The man working the bar was thirtyish, fair, balding, stubbled. He wore tinted eyeglasses and one of his ears was double pierced, hosting a tiny gold stud and a white metal hoop. He had on a soiled white apron over a black T-shirt, and his chest was flabby. His arms were soft looking, too, white and tattooed. He wasn't doing much when I came in, and he continued along those lines. Two men sat at the bar, far from each other. More tattoos. They didn't move either. It looked like a poster for National Brain Death Week.
I took a stool between the men and ordered a beer.
“Draft or bottle?”
“Draft.”
The bartender took a long time to fill a mug, and as I waited I snuck glances at my companions. Both wore billed caps, T-shirts, jeans, and work shoes. One was skinny, the other muscular. Their hands were dirty. They smoked and drank and had tired faces.
My beer came and I took a swallow. Not much head and not great, but not as bad as I'd expected.
“Any idea when Roddy'll be back?” I said.
“Who?” said the bartender.
“Rodriguez—the masonry guy next door. He's supposed to be doing a retaining wall for me and he didn't show up.”
He shrugged.
“Place is closed,” I said.
No answer.
“Great,” I said. “Guy's got my goddamned deposit.”
The bartender began soaking glasses in a gray plastic tub.
I drank some more.
ZZ gave way to a disc jockey's voice, hawking car insurance for people with bad driving records. Then a series of commercials for ambulance-chasing lawyers polluted the air some more.
“When's the last time you've seen him around?” I said.
The bartender turned around. “Who?”
“Rodriguez.”
Shrug.
“Has his place been closed for a while?”
Another shrug. He returned to soaking.
“Great,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder. “He never comes in here, I got nothing to do with him, okay?”
“Not much of a drinker?”
Shrug.
“Fucking asshole,” said the man on my right.
The skinny one. Sallow and pimpled, barely above drinking age. His cigarette was dead in the ashtray. One of his index fingers played with the ashes.
I said, “Who? Rodriguez?”
He gave a depressed nod. “Fucking greaser don't pay.”
“You worked for him?”
“Fucking A, digging his fucking ditches. Then the roach coach comes by for lunch and I wanna advance so's to get a burrito. He says sorry, amigo, not till payday. So I'm adios, amigo, man.”
He shook his head, still pained by the rejection.
“Asshole,” he said, and returned to his beer.
“So he shafted you, too,” I said.
“Fucking A, man.”
“Any idea where I can find him?”
“Maybe Mexico, man.”
“Mexico?”
“Yeah, all a them beaners got second homes there, got they extra wives and they little taco-tico kids, send all they money there.”
I heard a metallic click to the left, looked over, and saw the muscular man light up a cigarette. Late twenties or early thirties, two-day growth of heavy beard, thick, black Fu Manchu mustache. His cap was black and said CAT. He blew smoke toward the bar.
I said, “You know Rodriguez, too?”
He gave a long, slow headshake and held out his mug.
The bartender filled it, then extended his own hand. The mustachioed man jostled the pack until a cigarette slid forward. The bartender took it, nodded, and lit up.
Guns 'n Roses came on the radio.
The bartender looked at my half-empty mug. “Anything else?”
I shook my head, put money down on the bar, and left.
“Asshole,” said the skinny man, raising his voice to be heard over the music.
I drove back to the Rodriguez house. Still dark and empty. A woman across the street was holding a broom, and she began looking at me suspiciously.
I called over: “Any idea when they'll be back?”
She went inside her house. I drove away and got back on the freeway, exiting on Sunset and heading north on Beverly Glen. I realized my error just as I completed the turn, but continued on to my house anyway, pulling up in front of the carport. Looking over my shoulder with paranoid fervor, I decided it was safe to get out of the car.
I walked around my property, looking, remembering. Though it made no sense, the house already looked sad.
You know how places get when they're empty . . .
I took a quick look at the pond. The fish were still there. They swam up to greet me and I obliged with food.
“See you guys,” I said, and left, wondering how many would survive.
CHAPTER
11
I made it to Benedict a few minutes later.
The black van and the unmarked were gone. Two of the three garage doors were open and I saw Robin inside, wearing work clothes and goggles, standing behind her lathe.
She saw me coming and turned off the machine. A gold BMW coupe was parked in the third garage. The rest of the space was a near duplicate of the Venice shop.
“Looks like you're all set up,” I said.
She pushed her goggles up on her forehead. “This isn't too bad, actually, as long as I leave the door open for ventilation. How come you're back so soon?”
“No one home.”
“Flake out on you?”
“It looks like they're gone for a while.”
“Moved out?”
“Must be the week for it.”
“How could you tell?”
“Two days' mail in the box and her husband's business was padlocked.”
“Considerate of her to let you know.”
“Etiquette isn't her strong suit. She wasn't thrilled about my evaluation in the first place, though I thought we were making progress. She probably took the girls out of state—maybe Hawaii. When I spoke to her yesterday she made a crack about a Honolulu vacation. Or Mexico. Her husband may have family there. . . . I'd better call the judge.”
“We set up an office for you in one of the bedrooms,” she said, leaning over and pecking my cheek. “Gave you the one with the best view, plus there's a Hockney on the wall—two guys showering.” She smiled. “Poor Milo—he was a little embarrassed about it—started muttering about the “atmosphere.' Almost apologizing. After all he did to help us. I sat him down and we had a good talk.”
“About what?”
“Stuff—the meaning of life. I told him you could handle the atmosphere.”
“What he say to that?”
“Just grunted and rubbed his face the way he does. Then I made coffee and told him if he ever learned to play an instrument I'd build one for him.”
“Safe offer,” I said.
“Maybe not. When we were talking, it came up that he used to play the accordion when he was a kid. And he sings—have you ever heard him?”
“No.”
“Well, he sang for me this afternoon. After some prodding. Did an old Irish folk song—and guess what? He's got a really nice voice.”
“Basso profundo?”
“Tenor, of all things. He used to be in the church choir when he was a little boy.”
I smiled. “That's a little hard to picture.”
“There's probably a lot about him you don't know.”
“Probably,” I said. “Each year I get in touch with more of my ignorance. . . . Speaking of grunts, where's our guest?”
“Sleeping in the service porch. I tried keeping him here while I worked, but he kept charging the machines—he was ready to take on the bandsaw when I got him out of here and locked him in.”
“Tough love, huh? Did he do his little strangulation routine?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. She put her hand around her throat and made a gagging sound. “I yelled at him to be quiet and
he stopped.”
“Poor guy. He probably thought you were going to be his salvation.”
She grinned. “I may be sultry and sensual, but I ain't easy.”
I let the dog loose, gave him time to pee outside, and took him into my new office. A chrome-and-glass-topped desk was pushed up against one wall. My papers and books were piled neatly on a black velour couch. The view was fantastic, but after a few minutes I stopped noticing it.
I phoned superior court, got Steve Huff in his chambers, and told him about Evelyn Rodriguez's no-show.
“Maybe she just forgot,” he said. “Denial, avoidance, whatever.”
“I think there's a good chance she's gone, Steve.” I described Roddy Rodriguez's locked yard.
“Sounds like it,” he said. “There goes another one.”
“Can't say that I blame her. When I saw her two days ago, she really opened up about the girls' problems. They're having plenty of them. And Donald wrote me a letter—no remorse, just tooting his own horn as a good dad.”
“Wrote you a letter?”
“His lawyer's been calling me, too.”
“Any intimidation?”
I hesitated. “No, just nagging.”
“Too bad. No law against that . . . no, can't say that I blame her either, Alex—off the record. Do you want to wait and try again, or just write up your report now—document all the crap she told you?”
“What's the difference?”
“The difference is how quickly you want to get paid versus how much lead time you want to give her, if she has hightailed it. Once you put it in writing and I receive it, I'm obligated to send it over to Bucklear. Even with reasonable delays he gets it in a couple of weeks or so, then he files paper and gets warrants out on her.”
“A murderer gets warrants on a grandmother taking her grandkids out of town? Do we file that under “I for irony' or “N for nuts'?”
“Do I take that to mean you'll wait?”
“How much lead time can I give her?”
“A reasonable period. Consistent with typical medical-psychological practice.”
“Meaning??”
“Meaning what shrinks normally do. Three, four, even five weeks wouldn't chafe any hides—you guys are notorious for being sloppy about your paperwork. You might even stretch it to six or seven—but you never heard that from me. In fact, we never had this talk, did we?”
“Judge who?” I said.
“Attaboy—oops, bailiff's buzzing me, time to be Solomonic again, bye-bye.” I put the phone down. The bulldog placed his paws on my knees and tried to get up on my lap. I lifted him and he settled on me like a warm hunk of clay. At least thirty pounds.
The Hockney was right in front of me. Great painting. As was the Thomas Hart Benton drawing on the opposite wall—a mural study depicting hypermuscular workmen cheerfully constructing a WPA dam.
I looked at both of them for a while and wondered what Robin and Milo had talked about. The dog stayed as motionless as a little furry Buddha. I rubbed his head and his jowls and he licked my hand. A boy and his dog . . . I realized I hadn't gotten the number for the bulldog club, yet. Almost five p.m. Too late to call the AKC.
I'd do it tomorrow morning.
Denial, avoidance, whatever.
That night I slept fitfully. Friday morning at eight I phoned North Carolina and got an address for the French Bulldog Club of America, in Rahway, New Jersey. A post office box. No phone number was available.
At eight-ten, I called the Rodriguez house. A phone company recording said that line had been disconnected. I pictured Evelyn and the girls barreling over a dirt road in Baja, Rodriguez following in his truck. Or maybe the four of them, wandering through Waikiki with glazed tourists' eyes. If only they knew how much we had in common now . . .
I began unpacking books. At eight thirty-five, the doorbell rang and Milo appeared on one of the TV monitors, tapping a foot and carrying a white bag.
“Breakfast,” he said, as I let him in. “I already gave Ms. Castagna hers. God, that woman works—what've you been doing?”
“Getting organized.”
“Sleep okay?”
“Great,” I lied. “Thanks a lot for setting us up.”
He looked around. “How's the office?”
“Perfect.”
“Great view, huh?”
“To die for.”
We went into the kitchen and he took some onion rolls and two Styrofoam cups of coffee out of the bag.
We sat at a blue granite table. He said, “What's your schedule like today?”
“It's pretty open now that the Wallace thing's on hold. Looks like Grandma decided to take matters into her own hands.”
I recounted what I'd found in Sunland.
He said, “They're probably better off. If you feel like taking on a little assignment, I've got one for you.”
“What?”
“Go over to the Mental Health Center and talk to Ms. Jean Jeffers. I finally got through to her—she actually called me back last night, which I thought was pretty cool for a bureaucrat. Better attitude than I expected, too. Down to earth. Not that she shouldn't cooperate, after what happened to Becky. I told her we'd come across some harassment crimes—didn't go into specifics—that we had reason to believe might be coming from one of her patients. Someone we also had reason to believe was a buddy of Hewitt's. Mentioning his name got her going—she went on about how Becky's murder had traumatized all of them. Still sounds pretty shook up.”
He tore an onion roll into three pieces, placed the segments on the table like monte cards, picked one up, and ate it.
“Anyway, I asked her if she knew who Hewitt hung out with and she said no. Then I asked her if I could look at her patient roster, and she said she wanted to help but no—the confidentiality thing. So I threw Tarasoff at her, hoping she didn't know the law that well. But she did: no specific threat against a specific victim, no Tarasoff obligation. At that point, I played my trump card: told her the department had a consultant doing some profiling work for us on psycho crimes—a genuine “pee aitch dee' who respected confidentiality and would be discreet, and I gave her your name in case maybe she heard of you. And guess what, she thought she had. Especially after I told her you were semi-famous.”
“Hoo-hah.”
“Hoo-hah to the max. She said she couldn't promise anything, but she'd be willing to at least talk to you. Maybe there'd be some way to work something out. The more we talked, the friendlier she got. My feeling is she wants to help but is afraid of being burned by more publicity. So be gentle with her.”
“No brass knucks,” I said. “How much do I tell her?”
He ate another piece of roll. “As little as possible.”
“When can she see me?”
“This afternoon. Here's the number.” He took a scrap of paper out of his pocket, gave it to me, and stood.
“Where you going?” I said.
“Over the hill. Van Nuys. Try to find out what I can about who cut up Myra Paprock five years ago.”
After he was gone, I called in for messages—still nothing from Shirley Rosenblatt in New York—then wrote a letter to the bulldog club informing them I'd found what might possibly be a member's pet. At nine-thirty, I phoned Jean Jeffers and was put through to her secretary, who sounded as if she'd been expecting me. An appointment with Ms. Jeffers was available in an hour if I was free.
I grabbed a roll, put on a tie, and left.
The center was in a block of cheerless, pastel-colored apartments, in a quiet part of West L.A. not far from Santa Monica. An old, working-class district, near an industrial park whose galloping expansion had been choked off by hard times. Constructus interruptus had left its mark all over the neighborhood—half-framed buildings, empty lots dug out for foundations and left as dry sumps, pigeon-specked FOR SALE signs, boarded-up windows on condemned prewar bungalows.
The clinic was the only charming bit of architecture in sight. Its front windows were barred, b
ut boxes filled with begonias hung from the iron. The spot on the sidewalk where Dorsey Hewitt had fallen dead was clean. But for a couple of trash-choked shopping carts in front, it could have been a private sanitarium.
A generous lot next door was two-thirds empty and marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. NO PATIENT PARKING. I decided a consultant qualified as someone's employee, and parked there.
I made my way back to the front of the building, passing the section of wall that had been obsessed upon by the TV camera. A cement cornerstone etched with names of forgotten politicos stated that the building had been dedicated as a veterans clinic in 1919. The door Hewitt had come out of was just to the right, unmarked and locked—two locks, each almost as large as the one sealing Roddy Rodriguez's brickyard.
The main entrance was dead center, through a squat arch leading to a courtyard with an empty fountain. A loggia to the right of the fountain—the path Hewitt would have taken to get to the unmarked door—was sectioned off by thick steel mesh that looked brand-new. An open hallway on the opposite side led me around the fountain to glass-paned doors.
A blue-uniformed guard stood behind the doors, tall, old, black, chewing gum. He looked me over and unlatched one of the doors, then pointed to a metal detector to his left—one of those walk-through airport things. I set it off and had to give the guard my keys before passing silently.
“Go 'head,” he said, handing them back.
I walked up to a reception desk. A young black woman sat behind more mesh. “Can I help you?”
“Dr. Delaware for Ms. Jeffers.”
“One minute.” She got on the phone. Behind her were three other women at desks, typing and talking into receivers. The windows behind them were barred. Through the bars, I saw trucks, cars, and shadows—the gray, graffitied walls of an alley.
I was standing in a small, unfurnished area painted light green and broken only by a single door to the right. Claustrophobic. It reminded me of the sally port at the county jail and I wondered how a paranoid schizophrenic or someone in crisis would handle it. How easy it would be for someone with a muddled psyche to make it from the no-parking lot, through the metal detector, to this holding cell.
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