Night Moves

Chapter 30

Nothing like the neighborhood crank when you wanted details.

The mat in front of the house adjoining Tabatchnik’s said Not Buying What You’re Selling. No answer to my knocks or the doorbell.

I returned to the Seville, called Milo’s office phone, relayed Tabatchnik’s account.

He said, “The guy made Moe last night. Damn. An encounter, huh?”

“It doesn’t sound friendly,” I said, “so the mutual interest in chocolate may not mean camaraderie.”

“Okay, good to know. I was gonna call you, Moe spotted Chelsea doing one of her night moves at one a.m. She slipped through that joke of a gate, meaning she left through the rear door. She headed straight for Bitt’s place, lit up a cigarette, looked up at Bitt’s window, and went back home. Bitt’s lights were out so maybe she didn’t want to wake him. Or I’m dead wrong about something creepy going on, she just wants to sneak a smoke. The other bit of nothing is no prints or DNA on the phone I lifted at the A-frame, and the unidentified one from the motel is too incomplete to analyze.”

A car drove past me. Older gun-metal gray Mercedes diesel, an intent, white-haired woman scowling and crawling forward, two hands clenching the wheel. She turned into the driveway bordering Tabatchnik’s.

I said, “Call you back,” and watched as the car lurched to a squeaking stop, bucked, and repeated that staccato performance several times.

The white-haired woman, tiny, thin, ponytailed, dressed in black knit pants and top and black flats, walked around to the passenger side. Opening the door with effort, she extricated a black purse, positioned the strap on a narrow shoulder. Next came a paper shopping bag — Gelson’s — that she placed on the ground. It took two attempts to shut the Merc’s heavy door. She manually locked the car on both sides, retrieved the bag, and held it in two hands as she approached the front door.

I was a Boy Scout as a kid, have that impulse to help, but the hostile doormat killed any idea of chivalry. I waited until she’d managed to bring her groceries inside and shut her front door. The dead bolt snicked. I gave her additional time to settle before ringing the bell.

A raspy voice said, “Who is it?”

“Police.”

“Prove it.”

I unclipped my badge and held it up to the peephole.

“Hmph,” said the voice. Nothing happened for a few moments and I wondered if she was calling the station. Without Milo pre-notified, that could complicate matters. But the door opened and she stared at me, then the badge.

“Let me see that.”

One of the few. I handed it over. She squinted. Maybe farsightedness would save me.

“You’re a good-looking guy, this does nothing for you... Ph.D.? What kind of police is that?”

“I’m a psychologist who works with the police.”

“Have a niece who’s a psychologist. She’s also a tattooed lunatic.” Giving me the once-over. “What can I do for you, I guess it’s Doctor.”

“We’re doing some follow-up on the incident at the Corvin house.”

“That’s their name, huh?” She snorted. “The incident? Just come out and say it, a lunatic sliced someone up and left body parts in their house.”

“That’s another way to put it,” I said, smiling. She didn’t reciprocate.

“Don’t soft-pedal for my sake, I was an emergency room nurse for thirty years. Before that, I was in the military.” A bony hand shot out. “Edna San Felipe.”

She squeezed hard, flung my hand away like a used tissue. “Know anything about hospitals?”

Strange question. “Used to work at Western Peds.”

“The kids’ hospital,” said Edna San Felipe. “Even so. The name ‘Horatio San Felipe’ ring a bell?”

“Sorry, no.”

“My brother was the greatest heart surgeon who ever lived. Pig-valve substitution for the pneumonic, he figured out how to repair with minimal invasion. Our father was U.S. ambassador to Honduras. Our grandfather and great-grandfather grew more bananas than Dole.”

She shook her head. “No one learns history, anymore. So what can I do for you, Doctor?” Making my degree sound like a correspondence-course joke.

“If there’s anything you want to tell me about the murder—”

“A stranger’s corpse ends up in someone’s house? That’s not random. How’d it get there? Why them? It’s still not solved, they have to be hiding something.”

“Is there something about them—”

“No, I’m just being logical.”

“Do you have any impressions of them?”

“So I’m right,” she said.

“At this point—”

“No, I haven’t any impressions,” she said. “Never had dealings with them except once in a while I’d see him — the husband — and he’d try to chitchat. He’s an oily type, pretending we know each other when we don’t. Like a politician.”

“Any contact with Mrs. Corvin?”

“She’s a typical one,” said Edna San Felipe. “The tinted hair, the clothes, the manicure.” Displaying her own nails, blunt and unpolished. “The E.R., you’re elbow-deep in someone’s bowels, you don’t fool around with talons.”

“One of my friends is an E.R. surgeon.”

“Where?”

“Cedars. Dr. Richard Silverman.”

“What does he patch?”

“He’s a trauma surgeon.”

“Bet his nails are short.” She began to close the door.

I said, “So there’s nothing about the Corvins you can—”

“The wife works, I’ll give her that. I know that because I see her load the kids in the morning and she doesn’t come back until late afternoon when she brings them home — now, those are a couple of...” Finally, at a loss for words.

“The kids.”

“The boy looks to me like a potential reprobate,” said Edna San Felipe. “One day I heard my garbage cans clunk to the ground and when I went out to check, that one was skateboarding up the block.”

“Did you complain?”

“What good would that do, there’s no discipline anymore.” She smiled crookedly. “What I did do was line the lid of my cans with habanero paste, that’s a chile pepper able to blow a hole in your colon. If the brat tried it again and touched his face, he’d learn.”

She held my gaze. “You think that’s child abuse? I call it education. Same for someone’s dog nosing around, habanero the grass, let the mutt learn by experience. And don’t worry about risk to the garbagemen, they’ve got these automatic trucks, sit on their keisters and use a power hoist.”

She folded her arms across a scrawny chest. Daring me to argue.

When I didn’t she said, “Then there’s the girl. There’s obviously something wrong, there. Is she retarded or autistic? It’s one or the other, that blank look in her eyes. She walks around at night. I’ve come home late from my place at the beach, seen her. At night. Late. Where’s the parental supervision?”

The door swung a few inches wider. “The police have no idea so they called you in to psychoanalyze?”

“Something like that,” I said. “I’d like to ask about another of your neighbors—”

“No one’s a neighbor, here,” said Edna San Felipe. “We co-reside but there’s no socializing. It wasn’t that way in Honduras. Our workers were happy as clams to be picking bananas, everyone socialized, from all levels of the social ladder. Who?”

I said, “Trevor Bitt.”

“That one was my first thought when I heard about it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Basic logic. Something bizarre happens, look for a bizarre person.”

“Have you had dealings with him?”

“None whatsoever. But he’s also not normal, no question about it.”

“A person on the block witnessed what might’ve been an argument between Mr. Bitt and Mr. Corvin.”

She glanced at Tabatchnik’s house. “He sent you to me?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I happened to see it, I don’t rubberneck. Unlike him, what do those people call snoopers — yentas. Like the Streisand movie. Love her voice but never bought her as a man.”

“What can you tell me about the encounter between Bitt and Corvin?”

“I saw two grown men acting like children in a playground.”

“Aggressive.”

“Facing off,” said Edna San Felipe. “Like brats.”

“Any idea what the conflict was about?”

“Not a clue.”

“Professor Tabatchnik said Mr. Corvin was doing all the talking.”

“He was.”

“And Mr. Bitt just stood there.”

“Like the Sphinx,” she said. “He wasn’t happy, that was obvious from what you people call body language. I’d take a long, hard look at him. Like I said, not random and the man’s clearly unhinged. Slouches around looking like a robot. Pretends not to hear when you say hello. Which I did just once, believe me.”

I said, “At least he didn’t kick your cans over.”

She glared at me. If faces were tools, hers was a filleting knife. “That supposed to be a joke?”

The door closed.

A crank, but her instincts were good: nothing random about the body dump, focus on the unusual neighbor. Now that I knew about Bitt absorbing Chet Corvin’s anger, he deserved further observation.