Breakdown

Chapter 21

I called Detective Otis Ott II (ret.).

“This is Dub. You the psychologist?”

“Alex Delaware.”

“Zina Rutherford, blast from the past,” said Ott. “Never heard of any daughter so there’s probably nothing I can do for you.”

“Could we talk anyway?”

“You want to take me out to lunch tomorrow?”

Third case-related meal I’d had in as many days. I said, “Where?”

“How about Spago?” He laughed. “Nah, there’s a deli, Pico near Robertson. Say, eleven-thirty? That way I’ll be ready for an early dinner.”

Otis Ott got there before me, had taken a booth that gave him a full view of the deli’s front door. Classic detective move.

A trim, light-skinned black man in his sixties, he had alert hazel eyes and a wide mouth that didn’t budge much when he greeted me and said, “I’m Dub.”

Like a well-trained ventriloquist. Perfect for intimidating suspects. He wore a charcoal cashmere sweater over a white polo shirt. Coffee in front of him. The deli was half full, mostly older people drinking soup and young mothers trying to eat anything while tending to toddlers.

He said, “I don’t need a menu but you do.”

“Pastrami sounds fine.”

“Twenty years ago it sounded fine for me, too. Now it’s turkey breast. At least here it doesn’t taste like cardboard.”

A Latina waitress came over, smiling warmly. Dub Ott said, “Hola, Elizabeth, usual for me, pastrami for the young guy.”

“Oh, you’re young, Dub.”

“Compared to King Tut. What’re you drinking, Doctor?”

“Cream soda.”

“There you go, keeping to a theme,” said Ott. “We’re doing the ensemble dining thing, Elizabeth.”

She laughed and left.

Ott pushed his coffee mug to the side and favored me with a sharp-eyed scrutiny. “Doctor, explain why you care about Zina Rutherford.”

My recap took a while. Ott listened without interruption — another virtue for an investigator. When I finished, he said, “Mental illness, huh? That’s interesting, from what I was told, Zina also had some problems. But like I said, no daughter came to light. No kin in L.A., period. The one who reported her missing was a brother from Cleveland.”

“Do you recall his name?”

“Something Smith — John, Jim, Joe. Maybe Bob, something common, sorry, it’s been a while and I only had phone conversations with the guy.” He reached down, produced a soft leather case, and drew out a fuzzy photo.

Faded photocopy of an enlarged driver’s license. Zina Rutherford had been a pretty woman. But even accounting for the insult inflicted by DMV cameras, nothing like the beauty Zelda had once been. The license had been issued the day after Rutherford’s twenty-eighth birthday, which was two years prior to her disappearance. Thirty isn’t old, but in Hollywood, it’s way past “aspiring.”

I said, “Can I keep this?”

“It’s your copy,” said Ott. “The original’s all I held on to — for the flyer I put out. Any resemblance to your Zelda?”

“Nothing striking.”

“Too bad, I was hoping for a eureka moment. Not that it would matter, Zina’s never going to be closed. The case was a bastard. For all I know she’s living in Pakistan or Poland or Belgium. On the other hand, she could be buried in some landfill.”

He pinged his coffee cup. “Missing person’s different from other investigations because you don’t even know if a crime’s been committed. So you start way behind. On the other hand, unlike your pal Sturgis, I got to deliver good news to families more often than you might think. My wife’s a nurse, she says I was doing the obstetrics of police work.”

The food arrived. Ott grimaced and said, “Healthy,” and lifted half a turkey sandwich. He nibbled a corner, put it down.

I said, “What kind of emotional problems did Zina have?”

“Her landlady thought she was weird. The brother never spelled it out but I got the feeling she’d always been the problem child. She was the youngest of a bunch of sibs. He sounded pretty conservative.”

“The family didn’t approve of her acting?”

“More like they didn’t approve of her wanting to. Only evidence I found of acting was a couple commercials she did years before, just background, no lines. I suppose if she’d made it, the family might’ve changed their tune. Fame trumps everything. I contacted the Screen Actors Guild and they had nothing on her. Only reason she got called an ‘actress’ in the paper was because that’s what I said to get the story run. The alternative wasn’t suitable for family reading.”

I said, “She hooked?”

“Maybe... the info came via her landlady.”

“The same one convinced Zina was weird.”

“Nasty old crone,” said Ott. “But maybe she was on to something. She said she’d try to say something to Zina and get a blank look, like Zina was off in another world. She also suspected drugs but none showed up when I searched Zina’s apartment. There were a lot of liquor bottles, which supports the landlady’s claim that Zina would bring home guys when she was stone-drunk.”

“That’s the evidence of prostitution?”

Ott nodded. His expression was pained, as if reluctant to admit the possibility. Identifying with his victim. The good ones always did.

“She said Zina had no job — and I never found one — would sleep all day and go out ‘all tarted up.’ If Zina was a pro, it does make her a higher-risk victim. But neither West Hollywood or L.A. Vice ever arrested her and when I found a couple of local bars she frequented, all I got was that she sometimes tended to overdo, no solicitations of customers. No one remembers her getting picked up, period. More like they felt sorry for her.”

He shook his head. “Bottom line, Doctor, ‘actress’ didn’t demean her and it got her case in the paper.”

“All those complaints from the landlady,” I said. “Were there plans to evict her?”

“Nope. For all old biddy’s bitching, Zina paid her rent on time, was quiet, and, except when she brought guys home, stuck to herself. That was my big obstacle, her being a loner. No friends I could locate, no local family, just that tight-ass brother in Cleveland. Maybe that was a symptom of a psychological problem, you tell me.”

I said, “How’d the brother come to report her missing?”

“He tried to call her for Thanksgiving and couldn’t get through. But he waited a full month after Thanksgiving to report, got squirrelly when I asked him why. So we’re not talking dedication. Worst thing in MP is a time lag. It was like fishing without bait.”

“What was the landlady’s name?”

“Frances Bynum, but forget talking to her. She was old back then — eighties — and breathing with an oxygen tank. Bitter about everything.”

“Anything from Zina’s neighbors?”

“No backup on the lifestyle issues but a couple of people did say she could look spaced out. But overall she hadn’t made much of an impression.”

Ott took a bite, dabbed his mouth. “I didn’t like Mrs. Bynum but she may have been right about Zina being a pro. I never found any employment records and her checking account showed frequent but irregular cash deposits — hundred here, two hundred there. Also, I found some sex toys in her nightstand along with condoms of various styles and sizes. A john-book would’ve been great but no such luck. Nothing of a personal nature, period. The apartment looked more like a temporary setup, even though she’d been there for a while. My assumption was if someone killed her, they took anything incriminating.”

“Do you see murder as likely?”

“More likely than any other possibility but I really don’t know, Doc. If it happened in her apartment, someone cleaned up really well, not a trace of nasty. Maybe she did outcall and went to the wrong guy’s crib and he covered his tracks. If the john-book, her license, and her house-key were in a purse, easy as pie. More to the point for you, no one ever saw her with a child. I can see why you’d want to know your victim’s kid is okay, but do you really think some crazy woman talking about a movie-star mama can lead you to him?”

“Probably not.”

He studied me some more, ate some sandwich. “I get you, Doctor. You’re going to do what you can until you’re convinced there’s nothing more to do. That was my approach. Sometimes it worked.”

I said, “Zelda’s given name was Jane Smith.”

He put his sandwich down. “That so? Her and the guy from Cleveland being named Humperdinck would be more impressive, but let’s go with that, say your Zelda was my Zina’s daughter. You still end up with two women decades apart. Even if I could connect you with the family and I can’t, you’d be unlikely to learn anything. We’re not talking a close-knit bunch — only that brother ever bothered to call me and he did it once. And when he talked about Zina, it was kind of... clinical. That’s the reason I felt she’d been an outcast.”

He smiled. “This brings back memories. Guess that’s what you get, talking to a psychologist.”

Despite framing lunch as my treat, Ott tried to pay. “Forget it, Doctor, what I gave you wasn’t worth the water.”

I had Elizabeth wrap my sandwich and threw down enough cash to make her beam. Ott said, “Fine, you win,” and I walked him to a little blue Mazda RX.

We shook hands again, a bit less energetically.

“Good luck, Doctor.”

“Thanks. Do you recall Zina’s address?”

“Man, you don’t let go. Wetherly Drive between Beverly and Third, round the corner from the Four Seasons, but you won’t find it. Couple of years ago, someone put up a huge condo development.”

Couple of years ago.

He’d taken the time to drive by.

Back in my office, I phoned Sherry Andover and told her about the colchicine.

She said, “Herbals? Okay, thanks for the tip. Only thing we ever find around here is dope, not yuppie stuff, but I’ll check. Did Judy reach you?”

“Judy who?”

“Judy Meers, at the men’s place. She told me she had something to pass along.”

“Any idea what?”

“Not a clue,” said Andover. “I’m not one for prying.”

Judith Meers said, “Sorry, I lost your number, Sherry gave it to me, I was just about to call.”

“Appreciate it. What’s up?”

“After you were here I asked around. No one remembered Zelda until this morning when one of our alumni stopped by to donate clothing and said they’d done some drinking together. More important for you, he claims to have met her son.”

“When did that happen?”

“I tried to pin him down time-wise but the best he could say was when he lived here, which was around three years ago.”

Shortly after the show’s cancellation. Shortly before the Central cop had seen her living on the street.

She slid down fast.

“What’s this man’s name and how can I reach him?”

“We know him as Chet Brett but I doubt that’s genuine. He claims he’s Norwegian and he does speak with a little bit of accent. Reaching him is going to be tricky because he lives out of his car. I asked him how I could get in touch but he ignored me and left.”

“Donating clothing,” I said.

“He does it once in a while, I suspect he dives Goodwill bins. But, still, altruism’s a good sign, right?”

“It’s a step,” I said. “What kind of car does he drive?”

“An old green one. Sorry, I’m not into makes.”

“Any idea where he parks?”

“I saw him once, not far from us, east on Sunset. A few blocks west of downtown. There’s a couple of vacant lots near a building supply place. I was driving from campus and he was sitting on the hood of his car and drinking.”

“Thanks, Judith.”

“There is one thing that might help you find him. He’s not exactly... typical.”

How many five-foot-tall, homeless Norwegian immigrants claiming to be ex-merchant-marines could there be out there?

When I called Milo and gave him the details, he said, “Chet Brett. About as Nordic as tostadas.”

“You’re not into lutefisk with a side of refried?”

“Yum... let’s see.” Click click click. “Got a Chester Ernest Brett in Saugus, six one, two sixty, Caucasian... a Chetley Armando Brett, Compton, eighteen years old, black, five nine, one forty... Chester NMI Brett-Lopez, Malibu, Hispanic, six foot, one seventy, twenty-five. Your guy into clever disguises? Maybe walks on his knees?”

I said, “The way things are going, I’m ready to join the circus to find out.”

“That bad, huh? You hear from Dub Ott?”

“Just talked to him.” I summarized the meeting.

He said, “Pastrami? You could gain weight on this one — no, scratch that, you probably sat there exercising iron control and took the damn thing to go, right?”

“Blanche digs nitrites as much as you do.”

“I find that doubtful... so, no obvious link between Zelda and Zina except for the Smith thing.”

“It’s thin but it’s something.”

“I do find myself intrigued.”

“Really?”

“Call it empathy, Alex. Known otherwise as when you’re up a creek at least be nice to your pals. I’ll do some checking, maybe Dub missed something.”

I hung up thinking: dead mother, dead daughter.

The worst kind of family tradition.