Obsession

CHAPTER 6

Milo touched a corner of the newspaper he’d slid across the booth. “Cute, huh?”

Ten a.m., North Hollywood. Hot Friday in the Valley, the Du-par’s on Ventura east of Laurel Canyon.

I’d left a message for Tanya about no malpractice issue, told her I’d be contacting Detective Sturgis. An hour later I was watching him jab the front-page Times article with his fork.

Breathless coverage of the founding of a mental health program in Tahiti by a former film agent and a retired studio head. Diploma mill doctorate for her, deep pockets and May-December infatuation for him. The agenda was past-life regression, a Chinese menu of meditation games, all the therapy you could eat for two hundred grand a pop, no refunds. The projected client base was “people in the public eye.”

I said, “What a scoop.”

“Probably some kiss-ass reporter with a screenplay.”

“That’s networking, dude.”

“Curse of the millennium. Hollywood sharks peddling mental health, what a concept. If you get in a tropical mood, maybe they’re hiring.”

I laughed and slid the paper back.

“Hey,” he said, “you’re not on the stand, volunteer an opinion.”

“I get paid for opinions.”

He grumbled something about “dogmatism.”

I said, “How’s this: Taking life advice from people like that is like learning the tango from gorillas.”

“Eloquent. Now I might even listen to the further details of your little mystery.”

We were putting away stacks of pancakes and drinking coffee strong enough to make my pulse race. With Milo, food smooths the process.

I’d driven out to Studio City because he’d been on the other side of the hill since midnight, cleaning up the details of a Mar Vista gang homicide whose tentacles had spread into Van Nuys and Panorama City. Another big one that would finally close. One more meeting with the D.A. and he’d be on a two-week vacation.

Rick was scheduled tight and couldn’t travel. Too bad for Milo, lucky for me. I had designs on his leisure.

I told him everything Tanya had said.

He said, “First a ‘terrible thing,’ now it’s a murder? Alex, I’m not prying into clinical details, but be brutally frank: Is this kid stable?”

“Nothing points otherwise.”

“Meaning you’re not sure.”

“She’s functioning well,” I said. “All things considered.”

“Mommy offed some neighbor? But she really didn’t? What exactly does she want?”

“I’m not sure she knows. I figure we do a little searching, come up empty, I’ll have more authority to ease her away from it. If I don’t make an attempt, I lose her as a patient. She talks a good case about handling her grief, but there’s a long way to go. If she falls I’d like to be around to catch her.”

He played with the edge of the newspaper. “Sounds like you’re a bit involved in this one.”

“If it’s too much of a hassle-”

“I’m not refusing, I’m contextualizing. Even if I wanted to say no, there are domestic issues at stake. Rick thinks Patty was some kind of saint. ‘It’s great you’ll be free to help, Alex.’”

“Let’s hear it for the zeitgeist,” I said.

He threw money on the table that I returned to him.

“Fine, you’re in a higher tax bracket.” Hoisting his bulk out of the booth.

“When do we start?” I said.

“We?”

“You lead the way, I’ll be your loyal assistant.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “And I’ve got a life regression package to sell you.”

I walked him to his unmarked as he studied the list of addresses.

He copied it into his notepad. “She moved around a bit, didn’t she…so the kid’s theory is Mommy was trying to protect her from some kind of revenge?”

“Less than a theory,” I said. “She was tossing out possibilities.”

“Here’s one: Mommy was impaired and talked gibberish.”

“Tanya’s not ready to see that.”

“I asked Rick about the whole brain damage thing,” he said. “Unwilling to commit-all you doctor types are alike. Okay, let’s be organized so we don’t have to backtrack. You talk to Patty’s oncologist and see if you can nail down some medical specifics. I’ll hit the assessor’s office and find out Patty’s local residences before she took Tanya in. She from SoCal?”

“New Mexico.”

“Where in New Mexico?”

“Outside Galisteo.”

“If this terrible thing went down out of state, good luck.” He snorted. “Listen to me. Like it really happened.”

“I appreciate this-”

“I will file your gratitude under Things To Exploit At An Opportune Time. Another thing you can do is play computer games, see if Patty shows up anywhere in cyberspace. Plug in those four addresses. Anything else that strikes your fancy.”

“Has the department database gotten any better?”

“Last coupla times I’ve able to boot up and not blow a fuse.”

“Given an address, can you pull up crimes on neighboring streets?”

“Oh, sure, me and Bill Gates just did that yesterday. No, it’s a mess. Recent cases have been entered but for the most part we’re talking cardboard boxes in storage. Department’s notion of pattern-tracing is the pin board and the board changes every year. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it is something recent. ‘Close by,’ huh? That could be the same street but down the block, one street over, a quarter mile up to the cul-de-sac, turn left, toss salt over your left shoulder. For all we know, Alex, she meant something ungeographical. Close by as in a friend.”

“Tanya said she had no relationships with men.”

“What about women? A bisexual triangle could get nasty, there was one a few years ago in Florida, woman had her girlfriend gut-shoot her old man for insurance money.”

“Patty told me she was asexual.”

“You asked her about her sexuality?”

“She brought it up during the intake.”

“The intake was on the kid so why would Mama’s sex life be relevant?”

I had no answer for that.

He said, “What was the context, Alex?”

“Letting me know she wasn’t gay. But not in a defensive way. More matter-of-fact, this is who I am. Then she asked me if I thought she was abnormal.”

“So she was uptight about being considered gay. Meaning she probably was gay. Meaning she coulda been doing stuff Tanya didn’t know about.”

“I guess it’s possible.”

“People with secrets parcel out what they want other people to know, right? If we’re going to start excavating this woman’s life, Tanya could learn things she doesn’t want to. Is she psychologically ready for that?”

“If she runs off excavating by herself, it could be worse.”

“She’d do that?”

“She’s a determined young woman.”

“Obsessive? Rick said Patty had tendencies in that direction. Did the kid start imitating her and that’s why you treated her?”

I stared at him. “Very good, Sigmund.”

“All these years absorbing your wisdom, something was bound to rub off.”

He opened his car door. “Get ready for a whole new world of false starts and dead ends.”

“Your optimism is touching.”

“Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience.”

“What’s pessimism?” I said.

“Religion without God.”

He got in the car, started up the engine.

I said, “I just thought of something. What about Isaac Gomez? He was compiling some pretty good databases.”

“Petra’s boy genius…yeah, maybe he’ll have some spare time. Hollywood went this whole year without a single murder. If it stays that quiet, the chatter has Stu Bishop vaulting to assistant chief.”

“What’s Petra been doing with herself?”

“My guess would be digging up cold cases.”

“Patty and Tanya’s first address was in Hollywood,” I said. “Back then there were plenty of murders. Maybe Petra will want to hear about this.”

“An unsolved she just happens to be working on? Wouldn’t that be screenplay-cute. Sure, call her. Talk to Dr. Gomez, too, if Petra’s cool with that.”

“Will do, boss.”

“Keep up that attitude, assistant, and you just might make the grade.”

I took Laurel Canyon south to the city, used the red light at Crescent Heights and Sunset to call Hollywood Division and asked for Detective Connor.

“She’s out,” said the civilian clerk.

“Is Isaac Gomez still working there?”

“Who?”

“Graduate student intern,” I said. “He was doing research on-”

“Not listed,” said the clerk.

“Could you connect me to Detective Connor’s voice mail?”

“Voice mail’s down.”

“Do you have another number for her?”

“No.”

I drove east. At Fuller and Sunset, a group of Nordic-looking tourists risked a crosswalk sprint and nearly got pulverized by a Suburban. Naive Europeans, pretending L.A. was a real city and walking was legal. I could hear Milo laughing.

As I neared La Brea, development continued its encroachment: big-box outlets and strip malls and chain restaurants sweeping through blocks that had once hosted by-the-hour motels and ptomaine palaces.

Some things never change: Hookers of both primary genders and a few that couldn’t be determined were working the street with ebullience. My eyes must’ve been restless because a couple of them waved at me.

Heading north to Hollywood Boulevard and hooking a right, I cruised past the Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theatre, the tourist traps attempting to feed off the overflow, continued to Cherokee Avenue. Just past the hustle of the boulevard sat a couple of padlocked clubs, mean and sad the way nightspots get during the daylight. Trash was piled at the curb and birdshit pollocked the sidewalk.

Farther north, the block had been rehabbed a bit, with relatively clean multiplex apartment buildings promising Security elbowing shabby prewar structures that offered no illusion of safety.

The first address on Tanya’s list matched one of the old ones. A three-story, brick-colored stucco building a short walk below Franklin. Plain front, frizzy lawn, limp beds of overwatered succulents struggling to breathe. As tired-looking as the homeless guy pushing a shopping cart nowhere. He made split-second, paranoid eye contact, shook his head as if I were hopeless, and trudged on.

A cloudy glass door cut through the center of the brick-colored building, but two ground-floor units in front had entrance from the street. Tanya remembered drunks knocking on the door, so my bet was on one of those.

I got out and tried the handle on the glass door. Cold and unpleasantly crusty but unlocked.

Inside, a back-to-front hallway carpeted in gray poly smelled of mold and orange-scented air freshener. Twenty-three mail slots just inside the door. Liver-colored doors lined the murky space. Lots of interviews, if it ever came to that.

A door at the rear of the hall opened and a man stuck his head out, scratched the crook of one arm. Sixty or so, gray hair flying like dandelion fuzz, haloed by sickly light. Scrawny but potbellied, wearing a blue satin Dodger jacket over striped pajama bottoms.

He scratched again. Worked his jaws and lowered his head. “Yeah?”

I said, “Just leaving.”

He stood there, watching until I made good on that promise.

South on Highland took me through two miles of film labs, tape-dupe services, costume warehouses, prop shops. All those people who’d never be thanked on Oscar night.

Between Melrose and Beverly a few dowager apartment buildings clung to twenties elegance. The rest didn’t even try. A turn onto Beverly took me around the southern edge of the Wilshire Country Club and into Hancock Park.

Hudson Avenue is one of the district’s grandest streets, and the second address on Tanya’s list matched a massive, multigabled, slate-roofed, brick Tudor piled atop a sloping lawn that had been skinned as close as a putting green. Five-foot bronze urns flanking the front door hosted lemon trees studded with fruit. Double doors under a limestone arch were carved exuberantly. A black filigree gate offered a view of a long cobbled driveway. A white Mercedes convertible sat behind a green Bentley Flying Spur hand-fashioned in the fifties.

This was where Patty and Tanya had just moved when they first came to see me. Renting space in a house. The owners of this house didn’t appear to need the extra income. Patty had been certain the move hadn’t been stressful for Tanya. Face-slapping contrast with the sad building on Cherokee made me a believer, and I wondered now about the specifics of the transition.

I sat there and enjoyed the view. No one came out of the mansion or any of its stately neighbors. But for a couple of lusty squirrels in a sycamore tree, no movement at all. In L.A. luxury means pretending no one else inhabits the planet.

I put in a call to Patty’s oncologist, Tziporah Ganz, left a message with her service.

One of the squirrels scampered over to the left-hand lemon tree, got hold of a juicy one, and tugged. Before it could complete the theft, one of the double doors opened and a short, dark-haired maid in a pink uniform charged out wielding a broom. The animal faced off, then thought better of it. The maid turned to reenter the mansion and noticed me.

Stared.

Another hostile reception.

I drove away.

Address three was a quick drive: Fourth Street off La Jolla. Tanya had returned to my office just after leaving there for Culver City.

The house turned out to be a Spanish Revival duplex on a pleasant leafy street of matching structures. The only distinguishing feature of the building where the Bigelows had lived was a concrete pad in lieu of a lawn. The only vehicle in sight was a deep red Austin Mini with vanity plates that read PLOTGRL.

Solidly middle-class, respectable, but a whole different planet after Hudson Avenue. Maybe Patty had wanted more room than rented mansion space afforded.

My final stop was a solid forty-minute drive in thick traffic to a grubby stretch of Culver Boulevard just west of Sepulveda and the 405 overpass.

The lot bore six identical gray-framed, tar-roofed boxes that ringed the crumbled remains of a plaster fountain. Two brown-skinned preschoolers played in the dirt, unattended.

Classic L.A. bungalow court. Classic refuge of transients, has-beens, almost-weres.

These bungalows weren’t much bigger than sheds. The property had been neglected to the point of peeling paint and curling roof shingles and sagging foundations. Traffic roared by. Pothole-axle encounters lent a syncopated conga beat to the engine concerto.

Maybe it had been spiffier in Patty’s day, but this part of town had never been fashionable.

Climbing the residential ladder, then down to this. Patty had come across solid and stable. Her housing pattern seemed anything but.

Perhaps it came down to thrift. Saving up cash for a down payment on her own place. Within two years, she’d pulled it off, snagging a duplex near Beverlywood on a nurse’s salary.

Even so, there had to be better choices than moving Tanya to another “sketchy neighborhood.”

Then another possibility hit me: That kind of jumping around was what you saw in habitual gamblers and others whose habits roller-coastered their finances.

Patty had achieved Westside homeownership, a trust fund, and two life insurance policies for Tanya on a nurse’s salary.

Impressive.

Remarkable, really. Maybe she’d been a savvy stock-market player.

Or had acquired an additional source of revenue.

A hospital nurse with too much money led to an obvious what-if: drug pilferage and resale. Stealthy dope dealer didn’t sync with what I knew about Patty but how well did I really know her?

But if she had a secret criminal life, why stir up the pot with a deathbed confession and chance Tanya finding out?

People with secrets parcel out what they want you to know.

Until something shattered their inhibitions. Had Patty’s proclamation been the agonized product of a disease-addled mind? An illness-fueled stab at confession and expiation?

I sat in the car and tossed that around. No way, too ugly. It just didn’t sit right.

Sounds like you’re a bit involved in this one.

“So what,” I said to no one.

A muscular guy in a ski cap pulled down to his eyebrows skulked by with an unleashed, pink-nosed white pit bull. The dog stopped, circled back, pressed its snout against my passenger window, created a little pink, pulsating rosebud. No smiling for this canine. A low-pitched growl thrummed the glass.

Ski-cap was staring, too.

My day for warm welcomes. I pulled away slowly enough so the dog wouldn’t lose balance.

No one thanked me.