Private Eyes

32

Back at Sussex Knoll, he pulled up beside the Seville.

I said, “What’s next for you?”

“Sleep, hearty breakfast, then financial scumbags.” He put the Porsche in neutral and revved the engine.

“What about McCloskey?” I said.

“Wasn’t intending to go to the funeral.”

Revving. Drumming the steering wheel.

I said, “Any ideas about who killed him and why?”

“You heard all of ’em back at the mission.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay.” He sped away.

My house seemed tiny and friendly. The timer had switched the pond lights off and it was too dark to tell how my fish eggs were doing. I crept upstairs, slept for ten hours, woke up Monday thinking of Gina Ramp and Joel McCloskey- bound together, again, by pain and terror.

Was there a link between Morris Dam and what had happened in the back alley, or had McCloskey been simply another piece of Skid Row garbage?

Murder with a car. I found myself thinking about Noel Drucker. He had access to lots of wheels and plenty of time on his hands during the Tankard’s indefinite hiatus. Were his feelings for Melissa strong enough to knock him that far off the straight and narrow? If so, had he been acting on his own, or at Melissa’s bidding?

And what of Melissa? It made me sick to think of her as anything other than the defenseless orphan Milo had portrayed to the detectives. But I’d seen her temper in action. Watched her channel her grief into revenge fantasies against Anger and Douse.

I recalled her and Noel, entwined on her bed. Had the plan to get McCloskey been hatched during a similar embrace?

I switched channels:

Ramp. If he was innocent of causing Gina’s death, perhaps he’d avenged it.

He had lots of reasons to hate McCloskey. Had he been at the wheel of the death car, or had he hired someone? The poetic justice would have been appealing.

Todd Nyquist would have been perfect for the job- how would anyone connect a surf-jock from the west side with the downtown death of a brain-damaged bum?

Or maybe Noel was Ramp’s automotive hit man, not Melissa’s.

Or maybe none of the above.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

An image flashed across my eyes.

The scars on Gina’s face.

I thought of the prison McCloskey had sent her to for the rest of her life.

Why waste time worrying about the reason he had died? His life had been a case study in wretchedness. Who’d miss him other than Father Andrus? And the priest’s feelings probably had more to do with theological abstraction than human attachment.

Milo had been right to brush it off.

I was playing head-games rather than making myself useful.

I stood, stretched, said, “Good riddance,” out loud.

Dressing in khakis, shirt and tie, and a lightweight tweed jacket, I drove to West Hollywood.

The Hilldale address Kathy Moriarty’s sister had given me was between Santa Monica Boulevard and Sunset. The house was a graceless box, the color of week-old newspaper, on a thirty-foot lot, shielded nearly to the roof by an unkempt eugenia hedge. The roof line was flat, layered with Spanish tiles painted black. Flat black- it looked like an amateur job, some of the terra cotta showing through in places, the hue that of a poorly dyed brown shoe.

The eugenia hedge ended at a short, collapsing driveway- asphalt struggling with weeds in the couple of feet not taken up by a twenty-year-old, bird-bombed, yellow Oldsmobile. I parked across the street, walked across a dry, clipped lawn packed harder than the asphalt. Four paces took me to a three-step cement porch. Three addresses in black metal letters were nailed to the right of the gray plank door. A piece of adhesive tape, now darkened to the old-paper tint of the house, covered the doorbell ringer. An index card with KNOCK in red ballpoint was wedged between the bell frame and the stucco. I followed instructions and was rewarded, seconds later, with a “Hold On!” in a sleepy-sounding male voice.

Then: “Yeah?” from behind gray wood.

“My name is Alex Delaware and I’m looking for Kathy Moriarty.”

“How come?”

I thought of Milo’s suggestions of subterfuge, decided I had no stomach for that, and opted for technical truth:

“Her family hasn’t seen her in a while.”

“Her family?”

“Her sister and brother-in-law. Mr. and Mrs. Robbins, in Pasadena.”

The door opened. A young man clutching a handful of paintbrushes in his right hand looked me up and down. No surprise, no suspicion. Just an artist’s eye gauging perspective.

He was in his late twenties, tall and solidly built, with dark hair combed back and tied in a foot’s worth of ponytail that dangled over his left collarbone. His face was heavy and soft-featured under a low flat forehead and shelf brows. The gestalt was simian- more gorilla than chimp- helped along by black eyebrows that met in the middle and a wash of black stubble that ran up past his cheekbones, swooped down his neck till it merged with his chest hair. He wore a black polyester tank top emblazoned with the logo of a skateboard company in tomato-red letters; baggy, flowered, orange-and-green knee-length shorts, and rubber beach sandals. His arms were coated with dark, coiling hair just past the elbow. The skin above that was hairless and white and slabbed with the kind of muscle that would pump up easily but looked slack and unused. A dried patch of baby-blue paint stained one bicep.

I said, “Sorry to disturb you.”

He glanced at the brushes, then back at me.

I pulled out my wallet, found the business card I’d taken from Milo last night, and handed it to him.

He studied it, smiled, studied me, and gave it back. “I thought you said your name was Del-something.”

“Sturgis is in charge. I’m working with him.”

“An op,” he said, grinning. “You don’t look like one- at least not like the ones on TV. Guess that’s the point of it, though, isn’t it? TrÈs incommunicado.”

I smiled.

He studied me some more. “A lawyer,” he finally said. “Defense, not prosecution- or maybe some kind of professor. That’s how I’d cast you, Marlowe.”

“Do you work in the movies?” I said.

“No.” He laughed and touched a paintbrush to his lips. Lowering it, he said, “Though I guess I do. Actually. I’m a writer.” More laughter. “Like everyone else in this town, right? But not screen plays- God forbid screenplays.”

His laughter rose in pitch and lingered, hovering on the brink of giddy. “You ever write one?”

“Nope.”

“Give yourself time. Everyone’s got a hot property-’cept me. What I do for a living is graphic art. Airbrush-photorealism to sell products. What I do for fun is art-art- sloppy freedom.” Waving the brushes. “And what I do to stay sane is writing- short pieces, post-modern essays. Had a couple published in the Reader and the Weekly. Mood-based urban fiction- how music and money and the whole L.A. experience make people feel. The different things L.A. evokes in people.”

“Interesting,” I said, not sounding very convincing.

“Yeah,” he said cheerfully, “as if you give a shit. You just want to do your job and go home to your lonely P.I. Murphy bed, right?”

“Boy needs a hobby.”

He said, “Oh, yeah,” transferred his brushes to his left hand and held out his right and said, “Richard Skidmore.”

We shook, he stepped back and said, “C’mon in.”

The interior of the small house was prewar budget construction: cramped dark rooms that smelled of instant coffee and takeout food, marijuana, and turpentine. Textured walls, rounded archways, tin wall sconces, all of them bulbless. A brick mantel above a fireplace was piled high with Presto logs still in their wrappers. Thrift shop furniture, including some plastic-and-aluminum-tubing outdoor pieces, was assembled randomly on worn wood floors. Art and its accoutrements- odd-shaped, hand-stretched canvases in various stages of completion, jars and tubes of paint, brushes soaking in pitchers- were everywhere but on the walls. A paint-encrusted easel sat in the center of the living room, amid a mound of crumpled paper, broken pencils, and charcoal stubs. A draftsman’s table and adjustable chair were set up in what looked to be the dining area, along with a compressor attached to an airbrush.

The walls were unadorned, but I noticed a single piece of white construction paper nailed above the mantel. Calligraphic lettering at the center read:

Day of the Locusts,

Twilight of the Worms,

Night of the Living Dread.

“My novel,” said Skidmore. “Both the title and the opening line. The rest will happen when the old attention span kicks in- it’s always been a problem for me, but hey, it didn’t stop the last couple of presidents, did it?”

I said, “Did you meet Kathy Moriarty through your writing?”

“Work, work, work, Marlowe? How much does Boss Spurgis pay you to get you to be so conscientious?”

“Depends on the case.”

“Very good,” he said, smiling. “Evasive. You know, this is really great, your dropping in like this. It’s why I love waking up in L.A. You can never tell when some SoCal archetype will come knocking.”

Another appraising glance. I started to feel like a still life.

“Think I’ll use you in my next piece,” he said, drawing an imaginary line in the air. “The Private Eye: The Things He Sees- The Things That See Him.”

He lifted several canvases covered with abstract splotches from a pool chaise and dumped them on the floor unceremoniously. “Sit.”

I did and he lowered himself onto a wooden stool directly in front of me.

“This is great,” he said. “Thanks for dropping by.”

“Does Kathy Moriarty live here?”

“Her place is in back. Garage unit.”

“Who’s the landlord?”

“I am,” he said with pride. “Inherited it from my grandfather. Gay old blade- ergo the Boys’ Town location. Came out of the closet twenty years after Grandma died, and I was the only one in the family who didn’t cut him off. So when he died, I got all of it- the house, the Bloatmobile, hundred shares of IBM stock. The art of the deal, right?”

“Mrs. Robbins says she hasn’t seen Kathy for over a month. When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Funny,” he said.

“What is?”

“That her sister would hire someone to look for her. They didn’t get along- at least from Kathy’s POV.”

“Why’s that?”

“Culture clash, no doubt. Kathy said the sister was Pasadena Whitebread. The kind who’d say urination and defecation.”

“As opposed to Kathy.”

“Exactly.”

I asked him again when he’d last seen her.

He said, “Same time Whitebread did- about a month.”

“When’s the last time she paid her rent?”

“The rent is a hundred a month, which is stand-up comedy, right? Couldn’t get into the whole landlord thing.”

“When’s the last time Kathy paid the hundred?”

“At the beginning.”

“Beginning of what?”

“Our association. She was so happy to get something that cheap- and it includes utilities because everything’s metered together and it’s too much of a hassle to have it changed- she came up with ten months’ worth right at the beginning. So she’s paid up through December.”

“Ten months. She’s been living here since February?”

“Guess so- yeah. It was right after New Year’s. I used the garage apartments for a party- artists and writers and terrific fakers. When I was cleaning up I decided to rent one of them and use the other for storage, so I wouldn’t be tempted to throw another party next year and hear all that bad dialogue.”

“Was Kathy invited to the party?”

“Why would she have been?”

“Being a writer.”

“No, I didn’t meet her till after the party.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“Ad in the Reader. She was the first to show up and I liked her. Straight on, no bullshit, a real no-nonsense Sapphite.”

“Sapphite?”

“As in Lesbos.”

“She’s gay?”

“Sure.” Big smile. “Tsk, tsk- looks like Sister Whitebread didn’t brief you thoroughly.”

“Guess not.”

He said, “Like I said, culture clash. Don’t be shocked, Marlowe- this is West Hollywood. Everyone here is either queer or old or both. Or me. I’m into chastity until something monogamous and heterosexual and meaningful comes along.” Tugging the ponytail: “Don’t let this fool you- I’m really right-wing. Two years ago I owned twenty-six button-down shirts and four pairs of penny loafers. This”- another tug-“was to make the neighbors more comfortable. I’m already dragging down the property values, not letting them bulldoze and put up another Spa-Jacuzzi-Full-Security.”

“Does Kathy have a lover?”

“Not that I saw, and my guess would be no.”

“Why’s that?”

“Her persona projects as profoundly unloved. As if she’s just come off something hurtful and isn’t ready to juggle with razor blades again. It wasn’t anything she said- we don’t talk too much, don’t run into each other much. I like to sleep as much as I can and she’s gone most of the time.”

“Gone this long?”

He thought. “This is the longest, but she’s usually on the road- I mean, it’s not weird for her to be away for a week at a time. So you can tell her sister she’s probably okay- probably doing something Miss Pasadena doesn’t really want to hear about.”

“How do you know she’s gay?”

“Ah, the evidence. Well, for starts, the stuff she reads. Lesbo mags. She buys them regularly- I find them out in the trash. And the mail she gets.”

“What kind of mail?”

His smile was a wide, white pin-stripe on wooly stubble. “Not that I go out of my way to read it, Marlowe- that would be illegal, right? But sometimes the mail for the back unit gets put in my box because the carriers don’t realize there’s a unit back there- or maybe they’re just too lazy to go back there. A lot of it’s from gay groups. How’s that for deductive reasoning?”

“After a month you must have quite a bit of it collected,” I said.

He stood, went into the kitchen, and returned a moment later carrying a sheaf of envelopes bound with a rubber band. Rolling the band off, he examined each piece of mail, then held on to it for several moments before passing the entire collection to me.

I fanned it and counted. Eleven pieces.

“Not much for a month,” I said.

“Like I said, unloved.”

I inspected the mail. Eight pieces were computer-addressed postcards and advertisements made out to Occupant. The remaining three were envelopes addressed to Kathy Moriarty by name. One appeared to be a solicitation for funds from an AIDS support group. So did another, from a clinic in San Francisco.

The third envelope was white, business-sized, postmarked three weeks previously in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Typewritten address: Ms. Kathleen R. Moriarty. Return address preprinted in the upper left-hand corner: THE GAY AND LESBIAN ALLIANCE AGAINST DISCRIMINATION, MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, CAMBRIDGE.

I pulled out a pen, realized I hadn’t brought paper, and copied the information onto the back of a gasoline receipt that I found in my wallet.

Skidmore was studying me, amused.

I turned the envelope over several times, more for his benefit than anything else, finally gave it back to him.

He said, “So what did you learn?”

“Not much. What else can you tell me about her?”

“Brown hair, butch-do. Green eyes, kind of a potato face. Her fashion statement tends to be oriented toward baggy and sensible.”

“Does she have a job?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but she could have.”

“She never mentioned a job?”

“Uh-uh.” He yawned and rubbed one knee, then the other.

“Other than being a writer,” I said.

“That’s not a job, Marlowe. It’s a calling.”

“Have you ever seen anything she wrote?”

“Sure. We didn’t talk at all the first couple of months she was here, but once we discovered we had the muse in common, we did do a little show-and-tell.”

“What’d she show?”

“Her scrapbook.”

“Remember what was in it?”

He crossed his legs and scratched a hairy calf. “What do you call this? Getting a profile on the subject?”

“Exactly,” I said. “What kinds of things did she have in her scrapbook?”

“All give, no take, huh?” he said, but without resentment.

“I don’t know anything, Richard. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

“That make me a snitch?”

“A source.”

“Aha.”

“Her scrapbook?”

“I just skimmed it,” he said. Yawning again. “Basically it was articles- stuff she’d written.”

“Articles on what?”

Shrug. “I didn’t look at it too closely- too fact-bound, no fancy.”

“Any chance of my seeing the scrapbook?”

“Like how would that be possible?”

“Like if you have the key to her apartment.”

He raised his hand to his mouth, a parody of outrage. “Invasion of privacy, Marlowe?”

“How about you stand right over me while I read it?”

“Doesn’t take care of the constitutional issues, Phil.”

“Listen,” I said, leaning forward and putting major effort into sounding ominous, “this is serious. She could be in danger.”

He opened his mouth and I knew he was going to crack wise. I blocked it by holding out a hand and said, “I mean it, Richard.”

His mouth closed and stayed that way for a while. I stared at him hard and he rubbed his elbows and knees and said, “You’re serious.”

“Very.”

“This has nothing to do with collecting?”

“Collecting what?”

“Money. She told me she’d borrowed lots from her sister, hadn’t paid any of it back, and her sister’s husband was getting pissed- he’s some sort of financial type.”

“Mr. Robbins is a lawyer,” I said, “and he and his wife are concerned about Kathy’s debt. But that’s not the issue anymore. She’s been gone too long, Richard.”

He rubbed some more and said, “When you told me you were working for the sister, I figured it had something to do with collecting.”

“Well, it doesn’t, Richard. Her sister- whatever their culture clash- is worried about her and so am I. I can’t tell you more than that, but Mr. Sturgis considers this case a priority.”

He undid his ponytail and shook his hair loose. It was thick and shiny as a cover girl’s, and fanned across his face. I heard his neck crack as he lowered it and continued fanning. When he looked up some of the hair was in his mouth and he chewed it while wearing a thoughtful expression.

“All you want to do is look at it, huh?” he said, pulling strands away from his lips.

“That’s it, Richard. You can watch me every second.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why not? At the worst, she’ll find out and get pissed and I’ll invite her to find a cheaper place.”

He stood and stretched and shook his hair again. When I got up, he said, “Just stay right there, Phil.”

Another trip to the kitchen. He came back too soon to have gone very far, carrying a loose-leaf notebook bound in orange cloth.

I said, “She left it with you?”

“Uh-uh. She forgot to take it back after she’d given it to me to look at. When I realized it, she was already gone, so I stuck it somewhere- got so much junk around here- and she never asked about it. We both forgot. Meaning it probably isn’t that important to her, right? That’s the rationale I’ll use if she gets pissed.”

He returned to the stool, opened the notebook, and flipped pages. Clinging to his treasure for just a moment before yielding, just as he’d done with the mail.

“Here you go,” he said. “We’re not talking racy, Phil.”

I opened the book. Inside were forty or so double-sided pages- black paper sheathed in transparent plastic. Newspaper clippings bearing Kathleen Moriarty’s byline were inserted on each side. There was a flap on the inside front cover. I slid my hand in. Empty.

The articles were arranged chronologically. The first few, dating back fifteen years, were from The Daily Collegian at Cal State Fresno. A score or so, spanning a seven-year period, were from the Fresno Bee. Next came pieces from the Manchester Union Leader and the Boston Globe. The dates indicated Kathy Moriarty had stayed at each of the New England papers for only about a year.

I turned back to the beginning and checked out contents. For the most part, general interest stuff, and all local: Town meetings and personality pieces. Holiday features of the clever pet variety. An investigative trend didn’t creep in until Moriarty’s year at the Globe: a series on pollution in Boston Harbor and an exposÉ of cruelty to animals at a Worcester pharmacologic firm that didn’t appear to have gone very far.

The last insert was a review in the Hartford Courant of The Bad Earth, her book on pesticides. Small press publisher. Good marks for enthusiasm, points off for poor documentation.

I checked the back flap. Slipped out several folded pieces of newsprint. Skidmore was looking at his toes and hadn’t noticed. I unfolded and began reading.

Five opinion pieces, dated last year, from a paper called The GALA Banner and subtitled “The monthly newsletter of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, Cambridge, Mass.”

Byline change to Kate Moriarty. Title of Contributing Editor.

These essays were filled with rage: male domination, the AIDS plague, the penis as a weapon. A piece on identity and misogyny. Stapled to that one was a scrap of newsprint.

Skidmore yawned. “Almost finished?”

“One sec.”

I read the scrap. The Globe, again, three years old. No Moriarty byline. No byline at all. Just a news summary- one of those “roundup” items papers run on page 2 of the final edition.

DOCTOR’S DEATH TIED TO OVERDOSE

(CAMBRIDGE) The death of a Harvard Psychiatric Fellow is believed to have resulted from an accidental or self-administered dose of barbiturates. The body of Eileen Wagner, 37, was found this morning in her office at the Beth Israel Hospital Psychiatry Department on Brookline Avenue. Time of death was estimated at some time during the night. Police would not speculate upon what led them to their conclusion, other than to say that Dr. Wagner had been suffering from “personal problems.” A graduate of Yale and Yale University Medical School, Dr. Wagner completed pediatric training at Western Pediatric Medical Center in Los Angeles and practiced medicine with the World Health Organization overseas before coming to Harvard last year to study Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

I looked over at Skidmore. His eyes were closed. I pulled off the article, pocketed it, closed the book, and said, “Thanks, Richard. Now how about giving me a look at her apartment.”

His eyes opened.

“Just to make sure,” I said.

“Sure of what?”

“That she’s not there- hurt or worse.”

“No way is she there,” he said, with genuine anxiety that was refreshing. “No way, Marlowe.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I saw her drive away a month ago. White Datsun- you can get the plates, run some kind of trace, right?”

“What if she came back without the car? You might not have noticed- you yourself said the two of you didn’t see each other often.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Too weird.”

“Why don’t we just check, Richard? You can stand there and watch- just like with the scrapbook.”

He rubbed his eyes. Stared at me. Got up.

I followed him into a tiny, dark kitchen where he picked a ring of keys out of a pile of junk and pushed open a rear door. We walked across a backyard too small for hopscotch to a double garage. The garage doors were the old-fashioned hinge-type. Door-sized inserts were centered in each. Garage apartments. Literally.

Skidmore said, “This one,” and led me to the unit on the left. The door-within-a-door was deadbolted.

“Illegal,” he said, “converting the garage. You won’t tell on me, Marlowe, will you?”

“Cross my heart.”

Smiling, he shuffled keys. Then turned serious and stopped.

“What is it, Richard?”

“Wouldn’t it smell- if she was… you know.”

“Depends, Richard. You never can tell.”

Another smile. Shaky. He fumbled with the keys.

“One thing I’m curious about,” I said. “If you thought I was here to dun Kathy for money, why’d you let me in?”

“Simple,” he said. “Material.”

Kathy Moriarty’s home was a twenty-by-twenty room that still reeked of automobile. The floor was wheat-colored linoleum squares; the walls were white plasterboard. The furniture was a twin-size mattress on the floor, sheet crumpled at the foot, revealing sweat-stained blue ticking. Wooden nightstand, round white Formica table, and three metal chairs padded at seat and back with dollops of yellow Hawaiian-print plastic. One of the far corners contained a hot plate on a metal stand; the other, a Fiberglas water closet no bigger than an airplane latrine. Above the hot plate a single bracket shelf held a few dishes and kitchen utensils. On the opposite wall was a makeshift closet frame of white PVC tubing. A few outfits, mostly jeans and shirts, hung from the horizontal tube.

Kathy Moriarty hadn’t spent her sister’s money on interior decorating. I had an idea where the funds had gone.

Skidmore said, “Oh, man.” The skin beneath his stubble was white and one hand was atop his head, snarled in hair.

“What is it?”

“Either someone’s been here or she’s packed out on me.”

“What makes you say that?”

He waved his hands, suddenly agitated. The kid with the poor attention span, struggling to make himself clear.

“This wasn’t the way it looked when she was here. She had luggage- lots of suitcases, a backpack… this big trunk that she used for a coffee table.” He looked around and pointed. “Right there. And there was a pile of books right on it- next to the mattress.”

“What kinds of books?”

“I don’t know- I never checked… but one thing I’m sure of: It didn’t look this way.”

“When’s the last time you saw it look any different?”

The hand in his hair clawed and gathered a clump. “Just before I saw her drive away- when would that be? Maybe five weeks. Or six, I don’t know. It was at night. I brought her some mail, and she was sitting with her feet up on the chest. So the chest was there- that’s for sure. Five or six weeks ago.”

“Any idea what was in the chest?”

“No. For all I know it was empty- but why would anyone take an empty trunk, right? So it probably wasn’t. And if she packed out, why would she leave her clothes and her dishes and stuff?”

“Good thinking, Richard.”

“Very weird.”

We entered the room. He stood back and I began circling. Then I saw something on the floor next to the mattress. Fleck of foam. Couple more. Bending down, I ran my hand along the side of the mattress. More foam fell out. My fingers searched and I found the wound: straight as a seam, surgically neat, barely noticeable even from up close.

“What?” said Skidmore.

“It’s been slit open.”

“Oh, man.” He moved his head from side to side, flapping his hair.

He stayed in place while I got down on my knees, spread the lips of the slit, and peered inside. Nothing. I looked around the rest of the room. Nothing.

“What?” said Skidmore.

“Is the mattress yours or hers?”

“Hers. What’s going on?”

“Looks like someone’s been curious. Or maybe she was hiding something inside. Did she have a TV or stereo?”

“Just a radio. That’s gone, too! But this isn’t about burglary, is it?”

“Hard to tell.”

“But you suspect nasty, don’t you? That’s why you came here in the first place, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know enough to suspect anything, Richard. Is there something you know about her that makes you think nasty?”

“No,” he said in a loud, tight voice. “She was a lonely dyke who kept to herself- I don’t know what else you expect me to tell you!”

“Nothing, Richard,” I said. “You’ve been a big help. I appreciate the time.”

“Yeah. Sure. Now can I close up? Gotta go call a locksmith, put on a new bolt.”

We left the garage. Once outside, he pointed to the driveway and said, “That’ll take you out.”

I thanked him again and wished him luck on his private-eye essay.

He said, “Cancel that one,” and went inside the house.