by E. E. Giorgi
His skin exuded a bitter smell, not the pungent odor of fear or the sour taste of deception. This guy was lonely and forlorn. What the hell happened to his life?
“How’s your child, Mr. White?” I asked. I could’ve checked before dropping the question. But with the lawyer on his way, I didn’t have the time. The ball was rolling and the pins were lined up. He raised his head and glared. His body odor spiked in adrenaline, his receptors sending new signals to the brain, quickly switching from apathy to rage.
“Gaya’s dead,” he spat.
GN White, I thought, age 8. The mysterious note I’d found on Huxley’s desk.
Strike. “My deepest sympathy,” I offered, sincerely.
White dropped his chin on the heel of his hands. “You don’t give a shit.”
Second frame up, ball rolling again. “Did they take good care of her at the Esperanza?”
This time White shot his head up and stared at me for a long time before answering. He had strong eyes, sharp, a first hint of expression lines at the corners. His lips slanted in a sad grimace. He let his arms fall to his sides and sank back in the chair. “What do you think, Detective? They didn’t save her life, did they?”
Strike number two. I bobbed my head in sympathy. “I’m truly sorry. I’m sure Dr. Cox and her team tried everything they could.”
White flashed a bitter smile. His blue eyes rested on me for a full minute, trying to read me. You’re a fool, they said, his wound still open. “She didn’t save my child, the bitch. All those big doctors care about is their fucking career. They can all go to hell.”
And on my third strike, the door opened and the lawyer stepped in, holding his hand up as if to catch in midair any other question that might’ve escaped my mouth.
There, Dr. Cox. To you and your fucking HIPAA. I now knew who GN White was.
* * *
A dome of yellow streetlights projected onto the night sky and embraced a checkerboard of blinking windows. The daily voices of downtown had snoozed down to a mellow drone: the humming of the climate systems gushing out white billows of vapor; the mumbled roar of the Santa Ana freeway; the distant whooshing of a helicopter circling over Echo Park.
I left Parker Center and merged into the One-Oh-One, swallowed by a headless snake of taillights. The hiccupping trail of vehicles was lethargic. I clenched my fists around the steering wheel and seethed. One hour later I landed at the gym, my legs thrashing on the elliptical trainer, resistance and incline set to maximum. I couldn’t concentrate, and after fifteen minutes I stepped down and moved to the treadmill. I pounded my legs angrily, thriving on the rhythmic whooshes bouncing off the belt. I closed my eyes and focused on the sounds: feet, heart, lungs, all pulsing at the same rhythm, numbing my thoughts.
It didn’t last too long—I was too distracted. I couldn’t block the smells of sweat or the squeaking of iPod ear buds around me. Tamara Tarantino’s bloodied face kept haunting me.
I pounded harder on the treadmill and kept my eyes on the woman in front of me. I never saw her face, only her perfect body, tight, with proportioned muscles she rhythmically flexed and relaxed. Her taut buttocks swayed up and down as she jogged, their hypnotic movement drawing my eyes like a pendulum. I stared and slowly forgot the dead bodies. I stared, and my thoughts shifted. To her, Diane Kyle. She had glared at me with the skepticism of a scientist when I told her the shooter had not entered the house alone. A woman had been there too the night before, waiting downstairs by the French doors. I thought of how Diane’s scent, finally freed from the constraint of the forensic coveralls, had aroused my nostrils, tickled and intrigued them on our way out of the house.
Twenty minutes later, I stepped off the treadmill and returned to the locker rooms. I showered, dressed, grabbed my cell phone and dialed.
Hortensia picked up immediately. “I missed you.”
Her liquid voice gargled in my ears.
CHAPTER 11
____________
Monday, October 13
The light was too bright. I groaned, rolled over, and sunk my face in the pillow. The ring went off one more time. A sleepy “Hello?” A pause. A drawled “No.” Silence, again. Where the hell am I? Rugged cotton brushed my face. I inhaled: turpentine, oil paints, charcoal, chalk, and paper. The salty scent of seashells. Catharsis.
I called Hortensia last night.
My brain slowly slid out of lethargy. I flinched. Brightly colored faces stared at me—blue, red, and gold. Black panthers with human eyes and lipless smiles; a tiger whose long body intertwined with that of a turquoise woman languidly seated on a purple sofa; toucans with vibrant feathers, a dolphin diving in a bright green sea. Naked bodies with cone-shaped breasts, large, dopey eyes, and fleshy lips.
I rolled over and faced Hortensia’s pale shoulders, the soft bulges of her spine drawing a sinuous line all the way down to the small of her back. I wrapped my fingers around the nape of her neck, her red hair fanning over the white pillows. “Hort,” I mumbled.
“Hmm.”
“What time is it?”
“Dunno. Can’t read the time on your phone.”
I shot up. “You answered my phone?” She turned—the hem of the sheets printed on her right cheek—and stared at me aloof, her parted lips an invitation to be devoured all over again.
“You wouldn’t answer the damn thing,” she scolded, rubbing her eyes. No point in asking why she didn’t pass me the phone. Whatever does not concern her, Hortensia does by inertia. When she even bothers.
I reached over to grab the mobile on the nightstand and snapped it open, surfing through the list of calls. Diane Kyle, the display informed me. Damn it. If sex is a catharsis, love is a catastrophe. I tossed the phone on the pillow and got out of bed, meandering through the stacks of painted canvases piled against the walls.
“Don’t step on my paintings!” she growled, pulling the sheets over.
“It’d help if you kept them all in one place!”
I’d met Hortensia years earlier at the opening of one of her exhibitions in Santa Monica. She stood in the middle of the gallery like a Greek goddess, her pearly white face a full moon crowned by red hair. All around her, vividly colored women lay abandoned in their men’s arms, watched over by wild animals with disturbingly human eyes. Over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, she asked me if I’d pose for one of her paintings. I was a street copper at the time, and though flattered, I told her I only posed in uniform. Art has never been my forte, yet that night we both drew and painted, our naked skins the canvas and our lips and fingers the paintbrushes.
Occasional lovers, Hortensia and I never were soul mates. It’s one of the constants in my life: skim through relationships like a surfer in rough seas, drifting from one buoy to the next while contemplating my solitude. It fits Hortensia’s personality as well, and neither of us ever complained.
“I finished your painting,” she told me as I stepped out of the shower.
“My painting?”
She padded to the kitchen and a minute later I smelled ground coffee. “The one I dedicated to you,” she said. “Check it out, it’s the one on the easel. Still thinking about a title.”
I walked over to the easel and stared at the painting while towel-drying my hair. A bright red woman with large emerald eyes lay on her side among lush green leaves, an ecstatic look about her face, her nipples and navel dappled with black stars. A cougar hovered from behind, its muzzle wedged between her left shoulder and neck.
“What’s the cougar doing?”
“Tasting her.”
“Wha—Hort, is this supposed to represent me?”
She chuckled, her laughter like water rushing down a creek. “You’re a predator, aren’t you?”
In the kitchen the coffee pot started gargling its brewing song. I slid on my pants, buttoned my shirt and tucked it into my waistband. The whole time, I kept my eyes glued on the bright red lady with emerald eyes, her smile oblivious to the beast about to banquet on her. A predator. I found mys
elf wondering, What does she taste like? Diane Kyle. Not in the way Hortensia meant. In a very different way. I closed my eyes, saw Diane’s neckline, and felt the urge to brush the tip of my tongue along her skin. Skim it down, sink in the secluded notch at the base of her throat, inhale her scent, and then lick my way up. To her lips. What would she taste like, I wondered.
You are a predator. Aren’t you?
* * *
I returned Diane’s call on my way to work. She informed me she had gathered a task force of experts from Trace, Photography, and Firearms, and she’d have some preliminary results for me the following day. Given how slow the scientific division had been in the past, I poured my enthusiasm over the news. My next call was from Satish, who whined about aches and soreness for a good five minutes and then told me the doc had just given him a slap on the back and the all-clear to return to full duty. He was eager to get started on the Tarantino double murder, except I had different plans.
“There’s Jerry White’s bail hearing at ten. I can’t go, but I thought you might—”
“Track,” he interjected. “You know how we roll in the LAPD. Experience before beauty. The bullet took a chunk of my lung, not the twelve years I got on you.”
I rolled my eyes. “And that’s why you should be talking to Gomez. Let me make a goddamn decision for once, ’kay? I want the White case.”
Silence.
“Did you just say Jerry White?”
“That’s what I said.”
I heard the sound of synapses crackling through his brain. “At ten in court. Will keep you posted.” And with that, he hung up.
Once at Parker Center, I met briefly with Cordelia, the Tarantinos’ daughter, a shaky twenty-year-old with brittle blonde hair and round, watery eyes. Through repressed sobs, the girl divulged the hardship of her first two years at Columbia, and how this tragedy was surely going to affect her grades. At least she had Tracy left—the yellow Labrador—and not all family was lost. Despite conducting the interview in one of the cubicles at the back of the squad room, when I saw her back to the elevator lobby I read it on the other detectives’ faces that her shrieks had been widely appreciated by the whole homicide table.
A detective from Homicide II shook his head and mumbled, “If there’s an afterlife, those two poor souls of her parents must be heart-warmed to see how concerned their daughter is that we catch their killer.”
His partner nudged him. “Don’t be too negative, Roy. The kiddo didn’t even ask how much she inherited.”
I snorted. “Course not. She saved that question for her accountant.”
I found a note from Nelson on my desk. It read: “Guess where the Tarantinos were the night they got murdered? Dan Horowitz’s mansion.” A string of five exclamation points followed.
Famous showman, singer and entertainer, occasionally improvised producer and even screenwriter, Dan H. Horowitz was one of those rich people who could afford to do anything, including publishing books. He owned a mansion in Bel Air where he hosted chums and foes alike so he could show off his two Ferraris, fine wines in his cellar, and an artificially rejuvenated wife. Last Saturday night the official excuse to dance and have fun was his daughter’s sixth birthday. Together with half of Hollywood, the list of partygoers included a good portion of L.A.’s lawyers and plastic surgeons, who, altogether, represented the showbiz’s warranty for a golden retirement. The reason escaped me, but it appeared that the Chromo CEO and executives had been among the privileged invitees as well.
I thought of what Diane had said: Whoever wanted them dead, knew how to get them at a vulnerable time. A party at the Horowitz residence could have easily reached over one hundred people. If the Tarantinos had been smooching all night, anybody could’ve guessed what their plans for the rest of the night were.
I spent the rest of the morning hunched over one of our terminals. On Jerry White’s Wikipedia page I found a link to the daughter’s obituary: Gaya Nicole White, October 19, 1999—January 3, 2008. She died at age eight, after a nine-month-long ordeal of chemotherapy and hospital stays. A battle lost to leukemia.
Former Mrs. White, British-born actress Hannah Kelson, married Jerry White in 1986. Rumors that the couple was expecting a child made their appearance in the tabloids in 1993, but it wasn’t until 1999 that the family actually expanded. I looked at the pictures posted on the web: a beautiful little girl, blonde, with large blue eyes. The disease was diagnosed in March 2007, and by then the cancer was already at an advanced stage. From the beginning there was little hope to save Gaya.
Whether or not he was a murderer, and whatever his motive, just staring at the child’s blue eyes put White under a completely new light. A lot of things didn’t quite add up, though: his wife and he had been divorced for five years now, and according to the various press releases, the separation had been consensual. No hard feelings on either side. I searched under the words “Kelson,” “Conrad,” and “affair,” but nothing came up, not even in the pettiest tabloids.
On the other hand, I found a wealth of information under Michael J. Conrad: there were countless articles on his eugenics statements backing up Graham’s sperm bank. After receiving the Nobel prize in 1989, the biochemistry professor became an advocate for selective breeding, giving talks and “raising awareness,” if one could call it so. None of this was mentioned on the Tate University website. Instead, the institution praised Conrad’s academic achievements, lauding the research that led to the Nobel recognition, the discovery of some important biochemical reaction—nothing to do with genetics. His passion for the DNA code and the possible ways of manipulating it dawned on him a few years later. He wrote editorials on how the human race was bound to see a decline in intelligence and only selective breeding could counteract it. Such statements fomented hatred and indignation among the public. People accused him of echoing Hitler and the Nazis. In 1996, at the peak of the debate, Tate University issued several statements in which the institution distanced itself from Conrad’s views. That same year, Conrad left Tate for two semesters. “Personal leave,” the university website claimed.
I mused over White and his ex-wife. Whether or not there had been a relationship between Conrad and Hannah Kelson, why would it incite a murderous rage now, after the divorce had long been settled? What was it to White, if his ex-wife slept with a sixty-three-year old professor? The director was likely under a lot of stress from the loss of his child. It had been over six months already, though. And the typical pattern in these scenarios saw the violence reverberate in the family. It would have been more predictable if White had shot his ex-wife instead. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made.
Detective Roy and his chatty partner walked past my computer station and out of the room, packs of cigarettes bulging from their pockets. Nicotine and caffeine, the only drugs one could legally abuse on the job. I followed their scents as they trailed out of the room, took a turn around the corner, swirled down the west wing, and drifted into the elevator lobby, soon replaced by a whiff of cheap aftershave. An annoyed look hanging from his pimpled face, Luke trotted into the squad room and slammed a piece of paper in Gomez’s inbox.
“Gomez is at White’s bail hearing, Luke,” I said. “What’d you leave him?”
He stopped and shot me a deep scowl. “The key to solve Conrad’s murder. Our line hasn’t been this hot in months. Forty-six tips—psychics, tarot readers, devout students who talked to the deceased’s soul—and twelve anonymous confessions in the past twenty-four hours alone, all twelve claiming the victim was a racist and the world will be better off without him. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear the phone ringing again.”
I mulled a few minutes longer, tapping a pen on my notebook. The hearing should be over by now. I reached the phone and dialed Satish’s number.
“What do you think of deputy district attorney Mark Auerbach, Track?” he asked. There was half a teaspoon of sour in his cocoa butter voice. From the vociferous background I guessed he’d just stepped
out of the D.A.’s office.
I pondered the question. “His eyes are set too deep and too far apart in his forehead to convey intelligence,” I replied. “He’s an asshole.” A large head grown atop a thick bush of rusty-gray beard, Mr. Auerbach loved to boss cops around and made it a point to always find a flaw in the cases we presented. If he didn’t have a one hundred percent certainty he was going to win the case, he didn’t bother.
“People are like wine, Track. Some age to be a Barolo, and some end up vinegar. Just watch what’s in your salad.”
“I hate salad. I’m a shameless carnivore.”
A sound between a snort and a grunt came out of his throat. “Auerbach dismissed the search warrants to White’s house and vehicles, slammed the new hire who signed them, and told Gomez that without any compelling evidence linking White to Conrad we have no case.” Satish heaved a sigh. As he walked out of the court, the loud conversations in the background were replaced by the growl of street traffic. “So, basically, we’re on a quest for motive.”
“We?”
The sour vanished from his voice. “I spoke to Gomez, Track. You wanted the case, and we got the case.”
“Excellent!”
Huxley, Tarantino, Conrad, and White: I didn’t know how or why, but something told me they were like dominoes lined one after the next. The first fell and the rest followed.
* * *
“My client is an award winning member of the Director Guild of America,” Satish said, mocking White’s lawyer. “And that asshole of Auerbach drank it all.”
