“Good morning, handsome.”
“Morning, gorgeous.”
“I’m glad I caught you.” She sounded a little down. Lonely? Or maybe that was me.
“How’s life with Grandma?”
“You know Gra— ” She laughed. “You don’t know her, do you? This morning, despite the fact that it’s freezing, she insisted we take a walk around the grounds and look for ‘unique leaves.’ Ninety-one and she’s forging through snow like a trapper. She studied botany at Smith, claims she would’ve gotten a Ph.D. if she hadn’t ‘been swept into matrimony’ at twenty.”
“Find anything?” I said.
“After clawing through a four-foot snowbank, I managed to produce one brown shriveled thing she found ‘interesting.’ My fingers were numb and that was with gloves on. Gram, of course, eschews hand-coverings except at lunches in the city.”
“Greatest generation. How large is the property?”
“Twelve acres, with lots of trees and rare plants she put in over the years.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It’s getting a little run-down,” she said. “And the house is way too big for her. Still clearing your consults?”
“They’re clear.”
“Good for you.”
Before she left, I’d asked if she wanted me to join her for part of the trip. “If it was up to me, Alex, you could stay the whole time, but Gram’s possessive. It’s a ritual with her— ’special time’ with each of the grandkids.”
At thirty-nine, Allison was the youngest grandkid.
“Am I keeping you from anything?”
“Not a thing,” I said, wondering if that were true.
“Consults work out okay?”
“As good as can be expected.”
“So what else is up, baby?”
I deliberated telling her about Duchay’s call. “Nothing exciting. What time does your flight arrive?”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m calling. Gram asked me to extend my visit for another two weeks. It’s hard to tell her no.”
“She’s ninety-one,” I said.
“The rooms smell like camphor and I feel a hundred and twenty. I’m getting serious cabin fever, Alex. She turns in for bed at eight.”
“You could make snow angels.”
“I miss you,” she said.
“Miss you, too.”
“I was thinking maybe we can do something about it. Gram has a friend coming from St. Louis tomorrow so she’ll be occupied for three days. The hotels in New York are running a post–New Year’s special. Big discounts and free upgrades.”
“When do you want me there?” I said.
“Really?” she said.
“Really.”
“That’s great— you’re sure?”
“Hey,” I said. “I need special time, too.”
“Oh, boy,” she said. “You don’t know what you’ve just done for my spirits. Is there any way you could make it by tomorrow? I could take the train and be at the hotel by the time you arrived.”
“Which hotel?”
“When I traveled with my parents we always stayed at the St. Regis. The location’s perfect— Fifty-fifth off Fifth— and they’ve got butler service on every floor.”
“Nice touch, if the butler’s not intrusive.”
“He won’t be if we bunk in and never call him.”
“Which bunk do I get?” I said. “Upper or lower?”
“I was thinking more in terms of share-zies.”
“I’ll bring a flashlight and we’ll play pup tent.”
“Alex, it’s incredibly flexible of you to do this.”
“Not in the least,” I said. “I’m acting out of pure self-interest.”
“That,” she said, “is the best part.”
* * *
I booked a nine a.m. flight out of LAX, scrounged at the back of my closet for the gray tweed overcoat I never wore, found a similarly neglected pair of gloves and scarf, packed a carry-on, and went for a run.
Beverly Glen was seventy degrees and clear, let’s hear it for winter. Weather’s a trivial reason for living somewhere unless you’re honest.
I set out hoping for endorphin-laced serenity. My brain had other ideas and I wondered about Rand. My body stayed tight and heavy as I huffed and kicked up dust and my brain pulled a split screen: looking out for passing cars on one side, as time flashed back on the other.
When I returned home, I called Milo’s house. No answer. Then, I tried the Westside substation and asked for Lieutenant Sturgis. It took awhile for Milo to come on the line and I was still breathing hard.
“Didn’t know you cared,” he said.
“Ha.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m meeting Allison in New York. Tomorrow.”
He murdered a few bars of “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” “Where you staying?”
“St. Regis.”
“Nice. The last time the department sent me to New Yawk was for that post-911 security seminar, and they vouchered me at a shitty dive in the thirties. While you’re there, get me a Knicks shirt at the NBA store.”
“No prob.”
“I was kidding, Alex. The Knicks?”
“Optimism’s good for the soul,” I said.
“So is logic. Am I correct in assuming that you called for some reason other than to boast about the superiority of your accommodations over mine?”
“You brought that up.”
“If you were really the sensitive guy you claim to be, you would’ve lied.”
I said, “The St. Regis has butler service.”
“I’m weeping into my case stack. Which, currently, is low. Per an interdepartmental memo, we are now experiencing an official drop in crime.”
“Congratulations.”
“Not my doing. Probably karmic crystals or chanting or the moon in scorpio-squatting or the Great Baal of Randomness . . . what’s on your mind?”
I told him.
“That one,” he said. “You didn’t like working it.”
“It wasn’t fun.”
“Duchay give any hint what he wanted?”
“He sounded troubled.”
“He should be troubled. Eight years at the C.Y.A. for murdering a baby?”
“Any professional guesses about why he didn’t show?”
“Changed his mind, couldn’t get it together, who knows? He’s a lowlife, Alex. He was the stupid one, right?”
“Right.”
“So toss in a lousy attention span, or whatever label you guys are putting on it nowadays, in addition to his being a lowlife thrill-killer who’s been thoroughly criminalized after being locked up with gangbangers for eight years. How old is he, now?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Lowlife at the height of his criminal hormone overload,” he said. “I wouldn’t take any bets on his experiencing any serious personality enhancement. I’d also not take his calls, from now on. He’s probably more dangerous than he was eight years ago. Why get involved?”
“Looks like I’m not,” I said. “Though I didn’t pick up any threat or hostility over the phone. More like— ”
“He’s troubled, yeah, yeah. He calls you from Westwood, which isn’t that far from your place. Semi-illiterate but he managed to find your number.”
“He’d have no reason to resent me.”
Silence.
“The plan was to meet him away from my place,” I said.
“That’s a start.”
“I’m not minimizing what he did, Milo. He, himself, admitted hitting Kristal. But I always felt Troy Turner was the primary force behind the murder and Rand got caught up in the situation.”
“Put him in another situation and he’ll get caught up again.”
“I suppose.”
“Hey,” he said. “You called me, not another shrink. Meaning you were looking for hard truth, not empathy and understanding.”
“I don’t know what I was looking for.”
“You
craved sage detective advice and Uncle Milo’s instinctual protective stance. Now that the former has been dispensed, I’ll do my best to provide the latter while you’re gallivanting up Fifth Avenue with a lovely lady on your arm.”
“That’s okay— ”
“Here’s the plan,” he said. “Though it falls well outside of my job description, I will drive by your house at least once a day, twice if I can swing it, pick up your paper and your mail, be on the lookout for shady characters lurking around the premises.”
“Gallivanting,” I said.
“You do know how to gallivant? Put one foot in front of the other . . . and just blow.”
* * *
At one p.m. he called back. “When were you planning to leave for New York?”
“Tomorrow morning. Why?”
“A body showed up last night in Bel Air, dumped in some bushes near the 405 North on-ramp. White male, young, six-two, two hundred, shot in the head, no wallet or I.D. But wadded down in the little front pocket of his jeans was a piece of paper. Greasy and frayed, like it had been pawed a lot. The writing, however, was still legible and guess what it was: your phone number.”
CHAPTER 12
I met Milo in his office on the second floor of the Westside substation. It’s a windowless cell, formerly a utility closet, set away from the collaborative buzz of the big detective’s room. There’s barely room for a two-drawer desk, a file cabinet, a pair of folding chairs, and a senile computer. The station’s a no-smoking zone but sometimes Milo puffs panatelas, and the walls have yellowed and the air smells like a dozen old men.
He’s six-three, and when he pays attention to his diet, two-sixty. Hunched at the undersized desk, he’s a cartoon.
It’s a setup unbefitting a lieutenant, but he’s not the typical lieutenant, and he claims it’s fine with him. Maybe he means it, maybe having a second office helps— an Indian restaurant a few blocks away where the owners treat him like royalty.
The leap from Detective III to brass had resulted from leverage he’d never sought: ugly secrets unearthed about the former police chief.
The deal was that he’d get a lieutenant’s salary, avoid the executive obligations that normally went with the job, and be allowed to work cases. As long as he functioned solo and stayed out of everyone’s hair.
That chief was gone and the new one seemed intent on shaking things up. But so far Milo’s situation had escaped scrutiny. If the current regime was as results-oriented as it claimed, maybe his solve rate would afford him some grace.
Or maybe not. A gay cop was no longer the official impossibility it had been when he’d joined the force, but he’d broken ground during colder times and would never fit in.
* * *
His door was open and he was reading a preliminary investigation report. His black hair needed a trim, cowlicks reigning, the white sideburns he called his skunk stripes bushing and trailing a half inch below his earlobes.
A spruce-green sport coat hung from the back of his chair and puddled onto the floor. His short-sleeved white shirt looked defeated, his skinny yellow tie could’ve passed for a mustard stain. Gray cords and tan desert boots topped off the ensemble. The unshielded ceiling bulb was vaguely pink and graced his acne-pitted cheeks with a phony sunburn.
He hooked a thumb at the spare chair and I unfolded it and sat. He handed me the prelim and some crime scene photos.
The report was the usual detached affair, recorded on the scene by Detective I S. J. Binchy. Sean was a former bass player in a ska band turned born-again Christian, a compliant kid who Milo sometimes enlisted for grunt work.
Nice kid, decent speller. The only new thing I learned was that a freeway cleanup crew had found the body at four-fourteen a.m.
The first photo was a frontal of the corpse, lying on its back, face up, as the coroner’s photographer click-clicked from above.
Night-bleached face, hard to make out details. A close-up shot showed the gaping mouth and half-closed eyes I’d seen so many times before. Hollowness behind the irises. The right cheek was slightly convex, but it wasn’t the distortion you’d see with a small-caliber bullet dancing around in the head.
A pair of lateral views revealed a dark, star-shaped entry wound, surrounded by a black halo of powder, just in front of the left ear, and a ragged exit, much larger and slightly higher on the right temple, that showcased bone and red-meat muscle and the oatmeal of brain matter.
I said, “Through-and-through shot.”
“Coroner thinks contact shot, or just short of contact, full metal jacket, no larger than a thirty-eight, no supplementary load.”
His voice was remote. Keeping his distance from this victim.
The next photo was a close-up. “What about these cheek abrasions?”
“He was found lying on his face, maybe he got dragged a bit during the dump. No defense wounds or tissue under his nails or any other signs of struggle. No major blood at the scene, so he was shot somewhere else.”
“He’s big,” I said. “So if there was no struggle, he was probably taken by surprise.”
“I’d ask if you recognize him, but we just got word from AFIS. The prints confirm it’s Duchay.”
I reviewed the pictures, tried to look past damage and death. Rand Duchay’s boyhood facial structure had been transformed by puberty into something longer and harder. His hair was darker than I remembered but that could’ve been the lighting. In life, he’d been a slow kid, with slack features. Death hadn’t changed that, but death has a way of blunting everyone around the edges. Would I have recognized him if we’d passed on the street?
I said, “Any fix on when it happened?”
“You know how T.O.D. is, mostly guesswork. Best guess is sometime between nine p.m. and one a.m.”
Nine was well after I’d gotten home from Duchay’s no-show. Maybe he had changed his mind about the meeting. Or had his mind changed.
I said, “Did you just happen to find out, or did you go looking for him?”
Milo stretched his long legs as far as the room allowed. “After you called I decided to do a little research on Duchay, found out he’d been released three days ago. Four years early, good behavior.” Flaring nostrils said what he thought about that.
“I learned who he’d been released to, which took some doing. Called, got no answer, decided a thrill-killer ambling around the Westside didn’t appeal to my sense of order. I left Sean a message to check prowler reports and attempted burglaries for the last three days. Then I took a drive up Westwood and hit some side streets.”
He worked his tongue inside his cheek. “I was thinking I’d finish up at your place, you’d fix me a sandwich, I’d wish you bon voyage. Then Sean calls back, he’s at the coroner, a case came in last night that looked like a whodunit and the crime scene guys missed something but the crypt attendant found it when she undressed the body. Little scrap of paper in the victim’s pocket. Sean was pretty sure he recognized your number, but wanted to confirm.”
“Sean’s got a good memory,” I said.
“Sean’s coming along.”
“You’re working the case with him?”
“He’s working it with me.”
* * *
As we left, Sean Binchy stepped out of the detectives’ room and hailed us. He’s red-headed and freckled, in his late twenties, as tall as Milo, many pounds lighter. Sean favors four-button suits, bright blue shirts, somber ties, and Doc Martens. Old tattoos are hidden by long sleeves. Short, neat hair replaces the dreads of his music days.
“Hi, Dr. Delaware,” he said cheerfully. “Looks like you’re involved in this one.”
Milo said, “Sean, Dr. Delaware’s scheduled to fly to New York tomorrow morning. I don’t see any reason that should change.”
“Sure, no prob— uh, Loot, I finally got through to the folks Duchay was staying with and they had no idea he’d gone into the city to meet with Dr. Delaware. He told them he was going looking for a job.”
“Where?”
“Construction site,” said Binchy. “There’s an apartment development going up not far from where they live and Duchay went to speak with the supervisor.”
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