The Murder Book

CHAPTER 7

Schwinn told Milo to drop Tonya off on Eighth near Witmer, down the block from the Ranch Depot Steak House.

"Get yourself a hunk of beef, darling." Slipping her some bills. "Get yourself a lovely T-bone with one of those giant baked potatoes."

"Mr. S.," came the protest. "I can't go in there dressed like this, they won't serve me."

"With this they will." Another handful of paper pressed into her hand. "You show this to Calvin up front, tell him I sent you- you have any problem, you let me know."

"You're sure?"

"You know I am."

The rear door opened, and Tonya got out. The smell of sex hung in the car. Now the night filtered in, cool, fossil-fuel bitter.

"Thank you, Mr. S." She extended her hand. Schwinn held on to it.

"One more thing, darling. Hear of any rough johns working the Temple-Beaudry area?"

"How rough?"

"Ropes, knives, cigarette burns."

"Ooh," said the hooker, with pain in her voice. "No, Mr. S., there's always lowlife, but I heard nothing like that."

Pecks on cheeks. Tonya clicked her way toward the restaurant, and Schwinn got back in front. "Back to the station, boy-o."

Closing his eyes. Self-satisfied. At Olive Street, he said: "That's a very intelligent nigger, boy-o. Given the opportunity a free, white woman woulda had, she woulda made something of herself. What's that about?"

"What do you mean?"

"The way we treat niggers. Make sense to you?"

"No," said Milo. Thinking: What the hell is this lunatic about?

Then: Why hadn't Schwinn offered the hooker to him?

Because Schwinn and Tonya had something special? Or because he knew?

"What it says," offered Schwinn. "The way we treat niggers, is that sometimes smart doesn't count."

Milo dropped him off at the Central Division parking lot, watched him get into his Ford Fairlane and drive off to Simi Valley, to the wife who liked books.

Alone, at last.

For the first time since the Beaudry call, he was breathing normally.

He entered the station, climbed the stairs, hurried to the scarred metal desk they'd shoved into a corner of the Homicide room for him. The next three hours were spent phoning Missing Persons bureaus at every station and when that didn't pay off, he extended the search to various sheriff's substations and departments of neighboring cities. Every office kept its own files, no one coordinated, each folder had to be pulled by hand, and MP skeleton crews were reluctant to extend themselves, even on a 187. Even when he pressed, emphasized the whodunit aspect, the ugliness, he got resistance. Finally, he hit upon something that pried cooperation and curses on the other end: the likelihood of news coverage. Cops were afraid of bad press. By 3 A.M., he'd come up with seven white girls in the right age range.

So what did he do, now? Get on the horn and wake up worried parents?

Pardon me, Mrs. Jones, but did your daughter Amy ever show up? Because we've still got her listing as missing and are wondering if a sackful of tissue and viscera cooling off in a coroner's drawer just might be her?

The only way to do it was preliminary phone contact followed by face-to-face interviews. Tomorrow, at a decent hour. Unless Schwinn had other ideas. Something else to correct him about.

He transcribed all the data from his pad onto report sheets, filled out the right forms, redrew the outline of the girl's body, summarized the MP calls, created a neat little pile of effort. Striding across the room to a bank of file cabinets, he opened a top drawer and pulled out one of several blue binders stored in a loose heap. Recycled binders: When cases were closed, the pages were removed and stapled, placed in a manila folder, and shipped over to the evidence room at Parker Center.

This particular blue book had seen better times: frayed around the edges with a brown stain on the front cover vaguely reminiscent of a wilting rose- some D's greasy lunch. Milo affixed a stickummed label to the cover.

Wrote nothing. Nothing to write.

He sat there thinking about the mutilated girl. Wondered what her name was and couldn't bring himself to substitute Jane Doe.

First thing tomorrow, he'd check out those seven girls, maybe get lucky and end up with a name.

A title for a brand-new murder book.

Bad dreams kept him up all night, and he was back at his desk by 6:45 A.M., the only detective in the room, which was just fine; he didn't even mind getting the coffee going.

By 7:20, he was calling families. MP number one was Sarah Jane Causlett, female cauc, eighteen, five-six, 121, last seen in Hollywood, buying dinner at the Oki-burger at Hollywood and Selma.

Ring, ring ring. "Mrs. Causlett? Good morning, hope I'm not calling too early…"

By 9 A.M., he was finished. Three of the seven girls had returned home, and two others weren't missing at all, just players in divorce dramas who'd escaped to be with noncustodial parents. That left two sets of distraught parents, Mr. and Mrs. Estes in Mar Vista, Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs in Mid-City. Lots of anxiety, Milo withheld facts, steeled himself for the face-to-face.

By 9:30 a few detectives had arrived, but not Schwinn, so Milo placed a scrawled note on Schwinn's desk, left the station.

By 1 P.M., he was back where he started. A recent picture of Misty Estes showed her to be substantially obese with short curly hair. West L.A. Missing Persons had misrecorded her stats: 107 pounds instead of 187. Oops, sorry. Milo left the tearful mother and hypertensive father standing in the doorway of their GI Bill bungalow.

Jessica Jacobs was approximately the right size, but definitely not the girl on Beaudry: She had the lightest of blue eyes, and the victim's had been deep brown. Another clerical screwup, no one bothering to note eye color in the Wilshire Division MP file.

He left the Jacobs house sweating and tired, found a pay phone outside a liquor store at Third and Wilton, got Schwinn on the line, and gave a lack-of-progress report.

"Morning boy-o," said Schwinn. "Haul yourself over here, there might be something."

"What?"

"Come on back."

When he got to the Homicide room, half the desks were full, and Schwinn was balancing on two legs of his chair, wearing a nice-looking navy suit, shiny white-on-white shirt, gold tie, gold tie tack shaped like a tiny fist. Leaning back precariously as he chomped a burrito the size of a newborn baby.

"Welcome home, prodigious son."

"Yeah."

"You look like shit."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Schwinn gave one of his corkscrew smiles. "So you learned about our excellent record-keeping. Cops are the worst, boy-o. Hate to write and always make a mess out of it. We're talking barely literate."

Milo wondered about the extent of Schwinn's own education. The topic had never come up. The whole time they'd worked together, Schwinn had parceled out very few personal details.

"Clerical screwups are the fucking rule, boy-o. MP files are the worst, because MP knows it's a penny ante outfit, most of the time the kid comes home, no one bothers to let them know."

"File it, forget it," said Milo, hoping agreement would shut him up.

"File it, fuck it. That's why I was in no big hurry to chase MP."

"You know best," said Milo.

Schwinn's eyes got hard. Milo said, "So what's interesting?"

"Maybe interesting," Schwinn corrected. "A source of mine picked up some rumors. Party on the Westside two days before the murder. Friday night, upper Stone Canyon- Bel Air."

"Rich kids."

"Filthy rich kids, probably using Daddy and Mommy's house. My source says there were kids from all over showing up, getting stoned, making noise. The source also knows a guy, has a daughter, went out with her friends, spent some time at the party, and never came home."

Maybe interesting.

Schwinn grinned and bit off a wad of burrito. Milo had figured the guy for a late-sleeping pension-sniffing goldbrick and turned out the sonofabitch had been working overtime, doing a solo act, and producing. The two of them were partners in name, only.

He said, "The father didn't report it to MP?"

Schwinn shrugged. "The father's a little bit… marginal."

"Lowlife?"

"Marginal," Schwinn repeated. Irritated, as if Milo was a poor student, kept getting it wrong. "Also, the girl's done this before- goes out partying, doesn't come home for a few days."

"If the girl's done it before, why would this be different?"

"Maybe it's not. But the girl fits stat-wise: sixteen, around five-seven, skinny, with dark hair, brown eyes, nice tight little body."

An appreciative tone had crept into Schwinn's voice. Milo pictured him with the source- some street letch, the source laying it on lasciviously. Hookers, pimps, perverts, Schwinn probably had a whole stable of lowlifes he could count on for info. And Milo had a master's degree…

"She's supposed to be cute," Schwinn went on. "No virgin, a wild kid. Also, at least one time before, she got herself in trouble. Hitchhiking on Sunset, got picked up by some scrote who raped her, tied her up, left her in an alley downtown. A juicehead found her, lucky for her he was just a bum, not a perve fixing to get himself some sloppy seconds. The girl never reported it officially, just told a friend, and the story made the rounds on the street."

"Sixteen years old, tied and raped and she doesn't report it?"

"Like I said, no virgin." Schwinn's hatchet jaw pulsed, and his Okie squint aimed at the ceiling. Milo knew he was holding back something.

"Is the source reliable?"

"Usually."

"Who?"

Schwinn's headshake was peevish. "Let's concentrate on the main thing: We got a girl who fits our vic's stats."

"Sixteen," said Milo, bothered.

Schwinn shrugged. "From what I've read- psychology articles- the human rope gets kinked up pretty early." He leaned back and took another big bite of burrito, wiped salsa verde from his mouth with the back of his hand, then gave the hand a lick. "You think that's true, boy-o? Think maybe she didn't report it cause she liked it?"

Milo covered his anger with a shrug of his own. "So what's next? Talk to the father?"

Schwinn righted his chair, swabbed his chin, this time with a paper napkin, stood abruptly, and walked out of the room, leaving Milo to follow.

Partners.

Outside, near the unmarked, Schwinn turned to him, smiling. "So tell me, how'd you sleep last night?"

Schwinn recited the address on Edgemont, and Milo started up the car.

"Hollywood, boy-o. A real-life Hollywood girl."

Over the course of the twenty-minute ride, he laid out a few more details for Milo: The girl's name was Janie Ingalls. A sophomore at Hollywood High, living with her father in a third-floor walk-up in a long-faded neighborhood, just north of Santa Monica Boulevard. Bowie Ingalls was a drunk who might or might not be home. Society was going to hell in a handbasket; even white folk were living like pigs.

The building was a clumsy pink thing with undersized windows and lumpy stucco. Twelve units was Milo's guess: four flats to a floor, probably divided by a narrow central corridor.

He parked, but Schwinn made no attempt to get out, so the two of them just sat there, the engine running.

"Turn it off," said Schwinn.

Milo twisted the key and listened to street sounds. Distant traffic from Santa Monica, a few bird trills, someone unseen playing a power mower. The street was poorly kept, litter sludging the gutters. He said, "Besides being a juicehead, how's the father marginal?"

"One of those walking-around guys," said Schwinn. "Name of Bowie Ingalls, does a little of this, little of that. Rumor has it he ran slips for a nigger bookie downtown- how's that for a white man's career? A few years ago, he was working as a messenger at Paramount Studios, telling people he was in the movie biz. He plays the horses, has a chicken-shit sheet, mostly drunk and disorderly, unpaid traffic tickets. Two years ago he got pulled in for receiving stolen property but never got charged. Small-time, all around."

Details. Schwinn had found the time to pull Bowie Ingalls's record.

"Guy like that, and he's raising a kid," said Milo.

"Yeah, it's a cruel world, isn't it? Janie's mother was a stripper and a hype, ran off with some hippie musician when the kid was a baby, overdosed in Frisco."

"Sounds like you've learned a lot."

"That what you think?" Schwinn's voice got flinty, and his eyes were hard, again. Figuring Milo was being sarcastic? Milo wasn't sure he hadn't meant to be sarcastic.

"I've got a lot to learn," he said. "Wasting my time with those MP clowns. Meanwhile you're getting all this-"

"Don't lick my ass, son," said Schwinn, and suddenly the hatchet face was inches from Milo's and Milo could smell the Aqua Velva and the salsa verde. "I didn't do dick, and I don't know dick. And you did way less than dick."

"Hey, sorry if-"

"Fuck sorry, pal. You think this is some game? Like getting a master's degree, hand in your homework, and lick the teacher's ass and get your little ass-licking grade? You think that's what this is about?"

Talking way too fast for normal. What the hell had set him off?

Milo kept silent. Schwinn laughed bitterly, moved away, sat back so heavily against the seat that Milo's heavy body rocked. "Let me tell you, boy-o, that other shit we've been shoveling since I let you ride with me- niggers and pachucos offing each other and waiting around for us to pick 'em up and if we don't, no one gives a shit- you think that's what the 187 universe is all about?"

Milo's face was hot from jawline to scalp. He kept his mouth shut.

"This…" said Schwinn, pulling a letter-sized, baby blue envelope from an inside suit pocket and removing a stack of color photos. Twenty-four-hour photo lab logo. The Instamatic shots he'd snapped at Beaudry.

He fanned them out on his skinny lap, faceup, like fortune-teller's cards. Close-ups of the dead girl's bloody, scalped head. Intimate portraits of the lifeless face, splayed legs…

"This," he said, "is why we get paid. The other stuff clerks could handle."

The first seven murders had gotten Milo to think of himself as a clerk with a badge. He didn't dare agree. Agreement seemed to infuriate the sonofa-

"You thought you were gonna get some fun for yourself when you signed up to be a Big Bad Homicide Hero," said Schwinn. "Right?" Talking even faster, but managing to snap off each word. "Or maybe you heard that bullshit about Homicide being for intellectuals and you've got that master's degree and you thought hey, that's me! So tell me, this look intellectual to you?" Tapping a photo. "You think this can be figured out using brains?"

Shaking his head and looking as if he'd tasted something putrid, Schwinn hooked a fingernail under a corner of a photo and flicked.

Plink, plink.

Milo said, "Look, I'm just-"

"Do you have any idea how often something like this actually gets closed? Those clowns in the Academy probably told you Homicide has a seventy, eighty percent solve rate, right? Well, that's horseshit. That's the stupid stuff- which should be a hundred percent it's so stupid, so big fucking deal, eighty percent. Shit." He turned and spit out the window. Shifted back to Milo. "With this"- plink plink- "you're lucky to close four outta ten. Meaning most of the time you lose and the guy gets to do it again and he's saying 'Fuck you' to you just like he is to her."

Schwinn freed his fingernail and began tapping the snapshot, blunt-edged index finger landing repetitively on the dead girl's crotch.

Milo realized he was holding his breath, had been doing it since Schwinn launched the tirade. His skin remained saturated with heat, and he wiped his face with one hand.

Schwinn smiled. "I'm pissing you off. Or maybe I'm scaring you. You do that- with the hand- when you're pissed off or scared."

"What's the point, Pierce?"

"The point is you said I learned a lot, and I didn't learn dick."

"I was just-"

"Don't just anything," said Schwinn. "There's no room for just, there's no room for bullshit. I don't need the brass sending me some… fly-by-night master's deg-"

"Fuck that," said Milo, letting out breath and rage. "I've been-"

"You've been watching me, checking me out, from the minute you started-"

"I've been hoping to learn something."

"For what?" said Schwinn. "So you can add up the brownie points, then move on to an ass-warming job with the brass. Boy-o, I know what you're about-"

Milo felt himself using his bulk. Moving closer to Schwinn, looming over the skinny man, his index finger pointing like a gun. "You don't know shi-"

Schwinn didn't yield. "I know assholes with master's degrees don't stick with this." Tap tap. "I know I don't wanna waste my time working a whodunit with a suck-up intellectual who all he wants to do is climb the ladder. You got ambition, find yourself some suck-up job like Daryl Gates did, driving Chief Parker's car, one day that clown'll probably end up chief." Taptaptap. "This ain't career-building, muchacho. This is a whodunit. Get it? This likes to munch on your insides, then shit you out in pellets."

"You're wrong," said Milo. "About me."

"Am I?" Knowing smile.

Ah, thought Milo. Here it comes. The crux.

But Schwinn just sat there, grinning, tapping the photo.

Long silence. Then suddenly, as if someone had pulled the plug on him, the guy slumped heavily, looking defeated. "You have no idea what you're up against." He slipped the photos back in the envelope.

Milo thought: If you hate the job, retire, asshole. Grab your pension two years early and waste the rest of your life growing tomatoes in some loser trailer park.

Long, turgid moments passed.

Milo said, "Big whodunit, and we're sitting here?"

"What's the alternative, Sherlock?" said Schwinn, hooking a thumb at the pink building. "We go in there and talk to this asshole and maybe his daughter's the one who got turned into shit, or she's not. One way, we've crawled an inch on a hundred-mile hike, the other way, we haven't even started. Either way we got nothing to be proud of."