I started to say something when Sergeant Vick Best opened the door and walked in.
“Baca, where’s that sperm whale pickup of yours? It is not in the lot. I wasn’t sure you were here.”
I said, “It’s not a sperm whale, it’s...never mind. My pickup is in the shop, getting some body work done.”
He moved his head back and forth, sniffing the air as he said, “What happened, they have to Bond-O all the harpoon marks? Hey, do I smell some chips?”
Hondo reached into his desk and pulled out the last unopened bag of Julio’s. Hunter got the remaining jar of salsa out of the small refrigerator and placed it beside the chips.
“Thank you, young lady.”
She shook his hand and said, “A pleasure, Sergeant. My name’s Hunter Kincaid. I’ve heard a lot about you from Ronny and Hondo.”
“Well, you be careful around these two. They tend to get friends into situations.” He rubbed at a point over his left hip as he talked.
Hondo said, “That old bullet wound acting up, Sergeant? I didn’t think a twenty-two would take that long to heal.”
Vick looked hard at me, “Yeah well, sometimes it acts up when it’s irritated.
Vick was getting all stirred up and agitated and I could hear the chips breaking in the sack under his arm. I said, “What brings you down, or do you just like our company?”
“They found a small shark this morning washed up on Malibu. Some tourist opened its mouth and saw a foot wedged in there.”
I said, “Shark? You sure it wasn’t sole?”
Vick half closed his eyes like he had a headache, “You are hopeless, you know that? What it is, they think it might be from Valdar because forensics found small flakes of paint on it. I thought if you knew that, you might stop snooping around and getting into trouble.” He was squeezing the bag of chips under his arm again.
Hunter stood up and took them from him, “Let me carry these to the car for you, Sergeant. We’ll walk down together and get acquainted.”
“Thank you, Miss.” Before Vick left, he walked over to me and leaned down to whisper, “You still owe me two bags of chips and two jars of salsa, don’t think I didn’t notice.”
Hunter stayed outside with him for ten minutes before returning. When she returned, she shook her head at the empty bag of chips on Hondo’s desk. “He’s a nice man. He likes you two a lot, but doesn’t want you to know.”
Hondo said, “You were out there a while. What’d you find out?”
“I thought it might narrow down the search if I quizzed him about Russian crime in LA. He’s aware of the East European organizations moving in, works with an FBI task force that’s looking into the spread of the Russian Mafia in California and their partnerships with other criminal families. What Vick said, there are several factions working in Los Angeles, each bumping against the other for bigger pi
eces of the pie.”
“He mention anything about Siberia?”
“Yeah, I didn’t even have to prime him. He was telling me they’ve looked at several companies that run bars around the county, and he mentioned five or six names, but one is called the Sarana Corporation and it owns a piece of Siberia and a dozen or so other strip clubs scattered around town.”
Hondo said, “That’ll help. I’ll go down to the county and city offices, check the abstracts and talk to a couple of people, see what I can find on Sarana.”
Hunter said, “I’ll go with you. I can make my calls on the cell, and two people looking will go faster.”
Hondo said to me, “How about you?”
“I’ll make some calls, go check out a couple hunches,” I didn’t want to say in front of Hunter that I was heading straight to the strip bars. My ribs were still bruised from her last shot.
When they were gone I pulled out the yellow pages and looked through the Nightclubs section for some ideas, got one that looked promising and went next door to borrow Archie’s Corvette.
The Caspian Diamond Gentlemen’s Club was in West Hollywood in the center of the large Russian community. Thirty or so cars were in the lot when I arrived. I parked the Corvette and went to the smoked glass doors where a large, polite man in a dark suit and long blond ponytail opened the door to let me enter.
The inside looked as black as a cave after being in the sun, and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust. There was a central stage with a dancing pole and two smaller stages and poles in two corners. In between them were round tables, chairs, and a circle of stools surrounding the dancing platforms. The half-circle bar took up the far wall and the shape allowed customers to swivel and see the shows without too much trouble.
There was one g-stringed dancer on center stage doing a good number with the pole as Pink sang through the speakers. I sat down at a table against the wall so I could see the entire room. I ordered a beer from the waitress and watched the dancer some more. She hung upside down on the shiny pole using only her wrapped legs to grip as her arms waved free in snaky movements. Her head was five feet off the floor and she controlled her slide down the pole with her thigh muscles. My mind started wondering what a woman who could do that with her thighs would be able to do in...I tried to clear my thoughts and check out the customers.