Hollywood Crows

FIFTEEN

MAN, YOU AIN’T RIGHT for this work,” his neighbor known as Junior said to Leonard Stilwell that evening while Ali Aziz wept and the Mexican pharmacist partied.

Leonard and Junior had been practicing for twenty minutes with a TR4 tension bar and a double-diamond pick that Leonard was planning to borrow from Junior for the job tomorrow. Junior’s apartment, three doors down the hall from Leonard’s, was about what Leonard had always found in a parolee’s crib: Cuervo bottles, porn mags, a half-eaten chocolate cake, candy wrappers everywhere. The room was so small, the giant Fijian would have had to stand in the kitchenette to make the bed, which he never did. He had huge hands and lots of jailhouse tatts that were nearly invisible on his dark skin.

After getting Junior away from the cartoon channel, Leonard was kneeling on the floor with the door open, trying to unlock the double-sided dead bolt with a thumb-turn on the inside. He was interrupted when a fat cockroach crawled up his neck, causing him to yelp and do a roach dance, slapping at his neck and shaking like a wet dog.

“They do not hurt you, bro,” Junior said. “Back home we eat them bugs if they too dumb to get off our food.”

“I’m scared of roaches,” Leonard said. “I grew up in Yuma with six brothers and sisters and a drunk old man that never worked. Cockroaches crawled all over us when we were sleeping, and so did the rats.”

“Bro, back home we eat them rats too. No problem.”

“Okay, lemme try again,” Leonard said.

The tension bar looked to Leonard like a very slender Allen wrench, and the pick, which Junior called a rake, was like a four-inch needle with what looked like a couple of camel humps on the end of it. The fact of the matter was, Leonard had never picked a lock in his entire life and had never bothered to learn from Whitey Dawson, not even once on the dozen jobs they’d done together.

“Man, you was not born for this work,” Junior said. “You sure you wanna take the job? You gonna fuck up and get busted.”

“I seen it done lots of times when I had a partner,” Leonard said. “It looked easy when he did it.”

“Why don’t you cut that partner in on this job, bro? I don’t think you gonna be teachable.”

“He’s dead.”

“Too bad, man. Wish I could help you but I promise my mommy I ain’t gonna do no crime no more.”

“Show me again,” Leonard said. “One more time.”

The big Fijian held the tension bar in his massive hand, inserted it, and said, “See, bro, the tension bar turn the cylinder.” He slid the pick inside with the other hand and said, “The rake, it lift up the pin.” Then he turned the knob easily and handed the little tools to Leonard, saying, “My granddaddy could do this, and he lost one hand to a mako shark.”

“Lemme try once more,” Leonard said, and he concentrated on copying the big Fijian’s finger moves.

He inserted the tension bar and said, “With this I turn the cylinder.” Then he inserted the pick and said, “With this I lift the pin.” And he felt it.

“Yes!” he said when he turned the knob.

He did it once more, and again it worked.

“You there, bro!” the Fijian said.

“I’ll bring them back to you tomorrow night,” Leonard said, putting the instruments in his pocket.

“You get caught, man, you don’t know me. You never heard of nobody from Fiji. Not even Vijay Singh.”

“I’m good with that,” Leonard said. “And when I bring the tools back, you’ll get the President Grant, like I promised.”

“If you ain’t in jail,” the Fijian said.

“Later, man,” Leonard said, walking out.

“Hey, bro,” the Fijian said, “I just remember. Could you gimme a ride to the clinic? I caught the clap from some whore, and the doc say come back for a checkup.”

“Yeah, I’ll drop you,” Leonard said. “Where you being treated?”

The Fijian aimed a fat index finger at his genitals and said, “Down there.”

When Ronnie and Bix returned to Hollywood South to turn in their car and check out, Hollywood Nate was waiting with his feet up on a desk, reading Daily Variety. Bix didn’t look happy to see him.

“Go on ahead,” Bix said to Ronnie. “I gotta talk to Nate for a minute. I’ll meet you at the restaurant, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, glancing at Nate, but he just gave her a little wave, betraying nothing.

Ronnie entered the women’s locker room to change out of her uniform, more uncertain than ever about her partner. There was something going on other than secret drinking. But what would it have to do with Hollywood Nate Weiss, who was sitting there like a sphinx? If she only knew Bix a little better, she’d just grab him and blurt out some questions she wanted answered. But for now she didn’t feel she had the right to intrude.

Bix and Nate walked outside and stood on the step in front of Hollywood South. Traffic was light on Fountain Avenue for such a balmy summer evening. At times like these, old residents of the neighborhood could almost smell the flower gardens and citrus trees that everyone used to cultivate back in the day. But now, in the most traffic-choked city in North America, there was only the smell of engine exhaust.

“Now, what’s this about?” Bix said, sitting on the step.

Nate also sat and said, “Like I told you on the phone, the surfers jacked up some dude with four-five-nine priors who had an address in his car. It was a bad address but the closest number to it belongs to someone named Margot Aziz.”

Bix Ramstead gave Nate a blank look and said, “What’s that got to do with me?”

“Flotsam and Jetsam were wondering if this guy might be employed by the homeowner. His name’s Leonard Stilwell. A white dude about forty, medium height and weight, red hair and freckles. He drives a shitty old black Honda with primer spots on it. If he’s not working for the homeowner, he might be targeting the house for a four-five-nine. That’s what our sleuthing surfers think.”

“Again, what’s that got to do with me?” Bix said.

Nate had given Bix enough bait, but he hadn’t come close to taking it. So Nate decided to tell a half-truth.

“They drove up Mount Olympus a little later and saw one of our cars up there.”

Of course Bix thought that “our cars” referred to police vehicles, and he said, “What night was that?”

“I don’t know,” Nate said, telling another half-truth. “But they checked and found out who was driving the car that night.”

Bix Ramstead looked like he was pondering it and then he said, “Well, if it was the night before last, it was me.”

And that was all he said. He looked at Nate as though it was his turn to talk.

Nate said, “I’m not asking you about your business, Bix. It’s just that they thought this dude Stilwell is bad news and they just wondered-”

Interrupting, Bix said, “I know the woman who lives there. Last year we met at a Tip-A-Cop fund-raiser, and she calls me with problems occasionally.”

Nate would always look back on this moment and regret that he’d not been brave enough and honest enough to show and tell, to compare notes on Margot Aziz. But all he said was “I don’t suppose the problem had to do with somebody who fit the description of this guy Stilwell?”

“No,” Bix said, looking less tense, more forthcoming. “Actually, she’s worried about her husband, Ali Aziz. Do you know the Leopard Lounge?”

“Topless joint on Sunset?”

“That’s it.”

“Yeah, I know where it is.”

“Ali Aziz is the owner. Anyway, they’re in the middle of a raging divorce and custody battle, and she’s afraid he’s gonna do her harm.”

“Is he one of those nightclub-owning gangsters, like the Russians?”

“No,” Bix said. “He’s just some semi-sleazy operator from the Middle East who found his American dream selling T and A.”

Now Nate was the one feeling less tense. It was all in sync with what Margot Aziz had said to him. Of course, the big question tormenting Nate was whether Bix was more than just a professional acquaintance of Margot’s. Again he tried to summon the nerve to ask Bix, and to reveal to him that she had almost offered to let Nate move into her house, and that she’d spent an evening trying to pour booze down his throat.

But all he could bring himself to say was “So do you think somebody should ask if she knows Stilwell?”

“I don’t see why we should add to her worries. She’s paranoid enough about her husband. After all, you said it was a different house number.”

“Yeah, but the number he had doesn’t exist, and the Aziz address is the only one close to it.”

“If it’s bothering you, I guess I could call her tomorrow and ask if she knows the guy. Maybe he’s giving her a price on window washing or something. She happened to mention the house is in escrow and she’ll be moving.”

“It’s not bothering me. It’s bothering those log-head surfers.”

“I can call her,” Bix said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

Nate tried to make it sound casual when he said, “Is she an older woman?”

“Why do you ask that?” Bix said.

“Well, if she’s an older woman, I wouldn’t wanna scare her.”

“An older woman in a custody battle?”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” Nate said. “She can’t be that old.”

Bix said, “I’ll give her a call tomorrow, just to be on the safe side.”

And that was all the nibbling around the edges that Hollywood Nate was prepared to do. He was convinced that Bix Ramstead was more than an acquaintance of Margot Aziz’s. Because anybody on the planet, when asked if Margot was an older woman, would have said that far from being an older woman, she was a Hills honey who could stop traffic at noon on Rodeo Drive or anywhere else, no matter how much competition was out there. But Bix hadn’t done that.

“Well, I gotta change and meet Ronnie for some carne asada,” Bix said. “Wanna join us?”

“Naw, I think I’ll go in the workout room and hit the treadmill,” Nate said. “I got my physical coming up in two weeks.”

“Catch you tomorrow,” Bix said.

And suddenly Nate Weiss didn’t feel so bad about not telling the whole truth to Bix Ramstead, because he was absolutely certain that Bix had been lying to him.

Midwatch unit 6-X-66 was having an uneventful tour of duty so far. Gert Von Braun had written a ticket to a guy in a Humvee who’d been gawking at a dragon hustling tricks on Santa Monica Boulevard. He blew through the stoplight at Western Avenue, almost broadsiding a car full of Asian kids. Then they’d refereed a family dispute involving a soldier just back from Iraq whose wife had moved in with her boss’s son and wouldn’t let the soldier have personal property that he said belonged to his mother.

Then, two hours into their watch, they’d received a message on their MDC computer that sent them to the bungalow of a ninety-year-old lifelong resident of East Hollywood who claimed that a possible home invader was watching her house. When Gert and Dan Applewhite arrived, they found the old woman sitting in a rocker on her front porch, stroking a Persian cat. A light burned inside and a cable news channel was on.

You could count the old woman’s bones through flesh the color of antique ivory, but she seemed very alert and described the suspicious man to Gert and Dan as having black hair and “large, liquid brown eyes.”

When Gert asked if she had any idea who the man was, the old woman said, yes, his name might be Tyrone Power.

Gert, who was nearly twenty years younger than Doomsday Dan, said, “Is this Tyrone Power a black man or white?”

“He’s white,” Dan said to Gert.

Gert looked at Dan and said, “How do you know?”

Instead of answering Gert, Dan said to the old woman, “Was he wearing a black mask, by any chance? And did he carry a sword?”

“No,” the old woman said. “Not this time.”

“On other occasions?” Dan asked.

“Oh, yes, sometimes,” she said.

“Did he ever carve a Z on any objects around here?”

“He might have,” she said. “He’s very handsome.”

“I know exactly where this man is,” Dan said.

“You do?” the old woman said.

“Yes, and I’ll see to it that he doesn’t come around bothering you again. You don’t have to worry about it. Do you live with someone?”

“Yes, I live with my daughter. She’s at work.”

“Well, you can sleep tight. We’ll take care of that fellow.”

“You won’t hurt him, will you?” she said. “He’s very handsome.”

“I promise we will not hurt him,” Dan Applewhite said.

When they were walking to their shop, Gert said, “So, okay. Who’s this Tyrone Power?”

“You’re too young to know, but he was a big movie star.”

“And you say you know exactly where to find him?”

“Yes, in a mausoleum at the Hollywood cemetery,” Dan Applewhite said.

Gert cleared by pressing a button on the MDC keyboard and they resumed patrol, Dan driving and Gert keeping score. She logged the call and then looked over at Dan.

“You know what I heard about you?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“I hear you’re a serial groom, that you’ve been married four times.”

“That’s a lie,” he said. “Three times.”

“You don’t like to stay married very long, huh?”

“I’ve been married a long time,” he said, “but to three different women.”

“Got kids?”

“Only one,” Dan said.

“How old?”

“Twenty-six. He’s a computer geek, and a whiner like his mother. How about you?”

“Never been married,” she said. “This job isn’t conducive.”

“You’ve got lotsa time,” he said. “You’re young.”

“Look at me. I don’t have anybody breaking down my door,” she said.

He turned and did take a good look at her and he said, “Whadda you mean?”

“I’m wide,” she said with defiance in her eyes. “Ask Treakle.”

“You care what Chickenlips thinks?” Dan said. “I think you look healthy. I’m sick of anorexic women. My last two wives figured out a way to throw up more food than they ever swallowed.”

“My dad’s a skinny German,” she said, “but my mom’s Dutch, with big shoulders and wide hips. From picking too many tulips, I guess. I favor her side of the family.”

“I like the way you look,” Dan said.

Gert smiled slightly and said, “Tyrone Power, huh? I’m gonna have to educate myself. He played Zorro?”

“Long before Antonio Banderas,” Dan said. “You like old movies?”

“I haven’t seen too many, but yeah, I do.”

“I know an art house cinema where they even show silents. You should go with me sometime. I mean, not like a date or anything. I know my sell-by date is way past.”

“You’re not that old,” she said.

“You don’t think so?” said Doomsday Dan.

The incipient flirtation was interrupted by another computer message, directing them to an address familiar to Ronnie Sinclair and Bix Ramstead.

When 6-X-66 arrived at that address and knocked, a portly black woman came to the door. She pointed across the street at a wood-frame cottage where two shopping carts were overturned in the tiny front yard.

“I’m Mrs. Farnsworth,” she said. “I’ve called you all about the people over there. About the shopping carts in the yard and about the noise.”

“Is that what this is about?” Gert said. “Noise?”

“No, this is about the quiet,” she said. “It’s too quiet over there. At this time of evening they usually got this weird Somali music blaring. But not tonight.”

“Maybe they’re not home,” Dan said.

“They’re home,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “I seen them through their windows an hour ago, but now the blinds are down.”

“Maybe they went to bed,” Gert said.

“Honey, they don’t go to bed till two, three A.M.,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “At least he don’t. He yells at her all the time. And I know he beats her, but she won’t say nothing whenever I get a chance to ask her about it.”

“It’s pretty hard for us to go knock on people’s doors and ask them why they’re being so quiet,” Dan said.

“There’s a young man,” Mrs. Farnsworth said, “a young white man. He used to drive her home once in a while. She cleans his house, is what she told me. He lives with his handicapped parents and he has a good job and he’s good to her, she said. One day I seen him drop her off, and her husband came outta the house with only his underwear on and he grabbed her arm and started jabbering in their language and dragged her into the house and slammed the door. After that she took the bus home from her housecleaning jobs. He’s a very mean man and she’s a very sweet and frightened girl.”

Gert looked at Dan and he said, “We can knock and try to think of some reason for doing it. Just to make sure everything’s okay.”

“The shopping carts,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “He’s been warned about that before.” Then she went to a bookshelf and removed a porcelain vase with some cards inside. She handed one to Gert, saying, “The officer wrote his personal phone number on the back of the card and said I could call him anytime.”

Gert read it and said, “Officer Bix Ramstead.” Then she said to the woman, “We’ll knock and see what’s what.”

“Please,” Mrs. Farnsworth said. “I’m really worried about that girl. And so was that Officer Ramstead. You could see it in his face.”

Gert Von Braun and Dan Applewhite crossed the residential street, needing their flashlights to keep from stepping into the potholes that the city of Los Angeles hadn’t the financial resources to repair.

They listened and heard nothing inside. Dan knocked. No answer.

Gert walked a few steps to the window and listened. Dan knocked again. No answer.

Dan said, “There’s nothing more we can do here.”

Gert put her palm up to hush him and pressed her ear to the door. “I think I hear something,” she said.

“What’s it sound like?”

“It’s very faint. Like a man chanting or something. In their language, not ours.”

Dan drew his baton and banged it on the door, good and loud. Gert kept listening after he stopped.

“Anything change in the sound?” he said.

She shook her head and tried the knob. It was locked.

“Maybe we should call a supervisor,” Gert said. “To give us an okay to enter.”

“And take the chance of drawing Chickenlips Treakle?”

“Forget the supervisor,” Gert said.

Both cops walked back to the street. Gert said, “Put your light on this.”

Dan held the business card and lit it for her with his flashlight beam. She took out her cell and dialed the handwritten number on the back of the card.

The Crows were in their street clothes: Ronnie in a striped, tapered shirt, and jeans from Banana, and Bix in a yellow polo shirt and chinos from the Gap. Ronnie thought he was even better-looking out of uniform. LAPD blue seemed somehow unbecoming to him. Ronnie had ordered the chile relleno plate and a margarita. Bix had ordered two carne asada tacos and a cold horchata, made of rice water and cinnamon. Ronnie had hesitated before ordering an alcoholic drink in front of Bix but then figured it would make him even more uncomfortable to know she was avoiding booze for his sake.

They were halfway through dinner when his cell chimed. Ronnie wondered if it might be the mysterious caller who’d made him so uncomfortable. The one he’d lied about, saying it was his brother Pete.

He looked at the number and didn’t recognize it. “Hello,” he said.

“This is Six-X-Sixty-six, Von Braun here,” Gert said. “Is this Officer Bix Ramstead?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“I got your number from a Mrs. Farnsworth,” Gert said. “It’s about some Somalians that live across the street from her. She tells me you know something about them.”

“What happened?” Bix said.

“It’s weird,” Gert said. “Apparently they’re in there, but they won’t answer the door. The house is way too quiet to suit Mrs. Farnsworth, and I can hear the guy inside chanting some voodoo or something.”

“Are you going in?”

“We don’t know whether to back off or bang on the door some more or what.”

“Did you call a sergeant?”

“No, we’re afraid we’d get Treakle. He’d turn it into a fire drill.”

“I’ll be right there,” Bix said.

When he closed his cell, he pulled some bills from his wallet and put them on the table. “That was a midwatch officer. It’s the Somalians. Something’s wrong and they won’t open the door.”

“Where’re you going?”

“He might open the door for me. I established some rapport with him.”

“Bix, you’re off duty,” Ronnie said. “Let a supervisor deal with it. You shouldn’t get involved.”

“Finish your dinner, Ronnie,” Bix said. “I’ll call you when I check it out.”

“This is not your responsibility,” Ronnie said.

“I feel I should’ve done more,” he said, turning toward the door. “I had a gut feeling.”

“We did what we could at the time,” Ronnie called after him. “If something bad happened there, it’s not your tragedy, Bix!”

She didn’t know if he heard that last part or not. Bix Ramstead was running out the door to the parking lot.

Mrs. Farnsworth was standing on the street by the black-and-white. She’d given Gert and Dan each a cup of coffee, which they were finishing when Bix Ramstead drove up and parked his personal car, a family-friendly Dodge minivan.

The cops gave their empty cups to Mrs. Farnsworth, who said, “Evening, Officer Ramstead.”

“Hello, Mrs. Farnsworth,” Bix said. “I’m glad you kept my card.”

“It’s real quiet in there,” she said to Bix. “And it’s never quiet in there. And he got real mad at her last week when a young white man she works for gave her a ride home. If he’d hit her, I woulda called you. But he just grabbed her arm and got in her face and yelled angry Somali talk. And she took the bus home the next day without the young white man. It shouldn’t be so quiet in there like it is tonight, Officer Ramstead. I’m scared for that girl.”

A moment later, all three cops were back on the front porch of the wood-frame cottage. They stood silently and listened. There was only the hum of traffic on the nearby four-lane avenue and the sound of a dog barking nearby and the whirring of cicadas in the yard next door and faint salsa music from somewhere down the block. Then they heard the sound of a deep male voice, chanting prayers.

Bix knocked at the door and said, “Mr. Benawi, it’s Officer Ramstead. I spoke to you last week about the shopping carts, remember?”

They listened again. The chanting stopped.

Bix said, “Mr. Benawi, please open the door. I need to talk to you. It’s okay about the shopping carts. I just need to know that everything else is all right. Open the door, Mr. Benawi.”

The chanting started again and Gert Von Braun felt a shiver, but it was a warm, dry summer evening with a Santa Ana blowing hot wind from the desert to the sea. Dan Applewhite felt the hair on his neck tingle and he knew it wasn’t caused by the Santa Ana.

Bix Ramstead said, “We’re not leaving until you open the door, Mr. Benawi. Don’t make us do a forced entry.”

The chanting stopped again. They heard padded footsteps. Then Omar Hasan Benawi’s rumbling voice on the other side of the door said, “There is nothing for you here. Please leave my home.”

“We will, Mr. Benawi,” Bix said. “But first I need to talk to you face-to-face. And I need to see your wife. Then we’ll all go away.”

“She will not talk to you,” the voice said. “This is my home. Please go away now. There is nothing for you here.”

They heard the padded footsteps retreat away from the door, and the chanting began once more.

“Well, shit!” Dan said.

“Now what?” Gert said.

“This is what the federal consent decree has done to the LAPD,” Bix said to Doomsday Dan. “What would you have done back when we were real cops?”

Dan looked at Bix Ramstead and said, “We’re white, he’s black. We better not do something hasty. I can’t afford a suspension right now.”

“Answer my question,” Bix said to Dan. “What would you have done six years ago, before a federal judge and a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats emasculated us?”

Dan Applewhite glanced at Gert Von Braun and said, “I’da kicked the fucking door clear off the hinges and gone in there to see if that woman is okay.”

“Exactly,” Bix Ramstead said.

And he took three steps back, then ran forward and kicked just to the right of the doorknob, and the door crashed open and slammed against the plasterboard wall.

Bix Ramstead’s momentum carried him into the darkened living room. Gert Von Braun and Dan Applewhite drew their nines and followed him, casting narrow beams of light around the shabby room. Dan took the lead, trying to illuminate the ominous hallway leading to other rooms at the rear of the cottage.

The chanting had stopped. Now there was no sound at all, except for the traffic on the busy avenue half a block away. The first room was stacked with cardboard cartons, aluminum cans, and refundable bottles. Their flashlight beams played over the boxes, and then the cops advanced one behind the other to the last room, where a dim light was burning. Dan Applewhite pressed his back to the wall, his Beretta semiautomatic in his right hand now, and he crouched and peered around the corner.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, and he leaped upright, dropping his little flashlight and holding the Beretta in both hands. “Down! Get down on your belly!”

Gert, holding her light in one hand and her Glock in the other, sprang forward, crouching below Dan’s extended arms, and yelled, “Down, goddamn you!”

Bix Ramstead edged into the crowded space and looked in the room.

The Somalian was on his knees then, wearing only the black trousers he wore when last Bix saw him. He was also wearing half-glasses, his eyes looking like tarnished dimes, and he clutched a Koran in his right hand when he slid down into the prone position.

Bix Ramstead mumbled, “In the name of god!”

Lying prone, Omar Hasan Benawi said, “Yes, in the name of the one true god. She did the shameful thing with a white man. Now I give her to the white man.”

There was dried white paint spatter on one wall, and puddles of paint on the threadbare carpet had dried and were hardening. Dried paint smeared the other walls and had dried in streaks on the window blinds. The Somalian’s hands were white with dried paint and there were smears on his bare torso and on the tops of his bare feet, and the front of his trousers was caked with white paint. A cheap table lamp lay broken on the floor, and an empty five-gallon can of paint was lying on the floor beside the bed alongside an eight-inch paintbrush. There was dried white paint all over the coppery bedspread.

And on the bedspread was Safia, the wife of Omar Hasan Benawi. She had been strangled with the cord he’d jerked from the table lamp, and the ligature lay coiled like a serpent on the pillow beside her head. Naked, she looked tinier, more frail and fragile and vulnerable, than Bix Ramstead had remembered her. And more childlike. She was lying supine on the bed with her head on a pillow, and her arms were crossed over her small breasts, as her husband had posed them. And she was white.

He had painted every inch of her white. From the bottoms of her delicate feet to the crown of her small round head, she had been painted dead white. Even her opened lifeless eyes had not been spared. Dried paint clogged the cavernous orbs that Bix Ramstead remembered so well.

When Dan was handcuffing the Somalian’s hands behind his back, the prisoner said, “Now she is yours to bury with other white dogs in your infidel places of the dead.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Gert Von Braun said. “And listen while I advise you of your rights.”

There were dozens of employees of the Los Angeles Police Department at that crime scene before the sun rose. One of the first was the night-watch detective Compassionate Charlie Gilford, who was about to go end-of-watch when he got the call from Bix Ramstead. He just had to see this one, so he jumped into a detective unit and drove to Southeast Hollywood as fast as he could.

After he took in the grotesque scene in the little bedroom, he walked out on the front step and directed his nuggets of wisdom at a pair of night-watch coppers who’d been called to assist with scene preservation.

“Fucking Hollywood,” the disappointed detective said. “You can blame this kinda shit on the movies. I’ll bet this fifty-one-fifty was sitting there watching TV and got the idea from Goldfinger, where they did the same thing to James Bond’s snitch. Different color paint is all. This don’t show any imagination. This Somali wing nut’s nothing more than a second-rate copycat.”

Ronnie Sinclair received a call from Bix Ramstead just before she went to bed. He told her what they’d found in the cottage and that he’d be at Hollywood Station until the early-morning hours, doing reports and being interviewed by Homicide detectives. Bix told Ronnie that there was no telling what time he’d get home and would need to take tomorrow off. He said he’d left a long message on their sergeant’s voice mail explaining what had happened.

Before the conversation ended, Ronnie Sinclair said to Bix Ramstead, “It was not our fault. It is not our tragedy.”

He didn’t respond to that.