The Bone Polisher sg-6

by Timothy Hallinan

  “I said that he’d followed that pattern in the past.”

  “ ‘In a few weeks,’ you said.” Nordine’s stubborn mode was becoming very familiar.

  “If the pattern holds.”

  “Well, then,” he said, as though everything was settled.

  “It may not be in West Hollywood,” I said.

  “Of course it’ll be in West Hollywood. Why would he go anywhere else?”

  There were a dozen reasons he might go somewhere else, but I didn’t think they’d hold Christy’s attention, and I needed all of it. “I want you to go to the cops,” I said.

  That caught him by surprise. He opened his mouth and closed it. Then he swallowed. “You’re joking.”

  “Take a lawyer. Take two, if you’ve got a pile of money somewhere. I know a reporter on the L.A. Times you can talk to before you go in. Hell, she’d probably go with you. Even Spurrier isn’t going to pound on you with the media watching.”

  He considered it and changed the subject slightly. “They’re already watching.”

  “Come again?”

  “I told you they would be. Haven’t you seen the paper?”

  “I don’t get one.”

  “Hold on.” He got up and went into the back of the house, and I heard Alan’s inquiring voice before Christy reappeared with a folded copy of the Times in his hand.

  MURDERED MAN WAS TV STAR read the headline. Bottom right corner of page one. Not bad for a gay murder; the Times is so conservative on some issues as to be fundamentalist.

  A West Hollywood man who was murdered on Tuesday was a popular television star in the 1950s, the story began. Max Grover, 77, who was brutally beaten to death in his home by an unknown assailant, starred in a top-rated series, Tarnished Star, under the name Rick Hawke.

  “They finally woke up,” I said. Nothing about the mutilation, nothing yet about the serial angle.

  “Well,” Christy said, the soul of reason, “Max kept it pretty quiet.”

  “All the more cause for you to talk to a reporter before you go in.”

  Reason went out the window and truculence came in. “I’m not going in.”

  “Shush,” I said. I’d seen a name toward the bottom of the story.

  Grover’s longtime agent, Ferris Hanks, told the Times that Grover had lived quietly since abandoning his career toward the end of the fifties. “Max could have been a major star,” Hanks said. “He was a great talent. When he quit, he could have had his pick of the networks.”

  “Ferris Hanks,” I said.

  “Oh, how Max loathed that man,” Christy said. “Said he was inverse proof that the good die young. Eighty-two-he says — and still doing mischief.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “ Meet him? We wouldn’t go near him.”

  “Before Max, I mean.”

  “Of course not. Hardly my circle.”

  “But Max talked about him.”

  “Like you’d talk about an operation you once had. And he called a couple of times.”

  “What about?”

  “He never gave up. He wanted Max to go back to work, can you imagine?”

  That took me by surprise. “I thought he hated Max.”

  “He was terrible to him for years. The old ‘you’ll never work in this town again’ stuff, as though Max cared. And then, just like nothing had happened, there he was on the phone, offering work. I ask you.”

  “But Max said no.”

  “Max, work for Ferris Hanks? Of course not. An unbelievable man. Absolute sewage.”

  “So everyone says.”

  “And for once, everybody is right.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It seems to me that a community is usually right when it passes judgment. Look how people felt about Max.”

  “And how they feel about me,” Christy said, using my least favorite of his repertoire of tones.

  “People don’t think badly of you,” I said. “They just wonder when you’re going to do something on your own.”

  It startled him. Everyone was being nice to him, and here I was, kicking him in the shins. “Like what?” he demanded. “How much time-”

  “I know all about that,” I said, “and you have no idea how much time you have. You could live for years. You’re going to have money. What are you going to do, Christy?”

  “How would I know? I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Start by going to the cops.”

  “Why? Why should I do that?”

  “Well, they’re looking for you, for one thing. You can’t hide with Robert and Alan forever. You get caught, they’re going to be in trouble, too.”

  “I’ll go somewhere else,” he said.

  “And you can’t help me until you’re free to move around.”

  “Help you?” He sounded skeptical. “You think I can help you?”

  “Of course you can. I’ve needed to talk to you a dozen times in the past two days, and I didn’t know where you were. And even now, now that I do know, I can’t call you from home because the cops might be monitoring my phone. I need to get into things, like Max’s safe-deposit box, that I don’t have access to without you.”

  “What’s in the safe-deposit?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “until I look.”

  “Don’t you think the cops will look there?”

  “Same answer.”

  He got up and did a circuit of the room. His clothes sagged on him, but it wasn’t until he turned his back and I saw the buckle on his pants that I realized he was wearing Alan’s. They made him look even thinner than he was. At the mantel he stopped and picked up one of the black cats. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Do it for Max.”

  The cat got folded into half and then into quarters. Christy wasn’t looking at it; he seemed to be studying the face of the grandfather clock. “What kinds of questions did you have?” he asked at last.

  “Marta Aguirre, for example. She’s not around.”

  He shrugged. “So?”

  “So why not?”

  He tore the cat in half. “What does it matter?”

  “Is she legal?”

  “No. Her cousin is. That’s where she lives, with her cousin. Max hired her because she wasn’t legal. His way of helping out, as usual. And she spied on us. She stole from us.”

  Ah, Marta the thief. “What kinds of things?”

  “Little stuff. A couple of Max’s rings. A gold chain Max gave me. Stuff she could put in her pockets.”

  “Max knew?”

  Christy rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Max gave her a raise. Said she must not be earning enough.”

  “What days did she work?”

  “Mondays and Thursdays.”

  “My, my,” I said. “Mondays.”

  Christy paused in the act of ripping the cat into quarters and stared at me. “The day before-”

  “Do you have her address?”

  “No, but her cousin’s listed. Elena Aguirre. In Reseda, in the Valley. That’s where we had to call if we wanted her to come in on an off day.” He looked down at the scraps of paper in his hands and searched the room for a place to put them.

  “What does she look like?”

  “I’m no good at describing people.”

  “You’re very good, though, at identifying things you’re not very good at.”

  “She’s tiny,” he barked. “No more than five feet, and she’s got short gray hair cut at the ears like a helmet, and one shoulder higher than the other.”

  “Any tattoos?”

  “How should I-” He stopped and worked his mouth into a tight little knot, and then he smiled that same sweet smile. “That was a joke,” he said. He suddenly looked doubtful. “Wasn’t it?”

  “More or less. Are you going to go to the cops for me, Christy? For Max?”

  “I don’t know,” he said again, stuffing the cat into his pocket, along with the remnants of the smile.

  I gave up. “Are you going to stay her
e, then?”

  “Maybe.” He sounded all of sixteen.

  “Then I need to talk to Alan and Robert,” I said. “There are some things they should know.”

  He looked stung. “You think I’d keep anything from them?”

  “I don’t know what I think, Christy. You’re not willing to do the one thing I need you to do.”

  “I haven’t said no yet.”

  I got up and crossed the room and knocked on the door through which Alan and Robert had disappeared. The door opened into a den, furnished in Intensive Cozy: quilts and lap rugs flung themselves aggressively across overstuffed furniture. Potted plants flourished in terra-cotta containers. Robert was watching television, wearing earphones, and Alan was reading a detective novel with a startlingly lurid cover.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but I need you in the living room.”

  “I’m here,” Christy said sulkily from behind me.

  “Robert?” I said, miming removing headphones. Robert pulled his off, looking faintly surprised.

  “What is it?” Alan asked.

  “The two of you are in danger,” I said, “and I thought somebody should tell you so.”

  “We’re not afraid of the police,” Robert said.

  “I’m not talking about the police.”

  Alan drew in the corners of his mouth, looking like a schoolteacher weighing the punishment for some poor kid’s spitball. “What, then?”

  “The guy who killed Max,” I said. “He came back to the house, looking for something, and I don’t think he found it. If I were in his shoes, I’d be worried that Christy has it.”

  “I don’t have anything,” Christy said, and then he said, “he came back to the house!”

  I told them about my encounter two nights earlier. “Whatever he wanted, it was small,” I said, “and he hadn’t found it when I showed up or he wouldn’t have tackled me. And I doubt he stuck around to look for it after I left.”

  “What was it?” Alan asked.

  “Something he couldn’t leave,” I said. “Something that ties him to the murder.”

  “Well, I haven’t got it,” Christy said insistently.

  “That doesn’t really matter,” I said. “What matters is that he probably thinks you do.”

  “Why wouldn’t he think the cops found it?” Alan asked.

  “He’s thinking past that. If the cops found it, there’s nothing he can do. If Christy has it, though, there is something he can do.”

  “You believe,” Alan said.

  “I saw Max,” I said. “Christy saw Max. If there’s even one chance in ten I’m right, it’s something worth worrying about.”

  They all looked at each other. I listened to the grandfather clock ticking in the living room.

  “Assuming that you’re right,” Alan said judiciously, “which I’m not sure I do, what should we do about it?”

  “It’s what Christy should do. I want him to go to the sheriff.”

  “What would that accomplish?”

  “It would get him out of here, for one thing,” I said. “They’re pretty sure it’s not Christy. They just want to question him. I’ll get him a lawyer-”

  “I’m a lawyer,” Alan said. “I’m a damn good lawyer.”

  “Then tell him.”

  Alan looked at Robert. Robert looked past me, at Christy.

  “I’ll go,” Christy said. “I’ll go tomorrow.”

  The best way to get from West Hollywood to Reseda is to take Santa Monica Boulevard west, through Beverly Hills and Westwood, and pick up the San Diego Freeway north to the San Fernando Valley. At nine-thirty on Friday night the traffic on Santa Monica was too heavy to make me happy: All I wanted to do was cross Doheny, the western border of West Hollywood, and get out of the Sheriffs’ territory.

  I didn’t make it.

  The red lights came on behind me at Almont. I pulled over and took out my wallet before they even got out of the squad car. I didn’t want to make any ambiguous movements.

  Something punched Alice hard in the left rear fender, rocking the car, and Ike Spurrier leaned down and grinned through the driver’s window.

  “You got a bad taillight,” he said. He was holding a tire iron in his left hand.

  “I’ve been meaning to have it looked at,” I said.

  He tapped the iron against the door. “Procrastination is a terrible thing.”

  A uniformed deputy shone a flashlight through the passenger window. “Dangerous, too,” I said.

  “For want of a nail,” Spurrier declaimed, “the shoe was lost.”

  “Have you been following me? Somehow this doesn’t feel like a chance meeting.”

  “It’s a conspicuous car,” he said. “We have radios, you know.”

  “Boy,” I said. “The technological edge.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to get out of the car, sir,” Spurrier said, backing away from the door. “Be careful of the oncoming traffic, now.”

  “We wouldn’t want anything to happen to me.”

  He gave me his wet smile, “Not out here, anyway.”

  I climbed out of the car slowly, keeping my hands in plain sight. When I was standing on the road I laced my fingers together and put them on top of my head.

  “Aren’t we cautious?” Spurrier said.

  “I haven’t updated my life insurance.”

  “Come around the car. On the sidewalk, please.” I did as I was told. “Now put your hands against the car, spread your legs, and lean forward, putting your weight on your hands.”

  “For a broken taillight?”

  “We’re cautious, too.”

  The deputy patted me down, knocking my knees apart with more force than was strictly necessary. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Just stay there,” Spurrier said. He handed the tire iron to the deputy and leaned forward and unbuttoned my right cuff. “It’s an interesting thing,” he said conversationally. “We’ve been poking around in Max’s house, and it looks like we had two intruders.”

  “That’s a lot of intruders.” The deputy was shining his flashlight onto the backseat of the car.

  “They both came in through the back door. Left the key right there.” He rolled the sleeve up and examined my arm, then rolled it down again and thoughtfully buttoned the cuff. “One of them left through the bedroom window. And I mean through it.”

  “Must have been in a hurry,” I said.

  “I’d say so.” He moved behind me and came around on the left. “The other one apparently went out through the door he’d come in through. Left it wide open.”

  “Probably raised in a barn.”

  “Did your mother use to say that?” He unbuttoned my right cuff. “My mother used to say that.”

  “Your mother probably had cause.”

  “Now, now,” he said, rolling the sleeve up. “Don’t antagonize the forces of justice. Whoever they were, they seem to have had a disagreement. How’d you get this?”

  He ran his finger up the cut on my arm.

  “Cutting brush,” I said. “Fire clearance.”

  “Good citizen. Wish we had more like you.” He gave a little tug at the cut, and a line of fire ran up my nerves all the way to my armpit.

  “Sergeant,” the deputy called.

  “This is sure to be important,” Spurrier said confidingly.

  “Latex gloves,” the deputy said, holding up the box from the backseat.

  “That so,” Spurrier said. “I’m sure you can explain this.”

  “Damn, Ike,” I said. “They were going to be my Christmas present to you. I figured, the way you must go through them-”

  I stopped because he’d dug his thumbs into the skin on either side of the cut and pulled it open. I began to bleed immediately, and Spurrier yanked his hands from my arm.

  “I’ve had enough out of you,” he said, examining his hands for my blood. “I think we’ll finish this at the station.”

  I grabbed a deep breath, filling my lungs with exhaust. “A
rrest me,” I said.

  “I’ll arrest you when I-”

  “I want the whole thing, Ike,” I said. “I want you to radio in now, and then I want the booking and the printing and the phone call, the whole dog and pony show. And I’m going to say all that again, loud enough for your deputy to hear me, and if you don’t radio me in, I’m going to turn and run, and you’re going to have to catch me in front of all these people.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” He sounded betrayed.

  “Not much.”

  “Take him in, Sergeant?” the deputy asked.

  “Just a second,” Spurrier said. He leaned closer to me. “You’re messing with the wrong guy, sonny.”

  “Ike,” I said, gambling, “you will not believe how much I know about you.”

  One of his eyes got very much smaller than the other, and he regarded me out of it for a moment that was long enough to make my legs begin to shake. “Check the trunk, Hal,” he called. “Keys are in the ignition.” When Hal was as far away as he was going to get, Spurrier pushed his big face within a few inches of mine. “Anything specific we should discuss?”

  “Not with you. I want to tell someone who’ll be surprised.”

  He straightened up and put his hands in his jacket pockets, gazing across the street and moving his lips as though he were running through possible things to say. One of the hands came out of the pocket with what looked like the same crushed package of cigarettes, and he shook one out and lit it.

  “We’re not getting along very well,” he observed. “I may not have made myself clear, about Max’s house, I mean. There was a fight there, did I tell you that? What that means, the way I figure it, is that one of the people there was on our side. How does that sound to you?”

  “Like enlightened speculation,” I said. “Can I straighten up?”

  “Sure,” he said, as though he was surprised to learn I was still leaning against the car. “So I figure that person, like I said, is on our side, and maybe he’s got something to tell us.”

  “Maybe he does,” I said. “You told me to stay away from the case, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Spurrier said mildly. “You picked up Max’s dry cleaning.”

  “I picked up Christy’s dry cleaning,” I said. “Max’s just happened to be in with it.”