Baca Read online

  BACA

  A Ronny Baca Novel

  By

  Billy Kring

  Copyright © 2014

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Image by:

  Elizabeth Mackey Graphic Design, www.elizabethmackey.com

  For my talented and crazy-fun friends in the entertainment industry.

  Books by Billy Kring

  The Hunter Kincaid Mystery Series

  Quick

  Outlaw Road

  The Empty Land

  The Ronny Baca Mystery Series

  Baca

  LA Woman

  Romantic Suspense

  (As B.G. Kring)

  Where Evil Cannot Enter

  Co-written with George Wier

  The Far Journey Chronicles

  1889: Journey to the Moon

  1899: Journey to Mars

  You can find these books and more at my website: www.billykring.com

  Want to know when my next novel is available? You can sign up for my new release e-mail list here:

  Click me!

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  CHAPTER ONE

  I sat at my desk in a tee shirt and shorts, cooling down after a workout at the gym next door and checking the internet for any open casting calls so I could have my ego crushed again. That’s when a Milla Jovovich clone, wearing big diamonds and a criminally short white skirt walked into my office.

  “Ronald Baca?” she asked as she sat in the chair across from my desk.

  “You’ve got me.”

  She looked me over and said, “You don’t look Hispanic.”

  “Ancestors were from Bolognia. It’s over near Spain.”

  She didn’t blink. “Mr. Baca, my name is Bond Meadows, and I need to hire you.” Bond crossed her legs and I looked at flawless tanned skin on two long legs. Her face and the name were vaguely familiar.

  I said, “What would this be about Ms...”

  “Mrs.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Meadows?”

  She said, “I want you to find someone.”

  “Someone you’d like to locate or someone missing?”

  “Missing.”

  “Have you filed a report with the police?”

  “No, it’s not like that. Maybe you’ve heard of him, Robert Landman?”

  “The actor?” I’d heard of him. So had most of the planet. Landman was in the league of Brad Pitt and George Clooney, where attaching his name to a movie almost guaranteed good box office. I said, “What makes you think he’s missing?”

  “My husband is Frank Meadows, head of Americas Studios, and Bob is working there.”

  I knew of Meadows. Frank’s unofficial nickname around town was “Fat Man” Meadows, as in the name of the second atomic bomb. It had to do with the record number of box-office mushroom clouds that his studio had sent to the viewing public over the last two years. No one called Frank “Fat Man” to his face, though. Frank had the reputation as a legitimate tough guy who enjoyed the company of ex-cons and not-so-ex-cons.

  Frank’s name made me remember where I’d seen this woman. It was in the society columns, with her husband. Something else about her was worming around in my skull, but I couldn’t bring it forward.

  She said, “Bob’s not at home, and he’s not on location filming. He left no forwarding information and I haven’t heard from him in three days.”

  “Mrs. Meadows, three days for somebody in the entertainment business is not all that long.”

  “It is when you’re having an affair with them.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I let it slide.

  “Mr. Baca, I’ve talked to him several times a day, every day for the last two months.”

  “You still haven’t told me why you think he’s missing.”

  “I believe my husband found out about us.”

  “Did your husband confront you?”

  “No. Look, Mr. Baca, I’m willing to pay you, so is there some sort of problem?”

  “I’m not against making money, Mrs. Meadows, but I don’t take advantage of clients, either.”

  “Mrs. Meadows sounds so old. Call me Bond, and don’t worry about taking advantage of me. I can take care of myself. When can you start?”

  “Don’t you want to discuss fees?”

  “You don’t seem like the type to haggle. I’ll give you five thousand dollars up front and you can bill me as you like if you need more.”

  I didn’t let her see me swallow. “You’re not worried I’ll drag this out?”

  “I talked to several people in the business about you, Mr. Baca-”

  “Call me Ronny. Mr. Baca sounds so old.”

  She gave me a small smile, “-and they assured me you don’t work that way. Matt and Ben said you might come across as a wise-ass, but you were honest and your work was good.”

  I said, “Matt and Ben?”

  “They said you helped one of their friends. Others who are outside the entertainment industry said you get things done.”

  “Nice to have your own fan club.”

  “Oh, they aren’t fans.” She stood up, removed a large stack of hundreds, counted out fifty of them and placed the money on my desk along with a business card and a sheet of paper with information printed on it. “I don’t need a receipt. The paper has information on Bob you might find useful. If you need me, call the number on the card. It’s my business cell phone. I always have it with me. Thank you.” She walked out, closing the door behind her.

  I looked at the money. Okay, I thought. How hard can it be to find a famous Hollywood movie star? It’s not as if people won’t recognize him. The guy had been on more magazine covers in the last year than the Olsen twins had in their entire lives. I looked at the typed paper and found Landman’s address in Pacific Palisades, license plates and descriptions for vehicles, an address on a Malibu home, his personal assistant’s phone number and the phone number and location of Landman’s office on the lot at Americas Studios. There were about ten cell phone numbers, all shown as Bob’s, and a description of a customized yellow Colnago Oval Master mountain bike he owned. I wondered if I should call Bond and tell her she’d left off his zodiac sign and biorhythm chart.

  I got up from the chair and went into the bathroom to shower and change. No sense in greeting the next clients barefooted and in gym shorts.

  I slipped on a dark blue short-sleeved shirt, gray pleated pants and matching gray New Balance tennis shoes. The shoulder holster with my Model 19 Smith and Wesson went on like a lover’s embrace and I covered it with a new, gunmetal gray Patagonia windbreaker I had practically stolen. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Good enough for the cover of GQ...or Guns and Ammo.

  I opened the bathroom door and saw my partner, Hondo Wells sitting on the corner of my desk, looking at the scattered hundreds covering the top.

  “Hey, I had that in my drawer.”

  “I smelled it when I came in.”

  “You smelled it? Well shoot, let’s take you up north and look for D.B. Cooper’s money.”

  Hondo said, “So you’ve got forty-two hundred dollars here-”

  “Hey, there’s five thousand.”

  “G
otcha. What are we being paid to investigate?”

  I filled him in as he restacked the money and put a rubber band around it.

  Hondo said, “We’ll take my car.”

  “What’s wrong with mine?”

  “I’m not going through that neighborhood in Shamu.” Hondo insisted we take his vehicle since he’d washed it and it would blend in better than my pickup, which is a two-year old four-wheel-drive Ford 250 pickup with oversized tires and front and rear bumpers made of welded six-inch iron pipe painted black. The windows are tinted black and the pickup is painted black except for white teardrop shapes along the headlights and white along the bottom third of the side panels and doors. That’s why Hondo calls it Shamu. I’d taken it as payment on a case and he hasn’t let me live it down. Hondo on the other hand drives a prissy looking gold Mercedes convertible. He denies its prissy looking, but it is.

  We’d used a Map To The Stars’ Homes in a case last year and I had it with me as we drove through Pacific Palisades. I pointed ahead, “Look, that’s Arnold’s old house.”

  Hondo used one finger to pull the Ray Bans down on his nose and look at me.

  “Hey, I like his movies.” Landman’s residence was several houses further down, and Hondo eased by the driveway and iron gate, stopping just beyond. I walked back and looked through the bars.

  The house was a combination of Spanish Mediterranean and Early Love Boat. A red tile roof above white stucco walls three stories high made up a house that must have contained forty thousand square feet. Round windows the size of whiskey barrel lids ran in regular intervals around each story like portholes, and the arched double front doors were massive white marble slabs inscribed with black lines and runes. Each door was about ten feet high and five feet wide, looking like something you would open to enter The Mines of Moria.

  A Lincoln sat in the circular drive and as I watched, one of the home’s massive doors swung open and a slender woman with blond, spiky hair, wearing a lime green blouse and Capri pants the color of walnuts walked around the car and stopped at the driver’s door. On a hunch I pulled Bond’s folded paper out of my jacket, located the number for Landman’s personal assistant and dialed it on my cell. As it rang in my ear, I watched the slender woman reach into her purse. She pulled out a cell phone and put it to her ear.

  I heard, “Hello?”

  “Miss Haile, Mickey Haile?”

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “My name is Ronald Baca. I’m a private investigator who’s been hired by someone close to Mr. Landman.” Mickey Haile moved around, taking two or three little steps, then turning and doing it again, like a windup toy soldier that bumps into things and only goes a few steps before changing direction.

  “What? What do you want?”

  “I want to locate Robert Landman.”

  More turning, walking, turning, and a little hair tugging. “I don’t...I can relay your message to Mr. Landman. If you’d like to leave your number...”

  “Can I come by and give it to you personally?”

  “Yes, yes, sure-”

  “You’re sure it’s okay to give it to you person-to-person?”

  More hair tugging, “Yes! You can come by the off-”

  “How about right now? I’m at the gate.” She looked at the gate and I waved a big, side-to-side Howdy-Do at her. From her reaction, it was a good thing she was wearing brown slacks.

  **

  After Mickey opened the gate, Hondo parked the Mercedes by the Lincoln and we walked to the marble doors where she held one side open. Hondo left on his sunglasses, going for the mysterious effect.

  Mickey was a nervous wreck, with shaking, jerky hands and dark circles under her eyes that makeup didn’t quite cover. Her short hair looked like it had been savaged by an attacking squirrel, and I could smell that she hadn’t bathed in several days.

  Hondo can’t stand bad smells, and I was surprised he didn’t run onto the lawn and rub his face in the grass like a skunk-sprayed dog. Instead, he smiled and walked beside her into an enormous den with floor to ceiling bookcases, a huge black marble fireplace that could hold a small tree, several comfortable chairs and one desk with a black marble top as big as a sheet of plywood.

  One thing about Bob Landman, he kept the marble industry healthy. The odd thing about the bookcases was the absence of books. There was room for five thousand volumes, and nothing was there but empty space.

  Mickey sat in a chair near the unlit fireplace. Well, sat isn’t the right word. She perched, maybe an inch of her rear on the front edge of the seat cushion, with her back ramrod straight and her hands picking and pulling at each other as her eyes darted from me to Hondo and back again.

  Hondo sat on the sofa across from her and said, “Its okay, Mickey. We’re worried about him, too.”

  It was as if the sprinkler system came on. Mickey buh-hawed and more tears came than I’d imagined could come from two eyes. Big drops one right after the other, building and dropping from her lashes and off her nose and chin and plopping on the floor like marble-sized rain.

  Hondo looked at me and motioned with his head toward her. I walked over to Mickey and placed a hand on her thin shoulder. “Mickey, it’s okay. We just want to find him, make sure he’s all right. Make sure he’s not in any trouble.” That started another round of hawing and head shaking.

  “There, there,” I said and patted her shoulder. Suddenly Mickey stood up and hugged me close with a surprising spidery strength, crying her eyes out on my gray windbreaker, smearing mascara, snot, and tears all over the front where she rubbed her face back and forth. I held her until the crying subsided to sobs and shudders and gasps, and then to whimpers and small keenings and finally to deep, exhausted breathing.

  She raised her face to look up at me. Gene Simmons in his Kiss days had less black around the eyes. She gave me the same look a shooting victim gives the first paramedic to reach them. “C-Can you find him? Oh, please?”

  “We think what you can tell us might get us closer.”

  “I don’t know anything. Bob, he...he was at the office Wednesday and said he’d see me the next day, and then...he disappeared.”

  I sat her down and took a vacant chair. “How did you try to reach him? When did you first miss him? Take us through every step.”

  Mickey attempted to push down the spikes of hair as she thought it through, “It was the next morning after he missed two studio meetings, nine and ten o’clock. I tried his car phone - the one in his Ferrari, not the Hummer - I tried that later, then I called his home, his personal cell phone, his office cell phone and the studio cell phone. I tried the studio, the home in Malibu, his yacht in Marina Del Rey, and I left e-mails on all five of his computers and those of Mr. Meadows’ executive assistant. I’ve done that every day since he’s been gone.”

  I looked at Hondo, but couldn’t read anything behind the sunglasses. Hondo said, “You call any people he hangs out with?”

  “Yes, all one hundred and twenty four names I have in my rolodex.”

  Hondo cocked his head, “Are there any people you might not have listed? New acquaintances, someone special?”

  Mickey acted offended. “No, I know everyone Mr. Landman considers phoneable.”

  Phoneable? This girl would be a riot at a scrabble tournament. I said, “Mickey, pest control is phoneable. Couldn’t there be someone you don’t have listed?”

  She gnawed at the skin around her thumbnail as she thought. After two minutes, I worried that her teeth might scrape bone, but she finally spoke. “He did make some calls from his office. They were funny.”

  “Funny ha-ha or funny weird?”

  “Funny weird. He would close the door and use a cell phone. I noticed because the line wouldn’t light up on my phone.”

  Hondo asked, “Did he make a call like that on Wednesday?”

  Mickey chewed another inch of skin from her thumb before saying, “Yes. He called about four in the afternoon, and he left a half hour later.”

&nbs
p; I asked, “Are you sure of the time?”

  “Yes, because the Fed-Ex man came and I signed for a package at three fifty-five and it was right after that. And he left at four-thirty because I had to cancel a four forty-five meeting for him.”

  Hondo looked at me, “We can find out who he called pretty easy that way. Might be something.”

  “We’ll check it out.” Mickey began wringing her hands and her eyes filled. I said, “Mickey, we’re going to find him. You’ve been a big help.”

  Mickey started bawling again, and after she grabbed me and buried her face on my chest, I wondered if my nipples would prune from all the moisture.

  **

  After Mickey dried out we had her write down any of Landman’s phone numbers we didn’t have, the name and location of his yacht, and then we walked around the house to see which vehicles were and weren’t there. He had fourteen, and all were there, even the Hummer, painted with scenes that were god-awful.

  Mickey said, “Bob was feeling very Southwestern when he had it painted. He hired Valdar, you know, the Volga artist? He’s staying at Bob’s Malibu house for a few months while he gathers the essence of the American experience.”

  Saguaro cactus, buttes, and howling coyotes that looked more like Lassie than wild canines silhouetted against a full moon. The worst image in the scene was of a party of six Fabio-looking Indian warriors – four of them blondes – on horseback dressed in Plains Indian costumes including braids and full headdresses with feathered tails flowing in some unseen breeze. You’d think Valdar could have gotten the right Indian Nation for the terrain. Mickey continued, “It’s very masculine, don’t you think?” She was practically wetting her pants.

  To keep from getting soaked I said, “It’s ah...unique.” Hondo was in the corner of my vision and I saw him shake his head in slow motion.

  We’d left then, but not before Mickey gave me a hug and big kiss on the cheek, her private cell phone number, her home phone number, office and home e-mail, and her address. Hondo asked her if the Lincoln was her only vehicle and she said no, she also had a Volkswagen Bug, one of the new ones, and oh, Bob had had his artist paint it with tiny cactus and coyotes, too, so they would match. She squirmed as she talked, like she had to go to the bathroom. “Bob had Valdar paint Indian maidens instead of the warriors. Wasn’t that just the most thoughtful, darling thing?”