Bad Love

25

Milo was no longer at Records, and Sally Grayson's number was picked up by a male detective who hadn't seen her all morning and had no idea who Milo was. I left a message, and wondered why Joshua Rosenblatt had been so sure the police couldn't help.

My offer to go to New York had been impulsive- probably an escape reflex- but maybe something would come out of my talk with Shirley Rosenblatt.

I'd leave as soon as possible; Robin would have to move out now.

I looked out at the pool, still as a slab of turquoise. A few leaves floated on top.

Who cleaned it? How often?

I didn't know much about this place.

Didn't know when I'd be able to leave it.

I got up, ready to drive into Beverly Hills to find a fax service. Just as I put my wallet in my pants pocket, the phone rang and my service operator said, "A Mr. Bucklear wants to talk to you, doctor."

"Put him on."

Click.

"Doctor? Sherman Bucklear."

"Hello."

"Have you received my correspondence?"

"Yes, I have."

"I haven't received any reply, doctor."

"Didn't know there was anything to reply to."

"I have reason to believe you have knowledge of the whereabouts-"

"I don't."

"Can you prove that?"

"Do I have to?"

Pause. "Doctor, we can go about this civilly or things can get complicated."

"Complicate away, Sherman."

"Now, wait a sec-"

I hung up. It felt great to be petty. Before I could put down the phone, the service patched in again with a call from New York.

"Dr. Delaware? Josh Rosenblatt, again. My mother's willing to talk to you but I've got to warn you, she can't handle much- just a few minutes at a time. I haven't discussed any details with her. All she knows is you knew my father and think he was murdered. She may have nothing to tell you. You may end up wasting your time."

"I'll take the chance. When would you like me there?"

"What's today? Tuesday… Friday's bad and she needs her weekends for total bedrest- Thursday, I guess."

"If I can catch a flight tonight, how about tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow… I guess so. But it'll have to be in the afternoon. Mornings she has her therapy, then she naps. Come to my office first-500 Fifth Avenue. Schechter, Mohl, and Trimmer. The thirty-third floor. Have you faxed me your credentials yet?"

"Just on my way out to do it."

"Good, because that'll be a prerequisite. Send me something with a picture, too. If everything checks out, I'll see you, say, two-thirty."

• • •

I found a quick-print place on CaÑon Drive and faxed my documents to New York. Returning home, I postponed telling Robin and called an airline, booking myself a ten p.m. flight out of LAX. I asked the ticket agent about hotels.

She said, "Midtown? I really don't know, sir, but you might try the Middleton. The executives from our company stay there, but it's expensive. Of course, everything in New York is unless you want a real dive."

I thanked her and phoned the hotel. A very bored-sounding man took my credit card number, then grudgingly agreed to give me a single room for two hundred and twenty dollars a night. When he quoted the price, he suppressed a yawn.

• • •

I told Robin about Rosenblatt first.

She shook her head, took hold of my hand.

"Four years ago," I said. "Another gap filled in."

"How'd he die?"

"The son didn't go into any details. But if the killer's being consistent, it was probably something to do with a car or a fall."

"All those people. My God." Pressing my hand up against her cheek, she closed her eyes. The smell of glue hung in the garage, along with coffee and dust and the sound of the dog's breathing.

I felt him nosing up against my leg. Looked down at his wide, flat face. He blinked a couple of times and licked my hand.

I told Robin of my plan to fly east and offered to have her come with me.

She said, "There'd be no point to it, would there?"

"It's not going to be a vacation, just more digging up people's misery. I'm starting to feel like a ghoul."

She looked off, at her tools and her molds.

"Only time I've been in New York was a family trip. We went all the way up to Niagara Falls, Mom and Dad squabbling the whole time."

"I haven't been there, myself, since grad school."

She nodded, touched my biceps, rubbed it. "You have to go- things are getting uglier and uglier here. When are you leaving?"

"I was thinking tonight."

"I'll take you to the airport. When will you be coming home, so I can pick you up?"

"Depends on what I find- probably within a day or two."

"Do you have a place to stay?"

"I found a hotel."

"A hotel," she said. "You, alone in some room…" She shook her head.

"Could you please stay with Milo and Rick while I'm gone? I know it's disruptive and unnecessary, but I'd have a lot more peace of mind."

She touched my face again. "You haven't had much of that lately, have you? Sure, why not."

• • •

I tried a couple more times to reach Milo without success. Wanting to get Robin settled as soon as possible, I phoned his house. Rick was there and I told him we'd be coming over.

"We'll take good care of her, Alex. I'm really sorry for all this crap you've been going through. I'm sure the big guy will get to the bottom of it."

"I'm sure he will, too. Will the dog be a problem?"

"No, I don't think so. Milo tells me he's pretty cute."

"Milo never expressed any affection for him in my presence."

"Does that surprise you?"

"No," I said.

He laughed.

"Are you badly allergic, Rick?"

"Don't know, never had a dog. But don't worry, I'll pick up some Seldane in the ER, or write myself a scrip. Speaking of which, I have to head over to Cedars pretty soon. When were you planning on coming?"

"This evening. Any idea when Milo'll be back?"

"Your guess is as good as mine… Tell you what, I'll leave a key in back of the house. There're two sago palms growing up against the rear wall- you haven't been here since we relandscaped, have you?"

"Just to pick up Milo."

"Came out great, our water consumption's way down… the sago palms- do you know what they are?"

"Squat things with leaves that look like fan blades?"

"Exactly. I'll leave the key under the branches of the smaller one- the one on the right. Milo would kill me if he knew." More laughter. "We have a new alarm code, too- he changes it every couple of months."

He rattled off five numbers. I copied them down and thanked him again.

"Pleasure," he said. "This should be fun, we've never had a pet."

• • •

I packed my carry-on and Robin packed hers. We took the dog for a walk around the property and played with him, and finally he got sleepy. We left him resting and drove into town for an early dinner, taking Robin's truck. Cholesterol palace on South Beverly Drive: thick steaks and home-fried potatoes served in lumberjack portions at prices no lumberjack could afford. The food looked great and smelled great, and my taste buds told me it probably tasted great, too. But somewhere along the line the circuitry between my tongue and my brain fizzed and I found myself chewing mechanically, forcing meat down a dry, tight throat.

• • •

At seven, we cleaned the house on Benedict, picked up the dog, locked up, and drove over to West Hollywood. The key was where Rick had said it would be, placed on the ground precisely at the middle of the palm's corrugated trunk. The rest of the yard was desert-pale and composed, drought-tolerant plants spread expertly around the tiny space. The walls were higher and topped with ragged stone.

Inside, the place was different, too: whitewashed hardwood floors, big leather chairs, glass tables, gray fabric walls. The guest room was pine. An old iron bed was freshly made and turned down. A single white rose rested on the pillow and a bar of Swiss chocolate was on a dish on the nightstand.

"How sweet," said Robin, picking up the flower and twirling it. She looked around. "This is like a great little inn."

Sheets of newspaper were spread on the floor next to the bed. On them were a white ceramic bowl filled with water, a plastic-wrapped hunk of cheddar cheese, and a shirt cardboard lettered in fountain pen, in Rick's perfect, surgeon's hand: POOCH'S CORNER.

The dog went straight for the cheese- nosing it and having trouble with the concept of see-through plastic. I unwrapped it and fed it to him in bits.

We let him explore the yard for a while, then went back inside. "Every time I come here, they've done something else," Robin said.

"They? I don't think so, Rob."

"True. You know, sometimes I have trouble imagining Milo living here."

"I bet he loves it. Refuge from all the ugliness, someone else to worry about the details for a change."

"You're probably right- we can all use a refuge, can't we?"

• • •

At eight, she drove me to LAX. The place had been rebuilt a few years ago, for the Olympics, and was a lot more manageable, but incoming arteries were still clogged and we waited to enter the departure lanes.

The whole city had been freshened up for the games, more energy and creativity mustered during one summer than the brain-dead mayor and the piss-and-moan city council had come up with in two decades. Now they were back to their old apathy-and-sleaze routine, and the city was rotting wherever the rich didn't live.

Robin pulled up to the curb. The dog couldn't enter the terminal, so we said our good-byes right there, and feeling lost and edgy, I entered the building.

The main hall was a painfully bright temple of transition. People looked either bone weary or jumpy. Security clearance was slow because the western-garbed man in front of me kept setting off the metal detector. Finally, someone figured out it was due to the metal shanks in his snakeskin boots, and we started moving again.

I made it to the gate by nine-fifteen. Got my boarding pass, waited a half hour, then stood in line and finally got to my seat. The plane began taxiing at ten-ten, then stopped. We sat on the runway for a while and finally lifted off. A couple of thousand feet up, L.A. was still a giant circuit board. Then a cloud bank. Then darkness.

• • •

I slept on and off for most of the flight, woke varnished in sweat.

Kennedy was crowded and hostile. I lugged my carry-on past the hordes at the baggage carousels and picked up a cab at the curb. The car smelled of boiled cabbage and was plastered with no-smoking signs in English, Spanish, and Japanese. The driver had an unpronounceable name and he wore a blue tank top and a white ski hat. The hat was rolled triple so the edge created a brim. It resembled a soft bowler.

I said, "The Middleton Hotel, on West Fifty-second Street."

He grunted something and drove off, very slowly. The little I saw of Queens from the highway was low-rise and old, bricks and chrome and graffiti. But when we got on the Queensboro Bridge, the water was calm and lovely and the skyline of Manhattan loomed with threat and promise.

• • •

The Middleton was twenty stories of black granite sandwiched between office buildings that dwarfed it. The doorman looked ready for retirement and the lobby was shabby, elegant, and empty.

My room was on the tenth floor, small as a death row cell, filled with colonial furniture and sealed by blackout drapes. Clean and well ordered, but it smelled of mildew and roach killer. A dead quail-hunt print hung over the bed. The air-conditioner was a heavy-metal instrument. Street noise made it up this far with little loss of volume.

No rose on my pillow.

Unpacking, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, ordered a three-dollar English muffin and five-dollar eggs, then punched the operator's 0 and asked for a wakeup call at one. The food came surprisingly quickly and, even more amazing, was tasty.

When I finished, I put the tray on a glass-topped bureau, pulled back the covers, and got into bed. The TV remote was bolted to the nightstand. A cardboard guide listed thirty or so cable stations. The last choice was an early morning public access show featuring a dull, pudgy nude man interviewing dull, nude women. He had narrow, womanish shoulders and a very hairy body.

"Okay, Velvet," he said, leering. "So… what do you do for, uh… fun?"

A painfully thin blond with a beak nose and frizzy hair touched a nipple and said, "Macramé."

I switched off the set.

Lights out. The blackout drapes did their job well.

My heart was as dark as the room.