He stopped to study a stock quotation on the tube, switched off the set, cleared a massive pile of newspapers off a plaid sofa, and brought them over to a metal-legged dinette table. Four red vinyl chairs ringed the table. Hardback ledgers filled two of them. Half the table surface was taken up by more ledgers and legal pads, pens, pencils, a hand calculator, cans of Diet 7-Up, snack bags of assorted carbohydrates.
The apartment was basic: white walls, low ceilings, a front space that served as the living room–eating area, a kitchenette, the bathroom and bedrooms beyond a stucco arch. Nothing on the walls. The kitchen was cluttered but clean. A few feet from the counter, a PC setup was perched on a rolling cart. Aquarium screen saver. An air conditioner rattled.
Sonny Koppel said, “Can I offer you guys something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Koppel’s soft, bulky shoulders rose and fell. He sighed, sank into a green tweed La-Z-Boy recliner, kept the chair upright.
Milo and I took the plaid sofa.
“So,” said Koppel, “what can I do for you?”
“First off,” said Milo, “is there anything you can tell us about your ex-wife that could help us solve her murder?”
“I wish there was. Mary was a remarkable person— attractive, really smart.” Koppel ran a hand over his scalp. Instead of settling, his hair picked up static and coiled as if alive. The room was dim and he was backlit with fluorescence from the kitchen and the hair became a halo. Sad-looking, pajama-bottomed guy with an aura.
“You’re thinking,” he said, “how did someone like her ever hook up with someone like me.”
His lips curled like miniature beef roulades, approximating amusement. “When Mary and I met I didn’t look like this. Back then I was more shortstop than sumo. Actually, I was a pretty decent jock, got a baseball scholarship to the U., had Major League fantasies.”
He paused, as if inviting comment. When none followed, he said, “Then I ripped a hamstring and found out I had to actually study to get out of there.”
One hand dipped into the popcorn bowl. Koppel gathered a full scoop and transferred the kernels to his mouth.
Milo said, “You met Dr. Koppel when you were in law school?”
“I was in law school, and she was in grad school. We met at the rec center, she was swimming, and I was reading. I tried to pick her up, but she blew me off.” He touched his abdomen as if it ached. “The second time I tried, she agreed to go out for coffee, and we hit it off great. We got married a year later and divorced two years after that.”
“Problems?” said Milo.
“Everyone’s got them,” said Koppel. “What’s the cliché— we grew apart? Part of the problem was time. Between her dissertation and my classes, we never saw each other. The main problem was I screwed up. Had an affair with a woman in my class. To make it worse, a married woman, so two families got messed up. Mary let me down easy, she just wanted a clean break. Stupidest thing I ever did.”
“Cheating on her?”
“Letting her go. Then again, she probably would have broken it off, even if I had been faithful.”
“Why’s that?”
“I was kind of at loose ends back then,” said Koppel. “No goals. Only reason I went to law school was because I didn’t know what else to do. Mary was just the opposite: focused, put-together. She has”— He winced—“had a powerful persona. Charisma. I couldn’t have kept up.”
“Sounds like you’re selling yourself short,” said Milo.
Koppel looked genuinely surprised. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ve done some background on you, sir, and you’re one of the biggest landlords in Southern California.”
Koppel waved a thick hand. “That’s just playing Monopoly.”
“You’ve played well.”
“I’ve been lucky.” Koppel smiled. “I was lucky to be a loser.”
“A loser?”
“I nearly flunked out of law school, then I chickened out of taking the bar. Started experiencing anxiety attacks about taking it that put me in the ER a couple of times. One of those pseudo–heart attack things? By then Mary and I were having our problems, but she helped me through it. Deep-breathing exercises, having me imagine relaxing scenes. It worked and the attacks stopped and Mary expected me to take the bar. I showed up early, looked around the room, walked out, and that was it. That bothered Mary more than my cheating on her. Soon after, she filed.”
Koppel’s hand waved again, this time limply. “Couple months after that, my mother died and left me an apartment building in the Valley, so all of a sudden I was a landlord. A year later, I sold that property, used the profit and a bank loan to invest in a bigger building. I did that for a few years— flipping and trading up. Real estate was booming, and I made out okay.”
He shrugged, ate more popcorn.
Milo said, “You’re a modest man, Mr. Koppel.”
“I know what I am and what I’m not.” Koppel turned his head to the side, as if recoiling from insight. His jowls quivered. “Do you have any idea who murdered Mary?”
“No, sir. Do you?”
“Me? No, of course not.”
“She was murdered in her home,” said Milo. “No signs of forced entry.”
“You’re saying someone she knew?” said Koppel.
“Any candidates, sir?”
“I wasn’t privy to Mary’s social life.”
“How much contact did you and she have?”
“We stayed friendly, and I kept up my spousal support.”
“How much support?”
“It evolved,” said Koppel. “Immediately after the divorce, she got nothing except the furniture in our apartment because we were both starving students. When I started to earn a decent income, she called and asked for support. We agreed on a figure and over the years I’ve increased it.”
“At her request?”
“Sometimes. Other times, I decided to share some of my good luck.”
“Keep the ex happy,” said Milo.
Koppel didn’t answer.
“Sir, how much were you paying her at the time of her death?”
“Twenty-five thousand a month.”
“Generous.”
“It seemed fair,” said Koppel. “She stuck with me when I needed her. Helping through those panic attacks even after I cheated on her. That deserves something.”
Milo said, “Twenty-five thousand a month. I went through her bank records, never saw any back-and-forth on that level.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Koppel. “Mary lived off her practice and re-invested what I gave her.”
“In what?”
“We’re partnered on some of my properties.”
“She let you hold on to what you owed her and put it back in properties.”
“Mary did very well partnering with me.”
“Who gets her share of the partnered properties now that she’s dead?”
Koppel’s fingers grazed the rim of the popcorn bowl. “That would depend on Mary’s will.”
“I haven’t found a will, and no executors have come forth.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me,” said Koppel. “For years I’ve been telling her to do some estate planning. Between her practice and the properties, she was building up a comfortable estate. You’d think she’d have listened, being so organized about everything else. But she was resistant. My opinion is she didn’t want to think about death. Her parents died pretty young, and sometimes she had premonitions.”
“About dying young?”
“About dying before her time.” Tears beaded Koppel’s lower eyelashes. The rest of his stubbled face was impassive.
“She have those premonitions recently?”
Koppel said, “I don’t know. I’m talking back when we were married.”
Milo said, “Assuming there’s no will, what happens to her real estate holdings?”
“If there are no cr
editors or heirs,” said Koppel, “they’d revert to me. A hundred percent in the case of the ones whose mortgages I carry— I own a little financing company, allows me to keep things in-house. Those that are bank-financed, I’d have the choice of paying off Mary’s share or selling.”
“One way or the other, you’d get everything.”
“Yes, I would.”
Milo crossed his legs.
Koppel emitted a deep, rumbling laugh.
“Something funny, sir?”
“The implication,” said Koppel. “I suppose there’s a logic to it, Lieutenant, but do the math: Mary Lou’s holdings net out to . . . I’d say one and a half, maybe two million dollars, depending on the real estate market. I grant you that isn’t chicken feed. Eventually, she could’ve retired nicely. But to me, a sum like that isn’t significant . . . you say you’ve looked into my holdings?”
“Two million’s a drop in the bucket,” said Milo.
“That sounds ostentatious,” said Koppel, “but it’s true. A couple of million wouldn’t make any difference.”
“During good times,” said Milo.
“Times are good,” said Koppel. “Times are always good.”
“No business problems?”
“With business, there are always problems. The key is to see them as challenges.” Koppel placed the popcorn bowl between his knees. “What makes it easier for me is I have no interest in acquiring material goods. I do real estate because it seems to be what I’m good at. Since I don’t need much— without the burden of stuff— I’ve always got free cash. Meaning there’s no such thing as a bad market. Prices go down, I buy. They go up, I sell.”
“Life is good,” said Milo.
“I’d like to get back into shape physically, and I’m upset about Mary. But when I step back and assess, yes, I have a lot to be thankful for.”
“Tell me about the halfway houses you own, sir.”
Koppel blinked. “You really have been doing your research.”
“I ran into an ex-con vacuuming Dr. Koppel’s building and I got curious.”
“Oh,” said Koppel. “Well, I hire a lot of those guys for custodial work. When they show up, they do a good job.”
“They give you attendance problems?”
“No worse than anyone else.”
“What about pilferage problems?”
“Same answer, people are people. Over the years, I’ve lost a few tools, some furniture, but that goes with the territory.”
“Your secretary said properties get broken into.”
“From time to time,” said Koppel. “Not the halfway houses, though. What’s to take from there?”
“You recruit your own tenants as janitors?”
“I get recommendations from the halfway-house managers. They send me guys they think are reliable.” Koppel lifted the popcorn bowl.
“How’d you get into the parolee business?”
“I’m in the real estate business. A handful of my properties are halfway houses.”
“How’d you get into that, sir?”
“I’d never have done it on my own. I’m a bleeding heart liberal but only to a point. It was Mary’s idea. Actually, I was pretty wary, but she won me over.”
“How’d she come up with the idea?”
“I think Dr. Larsen suggested it— one of her partners. Have you talked to him yet?”
Milo nodded.
“He’s an expert on prison reform,” said Koppel. “He got Mary into it, and she was all afire. She said she wanted to do more than build up equity, she wanted her investments to do some social good.”
“The halfway houses are the properties she partners with you?”
“We’re also together on some conventional rentals.”
“Pretty idealistic.”
“When Mary believed in something, she got very focused.”
“But you tried to un-focus her.”
Koppel lifted a leg in order to cross it, changed his mind, and planted a heavy foot on the carpet. “I approached the issue like a businessman, let’s look at the assets and debits. Mary did her homework, showed me the subsidies the state was offering and I had to admit the figures looked good. Even so, I was concerned about tenant damage, so I’d look at the crowd you’re talking about. I also told her I could get equal or better subsidies on what seemed to be safer investments— senior citizen housing, historic properties, where, if you respected the integrity of the structure, you could get three separate funding sources.”
His eyes had dried, and he was talking faster. In his element.
Milo said, “Mary convinced you.”
“Mary said the tenants would be more reliable, not less, because they weren’t paying rent so they had no incentive to leave. On top of that, the state mandated supervision by parole officers and provided in-house managers and security guards. She had to work on me for a while, but I agreed to give it a try. Smartest thing I ever did.”
“Good deal?”
“The funding’s ironclad— long-term state grants that get renewed easily— and the properties can be had dirt cheap because they’re always in fringe areas. You’re not going to stick a building full of criminals in Bel Air, right? So there are no NIMBYs, no zoning problems, and once you get past financing the part the state doesn’t cover, the rents are great. And listen to this: On a square-footage basis, the income’s close to Beverly Hills, because you’re not talking multiroom apartments, it’s all single rooms. And as opposed to a senior citizen situation where the tenancy-terminating event is death so your occupancy is uncertain, you go in knowing the tenants are there on a short-term deal but they’re always going to be replenished.”
“No shortage of bad guys.”
“Doesn’t seem to be,” said Koppel. “And turns out there are fewer repairs. The bathrooms are all communal, so the plumbing’s centralized, there are no kitchens in the rooms, all the tenants get is hot plates. And their use is restricted to certain hours. There’s some paperwork, but nothing I haven’t seen before. And, let’s face it, the state wants you to be a success.”
“Define ‘success.’ ”
“The residents stay put and don’t roam out in the community to hurt or kill someone.”
“Where do I sign?” said Milo.
Koppel smiled. “I should’ve known listening to Mary would never lead me wrong.” He shifted his bulk in the recliner. “Now she’s gone. I can’t believe it— is there anything else I can tell you?”
“Back to the halfway houses, sir. Great deal notwithstanding, have you ever had any problems with tenant violence?”
“Not to my knowledge. But I wouldn’t know.”
“Why not?”
“All that’s handled in-house,” said Koppel. “I’m not a warden. I just own the building, and the state runs it. Why, do you think one of those lowlifes killed Mary?”
“There’s no evidence of that,” said Milo. “Just covering all bases.” He opened his pad. “What’s Charitable Planning all about?”
“My foundation,” said Koppel. “I give away ten percent a year. Of after-tax income.”
“We’ve been in the building a few times and never saw any activity on the ground floor.”
“That’s because there isn’t much. Twice a month, I go in and write checks to worthy causes. It takes a while because the solicitations come in constantly, everything really piles up.”
“An entire ground-floor suite for you to write checks? That’s Beverly Hills space, Mr. Koppel. Why don’t you rent it out?”
“I had a deal, last year, for a tenant to take the whole floor. An online brokerage. You know what happened to the market. The deal fell through. I was planning to subdivide— rent most of it out and leave a small office for Charitable Planning. But Mary asked me to put a hold on that until she and Larsen and Gull could decide if they wanted it.”
“Why would they want it?”
“To expand their practice. They were talking about doing group therapy, needed larger ro
oms. The only space I use is a small office, the rest is empty. Mary was supposed to tell me in a week or so.”
“Group therapy,” I said.
“From a business standpoint, I thought it was a smart idea. Treat the max number of patients in the shortest time. I joked with Mary that it had sure taken her a long time to figure it out.” Koppel smiled. “She said, ‘Sonny, you’re the moneyman, and I’m the healer. Let’s stick to what we know.”
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