“Did you like him?” I asked her when I was a boy.
“Who?”
“Granddad. The rich one.”
“No. He never looked at me. Isn’t that strange? Never once. When someone doesn’t look into your eyes, they can’t know you and you can’t like them.”
“He didn’t like Dad, either.”
“Your father’s a tough man to like.”
“I don’t”—I almost swallowed the words, but they came—“like him sometimes.”
“We don’t always like what we love. Do you love him?”
“I think I do. He scares me.”
“He’d never hurt you. You know that. I would never let that happen.”
“He read me a story last night.”
“What kind of story?”
“It was about a sparrow and a statue and it made me sad at the end.”
My mother insisted that my father’s inheritance be kept for my college and future, and we lived a sparse life in a rich town, my father spending hours at the gym and occasionally working fishing boats, and my mother earning her master’s in literature and rising to charter school principal. A man of quick edges and gazing silences, my father lived half in this world, half someplace else. He left me mostly to Mom. But he taught me how to box. I was good at it, but I never liked it, except how the world outside the ring went quiet. “That’s the church of it,” he told me once. “That silence in your head makes you sacred.” He could say things like that, things that made Mom laugh and cry and sit on his lap in the kitchen and stroke his hair, patch his cuts, and whisper to him until morning. He died when I was eleven. They never found his killers. They let them sail away. How could that be? I’ve kept a lace from one of his boxing gloves. It is stiff and dry with sweat and blood.
A match strike, a wisp.
“What are you burning today, Lester?”
“Lavender.”
“Can’t really hide it, though.”
“Nah, it stays in the nose.”
“I heard you and your wife split.”
“We did, but we’re back,” he says, peering into Gallagher’s open throat. “Routine is a powerful thing. More durable than love. We started a ballroom dance class. My wife says dancing will help us understand each other’s subtleties. We’ve been together thirty years, Carver. I know her subtleties and not-so-subtleties. What are you going to do? You gotta try, right?”
“I guess.”
“Tinder aside, you have anybody?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Find someone, Carver. Go to the zoo. Catch a movie. You still living in the old Metro building?”
“A few years,” I say, looking down at Gallagher. “Hey, when tox comes back, let me know this guy’s blood alcohol. He was a gin man and kept a hooker.”
“That probably deadened the pain.” Lester winks.
“I gotta go,” I say. “Have to talk to one of his partners.”
Lester turns back to Gallagher. I head out the door into Sunday morning sun. She blindsides me.
“Hey, Carver.”
“No comment.”
I slide on sunglasses and keep walking toward my car.
“C’mon, Carver. Slow down. What’s the story? Rich, politically connected dead architect on a downtown sidewalk. Give me something. Off the record. We’ve got a short piece up on the web and an obit coming but not much on what happened.”
“Call Public Affairs.”
“You’re not very pleasant when you’re like this, Carver. Just a few sentences.”
“You been following me?”
“In your dreams. Murder happens Saturday night, detective shows up at medical examiner’s office Sunday morning. Pretty standard. I waited for you.”
“You look like you’ve been up all night.”
“Check the mirror yourself. Sleep much? Got a little gray in your stubble too, Carver. Getting old. It happens. What are you, thirty-eight, thirty-nine? Must be closing in on that midlife magic number.”
Susan Chandler fires words more than speaks them. Blond hair, blue eyes, skirt, ankle boots, and denim jacket—she is a looker, the late-born daughter of hippies turned California real estate speculators, but a pain in the ass, a relentless interrogator and a top-notch writer. Her stories get the streets—compassionate but never sentimental. She’s got a magpie’s eye for detail, and the eloquence of a novelist. I don’t tell her this. She’s the kind of woman who would hold a compliment against you, parse through it, and see it as an attempt to manipulate her. She’s been at the Los Angeles Times for a few years, bitching about editors, story play, and the shrinking fortunes of her business.
“I didn’t think you guys were still publishing. All those layoffs, and that funny name your new owners gave the company. ‘Schlonk,’ is it?”
“‘Tronc,’” she says. “That’s the corporate name. Bunch of Chicago assholes thought it up. We’re still the Los Angeles Times.”
“Mmmm. What’s a tronc, anyway?”
“Hell if I know.”
We both laugh. She’s doing her job; I’m doing mine.
“Can you give me anything?”
“Okay, listen. I’ll tell you a few things. You know the stiff’s name, what he does—did. Politically connected, et cetera. Doesn’t look like a robbery. Had his wallet and cash.”
“How much cash?”
“A thousand bucks.”
“What was he doing down there at that time? Not really an architect’s part of town.”
“I’ll tell you a few things. Background. You can’t use it yet. Promise?”
“How can I promise if I don’t know?”
“Okay, screw you, then.”
“Carver, why do we always do this dance? You know you can trust me.”
“You burned me once.”
“You still hanging on to that? That was unavoidable. Police mix up evidence, and the wrong guy goes to jail. C’mon, Carver. That story had to be told. Besides, I never named you as the source.”
“People knew.”
“People thought they knew. You survived,” she says, holding up an empty page in her notebook. “Can we get to present day? Why was Mr. Architect down there?”
“You never buy me a coffee. Ever notice that? I thought reporters took sources out to coffee.”
“You want a latte, I’ll buy you a latte.”
“With caramel and whip cream. A grande.”
“You’re messing with me. And you’re doing that quit-again smoker’s thing.”
“What?”
“Patting your pockets for a cigarette.”
“I’m not.”
“Are.”
I cut her a glance.
“I don’t like you most days.”
“Mutual.”
“Here’s what we know,” I say. “Guy was seeing a hooker downtown. He kept an apartment. I’m not telling you where. You figure it out. His throat was slit. Clean. Almost perfect. We don’t have much else. But as I said, it’s not a robbery, and likely not some homeless guy off his meds, although not ruling that out. Could have been something freakish like that. A crazy Captain America wannabe popping up in the night.”
“There’s passion in a slit throat, Carver. Someone who knew him.”
“What I’m thinking.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Don’t use the slit throat or the hooker yet. You can say it was a stabbing. Technically, that’s accurate. Let me get a little more ahead on this. Deal?”
“You still want a latte? I’ll buy you a scone too.”
“Rain check.”
She turns to go and then looks up at me in the sunlight, hair blowing around her like gold.
“Carver, remember that night in your car? You think …”
“Let’s not go th
ere now.”
I walk away, knowing she’ll keep her promise not to use everything I told her. Some women are built right inside and out. I head over to Gallagher’s offices near Seventh and Flower. I park outside, past stirring homeless guys and hipsters—I do hate that name, but what else are they?—strolling toward Whole Foods for Naked Juice, coffee, artisanal bread, and inflated Brie and Beaufort. I pass a bearded one in pants tight as pea pods, untucked blue shirt, a hashtag tattoo on his neck, and a Sinatra hat. The city is sprouting these guys. The alleged Renaissance is full of rangy men with stud earrings and lovely Asian girlfriends—a few of them, anyway. Hipsters make me feel as if I’m a beat off the rhythm and missing essentials. That’s bullshit, I know; they don’t have a fucking clue. But there is that sense of separation and the weight of age. I’m not even that old, but the young can make you feel hieroglyphic with their vapes, multiple playlists, tattoos, and coconut milk. I buzz Kimmel, Brady, and Gallagher Associates and take the elevator to the thirtieth floor. The door opens, and the city unwinds from the San Gabriels to the ocean. Clear, no smog. Magical.
Arthur Kimmel walks toward me in an open-collar white shirt, jeans, dark blazer, black loafers. Silver-haired, manicured, a Rolex snaking his wrist. He shakes my hand. He smells of cologne and coffee breath. One of those seventysomething guys who swim at five a.m. and flirt with women at parties, like a creature out of Updike or Cheever, a throwback with a year-round tan and too-bright veneers. He leads me to his office. Modern. Steel. Sparse. Rolled and unrolled drawings lie on a big desk, a few Macs aglow, one with the cosmos, the other with a shining tower in a place that looks like Dubai or Doha. We sit in rigid chairs of Swedish design; I think so, anyway. Kimmel crosses his legs and wipes his eyes with a handkerchief. A woman brings coffee and picks up a valise.
“You can go now, Mary. Thank you.”
Kimmel sips his coffee, folds his kerchief away. Mary disappears. I open my notebook, flick through pages.
“This is all so tragic,” he says. “Michael was such a fine architect. A good man too. To die like that. Alone on a sidewalk. In that part of town.”
“You know a little of what happened.”
“A friend from the mayor’s office called last night, or I guess it must have been early morning. It was still dark. I was quite alarmed. You know, getting a call like that. Startled out of sleep. They said his throat was slit, but nothing was taken. What does that mean, Detective?”
“We don’t know yet. Was Gallagher okay lately? Was he worried about anything? Mention anything that troubled him?”
“You mean did he have any enemies? Of course he did. Architects are a backbiting bunch, and with all that’s going in the city, all the contracts, well, things have gotten testy. Yes, quite testy. Michael was a bit of an egotist, but what’s wrong with that? I suppose he rubbed some of his colleagues the wrong way. But architects don’t kill people.” He looks away and back at me for verification. “I’m sorry to be terse. I’m hurt by this. I brought Michael into the firm. We were close because of that. He was brilliant in a way. A real modernist in how he saw the city—not just LA, but the concept of the city. Renewal and decay in timeless cycles.”
Kimmel nods to the window.
“Look at it all down there,” he says. “The cranes, the holes. Half finished. No one ever cared about downtown. That’s changing, Detective. This city never had a center of balance. You can see that from up here. A strange garden. What’s happening now will alter that. LA will have gravity. The question is, what will it look like? I wonder if we have the capacity to realize something bold and great. So much politics, so much intrusion into the creative. Michael and I talked about this a lot.” He points to the new Wilshire Grand. “Our tallest new child. Korean money, but the design is something out of Doha. What does it say about who we are? It’s not beautiful and it’s not a horror. It’s something in between.”
“It’s sleek. Like a crystal sail in the wind. It seems very much of today. But I’m no architect.”
“Yes,” says Kimmel, lifting a finger to his lip, pausing for a moment. “It’s ironic, Detective, sitting way up here and staring down, thinking we have some control. I learned early in my career that an architect is less an artist and more an errand boy. That may be too harsh, I suppose. But so much time is spent haggling over materials, negotiating with contractors, acquiescing to the money. Endless regulations. It’s not just earthquakes anymore. It’s global warming. Tsunamis. It all must be considered. The building you start off with in your head, this very pure thing, becomes something else. Visions become shared. Compromised. I imagine it’s what a director feels when a studio cuts twenty minutes from his film. Michael always fought that. He was young and brash, a bit of Ayn Rand in him. But his aesthetic was thoroughly modern. He saw what the future could be. It takes courage to be that way.”
Kimmel wipes his eyes. He swallows. Weary.
“I’m sorry, Detective, I’m babbling.”
I give him a few seconds to collect himself.
“How well did you know his wife?”
“Miranda? Hell of a lawyer. A damn fine cook too. She and Michael drifted apart. Couples do that, right, Detective? Nothing really lasts. I’ve had three wives. Buildings last—well, I suppose not forever, but longer than love.” He leans in and looks at me. “Surely, you don’t think Miranda is involved. They had a bitter split. But she would never do this. It’s been too long. She left three years ago. New York.”
“You say a bitter split.”
“Something happened. Michael described it as a ‘quiet, intense explosion.’ He never told me about it. I didn’t pry. But as I say, that ‘explosion’ came after what I had sensed was a longtime diminution of what once was. ‘The brokenness of joy.’ My second wife used that phrase in our divorce hearing. Women can be quite poetic when the goods are being divvied up. You certainly must know this. Human nature, I mean. That’s your business. The flaws in us.” He takes a deep breath. “I did see Miranda before she left. We went to dinner. She didn’t let on why, either, but she seemed relieved. A weight lifted kind of thing. No, I don’t think Miranda’s involved.”
Kimmel fills a lot of space with words. He doesn’t want quiet. He’d sit here all day, skipping through thoughts, using Gallagher’s death for his own introspection. Selfish but natural. Gallagher meant something to him. Old master, young protégé. Men like Kimmel need someone to carry on. They don’t know that when they’re gone, so are their conceits and the worlds they imagined.
Kimmel wipes his eyes and walks to the window. He stands with his back to me. I rise and look past him and out the glass. Kimmel said he felt like an errand boy, but one could pretend to be untouchable up here, the horizon stretching to the sea, the world gnawing silently thirty floors below.
“How active was Michael politically? The mayor’s office has taken a particular interest in the case.”
“My firm gives a lot of money to a lot of politicians and parties,” says Kimmel, turning toward me. “You have to. Cost of business. Nothing new in that, as I’m sure you know, Detective.”
“Anyone else Michael was close to? Someone who might have insight.”
“His best friend was Paul Jamieson over at McKinley, Jamieson, and Burns. We’re collegial competitors. Odd but true. Paul and Michael ran around a lot. At one time, they talked about starting their own firm. There was a third friend. Michael brought him to an office party once. I can’t remember his name. He was a few years older—an architect too. I suppose we’re an incestuous bunch.”
Chapter 7
Sleepless night.
Monday morning. I’m late.
I drink a quick espresso and slip on a V-neck white T and a pair of jeans. My hair’s a mess. I twist it into a ponytail. No matter, it’ll be an office day. Maybe lunch with John, but otherwise quiet except for my nine a.m. conference call to Chicago to discuss an art gallery John and I are des
igning. I pop a bagel into the toaster, unfold my laptop, and scroll.
He floats up the screen like a smiling, unrepentant ghost. Michael J. Gallagher leads the Los Angeles Times home page. The story’s shorter than I would have imagined: a few pictures of the dead architect, one with his ex-wife on a rented yacht in Belize, and several buildings his firm designed—soulless deconstructionist abstractions that these days are called “brave” and “bold.” Two b words I hate. It’s jarring to see, though. I’m the only one who knows. The keeper of secrets, the hearer of his final breath. Ahhhhhhhhh. Or was it erghhhhh? Or just nnnnnnnnnn? He’s a pixelated image now. He’ll slip further down the screen, and soon he’ll be gone. Resurrected every now and then by a keystroke, a stumbled-upon artifact, a mystery drifting in ether. I did that. The story says Gallagher was stabbed—whoa, understatement—and makes other allusions to the crime, but nothing solid. My detective doesn’t have much in the way of clues. They’ll trickle out, I suppose. They always do. But not this time. I bite into the bagel and check the clock. Lipstick, tweezers, liner, a quick pee.
I hop in the car and cross over the 101, take a left on Temple, past barred windows and into downtown. Beyoncé seethes about betrayal; Chrissie Hynde kicks ass; Amy Winehouse is a squall of lust. I click to a Joni Mitchell tune from way before my time. Too airy. Blondie? Almost. Drive music is tricky. I settle for the in-your-face voice of Courtney Love. Whatever happened to her? Where do the rabid ones go? I feel as if someone is watching me. I’m a suspect. I know that’s not true, but Gallagher is in my head. I can feel him dying against me. I would do it again, yes, I would, but I am rattled, like a house of restless spirits. Not the serious kind they lock you up for, but the insistent ones, hovering, taunting, judging. I can almost hear them slipping through songs. Smug.
My Detective Page 4
