Killer: An Alex Delaware Novel

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Milo said, “Connie did.”

  “What? Fuck. When?”

  “Couple of nights ago.”

  “Oh, man—you’re thinking Ree had something to do with that? No fucking way. Ree’s like the most nonviolent person in the world.”

  “We keep hearing that.”

  “That’s ’cause it’s true.”

  “What about Winky?”

  “Winky? Let me tell you about Winky,” he said. “Back in the day, Lonesome—the band, we’re Lonesome Moan—back in the day we toured all over the country, did a lot of dives. Sometimes we’d end up in situations, you know? People drinking or smoking too much, assholes get hostile.”

  He flexed a monumental biceps. “Sometimes you need to take care of business.” His eyes shifted from me to Milo. “You look like a guy who played some football.”

  Milo smiled. “Guard.”

  Chamberlain tapped a bulging pectoral. “Center and D-tackle. Till I discovered Leo Fender. Anyway, what I’m getting at is best defense is offense, back in the day there was some tussling. Me and Chuck and Zebe—those are the other guys in the band—we whaled a few butts. But not Winky. When the shit hit the fan you could count on him being out in the van or some other place where his nose wouldn’t get like mine.” Rubbing the battered organ.

  “Conflict-averse,” said Milo.

  “Um … yeah, sure. What I’m trying to get across is Wink would do anything to avoid bloodshed.”

  “Even when threatened.”

  “Especially when threatened,” said Chamberlain. “Back in the day it pissed us off, we thought it should be all for one, you know?”

  “Like the musketeers.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  I said, “Winky couldn’t be counted on.”

  “We’re getting our clocks cleaned, doing some cleaning of our own, he’s out in the van. Okay, he’s a small guy, but still.”

  I said, “How did Ree react to tussles?”

  Chamberlain stared. “She’s a girl, what could she do? And don’t get the idea she was always with us. Sometimes she was on the bus but just sometimes.”

  “Was she ever around when clocks got cleaned?”

  “How would I know?” he snapped. “It’s been a long time, who remembers shit like that?”

  I said, “What we’re getting at is was there a special relationship between Wink and Ree?”

  “They’re friends, we’re all friends.”

  “Close enough friends for her to call him when she needed help?”

  “What’re you getting at?”

  Milo said, “Okay, here’s some facts: Ree and Winky got the hell out of Dodge the same night Connie got killed and Ree’s car just showed up at Union Station.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Wish I was, Boris.”

  Chamberlain rubbed his bald head. “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

  We waited.

  He said, “I dunno, maybe they just felt like splitting. It can get that way, right?”

  “What can?”

  “Life. It closes in.”

  “Connie gets murdered, Ree and Winky decide to take a random train trip,” said Milo.

  Chamberlain threw up his hands. “I got nothing else to tell you.”

  “Else? You really haven’t told us much, period.”

  “That’s ’cause all I know is nothing. I mean, you knock on my door, I’m supposed to make shit up?”

  Milo said, “Good title for a song.”

  “Huh?”

  “ ‘All I know is nothing.’ ”

  “Oh … yeah, maybe.” He walked over to the Fender bass, removed it from the stand, thumbed a rapid run down the neck.

  “Nice technique,” I said.

  “I practice.”

  Milo said, “Detective Perugia will be calling you today. You come up with any original ideas about Ree and Winky, you call me, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.” Chamberlain began to rotate away from us.

  I said, “One more thing: Why do you think Connie suspected you or Winky of being Rambla’s dad?”

  Chamberlain’s body remained in place but his head swung back. “Probably because we used to party together.”

  I said, “Any other reason?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did anything happen more recently that would—”

  “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, fine, what’s the big deal?”

  His mouth clamped shut. We waited.

  “Okay, yeah, a few months ago we’re gigging and Connie shows up out of the blue. Sits at the back drinking water, pretending to be there for the show but she doesn’t give a shit about music, is checking us out, we have no idea why. Obviously it was about Ree. ’Cause Ree was there, too. Behind the bar. Helping Chuck. He owns the place and he also drums so when he’s drumming he could use help and that night his regular bartender was out. So Ree’s filling drinks and she doesn’t see Connie at first. Then the song ends and I look where Connie was sitting and she’s gone, I’m thinking good riddance. Then we take our break and are hanging and Ree and Winky are like … okay, nothing serious, just a little making out, okay? Ree’s affectionate … you know. With me and Ree, it’s not even that, just a kiss, friendly, okay?”

  Vermillion had turned to ruby. “Then she appears again and she’s watching.”

  “Connie.”

  “Guess she never left, maybe she was in the john, I don’t know. Whatever, she’s there, giving us the stink eye. Like we’re maggots. Then she walks out with this creepy-crawly smile on her ugly puss. Soon after, Ree gets served with legal papers.”

  I said, “You never got served.”

  “No way.”

  “Sounds like Connie was the paranoid one.”

  “Oh, man,” he said. “To put Ree through something like that.”

  “But now Ree’s gone, along with Winky.”

  “Well I don’t know about that but no way did either of them have anything to do with Connie. And let me tell you, a lot of people could’ve hated Connie.”

  “Not Miss Charming?” I asked.

  “Bitch was a total waste of space.”

  CHAPTER

  28

  During the drive back to the station, Milo made several fruitless calls to Binchy. A couple of times his driving suffered but who was going to give him a ticket? By the time he dropped me off he was sullen.

  Happy to distance myself from the case, I drove home. A shiny white Range Rover was parked behind Robin’s truck, tricked out with big wheels and chrome spinners, the windows tinted way past illegal. Efren Casagrande got out of the driver’s side and watched me approach.

  I said, “Hey, what’s up?”

  “You’re okay with me here?”

  “Unless you’ve switched gigs and are working for the IRS.”

  “Seriously, Doc. It’s cool?”

  “You need to talk, it’s cool.”

  He grinned. “You always were the man.”

  As we walked to my office, I offered him coffee. He said, “I’m good,” and settled on my battered leather couch, one knee pumping. Twitches traced his jawline, fleas jumping beneath the skin. I settled behind the desk.

  “Here’s where it’s at, Doc,” he said. Waiting for a moment before continuing. “You know what happened but you don’t really know what happened.”

  The knee pumped faster.

  I said, “You’re talking about the hit on me.”

  “You sound all cool with that, it don’t bother you?”

  “It bothered me plenty. I just thought it was over.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s the thing. It’s over but it’s like … actually I can take some coffee. Cream.” He smiled. “Sugar would be nice but not today.”

  His shirtsleeves were rolled midway up to his elbows. Tiny red nicks dotted his left forearm. Better testing equipment allowed patients to save their fingers. He’d been drawing blood regularly.

  When I returned with two cups h
e hadn’t budged. The knee had stopped moving but when I handed him his coffee the jackhammer rhythm resumed, as if his body anticipated the caffeine jolt.

  He took a quick sip. “ ’S good, Doc. I’m okay with coffee, my endo-doc says it can be good at night, y’know? Raising the level when I can’t eat so I don’t get the hypoglycemia.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “I drink a little before I go to bed and … anyway … I’m doing okay. With the D.” Faint smile. “You weren’t here, I’d say the fuckin’ D.”

  I smiled. “Don’t let me hold you back.”

  “Sometimes I think of it as a dude, you know? Some motherfucker trying to poison my blood and I’m killing his ass. That’s stupid, huh?”

  “Not at all.”

  “There you go,” he said. “Just like before, like everything I do is cool with you.”

  “So far it has been.”

  His eyes hooded. “Yeah … sometimes’s good not to know everything, Doc.” The coffee cup wobbled. “Anyway, why I’m here is about you not me, Doc. What the cops tell you about how it went down?”

  “Connie Sykes contracted with Ramon Guzman to kill me, Guzman talked to you, you called it off.”

  “Okay,” he said, shifting his body to the side.

  “That’s not all of it?”

  He drank. “Yeah, the bitch talked to Ramon. And yeah I ended it but not because Ramon told me.”

  He winced. Turned away for a second. Was that moisture in his eyes? “You get what I’m saying, Doc?”

  “It was a close call?”

  He put the coffee cup down. “You don’t know, man. How close it was.”

  I figured I was making a good show of staying calm. My mouth tasted of wet copper. My bowels were twisting.

  He said, “Ramon’s a dumb motherfucker. He shoulda told me because he’s nothing in the … what he did is, he told someone who didn’t need to know. That individual told someone else.” He bent forward. “Who told me.”

  “Are you here because there’s still a danger of—”

  “No, no, I’m telling you because it came fucking inches close, Doc, and it wasn’t like she—like this person who told me was even saying it like it was a big thing, you know? Not like checking it out with Effo. It was like … like bullshit, part of something else.”

  She. Pillow talk had saved my life?

  I said, “It came up in casual conversation.” My voice was tight.

  He winced. “I’m sorry, Doc. It’s like … this person, she’s joking about how Ramon’s asking around to get someone done, gonna pay a thousand to the shooter and keep four, do some rich doctor up in Beverly Glen, up there in the hills, nice and quiet, gonna be an easy job. She’s like … laughing. What’s really funny is Ramon’s already got two guys wanna do it—like competing to do it, feel me? So now he’s bargaining. Who’ll do it for nine hundred, who’ll do it for eight.”

  The joys of free enterprise.

  I said, “Bargain hunting.”

  “It ain’t funny, Doc.”

  “I know.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess you’re making like it’s no big deal so it don’t get to you.”

  “Good guess, my friend. But it’s already gotten to me big-time.”

  “I’m sorry, man, I’m really sorry. I mean I wasn’t even listening to this bullshit until I hear Beverly Glen. I ask what kind of doctor, this person don’t know, she’s just—it’s bullshit talk, okay? I call someone else, say bring in Ramon. Those other dudes, too. Now.”

  His face was an Aztec stone carving. “We had like a meeting. I’m talking a day before it was supposed to go down, they were planning to split the money.”

  My lungs felt limp and boggy. I exhaled. That hurt my chest.

  Efren said, “I told Ramon he fucked up big, had to pay. He got a beat-down.”

  I smiled. “Hope he learned his lesson.”

  He took a long swallow of coffee, licked his upper teeth. “I’m still thinking about it. Over and over, like a thought gets stuck in your head, you can’t let go, it just keeps going round and round. You feel me?”

  I said, “It’s called a brain-worm.”

  “A worm … yeah, maybe … it used to be that way with the fucking D. I was like thinking about it all the time. Before they sent me to you. Then you tell me I’m not an asshole, I can stop thinking about that shit.”

  He tapped his temple. “It’s like you helped me un-mess it in here. So it ain’t like that with fucking D anymore but now it is like that with fucking Ramon. I mean, Doc, if the bad thing happened, it would be like worms forever, feel me?”

  And worms would be feasting on me. “I do.”

  “Ramon really fucked up.” He clicked his tongue. “So now I’m like maybe a beat-down ain’t enough.”

  He sat back, crossed a leg, mimed a finger-gun.

  “Not a good idea, Efren.”

  “Maybe not for you, Doc. But maybe for me.” Mimed trigger pull. Three times. “No more worm.”

  I shook my head. “Forget it, Efren.”

  He said, “It was so close, Doc. I keep thinking about it.”

  “We can deal with that, Efren.”

  “Like what, a pill? I already got enough pills.”

  “Not a pill. Mental training.” That sounded flimsy and ridiculous.

  He snickered. “You gonna train me not to take care of my own problem? Like a exercise? Like a worm gym class?”

  “I can help you stop thinking about it.”

  “Maybe I don’t wanna stop, Doc. Maybe I wanna take care of business.”

  “Maybe you do. But don’t,” I said.

  “Why the fuck not, Doc?”

  “First off, it’s wrong.”

  He stared at me. “You serious? Motherfucker tries to kill your ass and you’re like save his ass?”

  “He means nothing to me, Efren. If he came at me, I’d do my best to finish him off.”

  “With what, a book?”

  Years ago, I’d killed a man who’d tried to kill me. Whatever crept into my voice when I said, “Trust me, I’d take care of business,” made Efren look at me as if for the first time.

  “So what’s the problem, Doc? Stupid motherfucker needs to—”

  “I’d have to report you to the cops.”

  His lips slammed shut. His eyelids lowered. “You’d rat me out? What the fuck for?”

  “It’s the law.”

  “All this time you been telling me what I say here is secret—”

  “It is secret but there’s an exception. It’s called the Tarasoff warning. A patient tells me he’s going to hurt someone, I have to report it.”

  His legs uncrossed. “That’s fucked.”

  “It’s the law.”

  “It’s the law,” he mocked. “Like Ramon gave a shit about the law when he tried to kill your ass.”

  “I know it sounds—”

  He sprang up, walked to the door, paused. “What it sounds is bullshit, Doc. First you tell me I got a worm in my fucking brain then you’re like don’t tell me the truth.”

  “Efren—”

  “Exercises? You think I come here for exercises, Doc?”

  “Why exactly did you come here?”

  He stood there.

  “Efren—”

  “You tell me why I came here, Doc. You’re the smart one.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then I don’t know, either.”

  He left the office. Dropped something on the floor and left it there.

  I went after him. With his back to me he waved me away, walked faster.

  “Ef—”

  “We’re cool, Doc. Thanks for your time.” He began sprinting. By the time I got down the stairs, he was in the Range Rover, peeling out in reverse.

  I returned to the house and retrieved what he’d dropped.

  Plain white envelope. Inside were crisp twenties. I counted them.

  The exact amount I’d charged for therapy, back when he was a kid with
lifestyle issues.

  CHAPTER

  29

  I waited an hour before phoning Efren, left a message I knew he wouldn’t return.

  What, like a exercise? Worm gym class?

  Legally, ethically—technically—I’d done the right thing steering him away from revenge. That didn’t stop me from feeling out of touch.

  In a simple world I’d stalk and kill Ramon Guzman myself. Tossing in the two would-be hit men who’d been bargaining for the privilege of ending my life.

  Same fate for Connie Sykes, who started the mess. If Ree had taken care of that, I should be cheering her on, not aiding in finding her.

  Meanwhile, I’d damaged my relationship with Efren, probably beyond repair. In the jungle he prowled, nuance was a felony.

  I was wondering what to do about all of that when my service rang in with a message from Judge Nancy Maestro. Would I be downtown in the near future for a “chat”?

  I phoned her chambers. A female bailiff said, “She’s in session, sir.”

  “Will she be out at four thirty, as usual?”

  “Give me your name again, sir.”

  I complied and repeated the question.

  “She’s over on Commonwealth, sir, you can try there.”

  The court building on Sixth and Commonwealth handles big-time corporate litigation. Maybe Nancy was finally transitioning to the white-collar trials she craved. The first clerk I spoke to had no idea who she was and I got nudged along a chain of civil servants before a familiar male voice said, “Deputy Nebe.”

  The tight-ass I’d met at probate court.

  Today, he sounded more human. “Doctor, thanks for getting back. Unfortunately, Judge got tied up in meetings, will be back in chambers tomorrow.”

  Newfound warmth. Maybe he was getting a promotion, too.

  “I can drop by in the afternoon.”

  “Would one p.m. work for you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll tell her.”

  At twelve forty-five the following day, I was nearing Grand Street when Nancy reached my cell. “Glad I caught you. Listen, I’m running late, got stuck having lunch over in Little Tokyo. Any way you could find your way here? If you haven’t eaten, it’s on me.”

  “Yes, on both counts.”

  She directed me to Ocean Paradise, a place on First Street that I already knew. Second floor of a smallish shopping center erected back when Japan was considered a financial threat. Decent eateries, schlocky souvenir shops, an old-school sushi bar. From time to time, I’d stopped there when testifying downtown.