Evidence

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Identification of the second victim wasn’t established, might never be, as if anyone wondered. The government of Sranil had lodged a formal complaint regarding unauthorized entry to the hangar, demanded immediate return of the plane, the crates, the dark-haired skeleton. Invoking diplomatic privilege and bringing in a supporting army of faceless men and women from the State Department.

  “Must be my lucky week, Sturgis,” said the chief. “I get to see you twice.”

  “I’m the lucky one, sir.”

  The chief touched his rear. “Feels nice to be licked. So in come the ill-fitting suits with their small-print weapons. We get the female skeleton, the rest goes back to sutma-land. Do I look upset, Sturgis?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Diplomats are amoral, rim-jobbing worms, not worth my time. If the president called, I’d tell him the same thing.”

  “I’m sure you would, sir.”

  “Think about elections, Sturgis: Some sociopath spends hundreds of millions of dollars for a six-figure job. That’s some serious psychopathology, right, Doctor?”

  I smiled.

  The chief said, “He thinks I’m kidding. Anyway, to hell with the Feds, to hell with the sultan, to hell with that filthy lucre Teddy was stockpiling. Lot of good it did him. Though I guess I can’t blame the sultan for not wanting to be bankrupted by all that spending.”

  Milo said, “And Dahlia?”

  “Wrong place, wrong time. Or maybe they don’t like blondes in Sranil.”

  “So we’re finished.”

  “With international affairs, we are, and the clock’s still ticking on the turret murders. Twelve more days, then off you go to Southwest.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me, just row like a galley slave.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Days passed. A week. Milo resigned himself to Southwest Division.

  “Used to be a rib joint there. Meanwhile, I’m eating healthy.”

  Today, that translated to triple portions of lamb and unlimited vegetables from his personal buffet at Moghul.

  The woman in the sari refilled iced tea as if she were paid by the pitcher.

  “Guess what,” he said. “One of the prime gunrunner suspects is the nephew of Councilman Ortiz and Ortiz is the oily sludge in His Munificence’s tap water.”

  “Politics,” I said.

  “Whatever he claims, he’s one of them.”

  The door to the street opened. A midsized, bespectacled man in a dark green hoodie, jeans, and sneakers stepped in, walked straight toward us without hesitation.

  Late twenties, shaved head, sharp cheekbones, rapid, purposeful stride.

  Telltale bulge under the sweatshirt.

  Milo’s Glock was out before the guy got ten feet away.

  The woman in the sari screamed and dropped to the floor.

  The man’s eyes saucered behind thick lenses. “What the—Oh, shit—sorry.”

  “Hands on head, don’t move.”

  “Lieutenant, I’m Thorpe. Pacific Division?”

  “Hands on head. Now!”

  “Sure, sure.” The man complied. “Lieutenant, I had to pack, doing a GTA sting, decoy car’s not far from here, I figured I’d—I called your office first, sir, they said you were here, I figured I’d just...”

  Milo reached under the sweatshirt, took the man’s gun. Another Glock. Did a pat-down, found the badge in a jeans pocket.

  Officer Randolph E. Thorpe, Pacific Division.

  Wallet photos advertised a pretty young wife and three toddlers, Thorpe perched proudly on a Harley-Davidson, a house with a gravel roof in the background. Two credit cards and a certificate of membership in a Baptist church out in Simi Valley.

  Milo said, “Okay, relax.”

  Thorpe exhaled. “I’m lucky I didn’t soil myself, sir.”

  “You sure are. What can I do for you?”

  “We talked a while back, sir. About a pay phone on Venice Boulevard? You were looking for a tipster, a suspect named Monte? I think I might’ve found him for you. Not Monte, your tipster.”

  Milo returned the gun. “Sit down, Officer Thorpe, and have some lunch. On me.”

  “Um, no, thanks, Lieutenant. Even if I hadn’t already eaten, my guts are kind of knotted up.” Thorpe rubbed the offending area. “How about tea to settle them down?”

  “I’m okay.” Thorpe looked around. “Is this place dangerous or something?”

  “Someone comes toward me, no introduction, obviously armed, I get a little self-protective. You looked pretty intense, friend.”

  “The job does that to me,” said Thorpe. “I concentrate hard on whatever I’m doing. My wife says I turn into a robot even when I’m watching TV. Sorry if I—”

  “Let’s chalk it up to a misunderstanding. How about some tea for Officer Thorpe, here?”

  The woman in the sari said, “Yes, sir.” Back on her feet and looking none the worse. Downright happy, actually. Her faith in Milo’s protective powers validated, yet again.

  “Who’s the tipster, Officer Thorpe?”

  “Randy’s fine, sir. I can’t be sure, but there’s this old guy, I thought of him a few days after we spoke, he’s a local. I didn’t call you right away because I had nothing to back it up, then yesterday I spotted him approaching that same phone booth, my last day in uniform before the GTA thing. I was on Code Seven, having coffee across the street, he walks right up to the booth, makes like he’s going to call, changes his mind, leaves. Returns a few minutes later, gets as far as picking up the receiver, changes his mind again, leaves. I stuck around but he didn’t come back. It could be nothing, but I figured.”

  “Appreciate it, Randy. Got a name?”

  “All I know is George. But he lives in one of those old-age homes nearby. Here’s the address.”

  “Excellent,” said Milo. “Keep those eyes sharp, Randy. This works out, I’ll put in a good word with the chief.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Anytime.”

  Two Georges in residence at the mint-green apartment complex recast as Peace Gardens Retirement Center. George Bannahyde was wheelchair-bound and never left the building. George Kaplan, “one of our healthier ones,” resided in a second-story room.

  Too many old-age homes are hovels designed to stuff owners’ pockets with taxpayer largesse. This one was clean, fresh smelling, softly lit, with snacks in abundance and well-fed, nicely groomed residents playing board games, exercising on mats, watching movies on wide-screen TVs. A posted schedule listed activities every daylight hour, mealtimes excepted.

  Milo assured the desk clerk that Mr. Kaplan wasn’t in trouble, just the opposite, he was important to LAPD.

  She said, “George?”

  “Is he in?”

  “Up in his room. I can call him down if you’d like.”

  “No, that’s fine, we’ll just drop in.”

  Lots of head-turns as Milo and I walked past the activity. We climbed the stairs to a freshly vacuumed corridor. Bouncy brown carpeting, mock-adobe walls, burnt-orange doors equipped with name slots.

  G. Kaplan’s door was open. A small, round-backed, light-skinned black man sat on a neatly tucked bed, wearing a white shirt buttoned to the neck, knife-pressed maroon slacks, spit-polished black-and-white wingtips. Skimpy silver hair was pomaded to iridescence. Gray-blue eyes, not that different in hue from mine, studied us with amusement. A box of Tam Tam crackers, a bottle of dry-roasted peanuts, and a setup for instant coffee sat on a nightstand. The wall above the headboard bore portraits of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson, the latter signed.

  Two chairs faced the bed. George Kaplan said, “Sit, Gemma called from downstairs, officers, all ready for you.”

  Singsong cadence, velvety intonation; maybe one of New Orleans’s many variants. His eyes were serene but both hands trembled and his head rocked at irregular intervals. Parkinson’s disease or something like it.

  “Thanks for meeting with us, Mr. Kaplan.”

&nb
sp; “Nothing else to do.” Kaplan’s lips parted. Too-white dentures clacked. “What does law enforcement have in mind with relation to George S. Kaplan?”

  Milo studied the photos before settling. “LBJ? Usually it’s JFK.”

  “George S. Kaplan isn’t usual. Those Kennedys were fine, if you like pretty faces. President Johnson didn’t look like a movie star— Lord, those ears, he got no respect. But it was him pushed through legislation to smooth out the races.”

  “The Great Society.”

  “He was a dreamer, same as Dr. King. I did the man’s shoes, Ambassador Hotel. The president, not Dr. King, unfortunately. Had a stand there for forty-eight and a half years. Was there the night RFK got shot, tried to tell the cops I’d seen that Jordanian lunatic skulking around the hotel for days, muttering to himself. No one cared what I have to say.”

  “We care.”

  Kaplan massaged a pearl shirt button, fought to still his hands. “Know how old I am?”

  “You look good, sir.”

  “Take a guess, Officer—’scuse me, Detective. You’re a detective, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your guess? Don’t worry, I won’t be insulted.”

  “Normally, I’d say seventies, Mr. Kaplan, but if you worked at the Ambassador for forty-eight years and it closed around—”

  “It closed in 1989. Place gave sixty-eight years of service and they let it go stone-cold. Architectural masterpiece, designed by Mr. Myron Hunt. Know who he was?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Famous architect. Designed the Rose Bowl. Ambassador was a palace, drew in all the finest people. You should’ve seen the weddings, the black-tie galas, I did my share of last-minute patent-leather touchup and that’s a lost art. City bought the property, says it’s going to be a school. Just what we need, teenagers making a mess. So how old am I?”

  “Eighty ...”

  “Ninety-three.”

  “You look great, Mr. Kaplan.”

  “Then appearances are deceiving. I’m missing a whole bunch of internal organs, doctors keep taking things out of me. Apparently, God gives us extra organs that can be removed without serious consequence. As to why, you’d have to ask Him. Which I’m figuring I’ll get a chance to do, soon. Care for crackers?”

  “No, thanks, sir.”

  “Peanuts?”

  “We’re fine, sir.”

  “So what about George S. Kaplan is of interest to the Los Angeles police?”

  “Monte.”

  Kaplan looked at his knees. “I got a Jewish name, in case you didn’t notice. Kaplan comes from Hebraic. Means chaplain. I still haven’t figured it out. Someone said my family might’ve worked for Jewish slave owners but that’s wrong, we’ve been freemen since the beginning. Came over after emancipation, from Curaçao, that’s an island in the Caribbean, lots of Jews used to live there so who knows? What do you think, Detective? Can the mystery be solved?”

  “The Internet has lots of genealogy websites—”

  “Tried all that. My great-grandson Michael, he’s a computer geek—that’s what he calls himself. That’s how I learned about the Hebraic origin of my name. But it led nowhere. Guess some mysteries don’t like being solved.”

  “Some do, sir. Monte?”

  “How’d you locate me?”

  “We traced your tip-call to the pay phone.”

  “Lots of people use that pay phone.”

  “Not as many as you’d think, Mr. Kaplan.”

  “Cell phones. Don’t want one. Have no need for one.”

  “An officer watching the booth saw you approaching it yesterday. It appeared to him as if you were ready to make another call, changed your mind.”

  Kaplan laughed. “And here I was, being careful.”

  “You wanted to help but didn’t want to get overly involved.”

  “He’s a frightening person, Monte. I lived ninety-three years, would like a few more.”

  “There’s no need for him to know, Mr. Kaplan.”

  “You arrest him based on my word, how’s he not going to know?”

  “You’ll be listed in my notes as an ‘anonymous source.’”

  “Until some lawyer pokes around and you feel the pressure.”

  “I don’t respond well to pressure,” said Milo. “And I never break my word. I promise your name will never appear in any case file.”

  Kaplan kept his eyes down. “Sure you don’t want a cracker?”

  “It’s not food I need right now, sir.”

  “You think Monte killed that girl.”

  “I think I need to hear what bothers you about him.”

  “Huh,” said the old man. “George S. Kaplan does his civic duty like his mother taught him and look where it gets him.”

  “If Monte’s dangerous, sir, all the more reason to get him off the street.”

  “I’ve never seen him do anything dangerous.”

  “But he’s a scary guy.”

  “I’ve lived long enough to know a frightening person when I see one. No respect for his elders.”

  “He was discourteous to you?”

  Kaplan’s head shifted from side to side. When it stopped moving, he said, “That girl on the TV, the pretty one who was killed in that big house near Bel Air. She lived with him. Him and his other girlfriend, the three of them going in and out of that house. Normally, you’d think they were up for hanky-panky but all the times I saw them, they didn’t look like they were having recreation.”

  “Serious?”

  “More than serious, I’d called it purposeful. Sneaky eyes, like they were up to something. I walk around the neighborhood a lot, good for the joints and the muscles, I notice things other people don’t. There’s a woman right down the block, been cheating on her husband with the gardener for near on six years, kisses her husband when he comes home like she’s madly in love with the poor fool, when he’s gone she’s with the gardener. People do crazy things, I could tell you all sorts of stories.”

  “Tell us about Monte and the girl on TV.”

  “The last time I saw her with him was maybe a week before she got killed. Monte’s other girlfriend wasn’t there, just that girl and Monte, and they were going into that house and I started thinking maybe Monte’s cheating on one girlfriend with the other girlfriend, she’s certainly a better looker. But they didn’t look up for fooling around—grim, that’s the word. Real grim. After Monte let the girl in, he turned around, gave me the dirtiest look you’ve ever seen. Said, ‘Got a problem, old man?’ I just kept on going, could feel him watching me, made the small hairs stand up. Never walked near there again. A week or so later, I’m watching the fifty-inch downstairs and the news comes on, there she is. A drawing, but it’s her. So I do my civic duty. What I didn’t figure on was having to do more.”

  “Any idea what Monte’s last name is?”

  “I just heard his girlfriends calling him Monte.”

  “Where’s the house?”

  “Two blocks east, one block north. He drives a black pickup truck. She drives a Honda. Gray, the other girlfriend. Never saw the pretty one with a motor vehicle, always riding with one of the other two.”

  “You wouldn’t have the address by any chance, would you?”

  “You swear on a stack my name won’t appear anywhere?”

  “Scout’s honor, sir.”

  “You were a scout?”

  “Actually, I was.”

  “I would’ve liked to be a scout,” said George S. Kaplan. “No colored scouts in Baton Rouge back then. I learned to be prepared, anyway.” Denture grin. He reached for a bureau drawer. “Let me find that address and copy it for you. Do it in block lettering so no one can trace my handwriting.”

  CHAPTER 37

  The house was a flat-face stucco bungalow the color of curdled oatmeal, narrow and tar-roofed and shuttered tight. Cement square instead of lawn, no vehicles parked there, no mail pileup.

  Milo and I did a quick drive-by, parked half a mile up.
He celled Moe Reed, asked for an assessor’s check.

  Owned and managed by a Covina real estate firm, rented to a tenant named M. Carlo Scoppio.

  “Looked him up, Loo. Male white, thirty-two years old, no wants or warrants, no NCIC. Owners can’t evict him but they’d like to.”