"Nobody around here knows anybody well. I think Emi is super cool. She's a visionary; a real construction whiz. Honest to God, what we could do if we teamed up," Peter said. "Which we almost did"
"She was going to work for you?"
"No, not for us. We were talking to them about collaborating on a haunted house deal. We were going to build some movable units. That's what we call them. Enver calls them companions. Enver was going to paint them. He's got a fine hand. That man can paint a movable unit like nobody's business. It would have been awesome to work with them."
"Why didn't your deal work out?" Finn asked.
"Emi and Enver just dropped off the map." Peter's expression changed to one of sincere confusion. "I was surprised. We were paying top dollar. Emi seemed so excited to take it to the next level."
"Did you have them sign an NDA?" Finn asked.
"No, it never went that far. We each brought something to the table," Peter said.
"Did you find someone else to collaborate with?"
"We did and they're fine, but the project won't be all that it could be. Enver is a genius with a paintbrush, but Emi has a super cool way to create smooth moving limbs. I tried to get the secret out of her, but she wouldn't tell. She showed us a prototype and whatever she did with those joints was brilliant." He smiled in a nod to his professional admiration. "I think she has a patent pending on the joint bearings mechanism she was using. I wouldn't have told me either because she's going to make a fortune if she can get it into production. Just imagine how something like that could impact prosthetics." Peter waved his hand knowing this was neither here nor there. "Whatever happened, the partnership never materialized. We moved on. It was just business."
"When was this?" Finn asked.
"Six months ago; maybe eight. I'd have to check. My brother was the point man. I have heard that Enver told one of his neighbors he was working on something that was amazing. Far reaching. World changing."
"Want to guess what it might be?" Finn asked.
"That's artist talk, my friend," Peter scoffed. "I mean, give me a break. No matter how good he is, those dolls are nothing more than an American pie for a bunch of rich old dudes. If they hit big money, I'm guessing it has something to do with Emi's joint bearings."
Finn nodded, adding to his notes as he did so: joint bearings/ patent/ money/check Asylum men - investors?
This time Finn drew a box around the notes because big money was always important. Possible outside investment. Mitzie's mention of an NDA. Peter's talk of a patent pending. Bev's assessment of the victim as a bitch wanting to bring down a successful man. Moneyed guests waiting to see something revolutionary. All were nice little bits of string that might weave themselves into a ribbon that would eventually tie up a motive for murder.
"You have a telescope on the roof. I'd like to take a look," Finn said.
"Do I have a choice, you being a cop and all?" Peter said.
"Of course." Finn smiled. "But with you being a good citizen, I know your choice will be the right one."
Peter grinned, set aside his drink, and popped off the table.
"You know, I bet if you worked here for a week you would be a lot of fun."
Feeling he was quite fun as it was, Finn didn't bother to comment. He followed Peter to a freight elevator. He was grateful to reach the roof where Peter's voice didn't fill every inch of space.
"'Tisn't this prime." Finn walked toward the edge of the roof and put his hands atop the retaining wall. "I'm surprised some developer hasn't put up a shiny new high rise."
"It will happen as soon as this part of town is considered cool," Peter said.
Finn knew he was right. The immediate surrounding area was nothing but small industrial buildings. Beyond that, the City of Angels rose in a skyline that had become as identifiable as New York's. It glittered in sunlight, but Finn knew it was only the clement weather and distance that made the place look like Oz. Wilshire Division was proof of that. It was part Emerald City, part crumbling dark Gotham. He missed it.
Beyond the city were the hills of Hollywood. The sprawl of everything in between laid itself out neatly from this perch. But the city was not as orderly as all that. It was full to bursting with people who insisted on wedging themselves onto every inch of available land. Freeways wound through it all, spreading tentacles far and wide. They went into Pasadena and Flintridge on one hand, and the valley on the other. A major artery flowed to the coast. The road to the ocean was clogged on any given weekend as city dwellers flocked to the shore. Behind Finn the mountains, still tipped with snow, rose up. The air was so clear it seemed he could reach out and touch them.
"You've a nice set up here," Finn said as he looked around the roof top.
The three brothers had made the space their home. There were three couches, five chairs, and two barbeques. It all made the roof feel rather cozy. A refrigerator was rigged to hijacked electricity, and there was a telescope.
Finn walked over, and looked through the lens without adjusting it. There was a direct shot to the third floor window of the Cucas’ place. He could clearly see where the bed had been; where the girl had died.
"Do you and your brothers ever tire of watching the stars and watch your neighbors instead?" Finn asked.
"I cannot tell a lie. We take a peek now and again. I don't know what we thought would go on in there. Orgies with all those plastic chicks, I guess." Peter put his hands on the top of the wall and bounced on the balls of his feet. "But there was nothing that would get a guy all hot and bothered. To tell you the truth, spying on them gets kind of boring."
"But you've seen through the window."
Peter flipped around and put his back against the wall. "Sure. The last couple of months there's been a girl up there. I think they sublet the top floor 'cause she doesn't do much. She sits there, or walks around, or lies on the bed. I'm not sure she lives there fulltime, and she sure doesn't work. She's got to be bored out of her mind."
"Have you seen her take a bath?"
Finn asked the question even though he knew this was impossible. Even artists couldn't make water flow if the pipes weren't hooked up.
"I've seen her drop her drawers," Peter said. "We all have. She's pretty enough, but not really my type."
"Would you know her if you saw a picture of her?"
Peter thought for a minute and then said, "Yeah, I might. You know, sometimes I think she was drunk or high. Come to think of it, maybe she didn't live there. Maybe she goes there to get wasted."
"What made you think that?" Finn asked, resting his arm on the telescope having seen what he needed to see.
"I don't know. She would sit for a long time. Then she would get up and weave around like she was kind of drunk. That's the only way I can describe it. Plus, I only saw her now and again. I'm not here all the time, and I have better things to do then check on the neighbors."
The little boy was gone, and Finn saw a different man in Peter. This imagineer was also an analyst. He had to figure out how something worked, before he could imagine how it could work better.
"Was she alone?" Finn prodded him when the silence stretched too long. "Did you see Enver Cuca with her?"
"Not Enver. But twice I saw a man," Peter said. "Now that was super cool."
"And why was that?" Finn asked.
"Well the guy in that window was pretty amazing," Peter said, reenergized to a point of giddiness. "My brother's didn't believe me, but I swear it was him. The first time I wasn't sure. The girl was sitting on the floor and he was sitting in a chair. He was stroking her hair. The second time I saw him sitting on the bed with her. I got a pretty good look that time, but then I stopped looking. You don't spy on this guy."
"And who is it we're talking about?" Finn asked.
"Ding Xiang."
Peter grinned as if he expected Finn to be hearing a brass band given what he had just told him. When Finn didn't react, Peter's arms dropped and his head bobbed.
"Come on, man.
Ding Xiang? He's only like the God of tech: immortal, the ultimate mind, inhumanely brilliant. Some people even say he's Satoshi Nakamoto.
"And that would be?"
"Boy, you need to get out," Peter said. "Satoshi Nakamoto is the guy who invented Bitcoin. Digital currency? Big, big bucks. Topple governments and financial institutions. New world order?"
"Do tell."
Finn pulled his bottom lip up, took out his notebook, and sat on the couch under the L.A. sun. He asked Peter to spell those names nice and slow.
11
Cori found it hard to look at the body of a young person, because it could be her daughter dead, never coming back, a life taken too soon. She hated seeing a little victim of crime, too. A dead child reminded her of her grandson, Tucker. Anyone who snuffed out a life not yet begun, or a life half lived, was pure evil in Cori's book.
At the moment, she was looking at a murder victim without a face; the woman found in the artist's residence. Cori could tell she was young and that she came from means. That was evidenced by the cut of her hair and the care of her body. It would be sad when they figured out who she was because then Cori would have to notify the next of kin. It was her least favorite chore. Right now, though, she was in full cop mode and damn curious about the dead woman.
This girl had been beautiful, of that there was no question. She was not tall, but she was perfectly proportioned. Her breasts were high and large for her delicate frame. They were also real. It was clear she did no hard labor. Her hands were small and unmarred. Her fingers were long, the nails manicured. Her feet were smooth. Her pedicure was the same as her manicure. It was hard to see her tan lines because her skin had taken on the ice-milked chalk of death. The girl's pubic area was shaved, and the swimsuit she wore to cover her nether regions would have barely saved her from an indecent exposure rap. Another few square inches of fabric had covered her nipples. There were narrow tan lines running over her neck and back where the straps would have tied.
Not even those tiny tan lines could distract from the new markings on her body. Between the wee hours of the morning and the early hours of the afternoon, the girl had been butchered. This was done in the nicest way possible given that Paul was doing the butchering. The M.E. had cut her from pelvis to breast. He pushed open her rib cage, sectioned her organs, and emptied her stomach. When all was said and done, Paul packaged up the leftovers and packed them back into the cavity and closed her up with coarse, even stitches.
Her arms were graceful, and her neck long. The head that sat upon it was elegantly shaped, but it too was disfigured. While her long dark hair hadn't been cut, her skull had been opened and her brain removed. What was left of her face had been pulled down over the skull so that Paul could see first hand the damage done by whatever hit her. All of this was recorded and photographed before her mutilated face was stitched back in place.
"You should join a quilting bee, doc," Cori said. "Nice work."
"I like to send them on as close to one piece as possible. That way the angels won't stare when my patients stroll through the pearly gates."
"You're lucky you're taken, doc, or I'd have to make a play," Cori said as she leaned over the corpse. "Did she bite the big one right away?"
"Her heart was beating for a few minutes after the attack was over. The bruises around the temple area are light so there wasn't a lot of blood pumping, but she was alive."
Cori's eyes swept over the woman's face —across, up, and down and then back again. When she and Finn had found her it looked like her face wasn't there at all. Now that she had been cleaned up, Cori saw that it was still there, pressed into the depression where her cheek and temporal lobe had collapsed.
"She took more than one hit?" Cori asked.
"Yes. Still, if you're asking if that is the cause of death, I can't say yet. I'm thinking suffocation."
"You're pulling my leg." Cori straightened and rested her hip against the table.
"There were bone fragments impacting her nasal passages. Given the damage she sustained to her nose and the maxilla..." he pointed to the spot where her upper lip would have been. "She probably couldn't breath through her nose or open her mouth. I found teeth in the pharynx. Between that and the bone fragments, she would have had a very hard time breathing. There's some petechial hemorrhaging, so suffocation isn't out of the realm of possibilities. She wasn't conscious, thank goodness."
"Would she have survived if we got to her sooner?" Cori asked, thinking of Officers Hunter and Douglas and their hesitation. If they were responsible for this girl's death, the whole department was going to suffer. It would be worse for all of them if she was some rich Asylum guy's woman.
"Don't worry about it. Between the traumatic brain injury and disfiguration, it was a blessing she didn't make it. Her quality of life would have been nonexistent. No one could have saved her."
Cori nodded. Her bottom lip disappeared between her upper teeth. She gave it a nice little bite to remind herself that this was all business.
"Look here." Paul pointed to the eye that was open— the one that was still fairly intact. Cori pushed away from the table.
"I don't know what you're looking at. The eye is flooded with blood. The other one is mush. I can't even see what color her eyes were," Cori said.
"Brown. Actually, more hazel. Very pretty," Paul said.
"If you say."
"Take my word for it. Lovely eyes. She was a beautiful young woman based on my measurements. It must have been quite a party if they were all like her."
"It was unique," Cori said. "Four men and a bevy of lovely ladies. All in various stages of undress."
"The men too?"
"No," Cori laughed. "The women."
"Thank goodness for that. Nothing worse than a naked man parading about. Usually, we don't have anything to show off that's too impressive," Paul said, and Cori chuckled. "A party like that reminds me of when I was in medical school and just married. My wife kept a tight hand on the finances. I worked so hard, such long hours, and I didn't understand why she didn't want me to have any fun.
"One evening we had a particularly heated discussion, and I stormed out of the house. I went to the North Beach. That's in San Francisco, you know. This was well before the city became unlivable. Anyway, I found myself in front of The Condor."
"Let me guess. That's an aviary where all the birds fly around a metal pole shaking their tail feathers," Cori said.
"Correct. But The Condor was a world famous strip joint," he said. "Carol Doda was the star. She had a forty-five inch bust, if you can you imagine. Well, I put my weekly lunch allowance down, bought entry and two watered down drinks just to show my wife who was boss."
"What did she say when you told her?" Cori asked.
"I never did. I was so mad at myself that I went a week bumming morsels off my fellow residents so she wouldn't know what I'd done."
"I didn't know a guy could be embarrassed about something like that," Cori said.
"It wasn't the money, or the fact that I ended up in a strip joint that shamed me. I never told her about that evening because the whole gesture was a bust."
Cori rolled her eyes and asked, "Pun intended?"
"Oh, no. No, no, but that would have been very funny," Paul said. "The truth is, as I sat with my horrible drink watching a naked woman stare into the distance and pretend to dance, I realized how sad it all was. Carol Doda was a freak of nature and she traded on that, but I don't think she was happy. The man at the table on my right snored as he slept. The guy closest to the stage fidgeted with whatever was under the napkin in his lap. I realized that was the saddest hour of my life. I was in that dark room with lonely people when I could have been home with a wife who loved me."
Paul sighed and stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his white coat. His eyes were on the dead girl. His mind was back in time; he was a young and stupid man again.
"I expected excitement and some sort of acknowledgement that I was a man in control of my destin
y."
"Women do the same thing only we end up sleeping with someone we hate or hanging off that pole," Cori said. "Everybody's got their saddest hour, doc."
"Well, one good thing came out of it. I learned that I was more turned on by the human anatomy when it wasn't moving —except for my wife mind you. Those are the two places I find the closest relationships: with my wife and with my patients. My wife never stares into the distance when she's with me, and the patients don't expect anything from me at all." He turned to look at Cori. "Maybe the people at that party of yours last night feel the same way this morning."
"You think too well of your fellow man," Cori said. "The people at that party included the president of a major bank, a CEO of a tech company, and a magazine publisher. I've never heard of the magazine, but it's supposed to be a big deal in international business. We never got one guy's name. His lawyer was at the station before we were, and had him headed home in five minutes. She was good. I have to give her credit."
"Women rule the world," Paul said.
"Women make it a more interesting place, and especially at this party," Cori answered. "Finn's ex was a guest."
"Oh, my," Paul said.
"I must say, she fills out a corset real well," Cori said.
"How did Finn take it?" Paul asked.
"He says he's good. Still, it's got to bother him. She made it real clear that she hated this little lady." Cori pointed to the body. "That puts her right in the middle of this mish-mash. Everyone in that place swears they don't know who she is. They all used aliases. Rules of the club."
"Well, that's a fun little game," Paul said. "Did Bev have one?"
"Aurora." Cori's cheek bulged where she had parked her tongue so as not to say anything more.
"Very Disneyesque." Paul said, neither intrigued nor amused. "But back to work. Our lady needs an identity. A real one."
Cori hung on every word that fell from the doctor's lips; her gaze followed each gesture. What this girl was now would lead her and Finn to who she had been in life. That was the key to solving her murder.
Intimate Relations: A Finn O'Brien Crime Thriller Page 9