When she went away, Pollard leaned toward him.

“Did you give that girl a hundred dollars?”

“What of it?”

“I’m not trying to fight with you, Holman.”

“Yes. A hundred.”

“Jesus Christ. Maybe I should have let you pay me.”

“Chee’s money. You wouldn’t want to get contaminated.”

Pollard stared at him. Holman felt a flush of embarrassment and glanced away. He was in a terrible mood and had to get a grip on himself. He looked at the menu.

“You want something to eat? As long as we’re here we might as well eat.”

“Fuck off.”

Holman stared at the menu until Marki returned. Marki told them she could hang for a minute, and Pollard went back to the point as if Holman hadn’t just made an ass of himself.

“Did she ever tell you about her johns?”

“She had funny stories about her johns. Some of them were celebrities.”

“We’re trying to find out about a guy she was with four or five months ago. He might have been her boyfriend, but it’s more likely he was a john. He had an unusual name-Anton Marchenko. A Ukrainian dude?”

Marki smiled, recognizing the name right away.

“That was the pirate. Martin, Marko, Mar-something.”

“Marchenko.”

Holman said, “How was he a pirate?”

Now her smile morphed into a giggle.

“’Cause that was his thing. Allie said he couldn’t get off without pretending he was this badass pirate, you know, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum, how he lived a life of adventure and had all this buried treasure.”

Holman glanced at Pollard and saw the corner of her mouth curl. She returned his glance and nodded. They had something.

Holman looked back at Marki and turned on his friendliest smile.

“No shit? He told her he had buried treasure?”

“He said all kinds of silly stuff. He used to take her to the Hollywood Sign. That’s where he had to do it. He’d never take her back to his place or do it in the car or use a motel. They had to go up to the Hollywood Sign so he could make these speeches and look out over his kingdom.”

Marki giggled again, but Holman saw a problem.

He said, “Allie told you they went to the sign?”

“Yeah. Four or five times.”

“You can’t get to the sign. It’s fenced off and covered by security cameras.”

Marki seemed surprised, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her either way.

“That’s what she told me. She said it was a big pain because you have to hike up, but the guy was loaded. He paid her one thousand dollars just for, you know, oral. She said she’d hike up there all day for a thousand dollars.”

A nearby table waved Marki over, leaving Holman and Pollard alone again. Holman was starting to doubt Allie’s story about going up to the sign.

He said, “I’ve been up there. You can get close, but you can’t get to the sign. They have video cameras all over up there. They even have motion detectors.”

“Now waitaminute, Holman-this is making sense. Marchenko and Parsons lived in Beachwood Canyon. The sign is right at the top of their hill. Maybe they hid the money up there.”

“You couldn’t bury sixteen million dollars anywhere around that sign. Sixteen million dollars is big.”

“We’ll see when we get there. We’ll go take a look.”

Holman still had his doubts, but when Marki returned Pollard resumed her questions.

“We’re almost finished, Marki. We’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

“Like he said, a hundred covers a lot of tips.”

“Did Allie know why it always had to be the sign?”

“I don’t know. That’s just where he liked to go.”

“Okay, you mentioned something about speeches. What kind of speeches did he make?”

Marki scrunched her face, thinking.

“Not really speeches, maybe-more like pretend. Like if he was a pirate and kidnapped her, he would screw her on all his stolen treasure. She had to act like that made her really hot, you know, like it would be this big turn-on to get screwed on all these hard gold coins.”

Pollard nodded, encouraging.

“Like that was his turn-on, to do it on the money?”

“I guess.”

Pollard glanced at Holman again, and this time Holman shrugged. Banging on bucks might have been Marchenko’s fantasy, but Holman still couldn’t see planting sixteen million in cash in such a public place. Then he remembered that Richie and Fowler had come home covered in grass and dirt.

Holman said, “When the cops were here before, did you tell them about Marchenko?”

Marki looked surprised.

“Should I have? It was so long ago.”

“No. I was just wondering if they asked.”

Holman was ready to leave, but Pollard wasn’t looking at him.

Pollard said, “Okay, just one more. Do you know how Allie hooked up with this guy?”

“No, uh-uh.”

“Did she have a madam or work for an outcall service?”

Marki screwed up her face again.

“She had someone looking out for her, but he wasn’t a pimp or anything.”

Holman said, “What does that mean, someone looking out for her?”

“It sounds kinda silly. She told me I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

“Allie’s gone. The statute of limitations ran out on that one.”

Marki glanced at the nearby tables, then lowered her voice again.

“Okay, well. Allie worked for the police. She said she didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble ’cause she had this friend who could make it go away. She even got paid for telling about her clients.”

This time when Holman glanced at Pollard, Pollard had turned white.

“Alison was a paid informant?”

Marki made an uneasy grin and shrugged.

“She wasn’t getting rich or anything. She told me they had some kinda cap or something on the amount. Every time she wanted some money this guy hadda get it approved.”

Holman said, “Did she tell you who she worked for?”

“Uh-uh.”

Holman looked back at Pollard, but Pollard was still pale. Holman touched her arm.

“Anything else?”

Pollard shook her head.

Holman peeled off another hundred and slipped it into Marki’s hand.

37

A DEPRESSED ACTRESS named Peg Entwistle killed herself in 1932 by jumping from the top of the letter H. The letters were fifty feet tall, then and now, and these days the sign stretched some four hundred fifty feet across the top of Mount Lee in the Hollywood Hills. After years of neglect, the Hollywood Sign was rebuilt in the late seventies, but vandals and dickweeds took their toll, so not long thereafter the city closed the area to the public. They surrounded the sign with fences, closed-circuit video cameras, infrared lights, and motion detectors. It was like they were guarding Fort Knox, which wasn’t lost on Holman as he directed Pollard up to the top of Beachwood Canyon. Holman had been going up to the sign since he was a kid.

Pollard looked worried.

“You know how to get there?”

“Yeah. We’re almost there.”

“I thought we had to go through Griffith Park.”

“This way is better. We’re looking for a little street I know.”

Holman still didn’t think they would find anything, but he knew they had to look. Every new discovery they made brought them back to the police, and now they knew a policeman had also been connected to Alison Whitt. If Whitt told her contact officer about Anton Marchenko, then the cops might have known about the Hollywood Sign. Putting the sign together with Marchenko’s fantasy would have inspired them to search the area. Richie might have been part of the search. Holman wondered if Alison Whitt had seen Marchenko in the news. It was likely. She had probably realized her pirate was the bank robber and offered up what she knew to her cop. This had probably inspired her death.

Pollard said, “These canyons are shit. I can’t get a cell signal.”

“Do you want to turn around?”

“No, I don’t want to turn around. I want to check out whether or not this girl was really an informant.”