He had to assume that what Tabor and Delta Ann had told him wasn’t just a tale, that it was real and that it was the story. He opened a notebook. He didn’t understand Gentry, probably never would totally. But there were things he was certain of. She had been fascinated by weaknesses, base weaknesses, especially sex. She used it over people. It was also true she liked the spotlight. He remembered her outside the grand jury room, a big woman comfortable with her body, posing for the cameras, joking with the reporters. She liked to get leverage on people, perhaps blackmail them. When had that started? He snapped his fingers, remembering that her brother had not called back. He put that down on a list of priorities.
The primary focus of the day, however, was to get to Christine Evers, a.k.a., Dusk. She was the story. She was the anchor to this ladder he was building out of hell.
Ordinarily McCarthy would have gone down to superior court and pulled files as he had on Delta Porter. But he figured he’d try a shortcut. There were still some cops in headquarters he hadn’t offended in nearly fifteen years of investigative reporting. One was Sgt. Roger “Tinker” Thompson, who was second-in-command of the gang’s detail.
McCarthy knew communications lines between the various police departments were convoluted. He figured it was unlikely his request for information would raise flags in Fisk’s Homicide Division. With a little cajoling he got Thompson to pull the file on Larry Milk.
The road to Dusk didn’t begin with her criminal record, McCarthy reasoned, but with the Milkman’s. Milk had a long rap sheet, mostly minor stuff. He’d served three terms. Twice for burglary. Once for possession of crystal methamphetamine. He belonged to a bike gang called the Ospreys. McCarthy wrote down the Milkman’s last three addresses, thanked Thompson, and headed for his car.
The first two addresses were busts. In each case the Milkman had moved out in the middle of the night, leaving no forwarding address. There were no changes of addresses filed at the local post offices, either.
At noon, McCarthy turned the corner onto Farnsworth Street, looking for 612A. The street was an odd collection of older, single-family dwellings. Behind many of them the owners had erected small apartment buildings. He knew from past experience that 612A was probably one of these dumps. He slowed as he passed 598, peering ahead through the web of cars along the curb and in the driveways. A short man in a blue suit came around the corner of a house half a block ahead.
“Shit!” McCarthy hissed. “He’s on to it!”
Lt. Jerry Fisk paused in the middle of the lawn in front of 612 Farnsworth, hands on his hips, talking to two other detectives. McCarthy reached over in his seat to get a baseball cap, tugged it low over his forehead, then, as inconspicuously as he could, pulled into a driveway and turned around. In his rearview mirror he saw Fisk and the cops get into a tan sedan and open cups of coffee.
McCarthy stopped in the parking lot of a strip mall three blocks away and slammed his hand on the steering wheel. Fisk was sitting on the Milkman. Had his request with Thompson at the gang’s detail tipped Fisk? No matter. If Fisk got to Dusk first, the story of the hit would come out at a big news conference. No exclusive. No reincarnation for this blackballed reporter.
He rested his head on the steering wheel and looked for a way out. The Milkman had been in the joint three times. Unless he was a total idiot, he knew when he was being hunted. It was unlikely he’d return soon to Farnsworth Street unless he was absolutely desperate. Even then Fisk was assuming that Dusk would be with him.
There had to be another way! He went back over everything that Porter and Tabor had told him. It took him almost ten minutes, but suddenly there it was, a new angle. A longshot, but the only one he had.
McCarthy drove as fast as he could down to the courthouse and pulled the last case on Larry Milk, the one involving crystal meth. He jiggled his knee racing through the various court documents and filings until he found what he was looking for: a yellow envelope stapled to the inside back of the folder. A probation report. “Not For Public Review” was stamped on the cover in red ink. He paused a second to glance around at the various attorneys and legal searchers thumbing through their own cases. The clerks were too busy behind the counter to notice.
He slid a thumbnail under the staple and worked the envelope free. He opened the flap and slid out the yellow report. On the very last page of the seven-year-old report, fifth section down under the heading “Known Relatives,” the Milkman had listed his mother’s name and address. Laura Milk, 3345 Caminito La Bruja.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” McCarthy whispered as he hurried back to his car.
Her Plastic, Fantastic Proportions …
AS MCCARTHY PERFORMED VERBAL sacrifices to the spirits of the information highway, Prentice LaFontaine was rounding a corner in a swank canyon street on the west side of Los-Angeles. He prayed Thomas P. Whitney was right and that Patricia Sutcliff, the former Mrs. Sloan Burkhardt, had more dirt on the developer.
Sutcliffs home was a multilevel glass and redwood affair perched on the steep side of the canyon. A bridge led to the front door. He crossed it under a blazing sun that had cooked the L.A. ozone depleters into a lung-singeing mist. He plucked out an asthma inhaler, gave himself two puffs, and then knocked.
A Mexican maid answered and when he told her he was looking for Sutcliff, she arched her brow and slammed the door shut.
“Was it my breath?” News asked the bronze statue of Buddha on the porch.
He was about to knock again when the door swung open to reveal a classic post-thirty-five, remade California woman. “What do you want Patty for?” she demanded in a thick, humid voice.
Her skin had been drawn hyper taut at the neckline, her nose bobbed so the nostrils flared ever so slightly, her breasts newly meloned to cantaloupe proportions, her ass and thighs jackhammered free of cellulite, her teeth pearled whiter than vanilla; and her hair had been dyed the hue of dried dune grass, every strand perfectly arranged to effect a sense of disarray.
She sported denim shorts and red cowboy boots and an embroidered denim tank top. She wore owly red eyeglasses. LaFontaine supposed that the hetero swells at The Post would find her alluring. He thought it might be more profitable to stuff her into a neon orange bikini and a set of in-line roller skates, dip her in polyurethane, and sell her to Madame Tussaud’s to be used in a tableau entitled “Brentwood Plastic Surgeons Amok.”
“I just want to ask her some questions about her ex-husband,” News said, handing the woman his card.
She looked at it contemptuously. “Never heard of you. Why are you interested in Sloan? Has he done anything wrong? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“Not now, not that I know of,” LaFontaine replied. He was on the defensive here, a position he hated.
“Do you have the guts to go after him? Would you smear him if you got the goods?”
That threw him off. “Who the hell are you?”
“Answer the question!”
“If there’s dirt and it’s pertinent, I’ll report it.”
The woman’s expression softened. She leaned against the doorway, clicking together ruby red fingernails the size of horse tranquilizers. “You know, I ordinarily don’t allow strange men into my house, but since you’re looking to do a hatchet job on my ex, come in.”
“Patricia Sutcliff, I presume?”
“In the flesh.” The woman smiled.
Or the plastic, LaFontaine thought.
“Sorry for the bitch act,” she said, standing back to let him enter. “It’s just that Sloan sends up private detectives every once in a while to harass me. I’ve learned to deal with them.”
Sutcliff shut the door, crossed the foyer, and climbed the polished maple staircase rhythmically, so her hardened ass pistoned before LaFontaine’s eyes. Must women of a certain age always thrust? he asked himself. Scientifically he guessed it hormonal, though experience told him it was more likely a feminine gag reflex brought on by prolonged mirror bouts. He closed his eyes and imagined for a moment th
at this derriere was that of his wonderful new military friend, Brad Perkins. News drew in air quick and hard at the thought. Brad was such a boy!
Sutcliff took a right at the top of the landing. She led him through a door into a bedroom decorated in Laura Ashley and Patricia Sutcliff. There were photographs and collages of her on every wall. Here over the vanity was one of a miniature Ms. Sutcliff cradled in the coils of a painted python. There on the far wall her face and protuberances were partially hidden by pressed orchids. Above the bed a soft lenses photo of her, back to the lens, nude in the mist on a beach.
“My, my, aren’t we modest?” LaFontaine drawled.
She flopped on the bed, looked up at her naked self, and said: “I’m an artist, Prentice. I believe all artists project themselves into their art. I’m just blatant about it.”
She motioned him to a rocking chair hard by the bed. He sat stiffly, sniffing the air tainted with the pungent odor of rock concert.
“This is where I do my best thinking, my best art, usually high,” she said. “Though it sounds trite in the nineties, the herb lets my mind wander down interesting alleys.”
“I bet.”
She rolled away from him across a black-and-yellow bedspread, reached into a drawer, and drew out a manila folder. “Before we talk, you’ve got to agree that if you ever quote me you’ve got to include the fact that I’m the U.S. representative of the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka.”
“The Tamils? Oh, no, I wouldn’t dream of leaving that out.” He sneezed and flipped open the folder. Inside lay a series of glassy photographs of her artwork, another soft focus shot of her, this time not nude, and copies of clippings and a resume. This last item listed her experience as “collage artist, film producer, and international peace negotiator.”
The clippings hailed from obscure art and film newsletters. In each she was quoted in a tiny item about her activities on behalf of the peoples of Southeast India and Sri Lanka. There was no mention of any forthcoming film or show in an art gallery. At the back of the folder a photograph showed Patricia Sutcliff hugging a sullen Tamil man in a bamboo grove. She leaned forward, showing News her cantaloupes. “They deserve to be free of New Delhi!” she whispered. “They are the niggers of India.”
“Hmmn. I thought those were the untouchables?”
She tapped a finger on her lips. “Well, okay. They’re the Chicanos of India. They’re getting a raw deal, anyway. They deserve to be free.”
“Sure, anything, free,” LaFontaine replied, looking for a way to get the conversation back on course. “Free, just like you deserved to be free of Sloan Burkhardt?”
She rolled around and lay on her back. She rocked her head off the edge of the bed so she peered at him upside down. Her dark roots were beginning to show. She cooed, “Tell me, Prentice, are you one way or do you sashay on both sides of the street?”
Tabloid Witchery …
MCCARTHY CRUISED THE LENGTH of Caminito La Bruja four times before parking. He studied each car for evidence the place was under surveillance. He was suspicious of a white panel van two blocks away, but on his third pass a workman drove it off.
He parked, got out, and took inventory. Paint curlicues hung from the eaves of the homes where pigeons roosted and crapped and decried the lack of good grass seed. The homes were all unsightly, but 3345 won ugliest house on the street hands down. Putrid green shingles. The roof cowered under the whipping of gravity and neglect. Rotting plywood hung in several of the window frames. Sparse fiddle-headed grass stalks guffawed at what used to be a lawn. A thunderhead of flies buzzed around an open can of garbage near the one-car garage.
Society’s proctologist. Let’s slap on the rubber gloves.
He loosened his tie and lumbered up the driveway, freezing when he heard it. A cackle. Not a good thing to attend to when approaching a house in which the mother of a rogue biker named Milkman lives. A cackle again, then a ragged whistle, and a “Hee! Hee! Hee!”
Behind all this echoed the loose babble of morning television. He couldn’t tell from here—what with the odd fly peeling away from the thunderhead to attack him—whether that was Bob Barker demanding contestants guess the price of cruelty-free makeup, or Phil Donohue filleting a recalcitrant husband to the delight of the studio coliseum.
Another fly attacked. He ran to the door and rapped hard. She answered on the fourth series, cracking the door to peer out at him. “Leper Rape Spawns Monster Child,” she whispered to him. “Thirteen-Year-Old Performs Self-Caesarean with Can Opener, Names Baby Campbell’s Chicken Soup!”
The fetid odor of human waste wafted through the cracked door. McCarthy twisted from it, watching her sidelong, sucking in fresh air from the corner of his mouth. She chanted: “DOLLY PARTON SHOCKER! BOTCHED BREAST JOB TURNS BOOBS TO KNOTHOLES!”
Laura Milk was built like a puppy, sharpei puppy to be exact, the folds in her face cast in shades of stale ginger root and cinnamon. Her bizarre grin doubled the disconcerting effect of a pair of viciously inane eyes spinning below the flotsam of hair dyed violet. She clutched too low a once-pink bathrobe, now stained with liquids McCarthy did not care to identify. He fought off the gag reflex by focusing on the door.
“Mrs. Milk?”
“ALIENS OFFER TO REVIVE JFK, LENIN, AND DISNEY FROM DEEP FREEZE,” she announced.
“Mrs. Milk, I’m looking for Christine Evers,” McCarthy said.
She thought about that a moment. “TINKERS TO EVERS TO CHANCE! TEXAS CULT WORSHIPS GREAT DOUBLEPLAY COMBO.”
“Mrs. Milk, I’m a reporter. I’m looking for Dusk. I’m told she comes and helps you.”
Her expression turned rational. “Reporter? Do you know Jeanne Dixon?”
“No, ma’am.”
She floated again. “JEANNE DIXON PREDICTS ZANY SEX HIGH JINKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE: HILLARY CLINTON IN LOVE TRYST WITH RUSH LIMBAUGH.”
He tried another tack. “Do you ever see your son, Larry?”
She puffed her lips and her eyes came unscrewed. “NO GOOD SON DEFRAUDS HELPLESS MOMMY!”
“Could you repeat that?”
A thin line of spittle drooled from the corner of her mouth. “NO GOOD SON DEFRAUDS HELPLESS MOMMY,” she repeated. She made a sound like a sledgehammer hitting a tin roof, then howled: “TONIGHT ON ‘A CURRENT AFFAIR!’ ”
“What about his friend, the one who helps you?”
“SEX SLAVE KEPT ALIVE IN BASEMENT. HER STORY WILL SHOCK YOU!”
“She’s in the basement?”
She raised a finger skyward. “Work for the Enquirer, sonny?”
“No ma’am, The Post.”
“Too bad, I know all about Jacky Hoffa and Elvis.”
He decided to humor her. “Tell me, Mrs. Milk.”
She looked both ways, batted her eyes twice, then picked up the hem of her bathrobe and whined in a little girl’s voice: “MUUURDEERRR!! MUUUURDERRRRR!!!!”
She jigged in place, her gray breasts slapping her chest. “MUUUURDERRRR!”
A fly rebounded inside the reporter’s slack mouth. He spit it out, coughing: “Yes, ma’am. I believe it, too.”
“Got your story then, sonny boy!” she snapped, suddenly angry. “Bye-bye. Eleven o’clock. Time for ‘Hard Copy.’ ”
The door slammed. Over the yip and keen of the television it came again, the cackle and the “Hee, Hee, Hee!” and then a screeching: “MUMMIFICATION! ANCIENT EGYPT OFFERS LAURA MILK HOPE OF AFTERLIFE!”
McCarthy’s stomach roiled again at the stench that boiled behind her. The flies tore about his head, looking for the source of the vile odor. He backed away from the house, got his breath, and almost left. When his head cleared he decided to go around to find an entrance to the basement.
Several pigeons flushed when he opened the gate. A mangy orange cat leapt from the empty pool, charged across the patio, and vaulted the back fence. Old blankets and what appeared to be black trash bags hung on the inside of the windows. No basement bulkhead. He knelt down, ripping away at a tangle of vines. A crawl spac
e. No basement at all. Just a back door under a portico of sorts. He felt vulnerable here, wondering what the Milkman might say if he caught him slinking around his demented mother’s backyard.
He was turning to leave when he noticed it, a footprint in the dirt beyond the portico. A narrow footprint of a woman’s shoe with a small heel. A woman had come through this door lately, probably in high heels. Laura Milk was in no condition to manage high heels. He smiled to himself. “I’ve got you, Dusk.”
He looked at his watch. Two-thirty. He had to be at the cop shop in half an hour. He glanced at the footprint again. He thought of Charley Owens. He thought of Carlos and Miriam. He thought of Claudette X and Ed Tower and Connor Lawlor, then made his decision. He wasn’t going to work night cops tonight. He wanted out of this limbo. Get the story or lose the job. One way or another it would be over after tonight.
He crossed back to his car and got it turned around so he could see 3345 Caminito La Bruja. He prayed to the spirits of the information highway that sometime in the next twenty-four hours Christine Evers, a.k.a. Dusk, would play whore with a heart of gold and come to change the diapers of a senile crone obsessed with yellow journalism.
Keeping the Weirdness at Bay …
PRENTICE LAFONTAINE STARED IN abject horror at the woman writhing obscenely on the bed in front of him.
“Well?” demanded Patricia Sutcliff. “Do you, or don’t you?”
“Perish the thought, Ms. Sutcliff,” Prentice LaFontaine replied. “To even sit here in the, er, rampant femininity of your boudoir gives me the heebies.”
“Too bad,” she sighed, and stilled her squirming hips. “Aside from good herb, I’ve found afternoon sex promotes profound creativity.”
“To think it! I chat with a female Georges Simenon.”
She grinned. “My theory is that engorgement draws blood down from the brain. Orgasm is a moment of anoxia, complete deprivation of oxygen. When the air comes back the brain’s fire is hot. Art results.”
“That why so many snooze afterward?”
Hard News Page 16
