He had lost his parents in a plane crash at the age of four and had been brought up by a baffled grandmother who tried to assure everyone—and herself—that down deep he was a good boy. But he wasn’t. He was a bad boy. When I asked him if he remembered his mother, he leered and told me she looked like a real piece of ass in the pictures he had seen. It wasn’t defensive posturing. It was really him.
The more time I spent with him, the more discouraged I grew. It was like peeling an onion and finding each inner layer more rotten than the last. He was a bad boy, irredeemably so. Most likely, he would get worse.
And there was nothing I could do. There was little doubt he would end up establishing an anti-social career. If society was lucky, it would be limited to con games. If not, a lot of blood would be shed. Logic dictated that he should be locked up, kept out of harm’s way, incarcerated for the protection of the rest of us. But democracy said otherwise, and, on balance, I had to admit it shouldn’t be any other way.
Still, there were nights when I thought of that eleven-year-old and wondered if I’d be seeing his name in the papers one day.
I set the nine files aside.
Milo would have more of his work cut out for him.
10
THREE DAYS of the old wear-down-the-shoe-leather routine had worn Milo down.
“The computer was a total bust,” he lamented, flopping down on my leather sofa. “All of those bastards are either back in the joint, dead, or alibied. The coroner’s report has no forensic magic for us. Just six and a half pages of gory details telling us what we knew the first time we saw the bodies: Handler and Gutierrez were hacked up like sausage filler.”
I brought him a beer, which he drained in two long gulps. I brought him another.
“What about Handler? Anything on him?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, you were definitely right in your initial impression. The guy was no Mr. Ethical. But it doesn’t lead anywhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“Six years ago, when he was doing hospital consultations, there was a bit of a stink—insurance fraud. Handler and some others were running a little scam. They’d peek their heads in for a second, say hello to a patient, and bill it as a full visit, which I take it is supposed to be forty-five or fifty minutes long. Then they’d make a note in the chart, bill for another visit, talk to the nurse, another visit, talk to the doctor, etc., etc. It was big bucks—one guy could put in for thirty, forty visits a day, at seventy, eighty bucks a visit. Figure it out.”
“No surprise. It’s done all the time.”
“I’m sure. Anyway, it blew wide open because one of the patients had a son who was a doctor, and he started to get suspicious, reading the chart, seeing all these psychiatric visits. Especially ’cause the old man had been unconscious for three months. He griped to the medical director, who called Handler and the others in on the carpet. They kept it quiet, on the condition that the crooked shrinks leave.”
Six years ago. Just before Handler’s notes had started to get slipshod and sarcastic. It must have been hard going from four hundred grand a year to a measly one hundred. And having to actually work for it. A man could get bitter …
“And you don’t see an angle in that?”
“What? Revenge? From whom? It was insurance companies that were getting bilked. That’s how they kept it going so long. They never billed the patients, just billed insurance.” He took a swig of beer. “I’ve heard bad things about insurance companies, pal, but I can’t see them sending around Jack the Ripper to avenge their honor.”
“I see what you mean.”
He got up and paced the room.
“This goddamn case sucks. It’s been a week and I’ve got absolutely zilch. The captain sees it as a dead end. He’s pulled Del off and left me with the whole stinking mess. Tough breaks for the faggot.”
“Another beer?” I held one out to him.
“Yeah, goddammit, why not? Drown it all in suds.” He wheeled around. “I tell you, Alex, I should have been a schoolteacher. Viet Nam left me with this big psychic hole, you know? All that death for nothing. I thought becoming a cop would help me fill that hole, catch bad guys, make some sense out of it all. Jesus, was I wrong!”
He grabbed the Coors out of my hand, tilted it over his mouth, and let some of the foam dribble down his chin.
“The things that I see—the monstrous things that we supposed humans do to each other. The shit I’ve become inured to. Sometimes it makes me want to puke.”
He drank silently for a few minutes.
“You’re a goddamn good listener, Alex. All that training wasn’t for naught.”
“One good turn, my friend.”
“Yeah, right. Now that you mention it, Hickle was another shitty case. I never convinced myself that was suicide. It stunk to high heaven.”
“You never told me.”
“What’s to tell? I’ve no evidence. Just a gut feeling. I’ve got lots of gut feelings. Some of them gnaw at me and keep me up at night. To paraphrase Del, my gut feelings and ten cents.”
He crushed the empty can between his thumb and forefinger, with the ease of someone pulverizing a gnat.
“Hickle stunk to high heaven, but I had no evidence. So I wrote it off. Like a bad debt. No one argued, no one gave a shit, just like no one’ll give a shit when we write off Handler and the Gutierrez girl. Keep the records tidy, wrap it up, seal it, and kiss it good-bye.”
Seven more beers, another half-hour of ranting and punishing himself, and he was stoned drunk. He crashed on the leather sofa, going down like a B-52 with a bellyful of shrapnel.
I slipped his shoes off and placed them on the floor beside him. I was about just to leave him that way, when I realized it had turned dark.
I called his home number. A deep, rich male voice answered.
“Hello.”
“Hello, this is Alex Delaware, Milo’s friend.”
“Yes?” Wariness.
“The psychologist.”
“Yes. Milo’s spoken of you. I’m Rick Silverman.”
The doctor, the mother’s dream, now had a name.
“I just called to let you know that Milo stopped by here after work to discuss a case and he got kind of—intoxicated.”
“I see.”
I felt an absurd urge to explain to the man at the other end that there was really nothing going on between Milo and me, that we were just good friends. I suppressed it.
“Actually, he got stoned. Had eleven beers. He’s sleeping it off now. I just wanted you to know.”
“That’s very considerate of you,” Silverman said, acidly.
“I’ll wake him, if you’d like.”
“No, that’s quite all right. Milo’s a big boy. He’s free to do as he pleases. No need to check in.”
I wanted to tell him, listen you insecure, spoiled brat, I just called to do you a favor, to set your mind at ease. Don’t hand me any of your delicate indignation. Instead, I tried flattery.
“Okay, just thought I’d call you to let you know, Rick. I know how important you are to Milo, and I thought he’d want me to.”
“Uh, thanks. I really appreciate it.” Bingo. “Please excuse me. I’ve just come off a twenty-four-hour shift myself.”
“No problem.” I’d probably woken the poor devil. “Listen, how about if we get something some time—you and Milo and my girlfriend and myself?”
“I’d like that, Alex. Sure. Send the big slob home when he sobers up and we’ll work out the details.”
“Will do. Good talking to you.”
“Likewise.” He sighed. “Goodnight.”
At nine thirty Milo awoke with a wretched look on his face. He started to moan, turning his head from side to side. I mixed tomato juice, a raw egg, black pepper, and Tabasco in a tall glass, propped him up and poured it down his throat. He gagged, sputtered, and opened his eyes suddenly, as if a bolt of lightning had zapped him in the tailbone.
Forty minutes later he looked every bi
t as wretched but he was painfully sober.
I got him to the door and stuck the files of the nine psychopaths under his arm.
“Bedtime reading, Milo.”
He tripped down the stairs, swearing, made his way to the Fiat, groped at its door handle and threw himself in with a single lurching movement. With the aid of a rolling start, he got it ignited.
Alone at last, I got into bed, read the Times, watched TV—but damned if I could tell you what I saw, other than that it had lots of flat punch lines and jiggling boobs and cops who looked like male models. I enjoyed the solitude for a couple of hours, only pausing to think of murder and greed and twisted evil minds a few times before drifting off to sleep.
11
“ALL RIGHT,” said Milo. We were sitting in an interrogation room at West L.A. Division. The walls were pea-green paint and one-way mirrors. A microphone hung from the ceiling. The furniture consisted of a gray metal table and three metal folding chairs. There was a stale odor of sweat and falsehood and fear in the air, the stink of diminished human dignity.
He had fanned out the folders on the table and picked up the first one with a flourish.
“Here’s the way your nine bad guys shape up. Number one, Rex Allen Camblin, incarcerated at Soledad, assault and battery.” He let the folder drop.
“Number two, Peter Lewis Jefferson, working on a ranch in Wyoming. Presence verified.”
“Pity the poor cattle.”
“That’s a fact—he looked like a likely one. Number three, Darwin Ward—you’ll never believe this—attending law school, Pennsylvania State University.”
“A psychopathic attorney—not all that amazing, really.”
Milo chuckled and picked up the next folder.
“Número cuatro—uh—Leonard Jay Helsinger, working construction on the Alaska pipeline. Location likewise confirmed by Juneau P.D. Five, Michael Penn, student at Cal State Northridge. Him we talk to.” He put Penn’s file aside. “Six, Lance Arthur Shattuck, short-order cook on the Cunard Line luxury cruiser Helena, verified by the Coast Guard to have been floating around in the middle of the Aegean Sea somewhere for the past six weeks. Seven, Maurice Bruno, sales representative for Presto Instant Print in Burbank—another interviewee.” Bruno’s file went on top of Penn’s.
“Eight, Roy Longstreth, pharmacist for Thrifty’s Drug chain, Beverly Hills branch. Another one. And—last but not least—Gerard Paul Mendenhall, Corporal, United States Army, Tyler, Texas, presence verified.”
Beverly Hills was closer than either Northride or Burbank, so we headed for Thrifty’s. The Beverly Hills branch turned out to be a brick-and-glass cube on Canon Drive just north of Wilshire. It shared a block with trendy boutiques and a Häagen Dazs ice-cream parlor.
Milo showed his badge surreptitiously to the girl behind the liquor counter and got the manager, a light-skinned middle-aged black, in seconds flat. The manager got nervous and wanted to know if Longstreth had done anything wrong. In classic cop style, Milo hedged.
“We just want to ask him a few questions.”
I had trouble keeping a straight face through that one, but the cliché seemed to satisfy the manager.
“He’s not here now. He comes on at two-thirty, works the night shift.”
“We’ll be back. Please don’t tell him we were here.”
Milo gave him his card. When we left he was studying it like a map to buried treasure.
The ride to Northridge was a half-hour cruise on the Ventura Freeway West. When we got to the Cal State campus, we headed straight for the registrar’s office. Milo obtained a copy of Michael Penn’s class schedule. Armed with that and his mug shot, we located him in twenty minutes, walking across a wide, grassy triangle accompanied by a girl.
“Mr. Penn?”
“Yes?” He was a good-looking fellow, medium height, with broad shoulders and long legs. His light brown hair was cut preppy short. He wore a light blue Izod shirt and blue jeans, penny loafers with no socks. I knew from his file that he was twenty-six but he looked five years younger. He had a pleasant, unlined face, a real All-American type. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d try to run someone down with a Pontiac Firebird.
“Police.” Again, the badge. “We’d like to talk to you for a few moments.”
“What about?” The hazel eyes narrowed and the mouth got tight.
“We’d prefer to talk to you in private.”
Penn looked at the girl. She was young, no more than nineteen, short, dark, with a Dorothy Hamill wedge cut.
“Give me a minute, Julie.” He chucked her under the chin.
“Mike …?”
“Just a minute.”
We left her standing there and walked to a concrete area furnished with stone tables and benches. Students moved by as if on a treadmill. There was little standing around. This was a commuter campus. Many of the students worked part-time jobs and squeezed classes in during their spare time. It was a good place to get your B.A. in computer science or business, a teaching credential or a master’s in accounting. If you wanted fun or leisurely intellectual debates in the shade of an ivy-encrusted oak, forget it.
Michael Penn looked furious but he was working hard at concealing it.
“What do you want?”
“When’s the last time you saw Dr. Morton Handler?”
Penn threw back his head and laughed. It was a disturbingly hollow sound.
“That asshole? I read about his death. No loss.”
“When did you see him last?”
Penn was smirking now.
“Years ago, officer.” He made the title sound like an insult. “When I was in therapy.”
“I take it you didn’t think much of him.”
“Handler? He was a shrink.” As if that explained it.
“You don’t think much of psychiatrists.”
Penn held out his hands, palms up.
“Hey listen. That whole thing was a big mistake. I lost control of my car and some paranoid idiot claimed I tried to kill him with it. They busted me, railroaded me and then they offered me probation if I saw a shrink. Gave me all those garbage tests.”
Those garbage tests included the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and a handful of projectives. Though far from perfect, they were reliable enough when it came to someone like Penn. I had read his MMPI profile and psychopathy oozed from every index.
“You didn’t like Dr. Handler?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth.” Penn lowered his voice. He moved his eyes back and forth, restless, jumpy. Behind the handsome face was something dark and dangerous. Handler hadn’t misdiagnosed this one.
“You did like him.” Milo played with him like a gaffed stingray.
“I didn’t like him or dislike him. I had no use for him. I’m not crazy. And I didn’t kill him.”
“You can account for your whereabouts the night he was murdered?”
“When was that?”
Milo gave him the date and time.
Penn cracked his knuckles and looked through us as if zeroing in on a distant target.
“Sure. That entire night I was with my girl.”
“Julie?”
Penn laughed.
“Her? No. I’ve got a mature woman, officer. A woman of means.” His brow creased and his expression changed from smug to sour. “You’re going to have to talk to her, aren’t you?”
Milo nodded his head.
“That’ll screw things up for me.”
“Gee, Mike, that’s really too bad.”
Penn threw him a hateful look, then changed it to bland innocence. He could play his face like a deck of cards, shuffling, palming from the bottom, coming up with a new number every second.
“Listen, officer, that whole incident is behind me. I’m holding down a job, going to school—I’m getting my degree in six months. I don’t want to get messed up because my name’s in Handler’s files.”
He sounded like Wally on “Leave It to Beaver”—all earnest
innocence. Gosh, Beave …
“We’ll have to verify your alibi, Mike.”
“Okay, okay, do it. Just don’t tell her too much, okay? Keep it general.”
Keep it general so I can fabricate something. You could see the gears spinning behind the high, tan forehead.
“Sure, Mike.” Milo took his pencil out and tapped it on his lips.
“Sonya Magary. She owns the Puff ’n’ Stuff Children’s Boutique in the Plaza de Oro in Encino.”
“Have you got the number handy?” Milo asked pleasantly.
Penn clenched his jaws and gave it to him.
“We’ll call her, Mike. Don’t you call her first, okay? We treasure spontaneity.” Milo put away his pencil and closed his notepad. “Have a nice day, now.”
Penn looked from me to Milo, then back to me, as if seeking an ally. Then he got up and walked away in long, muscular strides.
“Oh, Mike!” Milo called.
Penn turned around.
“What are you getting your degree in?”
“Marketing.”
As we left the campus we could see him walking with Julie. Her head was on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. He was smiling down on her and talking very fast.
“What do you think?” Milo asked as he settled behind the wheel.
“I think he’s innocent as far as this case goes, but I’ll bet you he’s got some kind of dirty deal going on. He was really relieved when he found out what we were there for.”
Milo nodded.
“I agree. But what the hell—that’s someone else’s headache.”
We got back on the freeway, heading east. We exited in Sherman Oaks, found a little French place on Ventura near Woodman and had lunch. Milo used the pay phone to call Sonya Magary. He came back to the table, shaking his head.
“She loves him. ’That dear boy, that sweet boy, I hope he’s not in trouble.’” He imitated a thick Hungarian accent. “She verifies he was with her on the fateful night. Sounds proud of it. I expected her to tell me about their sex life—in Technicolor.”
He shook his head and buried his face in a plate of steamed mussels.
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