyap—then hunkered down between Lenore’s thighs and sniffed her crotch. Terry leaned against the wall, and I pulled up a gilded chair from the antique secretary, which I saw was topped with another of the fancy hotel baskets.

  “I suppose I should tell you why I called,” Lenore said, picking a stray piece of lint off the spread.

  “That would be good,” Terry said with barely concealed sarcasm.

  Lenore glanced over at Terry, then averted her eyes. “I need you to find my soon-to-be-ex-husband.”

  “Why?” I said, trying for a more sympathetic tone. Terry’s ham-handed approach was obviously making Lenore skittish.

  “He has ten thousand dollars of mine,” Lenore said with a self-righteous flick of her chin. “I’d like it back.”

  Ten thousand dollars? Surely that was chump change for someone in Lenore’s economic bracket. She probably spent that much on Lancôme products and body waxes every month. But maybe there was a larger issue here.

  “Did he take the money from a joint account?” I said.

  Lenore stuck out a cinnamon-hued nail and scratched Paquito behind the ear. “I may be a romantic fool, but I’m not stupid,” she said archly. “We had no joint accounts.”

  “Then how did he get it?” Terry said.

  “It’s the money he got for selling my jewels. He stole them, then hocked them. I had to pay to get them back from a cheap little storefront on Pico Boulevard.”

  So it wasn’t the money. It was the humiliation Lenore had suffered when Mario abandoned her, his pockets full of baubles. Well, at least it didn’t sound like she wanted him handed over to the INS.

  “Any thoughts on where he might be?” I said.

  “I have no idea, that’s why I called you. You can find people, can’t you?”

  “If he hasn’t skipped the country,” Terry said. “Or even if he has, actually. It just takes longer and gets more expensive.”

  A wave of alarm spread over Lenore’s features. “How . . . expensive?” The facial pain was apparently nothing compared to the agony of parting with cash.

  “We charge three hundred dollars a day, plus expenses,” I told her. “We like to get one week in advance, pro ratable if we find what you’re looking for in less time—”

  “Three hundred dollars a day! What are you, lawyers?”

  This from a woman who had just racked up ten thousand dollars in elective surgery followed by a five-thousand dollar hotel bill.

  “It’s a fairly standard fee,” I said. “On the low side, really.”

  “Well, fine. But I can’t give you an advance. Obviously I don’t have cash here at the hotel.”

  Terry frowned. “There was a suitcase of bills in that other room.”

  “Not mine, I assure you. Those Mexican gals are something else. Come up here with a suitcase full of dollars to get their faces done. I guess Hattrick doesn’t take foreign checks.”

  “Hattrick?”

  “Daniel Hattrick. He does all of us. Oh, there are plenty of surgeons around—Beverly Hills is fairly bursting with them. But I wouldn’t let those hacks near me. Hattrick is magic. I can spot his work a mile away. Anyone can, who’s been around.”

  Now that was fascinating—the same people who could spot a Dior bag or a Valentino dress or Gucci shoes could spot a Hattrick tuck. I wondered if he signed his work, and looked on Lenore’s neck for his initials, carved or perhaps branded into her flesh.

  “Maybe you could pay us out of your canasta winnings,” I said.

  Lenore brushed aside the suggestion like a nettlesome insect, her hand flapping in the air. “Oh, I never actually take their money. How tacky would that be? It’s a win on paper, only. Purely for sport.”

  “We can take a check,” Terry persisted.

  Lenore jumped up from the bed with a grunt of annoyance, causing Paquito to roll off her lap sideways. The poor little thing righted himself, claws digging into the satin coverlet as the mattress rocked beneath him.

  “You’re just going to have to trust me for it. I can’t go to the bank and get the money, not like this. And when I recuperate it will be too late. You have to find him now. Before he slinks back to Mexico.”

  Terry gave me an I told you so look, then tried another tack. “Okay, how about this? We’ll take a twenty percent recovery fee when we get the money. That way you’re not on the hook for anything unless we’re successful.”

  Lenore considered it, her mouth bunched into a little fig. “Ten percent,” she countered.

  “Twenty percent,” Terry said. “Take it or leave it.”

  “Dash it all, you’ve got me over a barrel. Very well then, twenty percent. But I’m going to have a word with your greataunt about this. I would have expected some consideration, as a friend of the family.”

  Terry’s hand balled into a fist, and I knew she was giving Lenore’s face some consideration as a punching bag.

  “We’re working stiffs, Mrs. Richling,” I said quickly. “I’m afraid we can’t afford that kind of consideration.”

  “Oh, all right.” Lenore did a disgusted little toss of her head. “Just bring me the money.”

  “Good,” I said, glad to be done with the negotiations. “Where do we start? Does he have family in the area? Fr
iends? Anyone special—?”

  Lenore moved to the floor-length gold mirror and stared fixedly at herself, as if she were gazing into a magic glass and could see straight through the swelling and the stitches to her glorious new designer face.

  “He may have a girlfriend,” she said.

  Aha, so there was more to the story.

  “But that’s not the issue,” she added defiantly. “I just want what’s mine.”

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  “She’s a medical assistant in Hattrick’s office. Her name is Tatiana, and I think Mario may have been infatuated with her. But I’d rather you didn’t speak to her unless you have absolutely no other way of finding him. I’d hate for her to think I was . . . jealous.”

  We sat in awkward silence for a second.

  “Does Tatiana have a last name?” Terry asked, obviously losing patience with the process of pulling teeth.

  Lenore snorted. “Something Russian. What’s the difference? They’re all the worst sort of peasants.”

  Bigoted, coy, and a tightwad. All in all, Lenore was shaping up as my favorite candidate for Pain-in-the-Ass Client of the Year.

  “Okay then, we’ll start at the Beverly Hills Hotel,” I said. “Isn’t that where you met him?”

  Lenore spun around in dismay, her eyes going wide. “How did you know that?”

  Terry and I looked at each other—had we just finked on Reba?

  “Mrs. Richling, if we’re going to get your money, we have to dig around in places Mario might go,” I said, reasserting our professionalism. “That would mean speaking to his alleged girlfriend and asking around at his previous place of employment, where somebody might have a line on him. We have no other avenues to pursue. He won’t have an address on file with the DMV. He probably has a fake Social Security card, if he’s illegal . . .”

  Lenore deflated and leaned on the mahogany dresser, her pride going out of her with an audible rush of air.

  “I’m sorry. This has all been so humiliating.” She grimaced, pawing at the side of her face as if there were an itch she desperately wanted to scratch underneath the bandage. “I was silly, girls. I fell for a handsome face and he took complete advantage of me. I guess I should have known he didn’t love me for myself, but I thought that my social position . . .” The words tumbled out of her in a pathetic gush. “You’re too young to understand. It’s . . . it’s a hard thing for a woman to admit that she can no longer hold a man with her looks.”

  I felt sucker punched, a burst of sympathy overriding my previous assessment of Lenore as one of Satan’s minions. Whatever her defects, the woman was aging, she’d been ripped off by a gold-digging Lothario, and possibly dumped for a babe in a white smock, and she was asking for our help now with heartbreaking humility.

  “Help me out, won’t you, girls? It’s not the money,” she said, pulling out a Dunhill and torching it with a silver lighter. “It’s my pride.”

  We decided to go straight to the doctor’s office in spite of Lenore’s reservations. Tatiana Something-Russian was the only real contact we had for Mario, and we didn’t know much else about him, aside from what he looked like, bare-chested and sweaty next to a kidney-shaped pool. Lenore had given us a snapshot of him that she carried in her otherwise empty billfold.

  Back in the garage, Terry hooked her leg over the bike, frowning at me. “There’s something funky about this. She’s not telling us everything.”

  “I know,” I whispered, pointing to the cameras overhead, peering at us from every possible angle.

  “I doubt they have audio,” she whispered back.

  True, but the Pentagon itself couldn’t have had better visual coverage. It seemed like overkill for a hotel in a relatively crime-free neighborhood. My eyes traveled around the spotless garage—no pools of oil under the carriages of Jaguars, Lamborghinis, and good old-fashioned Mercedes sedans. Then I glimpsed a man in a blue shirt and a black coat lurking just inside the glass-paneled office. The parking attendant.

  I sauntered over to him and he lowered his large black eyes, as if he’d been caught spying or eavesdropping.

  “We parked ourselves.” I pulled a couple of crumpled bills out of the pocket of my light green capris. “This is for you.”

  He reached for the money, then the phone on his desk started beeping. He jerked around and grabbed the receiver.

  “Hello?” His eyes darted sideways and he lowered his voice. “Not yet. . . . Yes, sir.”

  He hung up and waved the bills away with a guilty look. “That’s okay, miss.”

  I tossed them down next to his lunch, a burrito wrapped in grease-stained paper with a half-eaten jalapeño lying next to it. Either they didn’t send duck à l’orange down for the help or he simply preferred a lump of green chili and beans wrapped in a flour tortilla. Couldn’t blame him.

  “Keep it,” I said, my mouth watering.

  As soon as Terry started up the engine and made a circle to leave, I saw the man pick up the receiver again. Maybe it was paranoia, but I got the distinct impression he was calling to let someone know we had gone.

  Hattrick’s office on Bedford Drive was about what you’d expect for a swanky plastic surgeon. Plush salmon-colored carpeting, subdued lighting, tasteful prints on the walls, and piped-in Muzak offering a soothing orchestral rendition of “Like a Virgin.”

  “Before” and “after” candidates were grouped on blue leather couches. An exotic-looking girl of fifteen with an aquiline profile and long dark hair sat next to her mother, who had bleached-out tresses and a scooped-out ski-slope of a nose. Like mother, soon-to-be like daughter. Further down, a middle-aged woman with blackened eyes and a nose bandage sat across from a man with hair plugs who might have been there to get a chin implant, since his neck started at his lower lip. A little boy with a large purple raspberry on the side of his face sat on his mother’s lap sucking a lollipop.

  We were just about to announce ourselves at the reception window when she walked into the waiting room, taking our breath away.

  She was five-foot ten, partly on account of the four-inch heels. She had flaxen hair that hung straight, brushing turbo-charged breasts that were bound in an impossibly tight red sweater. A taut, tanned face with a tiny little nose wedged between two mountainous cheekbones. Lips that were one-inch thick, poking out from her face like those of a hungry perch. Eyes that sparkled an arctic blue. She held out a leathery hand with inch-long acrylic nails done in a French manicure.

  “Hi, I’m Barbie! Dr. Hattrick’s beauty consultant. Is this your first visit?” Terry and I internally debated taking the hand—then I offered mine.

  “Yes, it is. Hi, Barbie. I’m Kerry McAfee.”

  We shook, then she held out her hand to Terry.

  “Hi, I’m Barbie!”

  “Hi, I’m Terry McAfee.”

  She was like a robotic blonde cyborg, stuck on the word “Hi.” We were afraid if we didn’t respond in kind she’d go into some sort of hyper-confusion and explode.

  “Would you like to take a look at our samples?” She ushered us over to a couch that was situated apart from the rest of the waiting room, then plopped down on it, motioning for us to sit beside her. She opened up a large binder on her lap with dividers that read: Nose, Eyes, Cheeks, Breasts, Liposuction, and so on.

  “Now, what are you here for? Let me guess.” She glanced back and forth between us. “Well, we can surely fix that bump in your noses. That’s easy as pie. And we could take care of those icky freckles—don’t you just hate them? And if you don’t mind an opinion, your chins could be stronger. And looky there, you’ve hardly got any breasts at all!”

  Terry and I looked at each other, speechless.

  Barbie flipped to the first section of the book. “Let’s start with your noses—”

  “Uh, Barbie?” Terry said.

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “Was your name always Barbie, by the way? Or did you change it, you know, after you had some work?”

  “I get
that a lot,” she chirped. “‘You look just like the doll, Barbie. Bet you changed your name.’ But, no—born Barbie, always will be Barbie, till Barbie is no more.” She paused, then went on, “You seem a little nervous, but I guarantee the pain is totally worth it, and we can have you looking just like me in four easy surgeries! Then, if you want to, you can change your names. But somebody’s already got the name the Barbie Twins. Too bad. You’ll have to think of something else.”

  I had to nip this conversation in the bud. If we listened to her much longer, we’d end by moving to Stepford, Connecticut, packing a case of Mop n’ Glo.

  “Actually, we’re not here for surgery,” I said. “We wanted to speak to Tatiana. Is she in?”

  Barbie deflated like a punctured blow-up doll. “No surgery?” she said in a wounded tone.

  “I’m afraid our insurance won’t cover it.”

  She brightened. “We can put you on a payment plan. Just like buying a car!”

  “It’s okay,” Terry said. “We enjoy being flat-chested and freckled with bumps in our noses. Could we speak to Tatiana?”

  Barbie pouted, her swollen lips pressed together. “She doesn’t work here anymore. I replaced her.”

  Oh, that’s why she was so disappointed. She was new on the job and eager to prove herself. I wondered if she got a commission on the procedures she talked people into.

  “Tatiana was the ‘beauty consultant’ before you?” I asked her.

  “Yeah. She just took off, I guess. That’s how I got this job, which was a really great break. Acting jobs are hard to come by these days, what with all the free sex sites on the Internet.”

  “Yeah, that must be tough,” I said. “Would you know where we could reach her?”

  “Barbie!” a sonorous female voice boomed from the inner office. Barbie looked up like a startled deer at an African American woman in a white coat who gestured from the reception window. She was big-boned and rich-colored, with naturally full lips, naturally full cheeks, and a short natural hairdo. Real out of place, with all that naturalness.

  “Yes, Janice?” Barbie squeaked.