Obsession

CHAPTER 15

Unless you’re a heart-transplant surgeon waiting for an organ, you don’t bring a phone or a beeper to the dining room at the Hotel Bel-Air.

Robin and I had decided tonight would be okay for a bit of glamour. We got a spot reservation, arrived at nine forty-five. She wore a sleeveless red sheath and black pearls I’d bought her years ago. Her auburn curls were combed soft and glossed with something that smelled good. I wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a red tie, figured I was doing a pretty good impression of someone who cared about haberdashery. The food was great, the wines were mellow, and when we left at eleven thirty, I felt flush.

We were in the bedroom, about to slip under the covers, when the phone rang.

“I woke you?” said Milo.

“That assumes I sleep.”

“I wouldn’t bug you but life just got complicated.”

Hollywood Boulevard after midnight was grubby sidewalks, night-haze that turned neon to grease smears, retreat of the tourists, goblins, bats, and ghouls emerging from their hidey-holes.

Clubs shuttered during daylight drew clumps of hollow-eyed kids and those who preyed upon them. Adrenalized bouncers looked for trouble. Night types beyond categorization loitered at the fringes of the crowd.

I made it halfway up Cherokee before the LAPD sawhorses and the uniform charged with protecting them stopped me.

Milo’s name coaxed a stare and a nod, then a muffled conversation with a two-way radio. “Park over by the side, sir, and proceed on foot.”

I hurried to the brick-colored building. Petra had called it raw sienna. Artist’s eye. Darkness shaded the stucco dull brown.

The uniform at the glass doors waved me in. Milo was up a ways, standing by an open door, talking to a skinny red-haired woman courageous enough to wear a mullet.

Coroner’s badge on her lapel. Investigator Leticia Mopp. Milo introduced her anyway.

She said, “Nice to meet you,” and turned back to him. “Rigor’s come and gone. Want another look before we pack him up?”

“Why not?” said Milo. “Always been the sentimental type.”

Mopp hung back and we crossed a toxic-dump living room. The few clean surfaces were pollened by fingerprint powder.

Petra Connor stood just outside a cramped gray bathroom at the rear. Stick-thin, ivory-skinned, and dark-eyed, she had on the usual black pantsuit. Hair that matched the suit was cropped in a glossy wedge. With her was another Hollywood detective I didn’t recognize, even younger.

She said, “Hey, Alex. Looks like everything converges, after all. This is Raul Biro.”

Biro was compact and broad-shouldered in a beige suit, brown shirt, and yellow tie. He smiled and nodded.

Petra said, “Love to chat, guys, but our job’s done here for the time being. We’ll talk tomorrow, Milo?”

“Count on it.”

“First new case in thirteen months,” she said. “I thought I missed the rush but now I’m not so sure. Raul doesn’t mind, right?”

Biro said, “Need the experience.”

The two of them left and Milo motioned me into the bathroom.

Lester Jordan sat hunched on his toilet wearing a periwinkle-blue terry robe that hung open on a pasty, ravaged body. His head hung low. The robe’s lapel swathed his neck. A rubber-tubing tourniquet around his left arm popped veins as kinked as an old garden hose. A syringe flashed silver on the filthy tile floor to his right. Not some homemade spike; this was a medical-quality disposable syringe, bright and shiny and empty. On the back of the commode sat the spoon-lighter kit and an empty Baggie.

“All these years and now he O.D.’s?” I said.

Milo gloved up. Carefully, almost tenderly, he took hold of Jordan’s chin and lifted the dead man’s head.

Around Jordan’s neck was another tourniquet. A white, braided cord, pulled so tight it nearly vanished in cold flesh. Triple-knotted in back, the hue blending in with Jordan’s pallor. Jordan’s eyes were half open, dry, alive as shirt buttons. His tongue drooped, black and distended, a Japanese eggplant.

Milo lowered the head just as gingerly. “I came here at ten thirty to talk to him about Leland Armbruster, found flashers and roadblocks, the full circus. Inside the apartment, Petra’s on her cell punching numbers. My phone rings. It’s me she’s calling. She says, ‘Beamed yourself up, Scotty?’”

“Karma,” I said.

“Who did I offend in some former life?”

“When was Jordan killed?”

“The estimate is eight to fifteen hours ago. No one spotted any visitors and that’s consistent with the scene. A window on the north side of the building was open and there’s some disturbance of the dirt but no clear footprints. Jordan got discovered because he left his music running-loud, the way it was when we were here. Next-door neighbors say that was his usual thing, there were tons of complaints but the landlord ignored them. The routine was someone pounds Jordan’s door long enough, he eventually stops. This time nothing worked and they called the cops.”

“Who are the next-door neighbors?”

“Two girls,” he said. “Dancers in a show at the Pantages.”

He took a long look at Jordan’s corpse. “Patrol officers show up half an hour later, bang the door, get no answer. They go around to the other side, see the open window, call for backup. Thank God they were smart enough not to touch anything, maybe we’ll get some physical evidence.”

Two crypt drivers arrived with a folded gurney. We slipped out of the bathroom, exited the building, walked to Milo’s car. No unmarked tonight; he was driving Rick’s white Porsche 928.

I said, “Jordan survives this long as an addict. We visit him to talk about Patty and a couple days later he’s dead.”

“High-risk lifestyle, anything can happen, but it does raise one’s eyebrows.” He demonstrated with his own shaggy hyphens. “No one remotely ominous knew we talked to Jordan-just that screenwriter, Bergman, and Chatty Mary Whitbread.”

“Saturday I went over to Hudson and spoke to Colonel Bedard’s grandson but Jordan’s name never came up.”

“Ominous fellow?”

“Hardly.” I summarized my impression of Kyle Bedard.

He said, “But if it is related to Patty, Jordan told someone we’d been around and got hushed for his troubles.”

“If someone cared that much about keeping the past buried, Tanya’s safety could be an issue.”

“If Patty hadn’t brought the whole thing up, we’d never have talked to Jordan and there might be no safety issue.”

“Maybe Patty knew something was going down whether or not she talked. In any event, I’m going to drive by Tanya’s.”

“Do that,” he said. “I’ll get some sleep and be bright and fresh for tomorrow’s challenges.”

But when I started up the Seville, the Porsche hummed behind me. I stuck my head out the driver’s window and he pulled alongside.

“What the hell,” he said, “let’s do a convoy. Don’t even think about saying ‘Ten-four.’”

Canfield Avenue at one thirty-five a.m. was silent and peaceful. Milo and I parked and got out.

He eyed the alarm company sign on the lawn. “Good start. I’ll sneak ’round back, make sure nothing’s out of order.”

“Tanya’s got a gun.”

“That so.”

I told him about Patty’s.22.

He said, “Same caliber as the one that did Lowball Armbruster.” He slipped a penlight out of a pocket. “If she shoots me, you can have my Official Detective pencil box.”

He returned three minutes later, gave a thumbs-up. “No sign of disturbance, she’s got a security light at the back door and bars on all the rear windows. Toss in the alarm and I certify it as safe. Let’s go home. Tomorrow I’ll follow up with Petra.”

I said, “We were wondering how Jordan managed to stay in the building so long. Now we find out the landlord never responded to the complaints about his music, even though that meant other tenants vacating.”

“Connections,” he said. “A family thing, like you said.”

“I’d like to know who’s got the deed to the building and if they owned it back in Patty’s day.”

“Petra got the landlord’s name from the dancing girls, hold on.” He pulled out his pad, used the penlight, flipped pages. “Deer Valley Properties in Utah, but it’s managed by a downtown firm.”

“Kyle Bedard’s mother lives in Deer Valley.”

He frowned, stared up the dark street. “My oh my.”

The following morning at ten, we were standing on the front steps of the mansion on Hudson Avenue, listening to the chimes of the doorbell. An hour ago, Milo had talked to the company that managed the building on Cherokee, verified that Lester Jordan was Mrs. Iona Bedard’s brother. Jordan was on their payroll as an “on-site inspector” but his duties were ambiguous and his three-hundred-dollar weekly paycheck traced back to Deer Valley.

“Company goes along with it in order to keep the building on their management list.” He eyed the Bentley and the Mercedes. “What do these people do for cash?”

“Born into the Lucky Sperm Club.”

The woman named America opened one of the double doors.

I smiled at her. She clutched her broom handle.

“Is Kyle here?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea where-”

“School.”

My thank-you was cut short by the whoosh of solid walnut gliding into place.

Milo said, “Ah, the warmth of hearth and home.”

The physics building at the U. is a sixties-era assemblage of glass, white brick, and mosaic murals that portray great moments in fusion. Across an inverted fountain looms the psych building, where I’d gotten my union card. I’d never paid much attention to the less ambiguous goings-on yards away.

Milo and I had come prepared to wrestle with department secretaries but Kyle Bedard was in plain view, sitting on the rim of the fountain eating a sandwich and drinking orange juice from a plastic carton. Talking, in between bites, to a young woman.

She was small, blond, preppy in pink and khaki. Kyle wore a gray sweatshirt, baggy jeans, antiquarian sneakers. He’d traded his contacts for black-framed eyeglasses.

As we approached, he righted the specs, as if trying to refocus.

The girl turned.

I said, “Hi, Tanya.”