Survival Of The Fittest

20

I left him on the terrace with his cigar and the rest of the wine. Just before I stepped onto the pathway that led back to the hotel parking lot, I stopped and watched him smile as he said something to the maitre d'.

Man at leisure. No clue he'd been talking about the death of a colleague.

Would it have bothered me had Milo not warned me about him?

For all his open manner, he'd told me less than Dr. Lehmann: Nolan had been an isolated, smarter-than-usual cop who played it by the book.

None of the serious problems Lehmann had alluded to. On the other hand, Baker had been Nolan's training officer, not his therapist.

Still, it was my second face-to-face meeting for no apparent reason.

People scurrying to protect themselves in the event of a lawsuit?

Over what?

Helena still hadn't called. Maybe she'd decided that only Nolan would understand what Nolan had done. If she dropped out of therapy, it was out of my hands, and on some level that didn't bother me. Because Lehmann was right: Real answers were often unobtainable.

Once home, I tormented myself with a faster-than-usual run up the glen, showered and changed, and set out for Beverlywood at four-fifteen, reaching the Carmeli home with ten minutes to spare for the five o'clock meeting.

The house was a neatly kept single-story ranch on a block full of them. A negligible lawn sloped up to a used brick driveway. Parked on top were a blue Plymouth minivan and a black Accord, both with consulate plates. The curbs were empty save for two Volvo station wagons and a Suburban parked down the block and an electrical-company van across the street. Other driveways hosted more vans and wagons, lots of infant seats. Utility and fertility.

Tucked east of the Hillcrest Country Club and south of Pico, Beverlywood had been developed in the fifties as a starter community for the families of junior executives on their way to senior partnerships and manses in Brentwood and Hancock Park and Beverly Hills, and some people still called it Baja Beverly Hills. L.A. had essentially abandoned street maintenance, but Beverlywood looked manicured because of a homeowners' society that set standards and kept the trees trimmed. A private security company patrolled nightly. The land boom of the seventies had raised housing prices to the half-million mark and the downslide had kept them at a level where striving families found themselves at the top of their dream, nesting here permanently.

Milo pulled behind me two minutes later. He had on a bottle-green blazer, tan slacks, white shirt, and yellow-and-olive tartan tie. Green giant, but not jolly.

“Finally managed to locate six more creeps from the initial M.O. files, all moved to Riverside and San Berdoo. None check out time-wise, and their P.O.'s and/or therapists vouch for them. Nothing on DVLL, either, so I'm ready to chuck that one into the garbage file.”

At the house, Zev Carmeli answered Milo's knock, wearing a dark suit and a grim expression.

“Come in, please.”

There was no entry hall and we stepped right into a low, narrow, off-white living room. The deep green carpeting was amazingly similar in hue to Milo's jacket and for a second he looked like a fixture. The tan couches and glass tables could have been rented. The beige drapes drawn over the windows were filmy but most of the light came from two ceramic table lamps.

Sitting on the largest couch was a beautiful brown-skinned woman in her thirties with very long, curly black hair and moist, deep-set black eyes. Her lips were full but parched, her cheekbones molded so severely they seemed artificial. She wore a shapeless brown dress that covered her knees, flat brown shoes, no jewelry. Her eyes were nowhere.

Carmeli moved to her side and hovered and I fought not to stare.

Not because of her beauty; I'd seen Irit's death photos and here was the woman she might have become.

“This is Detective Sturgis and Dr. Delaware. My wife, Liora.”

Liora Carmeli began to stand but her husband touched her shoulder and she remained seated.

“Hello,” she said very softly, struggling to smile but not getting close.

We both shook her hand. Her fingers were limp and her skin was clammy.

I knew she'd resumed teaching school and couldn't be this depressed with her students. So our visit had raked things up.

“Okay,” said Carmeli, sitting next to her and waving at some chairs on the other side of a glass coffee table.

We sat and Milo went through one of those little detective speeches full of sympathy and empathy and possibility that he hates to deliver but delivers so well. Carmeli looked angry but his wife seemed to relate a bit- shoulders straightening, eyes focusing.

I'd seen that before. Some people- usually women- respond to him immediately. He gets no satisfaction from it, always worried that he'll fail to produce. But he keeps delivering the speech, knowing no other way.

Carmeli said, “Fine, fine, we understand all that. Let's get on with it.”

His wife looked at him and said something in what I assumed was Hebrew. Carmeli frowned and tugged down at his tie. They were both good-looking people who seemed drained of their life-juices.

Milo said, “Ma'am, if there's anything you can-”

“We know nothing,” said Carmeli, touching his wife's elbow.

“My husband is right. There's nothing more we can tell you.” Only her mouth moved when she spoke. The brown dress tented and I could see no body contours beneath it.

“I'm sure you're right, ma'am,” said Milo. “The reason I have to ask is sometimes things occur to people. Things they think are unimportant so they never bring them up. I'm not saying that's actually the case here-”

“Oh for God's sake,” said Carmeli, “don't you think if we knew something we'd tell you?”

“I'm sure you would, sir.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Liora Carmeli. “Since my Iriti is… gone, I think all the time. Thoughts… attack me. At night, especially. I think all the time, I am always thinking.”

“Liora, maspeek,” Carmeli broke in.

“I think,” she repeated, as if amazed. “Stupid things, crazy things, monsters, demons, Nazis, madmen… sometimes I'm dreaming, sometimes I'm awake.” She closed her eyes. “Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.”

Carmeli's face was white with rage.

His wife said, “The strange thing is, Iriti is never in the dreams, only the monsters… I feel that she is there but I can't see her and when I try to… bring her face into the picture, it… flies away from me.”

She looked at me. I nodded.

“Iriti was my treasure.”

Carmeli whispered urgently to her in Hebrew again. She didn't seem to hear.

“This is ridiculous,” he said to Milo. “I request you to leave at once.”

Liora touched his arm. “The monster dreams are so… childish. Black things… with wings. When Iriti was little she was afraid of black, winged monsters- devils. Shedim, we call them in Hebrew. Ba'al zvuv-that means “lord of the flies' in Hebrew. Like that book about the schoolboys… it was a Philistine god that controlled insects and disease… Beelzebub in English. When Iriti was little, she had nightmares about insects and scorpions. She would wake up in the middle of the night and want to come to our bed… to help her I told her stories about shedim. The Bible- how we- the Philistines were… conquered… and their stupid gods… my culture- my family is from Casablanca- we have wonderful stories and I told them all to her… stories with children conquering monsters.”

She smiled. “And she stopped being afraid.”

Her husband's hands were blanched fists.

She said, “I thought I was successful because Iriti stopped coming to our bed.”

She looked at her husband. He stared at his trousers.

“When Irit got older,” said Milo, “was she afraid of anything?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I thought I'd done a good job with my stories.”

She let out a short, barking laugh, so savage it tightened my spine.

Her husband sat there, then shot to his feet and came back with a box of tissues.

Her eyes were dry but he wiped them.

Liora smiled at him and held his hand. “My brave little girl. She knew she was different… liked being pretty… once, when we lived in Copenhagen, a man grabbed her and tried to kiss her. She was nine, we were shopping for jeans and I was walking in front of her instead of with her because Copenhagen was a safe city. There was a museum, there, on the Stroget- the main shopping street. The Museum of Erotica. We never went in but it was always busy. The Danes are healthy about those things but perhaps the museum attracted sick people because the man-”

“Enough,” said Carmeli.

“- grabbed Iriti and tried to kiss her. An old man, pathetic. She didn't hear him- she had her hearing aid off, as usual, probably singing songs.”

“Songs?” said Milo.

“She sang to herself. Not real songs, her own songs. I could always tell because her head would move, up and down-”

“She stopped doing that a long time ago,” said Carmeli.

“When this man grabbed her,” said Milo, “how did she react?”

“She punched him and broke free and then she laughed at him because he looked so frightened. He was a little old man. I didn't even realize anything was wrong until I heard yelling in Danish and turned around and saw two young men holding the old man and Iriti standing there, laughing. They'd seen the whole thing, said the old man was crazy but harmless. Irit kept laughing and laughing. It was the old man who looked miserable.”

“That was Denmark,” said Carmeli. “This is America.”

Liora's smile vanished and she lowered her head, chastened.

“So you feel,” said Milo, “that Irit wasn't afraid of strangers.”

“She wasn't afraid of anything,” said Liora.

“So if a stranger-”

“I don't know,” she said, suddenly crying. “I don't know anything.”

“Liora-” said Carmeli, taking hold of her wrist.

“I don't know,” she repeated. “Maybe. I don't know!” She broke free of her husband's grasp and faced the wall, staring at the bare plaster. “Maybe I should have told her other stories, where the demons won, so you needed to be careful-”

“Ma'am-”

“Oh, please,” said Carmeli, disgusted. “This is idiotic. I insist you leave.”

He stomped to the door.

Milo and I got up.

“One more thing, Mrs. Carmeli,” he said. “Irit's clothes. Were they sent back to Israel?”

“Her clothes?” said Carmeli.

“No,” said Liora. “We sent only… she- when we- our customs- we use a white robe. Her clothes are here.” She faced her husband. “I asked you to call the police and when you didn't, I had your secretary call. They arrived a month ago and I kept them.”

Carmeli stared at her, bug-eyed.

She said, “In the Plymouth, Zev. So I can have them with me when I drive.”

Milo said, “If you don't mind-”

“Crazy,” said Carmeli.

“I am?” said Liora, smiling again.

“No, no, no, Lili, these questions.” More Hebrew. She listened to him calmly, then turned to us. “Why do you want the clothes?”

“I'd like to do some analyses,” said Milo.

“They've already been analyzed,” said Carmeli. “We waited months to get them back.”

“I know, sir, but when I take on a case I like to make sure.”

“Make sure what?”

“That everything has been done.”

“I see,” said Carmeli. “You're a careful man.”

“I try.”

“And your predecessors?”

“I'm sure they tried, too.”

“Loyal, too,” said Carmeli. “A good soldier. After all this time, the clothes being in my wife's car, what use are analyses?”

“I never touched them,” said Liora. “I never opened the bag. I wanted to, but…”

Carmeli looked ready to sting, said only, “Ah.”

Liora said, “I'll get them for you. May I have them back?”

“Of course, ma'am.”

She got up and went outside.

Unlocking the minivan's rear hatch, she lifted up a section and revealed the spare-tire compartment. Next to the wheel was a plastic bag still bearing an LAPD evidence tag. Inside was something blue- rolled jeans. And a white patch- a single sock.

“My husband already thinks I've gone crazy because I've started talking to myself- like Iriti's singing.”

Carmeli stiffened, then his eyes went soft. “Liora.” He put his arm around her. She patted his hand and moved away from him.

“Take it,” she said, pointing to the bag.

As Milo reached for it, Carmeli returned to the house.

Watching him, Liora said, “Maybe I am sick. Maybe I am primitive… What will you be analyzing? The first police told us there was nothing on it.”

“I'll probably repeat what's been done,” said Milo. He held the bag in both hands, as if it were something precious.

“Well,” she said. “Good-bye. Nice to meet you.”

“Thank you, ma'am. I'm sorry we upset your husband.”

“My husband is very… tender. You will return it?”

“Absolutely, ma'am.”

“Can you say when?”

“As soon as possible?”

“Thank you,” she said. “As soon as possible. I would like to have it with me again when I drive.”