That left Jarsdel by himself to interview Bonifacio Delgadillo.
Jarsdel hadn’t been sure what to expect. A monster, certainly, but what sort? Would he be ferocious, teetering on the brink of explosive violence, as his actions at the convenience store suggested? Or would he be cold and glib like Lawrence Wolin?
It turned out he was neither. When he took his seat across from Jarsdel, the first thing he did was apologize for not being allowed to shake hands. And though he was young, no more than nineteen or twenty, his voice was low and hushed, in the manner of a funeral director.
“No offense, but you understand I gotta have my lawyer here,” he said, nodding to the man at his side.
Delgadillo’s attorney had already introduced himself to Jarsdel while the two of them were waiting for him to be brought out. He was a weary, rumpled-looking man, clothes worn and tired, suit jacket shiny at the back and the elbows. But Jarsdel thought it was an act—the beleaguered public defender burning the midnight oil for an endless roster of indigent clients. In fact, he knew Barry Chavanne had an office on Wilshire and billed $350 an hour, and Jarsdel guessed it was cartel money that had put him on retainer.
Now the three of them would play a delicate game. Jarsdel, without revealing how little he actually knew, would ask as many questions as he could about Delgadillo’s connection to Wolin. Chavanne and Delgadillo, in turn, would answer as few of them as possible while still trying to work out what kind of case the police had.
“Okay, Detective,” said Chavanne, “just to set a couple ground rules, we’re not going to talk at all about the incident in Boyle Heights, nor will we discuss allegations that my client has ties to any criminal organizations. This is strictly a friendly meeting. It’s my hope that we can clear up any misunderstandings that my client is involved in whatever brought you here today. Put it to bed before wasting your time and ours. If all that’s agreeable to you, then we can proceed.”
“Certainly,” said Jarsdel.
“But if I sense you’re abusing this meeting in any way, I’ll immediately call it to a close, and you’ll never speak to my client again. So I urge you to be on your best behavior.”
Jarsdel nodded.
“Okay,” said Chavanne. “How can we help you?”
Jarsdel turned to Delgadillo. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”
Delgadillo shrugged. “Got lots of spare time.”
“I’m here because we’ve uncovered some evidence from a deceased person that indicates you may have known him.”
“What evidence?” Chavanne broke in.
“We can get to that. For now, we’re just trying to figure out how exactly you knew him.”
“Who is he?” asked Delgadillo.
Jarsdel reached for a manila folder he’d brought with him and produced the picture of Wolin in the Wax Museum. He slid it across the table.
Delgadillo reached for it, but Chavanne put his hand on his shoulder. “Don’t touch it. Just look.”
Delgadillo leaned forward and squinted down at the photograph. He took a long time before shaking his head.
“No?” asked Jarsdel.
“Never seen him before. Looks like a nice guy.” He made a dismissive gesture toward the picture, but Jarsdel left it where it was.
“His name was Grant Wolin. That sound familiar to you?”
“No.” Delgadillo’s soft voice seemed weighted with regret, as if he really had wanted to help.
“Hmm, that’s a puzzle.”
Chavanne held up a hand. “Please, Detective. Let’s dispense with the usual bullshit. Or are we finished already?”
“Apologies,” said Jarsdel, then, to Delgadillo, “Do you recall where you were on October 2 of this year?”
“No. What’s that, like a month ago? That when your guy got killed?”
“Let the detective ask the questions,” said Chavanne.
“What about the early morning hours of October 3?” asked Jarsdel.
“Still no,” said Delgadillo. “Probably in bed, man.”
“You ever been to Thai Town?”
“What’s that? Like Chinatown?”
“Yeah, but a lot smaller. And Thai. Thai Town. In Hollywood.”
“I been to Hollywood, but I don’t know no Thai Town.”
“I’m gonna show you something.” Jarsdel opened the folder again and brought out a photograph of the Wolin crime scene. It was a full body shot, taken at a forty-five-degree downward angle. Wolin’s head was wrenched upward and a little to the right, and his black eye sockets seemed to be staring straight into the camera. His mouth yawned open, pulled taut into a perverse imitation of high good humor. Jarsdel waited a moment, holding the picture so only he could see it, then slowly turned it around. He pushed it across the desk until it was level with the photo of Wolin alive and happy in the Wax Museum.
An expression of disgust flashed across Delgadillo’s face. It was brief, but it was there. “What’s this, man?”
“Detective, I warned you,” said Chavanne.
“This is why we’re here,” said Jarsdel.
Delgadillo shook his head vigorously. “No way. I didn’t have nothing to do—”
“Let me handle this,” said Chavanne. He turned to Jarsdel. “I told you to be on your best behavior. Now you’re trying to intimidate my client with this ghastly photograph.”
“I’m not trying to intimidate anybody,” said Jarsdel. “But I do need to know what happened to this man.”
“And what makes you think my client has any information on the matter?”
“I don’t think I should say.”
“And why not?”
“Because you just warned me to be on my best behavior. And you’re not gonna like the answer.”
Chavanne sat quietly for a moment, chewing his cheeks in thought. Jarsdel knew he was weighing the pros and cons of allowing the questioning to continue. In the end, the lawyer decided he wanted to know what the police had.
“All right. For my client’s best interest, I’ll let you continue. But our proceeding with you in no way concedes any involvement in this—this horror show.”
“Understood. Mr. Delgadillo, when you were arrested, a firearm was found in your possession. A Browning HP, 9mm.” He saw Chavanne about to protest and quickly added, “But I’m not alleging anything having to do with the Boyle Heights shooting. My interest is specific to the gun itself. Can you tell me where you got it?”
Chavanne answered instead. “That gun did not belong to my client. It happened to be in the car, which he’d borrowed from a friend.”
“Who?”
“That’s not important. Suffice it to say it’s not his gun.”
“Okay. Then my advice is that Mr. Delgadillo contact his friend, whoever it is, and explain that we’ll be wanting to speak with him about the death of this man here.” Jarsdel indicated the pictures.
“Guy doesn’t look shot,” said Delgadillo. “Burned or something.”
“A shell casing was found among his possessions,” said Jarsdel. “This casing has since been matched to the gun recovered from the vehicle you were driving.”
“That don’t mean nothing.”
“Really? Because if a cartridge from my own weapon were found on a dead man, I’d want to know how it got there.”
“Detective,” cautioned Chavanne, “I’ve already explained to you that it wasn’t his weapon. Are we going to be able to get past that or not?”
“Mr. Chavanne,” said Jarsdel, “put yourself in my position. Whether the gun belonged to your client or not, we still need to figure out how that casing ended up with our victim. So unless you have someone else for us to speak to, I’m afraid he’ll be the focus of our investigation.”
“And that concludes the interview,” said Chavanne, pushing the photographs back across the desk to Jarsde
l. “I thought we could cooperate on this, but it looks like the same old, same old from you guys. My client had nothing to do with this, and you’ll only embarrass yourselves by pursuing this angle of investigation. That casing could have come from anywhere. Your victim could’ve worked at a shooting range and collected them. Maybe I should even thank you. You’ve certainly proven that gun got around. And I’ll be interested to find out why this hasn’t been disclosed to us by the district attorney’s—”
But Jarsdel had stopped listening. Something Chavanne said was bothering him, and he was trying to figure out what it was.
Shooting range, he thought. Something about a shooting range.
Jarsdel stood suddenly, stuffing the photographs of Wolin back in the folder. “I’m sorry,” he said, cutting off Chavanne midsentence. “Thank you both for your time today. We’ll be in touch if anything else comes up.”
“That’s not going to hap—,” Chavanne began, but his words were drowned out by Jarsdel calling for the guard.
* * *
Once he was outside, Jarsdel put a call in to Hollenbeck Station’s homicide unit.
“Rislakki.”
He was glad it wasn’t Cooney, the one known as “Sleepy.”
“Hello, yes. This is Detective Jarsdel from Hollywood. We met last week about the Delgadillo case?”
There was a long pause on the line, and Jarsdel thought the other detective had hung up. Then the man said, “What can I do for you?”
“You said something before about the Boyle Heights shooting—how Delgadillo hit the guys in the car like he knew what he was doing. No spray and pray. You said he might have put in time at a range. Did you by any chance ever look into that?”
“Sure,” said Rislakki. “Thought it might help tie him to the gun in case he tried the whole ‘it wasn’t mine’ routine. Weren’t able to confirm anything, though. Canvassed a couple ranges in his area, but they didn’t recognize him by his picture, and he didn’t have any membership cards on him or anything.”
Jarsdel felt himself deflate. “Nothing?”
“Not that we found. And the ranges we didn’t visit personally, we emailed his picture. Nothing in SoCal. Why?”
“Then how was he so accurate? Military trained?”
“Ha. No. He’s just a punk.”
“But he had to have practiced somewhere.”
“Or got lucky. Or plinked cans out in the desert. Or a combination of the two. Tell you what—you figure it out, you let us know. That it?”
Jarsdel couldn’t think of anything else, so he thanked Rislakki and was about to hang up when the other detective spoke. “You know we go on trial day after tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Just a little reminder in case you forgot.”
“Uh-huh. And you didn’t tell the DA’s office about that shell casing, did you?”
“What do you care?”
“I just got out of a meeting with Delgadillo and his attorney, and—”
“You did what? You fucking did what?”
“We have our own investigation to follow. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but we still have to go where it takes us.”
“You may have just fucked this whole thing, you know that?”
“Hey, look, it’s not my problem you didn’t disclose—”
Rislakki hung up. Jarsdel let out a shaky breath and made his way back to the car. He’d considered going back to Daikokuya for lunch, but the conversation had cost him his appetite. After leaving the lot, he turned onto the 101, intending to drive back to Hollywood Station. Still, the shell casing nagged at him. He’d been so certain the gun range was the answer—that somehow it would connect back to Wolin. It would explain everything, including why he had so many different cartridges in his apartment and only one of them had been tied to a crime. But if Rislakki and Cooney couldn’t place Delgadillo at a single range in southern California, Jarsdel didn’t think he’d be able to do any better.
His mind wandered back to what Rislakki had said, that Delgadillo might have been doing his target practice out in the desert. Fine, but how would Wolin have come across any of his casings? An idea lurked somewhere in the tangle of his thoughts, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. A car swerved into his lane, and he had to slam on the brakes. “Goddamn it,” he muttered, swatting the wheel and stinging his palm. “No, come on,” he said. “What is it? The desert. Out in the desert. Why is that important? Sand, lots of sand. No way to…”
And then he had it.
* * *
Instead of getting off at Sunset, his exit for the station, he turned off the freeway on Cahuenga, then headed south until he hit Hollywood Boulevard. In five minutes, he was in front of the Wax Museum. He parked in a red zone and turned on his police lights, then hurried to the ticket counter. Ramesh Ramjoo wasn’t there. Instead, there sat an older man in a tall black turban, wearing a heavy beard. The tips of his mustache were molded into precise curls.
“Is Ramesh here?” asked Jarsdel as he approached.
“How you know Ramesh?”
Jarsdel pointed to the badge on his belt. “Please, it’s urgent. I need to talk with him.”
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. It’s about the case he’s helping us with. You were at the funeral, right? You’re his uncle?”
The man nodded, then gestured to the entrance. “Inside somewhere. Walking the floor.”
“Thanks.” Jarsdel stepped through the turnstile and into the museum. He hadn’t been inside since he was ten or eleven years old. The wax Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr waltzing in The King and I had been replaced by Ace Ventura, his expression more psychotic than gleeful. Farther in, where he remembered a beefy Rambo dummy, there stood in its place a figure of Jackie Chan about to kick. Jarsdel realized it was the same spot at which Wolin had been photographed and felt a chill.
He walked quickly through the exhibits, looking for Ramesh. Each room had its own music playing to match the scenes being depicted, and as he made his way through, the sounds and images blurred together into a discordant, dreamlike soup. He passed Dorothy and her friends, and it was “We’re Off to See the Wizard,” then Terminator, then Back to the Future and Titanic and Forrest Gump.
By the time he reached the exit, he felt a little dizzy, and he still hadn’t found Ramesh. He went back outside, approaching the man at the ticket counter.
“I didn’t see him. You sure he’s inside?”
“Check everywhere?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Horror Chamber? Crypt Keeper not working today. Maybe he’s fixing.”
Jarsdel wilted a little. He never had liked the horror section. When he was a kid, he’d test himself to see how far inside he could go before retreating. He’d made it all the way through only once, and it was at a light jog, eyes squinted nearly shut, hands clamped to his ears. And now at the mention of the place, a voice that had been dormant within him nearly thirty years began to protest.
Jarsdel thanked Ramesh’s uncle and went back inside, walking more slowly this time. He wasn’t sure if he’d ignored the horror section deliberately or not, but now he was careful not to pass it. And there it was, just off the superstars of music exhibit—Michael Jackson and Madonna and the Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper outfits—a passage snaking off into darkness, marked by a glowing, red-lettered sign reading Chamber of Horrors.
He stepped inside, making his way down the narrow hallway, which turned sharply left before opening into a large, dimly lit room. Upon entering, he was greeted by a sharp blast of air and a tinny cackle of canned laughter. A recording of scraping chains and low moans played behind Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The figures of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster stared down at him from a raised platform, and off to his right was Regan from The Exorcist, her head turning slowly around and around.
>
It took Jarsdel a moment to realize that he felt nothing—no fear, not even the slightest tingle of apprehension. The Chamber of Horrors was quaint now, its ersatz demons with their fangs and pale, clutching fingers holding no thrall alongside a knowledge of the world’s real monsters and the carnage strewn in their wake.
Jarsdel started forward, cautious of any more hidden sensors. At the far end of the room, a man was bent down, a penlight clamped between his teeth, fiddling with something attached to the wall.
Jarsdel approached. “Hey, Ramesh.”
Ramesh looked up at the sound of his name, startled, and the beam from the penlight shined into Jarsdel’s eyes.
“Oh, it’s you. Sorry,” said Ramesh, flicking the light off. He stood, brushing his pants. “Some damn kid kicked the sensor that works the Crypt Keeper. It’s all bent. What’s going on? Did you find the murderer?”
It was the kind of question, Jarsdel reflected, that he never would have been asked had he stayed a history teacher. “No, but I need your help with something.”
Ramesh shrugged. “Okay.”
“I need to know where Grant got his dirt. You know, for his Genuine Hollywood Dirt business.”
“Oh, the dirt, yes.” Ramesh thought for a moment. “He tried different soils, different colors. Some sold better than other ones. At first, I think he just dug around the rental property, but the dirt was too dark. Didn’t look good with the label.”
“Okay, so what’d he do?”
“Well, it’s hard to find just dirt in a city, you know—all the cement—so he’d bring a bucket up to the park and get it from there. Same place we’d go to smoke. Sort of sandy dirt, very nice shade. Tan.”
“The park? You mean Griffith Park?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“It’s hard to describe. Up by the fire road. I guess I can show you.”
“When? Now?”
Ramesh made a face. “No, I have to fix this. We have a big tour coming in an hour, and—”
“Ramesh, this is important.”
The other man considered. “It will help? With finding the murderer?”
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