“I’ll get you help,” I said.
“I don’t want help,” said Milton. “I want to die.”
Milton dropped his head forward and I saw clearly where his hair was falling out. I also saw scabs and various wounds. He had been beat up recently. Or had fallen. Or had contracted some disease or another. There was a time in my life when I could not do this, that I would not do this. Conversing with a bum in a forgotten construction site, exposed to germs and craziness and the unknown. But I was a different man back then. Different needs, different desires, different phobias. Now my desire was to do my job and to do it well—and to find Miranda and bring her back safely to her mother. Whatever it took, even if it meant being here now, in a forgotten construction site with a forgotten man, and a dog whose appetite would not be ignored.
I tossed him another chunk of cookie.
Milton and I were silent. He kept holding his side, wincing. The smell of urine was stronger in here. I suspected the stench was coming from Milton himself.
“Milton,” I said, then repeated his name louder before I got his attention. “Milton, when were you last in Trader Joe’s?”
He started nodding. “When I saw the girl.”
I sucked in some air that was also suffused with the smell of sawdust and dog breath. “Who was the girl?” I asked.
“Prettiest thing I ever did see. Made me want to live again.”
“The girl’s missing, Milton. Something bad happened to her. Something very bad.”
Milton began shaking his head, and he kept on shaking it, and in the dim light of the unfinished room, I could see the urgency in his rheumy eyes. Dusty moved closer to him, nuzzling him.
“I didn’t do anything to her,” he said.
“Did you see what happened to her, Milton?”
He started clawing his neck. Maybe his cancer was there, too, eating away at his throat. “I didn’t hurt her. She was too beautiful to hurt. I just wanted to look at her.”
“So you followed her around the store?”
He nodded. “You woulda, too, my friend. So pretty. Long brown hair.” He was getting drunker. Words slurring. I was losing him.
He started weeping, hard, and the moment he did, as if on cue, Dusty began howling with him, throwing back his head like a hound dog. I’m partial to hound dogs.
“I’m dying,” he said again, blubbering, his words barely discernible.
“I’m sorry, Milton.”
“I wanted to touch her so bad.”
“Did you touch her?”
He shook his head once and cried even harder, and Dusty was howling and periodically licking his dirty tears. Jesus.
“Did you follow her outside, Milton?” He didn’t hear me. I repeated the question.
“Yeah,” he finally said.
My heart was hammering now. The empty room was suddenly stifling. I swallowed hard and wished I had brought a bottle of water. Hell, even his back-washed whiskey was looking pretty damn good about now.
“What happened outside?” I said, pushing, keeping him focused.
He stopped crying on a dime and looked off to his side, eyes glazed and wet and distant. “He took her.”
With his sudden silence, Dusty fell quiet as well, looking from me to him, as if for an explanation to what had just happened. I had none to give.
“Who took her, Milton?”
When he spoke again, he did so hollowly, his voice barely discernible. “A man. In a van.” He laughed, or cried, at his own rhyme.
“What color was the van?”
“White.”
“Who was driving the van, Milton?”
“A man,” he said again. “Ugly as sin. Holes in his face.”
“Holes?” I said. “Pock marks?”
“Yeah, those.”
“Did she fight him?” I asked. “Did he force her into the van?”
“I don’t know, man. When I came around the corner she was already in.”
“Did she look scared, Milton?”
He shook his shaggy head. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
I asked him more questions—all the questions I could think of—but Milton clearly had no clue where she was taken to, or why she had gotten in the van, or who the man was. And as he lapsed into an impenetrable, drunken stupor, I set the remaining cookies next to him, patted Dusty on the head, and left.
“I’m dying,” he said behind me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and kept walking.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The L.A. Philharmonic is in downtown Los Angeles, and is located in the now famous Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Disney Hall, itself a modern-day marvel of neo-expressionistic architecture, which basically means weird, has been featured in everything from Iron Man to the Simpsons and from commercials to popular podcasts. The structure, which looks a bit like an ocean wave frozen in time and space, boasts laser-fitted stainless steel panels and sweeping, jutting walls that defy gravity and boggle the mind. Well, at least boggle my mind.
Anyway, I was heading over to it now for a concert, and I was running late, having lost all track of time while reading through Miranda’s police file for the hundredth time, looking for anything that stood out, anything the police might have missed. So far, nothing stood out. At least not yet. Oh, and the freak summer rainstorm didn’t help matters much. Five minutes of pouring rain that included two loud thunderclaps. Scared the shit out of my cat. Dogs in the neighborhood, spooked, had immediately started barking. As if on cue, the short downpour immediately bottled-necked Figueroa Avenue, proving once again that L.A. drivers have no clue how to drive in the rain.
Frustrated and ornery, I pulled into the adjoining parking lot, shelled out $9 that I would never see again, and hurried up a steep side street. Steep, that is, to these old knees.
As you might imagine, the evening was cool and damp. I was dressed in jeans and a flannel, not the attire of choice for the L.A. Philharmonic elite, but I happened to know its president, and I happened to know that the word was out that the L.A. Phil was actually encouraging casual attire to attract a wider audience.
Well, I was more than happy to oblige. I spent half my life in monkey suits. These days, flannel suited me just fine. Must be the country boy in me.
And there, standing near the glass entrance, dressed sharply in a wool coat with a fur collar, was my friend. A female friend. Her name was Grace, and she was also the aforementioned president of the L.A. Philharmonic, which means she courted the rich and famous for a living. Which means free tickets for me. She was young and in her early forties, blond and cute. She was also married to an ex-football player, and she thought of me, I think, as the grandfatherly type. I could handle that. I was indeed, after all, a grandpa. Anyway, I had helped her find her runaway son a few years back and ever since then I’ve been getting free tickets to the Phil. Admittedly, I usually passed on the free tickets, as the uppity scene just wasn’t my style these days.
Also, chamber music blows hard. Granted, I’m a fan of most music, and I do enjoy Bach and Mozart whenever I’m trapped in an elevator. But sitting through an entire concert of the stuff is truly a question of how fast will I hit the seat in front of me, snoring.
Spotting me, Grace stepped away from a small gathering of people, gave me a big hug, and a not-so-big peck on the cheek.
“You’re late,” she said, straightening the shoulders of my flannel and brushing lint off my shoulders. I was unaware of the lint. Grace was also neat freak. Me, not so much.
“And your point?” I asked.
“I suppose, if you had been early, that would have been the bigger news.”
“Exactly.”
She gave me my ticket and led the way inside. Grace seemed to know everyone. She stopped often, shook many hands, hugged those who were hug-worthy, and, in general, looked like she ran the joint, which she happened to do.
“So why tonight of all nights?” she asked as we boarded the escalator up. “You’ve turned down all my oth
er invitations.”
“I dig Indian folk music.”
“Bullshit,” she said.
“Well, someone has to.”
She laughed. “Well, Raffi is, in fact, world-famous.”
“With a name like that, how could he not be?”
She squeezed my arm, nearly snuggling against me. Flannel has that effect on women. She smelled of good perfume. Her skin was flawless. Her features were small and sharp, her eyes large and round and very blue.
“Not to mention, Raffi and I share the same birthday,” I added.
“So it was a sign,” she said. “You are big on signs.”
“Signs are important,” I said. “They mean something. It’s sort of like the universe speaking to you.”
“Or God,” she said.
I nodded. “Or God.”
We got off the escalator. She hurried me along a short tunnel where we joined a small throng of theater-goers. An usher was checking tickets, and was about to check ours when he looked up at Grace, the boss of bosses. He swallowed hard, smiled, and stepped aside, letting us through.
“Hey, he didn’t check my stub,” I said.
Grace squeezed my hand and pulled me along through an archway and into grand concert hall. She led the way up a few rows and slid into what I knew were the management seats. Not quite in the middle, but close enough. People paid damned good money for the middle seats, after all.
Oh, and grand it was. Holy shit. The main hall was massive and elegant, and the dichotomy between the cold metallic exterior and the soft woods of the interior, with its curved balconies and railings, couldn’t have been more striking. And since the L.A. Phil was built with Disney money, that meant the place was also cursed to look cartoonish. Example: the suspended wooden ceiling was supposed to be a stylized ship’s hull, except that it looked more like something Jack Sparrow would have captained in The Pirates of the Caribbean. And the elegant organ behind the stage, although a magnificent piece of modern art with its soaring brass pipes, still looked like the world’s biggest bag of French fries. Intentional or not, subliminal or not, I was now jonesing for some McDonald’s.
“The real question,” said Grace, once we were settled, “is how you interpret the signs.”
“Are we still on this?” I asked.
“Yes. Now, you must have been troubled with something, Aaron, or perhaps you were faced with a decision. And, in the middle of all this indecision, here appears a rather famous Indian sitarist who shares your exact birthday. So here you are, hoping that God will continue to speak to you, continue to guide your way. And all you have to do is follow the signs.”
“Are you quite done?” I asked.
“But am I right?”
“Maybe.”
“What are you struggling with, Aaron King?” she asked me. She tightened her grip around my arm. She was always very touchy-feely.
I opened my mouth to speak but a small man sporting a long gray ponytail approached Grace, hugged her tightly, chatted a bit and then left again. She didn’t bother to introduce me, nor did he seem particularly interested in me, anyway.
“Go on,” she said. “What are you struggling with?”
I took a deep breath. Held it. Took another one. Held it. Plunged forward. “I’m thinking about getting back into music,” I said.
“Ah,” she said, smiling smugly. “Yes, of course, you were a singer back in the day. I think you mentioned that once or twice when you were shit-faced drunk. And when I asked you about it later, you were not pleased that I knew.”
“Yeah, well, my singing was a long time ago.”
“And, on the very day you were struggling with that decision, you get my email invitation from me about this concert.”
“Everyone hates a know-it-all,” I said.
“And, being the observant investigator that you are, you happened to see the similarities in birthdays, and considered it a sign from God,” she said. “And now here you are.”
“You talk a lot,” I said. “Even for a broad.”
She smiled some more at me. “So what did you mostly sing back in the day? Rock, country?”
“Indian folk,” I said.
She looked at me some more. “You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”
“No, not yet.”
A true friend, she let it drop and gave me another forearm squeeze. I like squeezes.
As the house lights went down, the announcer politely asked in his pleasantly rich baritone to please refrain from taking any pictures and to please turn off all cell phones. And because he asked so nicely, I turned mine off and somehow refrained from taking any pictures, tempted as I was.
* * *
And by the end of the evening, after two hours of listening to traditional Indian folk music, I came to a decision about my own music.
Lord help me, I came to a decision.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The frames Dr. Vivian’s glasses were wider than her head, making her narrow face even more narrow. I liked her narrow face. I liked her big glasses. I liked her, in fact, a lot.
“I find you very attractive,” I said. We were halfway through my latest session, and I was finding her particularly distracting today, especially her big blue eyes.
“Isn’t that a little off-topic?” she said. As she spoke, she didn’t move a muscle. If my compliment surprised her, made her feel good, creeped her out, etc., you wouldn’t know it by looking at her.
“Your beauty is never off-topic.”
“Charming, Mr. King. But my beauty, or alleged beauty, is not the issue here,” she said. “Besides, you don’t find me attractive, not really.”
“I don’t?”
“No, you don’t.”
I chewed on that. Light from her lamp, which sat at the far corner of her desk, was casting angular shadows across her angular face. Angular or not, I was certain I found her beautiful. I said as much.
“It’s called transference,” she said.
“Transference?”
“It’s when the patient develops strong feelings for his therapist.”
“This has happened to you before?” I asked.
“Often.”
“I see,” I said. “And it’s not because you’re pretty.”
She tilted her head. As she did so, her oversized glasses caught a lot of the lamplight and reflected it back at me tenfold, nearly blinding me. I exaggerate, of course, for emphasis.
She said, “On the streets, Mr. King—that is, in the real world—you wouldn’t look at me twice.”
“I wouldn’t?”
“No. Especially not you, one who has had his fair share of the most beautiful women in the world.”
“And you are not one of them?” I asked.
“Most certainly not,” she said.
“Am I permitted to disagree?”
She looked at me steadily, unmovingly. If she were breathing, I couldn’t tell. “Mr. King, you see a female sitting across from you, patiently listening to you, helping you, working with you, completely invested in you, viewing you without judgment or agenda. I represent all the people in your life who should love you but don’t.”
I took a deep breath. “You’re not helping.”
She sat back. “Mr. King, just know that I’m not your type and will never be your type, and you are far too old for me, so just get it out of your head.”
“Ouch.”
“Tough love,” she said.
“Ah,” I said. “So you do love me, then?”
Despite herself, she grinned, and some of the lamplight caught her tiny front teeth. “Let’s get back to the business at hand, Mr. King.”
“So we’re changing the subject.”
“Yes, we are,” she said.
“Fine,” I said. “But don’t you have some questions for me?”
“What do you mean?”
“You just discovered a few days ago that your patient really is Elvis Presley, and you haven’t asked me a single thing.”
> “Because we’re not here for me,” she said.
“You have a lot of will power,” I said.
“Mr. King, as remarkable as your story is, as interesting as you might be, as storied as your life was and is, I still have a job to do. You pay me to help you—not act like a star-struck teenager.”
“Are you star struck?”
She looked me square in the eye, which was appropriate, since the frames of her glasses were mostly square. “Mr. King, I see you as a very troubled man. My job is to help you through your troubles.”
“Good luck,” I said.
“No,” she said, “Good luck to you, sir.”
“So I’m not in love with you?” I asked again.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Maybe a little?”
“I seriously doubt it.”
“Ah, hell.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
I was at a donut shop on Glendale Avenue with the good Detective Colbert. It was early in the morning and the sun was just out, and so were many of the bums, many of whom were actively panhandling the local intersections.
“Let me get this straight,” said Colbert. “The bum sees her in a van?”
“Yes.”
“The bum’s a credible witness?”
“He’s a drunk and he’s dying. His words.”
“But you believe him.”
“I think so, yes.”
“So the bum follows the girl around the store and then out into the parking lot, where some guy in a van picks her up.”
“That about sums it up,” I said.
“Being driven by a menacing-looking character,” Colbert said.
“With pock marks.”
“Pock marks are menacing,” Colbert said.
“That’s an unfortunate stereotype,” I said.
The donut shop was surprisingly packed. Across the street, through the big glass window, on a sidewalk in front of the Vons grocery store, was a homeless tent city, comprised of a dozen or so shopping carts filled to the brim with Lord knows what, covered with cardboard and blankets. Actually, the structure seemed fairly solid. Hell, so solid it was almost incorrect to call those within homeless. One way or another, that was certainly a home, complete with rooms and hallways. The ultimate kid’s fort.
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