Therapy

CHAPTER 43

The building’s manager was a man in his sixties named Stan Parks. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and gray slacks, had thinning hair and a disapproving mouth. A thirty-year-old Caltech engineering diploma hung behind his desk. His office was on the ground floor, next to the elevator, and the rumble of the lift shook the room at random intervals.

He said, “Hacker has no lease, just a month-to-month. He and his roommate.”

“Raymond Degussa?”

“Raymond something. Let me check.” Parks tapped the keys of a laptop. “Yup, Degussa.”

“Did he move in the same time as Hacker?”

“Two months later. Hacker cleared it with me. I told him no subleases, the check had to come from him, no split obligations.”

“How are they as tenants?”

“They’re okay. Your month-to-months, they’re the ones who give you troubles. I prefer leases, but it’s not one of the best units, stayed vacant a long time.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not one of our best. Not the harbor side, and the way the trees grow at that particular height you can’t see much of anything on the other side.”

“What trouble has he given you?”

Parks frowned and played with a pencil, stippling three fingertips, then passing the shaft between his fingers. “Look, I’m not just the manager, I’m part owner. So if there’s something going on that affects the building, I need to know.”

“Who are the other owners, sir?”

“My brothers-in-law, the dentists.” The elevator vibrated the room. Parks sat through it, stoic. “I depend on this place. Is there something I should worry about?”

Milo said, “At this point, no. What kind of problems have Hacker and Degussa given you?”

“At this point,” said Parks.

“The problems, sir?”

“A few noise complaints at the beginning. I spoke to Hacker, and it stopped.”

“What kind of noise?”

“Loud music, voices. Apparently, they bring women in, throw parties.”

“Apparently?”

“Mostly I’m sitting in here,” said Parks.

“Ever see the women?”

“A couple of times.”

“The same women?”

Parks shook his head. “You know.”

“Know what, sir?”

“The type.”

“What type is that?” said Milo.

“Not exactly… high society.”

“Party girls.”

Parks’s eyes rolled. “Hacker pays his rent. I don’t get involved in the tenants’ personal lives. After those first few complaints, they’ve been fine.”

“What’s the rent on their unit?”

“This is a money issue? Some sort of financial crime?”

“The rent, please.”

Parks said, “Hacker pays 2200 a month. The unit has two full bedrooms and a den, two baths, and a built-in wet bar. On the harbor side it would be over three thousand.”

“The women you saw, would you recognize any of them?”

Parks shook his head. “Everybody minds their own business here. That’s the point of the Marina. You get your divorced people, your widowed people. People want their privacy.”

Milo said, “Everyone doing their own thing.”

“Like you, Lieutenant. You ask all these questions, tell me nothing. You seem pretty good at keeping your business to yourself.”

Milo smiled.

Parks smiled back.

Milo asked to see Hacker’s parking slot, and Parks took us down to a subgarage that smelled of motor oil and wet cement. Half the slots were empty, but the black Explorer was in place. Milo and I looked through the windows. Food cartons, a windbreaker, maps, loose papers.

Stan Parks said, “Is this about drugs?”

“Why would it be?” said Milo.

“You’re examining the car.” Parks went over and peered through the windows. “I don’t see anything incriminating.”

“Where’s Mr. Degussa’s spot, sir?”

Parks walked us a dozen slots down to a Lincoln Town Car, big, square, the predownsize model. Chrome rims, shiny paint job. Custom job, a heavy, brownish red.

Parks said, “Pretty ugly color, don’t you think? Put all that money into restoration and end up with something like that. I keep a few collector cars, no way would I go this color.”

“This color” was the precise hue of dry blood.

“Ugly,” I said. “What cars do you keep?”

“A ’48 Caddy, ’62 E-type Jag, a ’64 Mini-Cooper. I’m trained as an engineer, do the work myself.”

I nodded.

Parks said, “By the way, Degussa also drives a motorcycle, puts it over there.” Indicating a section to the right, smaller slots for two-wheelers.

No bikes in sight.

“He pays extra for that,” said Parks. “Wanted it for free, but I told him twenty bucks a month.”

“A bargain,” said Milo.

Parks shrugged. “It’s not one of the better units.”

We left the Marina, and Milo asked for the 805 number I’d written down and the name that went with it.

Cody Marsh.

The Volvo was equipped with a hands-off phone system, and Milo plugged his little blue gizmo into it as he drove. He punched in Cody Marsh’s number. Two rings and a voice said he was being rerouted to a mobile unit. Two additional rings, and a man said, “Hello?”

“Mr. Marsh?”

“Yes.”

“This is Lieutenant Sturgis.”

“Oh, hi.” Fuzzy reception. “Hold on, let me switch off the radio… okay, I’m back, thanks for calling. I’m in my car, coming down to L.A. Any way you can see me?”

“Where are you?”

“The 101 Freeway, coming up on… Balboa. Traffic’s not looking great, but I can probably be in West L.A. within half an hour.”

“Christina Marsh is your sister?”

“She is… was… can you find time to see me? I’d really like to find out about her.”

“Sure,” said Milo. “Meet me at a restaurant near the station. Café Moghul.” He spelled the name and recited the address.

Cody Marsh thanked him and cut the connection.

We drove straight to the restaurant, arrived in twenty-five. Cody Marsh was already seated at a corner table drinking milk-laced chai.

Easy to spot; solitary patron.

By the time we stepped through the glass beads, he was on his feet. Looking exactly as if someone had died.

“Mr. Marsh.”

“Thanks for seeing me, Lieutenant. When will I be able to see my sister- to identify the body?”

“You’re sure you want to go through that, sir?”

“I thought I had to,” said Cody Marsh. “Christi has no one else.”

He looked to be around thirty, with long, wavy, brown hair parted in the middle, had on a gray shirt under a cracked, brown leather jacket rubbed white at the pressure points, rumpled beige cargo pants, white running shoes. Ruddy square face, thick lips, and tired blue eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses. Five-ten with an incipient beer belly. The only hint of kinship to the dead girl, a dimpled chin.

“Actually, sir,” said Milo, “you don’t have to do it in person. You can look at a photo.”

“Oh,” said Marsh. “Okay. Where do I go to see a photo?”

“I’ve got one right here, sir, but I have to warn you-”

“I’ll look at it.”

Milo said, “How about we all sit down?”

Cody Marsh stared at the death shot. His eyes closed and opened; he folded his lips inward. “That’s Christi.” He raised his fist, as if to pound the table, but by the time the arc was completed, the hand had stopped short of contact.

“Dammit.”

The pleasant sari-draped woman who ran the café turned to stare. Milo never talked business to her, but she knew what he did.

He smiled at her, and she resumed folding napkins.

“I’m sorry for your loss, sir.”

“Christi,” said Cody Marsh. “What happened?”

Milo took the photo and put it away. “Your sister was shot while parked in a car on Mulholland Drive, along with a young man.”

“Was the young man a friend?”

“Seemed to be,” said Milo. “His name was Gavin Quick. Know him?”

Cody Marsh shook his head. “Any idea why it happened?”

“That’s what we’re looking into. So Christi never mentioned Gavin Quick.”

“No, but Christi and I weren’t… in close communication.”

The saried woman came over. Milo said, “Just chai, right now, please. I’ll probably see you tomorrow for lunch.”

“That would be lovely,” said the woman. “We’ll have the sag paneer and the tandoori salmon on special.”

When she was gone, Cody Marsh said, “Can the… can Christi be released? For a funeral?”

“That’s up to the coroner’s office,” said Milo.

“Do you have a number for them?”

“I’ll call for you. It’ll probably take a few days to get the papers in order.”

“Thanks.” Marsh pinged his teacup with a fingernail. “This is horrible.”

“Is there anything you could tell us about your sister that would be helpful, sir?”

Ping ping. “What would you like to know?”

“For starts, when did Christi move to L.A.?”

“I can’t say exactly, but she called me about a year ago to tell me she was here.”

“You guys hail from Minnesota?”

“Baudette, Minnesota,” said Marsh. “Walleye Capital of the World. People who somehow find themselves there get their picture taken with Willie Walleye.”

“A fish.”

“A forty-foot model of a fish. I got out as soon as I could. Did my undergrad at Oregon State, taught grade school for a few years in Portland so I could save up enough money to go to grad school and study history.”

“History,” Milo repeated.

“Those who forget the past are condemned, and all that.”

I said, “Did your being in Santa Barbara play a role in your sister’s coming out to California?”

“It would be nice to say yes,” said Marsh, “but I seriously doubt it. The entire year we’ve seen each other exactly twice. Spoke on the phone maybe three or four times. And we’d been out of contact for a long time well before Christi left Minnesota.”

“Those two times,” I said.

“Here, in L.A. I was attending symposia and called her. Actually, I called her three times, but once she was busy.”

“Busy doing what?” said Milo.

“She didn’t say.”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“We had dinner at my hotels.”

“Which hotels?”

“That’s important?” said Marsh.

“Anything could be important, sir.”

“You’re the expert… let’s see, one was a Holiday Inn in Pasadena, the other was a Holiday Inn in Westwood. Christi met me in the coffee shop and came dressed totally inappropriately. For an academic meeting, I mean. Not that she was attending meetings, but the… the place was teeming with academics.”

“And she didn’t look academic,” said Milo.

“Not hardly.”

“Inappropriate how?” I said.

“I really don’t want to talk ill of my sister.”

“I understand.”

Marsh pinged his cup some more. “Both times she wore halter tops with no backs, very, very short skirts, spike heels, lots of makeup.” Marsh sighed. “There was faculty all around, people were staring. The first time I let it go, figuring she didn’t know what to expect. The second time I said something to her and it was a very tense meal. She cut it short, announced she had to go, and just walked out without saying good-bye. I didn’t try to follow her. Afterward, I realized I’d been a prissy jerk, phoned her to apologize, but she didn’t return the call. I tried again but by that time her number was inactive. A month later I heard from her, and she didn’t mention a thing about walking out. I asked for her new number, but she said she was using prepaid cell phones- disposable, so there was no sense copying down the number. I’d never heard of that.”

“She say why she was using prepaids?”

“She said it was simpler. I took that to mean she didn’t have enough of a credit history to get a real phone account. Or she had no permanent home.”

“Out on the streets?”

“No, I think she was living somewhere, but not in a permanent place. I tried to find out, she refused to tell me. I took that to mean she thought I’d disapprove.”

Ping ping. “I probably would’ve. Christi and I are very different.”

I said, “She called you to reconnect.”

“She managed to track me down at the History Department, I walk in one day and find a message in my box that my sister called. At first I thought it was a mistake.” Cody Marsh winced. “I didn’t think of myself as having a sister. Christi and I have the same father but different mothers, and we didn’t grow up together. Christi’s significantly younger than I- I’m thirty-three and she’s… was twenty-three. By the time she was old enough to relate to, I was in Oregon, so we really didn’t have a relationship.”

“Are her parents alive?”

“Our father’s dead. And so is my mother. Christi’s mother is alive, but she has serious mental problems, has been institutionalized for years.”

“How many years?” I said.

“Since Christi was four. Our father was a raging alcoholic. As far as I’m concerned, he killed my mother. Smoking in bed, blind-drunk. My mother was drinking, too, but the cigarette was his. The house went up in flames, he managed to stagger out. Lost an arm and part of his face, but it didn’t put a dent in his drinking. I was seven, went to live with my maternal grandparents. Soon after, he met Christi’s mom in a bar and started a whole new family.”

“Serious mental problems,” I said.

“Carlene’s schizophrenic,” said Marsh. “That’s why she hooked up with a one-armed, scar-faced drunk. I’m sure drinking was what they had in common. I’m sure drinking and living with my father didn’t help her mental state. I was the lucky one, my grandparents were educated, both teachers, religious. My mother was trained as a social worker. Marrying him was her big rebellion.”

“And he raised Christi after her mom was institutionalized?”

“It couldn’t have been much of a raising. I don’t know the details, I was living in Baudette, and he took Christi over to St. Paul. I heard that she dropped out of high school, but I’m not sure exactly what grade. Later, she went to Duluth with him- he was working on some sort of land crew. Then back to St. Paul. A really bad neighborhood.”

Milo said, “Sounds like you kept tabs.”

“No,” said Marsh. “I heard things from my grandparents. Filtered through their biases.” Marsh worked several strands of hair over his face, spread them back, shook his head. “They hated my father, blamed him for my mother’s death and everything else that was wrong in the world. They loved recounting his misfortunes in great detail. The slum neighborhoods he was forced to live in, Christi failing in school, dropping out. Christi getting into trouble. We’re talking editorializing, not straight reporting. They saw Christi as an extension of him- bad seed. They wanted nothing to do with her. She wasn’t their blood. So Christi and I were kept apart.”

“What kind of trouble did Christi get into?” I said.

“The usual: drugs, keeping bad company, shoplifting. My grandparents told me she got sent to one of those wilderness camps, then juvenile hall. Part of it was their schadenfreude- reveling in someone else’s misery. The other part was that deep down they worried about me. Being half-Dad genetically. So they used Dad and Christi as negative examples. They were preaching to the converted because Christi represented everything I despised about my roots. The trash side, as my grandparents called it. I was a good student, well behaved, destined for better things. I bought into that. It wasn’t until my divorce-” He smiled. “I neglected to mention that somewhere along the way I got married. That lasted nineteen months. Soon after the divorce, both my grandparents died, and I was feeling pretty alone, and I realized I did have a half sib I barely knew and maybe I should stop being a self-righteous jerk. So I tried to get in touch with Christi. Nagged my great-aunt- my grandmother’s sister- until she told me Christi was still living in St. Paul, ‘doing burlesque.’ I phoned a few strip clubs- I was motivated, the whole rebonding fantasy- and finally located the place where Christi worked. She wasn’t happy to hear from me, very distant. So I bribed her by wiring her a hundred bucks. After that, she started calling every couple of months. Sometimes to talk, sometimes to ask for more money. That seemed to bother her- having to ask. There was a shy side to her, she’d pretend to be tough but she could be sweet.”

Milo said, “She give you any other details about her lifestyle?”

“Just that she was dancing, we never got into details. When she called, it was always from a club, I could hear the music going. Sometimes I thought she might’ve sounded high. I didn’t want to do anything to put distance between us. She liked the fact that I was a teacher. Sometimes she called me ‘Teach’ instead of my name.”

Marsh removed his glasses and wiped them with his napkin. Unshielded, his eyes were small and weak. “Then her calls stopped, and the club said she was gone, no forwarding. I didn’t hear from her for over a year, until I got the message in my box at school.”

“No idea what she was doing for over a year?”

Marsh shook his head. “She said she’d made enough from dancing to relax for a while, but I wondered.”

“About what?”

“If she’d gotten into other things. I put that out of my head because I had no facts.”

“Other things such as…”

“Selling herself,” said Marsh. “That was another thing my grandparents were always telling me about Christi. She was promiscuous. They used less-kind language. I didn’t want to hear it.”

He took hold of his cup, managed to get down some chai.

“Christi had learning problems, but I guess one thing she could always count on was her looks. She was an extremely beautiful child. Skinny as a stick when she was little, white-blond hair below her waist. It was never clean or combed and she wore mismatched clothes- Dad didn’t have a clue. Sometimes, not often, he’d drop in unannounced. My grandfather would always storm up to his room and not come down. Grandmother called Christi ‘the street urchin.’ As in, ‘Here’s the bum and the street urchin come a-knocking. Better Lysol the cups and glasses.’ Usually, I’d escape to my room, too. One time, Christi couldn’t have been more than four, so I was fourteen, she ran up the stairs, flung my door open, and threw herself on me.”

Marsh pulled at the skin around his jaw. “Hugging me, tickling me, giggling, an idiot could’ve seen she was reaching out. But it annoyed me. I yelled at her to stop. Bellowed. And she got off me, stared with this look in her eyes. And slunk out. I really crushed her.”

His eyes were dry but he wiped them. “I was fourteen, what did I know?”

I said, “What do you know about her life in L.A?”

“In L.A. she didn’t ask me for money, I can tell you that.” He nudged his teacup aside. “I guess that bothered me. Because of what she might be doing to get by. Was she involved with bad people?”

“Did she imply that?”

Marsh hesitated.

“Sir?”

“She did tell me some wild stories,” said Marsh. “The last time we spoke, over the phone-”

Milo said, “How long ago was that?”

“Three, four months.”

“What kind of wild stories?”

“More out there than wild,” said Marsh. “She talked extremely fast so I wondered if she’d gotten into drugs- amphetamines, cocaine, something that was hyping her up. Or worse, could she be ending up like her mother.”

“Tell us about the stories,” I said.

“She claimed she was working with secret agencies, doing undercover work, spying on gangsters hooked up with terrorists. Making big money, wearing expensive clothes- expensive shoes, she went on a long time about her shoes. She really wasn’t making much sense but I let her go on. Then she just stopped talking, said she had to go, hung up.”

He pulled at his hair. “That’s the last time we talked.”

Milo said, “Secret agencies.”

Marsh said, “Like I said, out there.”

I said, “And shoes were a big deal to her.”

“Spying and wearing good shoes,” said Marsh. “She even mentioned a brand, some Chinese thing.”

“Jimmy Choo.”

“That’s the one.” Marsh stared at us. “What? It was true?”

“She was wearing Jimmy Choo shoes the night she died.”

“Oh, God. And the rest-”

Milo said, “The rest was fantasy.”

“Poor Christi,” said Marsh. “Fantasy as in mental illness?”

Milo glanced at me.

“No,” I said. “She was misled.”

“By the person who killed her?”

“It’s possible.”

Marsh moaned, covered his face with his hand.

We watched his shoulders heave.

“At least,” he said, “she wasn’t going crazy.”

“That’s important to you.”

“My grandparents- they raised me well, in a pseudo-moral sense. But I came to realize that they weren’t moral people. The way they demeaned Christi, her mother. Even Dad. I hated him but I came to realize that everyone deserves grace and charity. Grandmother and Grandfather always said Christi would end up like her mother. Made jokes about it. ‘Mad as a loon.’ ‘Weaving baskets in Bedlam.’ This was a child they were talking about. My sister. I didn’t like hearing it but I never objected.”

He gathered a handful of hair and twisted it hard enough to pucker the top of his brow.

“They were wrong. That’s good.”

I said, “Did Christi mention any names of people she was working with in the secret agencies?”

“She said she couldn’t. ‘This is covert, Teach. This is the real mindfucking powerful mojo, Teach.’ ”

Marsh slid his cup closer. “Someone misled her… who?”

“Can’t say anything more at this point, sir,” said Milo.

Marsh’s smile was resigned, but it warmed up his face. A man comfortable being disappointed. “Running your own covert operation?”

“Something like that.”

“Can you at least tell me this: Are you feeling any optimism? About finding out who did it?”

“We’re making progress, sir.”

“I guess I have to be satisfied with that,” said Cody Marsh. “Is there anything else?”

“Not at this point, sir.” Milo took his number, and Marsh stood.

“So you’ll call the coroner for me? I really want to see my little sister.”

We watched him leave.

Milo said, “Secret agent mojo. Think she coulda been going off the deep end?”

“I think someone convinced a girl with learning problems that she was playing spy games. Think prepaid phones.”

“Jerry Quick.”

“He hooked her up with Gavin,” I said. “Maybe he decided to give her another assignment: spying on his fellow scamsters. What if he was pulling a con within a con and got discovered and that’s why he’s on the run?”

“Running Christi as a mole.”

“She’d be perfect for the assignment. Undereducated, gullible, low self-esteem, living on the fringe. Growing up with a neglectful alchoholic father, she would’ve craved an older man’s attention. Jerry was an operator who didn’t pay his rent on time, but he did drive a Mercedes and he lived in Beverly Hills. To girls like Angie Paul and Christi, he would seem like a sugar daddy.”

“Christi would be perfect for something else,” he said. “Partying with Hacker and Degussa and bringing Jerry back the info. Compared to those slatterns we just saw them with, Christi would’ve been a prize.”

The saried woman came over and asked if we needed anything.

“How about some mixed appetizers?” said Milo.

She walked off, beaming.

He said, “Bastard buys her Jimmy Choos.”

“And Armani perfume and various other toys,” I said.

“Parks claims he wouldn’t recognize any of the women Hacker and Degussa partied with, but I could show him Christi’s death shot. Problem with that is, he’d freak out and want to evict Hacker and Degussa, so I can’t trust him to keep quiet.”

A tray of fried things arrived.

“Want some?”

“No thanks.”

“All for me, then.” He dipped something round into parsley-topped yogurt. “Christi wasn’t killed just because she happened to be with Gavin. Her cover got blown- hell, maybe she was the target, not Gavin, like we thought at the beginning. That would explain the sexual overtones.”

I thought about that. “Degussa impaled men in prison, and did the same to at least three women. He didn’t impale Gavin. You could be right, he concentrated his rage on Christi. Even with that scenario, though, Gavin was more than an accidental victim. As Jerry Quick’s son, he’d be a target for revenge. Or, Degussa was replaying Flora Newsome.”

“What do you mean?”

“The jealousy scenario,” I said. “If Degussa had partied with Christi, seeing her make love to Gavin would not have made him happy.”

“Degussa was dating Flora,” he said. “Christi was a party girl. This asshole picks up floozies in bars, he’s not into emotional involvement.”

“Maybe he is. Not romantically, but in terms of ownership. You said it yourself: Christi would’ve been a step up. Young, good-looking, compliant. What if Degussa wanted her to himself? Think about the Mulholland crime scene, the way the bodies were found: Gavin’s fly was open and Christi’s top was off. Degussa followed them, watched them park, watched them engage in foreplay. If all he was after was a quick execution, he could’ve stepped in earlier and gotten it over with. Instead, he waited. Watched them. The timing was significant: no consummation. The message was: You may try, but you won’t succeed. By shooting Gavin in front of Christi, he demonstrated to her that he was the dominant male. She was shocked, terrified. Maybe she tried to flirt her way out of it. Degussa shot her, too, then had fun with his iron rod.”

Milo put his fork down. Looked as if the last thing he wanted to do was eat.

I said, “The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. This is a hypermacho, action-oriented psychopath who doesn’t take well to rejection.”

He put cash on the table, called Sean Binchy and ordered him to find two other cops and do a careful surveillance on Hacker and Degussa. “Don’t lose them, Sean.” Hanging up, he rubbed his face. “If you’re right about Jerry Quick assigning Christi to Gavin and to Degussa, he used her in ways she couldn’t imagine.”

He snatched up an appetizer. Gulped it down. Frowned.

“Bad batch?” I said.

“Bad world.”