“I don’t know his name. Not the bad one. The other one—the one in the army.”
“We were told he was in the Marine Corps.”
Ramesh shrugged. “Okay.”
“And you mentioned the other brother, the one you just called ‘the bad one.’ What was their relationship like?”
“He was afraid of him. When they were kids, he used to beat Grant up. When he was out of jail, sometimes he’d just come by and say he was spending the night. Grant never argued with him about it.”
“What about you? You meet him?”
“A couple times, but any time he showed up, I’d leave. I didn’t like him very much.”
Jarsdel allowed a commiserating smile. “I don’t blame you. What else can you tell us? What was Grant like socially? Did he like to get high?”
“He smoked a little.”
“Marijuana?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing stronger?”
“No, just that.”
“Ever join him?”
Ramesh hesitated.
“We’re just trying to get a sense of his lifestyle. You’re not gonna get in any trouble. Legal now anyway, isn’t it?”
“Okay,” said Ramesh. “Sometimes.”
Jarsdel nodded. “Back to the dirt. Did you have an exclusive arrangement with Mr. Wolin, or was he free to sell it wherever he wanted?”
“We didn’t have a contract or anything. I think he tried to get Ripley’s interested in it, but no luck. Oh, and Hollywood Museum and Cinema Legacy Museum. They weren’t interested either.”
“Is there any other place you know of that did decide to deal with him?”
“No. Sometimes he’d just set up a stand somewhere. He liked the spot in front of Cinema Legacy, but the owner would complain to the police, and he’d have to move. Didn’t matter that he had a street vendor’s license. They’d always come up with a reason for him to go. His stand was too big, or he was blocking foot traffic.” He considered. “It wasn’t an easy life. You know, dangerous. He didn’t have any protection. One time, I was working the ticket counter, and he came running over to tell me he’d just been attacked. Some guy in front of the theater flipped over his cart and broke all his jars. And when Grant called the police, they didn’t come.”
Jarsdel made a note to talk to the owner of the Cinema Legacy Museum. “Was it the only way he made a living?”
“He also advertised for Fantasy Tours.”
“What’s that? One of those bus tours of celebrities’ homes?”
“Yeah. This one is mostly for the Chinese market. He even learned a couple words in Mandarin so he could attract customers. But he didn’t lead the tours, just advertised.”
“Where’d he advertise?”
“He’d walk the Boulevard, hand out flyers.”
Jarsdel nodded, copying down the information about Fantasy Tours and adding a note to contact Wolin’s employer. “And how long had he been doing that?”
“Only about two weeks. Before that, he worked for another company. I think…maybe…the Hollywood Experience. Something like that.”
“What’s that, another tour company?”
“Yes.”
Jarsdel wrote it down, and Morales picked up the questioning. “Did Mr. Wolin own a gun?”
Ramesh looked surprised. “I don’t think so.”
“Never went shooting or anything like that?”
“No. He liked shooting in games, but not in real life.”
“If I were to tell you we found a red quarter in his apartment, would that mean anything to you?”
“I’m sorry, a what?”
“A quarter that was painted red.”
Jarsdel could see by the expression on his face that Morales’s question had truly puzzled Ramesh. The quarter was a vital piece of evidence, one they were holding back from the media so that only the investigators and the killer would know about it. But both he and Morales had agreed it was equally important that they learn its significance and that saying they’d found it in Wolin’s apartment was a safe way to broach the subject.
“No, sir,” said Ramesh. “I have no idea.”
Morales pursed his lips in thought. He nodded to Jarsdel to resume his questions.
“I know it was a few weeks ago, but do you recall seeing Grant on October 2? That would’ve been a Thursday.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t. Was that the day he was killed?”
“Sometime between the second and the third, yes. We’re trying to put together a timeline of his last few hours.”
Ramesh looked up and wrinkled his forehead as he strained to remember. Finally, he shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“He didn’t mention plans to meet anyone? Could have been a business meeting, something social… Anything come to mind?”
“It’s hard to say,” said Ramesh. “I mean, like I said, he was always wanting to make money, to expand his business. It’s possible he was going around to the souvenir shops to see if they were interested, but I don’t know for sure.”
Jarsdel didn’t have any more questions, and he glanced over at Morales. The other detective gave a single shake of his head, and Jarsdel turned back to Ramesh. “Is there anything else you can tell us? Something maybe we forgot to ask that you feel is important?”
Ramesh said there wasn’t, and the detectives concluded the interview.
* * *
Grant Wolin’s funeral was held the next day at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. His brother Eric—in formal military dress—had received special leave to be present, but not Lawrence, who remained in lockdown after fighting with another inmate. Both detectives attended the service just in case a new suspect might emerge from the crowd of mourners, but they could tell immediately that their hopes were in vain. Only three people besides Eric—Ramesh, his sister, and their uncle—had shown up. There was a brief, twenty-minute service, then Wolin’s ashes were interred in a columbarium.
After the Ramjoo family had departed, the detectives introduced themselves to Eric Wolin. He looked like a stronger, healthier version of his late brother and stood with a soldier’s iron bearing.
“Sorry for your loss,” said Morales, shaking the man’s hand.
Eric nodded. His eyes were dry, but his jaw trembled as he spoke. “What’s happening with the investigation?”
“We’re making progress,” said Jarsdel. “Is there anything you can tell us that could help?”
“So what you’re actually saying is you don’t have any idea who did this.”
“We don’t have any suspects yet, no. Your brother seems to have been a well-liked man. He didn’t move in large social circles, but the friends he did have spoke very highly of him.” Friend, Jarsdel mentally corrected himself. Just the one friend.
Eric grunted. “You should check out the drug scene. Brother was a major pothead. Lotta lowlifes.”
“We’ll look into it,” Jarsdel lied. Lowlifes put an elbow through your car window to get at the change in your ashtray or rummaged through trash bins, hunting for credit card offers. What they didn’t do was kidnap you, cook you alive, and pose your naked corpse on Hollywood Boulevard.
“There’s one thing we’re wondering about,” said Morales. “We found a red quarter among your brother’s things. Any idea what that was for?”
“A red quarter?”
“Painted red, yeah.”
“Don’t some apartment managers use them? For the laundry?”
Morales nodded. “That’s right. But can you think of any reason your brother would have one?”
“Why? Is it important?”
“Probably nothing. We’re just following up on everything we can.”
They spoke for a few more minutes, covering much the same ground as they had with Ramesh. No, Eric didn’t know of anyone who’d have wanted to hurt Gr
ant. He was a nice guy, and everybody liked him. Eric reiterated his belief that Wolin’s death had something to do with LA’s drug culture. The detectives thanked him, exchanged contact information, and headed to their car. On the way, they passed Mel Blanc’s tombstone. Beneath a Star of David was the epitaph, “That’s all folks.”
“How’re we doing with those shell casings? Anything yet?” Jarsdel asked.
“I told you. Three days at least, and that’s a rush job. You really think they have anything to do with it?”
“It’s the only thing in the apartment that doesn’t fit.”
They reached the car. As Morales lowered himself into the driver’s seat, he clipped his knee on the steering wheel and gasped in pain. “Jesus. Goddamn it.”
“You okay?”
Morales waved him off. They pulled out of the lot and onto Santa Monica Boulevard, where they hit a traffic jam. Morales rubbed at his knee, and Jarsdel could see that despite the car’s air conditioning, a light sheen of sweat had broken out on the other man’s brow.
“Go ahead and ask,” said Morales. “Looks like we’re gonna be here awhile.”
“It’s none of my business,” said Jarsdel.
“It’s okay. We’re partners.”
“All right. So what happened to your legs?”
Morales thought for a moment, then asked, “You know what a ghost call is?”
Jarsdel didn’t. “Sounds familiar.”
“So this is when I was back in patrol, about ten years ago. I’m working out of Valley Bureau at the time, and my partner and me—You know Peter Van Hook? I think he transferred to Professional Standards down at the PAB.”
Jarsdel shook his head.
“Anyway,” Morales went on, “it’s like three in the morning, and we get a call from dispatch. It’s a bad one—caller says she’s being chased down the 900 block of Saticoy by a guy with a kitchen knife. She’s already been stabbed and thinks she might be bleeding to death. So we hit it, and since we’re already on Roscoe, we make it there inside of two minutes. And we’re lookin’ around and lookin’ around, and there’s nothing. We can’t find this girl. We double-check with dispatch to make sure we got the street right, and they say we did. We each get out and start jogging up and down the block with our Maglites. Nothing. No blood on the sidewalk, nothing out of place, just a quiet street. We check in with dispatch again, see if anyone else is reporting this, you know? I mean, girl getting chased down the street by a guy with a knife, and she’s screaming; she’s gonna attract some attention. But again, nothing. We’re about to wrap it up and just circle the block a few times in case we missed something when Pete spots a house with the door open. The metal security door is still closed, but the front door—the wood door—is open, and we can see the TV flickering inside. Rest of the house is totally dark.”
Morales paused to make a left on Western. He cleared his throat and continued. “Pete says we should ask the guy inside if he’s heard anything, so we approach, not thinking anything of it. I’m in front, so I knock. It’s loud, pounding on the metal like that at three in the morning, but no one answers. I identify myself and knock again. Then, all of a sudden, boom!—someone fires both barrels of a 12-gauge through the fuckin’ door. I take it right across my legs. Lucky I didn’t get my dick shot off. Anyway, I go down hard, and Pete’s shouting, and there’s another couple shots, and I black out. When I wake up, I’m in ICU.”
Jarsdel didn’t know what to say, and Morales continued.
“My wife and I used to dance. Bachata. You know bachata? Fridays at Club Bahia with a live band. I was good. I know I’m big now, but a lot of that’s only ’cause it’s hard to exercise. I was never a string bean, but I was fit, solid. And I could move.”
“Who was the shooter?” Jarsdel asked.
“Some old guy. Dementia. Shouldn’t’ve been living alone like that. And Pete had to take him out. Didn’t know the shotgun was empty by then, and the guy wouldn’t put it down. Whole thing shows you, you never know what’s behind that door. Here we are, thinking we’re gonna have a friendly chat with a citizen, and then I’m on disability leave three and a half months. Almost didn’t make it back.”
“But what about the call?” asked Jarsdel. “Was it some kind of setup?”
Morales shook his head. “Whoever made it had no way of knowing we’d pick that house. No, I still have no idea. We never did figure it out. Fuckin’ ghost call. Changed our lives, though, both me and Pete. You never know what you’re gonna sacrifice for this job till the moment it happens.”
* * *
By the time he made it back to Park La Brea, Jarsdel was exhausted. Something about the funeral service, followed by Morales’s story, made him feel emotionally drained. He wanted to do nothing more than curl around a bottle of wine for the rest of the night with a new slack-key album he’d bought. He had a Meiomi pinot noir in one hand and an opener in the other when his cell phone buzzed. He unclipped it and checked the display. It was a text from his father, asking if he could come at seven instead of six-thirty. Jarsdel stared in puzzlement for a moment, then groaned. His dads were having a dinner party for some of their academic friends, and Jarsdel had forgotten he’d promised to drop by.
“Shit.” He was tempted to text back and cancel but knew they’d probably been looking forward to seeing him all week. At least Dad had been. He wasn’t as sure about Baba.
Jarsdel put the bottle of Meiomi back in the closet under the stairs, where it would remain cool, and changed out of his work clothes. He put on a burgundy, fitted T-shirt Dad had bought him at Tankfarm & Co. in Seal Beach. It clung to his thin upper body, accentuating his slight, ungainly physique, but Dad would be so happy he’d thought to wear it. He left his gun and badge in his nightstand drawer and headed out, steeling himself for the crosstown drive.
There’s no good way to get from the Fairfax District to Pasadena, even at the best of times, and this was five thirty on a weeknight. Jarsdel pressed southward until he hit the freeway, then crept along until he finally reached the 110 interchange. By the time he got off at Fair Oaks, he’d been on the road the better part of two hours. He’d had Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Masters on repeat the whole way, but not even Ray Kane and Cyril Pahinui could stop him feeling tense and agitated when he pulled in front of his parents’ house.
It was a two-story Craftsman bungalow, built in 1915 by the Greene & Greene firm, and was listed as a tour stop on the city of Pasadena’s website. It had also been in the Jarsdel family for three generations. The sight of the old house helped calm him down a little after the hellish drive. It was a part of him, that house, and growing up an only child in a neighborhood with no other kids, it had often been his sole friend. One day, it would probably be his, if his parents didn’t disown him.
Jarsdel made his way up the curving brick walk to the front door and rang the bell.
* * *
Robert Jarsdel, professor emeritus of English literature at USC, had recently gotten into Moroccan cooking. That night’s dinner had been prepared in a tagine, the conical clay cooking vessel, an apparatus so tall that it scraped the top of the house’s old oven. What emerged was a kind of lamb and rice stew, and Robert had somehow managed to overcook the lamb and undercook the rice. The result was a dish that was both chewy and crunchy, but neither Jarsdel’s parents nor their other guests seemed to notice. The wine, however, was good—a potent Rombauer zin that made up for the experimental cuisine. Jarsdel had put away two glasses before reminding himself he still had to make it all the way back across town.
“Like some more?” asked Robert, threatening Jarsdel’s plate with a heaping spoonful of stew. He was handsome, in his late sixties, and a man whose coiffed silver hair and black horn-rimmed spectacles made him look like a B-movie scientist.
“Mm,” said Jarsdel. “Maybe just a little.”
Besides Robert and his husband—Professor D
arius Jahangir—and Jarsdel himself, there were only two others at the table. He knew one of them. Richie Berman, a longtime friend of his parents who taught screenwriting at USC. Berman, in his fifties but as strong and fit as a college linebacker, had been in earnest conversation with an enormous, red-bearded man since Jarsdel entered. The beard was a showpiece, thick and luxuriant, an ordered companion to the mass of curls erupting from his head. A faded black sport coat struggled to contain the man’s bulk, and a faux-vintage tee reading Sawyer Family BBQ—“Our family has always been in meat!” bulged across his belly. Taking in the scene, Jarsdel thought this was about what he’d expected when his parents had invited him to their “dinner party.”
“When I sat down to watch it, I was totally resistant,” the bearded man said. His voice was at odds with his size—high, even strident. “I’m thinking, ‘Why are we remaking Tarkovsky? I mean, really? Tarkovsky? You know it’s just gonna be painfully hip, right?’ But I was actually pretty impressed. And this is what I’ve always been saying. You should do a remake only—only—if it’s a significant departure from the original. It has to have something new to say. Otherwise, it’s no different from fan art, you know? Just masturbation. Put some thought into it. I mean, the height of folly is Van Sant’s Psycho. Yikes. I actually shouldn’t even bring it up—such low-hanging fruit.”
Berman shook his head. “I don’t know. Can’t think of a single remake I’ve been happy with. Not one.”
“Serious? What about the ’78 Body Snatchers?”
“It’s okay.”
“What? Man, I think it’s completely solid. I mean, with the original, you’ve got this great but heavy-handed commentary about conformity, Red Scare shit, et cetera. But with the Donald Sutherland one, it’s pure post-Watergate malaise and paranoia. And setting it in San Francisco’s just genius. Dream of the Love Generation’s clearly over, and now everyone’s gotta join the zombie establishment. Brilliant.”
Berman shrugged. “Okay.”
“You know what? I don’t know why I even bother with you.” He turned to the others. “Yeah, this is the guy who called Jaws ‘Wet Godzilla.’ Frickin’ Jaws, people. Right?”
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