Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 16 - The Murder Book

by The Murder Book(Lit)

  Larry had told me, Mashing and groping.

  'How'd Preston react?' I said.

  'He listened. Didn't say anything at all, at first. Didn't ask any questions, which really upset me. I got the impression he thought I was crazy. Finally, he said he'd get back to me. Two days later a letter of dismissal arrived in the mail. I was being let go for poor work habits and excessive absenteeism. I never showed the letter to my parents, just told them I'd quit because the job wasn't challenging. They didn't care. My mother wanted me to swim at the club and play tennis and meet guys. What she wasn't happy about was that I just wanted to hang around the house and not be social. So she arranged a family cruise to Alaska. Big luxury liner cruising past the glaciers - baby otters nursing amid the ice floes. All that blue ice wasn't as cold as my heart was that summer.'

  She stood, returned to the easy chair, tried to look comfortable but couldn't pull it off.

  'I've never told anyone what really happened. Not until now. But this was the wrong time and place, wasn't it? Using a stranger. I'm sorry.'

  'Nothing to be sorry for, Allison.'

  'All these years,' she said. 'And it still eats at me - not going after that piece of dirt. Who knows how many others he's done that to. What I could've prevented.'

  'It would've been his word against yours, and he was in power,' I said. 'It wasn't your fault then, and it's not your fault, now.'

  'Do you know how many women I've treated - how many patients I've helped deal with exactly this kind of thing? Not because I pursue those kinds of cases. Not because I'm using my patients to work through my own garbage. Because it's so damned common. I've helped my patients, but then when it comes to my own garbage, I repress. It's crazy, don't you think?'

  'No,' I said. 'It's human. I've preached the virtues of talking it out, but when it comes to my own stuff, I usually go it alone.'

  'Do you?'

  I nodded.

  'And you're going through something now, aren't you?'

  I stared at her.

  'Your eyes are sad,' she said.

  'I'm going through a bit of something,' I said.

  'Well, then,' she said, 'I guess we're kindred spirits. And I guess we'll leave it at that.'

  She walked me to the waiting-room door. 'Like I told you the first time, you're just too good a listener, sir.'

  'Occupational hazard.'

  'Was it helpful? Telling you that Larner was angry about Willie Burns?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Thanks very much. I know it was an ordeal.'

  She smiled. 'Not an ordeal, an experience. What you're going through - it has nothing to do with Caroline Cossack or Willie Burns, does it?'

  I shook my head.

  'Sorry,' she said. 'No more prying.' She reached for the doorknob

  and her shoulder brushed my arm. The contact sent something electrical down my arm. Suddenly I was rock-hard, fighting to keep my breathing even. To keep my hands off her.

  She stared at me. No tension around the huge, blue eyes, just softness, sadness, maybe desire.

  'It wasn't an ordeal,' she said. 'You said the right thing. Here's another confession: I was looking forward to seeing you again.'

  'Me too,' I said.

  I smiled and shrugged, and she did the same. Gracious mimickry.

  'You too, but,' she said. 'That bit of something, right?'

  I nodded.

  'Well, maybe in another galaxy, Alex. You're very sweet. Good

  luck.'

  'Good luck to you, too.'

  She held the door open. Kept it open as I walked down the hall.

  Milo woke up early the next morning, with the faces of the men at the Sangre de Leon meeting leering in his head. Thinking: Too many ways to take it, not enough of me to go around.

  He stumbled to the shower, shaved, picked clothes randomly, got the coffee machine going, looked at the clock. Seven-thirteen. An emergency call had yanked Rick out of bed three hours ago. Milo had watched in the darkness as Rick slipped into the scrubs he kept neatly folded on a bedroom chair, picked up his Porsche keys from the nightstand, and padded out the door.

  Rick stopped, returned to the bed, kissed Milo lightly on the forehead. Milo pretended to be sleeping, because he didn't feel like talking, not even 'Goodbye.'

  The two of them had talked plenty all night, sitting up late at the kitchen table. Mostly Milo had blabbed and Rick had listened, maintaining a superficial calm, but Milo knew he was shaken by the Paris Bartlett encounter and the HIV rumor. All these years, and Milo's work had never intruded on their personal life.

  Milo reassured him, and Rick nodded, complained of crushing fatigue and fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

  Milo cleaned up the Chinese takeout cartons and the dinner dishes and slipped into bed beside him, lying there for an hour or so, listening to Rick's even breathing, thinking.

  The Cossacks, Walt Obey, Larner Junior, Germ Bacilla, Diamond Jim Home.

  Plus the player who hadn't shown up. He saw that face, clearly: a stoic ebony mask.

  Smiley Bartlett, the personnel inquiry, and the HIV rumor said John G. Broussard's hand was in all of it.

  He recalled Broussard - smelled Broussard's citrus cologne in the interview room, twenty years ago. The hand-stitcned suit, all that confidence, taking charge. He and his pink pal - Poulsenn. Milo had no idea what had happened to his career, but look how far John G. had come.

  A white man and a black man teamed up, and the black man had been the dominant partner.

  A black man advancing that quickly, back in LAPD's bad old racist days. That had to mean Broussard had harpoons in all the right whales. Had probably used his LA dirt to build up leverage.

  Mr Straight and Narrow. And he'd covered up Janie Ingalls and Lord knew what else. Milo had been part of it, allowed himself to be swept along, pretended he could forget about it.

  Now he wondered what that had done to his soul.

  He poured coffee but the muddy brew tasted like battery acid and he spit it out and gulped a glass of tap water. The light through the kitchen window was the yellow-gray of old phlegm.

  He sat down, kept thinking about Broussard, a South Central guy who'd ended up in Hancock Park.

  Neighbor to Walt Obey.

  Every police chief before Broussard had lived in his own house, but John G. had convinced the mayor to give him an empty mansion on Irving Street, rent-free. The three-story edifice, donated to the city years ago by the heirs of a long-dead oil tycoon, was twelve thousand square feet of English Tudor with big lawns, a pool, and a tennis court. Milo knew because he'd done security years ago at a party for an ambassador - the envoy from some small Asian state that had since changed its name.

  Set aside originally as a mayor's residence, the Irving house had sat dormant for years because the mayor's predecessor had his own place in Brentwood and the current mayor's even larger spread in Pacific Palisades was just fine, too.

  John G. Broussard's crib, prior to his promotion, had been a too-small affair in Ladera Heights and John G. claimed he needed to be closer to headquarters.

  Ladera Heights was a half-hour ride downtown, the mansion on Irving was fifteen minutes up Sixth Street. The mayor's drive from the Westside could stretch to over an hour, but no one saw the

  inconsistency in John G.'s logic, and the new chief got himself baronial lodgings.

  Irving Street, less than a mile from Walt Obey's estate on Muirfield.

  Obey was one of the mayor's big donors. Had supported Broussard for chief over three other candidates.

  The mayor and Obey. Obey and Broussard. Obey and a bunch of lowlifes supping nouvelle-whatever cuisine in a private room at Sangre de Leon.

  Private enterprise and municipal government and the long arm of the law arm in arm. And Schwinn had thrown him right into it.

  He left his house, looking in all directions and over his shoulder, got into the rented Taurus, and drove north. IDing the asshole who claimed to be Paris Bartlett shouldn't be a p
roblem, if his hunch about a department plant was true. Just head over to the police academy in Elysian Park and thumb through the face books. But that was too conspicuous; for all he knew it was his sneaky little trips to Parker Center and back to his West L.A. desk that had sicked the department on him in the first place. Besides, Bartlett was a minor player, just a messenger, and did it really matter who'd sent him? Stay healthy...

  Maybe he should return to Ojai and nose around a bit more up there. But what more could he learn? Schwinn was the Ojai link, and he was gone. Falling off a goddamn horse...

  He pulled over to the curb, yanked out his cell phone, got the number of the Ventura County morgue. Using an insurance-investigator lie, he spent the next half hour being bounced from desk to desk, trying to get the full facts on Schwinn's death.

  Finally, a coroner's assistant who knew something got on the line. The death was written up just as Marge Schwinn had described: massive head injuries and fractured ribs consistent with a fall, copious blood on a nearby rock. Ruled accidental, no suspicious circumstances. No dope or booze in Schwinn's system. Or the horse's, the clerk added. An equine drug scan seemed thorough, and Milo told the CA so.

  'Special request of the widow,' said the guy, a middle-aged-sounding guy named Olivas. 'She wanted the horse tested and was willing to pay for it.'

  'She suspect something?'

  'All it says here is that she requested a full drug scan on Akhbar -that's the horse. We had a vet in Santa Barbara do it, and she sent us the results. Mrs Schwinn got the bill.'

  'So the horse was clean,' said Milo.

  'As a whistle,' said Olivas. 'It busted itself up plenty, though -two broken legs and a torsion injury of the neck. When the widow got there, it was down on the ground moaning, pretty much out of it. She had it put down. What's up, the insurance company has problems with something?'

  'No, just checking.'

  'It was an accident, he was an old guy,' said Olivas. 'Riding a horse at his age, what was he thinking?'

  'President Reagan rode when he was in his eighties.'

  'Yeah, well, he had Secret Service guys to look after him. It's like old people driving cars - my dad's eighty-nine, blind as a bat at night, but he insists on getting behind the wheel and driving to L.A. to get authentic menudo. That kind of thing and idiots on cell phones, give me a break. You'd see what I see comes in here every day, you'd be scared.'

  'I'm scared,' said Milo, hefting his phone.

  'Pays to be scared.'

  He craved caffeine and cholesterol, drove to Farmers Market at Fairfax and Third and had a green chili omelet and two stacks of toast at Du-Pars. Keeping his eye on a homeless guy in the next booth. The bum wore three jackets and hugged a battered, string-less guitar. The instrument made Milo think about Robin, but the psychosis in the homeless guy's eyes pulled him into the here and now.

  They engaged in a staring contest until the homeless man finally threw down a couple of dollars and waddled off mumbling at unseen demons and Milo was able to enjoy his eggs.

  Once again, he thought, I've brought peace and light to the world.

  But then the waitress smiled with relief and gave him a

  thumbs-up, and he realized he'd really accomplished something.

  Still hungry, he ordered a stack of hotcakes, drained everything down with black coffee, walked around the market, dodging tourists, figuring the distraction might get his brain in gear. But it didn't, and after inspecting produce stands full of fruit he didn't recognize and buying a bag of jumbo cashews, he left the market, drove south on Fairfax, turned left on Sixth, at the old May Company building, now an adjunct of the art museum, and kept going east.

  Chief John G. Broussard's official residence was beautifully tended, with grass as green as Ireland and more flower beds than Milo remembered from that diplomatic party. A flagpole had been erected smack in the middle of the lawn and the Stars and Stripes and the California Bear swooshed in the midday breeze.

  No walls or fences or uniformed officer on patrol, but the driveway had been gated with wrought iron, and through the stout bars Milo saw a black-and-white cruiser, and behind that a late-model white Cadillac. The Caddy was probably Mrs Broussard's wheels. He recalled her as a trim, pretty woman with henna-tinted, cold-waved hair and the resigned look of a political spouse. What was her name... Bernadette... Bernadine? Did she and John G. have kids? Milo'd never heard of any, and he realized how little he knew about the chief's personal life. How little the chief doled out.

  Seven blocks west and a half mile south was Walt Obey's address on Muirfield. The billionaire's nest sat at the end of the road, where Muirfield terminated on the southern border of the Wilshire Country Club. No house in sight, just ten-foot stone walls broken by an opaque, black steel gate studded with enormous bolts. Closed circuit TV camera on one post. The implication was a grand place on multiple acres, and Milo flashed to Baron Loetz's spread, neighbor to the Cossack party house. Did Obey spend time on his veranda, sipping gin and enjoying what God had given him?

  Eighty years old and still taking meetings with hustlers like the Cossacks. Some big deal on the verge?

  He found himself staring at Obey's gate. The TV camera remained immobile. The place was close enough for an athletic guy like John G. to jog over. Obey and Broussard on the veranda? Making plans. Running things. All of a sudden Milo felt very small

  and vulnerable. He rolled down the window, heard birds peeping, a plink of running water behind Obey's walls. Then the camera began to rotate. An automatic circuit, or maybe his presence had attracted attention. He backed up halfway down the block, whipped a U-turn, and got the hell out of there.

  A few minutes later, he was parked on McCadden near Wilshire, cell phone hot against his ear. More DMV finagling gave him other addresses, and he had a look at all of them.

  Michael Larner lived in a high-rise condo just east of Westwood, in the Wilshire Corridor. Pink stone and cheesy-looking brick, doorman out in front, an oversize fountain. Son Bradley's Santa Monica Canyon place turned out to be a smallish, blue frame house with stupendous ocean views and a FOR RENT sign out in front. No cars in the driveway, and the gardening looked a little lax, so Brad was living somewhere else.

  Garvey Cossack Junior and brother Bob bunked together at a Carolwood address in Holmby Hills, not far, geographically, from Alex's place off Beverly Glen, but a whole different world financially.

  Carolwood was a lovely, hilly block, leafy and sinuous, shaded by old-growth trees, one of the highest-priced stretches in L.A. Most of the houses were architectural masterpieces landscaped like botanical gardens, many of them cosseted by greenery and bearing that classy look that only came from durability.

  The Cossack brothers' pad was an exceedingly vulgar, blue-tile-roofed and monstrously gabled heap of gray limestone perched atop a scarred dirt hill with no grass or trees in sight. Stone facing, only. The sides were lumpy stucco. Bad trowel job. Cheap-looking white metal fencing and an electric gate partitioned the front of the property from the street, but without benefit of vegetation the house sat in full view, baking in the sun, puffy flanks glaring white in spots.

  A double-sized dumpster overflowing with trash advertised ongoing construction, but no workers were in sight, drapes covered the windows, and a mini car museum took up the rest of the massive driveway.

  Plum-colored Rolls-Royce Corniche, black Humvee with blacked-out windows, red (what else?) Ferrari that came as close as

  Milo had seen to a penis on wheels, a taxi-yellow Pantera, a pair of Dodge Vipers, one white with a blue center stripe, the other anthracite-gray striped orange, and a white Corvette convertible. All under a drooping, makeshift canvas awning that stretched across listing metal stilts. Off to the side, in the full sun, was a ten-year-old Honda that had to be the maid's wheels.

  Big house and all those cars, but no landscaping. Just the kind of eyesore a couple of teenagers would put together if they tumbled into endless cash, and Milo was willing to bet the Cossac
ks had six figures' worth of stereo equipment inside, along with a state-of-the-art screening room, a pub, a game room or two. He was starting to think of them as a dual case of profound arrested development.

  The house was exactly the kind of eyesore that would provoke neighbor complaints in a blue-chip district, meaning now he had something to look for.

  He drove downtown to the Hall of Records, made it through the traffic by 2 P.M., and combed through the zoning-board complaint files. Sure enough, three gripes had been lodged against the Cossacks, all by Carolwood residents, irritated about noise and dirt and other indignities caused by 'protracted construction.' All dismissed for lack of cause.