Survival Of The Fittest

37

Milo gave Pierce more details as we returned to Fourth Street.

“Different M.O.s, different divisions for each one,” said the Central detective. “Some piece of crap playing games?”

“That's what it looks like.”

“Who're the other Ds?”

“Hooks and McLaren in Southwest, Manny Alvarado in Newton, and we just picked one up that doesn't fit except for a DVLL link that's Hollywood's. D-I named Petra Connor, works with Stu Bishop.”

“Don't know her,” said Pierce. “One day Bishop's gonna be chief. Why isn't he in on it?”

“On vacation.”

“So what're we talking about, some coordinated effort?”

“Nothing to coordinate so far,” said Milo. “We've just been trading info and not much of it. Gorobich and Ramos did the whole crime-scene thing with the FBI and didn't get much either.”

Leaving out one particular detective.

Pierce clicked his upper teeth against his lowers. Perfect teeth. Dentures. “What do you want me to do, here?”

“Hey, Bob, far be it from me to tell you what to do.”

“Why not? My wife does. And her mother. And my daughters. And everyone else with a mouth… Okay, what I'm gonna do tonight is write this up as a 187 committed during a robbery. Then I'll try to see if Mr. Myers has a family. And a drug record. If there's a family, I make that call. If not, I visit the trade school tomorrow, see if he was a student, take it from there.”

Pierce smiled. “If I'm feeling really nasty, I call Bruce at midnight and tell him hey, guess what you'll probably still be working on when I'm fishing at Hayden Lake, trying to figure out which of my neighbors is an Aryan Nations nutcase and which one just hates people on general principle.”

“Would it traumatize you,” said Milo, “if I try to find out about Myers tonight? Run him through the files, maybe check out the school.”

“The school's closed.”

“Maybe they've got an off-hours number, someone who can confirm he was a student, tell us something about him.”

Pierce's eyes seemed to twinkle but the rest of his face expressed nothing. “Insomniac?”

“I've been living with this one for a while, Bob.”

“Yeah, go ahead, why not? You can call the family, too. And while you're at it, take my dog to the vet to get his anal glands squeezed.”

“Forget it. Don't mean to muscle in.”

“Hey, I'm kidding- go ahead, do what you want. I've got forty-eight days left before I trade smog for Nazis and no way am I gonna finish this one by then. Just keep me cued in from time to time, I need straight paper.”

He faced me. “This is police work in action. Enjoying the consulting, so far?”

Driving away, I said, “There's no way anyone else would have noticed those letters. A message but a private one.”

He twisted the wheel, drove to Sixth Street, hung a sharp left, and headed west, racing through the dark downtown streets. The only people visible were living out of shopping carts.

“Mug a blind guy, fake a robbery,” he said. “Telling us: Look how goddamn clever I am- press here for my score.”

He rolled up onto the freeway.

“Learn anything from the body?” I said.

“Not really. The poor guy was hashed.”

“So much for neat and clean,” I said. “So much for mercy killing. He's picked up the pace and increased the violence level. And the risk level: broad daylight. He may think he's got a serious philosophy but he's just another psychopath.”

“What's really picked up is his confidence level, Alex. He has no idea we even know what's going on, and with Carmeli's gag order we can't flush him out. Though what kind of warning could we issue? Anyone with a dark skin and a disability is a potential victim? Just what this city needs.”

“Anyone with dark skin and a disability plus Malcolm Ponsico. Who joined a group that just might believe handicapped people aren't human. Myers's death says we need to get closer to Meta, Milo. And why not use the fact that the killer doesn't know we're on to him as an advantage? I'll go to the bookstore, see if they've got a bulletin board, check out Zena Lambert. Maybe I can get invited to the next Meta party.”

We were going eighty-five on the 10, now. He passed under the bridge at the Crenshaw exit. “If Lambert turns out to be a literal femme fatale, chatting her up could be more than just a social thing.”

“Femme fatale,” I said. “So now you like the idea of a boy-girl killer team?”

“At this point, I'm not dismissing anything.”

“A collaboration could explain some of the diversity in M.O. Two self-rated geniuses getting together to play human chess. She serves as a lure, he steps in and does the heavy lifting. So when do I go to Spasm?”

“Thought you hated parties.”

“Sometimes I'm more social than others.”

We stopped for coffee at a fast-food stand on La Cienega, where I called Robin and told her there'd been another murder and I'd be late.

“My God- another retarded child?”

“A blind man.”

“Oh, Alex…”

“I'm sorry. It might be a while.”

“Yes… of course. How did it happen?”

“Fake mugging,” I said. “Downtown.”

I heard her inhale sharply. “Do what you have to do. But wake me when you get in. If I'm asleep.”

It was after eleven by the time we returned to Sharavi's house. He took a while to answer the door, had clearly been sleeping but he did his best to hide it.

The gold eyes were red-rimmed. He wore a plain white T-shirt and green cotton athletic shorts. As he ushered us in, he revealed his good hand and the black-matte pistol dangling from it.

“Plastic,” said Milo. “Glock.”

“No, a smaller manufacturer.” Sharavi slipped the weapon into a pocket of the shorts. “So the blind man was part of it.”

Milo told him what we'd learned and we returned to the computer room. Moments later we learned that Melvin A. Myers had no criminal record and had received various forms of public assistance for most of his life. No family.

“Let's try the school,” said Milo. “Central City Skills Center.”

Unsurprisingly, no one answered and Sharavi played with data banks for a while, finally locating a two-year-old article on the school in the Los Angeles Times. The director at that time had been a woman named Darlene Grosperrin.

“At least it's not Smith,” said Milo. “Look her up.”

He was sitting on the edge of his folding chair, moving in rhythm with Sharavi's one-handed stabs at the keyboard. Unaware of the harmony.

Sharavi complied. “Yes, here it is, DMV: Darlene Grosperrin, Amherst Street, Brentwood.”

Milo's long arm shot forward as he grabbed the phone and dialed 411. He barked, listened, wrote down the number. “Grosperrin, D., no first name, no address, but how many of those can there be… Here's what you get for your trusting nature, Ms. G. A midnight call.”

He punched numbers again.

“Darlene Grosperrin? This is Detective Milo Sturgis of the Los Angeles Police Department, sorry to call this late- pardon, ma'am? No, no, not your daughter, sorry to scare you, ma'am… it's about one of the students at the skills center, a gentleman named Melvin A. Myers- no, ma'am, unfortunately, he's not okay…”

He put the phone down ten minutes later.

“Top student, she says. And not retarded, smart, one of their best trainees, could type over one hundred fifty words a minute on the computer. He was due to graduate in a few months, she was sure he'd get a job.”

He rubbed his face.

“She was pretty broken up, couldn't tell me what he'd been doing in the alley. Sometimes he ate dinner downtown before heading back to Crenshaw but there'd be no reason for him to wander in there. And he was pretty good with that cane, knew the street layout.”

“So he was lured,” I said. “What about family?”

“None- lucky for Bob Pierce. Myers has been living alone for the last five years, since his mother died. Apparently she sheltered him and after she was gone he decided to pull himself together. First he took some training at the braille center, then he enrolled at the school. They've got an eighteen-month computer program and he was acing it. The address on Stocker is a state-financed group home.”

Sharavi removed the black-matte pistol and placed it next to the computer. “A blind man… my contact back east called me while you were gone. He's found nothing on Meta in New York, but the lawyer who wrote that article in The Pathfinder-Farley Sanger- is still practicing at the same Wall Street firm. The editor- that woman stock analyst, Helga Cranepool- is still working at her job, too. Neither of them comes up in Lexis, so Sanger doesn't go to court on important cases. My source says the firm does estate planning for rich people.”

“What kind of car does he drive?” said Milo. “What kind of shampoo does he use?”

“Mercedes station wagon, one year old. I'll try to find out about the shampoo. And if he uses cream rinse.”

Milo laughed.

Sharavi said, “The Mercedes is registered in Connecticut. Sanger's got a home in Darien and an apartment on East Sixty-ninth Street. He's forty-one years old, married, has two children, a boy and a girl, no record of criminal activity.”

“So Sanger's being watched.”

“For a while. I also looked up Zena Lambert, the bookstore clerk. No criminal record for her, either. She's twenty-eight years old, lives on Rondo Vista Street in Silverlake. The bookstore's nearby. She has a MasterCard but rarely uses it. Last year, she earned eighteen thousand dollars.”

He smiled. “I'll check into her hair-care, as well.”

“You surveilling her, too?” said Milo.

“Not without your agreement.”

“How long are you planning to surveil Sanger?”

“Long as necessary. In view of his belief that retarded people are- what was the phrase, Dr. Delaware-”

“Meat without mentation,” I said.

“- meat without mentation, it seems a good idea, maybe he'll do something that tells us more about the group. On both coasts.”

“Speaking of coasts, any chance of accessing his travel records?” said Milo. “Corporate lawyers fly back and forth all the time, nice cover.”

“Good idea,” said Sharavi. “I'll do it tomorrow, when offices open in New York. In view of Myers's murder, I did call all the major hotels here in L.A., just to check if Sanger's registered and he's not. But he could be traveling under a different name.”

“Thanks for all the work.”

Sharavi shrugged. “What next?”

“I've got an appointment to meet with Mrs. Grosperrin tomorrow morning, see if I can learn more about Myers, why he was lured, as opposed to some other student.”

“For one, he was black,” I said. “Every single victim- except Ponsico- was non-Anglo.”

“A racist eugenicist,” said Sharavi.

“The two have generally gone together. A look at the books Spasm sells might give us some information. Something tells me the place doesn't specialize in children's literature. When do I go?”

Sharavi's eyebrows rose.

Milo told him, “He wants to play Superspy. I blame you.”

“Are you thinking of going as yourself, Doctor?”

“I wasn't planning to show ID.”

“Then maybe you should take alternative ID.” Sharavi turned to Milo. “It's the kind of thing I could be helpful with.”

“Undercover hoo-hah?” said Milo.

“For his protection. If he's up for a bit of role-playing.”

Talking about me in the third person.

Sharavi gave me an appraising look. “You've already made progress on a beard.”