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“What are you doing here?”
Taking a calculated risk, I said, “Your uncle is a rapist and a murderer, and I’d like to see him go down for that.”
Her eyes switched focus upon hearing these words. Instead of the intense concentration on my face, her attention turned inward. She stayed like that for a while, finally asking, “What do you mean?”
“I thought he had information about a job I’m working. I came up on him after he’d drugged a woman and was getting ready to rape her.”
“Greta Hammett,” she said with certainty.
“How’d you know that?”
“G’s my friend. I introduced her to him a night or two after you came to the club.”
“And Miss Hammett came to you?”
“The police found them both unconscious. She went to a doctor after that, and he told her that she’d been roofied.”
“Roofied but not raped.”
“And how—how would you know that?”
“Before Malto could get his pants full off I came up on him with a gun in hand. I made him finish off the lion’s share of what he gave to Miss Hammett. After that, instead of doing what my blood wanted me to do, I dragged them down to the entrance of the house and set off the alarms.”
Caledonia looked up at me and said, “I’ve introduced him to a few girls.”
“And what did they say about the experience?”
“Nothing. But a few of them left LA soon after that. One girl, Marty, just disappeared. I swear, I had no idea what he was doing to them.”
“You never heard from Marty again?”
The club manager shook her head.
“And what are you doing here now?” I asked.
“Um, I’m—I’m not really sure,” she stammered.
“You armed?”
“I always am. Ever since I started managing the club.”
“You planning to shoot your uncle?”
The answer, burning in her eyes, had no immediate words, just an odd combination of uncertainty and determination.
“There’s a better way,” I offered.
“What’s that?”
“I have a friend name of Gladstone Palmer…”
“What about him?” she asked, maybe with a touch of hope.
“My car is parked up the hill. Why don’t you give me a ride there and we could find some place that isn’t so open to discovery.”
27.
WHAT I LAID out for Caledonia that night was a bit outside the range of your everyday PI: It involved a thirty-five-year-old unsolved murder, a hint of extortion, and an honest-to-goodness, Redford-and-Newman–style sting. That is, had The Sting also been a horror film.
