by Stuart Woods
Larsen laughed. “If Parker had any idea what kind of a guy you are he’d be on his way to another state.”
Danny’s face changed.
“What are you thinking?”
“He doesn’t know what kind of a guy I am, does he? He thinks I’m your regular faggot hairdresser, and that I’ll fold like a lily if he blows on me.”
“Probably.”
“You know, when I was in the navy—this was in my extreme youth—and some musclehead from the ship started hassling one of my gay mates, I’d put myself in the way. He’d think I was another wilting pansy, so I’d sucker him in and beat the shit out of him with a pipe, or sometimes whittle on him a little bit.”
“Jesus, Danny, now I’m scared of you.”
“My point is, he’s already had one shot at me, and he figures I got lucky. Why don’t we persuade him to take another shot?”
“That could be very dangerous, Danny.”
“I don’t mind being bait, not if it gives me first dibs on this guy.”
“Danny…”
“I’ll bet he’s a homophobe; bet it would drive him completely nuts if somebody put his hand on his knee.”
“Danny…”
“I’m liking this more and more.”
“Danny, you’ve got a hurt leg.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”
They were both quiet for a while, sipping their coffee. Frustration was thick in the air.
“Maybe there is a way to smoke him out,” Larsen said.
Danny shrugged. “As Ross Perot likes to say, I’m all ears.”
CHAPTER
41
Mel Parker got to work late the following morning; he’d had to wait for the guy to come and install the new window—this time with divided windowpanes and a steel frame. He’d had to spend some extra time with Buster, too. The dog was high-strung, and his experience the day before had unsettled the huge animal badly. Still, his security system had worked, and nobody had gotten inside. He wondered how the hell anybody could get away from the dog alive. He wondered, too, if the intruder might have been more than a burglar.
Parker started his day by checking the alarm calls from the night before. Only three, a good night. He called each of the customers and ascertained whether there had been a break-in or a false alarm: all three had been false alarms. He counseled them on how to prevent this circumstance in the future, and told them that he was always available if they needed more schooling on how to operate their security systems.
He then checked the call-in responses from his ads in the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles magazine. Only a couple today; sometimes there were as many as a dozen. Business was very nearly booming. He called them back and made appointments for the afternoon, since he didn’t have to do an installation today.
He looked at his schedule for the past week and saw that there was one sales call he hadn’t followed up on—the cop. That had been an awkward encounter, and he hadn’t liked it; he had no intention of calling him back. He’d let the cop make the next move, if any.
His morning went well, until the mail came. He separated the bills and put them in the bookkeeper’s out box, then picked out the checks and set them aside for deposit later that day. Then he came to a plain, square envelope with no return address. He turned it over; it was postmarked L.A., and it was addressed to him in childlike block capitals.
He opened it and read the message inside, which seemed to have been written in crayon or lipstick. It read, in its entirety:
I KNOW ABOUT YOU.
Sweat broke out on his forehead and under his arms. He turned the page over and looked at the back. Nothing. He examined the envelope again. Cheap dime-store paper. What the hell?
He had been very, very careful. He had never been so careful in all his life, and now this? Somebody knew? Who knew? Who could possibly know? He had been too careful for anybody to know.
In his mind he went over every step he had taken, every move he had made, and it was seamless, absolutely seamless. He had fooled them all, and he had made it stick.
And now this. Somebody knew.
He got up from his desk and walked to the plate-glass window that let him look down into his operations room. Below him sat four operators, looking at their computer screens and drinking coffee. An alarm came in, and one of them took it. Parker reached back to his desk and pushed a button on his phone so he could hear it.
A phone was ringing; a woman answered.
“Hello, this is Keyhole Security,” an operator was saying.
“Oh, hello; I’m afraid I did something to the alarm,” the woman said nervously.
“May I have your code, madam?” the operator asked.
“Oh, the code, damn it, what is it?”
“I’ll have to have the code or call the police, madam.”
“It’s…oh, shit, Harry has told me half a dozen times—please don’t call the police, he’ll give me hell.”
“I’m sorry, madam, for your own protection I’ll have to have the code or call the police.”
“Rover! No, Bowser, that’s it, Bowser!”
“That’s correct, madam. Your alarm will reset itself now. Please call us if you have any problems.”
Parker switched off the phone’s speaker and looked at the operators. Could one of them have found out something? Or somebody on one of the other two shifts? These people saw him more often than anyone else.
A buzzer signaled someone at the front door. An operator looked through the peephole, then answered it, received some sort of package, and signed for it. He was coming upstairs.
There was a knock on his office door.
“Come in.”
“Package for you, Mel,” the man said.
“Thanks.” Parker waited until the man had gone, then set the box on his desk and opened it. A dozen roses. He found the little envelope with the card.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Parker sat down, grabbed a Kleenex from the box on his desk, and wiped his perspiring face. His hands were trembling.
He could lose the business. All that work, and it could go right down the tube. He got up and began pacing back and forth, back and forth, like some caged animal, trying to think how this could have happened, trying to find his error.
But he could not find it. It was all seamless, it really was, it was perfect, perfect.
But why this? Why now? Who could possibly know? He sat asking himself this question over and over. He rested his head on a cradle of his arms, as he had done in school so many years ago.
“Sweet and low, sweet and low, wind of the western sea,” the teacher had sung while they napped and rested. It was soothing remembering that, back when he was another person, before all the trouble started.
He raised his head and looked at the card again.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Could it be the cop? How could the cop possibly know? It couldn’t be the cop, but he would find out who it was, and he would make him sorry.
CHAPTER
42
Danny sat cross-legged on the floor of Chris’s study, using one of her lipsticks to write notes to Parker. “How about ‘I’M GOING TO EXPOSE YOU’?”
“I like it,” Chris said. “Do another one.”
“How about, ‘YOU’RE GOING TO EXPOSE YOURSELF’?”
The two of them roared with laughter.
“Oh, God,” Chris said, wiping away a tear. “I don’t remember the last time I laughed like this.”
“It’s about time we had the laugh on him,” Danny said.
The phone rang, and Chris picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Jon. Any reaction?”
“None. Oh, we haven’t received any roses today—not yet, anyway.”
“That’s something, at least. What we need now is some sort of excuse to get you and Parker in the same place in public.”
“That’s easy,” Chris said. “The Malibu house is nearly finished, and next week I’m going to throw a party
for all the people who’ve worked on the construction.”
“Perfect! He won’t suspect a thing.”
“What do you plan to do?” Chris asked.
“I’m still working on that,” Larsen said. “Just make sure you invite Parker.”
“Mike Moscowitz is doing the inviting; I’m buying the beer.”
“I’ll talk to Mike; he knows I suspect Parker, and I don’t want him excluding the guy.”
“I’ll leave it to you, then.”
“Dinner tonight?”
“Love to.”
“I’ll come get you after work; see you then.”
Larsen hung up and began going through the material in his in box. There was a phone message from somebody called Helen Mendelssohn; the name was familiar. He called the number and got an answering machine.
“Hello, this is Helen; please leave a number, and I’ll call you back.”
“This is Jon Larsen, returning your call.” He left his number and hung up. Who the hell was Helen Mendelssohn? He couldn’t remember.
He opened an interoffice envelope and pulled out a plastic sheet with three fingerprints on it. At the top was Parker’s name. He looked idly at the prints and thought about them. When he had run the print from the Millman guest house, he hadn’t turned up anything, because the owner didn’t have a record, so he had thought Parker didn’t have a record. He’d have had to be printed by the Santa Monica police when he applied for a license to operate a security business. There was a gap here he hadn’t closed.
He took a sheet of stationery and wrote on it:
Elgin—I’d appreciate it if you’d run these prints as anonymous and see what we turn up.
Larsen
He put the prints back into the envelope, walked it over to the fingerprint department, and left it on Elgin’s desk.
When he got back to his desk, the phone was ringing. “Hello?”
“Jon, it’s Danny; I think you’d better come over here.”
“What is it?” He could hear Chris crying in the background. “What’s happened to Chris?”
“She’s all right, but I’d rather not explain on the phone.”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
Larsen did something he rarely had occasion to do: he put the flashing light on top of the car and drove very fast down Sunset to Stone Canyon. He took the light off a block before Chris’s house, but he didn’t slow down.
He ran up the front steps and walked into the house without ringing the bell. A cardboard gift box was on the floor beside the door, and Larsen stopped. This must have been what upset Chris. He tucked a finger under the lid and lifted. A pair of eyes stared at him from the box.
It was the severed head of a dog, a small mutt of some kind, he thought. He closed the box and went into the study. Chris had stopped crying and was sitting in her usual chair looking drained.
“Hi,” Larsen said.
Danny got up. “Come with me.”
“I’ve seen it.” He went and knelt beside Chris’s chair. “It was for shock value, that’s all; it doesn’t mean anything.”
She seemed to relax. “Thank God. I didn’t know what to think. The idea that he would kill some living thing in order to shock me. It’s really disgusting.”
“I’ll get rid of it,” Larsen said. With his head, he motioned Danny to follow him. Larsen put the box in the trunk of his car, then turned to Danny.
“It’s a death threat,” Larsen said.
“That’s what I thought,” Danny replied. “Did we push him too hard?”
“Maybe. Can you take a few days off from work?”
“I don’t have a job for another ten days; I’ll turn down anything new.”
“Thanks. I think one of us should be with her at all times, and armed.”
Danny patted his trousers pocket. “It’s loaded.”
“I think you should ask Melanie to stay at home, too.”
“How long?”
“Let’s say until after the party for the house-builders.”
“You think this is coming to a head?”
“If it isn’t, we’ll try to bring it to one at the time of the party.”
Danny handed an envelope to Larsen. “Will you drop this in a mailbox for me?”
Larsen looked at it. “Sure. What does it say?”
Danny told him.
“That’s appropriate.”
“I’ve arranged to have some more roses delivered, too.”
“Can’t hurt.”
“I hope it does.”
CHAPTER
43
Parker was opening the mail, and when he got to the plain, square envelope he began to shake. He ripped it open and read the message.
YOU ARE DISGUSTING.
Parker cringed as a thought struck. There was a knock on his office door.
“Package for you, Mel,” a voice said.
He went to the door and took the box. He already knew what it contained, but he had to open it; he couldn’t help himself. The roses were there; another note, too.
FILTH LIKE YOU DOESN’T DESERVE TO LIVE.
Parker winced. He opened his office door and threw the flowers down the stairs.
Downstairs, four operators raised their heads from their computers and looked at the window of Parker’s office.
He went back inside and closed the Venetian blinds, then sat down at his desk. He began to weep. What did these people want from him? He’d never hurt anybody, not really. Why were they doing this to him?
Larsen was at his desk when Elgin walked in with the results of his fingerprint search. He tossed an envelope onto the desk. “Go figure,” he said, and walked out.
Larsen opened the envelope and removed the report. The fingerprints belonged to one James Melvin Potter. Who the hell was Potter? Go figure, indeed.
He turned to his computer, called up the records program, and entered the name.
Searching…
The computer stopped searching. On the screen appeared the face of a much younger Mel Parker.
James Melvin Potter had been convicted of child molestation and aggravated assault and sentenced to five to fifteen years. He had served his whole sentence without parole at an institution for the mentally ill in northern California and had been released three years ago, against the recommendation of the director of the institution. His present whereabouts were unknown, but he was believed to have left the state.
Admirer was Parker, Parker was Potter. And now Larsen had something on him, though not much. He had falsified his application for a business license, a misdemeanor. Larsen could turn him in to the Santa Monica police; his business license would be revoked, and he’d be fined; he’d lose his business, but he would still be on the street. Larsen badly wanted him to lose more than his business.
He found the number of the institution and asked for the director, whose name was Michaels.
“This is Dr. Michaels.”
“Dr. Michaels, my name is Jon Larsen; I’m a detective with the Beverly Hills Police Department.”
“How can I help you, Detective?”
“I’m calling about a former patient of yours, one James Melvin Potter.”
“Ah, Jimmy, yes.”
“His criminal record says that he served his sentence without parole and that you recommended against his release.”
“That’s quite true. I felt he wasn’t ready to be returned to life in the community, but his sentence had been served, and he wouldn’t consent to voluntary commitment.”
“Why did you feel he wasn’t ready to be returned to society?”
Michaels sighed. “He was in for molesting a small boy, and I felt that in his time here we helped him deal with that problem, that he wasn’t likely to relapse.”
“Then why didn’t you want him to leave?”
“The young man was intensely paranoid, fearful of just about everything. We helped him a lot with that, too, but I felt we needed at least another year of treatment befor
e he’d be fully functional.”
“Suppose I told you that he was living alone in a large city and had started a successful business.”
“What kind of business?”
“Security—burglar alarms, that sort of thing.”
“I think he’d be ideally suited to such work,” the doctor said. “He was always brilliant with technical things; our maintenance staff hated to see him go. And what more could one ask for when paranoid about the security of one’s home than a true paranoid, someone who’d do the worrying?”
“You have a point, I guess. Do you think that Potter might be dangerous?”
“Not to children, I’d say. I can’t think of him as being dangerous to anyone but himself, unless he felt himself seriously threatened.”
“What kind of threat?”
“Almost any kind—physical, of course; he’d certainly fight back. But he could have all sorts of difficulties with anyone he thought meant him ill.”
“Could he become violent in such a circumstance?”
“Certainly. Mind you, he might go along apparently normally for years before such an explosion occurred.”
“Would his mental condition improve, back on the street?”
“Unlikely, without extensive therapy, and although I recommended a man to him, he would have none of it. You have to understand that such a personality could function quite well when he did not feel threatened. It doesn’t surprise me that Jimmy could operate a business; he was very bright.”
“I believe he may be involved in the obsessive harassment of a young woman,” Larsen said.
“Really? That’s very surprising,” Michaels said. “Jimmy’s sexual orientation was ambiguous, but certainly the tendency was toward homosexuality. People like Jimmy rarely form attachments of any kind, let alone obsessive ones. Society would tend to see him as a neuter.”
Larsen didn’t know what to say.
Michaels stepped in. “Of course, untreated, his illness could exhibit new permutations,” he said.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Larsen said, and hung up. He didn’t know what to think.