by Rain, J. R.
“An heir to what?” I asked.
“A significant fortune. The family was loaded. The loving couple left behind boat loads to two legitimate kids.”
“And now there’s an illegitimate kid.”
Hammer nodded as our food arrived. He immediately shoved three fat steak fries under his mustache into what I assumed was his mouth. His rat-like mustache twitched once, twice, and the fries disappeared.
I ate my fries as well, but I ate them one at a time, and I didn’t have a rat-like mustache.
Hammer nodded. “You guessed it. A legitimate kid who wants in on the family’s money.”
“Was there a will?”
“Of course. And it did indeed name a son whom she offered up for adoption years ago.”
“So he might the one.”
“Or not. Lots of scams out there, Spinoza. You know that. Anyway, the kid, your client, goes through the proper channels and next thing I hear they’re digging up mamma. Only she’s not where she’s supposed to be.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.
“Fucking sick, if you ask me.” But not so sick as to stop him from sinking his teeth deep into the burger.
“Any leads?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, chewing furiously. “But if you see a corpse lying around, lemme know. I’m trying like hell to pawn this case off on the robbery division, since they deal with human trafficking, too.”
“A loophole in the LAPD divisions,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s not shaking out the way I’d hoped. So far, Chief wants me in on it because I’m familiar with the case. Like I’ve got nothing better to do then look for a stolen fucking body.”
“A waste of your considerable talents,” I said.
“Don’t fuck with me, Spinoza. I got two new homicides in the last 24 hours alone. Last thing I need to be doing is looking for a bunch of bones.”
“Sounds like you might need my help, too,” I said.
“Not likely, but if you want to poke around, feel free.”
“I’ll need a copy of your file,” I said.
“It’s illegal for me to give you a copy of my file.”
“It’s never stopped you before.”
“I know,” said Hammer, polishing off the burger. “I just needed to officially say it before I accidentally email you a copy of the electronic file.”
I grinned. “Accidents do happen.”
Chapter Three
I was in my office when, a short while later, Detective Hammer “accidentally” sent me an email containing the entire contents of his investigation into the murder of Evelyn Drake. He followed his mistake by sending me an email stating that he had fucked up and sent the email incorrectly, and that I was, by law, to delete it immediately.
Which I did, after I had “accidentally” printed out the entire contents. And with my feet propped up on my desk during a quiet afternoon, when my phone neither rang nor clients stepped in, I read the file, glued to the pages. Hammer was a helluva homicide detective, I give him that, although I would never tell him in person. Actually, Hammer reminded me of another detective I’d recently had the pleasure of working with, an ex-football player out of Orange County. Cocky as hell, but meticulous and driven. Like Hammer.
Anyway, Hammer had made detailed file notes and reports, and it was all riveting stuff. From phone calls to interviews, to eyewitness testimonies and crime scene reports, it told a compelling story of heartbreak and murder, and I was glued to the pages until the sun went down.
During the course of the investigation, Hammer had had his hands full. The husband had tried his damnedest to cover his tracks and set up a fake alibi. Through dogged investigative work and following hunch after hunch, Hammer had cracked the case and nailed the murderous husband, who was now currently rotting in San Quentin, awaiting execution.
For good reason. Within these pages was a very sad tale of an abused woman and her worthless husband. She had spent decades being abused and tormented, only to finally find escape in death.
She left behind two teenage children and, according to the will, a third. Apparently, she had given up a boy for adoption when she had been very young. No other information was known or mentioned about the boy, just the small notation in the will...and a sizable trust fund.
I turned in my swivel chair and looked out my second-story window. My office sat on a small hillock above some shabbier homes in Echo Park, a burrow of Los Angeles made famous in movies and film.
For now the street below was quiet and the far horizon shimmered with more beauty than Los Angeles deserved. For all the smog that it pumped into its skies, the horizon should have been gray and black and dead, instead alive with nearly every color of the rainbow.
A corpse, at some point, had been dug up from the grave and removed. I knew there were body snatches out there. Folks who sold cadavers illegally for reasons known only to them. I suspected for illegal research projects. But such cases were damn rare.
But, as the pawn shop guy on TV says, “You never know what’s going to come in through your door next.”
In this case, it had been a phone call from an orphaned teenage boy presently seeking a DNA maternity test from a murdered mother he’d never met.
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. Behind me, through my open window, I heard a bum singing drunkenly. Unremarkably, he was singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” except he was so drunk that he was adding bottles. He was currently at 132 bottles of beer on the wall, although he occasionally skipped three or four bottles ahead.
Myself, I hadn’t had anything to drink in two years, not since the night my son lost his life.
I took in some air and didn’t fight the pain that overcame me all over again, perhaps for the fiftieth time that day. I let the pain run its course and when I was done weeping again, I stood up from my desk, grabbed my light jacket off the back of my chair, and headed out to meet the orphaned son for the first time.
Chapter Four
We were in Echo Park, sitting on a park bench before a man-made lake. Years ago, the lake had been filled with lotus plants—more lotus plants than I had ever seen. But the plants had slowly died off and now they were gone and it saddened the heart.
There was a stigma about the park. Some thought it was dangerous, and maybe it was, at times. But for the most part, it was a little piece of green and blue in a city of concrete and graffiti. Joggers mixed with bums mixed with lovers mixed with God-only-knew-what-their story was. A melting pot of physical fitness, homelessness and drugs.
And one curious private investigator and a very lost sixteen-year-old boy.
We were sitting side by side, although his backpack was tucked between us. The evening sky was mostly clear, with only a small patch of something gauzy and amorphous high above. The trees around us rustled in the breeze. The breeze carried the smell of pond decay. Across the street, boys played basketball at a park. Most were shirtless, and most were covered in tattoos. As I watched, a fight nearly broke out, but only a few choice words seemed to be the extent of it.
His name was David and he was shy. I was shy, too, and the two didn’t combine for a lot of random chit-chat. We had said our greetings and were now sitting quietly on the bench.
I finally started things off. “Hot day.”
“Yeah.”
“The nights aren’t any better.”
He nodded.
“How long have you been in L.A.?” I asked.
“A few months now.”
“Where did you live before?”
“San Francisco.”
I nodded. Funny how life was often serendipitous. My last major case had taken me to San Francisco.
“What brought you down here?”
“My birth mom.”
“Who are you staying with?”
“My aunt and uncle.”
“Who were you living with before coming down?”
He looked away. “My father.”
“Your a
dopted father?”
“Yes.”
“What about your adopted mother?”
“She died when I was four.”
“Do you like your adopted father?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” he said.
“I get paid to ask a lot of questions.”
“But I’m only paying you two tacos.”
“Payment is payment.”
David looked at me, squinting against the last of the sun that was hovering somewhere over my right shoulder. David had a smattering of freckles over his nose and cheekbones. I predicted in two years the freckles would be gone. My son had freckles, too.
Shit. I took in a lot of air. When I had some control over myself, I said, “Why don’t you like your father?”
“Because he’s lazy and says shitty things.”
“Did he ever hit you?”
“No.”
“But he was psychologically abusive.”
David nodded. “Yeah, that.”
“How was he lazy?”
He shrugged. “He never worked. We usually lived with his girlfriends, until they kicked us out. He made me start working at fourteen, at a girlfriend’s cookie shop. Then he took most of the money I made.”
“He put you to work and then took your money?”
“Basically.”
“What do you think about that?”
“I hate him.”
I asked him some more questions and I did my best to piece together his often stunted, one-word answers. The kid had known at a young age that he was adopted. His father, apparently, liked to throw his adoption in his face. No doubt to be cruel. Apparently his father had not taken his wife’s death too well. In the years after, the man had spent much of his time drinking and man-whoring.
David, at about age fifteen, began looking for his birth mother, until he quickly discovered that he couldn’t request birth parent records in the state of California until he, the adoptee, was twenty-one. But the kid was dogged and industrious, and soon he had the help of a sympathetic superior court judge, who happened to be the mother of a close friend. The judge stepped in and was able to convince the Department of Social Services to release David’s birth mother’s records. She cited extenuating, extraordinary circumstances, the only reason the state would release such information.
David didn’t know what the extenuating, extraordinary circumstance were, but I suspected the judge had simply pulled a few strings.
Now with her help, he was able to track down his mother all the way to Los Angeles, only to discover that she had been slain two years earlier. A mother who had left behind two children and a vast fortune. Those two children were being raised by grandparents; the father, of course, was currently awaiting execution at San Quentin.
The superior court judge next got hold of the will. In the will, Evelyn Drake, his birth mother, in an extreme act of generosity, had set up a significant trust fund for him, should he ever come looking for her.
David, who was already making arrangements to live with his adopted mother’s sister here in southern California, was set to inherit a good deal of money.
But state law insists on a DNA test. So one was set, and when it came time to administer the test; meaning, extracting DNA from his mother’s corpse, the body had been discovered missing.
Which is where I came in.
“That’s a helluva story, kid,” I said.
He looked away, nodded.
A shapely rollerblader came blading by. She was followed immediately by a stumbling bum, either drunk or high. The bum was followed, in turn, by a limping golden retriever. The retriever stayed close to the bum and I was briefly touched by the creature’s loyalty. I suspected the dog was the only thing keeping the man alive through sheer love, devotion and protection.
There were tears in David’s eyes. It’s bad enough losing one mother, but this kid had lost two.
The bum curled up in the fetal position on the grass near the lake, using his arm as a pillow. The golden retriever curled up next to him, ever watchful, keeping his drunken owner safe. A woman nearby immediately got up from the grass and left, shoving one of those e-reader thingies into her purse.
“I don’t really care about the money,” said David.
I nodded. The dog lay its fuzzy muzzle across the back of the unconscious man, who was now snoring loudly.
“I just want to know what happened to her,” he said.
I nodded again, and watched the dog close its eyes, although its ears remained ever alert.
Chapter Five
I was with my girlfriend, Roxi, at a restaurant called Fred 62.
A weird name for a place with great food. I’m sure the restaurant had all sorts of history, too, although I didn’t know it. But I was willing to bet that guys like Cagney and Hudson and Rooney all had eaten here at one point or another. Maybe Elizabeth Taylor had gotten shit-faced drunk in a back booth. Or John Wayne had punched out some asshole for asking too many lame questions. Maybe. I didn’t know, but the place had an old Hollywood feel to it. Ancient vinyl booths. Old wood paneling. Old posters. Hip energy. And set right in the heart of Los Feliz, itself just north of bustling Hollywood.
“I think David Schwimmer is eating behind us,” said Roxi. She sounded very excited.
“You mean Ross?”
“Yeah, Ross. And don’t say ‘Where’s Rachel?’”
“Where’s Rachel?”
“Dumb ass.”
But she was right. At least I think she was right. Behind a head of neatly trimmed dark hair flashed the occasional profile of the Friends’ star. He was with a beautiful woman, and they were sitting across from another beautiful couple.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “It’s all very exciting.”
“You don’t look very excited.”
“I live and work in L.A. I see stars all the time. So far, I have yet to see one of them levitate or turn water into wine.”
She pouted. “You’re such a party-pooper.” But even as she said those words, I saw her brain turning. Steam practically issued from her ears.
“Oh, no,” I said, catching on. “He doesn’t want to read your screenplay.”
“But he’s a director now. This could be my big break.”
“I doubt it.”
“You don’t believe in me?”
“Oh, I believe in you, but I doubt this is your big break.”
She pouted some more and seemed to refocus on her menu. “It’s a good screenplay.”
“I know,” I said. “I read it.” Which was mostly true. I had skimmed it. I found that focusing on anything for too long was nearly impossible these days. It’s hard to read words when you still hear your son screaming.
The waiter came by and took our order. I got a big breakfast sandwich, minus the ham, even though it was after 9:00 p.m. Roxi liked the sound of it and ordered the same, plus the ham. In fact, she made the waiter put my displaced ham on her sandwich.
He wrote everything down like it all made perfect sense, and when he left, Roxi asked me what I was working on. I told her about it, or as much as I knew.
“Wild,” she said.
“About as wild as it gets.”
“And you’re doing it all for free?”
“Not quite. For two tacos.”
She shook her head sadly. “You give away too much of your time. You could be doing paying work, you know.” She next held up her hand, stopping me. “Wait. I already know what you’re going to say.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re going to tell me that it’s not about the money, that it’s about helping those who can’t help themselves, about making things right in the universe.”
“That, and I want those tacos.”
“You can’t help everybody, Spinoza,” she said, using my last name like most people do.
“Nope, but I can sure as hell help some.”
“But this
case is...gross. You’re looking for a corpse, for Christ’s sake.”
“And giving a young man peace of mind, and perhaps setting him up for the rest of his life.”
“Because his birth mother left him an inheritance.”
“An inheritance that is rightfully his.”
“After the DNA testing confirms it,” she said.
“Right.”
“So how does one look for a corpse?”
“No clue,” I said, as the waiter came by with our food. My breakfast sandwich looked glorious. Huge and leaning and dripping with hollandaise sauce and ripe avocado slices. Roxi’s looked even bigger, with her two fat slices of ham.
“Do me a favor,” she said, as she picked up her sandwich. “Let’s not talk about corpses while we eat.”
Chapter Six
I started looking for the corpse at the only place I could think of: the cemetery where David’s birth mother, Evelyn, had been buried. Where her coffin had been exhumed. And where, later, it had been found to be empty.
Weird shit.
It was early the next morning when I pulled over to the side of one of those narrow cemetery roads and parked my Camry under an elm tree. I was tired but alert. I don’t sleep well these days, and if I was a betting man, I would bet that I would probably never sleep well again.
The Forest Lawn Cemetery here in Burbank, on the other side of the infamous Griffith Park, is epic, covering an entire hillside. If I had to be buried anywhere, it would be here. Granted, I would want to be buried near my son, but I doubted he would want anything to do with me, even in the after life, and especially for all eternity.
There were a few others here. This is greater L.A., after all, with nearly 30 million people, and so one rarely, if ever, finds themselves alone. Anywhere. About seven or eight people were presently brushing off burial plaques or standing solemnly in the early morning light. I heard the faint sound of weeping from somewhere. Most were dressed in business attire, no doubt on the way to work.