My head hurt and so did my eyes. I rubbed them and drank water.
The waitress came over and looked at our uneaten meals.
“Is something wrong?”
“No,” said Milo. “Something just came up and we’ve gotta run.”
“I can doggy-bag it for you.”
“No, that’s okay.” He handed her the cash.
She frowned. “Oka-ay, I’ll be back with your change, sir.”
“Keep it.”
Her smile was as wide as the beach. “Thank you, sir—we’re offering a complimentary custard dessert, today.”
Milo patted his gut. “Maybe another time.”
“You’re sure, sir? They’re real good.” She touched his arm, briefly. “Really.”
“Okay,” he said, “you twisted my arm. Pack a couple to go.”
“Right away, sir.”
She ran off and came back seconds later with a paper bag printed with the face of a happy-looking hound and the words FOR BOWSER. Milo carried it and we left the restaurant and headed for the Seville. As I got in the car, I realized he wasn’t with me and I turned back to see him standing over a skinny, barechested kid of around eighteen. The kid was sitting on the breezeway in front of the motel and holding a shirt-cardboard sign that said, WILL WORK FOR FOOD. His tan was intense, his cheeks were sunken, and his hair was a greasy umbrella.
Milo gave him the bag. The kid said something. Milo looked angry, but he reached into his wallet and handed the kid something green.
Then he got in the passenger seat and growled: “Take me to work.”
CHAPTER
23
The scene in the garage stayed with me during the drive back to L.A. Bad traffic just past Thousand Oaks had me sitting still, Katarina’s mangled body filling my head. I listened to the Seville idle, thought about pain and vengeance and Robin all alone up on Benedict Canyon. Mr. Silk, whoever he was, had won a partial victory.
Things finally got moving again. I escaped 101, made it to 405 and had a clear sail to Sunset. I was heading up Benedict shortly after nine-thirty when I noticed two red dots floating ahead of me.
Brake lights. A car stopped.
It seemed to be paused right in front of the narrow road that led to my adopted home, though from this distance, I couldn’t be sure. I put on speed, but before I got there, the lights dimmed and the car was gone, traveling too fast for me to catch up.
Probably nothing, but I was stumbling along the thin line between paranoia and caution and my heart was pounding. I waited. Everything stayed silent. I drove up to the white gate, slipped the cardkey in the slot, and raced up the cypress-lined driveway.
The house was lit from within, the garage shut. I approached the front door, wet with sweat, turned the key, and stepped inside, chest bursting.
Robin was stretched out on a sofa reading a design magazine. The bulldog was wedged between her legs, head nestled in her lap, trapdoor mouth open and snoring.
“Beauty and the Beast,” I said, but my voice was weak.
She looked up, smiled, and held out her hand. The dog opened one eye, then let the lid drop.
“Been shopping all afternoon?” I said, taking off my jacket. “I tried calling a bunch of times.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Lots of errands.… What’s the matter, Alex?”
I told her what I’d found on Shoreline Drive.
“Oh, no!” She propped herself on her elbows. The dog grumbled awake, but he stayed down. “You came so close to walking in on it.”
I sat down. As she squeezed my hand, I recounted what I’d found and what I’d learned from Bert Harrison and Condon Bancroft. She listened with her fingers at her mouth.
“Whoever’s behind this is relentless,” I said. “I want you to move somewhere else temporarily.”
She sat up completely. “What?”
“Just for a while. I’m not safe to be around.”
“We moved so you would be, Alex. How could anyone know you’re here?”
Thinking of the brake lights, I said, “I’m sure no one does, but I just want to be careful. I spoke to Milo. You can move into his place. Just till things ease up.”
“It’s not necessary, Alex.”
The dog was completely awake now, shifting his glance from Robin to me, his brow wrinkles deeper. The confusion and fear of a kid watching his parents fight.
“Just temporarily,” I said.
“Temporarily? If this person’s done everything you think he has, he waits years! So what kind of temporary are we talking about here?”
I had no answer.
She said, “No. No way, Alex, I won’t leave you. To hell with him—he can’t do that to us.”
“Robin, she was pregnant. I saw what he did to her.”
“No,” she said, eyes brimming. “Please. I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Okay,” I said.
She pitched forward as if falling and grabbed my shoulders with both hands. Pulling me closer, she held on tight, as if still off balance. Her cheek was up against mine and her breath was in my ear, hot and quick.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ll work it out.”
She squeezed me. “Oh, Alex, let’s just move to another planet.”
The dog jumped from the couch to the floor, sat down and stared at us. Whistling noises came from his compressed nostrils, but his eyes were clear and active, almost human.
“Hey, Spike,” I said, reaching over. “He been good?”
“The best.”
The affection in her voice made his ears go up. He trotted up to the edge of the couch and rested his flews on her knee. She caressed his head and he lifted his chin and gave her palm a long, wet tongue swipe.
“You could take him with you,” I said. “You’d have constant masculine attention.”
“Put it out of your mind, Alex.” Her nails dug into my back. “We probably won’t have him much longer, anyway. I got a call this morning from a group called French Bulldog Rescue. Very sweet lady over in Burbank—you wrote to the national club and they forwarded it to her. She’s putting out feelers, says these little guys are almost never intentionally abandoned, so it’s just a matter of time before the owners call to claim him.”
“No one’s reported him missing so far?”
“No, but don’t get your hopes up. She’s got a pretty good communication network, seems pretty sure she’ll find his owner. She offered to come by and take him off our hands, but I said we’d care for him in the meantime.”
The dog was looking up at me expectantly. I rested my hand on his head and he made a low, satisfied noise.
Robin said, “Now I know how foster parents feel.” She grabbed a handful of soft chin and kissed it. Her shorts had rolled high on her thighs and she tugged them down. “Have you had dinner yet?”
“No.”
“I bought stuff—chilies rellenos, enchiladas. Even got a six-pack of Corona, so we could pretend we were party animals. It’s a little late now to start a whole feast, but I can put something together if you’re hungry.”
“Don’t bother, I’ll make a sandwich.”
“No, let me, Alex. I need something to do with my hands. Afterward we can get in bed with the crossword and some really bad TV and who knows what else.”
“Who knows?” I said, drawing her to me.
We turned off the lights around midnight. I fell away easily, but I woke up feeling as if I’d been drained of body fluids.
I endured breakfast, feeding the dog bits of scrambled egg and making conversation with Robin until the two of them went to the garage.
As soon as I was alone, I called Dr. Shirley Rosenblatt in Manhattan and got the same taped message. I repeated my pitch, told her it was more urgent than ever, and asked her to get in touch as soon as possible. When no callback had come in by the time I’d finished showering, shaving, and dressing, I phoned Jean Jeffers. She was out for the day—some kind of meeting downtown—and hadn’t left word with her secret
ary about Lyle Gritz. Remembering her eagerness to look for him, I figured she’d come up empty.
Information had no listing for a Ramona or Rowena Basille, but there was a “Basille, R.” on 618 South Hauser Street. Right near Park LaBrea.
An older woman’s voice answered, “Hello.”
“Mrs. Basille?”
“This is Rolanda, who’re you?” Scratchy timbre, the midwestern tones I’d grown up with.
“My name’s Alex Delaware. I’m a psychologist, consulting to the Los Angeles Police Department—”
“Yes?” Rise in pitch.
“Sorry to be bothering you—”
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Basille. I was just wondering if I could ask you a few questions.”
“About Becky?”
“About someone Becky might have known.”
“Who?”
“A friend of Dorsey Hewitt’s.”
The name made her groan. “What friend? Who? I don’t understand.”
“A man named Lyle Gritz—”
“What about him? What’s going on?”
“Have you ever heard of him?”
“No, never. What’s this got to do with Rebecca?”
“Nothing directly, Mrs. Basille, but Gritz may have been involved in some other crimes. He may also have used the names Silk or Merino.”
“What kind of crimes? Murders?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. Why’s a psychologist calling—that’s what you said you were, right? Psychologist, psychiatrist?”
“Psychologist.”
“If there’s murders involved, why aren’t the police calling?”
“It’s not an official investigation, yet.”
Pause. “Okay, who are you, buster? Some sleazy tabloid writer? I’ve already been through that, and let me tell you what you can—”
“I’m not a reporter,” I said. “I’m who I said I was, Mrs. Basille. If you’d like to verify it, you can call Detective Milo Sturgis at West L.A. detectives. He gave me your name—”
“Sturgis,” she said.
“He handled the investigation of Becky’s case.”
“Which one was that—oh yeah, the big one … yeah, he tried to be nice. But where does he come off giving you my name? What are you doing, some kind of psychological study? Want to make me a guinea pig?”
“No, nothing like that—”
“What, then?”
There seemed no choice. “My involvement’s a lot more personal, Mrs. Basille. I’m a potential victim.”
“A vic—of who, this Gritch?”
“Gritz. Lyle Edward Gritz. Or Silk or—”
“Never heard of any of those.”
“There’s evidence he’s been murdering psychotherapists—several of them over a five-year period.”
“Oh, no.”
“The latest occurred yesterday, in Santa Barbara. A woman named Katarina de Bosch.”
“Yester—oh, goodness.” Her voice changed—lower, softer, still perplexed. “And now you think he’s out for you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He may have a thing against psychotherapists. He leaves a message at the crime scene. The words ‘bad love’—”
“That’s the same thing that scum yelled out!”
“That’s why we think there may be a connection. Last week, I received a tape with someone chanting ‘bad love.’ As well as a sample of Hewitt screaming. Shortly after that, I got a crank phone call, then someone snuck onto my property and did damage.”
“What are you saying? That Rebecca was part of something?”
“I really don’t know, Mrs. Basille.”
“But maybe that’s what it was? Someone else was involved in my Becky’s …”
A loud bang percussed in my ear. A few seconds later: “Dropped the phone, you still there?”
“Yes.”
“So what’re you saying? This Gritz could have been involved in hurting my baby?”
“I wish I could tell you, Mrs. Basille. Gritz and Hewitt were friends, so it’s possible Gritz had some influence on Hewitt. But there’s no evidence—”
“Bad love,” she said. “No one was ever able to explain to me what it meant.”
“It’s a psychological term coined by Katarina de Bosch’s father—Dr. Andres de Bosch.”
“Debauch?”
“De Bosch. He was a psychologist who ran a remedial school up in Santa Barbara.”
No reaction.
I said, “Lyle Gritz may have been a patient there. For all I know, Hewitt may have been also. Did Rebecca ever mention anything related to any of this?”
“No … God in heaven … I think I’m going to be sick.”
“I’m truly sorry, Mrs.—”
“What’d you say your name was?”
“Alex Delaware.”
“Give me your phone number.”
I did.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m calling that Sturgis right now and checking you out.”
“He’s in Santa Barbara. You can reach him at the police department there.” I fished around, retrieved Sarah Grayson’s card, and read off the number.
She hung up without comment.
Ten minutes later, my service put her through.
“He wasn’t in,” she said, “but I spoke to a woman cop who said you’re for real. So, okay, I’m sorry for what you’re going through—once you been through it you get sorry a lot for other people. Okay, what can I do for you?”
“I was just wondering if Becky ever talked about her work. Said anything that might help find Gritz and clear this up.”
“Talked? Yeah, she talked. She loved her … hold on … my stomach … hold on, I thought I was okay, but now I feel like I have to throw up again—let me go do that, and then I’ll call you back—no, forget that, I hate the phone. Phone rings now, my heart starts going like it’s going to explode—you want to come down and see me it’s okay. Let me see what you look like, I hate the phone.”
“How about I come to your house?”
“Sure—no, forget it. The place is depressing. I never was a homemaker, now I don’t do a darn thing. Why don’t you meet me over in Hancock Park? Not the neighborhood, the actual park—know where it is?”
“Over by the tar pits.”
“Yeah, meet me on the Sixth Street side, behind the museums. There’s a shady area, some benches. What’re you gonna wear?”
“Jeans and a white shirt.”
“Fine. I’ll be wearing—no, this is wrinkled, gotta change it—I’ll be wearing a … green blouse. Green with a white collar. Just look for an ugly old woman with a green blouse and a crappy disposition.”
The blouse was grass green. She was sitting under a thatch of mismatched trees, on a bench facing the rolling lawn that separated the County Art Museum from the dinosaur depository George Page had built with Mission Pack money. At the end of the lawn the tar pits were an oily black sump behind wrought iron pickets. Through the fence, plaster mastodons reared and glared at the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Tar leaked through the entire park, seeping up in random spots, and I just missed stepping in a bubbling pool as I made my way toward Rolanda Basille.
Her back was to Sixth Street, but I had a three-quarter view of her body. Around sixty-five. Her collar was a snowy Peter Pan job, her slacks olive wool, much too heavy for the weather. She had hair dyed as black as the tar, cut in a flapper bob with eyebrow-length bangs. Her face was crinkled and small. Arthritic hands curled in her lap. Red tennis shoes covered her feet, over white socks, folded over once. A big, green plastic purse hung from her shoulder. If she weighed a hundred pounds, it was after Thanksgiving dinner.
The ground was covered with dry leaves and I made noise as I approached. She kept gazing out at the lawn and didn’t look back. Children were playing there, mobile dots on an emerald screen, but I wasn’t sure she saw them.
The random trees had been
trimmed to form a canopy, and the shadows they cast were absolute. Several other benches were scattered nearby, most of them empty. A black man slept on one, a paper bag next to his head. Two women of Rolanda Basille’s approximate age sat on another, strumming guitars and singing.
I walked in front of her.
She barely looked up, then slapped the bench.
I sat down. Music drifted over from the two guitarists. Some sort of folk song, a foreign language.
“The Stepne sisters,” she said, sticking out her tongue. “They’re here all the time. They stink. Did you ever see a picture of my daughter?”
“Just in the paper.”
“That wasn’t a flattering one.” She opened the big purse, searched for a while, and took out a medium-sized envelope. Withdrawing three color photographs, she handed them to me.
Professional portraits, passable quality. Rebecca Basille sitting in a white wicker chair, posed three different ways in front of a mountain-stream backdrop, wearing a powder-blue dress and pearls. Big smile. Terrific teeth. Very pretty; soft, curvy build, soft arms, a trifle heavy. The dress was low-cut and showed some cleavage. Her brown hair was shiny and long and iron-curled at the ends, her eyes full of humor and just a bit of apprehension, as if she’d been sitting for a long time and had doubts about the outcome.
“Very lovely,” I said.
“She was beautiful,” said Rolanda. “Inside and out.”
She held out her hand and I returned the photos. After she’d replaced them in the purse, she said, “I just wanted you to see the person she was, though even these don’t do it. She didn’t like having her picture taken—used to be chubby when she was little. Her face was always gorgeous.”
I nodded.
She said, “There was a wounded bird within five miles, Becky’d find it and bring it home. Shoeboxes and cotton balls and eyedroppers. She tried to save anything—bugs—those little gray curly things?”
“Potato bugs?”
“Those. Moths, ladybugs, whatever, she’d save ’em. When she was real little she went through this stage of not wanting anyone to cut the lawn because she thought it hurt the grass.”
She tried to smile, but her lips got away from her and began trembling. She covered them with one hand.
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