Survival of the Fittest

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “All the way up,” she repeated, sounding impatient. “Right here— okay, now turn left over there— that's Rondo Vista. I'm a block up— pull in right here.”

  The Karmann Ghia came to rest on a cracked cement pad. It could have been any L.A. hilltop neighborhood, silent, hot, precarious, houses of all sizes and designs, unevenly tended.

  Facing the pad was a closed double garage, next to that, a flat-roofed white box with blue wood trim in need of touch-up. Leading to the blue door was a short walkway topped with corrugated fiberglass panels and lined with hanging spider plants, most of them dead. Pink geraniums in a window box set on the ground weren't doing well, either. A rusting hibachi sat near the front steps, leaking orange onto the cement.

  “Ma maison,” she said. “French is the language of physicality.”

  She kissed my cheek, waited for me to open the passenger door, then jumped out and marched ahead, as she had in the restaurant, bare arms swinging, narrow hips swaying, pink heels clacking.

  She got to the door when I was ten feet behind and opened it. Then she stopped, stared inside, gave a small wave— greeting someone— and closed it.

  “Merde, Andrew. We are stymied.”

  “What's going on?”

  She touched my face gently. “Tsk-tsk, the poor lad is suffused with lust and nowhere to spend. . . . Guests, Andrew. Friends staying over. They were supposed to be gone all day, they've changed their plans. Le grand dragorama, but such is our reality.”

  I frowned. “So much for spontaneity.”

  “So soddy, my dear.”

  I kept the frown going. She put a finger to her lip and looked at her watch.

  “I suppose,” she said, glancing at the garage, “I could take you in there and give you a nice quick suck . . . but, such a shame to reduce our first collision to that— where's your place?”

  “The Fairfax district.”

  She studied me. “A taste for bagels?”

  “A taste for cheap.”

  “Do you live alone— of course you do— but, no, it would take too long to get all the way to Semite-town and back, and I really must return to the shop.”

  The shop. As if she were selling dainty things.

  I said, “Great.”

  She stood higher and pulled me down at the same time. Kissed my nose.

  “Oh, Andrew, I've done you wrong. Obviously, it just wasn't meant to be. Thanks for lunch.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Was it?”

  Another kiss, softer, on my chin.

  “Yes,” I said. “Very much so.”

  “That's nice, Andrew. You're being so gallant about this— look at us, standing here being so civil. Aren't we both being wonderfully decent?”

  I laughed and she joined in.

  “I tell you, dear,” she said, placing a hand on my chest. “If the erotic moment hadn't passed, I would have dragged you into the garage, laid you across my friends' car, and sucked you to the root. Alas.”

  I drove her back to the store and this time she opened the door herself and jumped out.

  “Bye, Andrew,” she said, through the open window.

  “Shall we meet again?”

  “Shall we, shan't we . . . that depends upon whether or not you'll settle for less than all of me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, in the very immediate future all I can offer you is social contact, dear. Meaning, the closest you'll get to my precious parts might be a surreptitious grab punctuating the chitchat.”

  “Chitchat with your houseguests?”

  “And others.” She gave a happy-kid grin. “I've scheduled a soiree, Andrew. Tomorrow night. Cocktails at nine o'clock, casual dress. And you are now invited.”

  “What's the occasion?”

  “No occasion, Andrew. A carpe-diem kind of thing— good fellowship and social intercourse. Fun. Surely you remember fun?”

  “With the top one-third of a percent? Are you sure I qualify?”

  “Oh, Andrew, is this all too diffuse for you?”

  “Diffuse?”

  “Sharing me, after we've worked ourselves up.”

  She squeezed her small torso farther into the car window and put my hand on her left breast. Pressing down so I squeezed. The mound was unfettered, small, very soft, the nipple a weapon piercing my palm.

  “I suppose I'll have to take what I can get, Z.”

  She took the hand, flung it off. “Why doesn't that surprise me? Nine tomorrow. Bye-bye, A.”

  48

  “The old charm works its wonders,” said Milo, stretching in the car. Not the unmarked. A brown Honda I'd never seen before.

  Pine boughs darkened the car's interior. He'd pulled up next to me at Sunset and San Vicente and told me to follow him.

  The place he chose was in Beverly Hills, the alley behind Roxbury Park's western border. Lots of toddlers and mothers and nannies, the ice-cream man playing his jingle while dispensing popsicles and drumsticks, plenty of parked cars, no reason to notice ours.

  “If I needed an ego boost, this wouldn't be it,” I said. “She's beyond aggressive.”

  “Aw, don't sell yourself short . . . Little Miss Sex Pistol, huh?”

  “Both guns blazing. Ponsico must have been a trout in a bathtub. It's a good bet it was him she meant when she talked about brains without spine. The DVLL murders probably originated at a Meta meeting— maybe not the whole group, just a splinter. The scenario I like is that Ponsico was enthusiastic in theory but when it came to action, he got cold feet and disappointed her and her friends. Some of whom are staying over, will probably be at the party tomorrow night. Add Sanger's trip tomorrow and it smells like a big night for Meta. And Andrew's invited.”

  He frowned.

  “What's wrong?”

  “I worry when things go too well.”

  “Don't you think we're finally due for some good luck on this one?”

  “I suppose.”

  “There's no way she'd suspect anything, Milo. The time we spent together was divided between intellectual pretentiousness and sex talk. The sex came from her. I played Morose Andrew as hard as I could without turning her off. At one point, I thought I'd gone too far.”

  I described Zena's rage at perceived rejection. “Lots of talk about how wonderful she is, but at the core she's fragile.”

  “Fragile?” he said. “Or just a rotten temper?”

  “The two often go together. The point is, for all her posturing about being brilliant and sexy and slender and peppy, she lives in a shabby house and runs a bookstore with very few customers. The whole femme-fatale bit had a pathetic edge to it, Milo. It didn't take much to touch a nerve. She also called high school a “crucible of cruelty,' meaning she probably hadn't been Miss Popular Cheerleader. She was so upset when I moved her hand away, it actually blemished her face. That kind of volatility could have spelled bad news for Ponsico. Other people, too.”

  “Now you're saying Ponsico was killed because he offended her personally? I thought it was because he betrayed Meta.”

  “Maybe it was both,” I said. “Someone like Zena might not separate the two. One thing's for certain: She's a eugenics fan. My buying the books is what caught her attention and it didn't take long before she offered her views on the elite and the masses.”

  My two purchases were on the dashboard. He'd thumbed through them.

  “Mr. Galton and Mr. Neo-Galton,” he said. “Nasty stuff.”

  “Nasty store.”

  “Speaking of which, we can't find any business partners. Sharavi managed to trace her parents. Lancaster. Mother's dead and her father's a groundskeeper at Santa Anita racetrack, has a drinking problem. No trust fund.”

  “She said her folks were educated, brilliant. More posturing.”

  “She may be smart but she's not too educated, herself. Lancaster High, less than a year of junior college, then she worked at Kmart before getting the job at PlasmoDerm. And listen to this: When she was in JC, she signed up as a
police scout with the Lancaster sheriffs. She wanted to join the force but was too small.”

  “Anything weird on her academic record?”

  “No. She spent half a year, dropped out.”

  “Underachiever. It fits our profile,” I said. “So does her being a police wanna-be. I'd never have thought of a woman in those terms.”

  “A woman with pals, Alex. No way would she have been physically able to pull off any of the murders by herself.”

  “Maybe the pals who're staying at her house.”

  “Yeah . . . and maybe pals who fund the store.”

  “The Loomis Foundation?”

  “Wouldn't that be nice.”

  “What if, after the flap about Sanger's article, Meta shifted its emphasis to L.A.?” I said. “Sanger could be the group's bagman and he's flying out tomorrow to deliver cash.”

  “Mr. Mossad's working on untangling their accounting, we'll see what he comes up with.”

  “Heard from him on the trade school, yet?”

  “Nope.” He blew smoke rings out the window. The ice-cream man drove away; lots of pint-sized satisfied customers. So cute . . . everybody starts off cute . . .

  I said, “I skimmed as many books as I could but found nothing on DVLL. But some of them had no index and I couldn't cover everything in detail. If I stay friendly with Zena after the party, I'll have an excuse to get back to the store.”

  He flicked ashes and rubbed his face. “You've done good work, Alex, but there's a bad smell to this. You're sure you want to stick with it?”

  “If it means getting a closer look at Meta, I do. My main concern is how to avoid Zena when she decides she does want to take me into the garage and yank down my pants.”

  “Tell her you've got herpes.”

  “It's a little late for that and besides, this woman would check. I'll figure out something.”

  “Well, don't do anything you'll regret. Even LAPD has its standards.”

  I thought of Nolan Dahl's time-outs with teenage hookers. “How close were you following me?”

  “I was at the store before you got there, parked two blocks up Apollo, used some Zeiss binocs Sharavi gave me and had a clear view of you going in and coming out with her. She looks a lot different than the picture Sharavi gave me— the hair— but her size was the tip-off. Her body language was affectionate, so I figured it was going well. When you left for the restaurant, I was four cars behind you. While you ate French food, I had a bad burrito in the car.”

  “Such sacrifice.”

  “Yeah, workmen's comp time. When you left the restaurant, I followed you but when you turned up Lyric, I held back because it's a quiet road and I didn't want to be conspicuous.”

  “Daniel supply the car?”

  He nodded. “One of the things that smells bad, Alex, is the layout. In terms of maintaining a close watch. Too damn isolated, too damn quiet, and her house is at the top, no way to get above it.”

  “So you did drive up there.”

  “I waited a few minutes, drove to where Rondo Vista splits off from Lyric and stayed on Lyric, where I parked about a hundred feet down. Then I went on foot. I had on a uniform— gas company— and a stick-on gas-company sign for the car door. I was carrying one of those little meter gizmos, no reason for anyone to give me a second look. But there's a limit to that kind of thing, Alex. Gas guys don't show up often. I ambled from house to house, managed to catch you getting back in the Karmann Ghia.”

  “Never spotted you.”

  “I was two houses down, peeking around some plants. Zena's body language was even better— big-time hots, so I figured you weren't in any immediate danger, but I don't like it.”

  “It's just a party,” I said. “The elite and me. The biggest threat will be her hormones.”

  49

  Friday night; Daniel hated working on Sabbath.

  Back in Israel, before joining the police force, he'd consulted his father, a learned man, about the issue. Abba Yehesqel had sought the counsel of Rav Yitzhak, a ninety-year-old Yemenite hakham, and received a quick answer.

  The law was clear: Saving a life took precedence over shabbat. As with military duty, when police work involved a life-or-death situation, not only was Daniel permitted to work, he was obligated.

  Over the years, he'd used the ruling sparingly, working extra hours on weekdays in order to free up Friday night and Saturday. Not hesitating, of course, to go full-force on things like the Butcher, rapists, suicide bombers. As he climbed the ranks and was given more administrative duties in lieu of streetwork, it became easier. The only advantage of becoming a pencil pusher.

  Now, here he was, at the airport, sitting at the wheel of a yellow cab at the pickup-zone of the American Airlines terminal.

  Back in Jerusalem, he'd be praying in the tiny, ancient Yemenite synagogue near the Old City. Even if he hadn't been on the job, he'd have avoided group worship here, needing to maintain the lowest of profiles, not wanting to have to reject some well-meaning shul-goer who, learning he was an Israeli “software technician” consulting to some anonymous company out in the Valley, just had to have him over for shabbat.

  Early this morning, he'd called Laura and the kids, telling them he'd be back as soon as possible but not knowing what that really meant.

  His eldest, eighteen-year-old Shoshana, was home for the weekend, furloughed from national-service assignment up in Kiryat Shemona. Assigned to a mental-health clinic where she tried to comfort small children terrorized by Hezbollah bombs from Lebanon.

  “I've been thinking, Abba. Maybe I'll study psychology in university.”

  “You're well-suited for it, motek.”

  “The kids are so cute, Abba. I'm finding out that I like helping people.”

  “You always had a talent for it.”

  They talked a bit more, then she told him she loved him and missed him and went to get the boys. As he waited, he fantasized introducing her to Delaware someday, getting her some career guidance from the psychologist. Daddy arranging things for her, with his contacts. Delaware would be happy to help. . . . The more he worked with the guy, the more he liked him, that intense drive and focus—

  “Abba!” Mikey's twelve-and-a-half-year-old voice, still unchanged, burst from the receiver. Six months away from bar mitzvah, a big party to be arranged, Laura's parents wanted the Laromme Hotel. Then Benny's bar mitzvah, a year after that. A busy period coming up for the Sharavis, something to look forward to.

  “Hey, Mike. How's the studying going?”

  “It's okay.” Suddenly downcast. Not the student his sister was, the boy would have preferred to be playing soccer all day, and Daniel felt bad for bringing it up. But the bar mitzvah meant memorizing a Torah portion to be read in synagogue. Too bad his father wouldn't be there to see it. . . .

  “I'm sure you're doing great, Mike.”

  “I don't know, Abba, just my luck to get the longest portion in the entire chumash.”

  “Not the longest, he-man, but definitely long. Maybe God gave you that birthdate because he knew you could handle it.”

  “I doubt it. I've got a brain made out of marble.”

  “Your brain is fantastic, Mikey. So's your heart— and your muscles. How's soccer?”

  “Great! We won!” The boy's tone lifted and they stayed on sports til it was Benny's turn. The little one, once wild as an Old City cat, was now studious like Shoshi. Math was his thing. A gentle voice.

  Talking to his family gentled Daniel's soul.

  The arrangement with Petra Connor was clear: The female detective, dressed in an Alaskan Airlines flight-attendant's uniform and equipped with a carry-on suitcase with push-me handle, was to hang around the terminal, read a paperback, and keep her eyes out for the New York lawyer.

  In the suitcase, among other things, was a cellular phone preset to the one in Daniel's taxi.

  Once Sanger/Galton deplaned, she was to stick with him. Once she became aware of his luggage status— carry-on versus checked-thro
ugh— she was to phone Daniel.

  If Sanger/Galton picked up a rental car, she'd notify Daniel of the company, make, model, and license number, and try to reach her borrowed car— a dark green Ford Escort— in time to join in and create a two-person tail.

  Likewise if some friend was there to greet the attorney.

  If Sanger/Galton needed a taxi and Daniel ended up being his driver, Daniel would call Petra and report his destination, pretending to be contacting the dispatcher. If some other driver snagged the fare, Daniel's tail would be hampered and Petra would have to take the lead and wait til Daniel avoided another fare and made it out of the airport.