Monster

Chapter 30

We were back in the detectives' room by two P.M.

Friday. Most of the desks were empty. Del Hardy's was next to Milo's, and Milo waved me to Del's chair. Del had partnered with Milo years ago-an early alliance cemented by mutual respect and shared alienation. Del had been one of the first black D's to get an assignment west of La Brea. Now he had plenty of black colleagues, but Milo remained a one-man show. Maybe that had wedged them apart, or perhaps it was Del's second wife, a woman with strong views on just about everything. Milo never talked about it.

I used Del's phone to call the state psychiatric board, got put on hold electronically. Milo's desktop was clear except for a message slip taped to the metal. He peeled it loose and read it, and his eyebrows arched.

"Callback from Orlando, Florida. Some guy named Castro 'happy to talk about Derrick Crimmins.' "

He punched numbers, loosened his tie, sat down. A recorded voice of indeterminate gender told me my call would be accepted as soon as an operator was free. I watched Milo's shoulders bunch as his call came through.

"Detective Srurgis for Detective Castro," he said. "Oh, hi. Thanks for calling back… Really? Well that's interesting-listen, could I put someone else on the line? Our psychological consultant… Yeah, occasionally we do…Yeah, it's been helpful."

Placing a hand over the mouthpiece, he said, "Hang up and punch my extension number."

The recorded voice broke in, thanking me for my patience. 274

I cut it off, made the conference adjustment, introduced myself.

"George Castro," said a thick voice on the other end. "We all set now?"

"Yeah," said Milo. "Dr. Delaware, Detective Castro was just saying he's been waiting for someone to call him about Derrick Crimmins."

"Waiting a long time," said Castro. "This is like Christmas in the summer. Tell the truth, I gave up, figured he might be dead."

"Why's that?"

"Because his name never showed up in any crime list I could find, but bad guys don't just give up. And that kid was real bad. Got away with multiple murder."

"His parents," said Milo.

"You got it," said Castro. "Him and his brother-Cliff. Cliff was older, but Derrick was smarter. What a pair. Kind of a pre-Menendez Menendez, only the Crimminses didn't even come close to getting arrested. It was my curse. It's been jammed in my craw ever since. Tell me what you have him on, the little bastard."

"Nothing definite," said Milo. "Can't even find him. So far it looks like scamming and homicide."

"Well, that's our boy, to a T. I got to tell you, this really takes me back. I was new to Miami Beach. Did a year on Bunco, then Homicide. Moved down the year before from Brooklyn for the sun, never thought about what being named Castro would mean in Miami." He stopped, as if waiting for laughter. "And I'm Puerto Rican, not Cuban. Anyway, I worked some pretty ugly stuff up north. Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, East New York. But none of the scum I met ever bothered me as much as those brothers. Killing your own folks for dough-dad and stepmother, actually. It was a Coast Guard case, because the boat blew up in the water-half a mile offshore-but we did the land work. No doubt at all about it being dirty. Someone rigged a pipe bomb to the fuel tank, and the whole thing turned into sawdust. Three people died, actually. Old man Crimmins, his wife, and some Cuban kid they'd hired to captain. They were out marlin fishing. Boom. Shreds of bone, and that's about it."

"Did the Crimmins boys build the bombs?"

"Doubtful. We had some theories about that-down here there's quite a few characters with explosives experience floating around. Mobbed-up types, druggies, Marielitos. Alibis narrowed it down to half a dozen scrotes; we hauled 'em all in, but no one talked. And no one's bank account had suddenly gotten fat. I had my eye on two of them in specific- pair of Dominicans with a dry-cleaning joint as cover. They'd been busted before on a nearly identical explosion in a clothing warehouse, weaseled out on lack of evidence. We pulled in every informant we had, couldn't shake a rumor loose. That tells me the payoff was big bucks."

"The boys had money?"

"Big allowances-fifty grand a year, each. Back then you could have someone taken out for a hundred bucks. One to five thousand would get you someone competent, fifteen a stone pro. We scoured the brothers' bank accounts, found some nice-sized cash withdrawals during the weeks before the explosion, but we couldn't make anything outa that because that's the way they lived in general: the old man gave 'em the fifty at the beginning of the year, they took out play money as they needed it-four, five a month. Spent every penny. So there was no change in pattern. They used a smart-mouthed lawyer, he didn't give us an extra syllable."

"You focused on them right away 'cause of the inheritance angle?"

"You bet," said Castro. "First commandment, right? Follow the honey trail. With the stepmother gone, they were the old man's sole heirs, figured to get millions. Also, their alibis were too damn perfect: both out of town, they made sure to let us know that first thing. It was like one minute of phony grief, then, 'Oh, by the way, we were in Tampa, riding motorcycles.' Showing us some admission ticket to a race they'd been in-all ready with it. And smirking-rubbing my face in it. Because we'd had contact before. Back when I was on Bunco. Which is the third thing that nailed them in my mind: they'd been bad boys before. Fraud. Like I said, murder and cons, perfect fit."

"What was the con?" said Milo.

"Nothing brilliant. They cruised the beach, picked up senile old people, drove them out to some swampland that they pitched as vacation lots. Then they'd head over to the marks' bank, wait while the marks withdrew cash for a down payment, hand them some bullshit deed of trust, and split. They preyed on real deteriorated old folk. Most of the time, the marks didn't even know they'd been fleeced. And the withdrawals weren't huge-five, six hundred bucks-so the banks didn't notice. It ended when some old lady's son got wind of it-local surgeon. He waited with his mom on the beach until she pointed out Derrick."

"They serve time?"

"Nah," said Castro angrily. "Never even got charged. Because Daddy hired a lawyer-the same smart-mouth who shielded them on the boat thing. The weakness was the identification angle. The lawyer said he'd have fun with the old people on the stand-show they were too demented to be reliable witnesses. The D.A. didn't want to risk it. A couple of bank tellers thought they could make an I.D. but they weren't sure. Because Derrick and Cliff wore disguises-wigs, fake mustaches, glasses. Stupid stuff, amateurish, they coulda dressed up like Fidel for all the marks noticed. We couldn't trace the phony deeds back to them, either-primitive shit, mimeographed jobs. The whole thing was so low-level it woulda been funny if it hadn't been so cruel. In the end, the old man made restitution, case closed."

"How much restitution?"

"I think it was six, seven thou. Not a major con, but remember, we're talking a one-month period and two kids in their early twenties. That's what I found scary: so young and so cold. My experience was you got plenty violent kids at any age, but it usually takes a few years to season a frosty con like that. It wasn't like they were so bright-neither of them went to college, both just bummed around on the beach. Cliff was actually kind of a cabbage-head. But they had that con edge.

They were lucky, too. One good I.D. and they mighta gone down-at least probation."

He laughed again. "Lucky bastards. The excuse they gave was the stupidest thing of all: big misunderstanding, die old folk were too mentally disturbed to know the difference between reality and fantasy, the land thing was never supposed to be taken seriously. It was all part of some movie they were doing on con games. They even showed us the outline of a script. One page of bullshit-scam games and hot cars- something like The Sringmeets CannonballRun. They claimed they were gonna sell it to Hollywood." He laughed again. "So they actually got out there, huh?"

"Derrick made it," said Milo. "Cliff died a few years after Daddy and Stepmom. Motocross accident near Reno."

"Oh boy," said Castro. "Interesting."

"Very."

"Like I told you, cold. I always saw Derrick as the idea guy. Cliff was a party dude. Better-looking than Derrick, nice tan, expert water-skiier, pussy hound. And, yeah, motorcycles, too. He had a bunch of them. A collection. They both did. So Derrick might very well know how to rig one… I figured if anyone cracked, it'd be Cliff, my plan was to split them apart, see if I could play one against the other. But the lawyer wouldn't let me get close. I'll never forget the last time I talked to them. I'm asking questions, faking being civil, and those two are looking at their lawyer and he's telling me they don't have to answer and they're smirking. Finally, I leave, and Derrick makes a point of walking me to the door. Big old house, tons of furniture, and he and his brother are gonna get it all. Then he smiles at me, again. Like,'I know, you know, fuck you, Charlie.' The only comfort I got out of it was they didn't get as rich as they thought they would."

"How much they get?" said Milo.

"Eighty grand each, mostly from the sale of the house. The place was heavily mortgaged, and by the time they paid estate taxes, commission, all that good stuff, there wasn't much left. They were figuring the old man was sitting on big-time cash, but turns out he'd made some bad investments-land deals, as a matter of fact-which is funny, don't you think? Leveraged up the Y.Y. He'd even cashed in his insurance policies as collateral for some loans. The only other assets were the furniture, pair of three-year-old Caddies, golf clubs and a golf cart, and the stepmom's jewelry, half of which turned out to be costume and the rest new stuff, which doesn't maintain its value once you take it out of the store. The other funny thing was, the boat hadn 't been borrowed on. Apparently the old man loved it, kept up with his slip fees and maintenance. Nice-looking thing, from the pictures. The old man had stuffed fish all over the house." He laughed louder. "Fifty grand worth of boat, minimum, free and clear, and that they blew up. So tell me more about what Derrick did out there."

Milo kept it sketchy.

"Whoa," said Castro. "Creepy murder, that's a whole new level… Makes sense, I guess. Keep getting away with it, you start thinking you're God."

"The thing that interests me," said Milo, "is from what we can tell, Derrick isn't living well. No car registrations, no address in any swank neighborhood that we can find, and he may have taken a low-paying job under an alias. So he must not have invested that eighty grand."

"He wouldn't. He'd plow right through it, just like any other sociopath."

"I can't find any Social Security for him except when he lived in Miami," said Milo. "So no jobs under his own name. Any idea what he's been doing all these years?"

"Nah," said Castro. "He left town nine or ten months after the murder, they both did, left no trail. The case was officially open, but no one was really working on it. In my spare time, I kept following the money, drove by some clubs they hung out at. Then one day a source at County Records called me-I'd asked to be told when the estate was settled. That's when I learned how little they were gonna get. The address on the transfer was in Utah. Park City. I traced it. FOB. It was winter by then. I figured the little fucks went skiing with the death money."

"Scams, murder, movies," I said. "No known address. Need a closer fit?"

Milo shook his head. I felt sparked by what we'd just learned but he seemed dejected.

"What is it?"

"First Derrick offs his parents, then his brother, probably for Cliff's share of the eighty grand. This is professional evil."

"What was left of Cliff's share," I said. "Like Castro said, they probably chewed right through it. Maybe Derrick chewed faster."

"Derrick the dominator… arrogant, just like you've been saying."

"Good criminal self-esteem," I said. "And why not? He does bad things and gets away clean. And maybe he had practice with family elimination."

"The Ardullos," he said. "Spurring Peake on-well, your guesses have been pretty right on, haven't they?"

"Aw shucks," I said. "Now all we need to do is find Derrick. Let me get back on the line with the psychiatric board."

"Sure. I'll hit Pimm again. And Park City. Maybe Derrick tried a land scam there, too."

"If you want, I'll give you some other possibilities."

"What?"

"Aspen, Telluride, Vegas, Tahoe. This is a party boy. He goes where the fun is."

The dejected look returned. "Those kinds of record checks could take weeks," he said. "The guy's right here, polluting my city, and I can't put a finger on him."

It took several calls to learn that psychiatric tech licenses were granted for periods ranging from thirteen to twenty-four months. Individual names could be verified, but sending the entire list was unheard-of. Finally, I found a supervisor willing to fax the roster. Another twenty minutes passed before paper began spooling out of the sorry-looking machine across the room.

I read as it unraveled. Page after page of names, no Crimmins, no Wark.

Another alias?

Griffith D. Wark. Scrambling a film maestro. Manipulative, pretentious, arrogant. And strangely childlike-playing pretend games.

Seeing himself as a major Hollywood player. The fact that he'd never produced anything was a nasty bit of potential dissonance, but the same could be said of so many coutured reptiles occupying tables at Spago.

Psychopaths could deal with dissonance.

Psychopaths had low levels of anxiety.

Besides, there were other types of productions.

Blood Walk.

Bad eyes in a box.

Something else about human snakes: they lacked emotional depth, faked humanity. Craved repetition. Patterns.

So maybe Wark had co-opted other major directors. I was no film expert but several names came to mind: Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, John Huston, John Ford, Frank Capra… I scanned the tech list. None of the above.

But Wark was D.W. Griffith's middle name. What was Hitchcock's?

I called the research library at the U, asked for the reference desk, and explained what I needed. The librarian must have been puzzled, but odd requests are their business and, God bless her, she didn't argue.

Five minutes later I had what I needed: Alfred Joseph Hitchcock. John no middle name Huston. Frank NMN Capra. George Orson Welles. John NMN Ford; real name, Sean Aloysius O'Feeney.

Thanking her, I turned back to the tech list. No Capras, four Fords, one Hitchcock, no Hustons, no O'Feeneys… no obviously cute manipulations of Hitchcock or Ford…Then I saw it.

G.W. Orson.

Co-opting a genius.

Delusions were everywhere.