The Wedding Guest

Chapter 47

The elevator arrived within seconds, rosewood doors gliding open with a whoosh. The car was paneled in the same wood. Stingy compartment, barely enough room for the three of us, filling with the odor of ripe sweat as the doors eased shut.

Milo inserted the smaller gold key into the slot next to 24 (P) and we sailed upward. Moments later, we were facing a massive Venetian mirror affixed to a white wall. The vestibule floors were white marble. Bad for noise suppression.

Milo unholstered his Glock and tiptoed out into the vestibule. Binchy armed himself and followed. Then me. Function unclear.

Long narrow vestibule, nothing but the mirror relieving the starkness. A white door to the left was designated PH1 by blocky, steel characters. Same for PH2 to the right, where an unopened package sat near the threshold.

Gun in hand, Milo tiptoed to the left, pressed his ear to the door, waited, pressed again, then made a zero-sign with thumb and forefinger. Looking down at his gun for a moment, he breathed in and slid the larger key into the bolt, turning slowly.

Slight creak, then silence.

He waited, shoulders bunched, before toeing the door open an inch, waited some more before peering through. His eyebrows arced as he nudged the gap another couple of inches. Another brief inspection. Head shake. Half a dozen more inches. Finally, he created enough space to slip through, gun-arm extended.

Binchy followed, motioning me to hang back.

I stood there until he stuck his head out and nodded. Joined the two of them in a vacant ten-by-ten foyer.

The same white marble flooring, noise mercifully cushioned by a high-pile, black-and-gold Chinese rug.

Snarling dragons and chimeras, fanged mouths agape, serpentine tails intertwined.

Beyond the foyer was five hundred square feet of space meant to be a living room.

No living here; not a stick of furniture, no windows, just three walls of floor-to-ceiling ebony bookshelves. Every inch filled with volumes but for a scarlet door notched into the broad rear unit.

Thousands of books. Not the bland-jacketed texts Susie Koster had hoarded. Every one of these was covered in gilt-trimmed, tooled leather, the bookbinder’s art displayed in a riot of colors and textures.

I stepped closer and read a few spines.

Milo and Binchy were reading, too. Milo looked angry, Binchy puzzled.

Milo edged over to the scarlet door. More leather, pebbled; oval red-lacquer doorknob.

No key-slot, no bolt.

He repeated the ear-press, retreated several steps, and repeated again, footsteps on the cushy rug no more than puffs.

I became aware of the utter lack of sound.

Not a serene silence. This was cold, blank, negative air, rife with bad possibilities. The kind of clogged silence that promises malignant surprise.

Milo placed his hand on the red knob. Rotated. Sprang back.

The scarlet door swung out smoothly on hidden hinges. Milo inched forward, allowing his Glock to lead the way.

He hazarded a peek. Then a longer look.

Nodding, he stepped through.

Same drill: Binchy leaving me to wait, followed by the go-ahead.

Now we stood in an even larger space, this one floored in black granite as glossy as an oil spill.

To the left was a white kitchen that looked as if it had never been used.

Finally the taming of the silence: a faint hum, courtesy the electronic veins, arteries, and capillaries that run through every high-end building.

Good insulation, those books.

In this room, two walls of glass offered jaw-loosening western and northern views. Dead-center on the granite, a pair of black leather Eames chairs flanked a silver six-foot cube aspiring to be a coffee table.

Atop the cube: a plastic packet of orange-tipped hypodermic syringes and a small baggie empty but for bits of white grit toward the bottom.

Behind the cube, an open doorway.

No sound but the electronic hum.

Sidling as far from the opening as possible, Milo advanced, Binchy close behind.

No permission for me to enter but I followed. Heard music rising above the hum, faint but unmistakable.

Lilting, trebly, reedy — some sort of flute, a chiffon of notes rising in pitch then returning to base.

The same arpeggio, over and over.

The kind of New Agey stuff looped in strip-mall day spas, designed to relax.

It stiffened both detectives’ gun-hands and prickled the short hairs on the nape of my neck.

They advanced. Again, neither of them held me back so I walked through the opening after they did.

Dim bedroom. Sparse but massive, likely created by combining two sleeping chambers.

This floor was cushioned by a snowdrift of white flokati rug. A black leather base held a bed wider than a king, draped tautly in silver silk. Pillows in hues that recalled the books out front were scattered on the bed and the rug. A doorless entry to the right revealed a slate, walnut, and smoked-glass bathroom.

Milo pointed to the wall facing the bed.

Covered by gray flannel drapes except where it wasn’t.

An eight-foot gap revealed the handle of a sliding glass door that led to a marble-floored balcony.

The southern view, barely encumbered by a waist-high glass railing aiming for invisibility.

I imagined what would be seen. Planes landing at LAX. Miles of the neighborhoods avoided by people who lived in the Wilshire Corridor.

From this high, everything would be beautiful.

Today it wasn’t.

At the rightmost periphery of the window was a hint of brown wicker and orange cushion. High-end, weather-resistant outdoor furniture.

Resting near the edge of the cushion was a bare foot.

Small, white. Inert.

Milo charged.

We burst onto the balcony, three sets of eyes camera-clicking.

Amanda Burdette, prone on her back, on a stylish brown wicker chaise.

Face as gray as her shapeless dress.

The hem of the dress riding up, legs white as the marble floor where they weren’t encased by a black body shaper.

On the floor, a coil of rubber tubing and a used syringe.

Ruby dot in the crook of her left arm.

Thurston Nobach, in a white, hooded caftan that trailed onto the floor, had been standing with his back to her, enjoying the view. Behind him, a pulsating tide of sound, the beeps, chitters, and burps of the city. Muted by altitude but not vanquished.

Milo’s and Binchy’s “Police! Freeze!” duet caused him to wheel. His lower jaw dropped like a dump-truck scoop.

Staring at us. Long hair ponied, the tail flopping against his shoulder. Harder, rougher face than in his website photo. Thirty-seven but I’d have guessed ten years older.

I’ve seen that in psychopaths: oozing through life apparently glib. But their bodies know different and their cells die in rebellion.

Nobach’s mouth slammed shut, surprise giving way to rage.

As the photo from Warsaw had suggested, tall man, just below Milo’s six-three. High-waisted, broad-shouldered, hints of muscularity beneath the billowing caftan.

He said, “What the fuck gives you the right?” Looked at Milo’s gun, then Sean’s, and added his own roar to the city sonata.

Fisting his hands and bracing his body. Arrogant enough to dare warfare?

Milo sidestepped him, offering Binchy direct access to Nobach. That confused me until I saw him reach for the secondary bulge in his pocket — what I’d assumed to be a second weapon.

He drew out a squat white plastic cone with a clear plastic spout at the bottom and a clear plastic push-button at the top.

Naloxone nasal spray. LAPD patrol officers carry it now, and so do county sheriffs. Not so much detectives. This Boy Scout had come prepared.

As he bent over Amanda and inserted the cone into her nostril, Thurston Nobach shoved Sean aside and hurled himself at the chaise.

Sean body-blocked him. Nobach roared again, louder, and clamped his hands around Sean’s neck.

Sean’s one of those habitual optimists who mainline good cheer. Despite years as a cop, that had worked out just fine. Now it threw him off.

Unprepared.

He struggled to free his gun-arm but Nobach had pressed against him so close that the limb was immobilized.

Nobach’s large hands blanched as they pressed harder. Sean’s eyes rolled and he gave up on the weapon, gasped, and flailed at Nobach’s grip with his free arm.

Milo was just starting to turn away from Amanda when Nobach planted his feet wide and swung Sean toward the waist-high glass barrier.

Sean’s gun clattered to the floor as he fought to resist. Nobach’s rage won out and Sean’s upper body tilted over the glass.

I dove forward, taking hold of Sean’s shirt and pulling him back. Nobach struck out at my face with one hand, missed as he tried to push Sean over with the other.

For less than a second, Nobach and I played tug-of-war with Sean’s body. Then he said, “Fuck this,” let go, and swung at me.

What could’ve been a bone-crusher grazed my right cheek as I feinted to the left and concentrated on pulling Sean to safety.

Sean, gasping, saw his gun on the floor and went for it.

Milo moved on Nobach.

Nobach weighed his options.

I shouted, “ABD pretentious asshole.”

Nobach’s eyes went blank. He round-housed his fist toward me. I stood there as if ready to take it, then moved to the left just before he reached me.

Forward inertia murdered his balance. Staggering, fighting for stability, he tried to plant his feet but got caught up in the puddling hem of his caftan.

He kicked at the cloth violently.

Tripped and pitched forward.

Long-legged and high-waisted. The wrong center of gravity when you were fighting a thirty-two-inch railing.

Arms aloft, mouth a black O, he went over.

Binchy watched him, saucer-eyed. I rubbed my left cheek. Heating up and swelling. Maybe more than a graze but nothing felt broken.

Stirring from the chaise drew me away from the pain. A series of gurgles, coughs, and mewls as Amanda Burdette came to.

Milo said, “There you go, kid,” and lightly slapped her face.

She looked up at him, groggily.

“You’re okay, kid.”

Cloudy eyes flinched, shut, opened.

It took a few moments for anything close to lucidity to appear.

“There you go, kid,” said Milo.

“Go away,” she said. “I don’t like people.”