After car-time, the guy had been moved downtown to Parker Center Records, then Administration.
Then a year with Internal Affairs.
Finally: a kick up to D-III and his current assignment.
Administrative Staff at Chief Broussard's office.
The bastard was an executive aide to John G.
Milo disconnected the pencil camera, brought it and the homemade pornos and the dope back to the living room. Bosc was still working on maintaining his mellow but Milo's footsteps opened his eyes and when he saw what Milo was showing him, he flinched.
Then he recovered. Smiled. "Gee, you must be a detective."
Milo held an E-tab under Bosc's nose. "Bad boy, Craig."
"I'm supposed to be worried?"
"Pocketful of felonies, Georgie Porgie."
"Another country heard from," said Bosc.
"You think John G.'s gonna protect you? Something tells me the chief doesn't know about your film career."
Bosc's eyes got hard and cold, offering a glimpse of the meanness that lurked beneath the pretty-boy façade.
He said, "What I think is you're fucked." Laughter. "In the ass. Then again . . ."
Milo hefted the camera and the drugs.
Bosc said, "You think you're seeing something, but you're not. None of that exists." He shook his head and chuckled. "You are so fucked."
Milo laughed along with him. Stepped forward. Placed his foot on one of Bosc's shins and bore down.
Bosc cried out in agony. Tears filled his eyes as he struggled to twist away.
Milo lifted his shoe.
"You asshole-fuck," Bosc panted. "You stupid faggot fuck."
"S'cuse me, Craig-o."
"Go ahead," said Bosc, catching his breath. "You're only digging your own grave."
Milo was silent.
Bosc's smile returned. "You just don't get it, do you? This is L-fucking-A. It's not what you do, it's who you know."
"Connections," said Milo. "Got yourself an agent, yet?"
"If you had a brain, you'd be an ape," said Bosc. "You gain access to my premises with a clear B&E/kidnap combo, then add assault. We're talking major felony, prison time to the next millennium. You think any of that shit you're holding's going to stand up evidentiary-wise? I'll say you planted it."
Milo fanned the photos. "It's not my dick in these."
"That's for sure," said Bosc. "Yours would be half the size and packed in fudge."
Milo smiled.
"You're out of it, man," said Bosc. "Have been from the beginning, always will be. No matter how many 187s you close. No good deed goes unpunished, man. The longer you keep me here, the more screwed you are, and so is your shrink buddy."
"What does he have to do with it?"
Bosc smiled and closed his eyes again, and for a moment Milo thought the guy would revert to silence. But a few seconds later, Bosc said, "It's a game. You and the shrink are pawns."
"Whose game?"
"Kings and bishops."
"John G. and Walter Obey and the Cossack brothers?"
Bosc's eyes opened. Cold again. Colder. "Stick your head up your ass and get yourself a clue. Now let me go, and maybe I'll help you out." Snapping out the order.
Milo placed the contraband on a table. Paced the room, as if considering compliance.
Suddenly, he hurried back to Bosc's side, kneeled down next to Bosc, placed the tip of his finger on Bosc's shin. Precisely on the spot where his shoe had dug in.
Bosc began to sweat.
"Chess analogy," said Milo. "How erudite, Bobby Fischer. Now tell me why you ripped off my car and put on that show at the hot dog stand and rented a post-office box under Playa del Sol and were snooping around my house today."
"All in a day's work," said Bosc.
"At John G.'s request?"
Bosc didn't answer.
Milo pulled out his gun and pressed the barrel into the soft, tan flesh under Bosc's chin.
"Details," he demanded.
Bosc's lips jammed shut.
Milo retracted the weapon. As Bosc laughed, Milo said, "Your problem, Craig, is you think you're a knight, but you're a shit-eating pawn." He rapped the butt of the gun against Bosc's shin, hard enough to evoke an audible crack.
He waited for Bosc to stop crying, then raised the gun again.
Bosc's panicked eyes followed the weapon's ascent, and he scrunched his eyes and sobbed out loud.
Milo said, "Craig, Craig," and began to lower the weapon.
Bosc yelled, "Please, please, no!" Began jabbering.
Within minutes, Milo had what he wanted.
Good old Pavlovian conditioning. Would Alex be proud?
CHAPTER 38
Bert Harrison placed a hand on the shoulder of the man in the wheelchair. The man rolled his head and hummed. I saw my image doubled in his mirrored lenses. A pair of grim strangers.
I said, "My name's Alex Delaware, Mr. Burns."
Willie Burns smiled and rolled his head again. Orienting to my voice the way a blind man does. The skin between his white beard and the huge lenses was cracked and scored, stretched tight over sharp bones. His hands were long and thin, purplish brown, the knuckles lumped arthritically, the nails long and yellowed and seamed. Across his legs was a soft, white blanket. Not much bulk beneath the fabric.
"Pleased to meet you," he said. To Bert: "Am I, Doc?"
"He won't hurt you, Bill. He will want to know things."
"Things," said Burns. "Once upon a time." He hummed some more. High-pitched voice, off-key but somehow sweet.
I said, "Bert, I'm sorry I had to follow you—"
"As you said, you had to."
"It was—"
"Alex," he said, quieting me with a soft palm against my cheek. "When I found out you were involved, I thought this might happen."
"Found out? You sent me the murder book."
Bert shook his head.
"You didn't?" I said. "Then who?"
"I don't know, son. Pierce sent it to someone but never told me who. He never told me about the book, at all, until the week before he died. Then one day, he brought it to my house and showed it to me. I had no idea he'd gone that far."
"Collecting mementoes."
"Collecting nightmares," said Bert. "As he turned the pages, he cried."
Willie Burns stared sightlessly at the treetops, humming.
"Where'd Schwinn get the photos, Bert?"
"Some were his own cases, others he stole from old police files. He'd been a thief for quite some time. His characterization, not mine. He shoplifted habitually, took jewelry and money and drugs from crime scenes, consorted with criminals and prostitutes."
"He told you all this."
"Over a very long period."
"Confessing," I said.
"I'm no priest, but he wanted salvation."
"Did he get it?"
Bert shrugged. "Last time I checked there were no Hail Marys in the psychiatric repertoire. I did my best." He glanced at Willie Burns. "How are you feeling today, Bill?"
"I'm feeling real good," said Burns. "Considering." He shifted his face to the left. "Nice breeze coming in from the hills, can you hear it? That plunking of the leaves, like a nice little mandolin. Like one of those boats in Venice."
I listened. Saw no movement among the trees, heard nothing.
Bert said, "Yes, it is pretty."
Willie Burns said, "You know, it's getting kinda thirsty out here. Maybe I could have something to drink, please?"
Bert said, "Of course."
I wheeled Burns back into the green board house. The front room was barely furnished— one couch along the window and two bright green folding chairs. Pole lamps guarded two corners. Framed magazine prints— garden scenes painted in Giverny colors— hung askew on plasterboard walls. Between the chairs, a wide pathway had been left for the chair, and the rubber wheels had left gray tracks that led to a door at the rear. No knob, just a kickplate.
Push door. Wheelchair
-friendly.
The kitchen was an arbitrary space to the right: pine cabinets, sheet-metal counters, a two-burner stove upon which sat a copper-bottomed pot. Bert took a Diet Lemon Snapple from a bulbous, white refrigerator, wrestled with the lid, finally got it loose, and handed the bottle to Willie Burns. Burns gripped the bottle with both hands and drank down half, Adam's apple rising and falling with each gulp. Then he placed the glass against his face, rolled it back and forth along his skin, and let out a long breath.
"Thanks, Dr. H."
"My pleasure, Bill." Bert looked at me. "You might as well sit."
I took one of the folding chairs. The house smelled of hickory chips and roasted garlic. A string of dried cloves hung above the stove, along with a necklace of dried chilies. I spotted other niceties: jars of dried beans, lentils, pasta. A hand-painted bread box. Gourmet touches in the vest-pocket galley.
I said, "So you have no idea how the murder book got to me?"
Bert shook his head. "I never knew you had anything to do with it until Marge told me you and Milo had been to visit and talked to her about an unsolved murder." He began to lower himself onto the second folding chair, but straightened and stood. "Let's get some air. You'll be okay for a few minutes, Bill?"
Burns said, "More than okay."
"We'll be right outside."
"Enjoy the view."
We walked into the shade of the surrounding trees.
Bert said, "You need to know this: Bill doesn't have much longer. Nerve damage, brittle diabetes, serious circulation problems, hypertension. There's a limit to how much care I can give him, and he won't go to a hospital. The truth is no one can really help him. Too many systems down."
He stopped and smoothed a purple lapel. "He's a very old man at forty-three."
"How long have you been taking care of him?" I said.
"A long time."
"Nearly twenty years, I'd guess."
He didn't answer. We walked some more, in slow, aimless circles. No sound issued from the forest. Not a trace of the music Willie Burns had heard.
"How'd you meet him?" I said.
"At a hospital in Oxnard."
"Same place you met Schwinn."
His eyes widened.
I said, "I was just over at Marge's place."
"Ah." Once a shrink . . . "Well, that's true," he said. "But Pierce's being there wasn't really a coincidence. He'd been tracking Bill for a while. Not very successfully. And not very consistently, because his amphetamine habit had rendered him pretty much incapacitated. Occasionally, he'd grow lucid, convince himself he was still a detective, make a stab at investigating, then he'd binge and drop out of sight. Somehow, over the years— through his criminal contacts— he managed to figure out that Bill had come up the coast. He knew Bill would need medical care and eventually, he pinpointed the hospital, though not until well after Bill had been discharged. But he began hanging around, checking himself in for spurious reasons. They had him tagged as an addicted hypochondriac."
"He was trying to get access to Burns's records."
Bert nodded. "The hospital staff thought he was just another down-at-the-heels junkie out to steal drugs. As it turns out, he was really ill. An on-call neurologist who didn't know him ordered some testing and found a low-level seizure disorder— petit mal, mostly, some temporal symptoms, all due to drug toxicity. They prescribed anticonvulsants with mixed results, admitted him for short-term care several times, but I was never on duty during those periods. One day, he had a grand mal seizure out in the parking lot and they brought him into the ER and I was on call. One thing led to another."
"Willie Burns needed medical care because he was burned in a house fire."
Bert sighed. "You're as skillful as ever, Alex."
"A house on 156th Street in Watts. A neighborhood where a black man would be comfortable hiding out. Where a white face would stand out. A white police detective named Lester Poulsenn was assigned to guard Burns and Caroline Cossack and one night he was shot and the house was torched as cover. A high-ranking cop murdered but LAPD kept it quiet. Interesting, don't you think, Bert?"
He remained silent. I went on, "It's a safe bet Poulsenn got ambushed by the people sent to get rid of Caroline and Willie. People who'd pulled off an ambush before and murdered a bail bondsman named Boris Nemerov. Burns's bondsman. Did he tell you about that?"
Nod. "It came out in therapy. Bill felt guilty about causing Nemerov's death. He would have liked to come forward— to come clean about what he saw, but that would have put him in mortal danger."
"What's his version of the ambush?"
"He phoned Nemerov for help because Nemerov had always been kind to him. He and Nemerov arranged a meeting, but Nemerov was followed and murdered and stuffed in the trunk of his car. Bill was hiding nearby, saw it all. Knew Nemerov's death would be blamed on him."
"Why was Burns offered a police guard in the first place?"
"He had contacts in the police department. He'd worked as an informant."
"But after Poulsenn's and Nemerov's murders the department let him dangle."
"Contacts, Alex. Not friends."
"The house was set on fire, but Burns and Caroline got away. How severe were their injuries?"
"She wasn't hurt, his were severe. He neglected the wounds, didn't seek care until months later. His feet had been scorched almost down to the tendons, multiple infections set in, at the time of admission the wounds were suppurating, gangrenous, flesh falling off the bone. Both feet were amputated immediately, but sepsis had spread up into the long bones and additional amputation was necessary. You could actually smell it, Alex. Like barbecue, the marrow had been cooked. We had some marvelous surgeons, and they managed to preserve half of one femur, a third of another, created skin flaps and grafted them. But Bill's lungs had also been burned, as had his trachea and his esophagus. He formed fibroid scars internally and removing the damaged tissue required additional multiple surgeries. We're talking years, Alex. He bore the agony in silence. I used to sit by the whirlpool as the skin sloughed off. Not a whimper. How he tolerated the pain I'll never know."
"Was it the fire that blinded him?"
"No, that was the diabetes. He'd been ill for a while, had never been diagnosed. Made matters worse by indulging an addict's sweet tooth."
"And the nerve damage? Heroin?"
"A bad batch of heroin. He scored it the day of the fire. Slipped away from Poulsenn and walked down the block to meet his supplier. That's how they traced him— something else he feels guilty for."
"How'd he escape on burnt feet?"
"They stole a car. The girl drove. They managed to get out of the city, found themselves on Highway 1, hid out in a remote canyon in the hills above Malibu. At night, she sneaked into residential neighborhoods and scrounged in garbage cans. She tried to take care of him but his feet got worse and the pain caused him to shoot up that last hit of heroin. He lost consciousness, stayed that way for two days. Somehow she cared for him. At the end, she was trying to feed him grass and leaves. Gave him water from a nearby creek that added an intestinal parasite to his miseries. When I saw him in the burn ward, he weighed ninety-eight pounds. All that, and he'd withdrawn cold turkey. His survival's nothing short of a miracle."
"So you became his doctor," I said. "And Schwinn's. And eventually, the two of them connected. Was that by design?"
"I listened to Bill's story, then Pierce's, eventually put it all together. Of course, I never told either of them about the other— Pierce still thought of himself as a detective. Looking for Bill. Eventually— after much work— I got Bill's permission and confronted Pierce. It wasn't easy but . . . eventually they both came to understand that their lives were interwined."
Matchmaking. Just as he'd done with Schwinn and Marge. The grand physician. Giving.
"You waited until it was clear Burns had nothing to fear from Schwinn," I said. "Meaning you learned the details of Janie Ingalls's murder. But all of you agreed not to purs
ue it. You became part of the cover-up. That's why you offered me all those apologies."
"Alex," he said. "Some decisions are . . . these are shattered lives. I couldn't see any other way . . ."
"Schwinn changed things," I said. "Changed his mind about keeping the secret. Any idea why he grew agitated about the murder during the weeks before his death? Why he sent out the murder book?"
The Murder Book Page 42