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Black Sapphire Pearl
The case of the purloined LS 460.
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by mark haskell smith | illustrations by tavis coburn
I can tell fact from fiction. It's not difficult. You spend 13 years with the Los Angeles Police Department like I did, every day somebody telling you something that they think you want to hear, something that might get them out of the soup, spinning bald-faced lies to hide their sins or just blabbing some kind of made-up mumbo-jumbo, and, trust me, you'll be like me. I can tell fact from fiction. It's my job.›
I had an appointment with a client in the 90210. A new client. Business had been kinda slow and the zip code was all I needed to hear to get me out the door and on the road. I took Sunset because, on a good day, it's one of the nicest drives in town. You cruise past a neon jumble of famous nightclubs and bars, tattoo parlors and bookstores (both adult and literary), and rows of faux French cafés where starlets sit drinking cosmos and talent agents check their BlackBerrys. On a good day Sunset is sun-kissed and glamorous. This was not a good day.
A line of limos snaked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, causing the cars to stack up at the intersection where Coldwater Canyon spills down from the hills and collides with Sunset in a six-forked cluster of traffic lights and No Right Turn signs. I've never stayed at that hotel. Not many detectives have.
To avoid the congestion, I slid my motorcycle into the gap-you know, that little space between the cars, where that dotted white line usually is. It's dangerous, I'm aware, but I didn't want to be late. I like to make a good first impression.
I took a right, and headed north above Sunset, where the houses remind me of that ride at Disneyland. You know the one. It's a small world. China and Switzerland across the stream from Argentina and just a left turn from Kenya. I'm sorry, the world's not that small. But that's what Beverly Hills is like: You can find architecture styles from around the world, sometimes on the same house.
I pulled up to my destination, a gigantic Mexican hacienda, somehow stuck between a Japanese pagoda and an English manor house, and pushed the intercom button.
"It's Detective Park. I've got an appointment."
I wasn't always a private investigator. Like I said, I was with the LAPD, until some crumb with a MAC-10 tried to snuff me. I lived, although now I've got enough nuts and bolts in my right leg to open a hardware store-and, yes, I do sometimes set off the metal detectors at the airport. The Police Commission gave me a full pension and a medal for bravery under fire. I keep the medal in a drawer with my socks.
After my police career ended (I'd worked my way up to detective with the organized crime and vice unit), I was offered a series of fascinating jobs in the security business. You know, catching teenage girls shoplifting from the makeup counter at Nordstrom or looking for card counters at the casinos, that kind of thing. Getting my private investigator's license was a no-brainer. Something my parents continue to remind me of.
A housekeeper opened the door and led me through the hacienda. The interior is hard to describe. It was like an antiques showroom, only not those antiques you can buy in Tijuana, where the sign out front says "ANTIQUES MADE WHILE YOU WAIT"; these looked like the real deal. All the furniture was plush and comfy, with velvet drapes and wrought iron candelabras, and there were objets d'art strewn around with calculated casualness. Even the paintings looked pricey, like they were painted by someone famous. I was glad I'd worn my clean jeans.
I stopped to check a display of framed book covers hung along a wall. There were 10 of them. Each one had quotes from places like The New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly, saying things like "hard-boiled crime has a new master" and "a hair-raising page-turner." The name of the author, Lydia Stark›, was about twice the size of the titles.
I've met a lot of people in my line of work. Mostly unsavory types-gang bangers, drug dealers, that kind of person-but I'd never met an author before, especially not a best-selling one.
Whenever I think of best-selling authors I always get a picture of some craggy old person with thick glasses and a typewriter, so I admit I was surprised when Lydia Stark turned out to be young and easy on the eyes. She still had the glasses, though: thick, black frames that looked like they were designed for designers. They had the effect of making her look like a very hip librarian. Once you got past the glasses, things only got better: She seemed to be about 32 years old, wore her brown hair tied back in an intelligent ponytail, and had one of those wickedly smart-ass smiles.
We shook hands and she said, "I didn't expect you to be so young."
I could've said the same thing about her.
"I'm not that young."
She gave me the once-over. "Jared› said you were the best. But he didn't tell me you looked like a Chinese movie star."
Now I could list a thousand distinctions between the Chinese and the Koreans, but, you know, you either see them or you don't. Besides, if someone thinks I look like Chow Yun Fat, I'm gonna take that compliment every time. So I just smiled and let her talk.
"I guess I was expecting someone who looked a little more like, I dunno, Mickey Spillane or something."
"I keep my fedora in the closet."
She gave me a grin. "I bet you don't even have one."
"You'd win that bet."
She motioned for me to sit down and I did. "Did Jared tell you why I wanted to meet you?" she asked.
"You want me to find someone."
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