“Hey, guapo,” she said, hugging him tightly. “Long time, amigo. Too long.”
“Yeah,” he said.
Lita was a small woman, at one time very pretty. Now, she wore a perpetually exhausted expression, hang-dog, some would call it. She was only thirty-two, but she could easily have passed for forty. She took a moment to appraise Lou, then sniffed the air.
“You smell like booze,” she noted, taking him by the arm and leading him inside. “Hard night?”
“Just another day at the office,” he smiled mischievously.
“Right,” Lita said, rolling her eyes. “She’s out in the yard.”
Diamond walked ahead of her, not meaning to be rude, but aware of how quickly time was passing. He stopped at the back yard sliding terrace door. Just to watch her for a moment.
She was playing with a friendly-looking golden retriever; the dog was easily her size, and equally energetic. A very serious game of “slobber on the tennis ball” was in play. The dog appeared to be winning, an endless supply of dog-spit at its disposal.
Diamond walked into the yard, reluctant to intrude. But when Sonia saw her father, the golden retriever was history. She ran into his arms, screaming out the only name she’d ever known for him.
“Daddy!”
He took her and held her tight; the feel, the touch, the smell brought tears to his eyes. Memories of Maria flooded his being.
“Hey, princess,” he said softly.
She pulled back and touched one of the small contusions on his face. “Someone punch you, Daddy?”
“Yeah, and I punched him back!” he tickled her. She giggled and hugged him again. He pulled back and looked into her deep, brown eyes.
His daughter’s eyes.
Maria’s eyes.
He stayed for a quick cup of coffee. Lita watched him silently, letting him choose the moment to speak.
“I’ve got to ask you to keep her here awhile longer,” he said at last.
“How long?” she said.
“I—I don’t know” he admitted. “A case has come up.”
“A case always comes up, guapo,” she said softly. She poured more coffee. “You can’t run by working yourself to death, Lou. Sonia needs you.”
“I know,” Diamond said. He couldn’t find anything to say against such damning truth. He looked down, twirling his coffee cup.
Lita put her own cup down, her patient smile gone. “Maria’s gone, Lou. Accept that. I do. My god, she was my sister.”
Diamond continued to stare at the floor. Lita pressed further. “You leave for weeks. No one knows where you are. The Department just tells me you’re on the job. Whatever that means,” she said, now angry. “Look at you. Look at your face. I’m pretty sure your job doesn’t include handing out parking tickets.”
“I’m a cop,” he mumbled. “It gets hairy sometimes.”
“Fine. Your job is your business. But Lou,” she said, reaching out to him, forcing him to look at her. “Bury the dead. Be a father to your daughter. And talk to your brother again. It wasn’t really his fault—”
Diamond stood at the mention of Marshall. He reached for his jacket. “We are talking again, Lita. That’s what this latest case is about.” He turned and looked at her, pleadingly this time. “Just a little while longer, okay?”
Lita sighed. Another small battle fought and lost. She stood and kissed him on the cheek. “Aye, hombre. Tiene un cabeza como bulludo. You have head like bull.”
He smiled salaciously at her. “Love when you talk dirty to me.”
She swatted him gently. Diamond walked back to the terrace door. Sonia was again playing with the dog. She came over to him, dragging the willing retriever by the scruff of its neck. A contrail of dog drool followed them both.
“You’re going to stay with Aunt Lita for a little while longer,” he told her, fixing her pigtail.
“I thought we were going home,” she said, disappointed.
“We will. Daddy has some work to do first.”
“You going away again for a long time?”
“Nope. I’ll see you on Sunday,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek.
She hugged him suddenly, holding on to him as if there was no tomorrow. “Love you, Daddy. You make me worried.”
Diamond closed his eyes. He just nodded, holding her tight for another minute, until his tears dried.
TEN
Turner Sage picked him up in front of Lita’s house five minutes later, at Diamond’s request. The booze had caught up with him and he was in no immediate position to drive. As he watched Turner’s piece-o-shit ‘78 Rabbit trundle up to the curb, Diamond was aware of his hands shaking. Really shaking. He shoved them into his pockets, willing (praying) for stability.
Turner’s expression told Diamond that he must have looked like something that dropped out of the backside of a baby yak; he expected this gentle thought to be communicated to him, but Turner apparently decided on a ‘no comment’ policy at the moment. Diamond knew he was hiding it poorly—his drinking. Drinking, hell. Binging. Poisoning himself. Call a spade a spade. It was Turner who found Diamond at St. John’s Medical Center the day after Maria was murdered. Diamond had ingested so much bourbon in a twenty-four hour period he had suffered severe alcohol poisoning. Diamond had been strapped to a gurney, screaming obscenities, oblivious to anyone and everyone around him. It took three days for him to be rehydrated, and another two days after that to painfully detox. Through it all, Turner was there.
Yeah, Diamond thought, today I must look like chunky ka-ka, no doubt about it.
“My, don’t we look fresh and fetching this morning.”
“Blow me,” Diamond muttered, slamming the passenger door then turning to glance back to the house. Sonia was waving from the living room window. Diamond waved back.
“Thought I told you to take the day off,” Turner said, irritated.
Diamond turned to him and patted him on the knee. “One day, I’ll surprise you and head for Mexico. Disappear for six months, wallow in Tequila and señoritas.”
Turner started the car again and screeched out of the driveway. “I had Ted Burke on the phone for a goddamn hour this morning. Bitch-moaning to me that you were sticking your nose into his case, and he didn’t give two fuck-sticks on the dollar whose brother you are.”
Diamond scowled, staring straight ahead. Not that Turner expected any kind of response. “Oh, hell, I can deal with Burke,” he said conversationally. “I just think you need some rest.”
“I rested, Turner,” Diamond said. “I took a shower and closed my eyes. What do you want me to do next, jerk off to the Dali Lama Love Mantra?”
“You had your ass kicked good last night,” Turner pressed, ignoring Diamond’s contentious response.
“I’ll live.” Diamond decided he was being a first-class prick. Turner Sage didn’t need the attitude—he was one of the best friends Diamond had, hands down, and no bullshit. Enough was enough. “Look, I appreciate the lift and the drive out.”
Turner shrugged. “Least I can do,” he mumbled and then shifted gears. “So you think this lady is a shooter?”
“That’s why you’re here, pal,” Diamond replied. “To tell me there’s a shitload of reasonable doubt.”
Diamond quickly reviewed the facts of the case, including his meeting with Linda Baylor much earlier that morning. He did not tell Turner about his little tete-a-tete with his brother a few hours ago.
“Well, glad you think I’m such a good judge of character,” Turner said, grinning again. “I can hardly wait to meet this stunning piece of work. What’s her name again?”
“Linda Baylor,” Diamond said, and even saying her name filled him with an intangible sense of annoyance. And something else. Foreboding? Premonition?
Sexual obsession?
Diamond shuddered. He was tired, he thought, and still appreciably drunk. Not drunk enough, though, and he could again feel his hands tremble and the eerie spasms deep within the muscles of his body.
The chills would come next. And then … the Scaries. Yeah. Those Fucking Scaries. The Scaries were coming on to him, like they always did when he slept too little and drank too much. The Scaries that took their time with him, nipping at his psyche like small, rabid pit bulls. The Scaries that brought with them an irrational kind of deep and profound inner panic and doubt that literally made his skin crawl.
Go away, Scaries, he commanded. I don’t have time for you today. I’ve got to deal with Queen Bitch Baylor, a narcissistic neurotic nutcase lawyer who my brother was banging in the not too distant past, and who might, just might, have killed two people less than eight hours ago in a deserted law library.
“Why don’t you see Dr. Westover?” Turner was talking again. Again ... about his personal mental and physical health, as if he needed someone to be concerned about both. “You liked her, right? I mean, after Maria, she was a big help, you said.”
Turner Sage was the only person alive on the planet who Diamond allowed to talk about his dead wife. Of course, Turner Sage was the only person alive on the planet he trusted completely. Bar none, even Lita. “She was okay,” he said noncommittally.
In fact, Dr. Julie Westover and Lou Diamond went back, way back behind the haystack, even before Maria. When he’d first joined SRT, the good doctor and he had shared some time together. Close time, bed time. It didn’t last long. He’d made it clear to her it wouldn’t, simply because he wanted it that way. It had worked well for him for forty years. A helluva lot of women across the globe, some good times, some not so good, but nothing inextricably downright crappy. He’d been a rolling stone gathering no moss. Hopefully causing little pain to others, and occasionally bringing in a little joy to a few others still. Not a bad way to live, he had told himself for almost four decades. No, sir, not bad at all.
Julie, in the aftermath of their little romp, had defined him as borderline misogynistic. This he failed to understand inasmuch as misogyny was a specific dislike and fear of women … failings, Lou felt, that he simply did not possess. He defended himself at the time by saying he was simply too busy for committed relationships. Too damaged, he admitted, by too much time in the world of war. His problem, no one else’s.
Given these grim circumstances, it was best that he, Lou Diamond, He Who Was Destined To Be Alone, should never tarry too long in the deceptive and ultimately disappointing arms of love.
Then he had met Maria. The woman he married. The woman he loved. The woman he would cherish till’ death did them part. When she was killed five years ago, Diamond was ready to die himself. Had it not been for Sonia he would have swallowed the .38 and moved on as he had lived—without question, without hesitation, without recrimination. Quickly. But since Sonia was still in the picture, he made the choice to continue living. If you could call it that.
He called it passing time.
Killing time, really. Doing the job, waking up, punching in, going under for a few weeks, damn near getting wasted now and then by some coked-up fuckstick, then the same thing all over again. Killing time?
No. More like wasting time. Waiting. Waiting until Sonia grew up, got happy, got married. Then his responsibility on this level of existence would be finished.
“I talked to her today,” Turner said from somewhere far away. “Westover, I mean. She said you should drop in and see her. Anytime, just to shoot the shit. Told me to tell you that,” he said hopefully.
“Gee, you treat me good, Turner,” Diamond said, glancing at his watch, noting absently that if he wasn’t a fucked-up neurotic obsessive basket case with a gut feeling … he should ideally be in bed sleeping. “Mind rubbing my feet while you’re at it?”
“In your dreams, home boy,” Turner snarled good naturedly. “Call the lady. The talk would do you good.”
It was not a suggestion, but a tacit order. Diamond got the hint. Turner was worried about him; really worried. And if Turner was that worried, it meant that Department as a whole was worried, notwithstanding the recent heroic exploits in San Pedro. The young cop who had seen him earlier had probably spread the word that Inspector Lou Diamond was showering fully clothed these days.
Great cop, everyone was sure to be saying. But in the same collective cop-ether, there was another certainty, not even a whisper and barely a thought: Lou Diamond: Section 8 inside of a month. Guy’s a fuckin’ loon. Serpico in freefall. Going down sooner or later.
“I’ll call Westover,” Diamond said at last.
Turner seemed satisfied. “Good.”
ELEVEN
Because Turner had a tendency to drive like his dead grandmother, Diamond was irritated when they finally arrived in front of Linda Baylor’s beach house at 10:35 a.m. For some ungodly irrational reason he felt that he was already disappointing her—not on time for their second date, as it were. Asinine, he thought. Sleep deprivation and the Scaries assaulting his judgment.
“Nice place,” he heard Turner mutter as they walked to the front door. As promised, it was indeed open. Diamond and Turner entered. Turner took his time, absorbing the expensive atmosphere inside and out.
The terrace door at the other side of the enormous living room was also open—a breeze rippled through the silk curtains. Beyond, the Pacific Ocean could be seen stretching out to the horizon, speckled with white caps and the occasional sailboat. Miles away where both sea and sky met, an enormous tanker ship was heading south. Maybe going to San Diego, Diamond mused, or Mexico. Possibly further. For one fleeting moment, Diamond wished he was on board, leaving everything he had ever known behind.
“Morning, Lou,” a familiar voice chimed out from directly ahead. Marshall turned the corner from the terrace holding a pen and writing tablet.
Diamond nodded, understanding Marshall’s presence here long before Turner did. “Let me guess. You’re her attorney.”
Marshall had a bandage over his lower lip and his forehead was bruised. Now they really did look like brothers, Diamond noted with some distant amusement.
“She asked me to be here,” Marshall replied coldly. “It was last minute.” He turned to Turner, extended his hand politely. “Turner. It’s been awhile.”
“That it has. Hurt yourself?” Turner shock Marshall’s hand, grasping it a minute longer than necessary.
Marshall glanced at his brother, then smiled his best shark smile at Turner. “Cut myself shaving.”
“Hate that,” Turner came back quickly. Both men laughed. A little preamble bullshit, everyone knew it, no big deal. Diamond could see that Turner believed Marshall’s ‘cut myself shaving’ horse poop about as much as he did in space aliens.
“Where is she, Marshall?” Diamond’s impatience was kicking in once again.
Marshall turned and indicated the beach beyond the outside veranda. Lou and Turner took the invite and walked through the terrace doors.
Linda Baylor was just coming out of the water some hundred yards down the beach, clearly finishing a brisk morning dip. She was also completely nude (gee, what a surprise, Diamond thought) … and not the least bit interested in concealing herself from anyone or anything that might have noticed. She walked leisurely over to her robe further up the sand bank, picked it up and then did a little stretch to the sun. Sea foam dripped off of her and twinkled as the morning sun caught the spray here and there.
“Hoo wee,” Turner whistled, taking in the view that was indeed a sight to behold.
Lou’s irritation took an exponential jump on his personal shit-fuck factor of being jerked around and manipulated. He knew, just knew, that she was doing this for his sake. She finally put the robe around her, then took her time about heading for the veranda.
“Morning, Lou,” she said, smiling.
“Ms. Baylor,” he replied quickly. “This is Lieutenant Turner Sage, my superior. We’ll try not to impose on your busy schedule.”
“No imposition whatsoever,” she said.
This time Turner glanced at Lou with an expression of mild curiosity. Lou ignored him.
“I’ve a
sked Marshall to sit in with us. Just for the record.” Linda continued.
She then went to a lounge chair and curled up in it like a cat. Her legs glistening perfectly against the sun. She waited until the three men found chairs of their own, ignoring Marshall’s concentrated look of annoyance cast her way.
“Ms. Baylor,” Lou began, “for the record, this is all very informal. Last night, as you’re aware, a murder was committed at Berenson & Marelli. Specifically, Marianne Simpson and Jason Randall were found shot to death by Marshall here at approximately one in the morning. We have no fingerprints, nor do we have a murder weapon. What we do have is an article of jewelry belonging to you found near the victims. My first question is how you came to lose this item?”
Linda’s smile disappeared. She appeared to be concentrating on her answer. “I was in the library most of the day. It probably fell off at some point. Have you talked to Marianne’s husband yet?”
“The police did a search this morning at the Simpson residence. Don Simpson wasn’t there. We have an All Points out on him,” Turner offered.
“Well, this case seems pretty open and shut to me, pardon the cliché,” Linda said easily.
“Maybe,” Lou shrugged noncommittally. “Now, may I ask where you were between the hours of midnight and one in the morning?”
“Here. Swimming,” Linda said, smiling at him. “I like to swim at night. After which, I like a long, hot shower.”
Diamond allowed his eyes to wander to her legs, now shifting slightly as she adjusted her position in the lounge chair. “Were you alone between the hours of midnight and one in the morning?”
“I usually swim and shower alone, Lou. Don’t you?”
“I haven’t done much of either lately.”
“I believe you,” she said, her smile broadening.
“Did you know Ms. Simpson or Mr. Randall?”
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