Robert Crais - The Two Minute Rule

“Okay, you mentioned something about speeches. What kind of speeches did he make?”

Marki scrunched her face, thinking.

“Not really speeches, maybe-more like pretend. Like if he was a pirate and kidnapped her, he would screw her on all his stolen treasure. She had to act like that made her really hot, you know, like it would be this big turn-on to get screwed on all these hard gold coins.”

Pollard nodded, encouraging.

“Like that was his turn-on, to do it on the money?”

“I guess.”

Pollard glanced at Holman again, and this time Holman shrugged. Banging on bucks might have been Marchenko’s fantasy, but Holman still couldn’t see planting sixteen million in cash in such a public place. Then he remembered that Richie and Fowler had come home covered in grass and dirt.

Holman said, “When the cops were here before, did you tell them about Marchenko?”

Marki looked surprised.

“Should I have? It was so long ago.”

“No. I was just wondering if they asked.”

Holman was ready to leave, but Pollard wasn’t looking at him.

Pollard said, “Okay, just one more. Do you know how Allie hooked up with this guy?”

“No, uh-uh.”

“Did she have a madam or work for an outcall service?”

Marki screwed up her face again.

“She had someone looking out for her, but he wasn’t a pimp or anything.”

Holman said, “What does that mean, someone looking out for her?”

“It sounds kinda silly. She told me I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

“Allie’s gone. The statute of limitations ran out on that one.”

Marki glanced at the nearby tables, then lowered her voice again.

“Okay, well. Allie worked for the police. She said she didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble ’cause she had this friend who could make it go away. She even got paid for telling about her clients.”

This time when Holman glanced at Pollard, Pollard had turned white.

“Alison was a paid informant?”

Marki made an uneasy grin and shrugged.

“She wasn’t getting rich or anything. She told me they had some kinda cap or something on the amount. Every time she wanted some money this guy hadda get it approved.”

Holman said, “Did she tell you who she worked for?”

“Uh-uh.”

Holman looked back at Pollard, but Pollard was still pale. Holman touched her arm.

“Anything else?”

Pollard shook her head.

Holman peeled off another hundred and slipped it into Marki’s hand.

A DEPRESSED ACTRESS named Peg Entwistle killed herself in 1932 by jumping from the top of the letter H. The letters were fifty feet tall, then and now, and these days the sign stretched some four hundred fifty feet across the top of Mount Lee in the Hollywood Hills. After years of neglect, the Hollywood Sign was rebuilt in the late seventies, but vandals and dickweeds took their toll, so not long thereafter the city closed the area to the public. They surrounded the sign with fences, closed-circuit video cameras, infrared lights, and motion detectors. It was like they were guarding Fort Knox, which wasn’t lost on Holman as he directed Pollard up to the top of Beachwood Canyon. Holman had been going up to the sign since he was a kid.

Pollard looked worried.

“You know how to get there?”

“Yeah. We’re almost there.”

“I thought we had to go through Griffith Park.”

“This way is better. We’re looking for a little street I know.”

Holman still didn’t think they would find anything, but he knew they had to look. Every new discovery they made brought them back to the police, and now they knew a policeman had also been connected to Alison Whitt. If Whitt told her contact officer about Anton Marchenko, then the cops might have known about the Hollywood Sign. Putting the sign together with Marchenko’s fantasy would have inspired them to search the area. Richie might have been part of the search. Holman wondered if Alison Whitt had seen Marchenko in the news. It was likely. She had probably realized her pirate was the bank robber and offered up what she knew to her cop. This had probably inspired her death.

Pollard said, “These canyons are shit. I can’t get a cell signal.”

“Do you want to turn around?”

“No, I don’t want to turn around. I want to check out whether or not this girl was really an informant.”

“They have some kind of informant hotline you can call?”

“Don’t try to be funny, Holman. Please.”

They wound their way up narrow residential streets higher into Beachwood Canyon. The Hollywood Sign grew above them, sometimes visible between houses and trees and sometimes hidden by the mountain. When they reached the top of the ridge, Holman told her to turn.

“Slow down. We’re coming up on it. You can pull over in front of these houses.”

Pollard pulled over and they got out of the car. The street ended abruptly at a large gate. The gate was locked and was hung with a large sign reading CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC.

Pollard looked dubious as she studied the sign.

“This is your shortcut? It’s closed.”

“It’s a fire road. We can follow it up around the peak to the back of the sign. This way cuts a couple of miles off going up through Griffith Park. I’ve been coming up here since I was a kid.”

Pollard tapped the sign, CLOSED.

“Have you ever obeyed the law?”

“No, not really.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Pollard squeezed around the side of the gate. Holman followed, and they started up the road. It was steeper than Holman remembered, but he was older and in lousy shape. He was breathing hard before long, but Pollard seemed to be doing fine. The fire road joined with a paved road, and the paved road grew steeper as it curved around to the back side of the peak. The Hollywood Sign disappeared from view, but the radio tower perched above it steadily grew.

Holman said, “There’s no way those guys brought all that money up here. It’s too far.”

“Marchenko brought his girlfriend up here.”

“She could walk. Would you leave sixteen million laying around in a place like this?”

“I wouldn’t rob thirteen banks and shoot it out with the cops, either.”

The road wrapped around the back side of the mountain as they neared the peak, but curved to the front face again, and suddenlly all of Los Angeles spread out before them as far as Holman could see. Catalina Island floated in the mist almost fifty miles to the southwest. The pudgy cylinder of the Capitol Records Building marked Hollywood, and tight clusters of skyscrapers pushed up like islands dotting the cityscape sea from downtown to Century City.

Pollard said, “Wow.”

Holman didn’t give a damn about the view. The Hollywood Sign was about thirty feet below them, walled off by a green six-foot chain-link fence that ran along the edge of the road. The radio tower waited at the end of the road, bristling with antennas and microwave dishes and surrounded by yet more fences. Holman waved his hand at the sign.

“There it is. You still think they buried the money up here?”

Pollard hooked her fingers into the fence and gazed down at the sign. The downslope was steep. The bases of the letters were too far below them to see.

Pollard said, “Goddamn. Can you get down there?”

“Only if we climb the fence, but it isn’t the fence you’d have to worry about. See the cameras?”

Closed-circuit video cameras were mounted on metal poles dotting the fence by the communications station. The cameras were trained on the sign.

Holman said, “These cameras watch the sign twenty-four hours a day. They have cameras all along the length of the sign and more cameras down below at the base so they can see it from all angles. They’re also set up with infrared so they can watch it at night, and they have motion sensors.”