Honky-tonk piano. A tune I’d always liked— Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date.” Solo piano, a recording I’d never heard.
Momentary hesitation, then the tune repeated. A flubbed note followed by fluidity.
Not a recording. Live.
Malley played the song through, then began again, improvising a basic but decently phrased solo.
The rendition repeated. Ended. Milo took advantage of the silence and knocked on Malley’s window again.
Malley resumed playing. Same tune. Different improv.
Milo turned on his heel, lips moving. I couldn’t make out what he said and knew better than to ask.
On our way out of the campgrounds, we spotted Bunny MacIntyre over by the RVs, talking to one of the elderly couples. Her hand went out and some bills were passed. She saw us, turned away.
“Charming rural folk,” said Milo, as we got back in the unmarked. “Is that the theme from Deliverance I hear wafting through the piney woods?”
“Should’ve brought my guitar.”
“A duet with Barnett the Pianner Man? Was that the reaction of an innocent guy, Alex? I was hoping I could eliminate him, but just the opposite.”
“Wonder why he keeps that welcome mat in front,” I said.
“Maybe some people are welcome.” He turned the ignition key, let the car idle. “The bloodhound part of me is itching to sniff, but the self-styled protector of victims thinks it’s gonna be a shame if Malley turns out to be a murderer. Guy’s life was blown to bits. I don’t read the Bible, but on some level, I get the whole eye-for-an-eye thing.”
“I get it, too,” I said. “Even though eye for an eye was never meant to be taken literally.”
“Sez who?”
“If you read the original biblical text, the context is pretty clear. It’s tort law— monetary compensation for damages.”
“Did you come up with that on your own?”
“A rabbi told me.”
“Guess he’d know.” He drove out of the campgrounds, turned onto the highway, switched on the police band. Crime was down but the dispatcher’s recitation of felonies was constant.
“The possibilities,” he said, “are dismal.”
* * *
Thursday morning, he called at eleven-fifteen. “Time for tandoori.”
I’d just gotten off the phone with Allison. We’d managed to sneak in some personal talk before her grandmother’s call for tea and comfort drew her away. The plan was for her to return in two or three days. Depending.
I said, “What’s up?”
“Let’s talk about it over food,” he said. “It’ll be a test of your appetite.”
* * *
Café Moghul is on Santa Monica Boulevard, a couple of blocks west of Butler, walking distance from the station. The storefront ambience is dressed up by carved, off-white moldings and arches designed to mimic ivory, polychrome tapestry murals of Indian country scenes, posters of Bollywood movies. The soundtrack alternates sitar drones with ultra-high soprano renditions of Punjab pop.
The woman who runs the place welcomed me with her usual smile. We always greet each other like old friends; I’ve never learned her name. Today’s sari was peacock blue silk embroidered with gold swirls. Her eyeglasses were off. She had huge, chocolate eyes that I’d never noticed before.
“Contacts,” she said. “I’m trying something new.”
“Good for you.”
“So far, so good— he’s over there.” Pointing to a rear table, as if I needed directions. The layout was four tables on each side divided by a center aisle. A group of twenty-somethings was gathered around two tables pushed together, dipping nan bread into bowls of chutney and chili paste and toasting some sort of success with Lal Toofan beer.
Other than them, just Milo. He was hunched over a gigantic salad bowl, sifting through lettuce and retrieving chunks of what looked to be fish. A cut-glass pitcher of iced clove tea sat at his elbow. When he saw me, he filled a glass and pushed it toward me.
“The special,” he said, plinking the rim of the salad bowl with his fork. “Salmon and paneer and these little dry rice noodles over green stuff with lemon-oil dressing. Pretty healthy, huh?”
“I’m getting worried about you.”
“Get real worried,” he said. “This is wild Pacific salmon. The intrepid types that leap upstream when they’re horny. Apparently, farmed fish are bland, lazy wimps and they’re also full of toxic crap.”
“The politicians of the fish world,” I said.
He speared a piece of fish. “I ordered you the same.”
I drank tea. “What’s going to test my digestive juices?”
“Lara Malley’s suicide. Got hold of the final report from Van Nuys. Turns out the D’s who worked it were the same ones who busted Turner and Rand.”
“Sue Kramer and a male partner,” I said. “Something with an ‘R.’ ”
“Fernie Reyes. I’m impressed.”
“I read their report on Kristal more times than I wanted to.”
“Fernie moved to Scottsdale, does security for a hotel chain. Sue retired and joined a P.I. agency over in San Bernardino. I’ve got a call in to her— here comes your grub.”
The blue-saried woman set a bowl down gently and swished off. My salad was half the size of Milo’s, which was still more than ample.
“Good, huh?” he said.
I hadn’t lifted my fork. He watched until I did, studied me as I ate.
“Delicious,” I said. Technically true, but tension had blocked the circuit from my taste buds to my brain and I might’ve been chewing a napkin. “What’s off about the suicide?”
“Cause of death was a single gunshot to the left temple, a thirty-eight. She was left-handed, so the coroner felt that supported a self-inflicted wound.”
“Through-and-through wound?”
“Yup, the bullet lodged in the passenger door. The gun was a Smith and Wesson Double-Action Perfected revolver registered to Barnett. He kept it loaded in his nightstand. His story was Lara musta taken it when he was at work, drove to a quiet spot in the Sepulveda recreational area and boom.”
“Did she leave a note?”
“If she did, it’s not in the coroner’s summary.”
“Was the gun returned to Malley?”
“No reason it wouldn’t be,” he said. “He was the legal owner and no foul play was indicated.”
He began shoveling fish and cubes of paneer cheese into his mouth. “Maybe my ambivalence about Malley was misguided. His life went to hell, but looks like he coped by getting rid of everyone he blamed for Kristal’s death. Starting with Lara, because she hadn’t kept her eye on the kid. Then the C.Y.A. system took care of Turner. That left Rand as the last messy detail.
“Why would he wait a full year after Kristal’s death to kill Lara?” I said.
“I was being imprecise. She died seven years and seven months ago. Just one month after Troy and Rand got sent away. What’s the obvious assumption?”
“Maternal grief.”
“Exactly. Great cover.” He pushed food around his plate. “Malley’s a weird one, Alex. The way he started pounding on that piano. I mean the smart thing to do, the cops come calling, is fake being cooperative. He does that, maybe I drop it.”
Unlikely, I thought. “ ‘Last Date’.”
“What?”
“The song he played.”
“You’re saying he was being symbolic? Rand had a last date with life?”
I shrugged.
He said, “Guy keeps his truck locked even though he lives out in the boonies and the damn thing’s sitting right in front of his cabin. Because he knows it’s hard to get rid of every speck of forensic evidence. Maybe he’s an old-fashioned eye-for-an-eye guy, doesn’t give a shit about original biblical context.”
“Other than the similarity to Rand, was there anything iffy about Lara’s suicide?”
“Nothing in Sue’s report.”
“Was she a good detective?”
He poured himself tea but didn’t drink it. “I need to get hold of the entire file on Lara before I talk to Sue. That’ll be fun— reopening a case another D thinks is long-closed. Maybe I’ll use the helpless approach: Here’s what I’m faced with, Sue. I could use some help.”
He grabbed his fork again, held it poised over the bowl. “So how’s your appetite?”
“Fine.”
“Proud of you.”
* * *
He downed two Bengal premiums, called for the check, and was slapping cash on the table when his cell chirped Beethoven’s Fifth.
“Sturgis. Oh, hey. Yeah. Good to hear from you, thanks . . . Would that be okay? Yeah, sure. Let me write it down.”
Tucking the phone under one ear, he scribbled on a napkin. “Thanks, see you in twenty.”
Rising to his feet, he motioned me toward the exit. Some of the twenty-somethings stopped laughing and looked at him as he loped out of the restaurant. Big, scary-looking man. All that merriment; he didn’t fit in.
“That was Sue Kramer,” he said, out on the sidewalk. “She’s right here in the city. Working a suicide, as it turns out, and happy to chat about Lara. So much for reading the file.”
“It’s L.A.,” I said. “Improvise.”
CHAPTER 17
The address was in Beverly Hills, Rexford Drive, south side of the city, between Wilshire and Olympic, where apartment buildings predominated.
“That’s her,” said Milo, pointing to a trim, dark-haired woman walking a champagne-colored toy poodle up the west side of the block.
He pulled up to the curb and Sue Kramer smiled and waved and gathered the dog in her arms.
“You’re not allergic are you, Milo?”
“Just to paperwork.”
Kramer got in the back of the unmarked. As Milo drove away, she sniffed the air. “That good old dirty-cuffs smell. Been awhile.”
“What’re you driving now, Ms. Private Enterprise? A Jag?”
“A Lexus. And a Range Rover.” Kramer was in her fifties, with a tight, leggy figure emphasized by black chalk-stripe pipe-stem pants and a tailored gray jacket over a white silk shell. Her hair was ink-black, cut short and spiked. No jewelry. Black Kate Spade purse.
“Hooh hah,” said Milo.
Kramer said, “The Lexus I earned myself. My new husband’s a financial guy. He bought me the Rover for a surprise.”
“Nice new husband.”
“Maybe the third time’s the charm.” The dog panted. “Chill, Fritzi, these are good guys— I think she’s smelling scumbag back here.”
Milo said, “My last passenger was Deputy Chief Morales. Got stuck driving him to a meeting at Parker.”
“There you go.”
Milo crossed Rexford at Olympic, turned left on Whitworth. “How’re things, Sue?”
“Things are great— pipe down, Fritz.”
“San Bernardino treating you well?”
“I could do without the smog, but Dwayne and I have a great weekend place in Arrowhead. How about you?”
“Peachy. What brings you to B.H.?”
“In the words of Willie Sutton, that’s where the money is,” said Kramer. “Seriously, it’s a sad one. Divorce case, Korean couple, the usual hassles over money and custody. The husband decided to kill himself, made sure the wife found him.”
“Gun?”
“Knife. He ran a bath, got in, cut his wrists. That was after calling the ex and telling her she could have the car and the kids and all the spousal payment she’d demanded. All he wanted was for her to come by so they could talk like mature adults. She walked in, saw bloody water running all over the apartment. Coroner says suicide but his divorce lawyer hired us to make sure.”
“Iffy?” said Milo.
“Not at all, but you know attorneys. This one wants to rack up a few more billable hours before he closes the file. Which is fine with Bob— my boss. We don’t make moral judgments, we just do the job. The apartment where it happened is back there, I’m supposed to watch it for a few days, see if anyone interesting goes in or out. So far, nothing, I’m going out of my mind. You did me a favor by calling.”
She leaned forward to get a better look at me. “Hi, I’m Sue.”
“Alex Delaware.”
I reached back and we shook hands. Milo told her who I was.
“I know that name,” said Kramer. “You evaluated Turner and Duchay, right?”
“Right.”
“Talk about sad.”
Milo said, “Duchay’s dead, Sue. That’s why we’re here.”
Kramer stroked the poodle. “Really? Tell me about it.”
When he finished, she said, “So you’re thinking: If Malley’s a vengeance-crazed killer, maybe he did the same to Lara.”
“I’m sure you were right on, but you know how it is when stuff comes up— ”
“No need to stroke me, Milo. If the situation was reversed, I’d do the same thing.” She sat back. The dog’s breathing had slowed. Kramer whispered something in its ear. “Fernie and I did a good job on Lara. Coroner confirmed it was suicide, there was no reason to think it wasn’t. Lara was what you psychologists call profoundly depressed, Doctor. Since Kristal’s death, she’d lost weight, was taking medication, slept all day, refused to socialize.”
“You got this from Barnett?”
“That’s right.”
“I found him a rather taciturn fellow.”
“Yeah, he did have the old Clint Eastwood thing going on,” said Kramer. “But Fernie and I had bonded with him because we caught the two little monsters.”
“What was his reaction to Lara’s death?”
“Sad, wiped out, guilty. He said he should’ve taken her depression more seriously, but they’d been having their problems and he’d been focusing on his work.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Marital stuff,” said Kramer. “I didn’t push. This was a guy who’d lost everything.”
“So he was feeling guilty for not paying attention to her.”
“Suicide does that. Right, Doctor? Leaves all that guilt residue. Like the case I’m working on right now. The wife hated the husband’s guts, did everything in her power to squeeze him dry during the divorce. But seeing him bleeding out in that bathtub freaked her out and now she’s remembering all sorts of wonderful things about him and blaming herself.”
Milo said, “Did Barnett express any guilt about Lara using his gun?”
“No,” said Kramer. “Nothing like that. I also talked to Lara’s mother and she said basically the same.”
“She and Barnett get along?” I said.
“I got the feeling they didn’t, but she never came out and said anything bad about him,” said Kramer. “What I got from her was that Lara had really struggled after Kristal’s death and she felt powerless to do anything about it, poor woman. Her name was Nina. Nina Balquin. She was devastated. How could she not be?”
“Lara was on medication,” I said. “She get that from a family doctor?”
“Lara refused to see a therapist, so Nina gave her some of her pills.”
“Mom was depressed, too.”
“Over Kristal,” said Kramer. “Maybe there was more. I got the sense this was a family that had dealt with a lot over the years.”
“Like what?” said Milo.
“It was just a feeling— I’m sure you’ve seen that, Doctor. Some families seem to live under a cloud. But maybe my opinion was colored because I was seeing them at their worst.”
“Twice,” I said.
“Talk about the pits. I’m getting profoundly depressed just thinking about it,” said Kramer. She laughed softly and stroked the poodle. “Fritzi’s my therapist. She loves stakeouts.”
“Walks
in a straight line and doesn’t talk,” said Milo. “The perfect partner.”
“And doesn’t need privacy to pee.”
Milo chuckled. “Anything else that would be helpful, Sue?”
“That’s it, guys. Those cases made me so damn sad, I couldn’t wait to close both of them. So maybe I overlooked something on Lara, I don’t know. But there really was nothing to indicate Barnett had anything to do with it.” She sighed.
Rage Page 13