City Of Mirrors: A Diana Poole Thriller Part 23

I shook her hard. "Give me a location!"

"I don't know where it is!" she screamed at me, then took a deep breath, and collected herself. "I do know he goes there for solace ... or to kill someone. That's probably why Luis drove him. Luis is an expert at killing."

My heart sank. I released her.

The front door buckled and crashed open.

Mrs. Parson quickly tapped the gla.s.s wall. It slid open, revealing a narrow balcony and harsh city noises rising up from the street. At the same time, Gerald, Bruno, and the rent-a-cop from the lobby rushed into the room.

"Stop!" I yelled at them. "Leave her alone!"

I whirled back to Mrs. Parson. She was on the balcony facing us, pushing herself up onto the metal railing and sitting precariously with her back to the night.

"What are you doing?" I worked to keep my voice calm. I was about four feet from her but afraid to get any closer.

"What I intended to do all along. Why else would I lock myself in here?" Her hands were a bloodless white from gripping the rail.

"Get down, Mrs. Parson," Bruno said, breathing hard.

Bruno and Gerald moved next to me. The rent-a-cop lingered in the background, nervously pulling at his lip.

"If I die, my husband will kill both of you." Her voice was high-pitched but strong. The truth of her statement froze them in their tracks. She smiled triumphantly as the wind pulled at her hair. "Tell Diana Poole where The Rock is."

"You know we don't know where it is." Bruno spoke in a pleading voice.

"You always lie to me."

"Swear to G.o.d, we don't know." Sweat poured from under the chauffeur's chin. "That's why he had Luis drive him. Only him and Rubio know, and they're with Mr. Parson."

"Tell her!" She released her hold on the rail and raised her hands into the air, her thin body swaying back and forth dangerously.

"The Rock, Mrs. Parson, that's all we know." Bruno inched forward again.

"Please get down," I said to her. "This is no way to ..."

She cut me off. "You don't understand. This is the only control I have left." She grinned at the two guards. "You two b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are dead."

She leaned back, her legs extending out in front of her, and for a brief moment she looked as if she were resting against a pile of dark pillows.

"No!" I lunged for her.

Bruno rushed after me.

But before we could reach her, she tumbled backward, falling into the night.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

On the balcony, Bruno swung away from the railing and was instantly in front of me, his ma.s.sive body blocking my way back into the penthouse. His sweaty eyes held mine.

Still reeling from Mrs. Parson's death, I knew if I made one wrong move Bruno would murder me.

Through the open gla.s.s wall I could see Gerald in the living room pacing in a small circle, dragging his hands through his dyed hair. "Jesus f.u.c.king Christ, Parson's going to kill us!"

Next to him, the rent-a-cop stood, stricken.

Gerald stopped pacing. He had an idea. "We have to shoot her. We can't let her go," he said to Bruno.

"Shut up, you useless piece of s.h.i.t." Bruno's arm shot out and he clamped a hand on my wrist. My back was only inches from the railing-he could easily toss me over to join Mrs. Parson. But the pain from his death-grip caused my mind to click into gear.

I talked quickly: "Your only chance to get out of this alive is if Parson never finds out I was here." Bruno tightened his squeeze on my wrist. Pain ripped up my arm, but I had his attention. "And you don't want Parson to know that his wife stole the key from you, Bruno. Think about it, if she was locked in properly and jumped off the balcony on her own, you're not to blame."

Unnervingly composed, Bruno a.s.sessed me.

"I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything!" The rent-a-cop began to cry. "I'm not part of any of this. I get minimum wage."

Gerald jammed his fist into his face. "Shut the f.u.c.k up." The man staggered backwards, holding his jaw.

"You don't have much time," I told Bruno. "There are people down there on the street. They've probably already called 911. It'll look bad if you don't call, too."

Bruno said over his shoulder to Gerald, "Do it. Just say a woman's jumped and give the address. Then hang up. I'll call Mr. Parson myself."

He pulled me back into the living room and glared at the rent-a-cop. "Get back down to the desk. When the cops arrive, show them up here. And if you want to go on with your useless life, make sure you don't know s.h.i.t."

As the man fled, Gerald talked to 911. Bruno dragged me across the living room and out the front door into the brightly lit hallway just as the elevator doors closed.

"You have to let me go, Bruno. It's the only way." I struggled against his grasp.

Pulling me across the hall, he opened an office door. But it wasn't an office. He shoved me into another, smaller elevator. I stumbled, and he lunged after me, grabbing my throat and pushing me with his body against the wall. Fingers digging into my flesh, he leaned his full weight on me, shoving one of his legs between mine so I couldn't knee him. I struggled to breathe.

"Remember one thing." His damp cheek rested heavily against mine, and I felt his hot sweat seeping into my skin. "If Parson finds out you were here or if he thinks you had anything to do with his wife's death, he'll kill you too. Do we understand each other?"

I tried to nod but couldn't. I blinked. Tears formed.

"Push the bas.e.m.e.nt b.u.t.ton. The elevator will take you down to Parson's private garage. There's an exit door that'll take you to the street at the rear of the building." With one last shake of my throat, he released me, backed his ma.s.sive frame out the elevator, and watched me suck for air and fumble for the bas.e.m.e.nt b.u.t.ton. I finally hit it.

Plummeting downward, I tried to swallow, I tried to take deep breaths, I tried not to think of Parson's wife falling to her death-the only power she'd had over her husband and her guards.

The elevator came to an abrupt halt, and the doors slid open. Chest tight, I peered out, looking for more men who might be hiding, waiting for me. But there was no place to hide in this windowless, fluorescence-lit room that looked big enough to hold just one limo. There was a steel corrugated garage door. Across from it was the exit. I ran for it, still not knowing where I was heading or how I could find Ryan.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

Sitting in my car on the side street, I heard the sirens from Sunset Boulevard winding down to a whine as the emergency vehicles reached Mrs. Parson's body. The black sky was aglow with the red swirl of their lights mingling with the starker blue lights of the LAPD patrol cars.

G.o.d, I didn't even know her first name.

I leaned my head against the steering wheel, frantically trying to gather my thoughts. The Rock was the only clue I had to find Ryan. I took my cell phone from my purse, hit the Google icon, and tapped in "The Rock Los Angeles." I got a wrestler named The Rock, the Hard Rock Cafe, the city of Eagle Rock, The Rock coffee house and a gem store. I thought of Jenny going to The Rock and, when she returned, according to her mother, she wanted to be an actress. These were hardly the places, or person, for that kind of epiphany. I clicked off.

Come on, Diana, you're a smart woman. Okay, this is all about Parson. Jenny wasn't inspired; she had the part of a lifetime for a beginning actor, and she blew it. She didn't want to be an actress; what she really wanted was to please her father-and he wasn't a professional actor, he was a criminal. She knew she was her father's daughter.

So why did Parson want her to have a career in the movies? Because he loved them. He had grown up watching movies. He loved hanging out with movie people, he wanted to control their lives.

I grabbed the wheel tightly. On his yacht Parson told me he used to sneak into a movie house when he was a child. And he would eat the candy dropped on the floor by the customers in order to survive. And if he didn't get kicked out, he'd sleep there. A movie theater was his home, his salvation. But how many years ago was that? Fifty or more? Could the theater still exist?

It might, if Parson had bought it. What had his wife said? "A place to find solace-or kill someone."

Fear for Ryan ran through me, then self-doubt. Was I really any closer to finding him? He could be dead or dying while I sat here putting together Parson's past as if it were a character study for a role I was going to play. Shaking off my uncertainty, I concentrated again.

Old movie houses didn't have names like The Rock. That had to be Parson's personal name for it. I remembered spending a hot boring summer in a small Nebraska town where mother was filming a period movie t.i.tled Gaily, Gaily. It turned out to be a flop. I whiled away my afternoons in an air-conditioned theater grandly called the Alexandria. The locals called it The Alex. So the Rock could be short for what? The Roscamoor? Rockefeller? Roc ... Roxy? The Roxy. Excitement stirred in me. I vaguely remembered hearing about old movie theaters called The Roxy years ago. Maybe Parson used the term The Rock as a kind of alias for The Roxy.

I grabbed my cell again. Parson said he had grown up in Boyle Heights. I Googled the information. And there it was: The Roxy on Figueroa Street, as far away from the wealthy Westside as it could possibly be.

Reaching under my seat, I felt for the gun. It was still there. I quickly started the ignition. The police would have Sunset blocked, so I swung a U-turn. Heading south, I turned left on Wilshire Boulevard and sped east, running lights and swerving in and out of traffic like every other L.A. driver. The ever-going heater warmed me.

Twenty-five minutes later I turned onto Figueroa Street. I slowed, searching for an address to get my bearings. Feeling like a lost tourist in a small Mexican town, I saw store signs in Spanish and shops painted blue, pink, and chartreuse. The windows were barred. There was a sad feeling of a fiesta that had gone on too long. Then I saw it-a shadowy spire atop a dark marquee empty of movie t.i.tles or show times. But the theater's name was still intact: The Roxy.

I swerved to the curb and parked. Reaching under the seat, I pulled out the Glock and slipped it into my jacket pocket, then I took my iPhone and put it into the other pocket. After hiding my purse under the seat, I got out of the car and hurried toward the box office, which looked as if it had been designed to resemble Cinderella's regal carriage before the ball was over. Now the windows were boarded up with graffiti-covered plywood, and what remained of its baroque trim had been smashed and broken. The tarnished bra.s.s entrance doors were blanketed by security grates. I tugged at them, but they were locked.

Hearing footsteps I whirled around, jamming my hand into my pocket and gripping my gun. A woman herded two small children along the sidewalk. Waiting until they were gone, I wondered what had happened to all the fathers. The wise old men. The mentors. Everybody was young now. And no one wanted to be a father. Except one man who could be taking his revenge out on Ryan right now.

I rushed around to the corner of the building, searching for another entrance. Instead, I stared into a long dark tunnel that was an alley. Taking out my iPhone, I clicked on its flashlight. In the light of its weak beam, I edged along the theater's wall. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I became aware of how clean the alley was: no trash, no bins, no addicts, no homeless, and no limo. I tried to dismiss the niggling idea that this ruin of a building was just what it appeared to be-another old movie house as dead as all the stars that had once strode across its screen.

Soon, my light came to rest on a chain wrapped around the handles of steel double doors. The chain was padlocked, and the doors led to the service entrance. I pounded on the steel. There was no response.

I called Ryan's cell number, then pressed my ear against the crack where the doors joined, hoping I could hear his ring tone-"Satisfaction." But I heard only my own jagged breathing.

As I stepped away I glimpsed a shadowy movement out of the corner of my eye. Heart knocking in my chest, I slowly turned to face it. The black silhouette of a man walked from the mouth of the alley toward me. Hanging from his right hand was something that looked like a long pipe or tire iron. Instinctively I backed away, and Ryan's words came back to me. "Alleys always dead-end." I hit a wall.

I took the gun from my pocket. Mouth dry, I held up my cell and yelled, "I've called 911. The police will be here any minute. And I have a gun pointed at you!"

"Turn your phone off. You're just wasting the battery." Heath came into view. "And where in h.e.l.l did you get the Glock?"

I let out my breath. "It's Rubio's. I took it when he crashed his bike into my car."

"Jesus, Diana, no wonder he wanted to kill you. Give it to me."

"So you can have two Glocks? Not a chance in h.e.l.l." I slid it back into my pocket.

He grinned, shaking his head. "I carry a Colt 911. Semi automatic." He reached into his jacket pocket with his free hand and came out with his flashlight. "Hold this and shine it on the chain."

I held the light for him. "What are you doing here?"

"Staking out the theater."

"I didn't see your car."

"You weren't supposed to." He took the iron bar and slammed it repeatedly at the padlock and chain. The sharp loud banging shattered the stillness.

"Aren't you making a lot of noise?"

"Parson sped off in his limo just before you arrived. You think I'd be doing this if he were here? Let's hope he didn't take Ryan with him."

I knew why Parson had left. He got the call from Bruno about his wife.

Heath's jaw muscles tightened each time he swung at the lock and chain, and I wondered how he knew about this place and that Ryan was probably inside.

"You purposely sent me on a wild goose chase to the 9000 building, didn't you?" I said.

"Something like that. I knew you wouldn't do as I asked and stay put," he spoke in rhythm to his swinging the crow bar. "Stay safe, stay out of the way."

"You thought I wouldn't get into the building and I'd just give up and go home."

"We all need hope, Diana." Now he jammed the crowbar between the door and chain. Sweat had beaded on his forehead.

"I got into the penthouse." I heard myself say. I hadn't intended to tell him.

He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. "You got past Bruno, the gatekeeper?"

I nodded. "With the help of Mrs. Parson." My voice quivered.

"What happened?"

"She killed herself. She leaped off the balcony in front of Bruno, Gerald, and me. Bruno called Parson and told him. That's why he left in such a hurry."

"And you're alive to tell me about this?"

"Bruno and I have a deal. I don't tell anyone I was there, and he won't kill me. I thought it was a pretty good compromise at the time. Are you going to tell Parson I was in the penthouse?"

"You still don't trust me, do you?"

"I just put my life in your hands, Heath."

"So you did." He frowned. "Why?"