A Cold Heart

25

After a futile double shift combing Hollywood for someone who recognized Kevin Drummond, Petra went to bed at 3 A.M., got up at nine, and did phone work from her apartment, lying in bed, hair pinned, still in her T-shirt and panties.

Milo had filled her in on Alex’s visit to Drummond’s college. Drummond’s professor’s description, firming up the profile.

Your basic loner; big shock.

One heck of a loner- not a single club owner or bouncer or patron or bookstore employee remembered his face.

The only people she found who responded to Drummond’s DMV photo at all, were the owner of a Laundromat within two blocks of Drummond’s apartment and the clerk at a nearby 7-Eleven who thought, yeah, maybe the guy came in there and bought stuff from time to time.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Maybe Slim Jims?” The clerk was a skinhead with a vulnerable face who reacted with the edgy eagerness of a game show contestant.

“Maybe?” said Petra.

“Maybe pork rinds?”

The Laundromat owner was a Chinese man who barely spoke English and smiled a lot. All Petra could get from him was “Yeah, mebbe wash.” She resisted the impulse to ask if Drummond had rinse-cycled a load of bloody duds, trudged back to her car, and returned to the station, where she decided to work Drummond’s pen names.

No chance Faithful Scriveners would be in the system, but she found plenty of felonious E. Murphys. Too late to deal with it at this hour, so she put it off for tomorrow.

Now, here she was all comfy and beddy-bye, working the phones.

Two hours later: none of the E. Murphys looked promising.

She located Henry Gilwhite, the transsexual-murdering husband of obnoxious Olive, the POB lady, and by 12:35 P.M. she knew that Gilwhite had begun his sentence at the state penitentiary at San Quentin only to be transferred to Chino within a year. A three-minute conversation with an assistant warden told her why.

She thanked the A. W., brewed coffee, ate a hollowed-out bagel, showered, dressed, drove to Hollywood.

She found a parking space in the strip-mall lot that afforded a clean view of the mail drop. A few scuzzy types entered and exited, then nothing for ten minutes. Petra made a smiling entrance and earned a brown-lidded glare from Olive.

“Hi, there, Mrs. Gilwhite. Heard from Henry, recently?”

Olive went scarlet, the splotches on her face knitting into a rosaceous mask. “You.”

Never had a pronoun sounded more hostile.

“Have you?” said Petra.

Olive mumbled something foul under her breath.

Petra put her hands in her pockets and stepped closer to the counter. Rolls of stamps sat at Olive’s dimpled elbow. She snatched them up and turned her back on Petra.

“Nice for you that Henry got transferred, Olive. Chino’s a lot closer than San Quentin, easier to visit. And you do get there regularly. Every two weeks, like clockwork. So how’s he doing? The old blood pressure under control?”

Olive half turned, revealing a flabby profile. Her lips bunched, as if gathering spit. “What’s it to you?”

“Chino’s a lot safer, too,” said Petra. “What with Armando Guzman, a cousin of Henry’s victim incarcerated at Quentin and being a big deal in the Vatos Locos gang. Turns out, there’s a large contingent of V.L.s in Quentin, but only a few at Chino, so it’s easier to segregate someone like Henry. What they tell me, though, is that Chino’s getting overcrowded. Situation like that, you can never tell when things are going to change.”

Olive wheeled around. Pale. “You can’t.” Hostility had been sucked from her voice, replaced by a nerve-scratching whine.

Petra smiled.

Olive Gilwhite’s cheeks fluttered. The peroxide thatch above her drinker’s face thrummed. Living with this harridan must’ve been fun for Henry. Then again, there were always trannies available for back-alley trysts.

Olive Gilwhite said, “You can’t.”

“The thing is,” said Petra, “Henry being a convicted murderer, even at his age, even with the hypertension, he’s not going to garner much sympathy from the prison administration. The fact that he’s refused any psychological counseling isn’t helping him in the brownie-points department, either. Stubborn fellow, your Henry.”

Olive picked at the platinum bird’s nest. “What do you want?”

“Box 248. What do you remember?”

“A loser,” said Olive. “Okay? Like all of them. What the hell kinda clientele you think I deal with? Movie stars?”

“Give me details on the loser,” said Petra. “What did he look like? How’d he pay for the box?”

“He looked like… young, skinny, tall. Big glasses. Bad skin. One of those what-they-call nerds. A nerd fag.”

“Gay?” said Petra.

“That’s what I said.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don’t think it, I know it. He got fag stuff in the mail,” said Olive, sneering again.

“Gay magazines?”

“No, an invitation from the Pope. Yeah, magazines. What do you think these are for?” Gesticulating at the wall of boxes. “Not too many Bibles coming in.” Olive laughed, and even at this distance Petra could smell juniper berries on her breath. Midday gin.

“Did he give you his name?”

“Who remembers.”

“He did give you a name.”

“He had to fill out a form.”

“Where is it?”

“Gone,” said Olive. “Once the box changes hands, I toss out the paperwork. You think I got space to keep it all?”

“Convenient,” said Petra.

“That’s my middle name. Threaten me all you want, but it’s not gonna change facts.” Olive cursed under her breath and Petra made out fuckin’ bitch. “You should be ashamed, so-called officer of the so-called law, threatening me. I should report you. Maybe I will.” Olive folded her arms across her bosoms, but she stepped back, as if readying herself for a blow.

Petra said, “What threat are we talking about?”

“Right,” said Olive. “Overcrowding. Things change.”

“I don’t hear any threat, ma’am, but feel free to complain about me to anyone you choose.” Petra flashed her ID. “Here’s my badge number.”

Olive eyed a pen but didn’t move toward it.

“What name did the nerd give?” said Petra.

“I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

“I don’t remember- something Russian. But he wasn’t. I figured him for a nut.”

“Did he act nuts?”

“Sure,” said Olive. “He came in drooling and shaking and seeing Martians.”

Petra waited.

“He was a weirdo,” said Olive. “Get it? What, I’m supposed to be some kind of psychiatrist? He was a nerd-fag, didn’t talk much, kept his head down. Which was fine with me. Pay the fee, collect your filthy little secrets, get the hell outta here.”

“How’d he pay?”

“Cash. Like most of them.”

“By the month?”

“No way,” said Olive. “I got a space problem. You want to take up space, you guarantee me three months. So that’s at least what I got from him.”

“At least?”

“Some of them, I ask for more.”

“Which ones?”

“The ones I figure I can get it from.”

“Was he one of them?”

“Probably.”

“How long did he have the box?”

“A long time. Coupla years.”

“How often did he come in?”

“I hardly ever saw him. We’ve got twenty-four-hour access. He came in at night.”

“You’re not worried about theft?”

“I clean out the cash drawer, lock everything up. They want to steal a few pens, who cares? Too much pilferage, I raise the fees on the box, and they know it. So they behave. That’s capitalism.”

Henry Gilwhite’s transsexual encounter had taken place late at night. Petra pictured Olive back home at the double-wide in Palmdale. What had Henry’s cover story been? Going to the neighborhood tavern for a couple of beers?

Suddenly, she felt sorry for the woman.

“I won’t trouble you much longer-”

“You’ve already troubled me plenty.”

“- was the Russian name Yuri?”

“Yeah, that was it,” said Olive. “Yuri. Sounds like urine. What’d he do to piss you off?” She cackled, slapped the counter, exploded into phlegmy laughter that morphed into uncontrollable coughing.

Nasty-sounding wheezes accompanied Petra as she left the maildrop.