Serpentine

Chapter 10

Fortified by two large bites of a fist-sized, rust-colored concoction laced with pumpkin seeds, Galoway wiped his lips and sat up straight, as if called upon to recite in class.

“You mind if I back up a bit? To make things clear for you.”

“Sure,” said Milo.

“How much do you know about her? Dorothy.”

“She was shot in the head in her car somewhere on the L.A. side of Mulholland, the car was pushed over the side then torched to look like an accident.”

Galoway stared at him. “That’s it?”

“We just started, Du.”

“Wow. Okay. First, I’m going to give you what I see as the psychology — her psychological state, you can appreciate that, Doctor.” He cleared his throat. “To me it was obvious she was unhappy with her marriage. She’d left him — what was his name... Seymour... Stanley. Right?”

“Stanley Barker.”

“An eye doctor. Right?”

“Right.”

Galoway grinned. “Nice to know the memory’s got some battery power left. Anyway, Stanley’s living up north but Dorothy dies down here. Obviously, that’s a red flag. I called him. He didn’t sound thrilled to hear from me, I’m thinking this is probably the guy. ’Cause that’s what they teach us, right? Start from the inside and work your way out. I figured he’d clam up but he answered my questions, just not with enthusiasm. He admitted they weren’t getting along, she’d left him six months before she was killed. No warning. He comes home, there’s a note on the bed and the kid’s at the next-door neighbor’s. Which tells you she had to be pretty miserable. I ask a few more questions — confirming the basics — and we finish. After that, Stanley’s not so great about getting back to me. So he stays on top of my list.”

I said, “Did you ever meet him face-to-face?”

“That would’ve required a plane ticket and a hotel, Doc. Milo, tell him the way it is when you’re soloing on a loser and ask for dough.”

“Got it,” I said.

“I’d have loved to sit down with the guy,” said Galoway. “You going to?”

Milo said, “He died nineteen years ago.”

“Oh. So like... two years after I talked to him. Who picked the case up after me?”

“No one.”

“All these years?” said Galoway. “Bummer. Anyway, no way was I going to dip into my own pocket. So I’m ready to fold my tents, figuring Stanley got away with it. Then something else Seeger wrote down — this smudged-pencil writing in the corner of a page, you could barely make it out — attracted my attention. The car wasn’t hers, it was registered to a company. Precision machining outfit, forget the name.”

He tapped his forehead, wrinkled it, tapped again. “Nope, gone, time for some new double A’s. Anyway, they made surgical knives, stuff like that. No indication Dorothy’s got those types of skills, I’m figuring if she had a job there, she was a secretary, something along those lines. But then I read the file for the zillionth time and the car she was in gets to me. Not a cheapo, we’re talking a one-year-old Cadillac Eldorado. Are you getting the same feeling I did, Milo?”

“Young woman, rich guy.”

“Bingo,” said Galoway, giving a thumbs-up. “Good-looking chick comes to town with no job experience, what’s she going to do? Use what God gave her.”

“Who owned the car?”

“Exactly, the obvious question. The first guy didn’t ask, or if he did, he didn’t record it. Same for Seeger. But I sniffed around. Unfortunately, the company wasn’t listed locally, so I backtracked with some business directories at the public library and then I went to the newspaper morgue. All of which takes time, by then there’s a little internet going on but the department’s not using computers except to teach clerks word processing. So we’re talking prying open Tut’s Tomb with my fingernails. Anyway the owner of the company is a guy named Deebarze. Spelled D-E-S separate word B-A-R-R-E-S, probably a French dude. Anton Des Barres. I check the backwards directory for an address and get nothing, makes sense, rich guys keep it private. So I go to the assessor and Des Barres had a house in L.A. but the last property tax payment was four years ago. I’m thinking shit, he split to France or wherever. But then I wonder if he’s dead so I check and sure enough, he kicked the bucket a year before that.”

I said, “Cause of death?”

He gave me a pitying smile. “Was he murdered, Doc? That would be juicy but nope, some disease, forget which. But here’s something that is juicy: The house was right on Mulholland, maybe two miles east of where they estimate Dorothy was found in that torched Caddy. I say estimate because if the site was recorded, it’s lost.”

Milo said, “Interesting.”

“I thought so,” said Galoway. “A picture’s forming, right? Good-looking chick leaves her old man, comes down here, gets with a rich older guy who gives her a Caddy to tool around in. Then things go bad. I mean they had to, right, for a car like that to get sacrificed? That tells me getting rid of her was a priority. Now I’m feeling some energy. I put it all together and tell my new captain and he gives me that dick-on-the-face look, says you have any actual evidence? I say not yet. A few days later, I’m re-transferred.”

“What was your captain’s name?”

“Alomar. Gregory Alomar, real bastard. Probably also dead, he smoked like a stack, ate crap, had a gut out to there. Even if he is alive, it’s not like he’s going to admit being in someone’s pocket. But sure, go for it, I’d be interested in what he has to say.”

Galoway finished the muffin. “Yum. I may get some takeout, bring it back home for my after-golf snack tomorrow. You play?”

Milo shook his head. “Not enough patience.”

“Exactly why you should try it, Milo. Good training for the soul. You, Doc?”

“Nope.”

“I thought docs spent their Wednesdays on the course.” To Milo. “So did I help?”

“Big-time,” said Milo.

“Really?” said Galoway. “That’s terrific. Maybe I could’ve been a homicide D.” He laughed. “God forbid.”

“Do you have time to show us the spot where she died, Du?”

“Now?”

“If possible.”

“Hmm. Sure why not, might as well spend some time in Los Angle-eeze. As Mayor Yorty used to say. Remember him? Sam the Man? My dad loved him — I grew up in Highland Park, this whole thing is bringing back La-La memories. I’ll go home to Ojai thanking my lucky stars.”

We waited as Galoway bought a bagful of herbaceous goods at the counter. He swung it as we walked him half a block to his car.

The “old Jag” was a red F-type convertible new enough to sport a paper plate.

Milo said, “Pretty wheels.”

“A boy needs a hobby. Got room to take one of you.”

“How about meeting us in front of the station, we’ll get our drive and follow you.”

“Your choice,” said Galoway. “We’ve got three routes. Closest east-west-wise is Beverly Glen but it lets you off north of Mulholland so I don’t see the point. Closest to the site is Laurel but that means hassling city traffic to get there. So I say let’s split the difference and take Coldwater. That work for you?”

“Sounds good, Du.”

“Excellent.” Galoway clapped Milo’s back. “This is kind of fun for an old failure like me. Hope you’ve got something with an engine. You don’t want to be eating my dust.”

He tailed us to the station, idled noisily at the curb until we exited the staff lot in Milo’s Impala.

“That’s it, huh? The big V-8, should be fine.” Swinging a U-turn, he sped north to Santa Monica Boulevard and turned right.

Milo said, “Ebullient fellow,” and pressed down on the throttle.

I said, “Maybe it’s golf.”

Galoway’s route was Santa Monica Boulevard east through Beverly Hills, then a left on Walden Drive where he crossed Sunset. A right onto Lexington took us into the shade of fifty-foot Canary Island pines that should never have succeeded in L.A. and the massive estates they sentried. Galoway’s approach to motoring emphasized advanced tailgating techniques and speed limits as suggestions. Amber lights meant acceleration. Same for the onset of red lights.

Milo bore down hard as the red Jaguar headed north on Beverly Drive, soon transformed to Coldwater Canyon. Just past a small park to the left, a sightseeing bus blocked the street, a driver on speaker lying to wide-eyed tourists about celebrity addresses.

Galoway passed on the left, narrowly missing a head-on with a southbound gardener’s truck.

Milo braked hard and cursed, nudged forward, finally managed his own loop around the bus. The Jaguar was a faint red speck in the distance, rocketing through the high-end suburbia that was Beverly Hills POB.

A five-car queue at the light south of the Mulholland East junction allowed us to catch up.

Milo wiped sweat from his face. “Amazing he made it to his sixties.”

Green-lit, the four cars in front of Galoway continued on Coldwater toward Studio City as he swung a radical right onto Mulholland Drive.

The terrain changed immediately, luxury housing ceding to stretches of dry brush and drought-puckered hillside specked by the occasional stilt-propped box. I came to L.A. as a sixteen-year-old college freshman, wondered how hill-houses on chopsticks stayed up. Then storms and quakes came and they didn’t. In SoCal, optimism’s the fossil fuel.

As we traveled east, straightaways shriveled and the road became a succession of S-curves that ribboned through wilderness. Guardrails girded some sections of pavement but plenty of stretches were unprotected.

Where the road wasn’t bordered by trees and scrub and rocks, it offered eye-blink views of steep gorges slaloming down to the city-sized table that had become the San Fernando Valley. At its highest, the sky was unruffled blue. Below that, a mucoid gray cloud hovered.

Galoway picked up speed, brake-tapping at the apex of hairpins then immediately speeding up on the exit swoop.

I said, “Looks like he took high-performance driving.”

“Or he’s just nuts.”

Two more miles of white-knuckle road-churning took us to the Laurel Canyon junction where another red light forced the Jag to snort and wait. When released, the red car bulleted up a sharp rise east of Laurel and raced past a small enclave of ranch houses that looked as if they’d been dropped in place simultaneously. Then, more uninhabited land, broken only by Fire Hazard warning signs and reduced speed limits.

About a mile in, Galoway swung an abrupt left across the road and screeched to a stop inches from a particularly battered section of guardrail. By the time we pulled up next to him, he was out of the Jaguar beaming, sunglasses hanging from a neck chain.

“Man, that was the most fun I’ve had since I took the Skip Barber course at Laguna Seca. You get to strip brakes, end up doing two hours around the track in a Formula Four. I was the oldest guy there but they loved me.”

Milo said, “This is the place?”

His failure to chitchat demolished Galoway’s smile. He put his shades on. Mirrored lenses. The mouth below them was a hyphen. “It’s an estimate. And logical. Take a look around, my friend. You see any addresses? Only thing I had to go on was Seeger’s notes. He put down something like one point three miles past Laurel. Am I remembering it wrong after twenty years? Can’t promise no, so give or take.”

He turned his back, folded his arms across his chest.

Milo walked to the edge of the cliff and stood next to him. “Thanks for taking the time, Du.”

“Sure,” said Galoway, grudgingly. “What the diff, anyway? It’s not like after all this time you’re going to get DNA in the brush down there. You saw what it was like coming up here. No people. Anywhere near here would be easy to pull off a car-dump at night.”

He ticked a finger. “No streetlights, it’s late enough, only thing you’re going to encounter are owls and deer and cah-yotes.”

Milo got on one knee and craned downward.

Galoway said, “Now you’re going to ask me where she landed and I’m going to tell you not a clue.” He kicked the guardrail. “Was this here back then? No idea. But there’s plenty of places still not railed. Wherever it went down, it’s got to be a dead drop for, what, at least five hundred feet? Light it up, push it over, business taken care of.”

He rubbed his palms together.

I said, “Who discovered the car?”

Galoway snorted. “You’d think someone would write that down in the book but you’d be wrong.”

Milo said, “Any idea where the book got filed?”

Galoway swiveled and faced him. “I wish. It was a loser when I got it and I went nowhere fast. Which was the plan, Alomar didn’t want me there. When I quit I handed all my paperwork over to some clerk.”

He turned toward the view. “All that crud over the Valley.” Down came the shades. The eyes behind them were weary. “Don’t mean to be touchy, I guess this brings back bad memories. Working my ass off and accomplishing nothing — you want to see Des Barres’s place?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Nah,” said Galoway. “We’re here already.”

He led us another 1.9 miles past a spot where another group of houses appeared. Not the homogeneous development just past Laurel. The more typical L.A. random toss of bungalows and mansions and everything in between.

Again, without warning, the Jag made a sudden stop in front of a property on the south side of Mulholland.

Du Galoway got out, expressionless, and pointed to arched iron gates. Returning to the Jag, he flashed a brief smile. “Anything else?”

Milo said, “Can’t think of anything.”

“Good luck, then.” Hooking an oblivious U-ey, Galoway rumbled back toward Laurel.

Milo put on the hand brake and said, “Making friends and losing them.”

The property Galoway had indicated was on the corner of Mulholland and Marilyn Drive, hedged by twelve feet of dense, emerald-green ficus. The hedge ran along both streets, far enough on either arm to suggest a huge spread.

We walked to the gates. Two feet lower than the hedge, beefy iron pickets fashioned decades ago and updated by mint-green paint and gilded spearhead finials. A gently curving cobbled road climbed past an alternating array of Mexican fan palms, sagos, and Italian cypresses. At the top of the drive, the barest hint of white wall and red-tiled roof.

Milo said, “This was never anything but serious real estate. Time to learn more about Mr. Des Barres.”