Billy Straight: A Novel (Petra Connor)

by Jonathan Kellerman

  A few birds are out there, flying around, diving. I take another step. Just one, but it makes a big difference, the ground drops out from under me and all of a sudden I’m up to my neck, trying to step back, but I can’t get a hold on to anything and now I feel the water moving under me and I’m in over my head, swallowing water, choking—up again, I can see the top of the water, the beach is getting smaller. I start to swim, but it doesn’t help. Something’s pushing me forward, I have no control, start kicking, waving my arms around, knowing this is stupid, you have to stay calm stay calm, but I’m being pushed out, forced, I don’t want this! I’m tiny, weaker than a barnacle, because I have no glue. Why am I thinking about Mom now, how bad she’ll feel, so cold, my eyes burn, my throat burns, my eyes got to keep them open but ohnocan’tkeepmyheadabov

  Up in the air again, coughing spitting, eyes burning, throat hurts like a knife scraping it and I’m still being carried out by the—no, the beach is getting closer—

  The ocean tosses me up, the sand gets even closer. Releasing me, like Jonah? No, no, here I go under again, swallowing so much water I think I’ll explode, then up, coughing, vomiting, rocks in the water, hitting me, stinging.

  The ocean playing with me. Which way will it throw me now?

  Stones scraping the bottom of my body. The ground. Sand.

  Back on shore.

  Sand sticks to my soaked clothes. Salt in the scratches makes them burn. I roll away from the water.

  Safe.

  Another chance.

  God?

  Or did even the ocean think I was trash, spit me back like bad food?

  I hurry back toward the pier, still coughing and spitting up salt water, collapse, stay there trying to get a little sun, dry out. A few people are out on the beach now. I just mind my own business. After an hour I’m drier, but still wet, my chest hurts and I’m scratched up by the sand but . . . I’m here.

  I need to concentrate. Money and a hat. Some food. Sunscreen.

  Mostly dry, I take a walk up to the pier. There’s a Ferris wheel, some bumper cars, and a merry-go-round, but they’re all shut and locked and there’s nothing to take there. A few restaurants, but they’re closed, too, and the only food around is dry bits of popcorn stuck to the floor.

  All the way at the end of the pier is a bait shack that’s open, some dirty-looking guy behind a counter and big white bathtub-type tanks full of anchovies, some of them already dead and floating to the top. A few people are fishing, mostly old Chinese guys and a few black guys. No one’s catching anything; everyone looks bored.

  The two garbage cans I find are full of fish guts and they stink so bad I almost puke. I leave the pier.

  Up above the beach is a street full of fancy-looking restaurants and hotels; nothing there for me. North is a small park with some old people and homeless guys, and if you keep looking, the street just seems to disappear. All those trees—too much like you-know-where.

  So I walk south and things start to look a little more familiar— motels and apartment buildings, weirdos who could be from the Boulevard. I find half a doughnut on the street and it looks okay so I eat it. Next block, I see part of a Twix bar left on the sidewalk, but it’s too melted and gross-looking and I only eat a small bit of it.

  A while later, a sign says I’m in Venice. Small houses, people, lots of Mexicans. I walk down a street. At the end is the ocean again, and soon I’m on this big wide path called Ocean Front Walk, like a giant sidewalk, the ocean on one side, stores on the other, all sorts of people—punks, blacks, beautiful bikini-girls on roller skates, their butt cheeks hanging out, guys looking at them. Young guys—like college students—old people sitting on benches, bikers with tattoos, lots of big, mean-looking dogs. Some Arnold Schwarzenegger–type guys are exercising in these fenced-off areas, their bodies all greased up so the muscles look like grapefruit trying to burst through the skin. Lifting weights, rubbing chalk on their hands, being huge and cool, showing off.

  The stores here are mostly small and cheap-looking. Fast food, stands selling ice cream, cold drinks, sunglasses, souvenirs, postcards, T-shirts, bathing suits.

  Hats that say CALIFORNIA! or MALIBU! or VENICE! I’d love some dry clothing, but there are too many people around to take something.

  Still, this might be a good place to hang out, see what happens later.

  I decide to walk from one end of Ocean Front to the other, see what turns up.

  Halfway down, I see a little gray building with a six-pointed star over the door. A Jewish star—I know that from my history book, the chapter “The Middle East: Birth of Civilization.”

  A Jewish church—what do they call them, synagons? I go over. Jewish letters next to the door, then English ones. Over the door it says CONGREGATION BETH TORAH.

  This might be good. The Jews always have money. At least that’s what Moron used to say—he’d go off on how they were all fucking bankers, sucking the blood out of the country, killing Jesus, and now they wanted to take our money, too.

  Like he ever had money.

  Then I think: Why would he be right? He was wrong about everything else. But still . . . what’s a church doing in the middle of all these businesses unless they’re out to make money?

  It wasn’t just Moron; Mom used to agree with him, say, Cowboy, they really got a talent for making money, must be in the blood.

  “You stupid bitch.” He laughed. “It ain’t talent, it’s ’cause they cheat us. Fucking ZOG—know what that is? Zionist Occupation Government, they want to take us over, not even human—come from the devil fucking a snake, didja know that? The Aryan race is the bona fide chosen people.”

  That night I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to study the Civil War. But then Mom started telling a story and I listened. About some rich Jewish family who owned a big strawberry farm down near Oxnard; her parents and her used to pick there when she was a kid. How the Jews had a big white two-story house and a Cadillac.

  “Fucking bloodsuckers,” Moron said.

  “Actually, they was okay, kinda nice—” she started. But he looked at her and she said, “Except they sure loved their money. The wife always dressed like she was going out to dinner, and she was just a farm wife. And here was this big house, maybe it was even three stories, buncha TV antennas all over the roof, but we slept in these little migrant shacks, kerosene heaters.”

  “Fucking A.”

  Even if it’s mostly lies, sometimes lies have some truth. And I don’t need thousands of Jewish dollars, just some spare change.

  A sign next to the synagon door says prayers will be held on Friday night and that the time for lighting candles is 7:34 P.M., whatever that means.

  No one’s looking. I try the door. Locked. The next place over is called Cafe Eats, and it’s closed too.

  There’s a space between the church and Cafe Eats. I slip around to the back, where there’s an alley, parked cars, but none driving. Two spaces behind the synagon but no cars. They’re praying Friday night. That’s tomorrow.

  I check out the back door. Plain wood, with some little wooden thing nailed to the frame on the right side, also with a Jewish star. Probably some kind of good-luck charm, maybe asking God for money.

  The back door’s locked, too. Right next to it is a window, a small one, too small for a man to fit through, but not for me. A screen over it, just like at the pineapple house. Also like that one, it comes right off.

  I don’t have to break this window; it’s loose. When I push up on it, it jiggles. So I shove harder and feel it give some more, then something pops and it slams open and I look up and down the alley.

  Still no one. I’m in.

  I’m getting good at this.

  The room I land in is a bathroom, small but clean—a toilet, a sink, and a mirror. No shower. The mirror tells me I don’t look as bad as I thought, just the scratches on my face and some white crust around my ears and my lips. I wash it off, use the toilet.

  Considering I almost drowned, I look prett
y good.

  I thank God, in case it was Him; wash my hands.

  Now, let’s find some Jewish money.

  CHAPTER

  38

  Petra awoke confused, at 6:30, her head crowded with Ron Banks, Estrella Flores, Ramsey, the boy with the presidents book—she wrapped herself in a robe and collected the morning paper.

  There it was, page 3, the drawing smack in the center of the article, no credit given to the artist.

  The gist of the article was no progress; the implication, those bumbling police. Salmagundi, the department spokesman, careful not to make too big a deal about the witness angle. The boy was “just one of several leads we’re looking into.”

  The last paragraph made her inhale sharply.

  Twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward to anyone providing information about the boy or anything else that led to the arrest of a suspect. Money put up by Dr. and Mrs. John Everett Boehlinger, all calls to be directed to Hollywood Detectives.

  Her extension. Blindsided. They must have gone through Schoelkopf, goddamn him. She couldn’t work this way.

  All day fielding crank calls—had Stu seen it yet?

  Normally, she’d call him. Nothing was normal anymore.

  She got dressed in the first thing she pulled out of the closet, took the paper with her, and drove much too fast to the station.

  There were already ten messages on her desk: nine sightings of the boy, and a psychic from Fontana claiming to know who’d murdered Lisa. What would the afternoon bring?

  Stu hadn’t come in yet. To hell with him. Fournier was checked out, too.

  She stormed into Schoelkopf’s office waving the article. He was sitting at his desk; jumped up and jabbed a finger at her.

  “Don’t get all pissy with me. The parents blew into town yesterday, went straight to Deputy Chief Lazara—he calls me at ten P.M. I have to come down here to deal with them. The father’s an obvious asshole, used to having his way. Who knows what he’ll try to do next.”

  I tried to warn you, idiot, and you brushed me off.

  “You could’ve called me,” said Petra.

  “I could’ve bought Microsoft at ten bucks—what’s the point, Barbie?”

  The nickname had never bothered her. Now it was a razor scraping raw nerve fiber. “The point is—”

  “The point is I’ve been running interference on this for you from day one and you’ve produced squat. I get yanked out of bed, get dirty looks from Lazara because he’s working late, he cuts out, leaves me with Mommy boo-hooing, Daddy delivering these fucking speeches: After Menendez and O.J., everyone knows LAPD can’t find a felon in the penitentiary. So I give him what I’ve got, which is this artwork of yours, figuring maybe it’ll calm him down. He says okay, what are you doing about it, and I say we’re looking for him, Mr. Boehlinger. And he says Doctor Boehlinger, then he tells me it’s not enough, he wants some incentives here—post a reward. I try to explain that rewards bring in mostly nuts, and even if we wanted to do that, it would take time. He picks up my phone, calls some lawyer named Hack, and says, Talk to your buddy at the Times and your other buddies at the TV stations. Showing me this Hack’s connected. Which he obviously is—it was already eleven and he got the picture in. So sue me, I didn’t wake you up at midnight. You think you’ve got a grievance, file a complaint. Meanwhile, go do your job.”

  He waved her out.

  A TV cop would have handed in the badge and gun.

  A real cop kept her mouth shut. She liked the job and the department was paramilitary, would always be, meaning lockstep rhythm, death of the individual, hierarchies. You pissed down, not up.

  Look at Milo Sturgis—she’d worked with the gay detective on one case, had seen him as the ace he was. But before that she’d heard only curses affixed to his name. The highest solve rate in West L.A.; to the department, that didn’t make up for sleeping with a man.

  She returned to her desk, put aside the ten message slips, and phoned the Nancy Downey Agency in Beverly Hills. A woman with a Latin accent said, “You should talk to Mr. Sanchez. He’s at our other office in San Marino.”

  San Marino and B.H. Covering the high-priced spreads, east and west.

  A man answered there, similar accent.

  “Mr. Sanchez?”

  “Yes.”

  She identified herself, told him she was looking for Estrella Flores.

  “I am, too.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I just got a call from her son in El Salvador. He’s worried, hasn’t heard from her since Sunday. Is this about Mrs. Ramsey’s murder?”

  “We’d just like to talk to her, sir. Why’s the son worried?”

  “Usually she calls him two, three times a week. He said he phoned the Ramsey house but got only a machine. I tried; the same thing happened to me. I left a message, but no one’s called me back.”

  “Mrs. Flores quit working for Mr. Ramsey, sir.”

  “When?”

  “The day after the murder.”

  “Oh.”

  “So she didn’t call you about another placement?”

  “No.” Sanchez sounded concerned.

  “Any ideas where she might be, sir?”

  “No, I’m sorry. She worked for the Ramseys for . . . hold on, let me look . . . here it is. Two years. Never complained.”

  “Where did she work before that?”

  “Before that . . . I couldn’t tell you.” Wariness had crept into his voice.

  “She wasn’t legal?”

  “When she came to us, she was legal. At least she presented papers. We do our best to—”

  “Mr. Sanchez, I have no interest in immigration issues—”

  “Even if you did, Detective, we have nothing to hide. Our women are all legal. We place them in the finest homes, and there must never be a hint of—”

  “Of course,” said Petra. “Please give me Mrs. Flores’s son’s name and number.”

  “Javier,” he said, reciting an address on Santa Cristina in San Salvador and a number. “He’s a lawyer.”

  “You don’t know of any other places she worked?”

  “She told us she worked for a family in Brentwood, but only for three months. No name—she didn’t want to use them as references because they were ‘immoral.’ ”

  “Immoral in what way, sir?”

  “I think it was something to do with drinking. Mrs. Flores is a very . . . moral woman.”

  Petra hung up, thought about the maid’s disappearance. If Flores had left of her own accord, why hadn’t she contacted her son? It didn’t take much morality to be repulsed by murder. Had she seen something? Or been seen?

  Where to go with it . . . more calls to substations, to see if Flores had turned up somewhere as a victim? Unlikely. If she’d been eliminated by Ramsey because she could blow his alibi, he’d have made sure to conceal the body.

  Better to scope out RanchHaven, talk to the guard service, ask long-overdue questions. While she was there, she could drop in on Ramsey again, slip in some hints about Flores, see how he reacted.

  Wil Fournier appeared in the squad room door, beckoning her with a wiggling finger. He looked angry. Something to do with the boy? She hurried over.

  “What’s up?”

  “Got some people can’t wait to meet you.” He angled his head down the hall. Petra looked out and saw a couple in their fifties standing at the far end. Well dressed, backs to each other.

  “The parents?”

  “None other,” said Fournier. “Schoelkopf snagged me as I came in, said they wanted a firsthand report from all three of us. Where’s Ken?”

  “Don’t know.” Her tone made him stare. “What exactly do they want?”

  “Info. Got any?”

  “Nope, how about you?”

  “Talked to a few shelters, churches, some of our Juvey people. No one knows the kid; a couple of social workers thought they might’ve seen him around, but he hasn’t checked in anywhere.”

  “Outdoor kid,�
� said Petra. Thinking what guts it took for an eleven-year-old to go it alone in the park.

  “Let’s go do some hand-holding,” said Fournier. “Female D and a coal-colored one. These people look like the type who still think lawn jockeys are funny.”

  Mrs. Boehlinger was everything Petra expected—petite, perfectly groomed, handsome; long-suffering Pat Nixon handsomeness. A puff of cold-waved hair the color of dry champagne crowned a roundish face. Contoured eyebrows. Trim figure in a conservatively cut black St. John’s Knits suit. Black suede pumps and purse. Red eyes.

  Her husband defeated expectation. Petra had pictured a big man, hearty, someone like Ramsey. Dr. John Everett Boehlinger was five-five, 140 pounds tops, with narrow shoulders and a homely face full of homely features: fat nose, small dark eyes, rubber-mask looseness around the jowls. Bald on top, thin fringe of gray at the sides. A clipped stainless steel goatee—he could have played Freud in the country club Halloween bash.

  He wore a black vested suit, white shirt, gray tie printed with tiny black dots. White silk hankie in the breast pocket. Onyx cuff links. Cap-tip shoes were polished shiny as motor oil.

  Two small people in funeral garb. Mrs. Boehlinger remained focused on the wall in front of her, clenching and unclenching one hand. The other gripped her purse. Her french nails were glossy but chipped. She still had her back to her husband, didn’t look up as Petra and Fournier approached.

  Dr. Boehlinger had focused on them immediately, body canted forward, as if ready to spar. When they were ten feet away, he said to Petra, “You’re the one I spoke to on the phone.”

  “Yes, sir. Detective Connor.” She extended her hand, and he submitted to a half second of skin contact before withdrawing. Wiping his hand on his suit—oh, for God’s sake.

  The she reminded herself: The poor man’s lost his child. Nothing worse than that.

  Nothing.

  He said, “Vivian?” and his wife turned slowly. Ravaged eyes, the corneas a scramble of ruptured capillaries. The irises bright blue—like Lisa’s. There was more than a suggestion of Lisa in the fine facial structure. Would Lisa have ended up like this—a fashionable matron, buttoned to the neck, all propriety?