“I gave you the best answer I can.”
He peered over at me, his blue eyes narrowing, before he looked back at the road before us.
We were passing Tower Records and Spago on our left. Sweetzer ran into Sunset around the bend from there just past the ornate white art deco Sunset Tower Hotel. Lamp eased off the gas and made a right turn, taking it slow as Sweetzer made a steep drop down from Sunset, tumbling its way past apartment houses that ranged from new and nice to old and nice to just plain not so nice. Kyle Cook’s building, Sweetzer Court, ranked in the not-so-nice category, although it had probably been splendid twenty or thirty years ago. It was one of those pink two-story Spanish-style stucco places built around a central courtyard. But no one had been taking care of Sweetzer Court for a long time. It needed a decent paint job, unless you consider stained, discolored and peeling a decent paint job. There were red roof tiles missing, more than a few cracked windowpanes and the landscaping had been seriously neglected. The bamboo in the beds out front grew wildly to the rooftop. The jacarandas and oleanders needed to be pruned way back. The lawn, if you want to call it that, was mostly hard bare earth with patches of weeds growing wherever they felt like.
There was a black Trans Am parked out front.
Lamp parked behind it, checking its license plate number against the one he’d jotted down in his notepad. “That’s Kyle’s car, all right. Does it look like the one that tried to run you down in Pacoima?”
Lulu answered for both of us with an emphatic woof.
“He appears to be home. Apartment 2C. Let’s go have a talk with him, shall we?”
We followed a brick path into the courtyard, which had the remains of a dead concrete fountain in its center. A couple of cheap, woven plastic lounge chairs were set around it. The bare ground around them was strewn with empty, greasy pizza boxes and empty, greasy Jack in the Box wrappers and beer cans and cigarette butts. As we strode toward the front door I found the place was summoning up images of the San Bernardino Arms, the faded apartment house where Tod Hackett mooned hopelessly over Faye Greener in The Day of the Locust, the Nathanael West novel that will teach you pretty much everything you’ll ever need to know about Hollywood. Although you’ll be much happier not knowing it, if you want my honest opinion.
Inside the front door there were mailboxes for eight apartments and a downstairs unit that probably belonged to the manager—if Sweetzer Court still had one, which I seriously doubted. The entry hall smelled of cat urine. Or at least I think it was cat urine. So did Lulu, who turned up her nose disdainfully.
The rubber treads on the stairway up to the second floor were worn through. As we climbed I heard the menacing din from somewhere up there of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, a song that had achieved iconic status as the unofficial anthem of bad-boy frat parties, minor league hockey games and skeevy biker bars from sea to shining sea. Axl Rose’s off-key wailing and Slash’s majestically inept guitar licks were not exactly welcome blasting from somebody’s apartment at 10:00 on a Sunday morning. As we started down the hallway toward apartment 2C the music got even louder.
A longhaired young guy who was wearing what I swear were Star Trek PJs was pounding on Kyle’s door and yelling, “If you don’t turn that the fuck down I’m calling the police! You hear me, bro?”
“I’m the police,” Lamp said to him over the blaring music.
“Well, do something, will you?”
“Please go back in your apartment, sir.”
He returned to his apartment across the hall, slamming the door shut.
Lamp knocked on Kyle’s door, even though Captain Kirk had just been pounding on it to no avail. He removed a clean handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers and tried the doorknob. The door was unlocked. Lamp pushed it open. It swung open about eighteen inches before it hit something and stopped. Something was blocking the door.
Make that someone.
One whiff and Lulu was already slinking back toward the stairs with her tail between her legs. She’d had just about enough death for one weekend, thank you very much. I ordered her to come back. She came back, grumbling, and in the three of us went, Lamp using his handkerchief on the doorknob to close the door behind us.
Kyle Cook was lying on his back just inside the door of his studio apartment in a T-shirt and boxer shorts with his unseeing bloodshot eyes bugging out of his head.
Lamp crossed the room to a battered boom box on Kyle’s nightstand and flicked off the music. Blessed silence. Then he returned to Kyle’s body, studying it carefully. “See all of that hemorrhaging in his eyes?”
“Pretty hard to miss it.”
“That’s a good indication he was strangled.”
“Yeah, I surmised that from those red finger marks that go all the way around his throat.”
Lamp bent down and touched Kyle’s arm. “He’s still warm. Hasn’t been dead for more than a half-hour. Whoever did this has much bigger hands than I do, see?” He positioned his in the air around Kyle’s throat for comparison before he glanced up at me, frowning. “Did you just say surmised? I’ve never heard anyone use that word in ordinary conversation before.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Lieutenant. And, just for the record, this is not my idea of ordinary conversation.”
“The knuckles of his right hand are red and swollen, see?” Lamp said, examining it closely. “That means he threw a punch at his killer and connected with hard bone. Whoever we’re looking for will have a bruise somewhere on his face.”
“‘His’ face. You’re positive it’s a man?”
“She’d have to be a strong woman with a mighty big pair of hands.”
“Monette has big hands.”
“Where are you going with this, Hoagy?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
I gazed around at the apartment, which wasn’t much. Just one small room with worn carpeting, a Pullman-style kitchen and very little in the way of furniture. His bed was nothing more than a convertible sofa, currently open. The pillows and sheets were rumpled. There was a nightstand with two drawers. The bottom drawer was pulled open wide and appeared to be empty. Several moving company cartons were stacked in the corner of the room. One of the boxes served as a hamper to hold his dirty laundry. There were no pictures on the walls. No curtains or shutters over the windows, which looked out over an alley that was lined with decoratively colored Dumpsters.
Lamp took a peek inside the small refrigerator. It was empty except for a carton of orange juice and a six-pack of Coors. Then he gave the bathroom a quick once-over before he said, “Not exactly living large, was he?”
“He probably spent most of his time on the Radford lot or at Kat’s place. Just came here to crash when she wanted him gone.” My eyes fell on Kyle’s boom box. “Why the loud music? Woke up the neighbors.”
“But also drowned out the sounds of their voices. If punches were thrown then they must have argued. I wonder what they were arguing about.”
“I have a pretty good idea. And so do you.”
“You’re right, I do. But I value your input. You have an atypical mind.”
“Thank you, I think. I’m guessing that someone didn’t want Kyle talking to you because Kyle could finger him, or her, as the person who hired him to throw that scare into Monette and me with his Trans Am.”
Lamp nodded his head. “Agreed. So who are we looking at for this?”
“Offhand, I can think of two possibilities. One is Kat . . .”
“Kat’s been home all morning. She’s got a media mob watching her house and we’ve got officers watching the media mob. She hasn’t set foot outside of her door. Besides, she’s tiny. No way those were her hands wrapped around Kyle’s throat. Who else?”
“Lou Riggio. Possibly Lou hired Kyle to scare us on Patrick’s behalf. Possibly Patrick told him to do it. Patrick swore to me that he didn’t, but I assumed he was lying to me.”
“Why did you assume that?”
&nb
sp; “Because everyone lies to me. It’s what they do. That’s why they pay me the big bucks. It’s possible, I suppose, that it was all Lou’s own idea. I don’t know. I do know that he has big, strong hands.”
Lulu had moved over to Kyle’s body, where she began sniffing at the floor near his right shoulder, snuffling and snorting as she dug her large wet black nose under his T-shirt. Or tried to. He wasn’t exactly budging. Thwarted, she sat back on her haunches and let out a frustrated moan.
“Why’s she doing that?”
“Thinks she’s found something underneath him. Shall we roll him over?”
“Can’t. The coroner goes bananas if we disturb a body.”
“Well, then how about we just give his shoulder a bit of a tilt?”
“Hoagy, you’re a bad influence.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. I try.”
“Here, let me . . .” Lamp knelt and grabbed the former Kyle Cook by his hip and shoulder and rolled him a bit.
Lulu wasn’t wrong, not that I for one second thought that she was. Attached to the underside of Kyle’s right shoulder was a wet, sticky Tootsie Pop. Grape by the looks of it.
“Big Lou loves grape Tootsie Pops.”
“Not real bright of him to leave it behind.” Lamp didn’t touch it. Just released his hold on Kyle and settled him back as we’d found him.
“Could be he’s freaking out. His meal ticket got killed yesterday. Plus he takes vast quantities of steroids. He also played defensive tackle in college, don’t forget.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he got hit in the head a lot,” I said as Lulu began to bark at Lamp. And bark.
He frowned at her. “Why is she doing that?”
“She wants you to give her an anchovy as a reward.”
“I don’t carry anchovies on me. I work for the LAPD, not SeaWorld.”
I thanked her for a job well done and told her I owed her an anchovy. I also told her to knock it off.
Lamp went over to that open nightstand drawer and knelt before it, sniffing at it. “We don’t want to touch this drawer until they dust it for prints, but stick your nose in there and tell me what you think.”
I stuck my nose in there and told him what I thought. “It smells like weed.”
He sniffed at it again. “And not just a joint or two either. It smells like he had a whole stash of bricks in here—which Lou made sure he grabbed on his way out the door. I wonder if Kyle was dealing for Lou on the sly.”
“Makes perfect sense.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Your drug people think Lou moves a lot of dope on the Radford lot, right?”
“Right . . .”
“He’d need someone plausible to go in and out of the trailers of the Malibu High cast members for him. He’d stick out himself, being a middle-aged, muscle-bound pinhead. Kyle wouldn’t. Kyle had no source of income other than handouts from Kat. We know he did some small-time dealing up in Atascadero. Besides, we know that he and Lou were buds.”
“We do?”
“They got into a sweaty three-way with Trish on the Eartha Kitt sofa yesterday, remember? Men who aren’t buds wouldn’t do that. They’d take turns.”
Lamp looked at me in dismay. “How on earth would you know that?”
“I’m sorry to disillusion you, Lieutenant, but I had some pretty wild times back in my cocaine eighties.”
“I have to call this in.” He glanced around. “Except I don’t see a telephone. He didn’t even have a phone.” His gaze fell upon Kyle there on the floor. Kyle with his bulging, bloodshot eyes. “Not much of a life, was it?”
“That all depends upon your definition of living. Yesterday afternoon he was at a Brentwood mansion snorting coke with a TV star. He probably thought he was living the dream.”
“You’re right, he probably did. Me, I want to die in my own bed with my wife of fifty-plus years holding my hand and my children and grandchildren surrounding me. How about you?”
“I haven’t got a fraction of your courage. I don’t want to die at all.”
“I’d better phone this in from my car.”
We let ourselves out, Lamp closing the door behind us. As we started back toward the stairs, Lulu came to a sudden halt and went in the other direction, her nose to the floor.
“What’s she doing now?” Lamp asked me.
“Following the killer’s scent. I’ll meet you at your car.”
Lulu led me to the other end of the hallway, where a set of stairs went down to the Dumpsters in the alley out back. She followed the scent out to a spot ten feet from the alley door, where she snuffled and sat, her tail thumping.
“Good girl, Lulu. Now I owe you two anchovies.”
We made our way around to the front of the building. Lamp was still calling it in from the front seat of his Caprice. He rang off as Lulu and I got in.
“He parked in back by the Dumpsters,” I informed Lamp. “One of Kyle’s neighbors may have seen him take off.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know. I’ll have some men canvass them.” He gripped the steering wheel in silence for a moment before he said, “Lou’s holding down the fort at Patrick’s cottage on Marmont for the time being. I just checked with our men who are on security detail outside.”
I looked at him curiously. “And . . . ?”
“The big guy went out at 8:45 this morning in his GTO. He returned about forty minutes ago.”
“Did they notice if he had a fresh bruise on his face?”
“They didn’t get close enough to see him. He pulled into the attached garage and went straight in the house.”
“What happens now, Lieutenant?”
“I stop by and personally notify Kyle’s next of kin, Kat, that her half-brother has been murdered. That’s what happens. But it also so happens that Patrick’s place is on the way to her house, so I suggest we swing by and have a quick little chat with Lou first.” He glanced over at me. “Unless you have a problem with that.”
“No problem at all.”
We made our way back up to Sunset Boulevard, hung a right and then took a quick left onto Marmont Lane, where the majestic old Chateau Marmont is nestled in a hillside above the Strip. The Chateau Marmont is the hotel where John Belushi died of a speedball injection in bungalow three ten years back, thereby flushing away one of the five or six most promising careers in the history of show business. Marmont Lane twisted its way past the hotel, became Marmont Avenue and then climbed way high up into the hills past a collection of modern, post-modern and post-post-modern houses that clung to tiny fingernail parings of land for dear life.
The late Patrick Van Pelt’s rental cottage had no front yard to speak of. Just an ivy-covered wall and a closed garage door flush up against the sidewalk. The gate in the ivy-covered wall was of solid wood for maximum privacy. What little I could see of the cottage gave me the impression it had been designed by an architect who’d been heavily influenced by The Jetsons.
The narrow street was crowded with dozens of grief-stricken fans who were dutifully leaving flowers, cards, candles and other mementos outside of Patrick’s wall to honor this great star who had meant so much to them. Celebrity mourners. I’ve never understood people who feel the need to congregate and sob over the death of someone whom they’ve never actually met. I used to be married to a celebrated movie star. I’m a former celebrity myself. Take it from me, celebrities are not who their fans think they are. Patrick certainly wasn’t. The man was a twenty-four-karat shitbird. But these people didn’t know the real Patrick. They only knew the kindly, heroic Patrick whom they’d seen on the small screen. What they were grieving over was a myth, not a man.
There were two LAPD black-and-whites parked outside of the front gate along with a gaggle of TV news crews who were there to talk to the tearful mourners and grab footage of the makeshift shrine they were erecting.
Lamp found a place to park and exchanged a few words with one of the cops in uniform before he buzz
ed the house from the intercom at the front gate.
After a moment a voice answered, “For the last time . . .” It was Lou’s sandpapery voice. “Will you media people please leave me the hell alone?”
“This is Detective Lieutenant Lamp, Mr. Riggio,” Lamp said into the intercom. “I’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, sure thing, Lieutenant. Sorry about that. I’ll buzz you in.”
Lamp pushed the front gate open when it buzzed. The cop he’d spoken with started up the path toward the front door of the house, his meaty right hand resting comfortably on his holstered weapon. Lamp turned to me and said, “You’d better wait here. There’s no telling what we’re about to walk into.”
I was just about to tell him what a bad idea that was when I heard the electric garage door open and a car’s engine start up with a roar. Then Lou’s vintage gunmetal gray GTO came zooming out of the garage in reverse, sending mourners and cameramen scattering. As he hit the brakes I caught a glimpse of the big man hunched over the wheel—lips pulled back from his teeth in a tight grimace, eyes wide with fright—before he put it in gear and went tearing down the hill.
Lamp made a dash for his Caprice. Lulu and I sprinted along with him and jumped in as he started it up and pulled away. Off we went down Marmont, twisting and turning our way past the Chateau just in time to see Lou hang a screechy right turn on Sunset.
Lamp came to a complete stop at the corner and said, “Okay, this is where you get out. I can’t endanger your safety in a high-speed chase.”
“Lieutenant, I’m the first major new literary voice of the 1980s. Do you honestly think I’m going to die on Sunset Boulevard riding shotgun in an unmarked police car?” Lulu let out a low moan from the seat between us. “Along with my short-legged companion? Get moving, will you? He’s getting away.”
“Fine, have it your way.” Lamp made a right turn, floored it and went after him. “But, I swear, if you get killed, I am going to kill you.”
The Sunday morning traffic on the Strip was still practically nonexistent, which was a good thing because Lou was barreling along at seventy miles per hour right down the center of the boulevard and zigzagging his way over the yellow line into what would have been oncoming traffic if there’d been any oncoming traffic. I wasn’t sure whether he was coked out of his gourd or simply flipping out at the prospect of spending the rest of his life in jail. All I know is that he was a full-blown accident ready to happen.
The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes Page 21
