Guilt

CHAPTER 44

The chief had opted to hide in plain sight, designating the meet at Number One Fortune Dim Sum Palace, one of those arena-sized places in Chinatown that still feature gluey chop suey, oil-drenched moo goo gai pan, and seafood of mysterious origin.

The air was humid with steam, sweat, and MSG. Linoleum floors had been pounded dull by decades of feet. The walls were red, green, more red, raised panels embossed with gold dragon medallions and outsized renderings of birds, fish, and bats. Chinese lettering might have meant something. Hundreds of lunchers were crammed into vault-like dining rooms, tended by ancient waiters in black poly Mao suits and tasseled gold beanies who moved as if running for their lives.

Enough clatter and din to make the Grill seem like a monastery. If there was a caste system behind this seating scheme, I couldn’t decipher it, and when Milo asked to be directed to the chief’s table, the stunning hostess looked at him as if he was stupid.

“We don’t take reservations and we have eight rooms.”

We set out on the hunt, finally spotted him at a smallish table near the center of the sixth room surrounded by hordes engrossed in their food. No one paying attention to the white-haired, mustachioed man in the black shadow-stripe suit, white silk tab-collar shirt, gray-yellow-scarlet Leonard tie that screamed more is more.

He saw us when we were thirty feet away, looked up from chop-sticking noodles into his mouth, wiped his mouth and drank from a glass of dark beer.

I looked around for his bodyguards, spotted a pair of cold-eyed burlies four tables over, pretending to concentrate on a platter of something brown.

“Sit down. I ordered spareribs, pepper steak, shrimp-fried rice, and some sort of deep-fried chicken thing, hopefully they won’t include the damn feet.” Glancing at Milo. “You I know will eat anything.” To me: “That sound suitable for your constitution?”

“Sure.”

“Easy to please today, Doc? Strange phase of the moon?”

He’d been trying to hire me full-time for years, had never accepted failure with anything approaching good nature.

He returned to eating, chopsticks whirling like darning needles. Excellent fine-motor coordination motivated a huge load of noodles under the mustache. He chewed, had more beer, looked around. “Damn barn.”

One of the old waiters brought tea and beer and sped away.

The chief said, “You stirred up a hornets’ nest, Doctor.”

“Keeps life interesting.”

“Maybe yours. Okay, give me a brief summary. And I mean brief. You, not Sturgis. He already went over the basics when he called and made my life complicated.”

I said, “At least three people who lived at Premadonny’s compound have been murdered.”

“Three?” he said. “I’ve got the nanny and the guy-Wedd.”

“The baby found in the park.”

“That,” he said. “All right, go on. Why do you suspect dark events at Xanadu?”

“A couple of years ago, I received a call from a man I believe to be Donny Rader, requesting help-”

“Why do you think it was him?”

“The way he spoke.”

“Like a moron.”

“Indistinctly,” I said.

“Okay, he needed a shrink for a brat, he’s an actor, big surprise. What else?”

“I set up an appointment that was canceled. I didn’t think much of it. But the death of one, maybe two child-care workers got me wondering about the family situation and I tried to learn as much as I could. That turned out to be next to nothing because the family’s basically gone underground. Moon and Rader used to be ultra-public figures. They peddled their fame. Now they’ve disappeared. No venturing out in public, no chatter on the Web, and right around the time I got that call they abruptly canceled a major film project due to ‘family issues.’ ”

“Maybe they didn’t like the script.”

The waiter returned. Platters were slammed down unceremoniously. The chief said, “So they’re miserable maladjusts. So what?”

“My experience is that extremely isolated families are often breeding grounds for psychopathology. Three people with connections to them are dead. Something’s going on there.”

“Sounds like you’ve got nothing, Doc.”

“Until recently, I would’ve agreed with you. Then I learned that Prema Moon purchased flesh-eating beetles and surgical tools. Right around the time the baby was born.”

“Show me the proof.”

I produced the form from JayMar, began explaining the purchasing process.

He cut me off. “They’ve got peons to wipe their asses for them, another big shock.” He put on glasses, read, frowned, slid the form into an inner jacket pocket.

Milo said, “Only thing missing, sir, is beeswax. If we can get access to the rest of their-”

The chief waved him quiet. “Beetles. Crazy bitch. How exactly did you get hold of the form, Doctor?”

“I called supply houses pretending to be someone from Apex, said I wanted to renew the order. Eventually, I found the right one.”

“Planning on billing the department for your time?”

“Hadn’t thought about it.”

“You just do this for fun, huh?”

“I’m a curious guy.”

“How long did it take you to find the right company?”

“A few hours.”

“You’re a persistent bastard, aren’t you?”

“I can be.”

“Deceptive, too … no telling how that’ll play into the hands of some nuclear-powered lawyer. If you’re deemed a police agent, it could open up claims of insufficient grounds, hence illegal search. Which is probably bullshit but with judges you never know. If you’re deemed to be a civilian, it could open you up to some ball-squeezing cross-examination, not to mention an invasion-of-privacy suit by people who can buy and sell you a thousand times over. That happens, forget any chance of a quiet life for the foreseeable future. These people are like governments, they go to war. You willing to take that risk?”

I said, “Sounds like you’re trying to discourage me.”

He put his chopsticks down. “I think long-term, Alex.” First time he’d used my name. “That separates me from ninety-nine percent of the population. Even at Harvard.”

He loved putting down the Ivy League, rarely missed the opportunity to bring up his graduate degree from the iviest of all.

I said, “You think I was wrong to dig up the information.”

“I think this could get nasty.”

“What happened to that baby was beyond nasty.”

He glared. “I got a white knight here.” Lifting a sparerib with his fingers, he chewed down to the bone, ingesting meat, gristle, and fat. “Take one, Sturgis. You not stuffing your face scares me. It’s like the sun stopping mid-orbit.”

Milo spooned some fried rice onto his plate.

The chief said, “Not into ribs, today, Lieutenant?”

“This is fine, sir.”

The chief smirked. “Establishing your independence? That makes you feel like a grown-up, be my guest.” To me: “This is a mess.”

He reached for the plate. Another rib got gnawed to the bone.

I said, “Another thing I did-”

“Another thing? Jesus Almighty, you figure you’re running your own investigation?” His eyes shifted to Milo. Milo’s head was down as he shoveled rice into his maw.

The chief turned back to me. “What?”

I told him about the morning’s hike. “None of the principals entered or exited the compound but I did learn that it’s a pretty busy place. In the space of three hours, I saw a seven-man groundskeeping crew, a grocery delivery, a repairman from a home-theater outfit, and a plumber. I copied down the tags-”

“Why?”

“I figured it might offer a possible way to get in-”

“Sturgis pretends to be a gardener or a plumber? Habla espanol, Sturgis? Know how to unclog a sink? I do, my father was a plumber, I spent my summers elbow-deep in rich people’s muck. You ever do that, Sturgis? Wade in rich folk shit?”

Milo said, “Frequently, sir.”

“Don’t like the job?”

“Love it, sir. It is what it is.”

The chief looked ready to spit. “Don Quixote and Sancho Panza … so, being a psychologist, Doc, you figure a crafty way to gain entry would be to hitch a ride with one of the peasants who services the castle, once you’re inside, you just mosey around at random in the hope of stumbling across definitive evidence?”

“I was hoping to catch Moon, Rader, or any of the kids leaving. But when I saw the volume of traffic, it occurred to me there might be an opening.”

“If Moon or Rader had left, you figured to tail them.”

“Discreetly.”

His face darkened. “Dr. Do-A-Lot. You talk to animals, as well?”

“If I’ve overstepped, I’m sorry.”

“Overstepped?” He laughed. “More like you’ve invented new dance moves. What day does the garbage get taken out at that place?”

Milo said, “I’ll find out.” He walked to the dining room doorway, talked on his cell.

The chief returned to his ribs, tried some pepper steak. Pincer-grasped a plump little pink shrimp out of the fried rice. “Not hungry, Doc?”

“Actually, I am.” I tried a rib. Greasy and delicious.

“Just like you,” said the chief.

“Pardon?”

“You’re like the damn ribs. Unhealthy but satisfying. Congratulations, Sturgis plodded along but you’re the one who learned something.”

“He-”

“No need to defend him, I know what he is, he’s good at what he does, as good as I’m gonna get. You, on the other hand, are a different animal. You piss me off without trying. You also make me wonder what the department would be like if everyone was super-smart and psychotically driven. Don’t tell Sturgis I said that, you’ll hurt his feelings.”

He and I ate in silence until Milo returned.

“Garbage collection’s in two days, sir.”

“Be there before the trucks arrive, Sturgis. Wear comfortable clothes and bring enough empty barrels to haul away every bit of trash. Don’t be noticed. Separate anything with DNA potential and run a match to the baby bones. Maybe this Qeesha character is still alive and shedding cells, we find an eyebrow pencil, a tampon, whatever, that links her to the bones, we’re a step forward. We also get an accurate victim count, two not three, and think of her as a homicidal bitch who killed her own kid.”

Milo said, “DNA analysis could take a while.”

“I’ll speed it through to the max.”

“Until then-”

“Until then you and your geniuses try to do what the doctor, an allegedly untrained civilian, was apparently able to accomplish: Watch the goddamn place without being seen. Prema or Donny or Qeesha appear, they get tailed. With finesse. Seduction, not rape, Sturgis.”

“Got it, sir.” Milo started to rise.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Getting back to work.”

“This is work, Sturgis. Amusing the boss. Now don’t let me down, I want to see some calorie consumption.”