The Murder Book

CHAPTER 24

Milo woke up early the next morning, with the faces of the men at the Sangre de Leon meeting leering in his head. Thinking: Too many ways to take it, not enough of me to go around.

He stumbled to the shower, shaved, picked clothes randomly, got the coffee machine going, looked at the clock. Seven-thirteen. An emergency call had yanked Rick out of bed three hours ago. Milo had watched in the darkness as Rick slipped into the scrubs he kept neatly folded on a bedroom chair, picked up his Porsche keys from the nightstand, and padded out the door.

Rick stopped, returned to the bed, kissed Milo lightly on the forehead. Milo pretended to be sleeping, because he didn't feel like talking, not even "Good-bye."

The two of them had talked plenty all night, sitting up late at the kitchen table. Mostly Milo had blabbed and Rick had listened, maintaining a superficial calm, but Milo knew he was shaken by the Paris Bartlett encounter and the HIV rumor. All these years, and Milo's work had never intruded on their personal life.

Milo reassured him, and Rick nodded, complained of crushing fatigue and fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

Milo cleaned up the Chinese take-out cartons and the dinner dishes and slipped into bed beside him, lying there for an hour or so, listening to Rick's even breathing, thinking.

The Cossacks, Walt Obey, Larner Junior, Germ Bacilla, Diamond Jim Horne.

Plus the player who hadn't shown up. He saw that face, clearly: a stoic, ebony mask.

Smiley Bartlett, the personnel inquiry, and the HIV rumor said John G. Broussard's hand was in all of it.

He recalled Broussard- smelled Broussard's citrus cologne in the interview room, twenty years ago. The hand-stitched suit, all that confidence, taking charge. He and his pink pal- Poulsenn. Milo had no idea what had happened to his career, but look how far John G. had come.

A white man and a black man teamed up, and the black man had been the dominant partner.

A black man advancing that quickly, back in LAPD's bad old racist days. That had to mean Broussard had harpoons in all the right whales. Had probably used his IA dirt to build up leverage.

Mr. Straight and Narrow. And he'd covered up Janie Ingalls and Lord knew what else. Milo had been part of it, allowed himself to be swept along, pretended he could forget about it.

Now he wondered what that had done to his soul.

He poured coffee but the muddy brew tasted like battery acid and he spit it out and gulped a glass of tap water. The light through the kitchen window was the yellow-gray of old phlegm.

He sat down, kept thinking about Broussard, a South Central guy who'd ended up in Hancock Park.

Neighbor to Walt Obey.

Every police chief before Broussard had lived in his own house, but John G. had convinced the mayor to give him an empty mansion on Irving Street, rent-free. The three-story edifice, donated to the city years ago by the heirs of a long-dead oil tycoon, was twelve thousand square feet of English Tudor with big lawns, a pool, and a tennis court. Milo knew because he'd done security years ago at a party for an ambassador- the envoy from some small Asian state that had since changed its name.

Set aside originally as a mayor's residence, the Irving house had sat dormant for years because the mayor's predecessor had his own place in Brentwood and the current mayor's even larger spread in Pacific Palisades was just fine, too.

John G. Broussard's crib, prior to his promotion, had been a too-small affair in Ladera Heights and John G. claimed he needed to be closer to headquarters.

Ladera Heights was a half hour ride downtown, the mansion on Irving was fifteen minutes up Sixth Street. The mayor's drive from the Westside could stretch to over an hour, but no one saw the inconsistency in John G.'s logic, and the new chief got himself baronial lodgings.

Irving Street, less than a mile from Walt Obey's estate on Muirfield.

Obey was one of the mayor's big donors. Had supported Broussard for chief over three other candidates.

The mayor and Obey. Obey and Broussard. Obey and a bunch of lowlifes supping nouvelle-whatever cuisine in a private room at Sangre de Leon.

Private enterprise and municipal government and the long arm of the law arm in arm. And Schwinn had thrown him right into it.

He left his house, looking in all directions and over his shoulder, got into the rented Taurus, and drove north. IDing the asshole who claimed to be Paris Bartlett shouldn't have been a problem, if his hunch about a department plant was true. Just head over to the police academy in Elysian Park and thumb through the face books. But that was too conspicuous; for all he knew it was his sneaky little trips to Parker Center and back to his West L.A. desk that had sicced the department on him in the first place. Besides, Bartlett was a minor player, just a messenger, and did it really matter who'd sent him?

Stay healthy…

Maybe he should return to Ojai and nose around a bit more up there. But what more could he learn? Schwinn was the Ojai link, and he was gone.

Falling off a goddamn horse…

He pulled over to the curb, yanked out his cell phone, got the number of the Ventura County morgue. Using an insurance-investigator lie, he spent the next half hour being bounced from desk to desk, trying to get the full facts on Schwinn's death.

Finally, a coroner's assistant who knew something got on the line. The death was written up just as Marge Schwinn had described: massive head injuries and fractured ribs consistent with a fall, copious blood on a nearby rock. Ruled accidental, no suspicious circumstances. No dope or booze in Schwinn's system. Or the horse's, the clerk added. An equine drug scan seemed thorough, and Milo told the C.A. so.

"Special request of the widow," said the guy, a middle-aged-sounding guy named Olivas. "She wanted the horse tested and was willing to pay for it."

"She suspect something?"

"All it says here is that she requested a full drug scan on Akhbar- that's the horse. We had a vet in Santa Barbara do it, and she sent us the results. Mrs. Schwinn got the bill."

"So the horse was clean," said Milo.

"As a whistle," said Olivas. "It busted itself up plenty, though- two broken legs and a torsion injury of the neck. When the widow got there, it was down on the ground moaning, pretty much out of it. She had it put down. What's up, the insurance company has problems with something?"

"No, just checking."

"It was an accident, he was an old guy," said Olivas. "Riding a horse at his age, what was he thinking?"

"President Reagan rode when he was in his eighties."

"Yeah, well, he had Secret Service guys to look after him. It's like old people driving cars- my dad's eighty-nine, blind as a bat at night, but he insists on getting behind the wheel and driving to L.A. to get authentic menudo. That kind of thing and idiots on cell phones, give me a break. You'd see what I see comes in here every day, you'd be scared."

"I'm scared," said Milo, hefting his phone.

"Pays to be scared."

He craved caffeine and cholesterol, drove to Farmers Market at Fairfax and Third and had a green chili omelet and two stacks of toast at DuPars. Keeping his eye on a homeless guy in the next booth. The bum wore three jackets and hugged a battered, stringless guitar. The instrument made Milo think about Robin, but the psychosis in the homeless guy's eyes pulled him into the here and now.

They engaged in a staring contest until the homeless man finally threw down a couple of dollars and waddled off mumbling at unseen demons and Milo was able to enjoy his eggs.

Once again, he thought, I've brought peace and light to the world.

But then the waitress smiled with relief and gave him a thumbs-up, and he realized he'd really accomplished something.

Still hungry, he ordered a stack of hotcakes, drained everything down with black coffee, walked around the market, dodging tourists, figuring the distraction might get his brain in gear. But it didn't, and after inspecting produce stands full of fruit he didn't recognize and buying a bag of jumbo cashews, he left the market, drove south on Fairfax, turned left on Sixth, at the old May Company building, now an adjunct of the art museum, and kept going east.

Chief John G. Broussard's official residence was beautifully tended, with grass as green as Ireland and more flower beds than Milo remembered from that diplomatic party. A flagpole had been erected smack in the middle of the lawn and the Stars and Stripes and the California Bear swooshed in the midday breeze.

No walls or fences or uniformed officer on patrol, but the driveway had been gated with wrought iron and through the stout bars, Milo saw a black-and-white cruiser, and behind that, a late-model, white Cadillac. The Caddy was probably Mrs. Broussard's wheels. He recalled her as a trim, pretty woman with henna-tinted, cold-waved hair and the resigned look of a political spouse. What was her name… Bernadette… Bernadine? Did she and John G. have kids? Milo'd never heard of any, and he realized how little he knew about the chief's personal life. How little the chief doled out.

Seven blocks west and a half mile south was Walt Obey's address on Muirfield. The billionaire's nest sat at the end of the road, where Muirfield terminated on the southern border of the Wilshire Country Club. No house in sight, just ten-foot stone walls broken by an opaque, black steel gate studded with enormous bolts. Closed circuit TV camera on one post. The implication was a grand place on multiple acres, and Milo flashed to Baron Loetz's spread, neighbor to the Cossack party house. Did Obey spend time on his veranda, sipping gin and enjoying what God had given him?

Eighty years old and still taking meetings with hustlers like the Cossacks. Some big deal on the verge?

He found himself staring at Obey's gate. The TV camera remained immobile. The place was close enough for an athletic guy like John G. to jog over. Obey and Broussard on the veranda? Making plans. Running things. All of a sudden Milo felt very small and vulnerable. He rolled down the window, heard birds peeping, a plink of running water behind Obey's walls. Then the camera began to rotate. An automatic circuit, or maybe his presence had attracted attention. He backed up halfway down the block, whipped a U-turn, and got the hell out of there.

A few minutes later, he was parked on McCadden near Wilshire, cell phone hot against his ear. More DMV finagling gave him other addresses, and he had a look at all of them.

Michael Larner lived in a high-rise condo just east of Westwood, in the Wilshire Corridor. Pink stone and cheesy-looking brick, doorman out in front, an oversize fountain. Son Bradley's Santa Monica Canyon place turned out to be a smallish, blue frame house with stupendous ocean views and a FOR RENT sign out in front. No cars in the driveway, and the gardening looked a little lax, so Brad was living somewhere else.

Garvey Cossack Junior and brother Bob bunked together at a Carolwood address in Holmby Hills, not far, geographically, from Alex's place off Beverly Glen, but a whole different world financially.

Carolwood was a lovely, hilly block, leafy and sinuous, shaded by old-growth trees, one of the highest-priced stretches in L.A. Most of the houses were architectural masterpieces landscaped like botanical gardens, many of them cosseted by greenery and bearing that classy look that only came from durability.

The Cossack brothers' pad was an exceedingly vulgar, blue-tile-roofed and monstrously gabled heap of gray limestone perched atop a scarred dirt hill with no grass or trees in sight. Stone facing, only. The sides were lumpy stucco. Bad trowel job. Cheap-looking white metal fencing and an electric gate partitioned the front of the property from the street, but without benefit of vegetation, the house sat in full view, baking in the sun, puffy flanks glaring white in spots.

A double-sized Dumpster overflowing with trash advertised ongoing construction, but no workers were in sight, drapes covered the windows, and a mini car museum took up the rest of the massive driveway.

Plum-colored Rolls Royce Corniche, black Humvee with blacked-out windows, red (what else?) Ferrari that came as close as Milo had seen to a penis on wheels, a taxi yellow Pantera, a pair of Dodge Vipers, one white with a blue center stripe, the other anthracite gray striped orange, and a white Corvette convertible. All under a drooping, makeshift canvas awning that stretched across listing metal stilts. Off to the side, in the full sun, was a ten-year-old Honda that had to be the maid's wheels.

Big house and all those cars, but no landscaping. Just the kind of eyesore a couple of teenagers would put together if they tumbled into endless cash, and Milo was willing to bet the Cossacks had six figures' worth of stereo equipment inside, along with a state-of-the-art screening room, a pub, a game room or two. He was starting to think of them as a dual case of profound arrested development.

The house was exactly the kind of eyesore that would provoke neighbor complaints in a blue-chip district, meaning now he had something to look for.

He drove downtown to the Hall of Records, made it through the traffic by 2 P.M., and combed through the zoning-board complaint files. Sure enough, three gripes had been lodged against the Cossacks, all by Carolwood residents, irritated about noise and dirt and other indignities caused by "protracted construction." All dismissed for lack of cause.

He moved over to the property files, ran searches on the Cossacks, Walt Obey, both Larners. John G. Broussard.

Obey's holdings were protected by a cadre of holding companies, a firewall that would take weeks, if not months, to break through. Same for the Larners and the Cossacks, although a few pieces of real estate were held privately by each duo. In the case of the Larners it was half a dozen condos in a Marina del Rey building owned jointly by father and son. Sixteen strip malls in low-rent exurbs were registered to the Cossack brothers.

The boys living together, working together. How touching.

Nothing was registered to Sister Caroline.

Shifting gears for a moment, he pulled up Georgie Nemerov's records. The bail bondsman and his mother co-owned a single-family dwelling in Van Nuys that Milo recognized as the family home from twenty years ago, and a six-unit apartment in Granada Hills, also jointly registered to Ivana Nemerov. Whatever Georgie had or hadn't done, building a real estate empire didn't seem part of the equation.

John G. Broussard and his wife- Bernadelle- had held on to the house in Ladera Heights as well as three contiguous lots on West 156th Street in Watts. Maybe the chief's or his wife's parents' place, an inheritance.

Once again: no empire. If John G. was trading for something, it wasn't land. Unless he was embedded somewhere in Walt Obey's corporate acreage.

He ran searches on Melinda Waters and mother Eileen and came up empty, was thinking about what else to do when the records clerk came over and told him the building was closing. He left and drove up and down Temple Street, past the place where Pierce Schwinn had spotted Tonya Stumpf strutting. The block was a Music Center parking lot now, filled with its daytime load of municipal workers' and litigants' vehicles, due to the Court Building down the street. Lots of people, lots of movement, but Milo felt out of it- out of the rhythm.

He drove toward home, slowly, not caring about rush-hour toxins, street-work delays, notably stupid driving by what seemed to be fifty percent of his fellow commuters. All the urban niceties that usually drove up his blood pressure and made him wonder why the hell he'd chosen to live like this.

He was sitting at a red light at Highland when his phone rang. Alex's voice said, "I got you. Good."

"What's up?"

"Maybe nothing, but my source- the woman Michael Larner molested- called me again, and I met with her last night. Seems the day Larner made his move on her, he was angry about Willie Burns. Enraged, talking to someone about Burns. Willie had been gone from Achievement House for a few days so it sounds like Larner found out who Burns was, was steamed because Burns disappeared."

"Enraged," said Milo.

"That's how she describes it. She walked into his office just as he got off the phone, said Larner was flushed and agitated. Then he composed himself and turned his attention to her. Which could be more than a coincidence. Harassers and rapists often get stoked by anger. Anyway, it's probably no big deal, but it does fit with our working hypothesis: The Cossack family contracted Larner to hide Caroline until Janie Ingalls's murder cooled down. Burns made contact with Caroline, then split, and the family panicked. But they never found him, he even managed to slip away after his dope arrest, because Boris Nemerov bailed him out immediately. Four months later he ambushed Nemerov."

"Interesting," said Milo. "Good work." He summarized what he'd seen at Sangre de Leon last night.

"Big money," said Alex. "Same old story. One more thing: When I was looking for Melinda Waters on the Internet, I got a few hits but dismissed them. Then I realized maybe I'd been too hasty about one in particular. An attorney in Santa Fe, New Mexico, specializing in bankruptcy and evictions. I'd been thinking about Melinda as a stoned-out truant, didn't see a pathway from that to a legal career, but your comment about her turning up with a family and picket fence got me thinking, so I pulled up her website again and checked her bio. She's thirty-eight years old, which would be exactly our Melinda's age. And she didn't graduate college until she was thirty-one, law school till thirty-four. Before that, she worked as a paralegal for three years but her résumé still leaves the years between eighteen and twenty-eight unaccounted for. Which would mesh with someone going through changes, pulling her life together. And get this: She was schooled in California. San Francisco State for undergrad, Hastings for law."

"Hastings is a top school," said Milo. "Bowie Ingalls described Melinda as a loser."

"Bowie Ingalls was not a sterling judge. And people change. If I didn't believe that, I'd choose another profession."

"Bankruptcy and eviction… I guess anything's possible."

"Maybe she's not our gal, but don't you think it's worth looking into?"

"Anything else interesting in her bio?"

"No. Married, two kids. Do they have picket fences in Santa Fe? Not that hard to find out. It's a ninety-minute flight to Albuquerque, another hour by car to Santa Fe, and Southwest Airlines has cheap flights."

"Calling her on the phone would be too easy," said Milo.

"If she's trying to put her past behind her, she may lie. There's a flight at seven-forty-five tomorrow morning. I booked two seats."

"Manipulative. I'm proud of you."

"It's cold there," said Alex. "Twenty to forty Fahrenheit, some snow on the ground. So bundle up."