Devil's Waltz

7

I read some more until seven, then worked on the galley proofs of a monograph I’d just gotten accepted for publication: the emotional adjustment of a school full of children targeted by a sniper a year ago. The school’s principal had become a friend of mine, then more. Then she went back to Texas to attend to a sick father. He died and she never returned.

Loose ends...

I reached Robin at her studio. She’d told me she was elbow-deep in a trying project — building four matching Stealth bomber-shaped guitars for a heavy metal band with neither budget nor self-control — and I wasn’t surprised to hear the strain in her voice.

“Bad time?”

“No, no, it’s good talking to someone who isn’t drunk.”

Shouts in the background. I said, “Is that the boys?”

“Being boys. I keep booting them out and they keep coming back. Like mildew. You’d think they’d have something to keep them busy — trashing their hotel suite, maybe — but — Uh-oh, hold on. Lucas, get away from there! You may need your fingers some day. Sorry, Alex. He was drumming near the circular saw.” Her voice softened: “Listen, I’ve got to go. How about Friday night — if that’s okay with you?”

“It’s okay. Mine or yours?”

“I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be ready, Alex, so let me come by and get you. I promise no later than nine, okay?”

“Okay.”

We said our goodbyes and I sat thinking about how independent she’d become.

I took out my old Martin guitar and finger-picked for a while. Then I went back into my study and reread the Munchausen articles a couple of times over, hoping to pick up something — some clinical cue — that I might have missed. But no insights were forthcoming; all I could think of was Cassie Jones’s chubby face turned into something gray and sepulchral.

I wondered if it was even a question of science — if all the medical wisdom in the world was going to take me where I needed to go.

Maybe time for a different kind of specialist.

I phoned a West Hollywood number. A sultry female voice said, “You’ve reached Blue Investigations. Our office is closed. If you wish to leave a nonemergency message, do so after the first tone. In an emergency, wait until two tones have sounded.”

After the second beep, I said, “It’s Alex, Milo. Call me at home,” and picked up my guitar again.

I’d played ten bars of “Windy and Warm” when the phone rang.

A voice that sounded far away said, “What’s the emergency, pal?”

“Blue Investigations?”

“As in cop.”

“Ah.”

“Too abstract?” he said. “Do you get a porno connotation?”

“No, it’s fine — very L.A. Whose voice is on the message?”

“Rick’s sister.”

“The dentist?”

“Yeah. Good pipes, huh?”

“Terrific. She sounds like Peggy Lee.”

“Gives you fever when she drills your molars.”

“When’d you go private?”

“Yeah, well, you know how it is — the lure of the dollar. Just a little moonlighting, actually. Long as the department keeps force-feeding me tedium during the day, might as well get paid well for it on the off hours.”

“Not loving your computers yet?”

“Hey, I love ’em but they don’t love me. ‘Course, now they’re saying the goddam things give off bad vibes — literally. Electromagnetic crap, probably slowly destroying this perfect body.” A burst of static washed over the tail end of the sentence.

“Where are you calling from?” I said.

“Car phone. Wrapping up a job.”

“Rick’s car?”

“Mine. My phone too. It’s a new age, Doctor. Rapid communication and even faster decay. Anyway, what’s up?”

“I wanted to ask your advice on something — a case I’m working on—”

“Say no more—”

“I—”

“I mean it, Alex. Say. No. More. Cellular and privacy don’t mix. Anyone can listen in. Hold tight.”

He cut the line. My doorbell rang twenty minutes later.

“I was close,” he said, tramping into my kitchen. “Wilshire near Barrington, paranoid lover surveillance.”

In his left hand was an LAPD note pad and a black mobile phone the size of a bar of soap. He was dressed for undercover work: navy-blue Members Only jacket over a shirt of the same color, gray twill pants, brown desert boots. Maybe five pounds lighter than the last time I’d seen him — but that still added up to at least 250 of them distributed unevenly over 75 inches: long thin legs, protruberant gut, jowls surrendering to gravity and crowding his collar.

His hair had been recently cut — clipped short at back and sides, left full at the top. The black thatch hanging over his forehead showed a few strands of white. His sideburns reached the bottom of his ear lobes, a good inch longer than department regulations — but that was the least of the department’s problems with him.

Milo was oblivious to fashion. He’d had the same look since I’d known him. Now Melrose trendies were adopting it; I doubted he’d noticed.

His big, pockmarked face was night-shift pale. But his startling green eyes seemed clearer than usual.

He said, “You look wired.”

Opening the refrigerator, he bypassed the bottles of Grolsch, removed an unopened quart jar of grapefruit juice, and uncapped it with a quick twist of two thick fingers.

I handed him a glass. He filled it, drained it, filled again and drank.

“Vitamin C, free enterprise, snappy-sounding business title — you’re moving too fast for me, Milo.”

Putting the glass down, he licked his lips. “Actually,” he said, “Blue’s an acronym. Big Lug’s Uneasy Enterprise — Rick’s idea of wit. Though I admit it was accurate at the time — jumping into the private sector wasn’t exactly your smooth transition. But I’m glad I did it, because of the bread. I’ve become serious about financial security in my old age.”

“What do you charge?”

“Fifty to eighty per hour, depending. Not as good as a shrink, but I’m not complaining. City wants to waste what it taught me, have me sit in front of a screen all day, it’s their loss. By night, I’m getting my detective exercise.”

“Any interesting cases?”

“Nah, mostly petty bullshit surveillance to keep the paranoids happy. But at least it gets me out on the street.”

He poured more juice and drank. “I don’t know how long I can take it — the day job.”

He rubbed his face, as if washing without water. Suddenly, he looked worn, stripped of entrepreneurial cheer.

I thought of all he’d been through during the last year. Breaking the jaw of a superior who’d put his life in danger. Doing it on live television. The police department settling with him because going public could have proved embarrassing. No charges pressed, six months’ unpaid leave, then a return to West L.A. Robbery/Homicide with a one-notch demotion to Detective II. Finding out, six months later, that no detective jobs were open at West L.A., or any other division, due to “unforeseen” budget cuts.

They shunted him — “temporarily” — to a data-processing job at Parker Center, where he was put under the tutelage of a flagrantly effeminate civilian instructor and taught how to play with computers. The department’s not-so-subtle reminder that assault was one thing, but what he did in bed was neither forgotten nor forgiven.

“Still thinking of going to court?” I said.

“I don’t know. Rick wants me to fight to the death. Says the way they reneged proves they’ll never give me a break. But I know if I take it to court, that’s it for me in the department. Even if I win.”

He removed his jacket and tossed it on the counter. “Enough bullshit self-pity. What can I do for you?”

I told him about Cassie Jones, gave him a mini-lecture on Munchausen syndrome. He drank and made no comment. Looked almost as if he were tuning out.

I said, “Have you heard of this before?”

“No. Why?”

“Most people react a little more strongly.”

“Just taking it all in... Actually, it reminded me of something. Several years ago. There was this guy came into the E.R. at Cedars. Bleeding ulcer. Rick saw him, asked him about stress. Guy says he’s been hitting the bottle very heavy ’cause he’s guilty about being a murderer and getting away with it. Seems he’d been with a call girl, gotten mad and cut her up. Badly — real psycho slasher thing. Rick nodded and said uh-huh; then he got the hell out of there and called Security — then me. The murder had taken place in Westwood. At the time I was in a car with Del Hardy, working on some robberies over in Pico-Robertson, and the two of us bopped over right away, Mirandized him, and listened to what he had to say.

“The turkey was overjoyed to see us. Vomiting out details like we were his salvation. Names, addresses, dates, weapon. He denied any other murders and came up clean for wants and warrants. A real middle-of-the-road type of guy, even owned his own business — carpet cleaning, I think. We booked him, had him repeat his confession on tape, and figured we’d picked up a dream solve. Then we proceeded to round up verifying details and found nothing. No crime, no physical evidence of any murder at that particular date and place; no hooker had ever lived at that address or anywhere nearby. No hooker fitting the name and description he’d given us had ever existed anywhere in L.A. So we checked unidentified victims, but none of the Jane Does in the morgue fit, and no moniker in Vice’s files matched the one he said his girl used. We even ran checks in other cities, contacted the FBI, figuring maybe he got disoriented — some kind of psycho thing — and mixed up his locale. He kept insisting it had happened exactly the way he was telling it. Kept saying he wanted to be punished.

“After three straight days of this: nada. Guy’s got a court-appointed attorney against his will, and the lawyer’s screaming at us to make a case or let his client go. Our lieutenant is putting the pressure on — put up or shut up. So we keep digging. Zilch.

“At this point we begin to suspect we’ve been had, and confront the guy. He denies it. Really convincing — De Niro could have taken lessons. So we go over it again. Backtracking, double-checking, driving ourselves crazy. And still come up empty. Finally, we’re convinced it’s a scam, get overtly pissed off at the guy — major league bad-cop/bad-cop. He reacts by getting pissed off, too. But it’s an embarrassed kind of anger. Slimy. Like he knows he’s been found out and is being extra-indignant in order to put us on the defensive.”

He shook his head and hummed the Twilight Zone theme.

“What happened?” I said.

“What could happen? We let him walk out and never heard from the asshole again. We could have busted him for filing a false report, but that would have bought us lots of paperwork and court time, and for what? Lecture and a fine on a first offense knocked down to a misdemeanor? No, thank you. We were really steamed, Alex. I’ve never seen Del so mad. It had been a heavy week, plenty of real crimes, very few solutions. And this bastard yanks our chains with total bullshit.”

Remembered anger colored his face.

“Confessors,” he said. “Attention-seeking, jerking everyone around. Doesn’t that sound like your Munchausen losers?”

“Sounds a lot like them,” I said. “Never thought of it that way.”

“See? I’m a regular font of insight. Go on with your case.”

I told him the rest of it.

He said, “Okay, so what do you want? Background checks on the mother? Both parents? The nurse?”

“I hadn’t thought in those terms.”

“No? What, then?”

“I really don’t know, Milo. I guess I just wanted some counsel.”

He placed his hands atop his belly, bowed his head, and raised it. “Honorable Buddha on duty. Honorable Buddha counsels as following: Shoot all bad guys. Let some other deity sort them out.”

“Be good to know who the bad guys are.”

“Exactly. That’s why I suggested background checks. At least on your prime suspect.”

“That would have to be the mother.”

“Then she gets checked first. But as long as I’m punching buttons, I can throw in any others as a bonus. More fun than the payroll shit they’re punishing me with.”

“What would you check for?”

“Criminal history. It’s a police data bank. Will your lady doctor friend be in on the fact that I’m checking?”

“Why?”

“I like to know my parameters when I snoop. What we’re doing is technically a no-no.”

“No. Let’s keep her out of it — why put her in jeopardy?”

“Fine.”

“In terms of a criminal history,” I said, “Munchausens generally present as model citizens — just like your carpet cleaner. And we already know about the first child’s death. It’s been written off as SIDS.”

He thought. “There’d be a coroner’s report on that, but if no one had any suspicions of foul play, that’s about it. I’ll see what I can do about getting hold of the paperwork. You might even be able to do it yourself — check hospital records. If you can be discreet.”

“Don’t know if I can. The hospital’s a different place now.”

“In what way?”

“Lots more security — kind of heavy-handed.”

“Well,” he said, “you can’t fault that. That part of town’s gotten real nasty.”

He got up, went to the fridge, found an orange and began peeling it over the sink. Frowning.

I said, “What is it?”

“I’m trying to frame some strategy on this. Seems to me the only way to solve something like this would be to catch the bad guy in the act. The kid gets sick at home?”

I nodded.

“So the only way to do it would be to surveil their house electronically. Hidden audio and video. Trying to record someone actually poisoning the baby.”

“The Colonel’s games,” I said.

That made him frown.

“Yeah, exactly the kind of stuff that prick would delight in... He moved, you know.”

“Where?”

“Washington, D.C. Where else? New enterprise for him. Corporation with one of those titles that tells you nothing about what it does. Ten to one he’s living off the government. I got a note and a business card in the mail a while back. Congrats for entering the informational age and some free software to do my taxes.”

“He knew what you were doing?”

“Evidently. Anyway, back to your baby-poisoner. Bugging her house. Unless you got a court order, anything you came up with would be inadmissible. But a court order means strong evidence, and all you’ve got are suspicions. Not to mention the fact that Grandpa’s a pooh-bah, and you’ve got to tread extra carefully.”

He finished peeling the orange, put it down, washed his hands, and began pulling apart the sections. “This one may be a heartbreaker — please don’t tell me how cute the kid is.”

“The kid’s adorable.”

“Thank you very much.”

I said, “There were a couple of cases in England, reported in one of the pediatrics journals. They videotaped mothers smothering babies, and all they had were suspicions.”

“They taped at home?”

“In the hospital.”

“Big difference. And for all I know, the law’s different in England... Let me think on it, Alex. See if there’s anything creative we can do. In the meantime I’ll start playing with local records, NCIC, on the off chance that any of them has been naughty before, and we can build up something to get a warrant. Old Charlie’s taught me well — you should see me ride those data bases.”

“Don’t put yourself in jeopardy,” I said.

“Don’t worry. The preliminary searches are no more than what an officer does every time he pulls someone over for a traffic stop. If and when I dig deeper, I’ll be careful. Have the parents lived anyplace other than L.A.?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t know much about them, better start learning.”

“Yeah, you dig your trench; I’ll dig mine.” He hunched over the counter, thinking out loud: “They’re upper-crusties, which could mean private schools. Which is tough.”

“The mother might be a public school girl. She doesn’t come across as someone who was born to money.”

“Social climber?”

“No, just simple. He’s a college teacher. She might have been one of his students.”

“Okay,” he said, opening his note pad. “What else? Maybe military service for him, maybe officer’s training — another tough nut to crack. Charlie has managed to hack into some of the military files, but nothing fancy, just V.A. benefits, cross-referencing, that kind of stuff.”

“What do you guys do, play around with confidential data banks?”

“More like he plays, I watch. Where does the father teach?”

“West Valley Community College. Sociology.”

“What about mom? Any job?”

“No, she’s a full-time mom.”

“Takes her job seriously, huh. Okay, give me a name to work with.”

“Jones.”

He looked at me.

I nodded.

His laughter was deep and loud, almost drunken.