Silent Partner

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “I won't stir anything up. What would be the point?”

  “Good. What about your detective friend?”

  “He's a realist.”

  “Good for him.”

  “Are you going to kill me anyway? Have Royal Hummel do his thing?”

  He laughed. “Of course not. How amusing that you still see me as Attila the Hun. No, Doctor, you're in no danger. What would be the point?”

  “For one, I know your family secrets.”

  “Seaman Cross redux? Another book?”

  More laughter. It turned into coughing. Several miles later the ranch came into view, perfect and unreal as a movie set.

  He said, “Speaking of Royal Hummel, there's something I want you to know. He'll no longer be functioning in a security capacity. Your comments on Linda's death gave me quite a bit of pause—amazing what a fresh perspective will do. Royal and Victor were professionals. Accidents needn't happen with professionals. At best, they were sloppy. At worst . . . You brought me insight late in life, Doctor. For that I owe you a large debt.”

  “I was theorizing, Vidal. I don't want anyone's blood on my conscience, not even Hummel's.”

  “Oh, for God's sake, will you please stop being melodramatic, young man! No one's blood is at stake. Royal simply has a new job. Cleaning our chicken coops. Several tons of guano need to be shoveled each day. He's getting on in years, his blood pressure's too high, but he'll manage.”

  “What if he refuses?”

  “Oh, he won't.”

  He aimed the vehicle at the empty corral.

  “You gave the silent-partner photo to Kruse,” I said. “The girls were photographed over there.”

  “Fascinating the things one dredges up in old attics.”

  “Why?” I said. “Why'd you let Kruse go on for so long?”

  “At one point, until recently, I believed he was helping Sharon—helping both of them. He was a charismatic man, very articulate.”

  “But he was bleeding your sister before he met Sharon. Twenty years of blackmail—of mind games.”

  He put the buggy in idle and looked at me. All the charm had dropped away, and I saw the same cold rawness in his eyes that I'd just witnessed in Sharon's. Genes . . . The collective unconscious . . .

  “Be that as it may, Doctor. Be that as it may.”

  He drove quickly, stopped the buggy and parked.

  We got out and walked toward the patio. Two men in dark clothing and ski masks stood waiting. One held a dark piece of elastic.

  “Please don't be frightened,” said Vidal. “That will come off as soon as it's safe for both of us. You'll be delivered safe and sound. Try to enjoy the ride.”

  “Why don't I feel reassured?”

  More laughter, dry and forced. “Doctor, it's been stimulating. Who knows, we may meet again one day—another party.”

  “I don't think so. I hate parties.”

  “To tell the truth,” he said, “I've tired of them myself.” He turned serious. “But given even a slim chance that we do come face to face, I'd appreciate it if you don't acknowledge me. Invoke professional confidentiality and pretend we've never met.”

  “No problem there.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. You've comported yourself as a gentleman. Is there anything else?”

  “Lourdes Escobar, the maid. A true innocent victim.”

  “Compensation's been made in that regard.”

  “Dammit, Vidal, money can't fix everything!”

  “It can't fix anything,” he said. “If it makes you feel any better, during the time she lived in the States, half of her family was wiped out by the guerrillas. Same death, no compensation. Those who survived were tortured, their homes burned to the ground. They've been granted immigration papers, brought over here, set up with businesses, given land. Compared to life itself, admittedly feeble, but the best I can offer. Any additional suggestions?”

  “Justice would be nice.”

  “Any suggestions about improving the justice that's been meted out?”

  I had nothing to say.

  “Well, then,” he said, “is there anything I can do for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is a small favor. An arrangement.”

  When I told him what it was, and exactly how I wanted it done, he laughed so hard it plunged him into a coughing attack that bent him double. He took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth, spat, laughed some more. When he pulled the handkerchief away, the silk was stained with something dark.

  He tried to talk. Nothing came out. The men in black looked at each other.

  He finally found his voice again. “Excellent, Doctor,” he said. “Great minds moving in the same direction. Now, let's attend to that hand.”

  Chapter

  37

  I was dropped off on the University campus. Pulling the blindfold off, I made my way home on foot. Once inside my house I found I couldn't tolerate being there, threw some things into a bag, and called the exchange to say I'd be going away for a couple of days, to hold my calls.

  “Any forwarding number, Doctor?”

  No active patients or pending emergencies. I said, “No, I'll check in.”

  “A real vacation, huh?”

  “Something like that. Goodnight.”

  “Don't you want to pick up the messages that are already on your board?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oka-ay, but there's this one guy who's been driving me crazy. Called three times and got rude when I wouldn't give him your home number.”

  “What's his name?”

  “Sanford Moretti. Sounds like a lawyer—says he wants you to work on a case for him or something like that. Kept trying to tell me you'd really want to hear from him.”

  My reply made her laugh. “Doctor Delaware! I didn't know you used that kind of language.”

  I got in the car and drove away, found myself heading west, and ended up on Ocean Avenue, off Pico. Not far from the Santa Monica Pier, which had closed up for the night and darkened to a knurled clump of rooftops over a thatch of bowed pilings. Not far from the (vulgar) Pacific, but no OC VU on this block. The sea breeze had taken leave; the ocean smelled like garbage. The street hosted beer-and-shot bars with Polynesian names and “day-week-month” motels given a wide berth by the auto club.

  I checked into a place called Blue Dreams—twelve brown, salt-smudged doors arranged around a parking lot badly in need of resurfacing, the neon tubes in the VACANCY sign cracked and drained of gas. A pasty-faced biker-hopeful with a dangling crucifix earring manned the front desk—doing me the favor of taking my money while making love to a slab of fried catfish and staring at a California Raisins commercial. Candy and condom machines stood side by side in the shoulder-cramping lobby, along with a pocket-comb dispenser, and the California Penal Code's reflections on theft and defrauding an innkeeper.

  I took a room on the south side, paying for a week in advance. Nine by nine, insecticide stink—no gnats here—a single narrow, filmed window exposing a slice of brick wall turned mauve by reflected streetlight, mismatched wood-grain furniture, skinny bed under a spread laundered to dishwater-colored fuzz, pay TV bolted to the floor. A quarter in the pay slot yielded an hour of fizzy sound and jaundiced skin tones. There were three quarters in my pocket. I tossed two out the window.

  I lay on the bed, let the TV run down, and listened to noise. Bass thumps from the jukebox of the bar next door, so loud it seemed as if someone was being hurled against the wall in two-four time; angry laughter and truncated street-talk in English, Spanish, and a thousand undecipherable tongues, canned laughter from the TV in the adjacent room, toilet flushes, faucet hisses, movement cracks, door slams, car horns, a scatter of sharp reports that could have been gunshots or backfires or the sound of two hands applauding. And backing it all, the Doppler drone of the freeway.

  An Overland symphony. Within moments I was robbed of twelve years.

  The room was a sweatbox. I stayed inside for three days, subsisting
on pizza and cola from a place that promised to deliver hot and cold and lied about both. For the most part I did what I'd been avoiding for so long. Had pushed away by chasing the inadequacies of others, throwing down cloaks over mudholes. Introspection. Such a prissy word for scooper-dips deep into the wellspring of the soul. The scooper honed sharp and jagged.

  For three days I went through all of it: rage, tears, tension so visceral my teeth chattered and my muscles threatened to go into tetany. A loneliness that I would have gladly anesthetized with pain.

  By the fourth day I felt sapped and placid, was proud I didn't mistake that for cure. That afternoon, I left the motel to keep my appointment: a sprint down the block to the sidewalk paper rack. The remaining quarter down the hatch and the evening edition was mine, gripped tightly under my arm, like pornography.

  Bottom left of page one, complete with picture.

  L.A.P.D. CAPTAIN CHARGED WITH SEXUAL

  MISCONDUCT RESIGNS

  Maura Bannon

  Staff Writer

  A Los Angeles police captain, accused of having sexual relations with several underage female Police Scouts while on duty, resigned today after a police disciplinary board recommended dismissal.

  The three-member Board of Rights panel ordered Cyril Leon Trapp, 45, terminated immediately from duty and recommended retroactive loss of all L.A.P.D. pensions, benefits and privileges. In accordance with what both Trapp's attorney and a police spokesman described as a negotiated settlement, Trapp agreed to register as a sex offender, forfeit appeal of the board's decision, sign an affidavit agreeing never again to work in law enforcement, and pay “substantial financial restitution, including full fees for medical and psychiatric treatment” to his victims, suspected of numbering over a dozen. In exchange, no criminal charges are being filed, an alternative which theoretically could have included indictments for statutory rape, narcotics abuse, sexual abuse of a minor and multiple misdemeanors.

  The offenses to which Trapp pleaded no contest, took place over a five-year period during which he served as a sergeant in the department's Hollywood Division, and may have continued while he was a lieutenant at the Ramparts Division and at the West Los Angeles Division, where he was promoted to captain, last year, following the sudden heart attack death of the previous captain, Robert L. Rogers.

  While at Hollywood, Trapp's name also surfaced in connection with the burglary scandal in which police officers broke rear windows of stores and warehouses on their patrols, tripping burglar alarms, then notified the police dispatcher that they were handling the call. The officers proceeded to loot the premises, using police cruisers to cart away stolen goods, then filed false burglary reports. No charges were filed against Trapp, who was characterized by prosecutors, at that time, as a “cooperative witness.”

  With regard to the current case, Trapp was accused of luring female scouts into his office under the guise of offering “career guidance,” plying them with beer, wine, “premixed, canned cocktails,” and marijuana before making sexual advances. Allegations of fondling were made in thirteen cases, with actual intercourse believed to have taken place with at least seven girls, ages 15 to 17. Though the Board of Rights refused to specify what led to the investigation of Trapp, a police source reports that one of the victims experienced emotional problems due to the molestation, was taken for counseling, and revealed to her therapist what had happened. The therapist then informed the Department of Social Services, who contacted the L.A.P.D.

  Corroboration of the charges was received from several other victims. However, none of the girls was willing to testify in court, leading the District Attorney's office to conclude that successful criminal prosecution of Trapp was “unlikely.”

  When it was suggested that the settlement constituted a slap on the wrist for an individual who could have been sentenced to a substantial jail term, the board chairman, Cmdr. Walter D. Smith, said, “The Department wants to make it very clear that it will not tolerate sexual misconduct of any sort on the part of any officer, no matter how high-ranking. However, we are also sensitive to the emotional needs of victims and couldn't force these girls into the psychological trauma of testifying. The board's action today guarantees that this officer will never again work in law enforcement and will lose every cent he has earned as a police officer. To me that sounds like a pretty good deal.”

  Trapp's attorney, Thatcher Friston, refused to divulge his client's future plans, other than to say that the disgraced officer is “expected to leave the state, maybe even the country, to work in agriculture. Mr. Trapp's always been interested in poultry farming. Now perhaps he'll have a chance to try it.”

  I read it once more, tore it out of the paper, and folded it into a paper airplane. When I finally landed the plane in the toilet, I left the motel.

  I went home, felt like a new tenant, if not a new man. Was sitting down at my desk ready to plow through accumulated papers when a knock sounded at the front door.

  I opened it. Milo came in, wearing his police ID tag on the lapel of a brown suit that reeked of squad-room smoke, glaring at me under black brows, his big face clouded.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Out.”

  “Out where?”

  “I don't want to get into it right now.”

  “Get into it anyway.”

  I didn't speak.

  He said, “Jesus! You were supposed to be making a few calls—doing the safe stuff, remember? Instead you disappear. Haven't you learned a goddamned thing!”

  “Sorry, Mom.” Then, when I saw the look on his face: “I did do the safe stuff, Milo. Then I disappeared. I left a message with my service.”

  “Right. Very comforting.” He pinched his nose. “‘Dr. Delaware will be out for a couple of da-ays.' ” Unpinch:

  “‘Where to, honey?' ” Pinch. “‘He didn't sa-ay.' ”

  I said, “I needed to get away. I'm fine. I was never in danger.”

  He swore, punched his palm, tried to use his height to advantage by looming over me. I went back into the library and he followed me there, digging deep in his coat pocket and pulling out a crumpled piece of newsprint.

  As he started to unfold it, I said, “Saw it already.”

  “I'll bet you have.” He leaned on the desk. “How, Alex? How the fuck?”

  “Not now,” I said.

  “What, all of a sudden it's let's-play-hide-and-seek time?”

  “I just don't want to get into it right now.”

  “Bye-bye, Cyril,” he said, to the ceiling. “For the first time in my life, wishes come true—it's like I've got this goddamned genie. Problem is, I don't know what he looks like, who or what to rub.”

  “Can't you just accept good fortune? Kick back and enjoy?”

  “I like making my own fortune.”

  “Make an exception.”

  “Could you?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Come on, Alex, what the hell's going on? One minute we're talking theory; the next, Trapp's neck-deep in shit and the speedboats are revving.”

  “Trapp's a very small part of it,” I said. “I just don't want to paint the whole picture right now.”

  He stared at me, went into the kitchen and came back with a carton of milk and a stale bagel. Tearing off a chunk of bagel and washing it down, he finally said, “Temporary reprieve, pal. But some day—soon—we're gonna have ourselves a little sit-down.”

  “There's nothing to sit down about, Milo. It's like an expert once told me, no evidence, nothing real.”

  He held the stare a while longer before his face softened.

  “Okay,” he said. “I get it. No neat wrap-up. Case of the law-enforcement blue balls: You were angling for a love affair with Little Miss Justice, found you couldn't go all the way. But hell, you handled that kind of thing in high school, should be able to handle it now that you're all grown up.”

  “I'll let you know when I'm all grown up.”

  “Screw you, Peter Pan.” Th
en: “How're you doing, Alex? Seriously.”

  “Good.”

  “All things considered.”

  I nodded.

  “You look,” he said, “as if you've been considering lots of things.”

  “Just tuning up the system . . . Milo, I appreciate that you care, appreciate all the things you've done for me. Right now I could really use being alone.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said.

  “See you later.”

  He left without another word.

  Robin came home the next day, wearing a dress I'd never seen before and the look of a first-grader about to recite in front of the class. I accepted her embrace, then asked her what had brought her back.

  “You're not happy to see me,” she said.

  “I am. You took me by surprise.” I carried her suitcase into the living room.

  She said, “I was thinking of coming down anyway.” Slipping her arm through mine. “I missed you, really wanted to talk to you last night and called. The operator at the service said you'd gone away without telling anyone where or for how long. She said you'd sounded different, tired and angry—‘cussing like a trucker.' I was worried.”

  “Charity time,” I said, stepping back.

  She looked at me as if for the first time.

  I said, “I'm sorry, but right at this moment, I'm not going to be the man you want.”

  “I've pushed it too far,” she said.

  “No. It's just that I've had to do a lot of thinking. Long overdue.”

  She blinked hard, her eyes got wet, and she turned away. “Shit.”

  I said, “Some of it has to do with you; a lot of it doesn't. I know you want to take care of me—know that's important to you. But right now I'm not ready for that, couldn't accept it in a way that would give you what you want.”

  She slumped, sat down on the couch.

  I sat facing her, said, “That's not anger speaking. Maybe some of it is, but it's not that simple. There are some things I need to work out for myself. Time I have to take.”

  She blinked some more, put on a smile that looked so painful, she might have just carved it in her flesh. “Who am I to complain about that?”