Breakdown

Chapter 8

Back home, I beelined for my office, found my notes on Ovid, got the name of his preschool and his teacher — Jeanette Robaire — and called.

She still worked there and I was lucky to catch her on break. She had no idea who I was but her voice took on warmth when I said I’d been Ovid Chase’s psychologist.

“Ovid. Sure I remember him — the bright ones stay with you. Why would you call me now?”

“I’m looking for him.” I gave her the basics, describing Zelda as having emotional problems I couldn’t go into.

She said, “Problems. I guess that doesn’t shock me, Dr. Delaware. She only came to the school a few times but when I saw her I got the feeling she was trying to be... okay. But it didn’t quite work — if that makes sense?”

“Working too hard at it.”

“And ending up nervous. As if she wasn’t quite sure she’d pulled it off. Someone said she was an actress.”

“She was.”

“Well, her performance with me wasn’t convincing. Not that there was anything threatening about her, just the opposite. Fragile. A beautiful fragile woman. Are you saying they took Ovid away from her? If that’s the case, why would you be looking for him?”

“I don’t know what happened to him other than he’s not with Zelda. And she’s in no condition to tell me.”

“Oh,” said Jeanette Robaire. “That sounds like more than just emotional problems.”

“Shortly after I saw Ovid, Zelda lost her job. Did she keep him in your school for the rest of the year?”

“I’m pretty sure she did. But I can’t tell you what happened when he left us and went to first grade. That’s the thing with my job. You lose contact.”

“Do you feed to any specific schools?”

“Not really. We get kids from all over and they spread out. Private and public. If they have younger sibs who enroll with us, we sometimes get progress reports from parents. Zelda’s problems, are you worried they could’ve led to abuse?”

“There’s no sign of that.”

“No sign,” said Jeanette Robaire. “I wish you just would’ve said, ‘No way.’ ”

Next try: HGK Babysitting and Child Care. No phone listing, nothing on the Internet. That was L.A.: no shelf life.

Phoning scores of schools and lying was an unpleasant prospect with no likelihood of paying off. Time to turn to a higher power.

—

Milo was away from his desk at West L.A. substation. I reached him at his cell.

“Hey, Alex.”

“I need your help.”

“That’s a switch. What about?”

“Can we get together?”

“That level of help, huh? I’m free in a couple of hours. My office okay?”

“Perfect.”

No questions asked.

Friend in need.

Milo’s situation at LAPD is one of those blips that slides off the screen to everyone’s benefit.

Years ago, he’d cut a deal with a police chief nearing retirement, a smooth, political man with plastic ethics. The barter was simple: Milo’s discretion in exchange for promotion to lieutenant. The rank usually means desk work. Milo got the higher salary and pension allotment and a mandate to keep working murders.

A new chief, autocratic and reflexively hostile, tolerated the arrangement as long as Milo’s solve rate remained nearly perfect.

Different situation from anyone else’s, but it’s always been different for my friend.

Back in his rookie days, homosexual officers were “nonexistent” in the department and Milo’s colleagues were busting heads at gay bars. Self-preservation mandated keeping your private life private and he buttoned himself up in psychosocial exile.

When social norms budged a bit, he kept up the low profile but stopped pretending and soon enough everyone knew. That period was the toughest — the sneers and stares and avoidance, the occasional overt ugliness.

Nowadays, the department has rules against discrimination of any sort and gay officers are on the job. Milo still keeps to himself and I believe it would be that way if he were straight.

Part of the deal with the corrupt chief was getting “creative” work space. The other detectives at West L.A. work out of a big room with lockers and coffee machines, a clamorous environment that bustles with work ethic and frustration and gallows humor.

Milo operates from a windowless former supply closet, a cramped domain behind an unmarked door, set at the end of a utility corridor near interview rooms where people sweat and deny and confess.

Meager square footage for a man who takes up plenty. He’s six two or three, depending on posture, with a gourmand gut and the bulk of a lineman gone sedentary.

Stretch too exuberantly and his knuckles brush the walls.

I’d go nuts working there. He loves it.

When I arrived, his door was wide open and he was at his computer, hunting-and-pecking like a studious rhino. Stacks of paper covered his desk, continued onto the floor and the spare chair. Without turning, he swiped at the chair, snowed the linoleum with paper.

I sat down. “New case?”

His fingers stopped moving. “Nah, professional development seminar. Aka knee-deep in cow-slop.” He resumed typing. Paused again. “Since eight a.m., I’ve been at a management seminar for department honchos, of which I am apparently one.”

“Congratulations.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m touched. And I blame the effect your colleagues have had on society.”

“Pyschobabble?”

“Hours of interpersonal whoopy doo and sensitivity blah blah blah. They even sent a social worker to tell us we were good human beings despite our aggressive tendencies. When she broke us up into small groups, I split. But I still have to finish this — open-screen test — to prove I was there.” He frowned. “Would you say empathy’s always necessary for effective management?”

I said, “Hmm.”

“No hmming or I’ll make you do it.”

“If there’s no ‘it depends’ option, I’d go with ‘true.’ ”

He jabbed a key. “Next: Is diversity enriching and facilitative due to cultural changes that have impacted law enforcement in the twenty-first century? Or has it always been advantageous for a well-functioning organization?”

“On that one, I won’t budge from ‘maybe.’ ”

He laughed, hunched lower, began pounding the keys progressively harder. Soon he was causing the board to jump and rattle and there was nothing for me to do but sit there and wait him out.

He looked as he usually does, black hair slicked but rebellious, white sideburns shaggy and mal-trimmed (“let’s hear it for skunk stripes”), the left side a quarter inch longer than the right.

Sadistic fluorescent bulbs called out every crease, pucker, and pock littering the steppes of his heavy face. Today’s fashion statement was a short-sleeved once-white shirt, a blue-and-orange tie that had never known a silkworm, defeated khaki cargo pants, and the usual desert boots, this pair the same muddled gray as the clouds outside the window of Zelda Chase’s cell.

They’re fashionable now. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

A shiny olive sport coat lay crumpled on the floor. I folded it over my lap and sat there. If either of us exhaled hard, we’d collide.

Clearing the screen, he popped a wheelie with his desk chair, swiveled hard and faced me. Spotting the folded jacket, he said, “Personal valet, I dig it. You also do windows?”

“Help me out and I might.”

Oddly bright green eyes studied me as if we’d just met. When he does that, it’s unsettling, but I’ve gotten used to it.

He said, “Tell me about it.”

He listened without interruption, said, “An actress? Never heard of her... okay, this shouldn’t be too hard.”

Returning to the keyboard, he pulled up a database off-limits to anyone but law enforcement and twelve-year-old hackers. As he typed, he hummed.

The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” A joke on multiple levels.

Small print began filling the screen. “Here we go, your gal has a criminal history... such as it is. First offense is that 415 plus trespassing five years ago in Sunland... dismissed. After that it looks like she stayed out of trouble until a couple of years ago when she got nailed for public intoxication in Central Division — Broadway near Fifth... dismissed.”

I said, “I thought vagrancy laws weren’t enforced.”

“You know how it is, Alex. There are no real rules, just back-scratching. My guess is some landlord or developer who contributes to campaigns bitched about transients and the department used a public health or a narcotics angle to conduct a temporary cleanup... whatever it was, it didn’t lead to any jail time for Ms. Chase and after that she stays out of trouble until... fifteen months ago, when she earned herself a second drunk and disorderly, also in Central, Olive Street near Fourth. That’s not far from Skid Row.”

“So she was probably living downtown.”

“That would be my bet... nothing else until a few days ago in Bel Air... dismissed.”

He turned to me. “Not exactly a felonious mastermind. And she may have switched her domicile to the streets of the Westside because I can’t see her hiking from Central to Poobahland just to invade someone’s backyard. Maybe she went natural — living up in the foothills.”

I said, “The first Central bust was a few months after her psychiatrist died. If no one replaced him, she could’ve slid down fast.”

“Makes sense. But from a police perspective she hasn’t done bad for a crazy woman. I’ve seen people in her situation rack up dozens of arrests.”

“Any addresses on the arrest forms?”

He scrolled back. “For the first one in Sunland, she’s on Corte Madera in the Hollywood Hills. For the second, she’s on Sunset.”

“Beverly Hills?”

“Why the hell would she be in B.H.?”

“Her psychiatrist got the studio to pay for a cottage at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Maybe she lied and said she was still there.”

“No, no, this address is East Hollywood... maybe Echo Park.”

He logged onto a map-site, fingered a spot. “Officially Hollywood, but right on the border. Let’s see what DMV has to say.”

No active driver’s license or registered vehicles, no state I.D. card issued in lieu of a license.

“Yeah, most likely a street person. No mention of any kid in her paperwork, she probably lost custody. Any father of record?”

“She never let on.”

“Okay, let’s switch gears and try to find this young’un and put your mind at ease so you can help me with the rest of this touchy-feely bullshit.”

He checked several social service websites including Social Security, followed up with calls just to make sure. No record of Zelda or Ovid Chase in the system.

He sighed. “Let’s try the bad stuff.”

I steeled myself as he logged onto the coroner’s site.

Nothing. Thank God.

Same for the L.A. missing child database and those of Orange County, San Diego, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara.

Next, he tried the roster of offenders housed by the California Youth Authority. “At least he doesn’t seem to be a bad boy. Let’s go national.”

Plenty of missing eleven-year-old boys all over the country, a sea of prepubescent faces, many age-progressed because they’d been gone for a long time.

The agony of so many families.

No one who could be Ovid Chase.

Milo rolled his chair and faced me. Not a wheelie, just the slow scrape of hard rubber on linoleum. “You probably thought of this already but mental illness can be genetic, right? So what about psych hospitals, a pediatric ward?”

“Sure,” I said, dispirited.

“Sorry,” he said. “For that, better you call than me.”

He found me an empty interview room and I phoned Ravenswood’s pediatric service and used my title. Negative. Same result at County and every other public hospital maintaining an inpatient pediatric psych ward.

When I returned to his office and told Milo, he said, “May I suggest that at this point no news is good news? Like maybe he’s living with a picture-perfect adoptive family.”

I said, “In a perfect world... The only other place I can think of would be a private psych ward but no way to gain access to their records.”

“Private costs a fortune, Alex. I don’t see the kid of a homeless woman affording that. Unless he’s in a place that takes government money, but if that was the case his name woulda showed up on some social service list. Same for public school, because they’d register him for assistance. And forget fancy boarding schools, right?”

“Right.”

“So what next?”

I had no answer.

He said, “When you saw her today she wouldn’t talk to you at all about the kid, huh?”

“I mentioned him but didn’t push it. I’m not sure she’s able to talk much. The only thing she got out was something about her mother disappearing. And that got her agitated, so I backed off.”

“Was that crazy stuff or do you think you touched a nerve?”

“I have no idea.”

“Mommy disappearing — hey, seeing as she was an actress, what about one of those where-are-they-now sites?”

“Tried it,” I said. “SubUrban lasted two and a half seasons, episodes are listed and she’s on the cast, but there are no bios.”

“Maybe none of them ever worked again.”

“That gives me an idea, Big Guy. I’ll try to find her cast-mates. Thanks.” I got up. “Can I also have that Echo Park address?”

“Better yet, I’ll come with you.”

“You’ve got time?”

“Anything’s better than this.” Logging off the test, he shrugged into his jacket.

I said, “The great escape.”

“It’s called executive prioritizing, amigo. They teach it to you at seminars.”