Time Bomb

20

When we got back to the pay lot, the Ford was in easy-exit position. The Filipino attendant stopped traffic on Speedway to let us out. Milo didn’t acknowledge the courtesy.

I said, “Swastikas on cars, hate messages on walls. What do you think?”

He said, “I think the world’s a kind and compassionate place,” and nudged the car through the pedestrian jumble. The pedestrians weren’t feeling cooperative today. Milo cursed as he inched forward, but his heart wasn’t in it.

I said, “ ‘Remember Kennedy.’ It doesn’t make much sense. Unless it was a warning, not a tribute. As in, remember what happened to Kennedy- we’ll get you too.”

“Who’s warning who?”

I said, “I don’t know,” and grew silent.

He smiled. “Starting to see evil everywhere? Sounds like a peace officer’s perspective.”

“Speaking of peace officers, this Mehan a good cop?”

“Very good.”

“Think he and Smith ever compared notes?”

He gave me a sharp look. “What is this, the Police Review Board?”

“Just wondering.”

“Wondering what? If one arm of the octopus knows what the other’s doing? Usually not. But what if Mehan and Smith did put their heads together. What would they have ended up with? Double dead ends.”

I said, “The dope thing might have led them somewhere. Smith was thinking in that direction- the rabbi said he was asking if Gruenberg had been involved in drugs. Not that that seems likely.”

“Why not?”

“Little old dope granny? She sure wasn’t living the life-style.”

“Alex, most likely Smith was just fishing- working with what he had, which in this case was close to zero. But the way things have turned, you can’t eliminate anyone. All the money to be made- it’s loony tunes out there. We’re getting old ladies packing their supp-hose with the stuff; people cuddling sweet little babies, the buntings crammed full of white powder; cripples using false limbs. And Gruenberg’s profile doesn’t contradict a dope granny- she had radical political views, which means she might not have been so reluctant to buck the establishment. She keeps to herself, doesn’t like company, and has Novato bunking in with her- some kid out of nowhere, with no ID, no past, and she’s got him living in the same unit with her. A black kid. Even for Venice, that’s strange- you saw how the other oldsters thought so. Then, just a few days after he’s snuffed, she’s gone. Maybe he was a commie too- that was the connection between them. Maybe the two of them had some political thing going. Hell, maybe that’s where the dough went.”

“Cash for the cause?”

“You want to speculate, I’ll speculate.”

I thought about it as he wrestled with the steering wheel and finally got back on Pacific. “Milo, if Gruenberg was involved in the dope scene, she could have made someone mad, and run out of fear. Or maybe the people she was afraid of got to her first. What if she’d ended up with a cash-flow or a dope-flow problem, and the break-in at her place was someone looking to collect?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But the other thing you’ve got to consider is that junkies are prime opportunists. The posters could have tipped them off that she was gone; her place was vacant, a perfect target. The bottom line is, all of this is just head-tripping- we don’t know shit.”

A block later I said, “Could Holly have been involved with them- Gruenberg and Novato’s cabal?”

“Cabal? An old lady, a bag boy, and a retarded kid who isn’t on anyone’s subversive list? Not much of a cabal.”

“She wasn’t retarded-”

“Okay, just stupid. Same difference.”

“I didn’t say it was a competent cabal. Two of them are dead and one’s missing. But maybe Holly’s shooting at Massengil was politically motivated.”

“If it was Massengil she was shooting at.”

“If.”

Milo came to a short stop at Washington Boulevard.

“Too weird, Alex. Got a headache.” He drove into a self-serve gas station with a mini-mart at the back of the lot. I waited in the Ford as he purchased a packet of aspirin. Before he returned to the car, he went to the pay phone and stayed there for a while, popping tablets, feeding quarters and talking, the receiver tucked up under his chin. Making two calls.

When he came back, he said, “Mehan’s out of town, two weeks’ vacation, no one knows where any of his files are, they’ll get back to me.”

“Who was the second call to?”

He looked at me. “What a sleuth! I tried the Holocaust Center, wanted to leave a message for someone I know there. Got a tape, they’re closed Sundays.”

“That’s right,” I said. “They know you. You helped them trace that Nazi scientist- the one the army protected.”

“Good old Werner Kaltenblud, president of the Poison Gas Club. Bastard’s still alive in Syria, living like royalty, unrepentant. I’ve got a more recent connection to the Center. Last year someone painted swastikas on the side of the museum building they’re putting up. Not my usual thing, but they called me because of Kaltenblud. Then it hit the news and the brass took over. ATD.”

“Frisk?”

“No. The asshole who preceded him, but same old story: TV crews and politicos making speeches- Gordon Latch, in fact.”

“How about Massengil?”

“Nope. Not his district.”

“Maybe not his area of interest, either.”

“Could be. It was a real circus, Alex. ATD playing I Spy, asking lots of clever questions, filing lots of paper, but they never bothered to surveill. Next week there were broken windows and an arson fire in one of the trailers out back in the construction site. We never found out who did any of it. So much for my credibility. But maybe I’ve still got enough good-will residue for them to think back and try to remember something about this Novato kid. Something more than his library card.”

He turned left on Washington, driving parallel with the Marina. A different kind of crowd here. White slacks and deep tans and aggressive little foreign ears. The boulevard was lined with new construction- mostly low-rise designer office buildings festooned with reminders of an architectural heritage that had never existed, and nautical theme restaurants draped with BRUNCH! and HAPPY HOUR! banners.

“Pretty, huh?” said Milo. “The good life reigns.”

He drove a couple of blocks, turned off on a street that dead-ended a block later. Small houses, in varying stages of gentrification. Cars lining the street, no people. He parked in front of a hydrant, left the motor running, got out, and opened the trunk.

He came back carrying a shotgun. Clamped it to the dashboard, barrel-up, and pulled the car out onto the street.

I said, “Where to?”

“Somewhere not so pretty.”

He got back on Washington, took it to the Marina Freeway, switched to the 405, wrestled with the airport jam for a while, and got off on Imperial Highway heading east. Bordering the off-ramp were the broad gray lots of shipping terminals, import-export companies, and customs brokers, and a four-story self-storage facility that looked like the box an office building would come in. A red light halted us at the intersection of La Cienega and Imperial, and we waited it out, staring at the colossal truncated bulk of the unfinished Century Freeway: hundred-foot concrete dinosaur legs supporting a six-lane slab that ended in mid-air and was fringed with curling steel veins- a messy amputation.

The green arrow appeared and Milo turned. The terrain deteriorated rudely to a block of scabrous one-story buildings on a dry-dust lot. A pool hall, a liquor store, and a bar advertising “nude table dancers,” all plywood-boarded and choked with graffiti. Even sin couldn’t flourish here.

But a block later there were signs of revitalization. Weekly-rate motels, auto shops, car dealerships, wig stores, and rundown apartments. Several beautifully kept churches, a couple of shopping centers. The sprawling campus of Southwestern College. And for color, the Golden Arches and its rainbow-hued clones- modular fast-food setups so clean and unscarred they might have been dropped into the neighborhood just minutes before by some clumsy Franchise Stork.

Milo said, “Taking the scenic route.”

I said, “Long time since I’ve been down here.”

“Didn’t know you’d ever been down here. Most folks of the fair-pigment persuasion never find the opportunity.”

“Grad school,” I said. “First year. I was a research assistant on a Head Start program trying to increase the reading skills of ghetto kids. I took an interest in one of the children- a very bright little boy named Eric. I visited him a couple of times at home- I can still picture the place. He lived on Budlong, near 103rd. Nice-looking building, not at all what I expected for the area. Widowed mother, the father had been shot in Vietnam. Grandma helping out- place was neat as a pin. Lots of pressure from both Mom and Grandma for Eric to get A’s, become a doctor or a lawyer.”

“How old was he?”

“Five.”

Milo whistled. “Long ways to med school.”

“Fortunately he had the brains for it.”

“What happened to him?”

“I followed him for a couple of years- phone calls, Christmas cards. He was still getting A’s. And starting to develop bad stomachaches. I was going up to San Francisco for my internship. Referred the mother to a good pediatrician and a community mental health center. After that, we just kind of lost touch. He’d be college age by now. Amazing. I have no idea what happened to him. Guess that makes me your typical superficial do-gooder, huh?”

Milo didn’t say anything. I noticed he was driving faster than usual. Two hands on the wheel. As we zipped eastward, the business establishments grew smaller, sadder, rattier, and I noticed a certain consistency to their distribution: check-cashing outlets, rib joints, nail palaces, liquor stores. Lots of liquor stores. Thin dark men lounged against filthy stucco walls, holding paper bags, smoking, staring off into space. A few women in shorts and rollers sashayed by and caught whistles. But for the most part the streets were deserted- that much South Central and Beverly Hills had in common. A quarter mile farther, even the liquor stores couldn’t make it. Plywood storefronts became as common as glass. Movie theaters converted to churches converted to garbage dumps. Vacant lots. Impromptu auto graveyards. Entire blocks of dead buildings shadowing the occasional ragpicker or stray child. More young men, glutted with time, starved of hope. Not a white face in sight.

Milo turned left on Broadway, drove until 108th, and made a right. We passed an enormous, windowless brown brick fortress.

“Southeast Division,” he said. “But we’re not meeting him there.”

He drove for another few miles, through silent residential blocks of tiny, characterless bungalows. Ocher and pink and turquoise texture-coat competed with the angry black-and-Dayglo tangle of gang scrawl. Dirt lawns were surrounded by sheets of chain link. Undernourished dogs scrounged through the trash that lined the curbs. A quick turn took us to 111th. Another led us into a cracked-asphalt alley lined with an alternating band of garage doors and more chain link.

A group of black men in their early twenties loitered midway down the alley. When they saw the Ford cruising toward them, they stared defiantly, then sauntered away and disappeared into one of the garages.

Milo said, “Strictly speaking, this isn’t Watts- that’s farther east. But same difference.”

He turned off the engine and pocketed the keys, then unclasped the shotgun.

“This is where it happened,” he said. “Novato. You want to stay in the car, feel free.”

He got out. I did the same.

“Place used to be a major crack alley,” he said, looking up and down, holding the shotgun in one hand. “Then it got cleaned up- one of those neighborhood group things. Then it got bad again. Depends what week you’re here.”

His eyes kept moving. To each end of the alley. To the garage doors. I followed his gaze and saw the pock and splinter of bullet holes in stucco and wood- malignant blackheads among the graffiti blemish. The ground was struggling clumps of weeds, garbage, used condoms, cellophane packets, empty matchbooks, the cheap-jewelry glitter of foil scraps. The air stank of dog shit and decomposed food.

“You tell me,” said Milo. “Can you think of any reason for him to come down here except for dope?”

The sound of a car engine from the north end of the alley made both of us turn. Milo lifted the shotgun and held it with both hands.

What looked like another unmarked. A Matador. Sage-green.

Milo relaxed.

The car nosed up next to the Ford. The man who got out was about my age, medium-sized and trim, very dark, clean-shaven, with a medium Afro. He wore a banker’s pinstriped gray suit, white button-down shirt, red silk tie, and glossy black wingtips. Square-jawed and straight-backed and very handsome, but, despite the good posture, tired-looking.

Milo said, “Maury.”

“Milo. Congratulations on the promotion.”

“Thanks.”

The two of them shook hands. Smith looked at me. His face was beautifully shaved and fragrant with good cologne. But his eyes were weary and bloodshot under long thick lashes.

Milo said, “This is Dr. Alex Delaware. He’s a shrink, called in to work with the kids at Hale School. He was the one who discovered the connection between the Burden girl and your guy. Been a department consultant for years but had never done a ride-along. I thought Southeast might be instructive.”

“Doctor,” said Smith. His grip was very firm, very dry. To Milo: “If you wanted to be instructive, how come you didn’t give him his own shotgun?”

Milo smiled.

Smith took out a pack of Marlboros, lit one, and said, “Anyway.”

Milo said, “Where exactly did it go down?”

“Far as I can remember,” said Smith, “just about exactly where you’re parked. Hard to recall with all the shootings we get around here. I brought the file- hold on.”

He went back to his ear, opened the passenger door, leaned in, and pulled out a folder. Handing it to Milo, he said, “Don’t show the pictures to the doctor here unless you want to lose yourself a consultant.”

“That bad?”

“Shotgun, from up close- you know what that does. He must have put his hands up in a defensive reflex because they got shredded to pieces- I’m talking confetti. The face was… shotgun stuff. Barely enough blood left in him by the time the crime-scene boys arrived. But he was dope-positive all right. Coke and booze and downers- regular walking pharmacy.”

Milo thumbed through the folder, his face impassive. I moved closer and looked down. Sheets of paper. Lots of typewritten police prose. A couple of photos taped to the top. Living color. Long-view crime-scene shots and close-ups of something lying face-up on the filthy asphalt. Something ragged and wet that had once been human.

My stomach churned. I looked away but struggled to remain outwardly calm.

Smith had been watching me. He said, “I guess you guys see that stuff- medical school and all that.”

“He’s a Ph.D.,” said Milo.

“Ph.D.,” said Smith. “Philosophy doctor.” He stretched his arm down the alley. “Any ideas about the philosophy of a place like this?”

I shook my head and smiled. As Milo read, Smith kept checking the alley. I was struck by the silence of the place- a sickly, contrived silence, like that of a mortuary. Devoid of birdsong or traffic, the hum of commerce or conversation. I entertained postnuclear fantasies. Then all at once, noise intruded with all the shock and harshness of an armed robber: the scream and wobble of an ambulance siren from afar, followed by high-pitched human screams- an ugly duet of domestic violence- from somewhere close. Smith gave a distasteful look, glanced at Milo’s shotgun, opened his suit jacket, and touched the butt of the revolver that lay nestled in his shoulder holster. Then silence again.

“Okay. Let’s see. Ah, here’s the toxicology,” said Milo, flipping pages. “Yeah, the guy was definitely fried.”

“Deep-fried,” said Smith, sniffing. “Why else would he be down here?”

Milo said, “One thing I wonder about, Maury. The kid lives in Venice. Ocean Front’s a pharmacy in its own right- why bother coming down here?”

Smith thought for a moment and said, “Maybe he didn’t like the brand they were selling locally. People do that now- get picky. The businessmen we’re dealing with nowadays are into packaging and labeling. Dry Ice, Sweet Dreams, Medellin Mouton- choose your poison. Or maybe he was a businessman himself- selling, not buying, came here to collect something the boys over in Venice weren’t providing.”

“Maybe,” said Milo.

“Why else?” said Smith. “Anyway, don’t lose too much sleep over it. If I wasted my time trying to second-guess junkies and wet-heads, might as well nail my foot to the floor and run in circles all day.” He puffed on his cigarette.

Milo said, “Yeah, saw your stats on the last report.”

“Grim,” said Smith. “Wholly uncivilized.”

He smoked and nodded, tapped one wing-tip and kept looking up and down the alley. The silence had returned.

Milo returned the file to him. “Not much in the way of background on him- no priors, no history, no family.”

“Phantom of the opera,” said Smith. “Sucker came right out of nowhere, no files on him anywhere. Which fits if he was an amateur businessman. They’re getting crafty. Organized. Buying phony paper, moving around a lot, hiding behind layers, just like the corporations do. They’ve even got subsidiaries. In other cities, other states. Novato told his landlady he was from somewhere back east- that’s as specific as I got. She forgot exactly where. Or didn’t want to remember.”

“Think she was lying?”

“Maybe. She was something, that one- flaming commie, didn’t like cops, wasn’t shy about telling you. Being with her was like being back in the sixties, when we were the enemies. Before Miami Vice made it hip to oink.”

Smith laughed at his own wit, smoked, and said, “Nice to be hip, right, Milo? Take it to the bank, try to get a loan.”

Milo said, “She tell you anything?”

“Diddly.” It was all I could do to get her to let me in her house. She was real uppity. Actually called me a cossack- asked me how did it feel to be a black cossack. Like I was some kind of traitor to the race. You get anything out of her?”

“Couldn’t,” said Milo. “She’s gone. Disappeared four days after Novato got hit. No one’s seen or heard from her since.”

Surprise widened Smith’s weary eyes. He said, “Who’s on the case?”

“Hal Mehan out of Pacific. He’s on vacation, back in two weeks. From what I can gather, he did the usual missing-persons stuff, found out she hadn’t packed or taken money out of the bank. Followed it for a couple of weeks and told her friends to hire a P.I. or forget about it. Told her neighbor it looked like foul play out on the streets.”

Smith’s foot tapped faster. “Mehan know about Novato?”

“The friends say they told him.”

Smith said, “Hmm.” His eyes half-closed.

Milo said, “Yeah, I know, he coulda told you. Shoulda. But the bottom line is you didn’t lose anything. He dead-ended, moved on to greener pastures. The next-door neighbor saved her mail- I just had a look at it. Not much of it, just junk and a few bills.”

Smith continued to look perturbed. “Who are these friends of hers? No one in the neighborhood seemed to know much about her. Only one who knew anything at all was the guy next door, some kind of English rabbi. He the one who saved the mail?”

Milo nodded. “Just spoke to him. The friends were a few old folk she knew from temple. Acquaintances more than friends. According to them she wasn’t sociable, kept to herself.”

“That’s true,” said Smith. “Man, that was some little old battle-ax.”

“They also said she didn’t have any family. Same as Novato.”

Smith said, “Think that means anything?”

“Who knows?” said Milo. “Coulda been misery loving company. Two loners finding each other.”

Smith said, “Black kid and an old white woman? Some company. Or maybe the two of them were up to something, huh? When I went around there on the Novato thing, saw how hostile and radical she was, how she didn’t even want me to come inside, I asked around about her being involved in a dope thing. Asked the neighbors about people coming in and out at weird hours, fancy cars parked outside- the usual thing. No one knew anything.”

“No one still does,” said Milo. “There’s one other thing you should know. A few days after she was gone, someone burglarized her place. The rabbi’s too. Took small stuff, trashed everything, wrote nasty stuff on the walls.”

“What kind of nasty stuff?”

“Anti-Semitic. And something about remembering John Kennedy, in red paint they’d stolen from the garage. That jibe with any of the gang stuff you’ve been seeing?”

Smith said, “Kennedy? No. There’s some punk band- the Dead Kennedys. That’s all that comes to mind.” He thought. “If they got the paint right there, doesn’t sound like they came to paint.”

“Could have been just an opportunist junkie,” said Milo. “Asshole got caught up in the intruder high and got artistically inspired.”

Smith nodded. “Like a shitter.” To me: “There’re these guys break into houses, steal stuff, and dump a load on the floor. Or the bed. What do you think of that, psychologically? Or philosophically?”

“Power trip,” I said. “Forbidden fruit. Leave a signature someone’ll remember. Same as the ones who ejaculate. Or eat all the food in the fridge.”

Smith nodded.

“Anyway,” said Milo, “just thought you should know about all this.”

“Thanks,” said Smith. “In terms of a dope thing, I ran Novato through NCIC, the moniker files, DEA, called every smart narc in the Department as well as the Sheriff’s guys. Nothing. The kid had no name in the business.”

“Maybe he was a newcomer,” said Milo. “Trying to move in on someone and it got him dead.”

“A newcomer,” I said. “Novato. I’m pretty sure that’s Spanish for ‘novice.’ ”

Both of them looked at me.

I said, “Latin name on a black kid. It could be an alias.”

“El Novato, huh?” said Smith. “Well, it’s not a moniker- least not one of the ones we’ve got on file. Guess it could be an alias.” He enunciated and put on a Spanish accent. “El Novato. Kind of like El Vato Loco. Sounds like something out of Boyle Heights, but this bro was black.”

“Anything left of the fingers to print?” said Milo.

Smith shook his head. “You saw the pictures.”

“How’d you ID him?”

“Wallet in pocket. He had a driver’s license- that’s it- and a business card from the place he worked at, some grocery. I called his boss, asked him about any family to notify. He said he didn’t know of any. Later, after no one had claimed the body, I called the boss again, told him if he wanted, he could claim it, give it a decent burial.”

“Spoke to him, too,” said Milo. “He cremated it.”

“Guess that’s a decent burial,” said Smith. “Doesn’t make much difference one way or the other when you’re that way, does it?”

More screams from down the alley. The same two people tearing at each other with words.

Smith said, “I’ll probably be back in the near future, pick up one of their bodies. Anything more you want to know about Novato?”

Milo said, “That’s all that comes to mind, Maury. Thanks.”

“Far as I’m concerned, Milo, good riddance. If he was a businessman on top of doping, and getting hit slowed his business, I’m even happier. One less piece of shit to keep track of.”

Smith dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel.

“How well did the Burden girl know Novato?”

“They were seen talking to each other. Probably means nothing. I’m just following the chain wherever it leads. If there turns out to be a connection, I’ll call you in.”

“Yeah,” said Smith. “That’d be real nice. Meantime, how about you remember me when the West L.A. roster opens up. I put in an application last year- no vacancies. Wouldn’t mind getting over to civilized territory. Catch a little breathing time between homicidal incidents. Your promotion, you could have some say in it, right?”

“That kind of thing gets handled higher,” said Milo, “but I’ll do my best.”

“Appreciate it. Could use some civilization.”

“So he was a doper,” I said, after Smith had driven away. “So much for Dinwiddie’s expertise.”

“Wishful thinking,” said Milo, “does strange things to the old judgment quotient.”

He avoided the streets on the way back, getting on the Harbor Freeway and taking it through the downtown interchange into the West Side of town. Neither of us said much. Milo seemed eager to get away.

I got to Linda’s apartment at eight. She came to the door wearing a black silk blouse, gray jeans, and black western boots. Her hair had been done up, fastened by a silver comb. She had on large silver hoop earrings, blush that accented her cheekbones, more eye shadow than I’d seen before, and a look of reserve that forced its way through her smile. I was feeling it, too- a reticence, almost a shyness. As if this were a first date: everything that had happened two nights ago had been a fantasy, and we needed to start from scratch.

She said, “Hi, right on time,” took my hand, and led me inside. There was a bottle of Chablis and two glasses on the coffee table, along with dishes of sliced raw vegetables, crackers, dip, and cubes of cheese.

She said, “Just a nip before dinner.”

“Looks great.” I sat down. She took a place beside me, poured wine, and said, “How about a toast?”

“Let’s see. Things have been pretty nuts lately. So how about: to boredom.”

“Hear, hear.”

We touched glasses and drank.

She said, “So… what’s new?”

There was plenty to tell her: Mahlon Burden in his natural habitat, Novato and Gruenberg. Savaged cars. Neo-Nazis in suburbia, a crack alley…

I said, “Let’s honor the toast for a little while.”

She laughed and said, “Sure.”

We munched vegetables, drank some more.

“Got something to show you,” she said, got up, and crossed the room toward her bedroom. The jeans showed off her shape. The boots had very high heels and they did something to her walk that convinced me two nights ago had been real.

She came back with a boom box. “Amazing the sound you can get from one of these.”

She set it up on the coffee table, next to the food. “Takes cassettes and compact discs.”

Looking like a kid on Christmas morning, she set the control on battery, pressed EJECT, and handed me the compact disc that slid out. Kenny G: Silhouette.

She said, “I know you like jazz- saxophone. So I thought this might be right. Is it?”

I smiled. “It’s great. That was really nice of you.” I popped the disc back in and pressed PLAY.

Sweet soprano sounds filled the small apartment.

She said, “Umm, that’s pretty,” and sat back down. We listened. After a while I put my arm around her. During the brief dead time between the first and second cuts on the disc, we kissed. Gently, with restraint- a deliberate holding back that was mutual.

She pulled away, said, “It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too.” I touched her face, traced her jawline. She closed her eyes and sat back.

We stayed locked in a lovely inertia. Kenny G did his thing. It seemed a personal serenade. After the fourth cut, we forced ourselves up and left.

We went to the galleries, taking in the newer places on La Brea, looking at lots of bad art, a few experiments that succeeded. The last gallery we visited was brand-new and a surprise- older stuff, by L.A. standards. Early twentieth-century works on paper. I found something I wanted and could afford: a George Bellows boxing print, one of the minor ones. I’d missed getting one from the same edition at an auction last year. After some deliberation I bought it and had it wrapped to go.

“Like the fights?” she said as we left the gallery.

“Not in the flesh. But on paper it makes for good composition.”

“Daddy used to take me when I was little. I hated it, all the grunting and the blood. But I was too afraid to tell him.” She smoothed her hair, closed her eyes. “I called him today.”

“How’d it go?”

“Easier than I thought. His… wife answered. She was kind of cool. But he actually sounded happy to hear from me. Agreeable- almost too agreeable. Old. I don’t know if it’s because it’s been such a long time or he’s really aged that much. He asked me when I was coming back for a visit. I beat around the bush, didn’t give him a straight answer. Even if I wanted to go back, so much else is going on right now. By the way, I confirmed your parents’ group for tomorrow. Should be a good turnout-” She stopped herself. “Ah, the toast. Viva boredom.”

“Forget the toast if you feel like it.”

“I don’t feel like it,” she said, and put her arm around my waist.

We got to the car. I put the print in the trunk and drove to a place on Melrose: Northern Italian food, seating inside and out on the patio. The night breeze was kind- the sort of caressing warmth that keeps people moving to L.A. despite the phoniness and the madness- and we chose outside. Small lacy trees in straw-covered pots separated the patio from the sidewalk. White lattice partitions had been set up around groupings of tables, affording the illusion of privacy.

The waiter was a pony-tailed recent acting-class graduate playing the part of Solicitous Server and he recited what seemed like an endless list of specials with the hubris of a memory course graduate. The lighting was so dim- just a single covered candle on each table- that we had to lean forward to make out the menus. We were hungry by now and ordered an antipasto, seafood salads, two kinds of veal, and a bottle of Pellegrino water.

Conversation came easily but we stayed faithful to the toast. When the food came, we concentrated on eating. Solicitous wheeled the dessert cart tableside and Linda chose a monumental cream and hazelnut thing that looked as if baking it required a building permit. I ordered a lemon ice. When she was halfway through the pastry, she wiped cream from her lips and said, “I think I can handle reality. Okay if we ditch the boredom pledge?”

“Sure.”

“Then tell me about the Burden girl’s home. What was the father like? Can you talk about it?”

“In terms of confidentiality? Yes. One of the conditions I gave him was that anything I learned could be passed on to you, to the kids, or to the police. But I didn’t learn anything earth-shattering. Just confirmed what I suspected.”

“How so?”

I gave her a synopsis of my visit. She said, “God, he sounds like a real jerk.”

“He’s different, that’s for sure.”

“Different.” She smiled. “Yes, that’s much more professional than jerk.”

I laughed.

She said, “See why I wouldn’t make a good therapist? Too judgmental. How do you do it, keeping your feelings from getting in the way?”

“It’s not always easy,” I said. “Especially with someone like him. While interviewing him I realized I didn’t like him, resolved to keep that in the forefront of my mind. Which is what you do. Be aware of your own feelings. Stay aware. Put the patient’s welfare first, keeping yourself in the background. Like an accompanist.”

“You consider him your patient?”

“No. He’s more of a… consulting client. The way the court would be, in a custody evaluation. Not that I’m going to be able to tell him what he wants to hear: that she was innocent. If anything, she fits the profile of a mass murderer pretty closely. So my hunch is I’ll probably get fired fairly soon. It’s happened before.”

She put half a hazelnut in her mouth and chewed. Some tension- the intensity- had returned to her face.

I said, “What is it?”

“Nothing. Oh, heck, I just keep thinking about my car. It was the first thing I bought myself when I had money. It looked so sad when they towed it away. They say it’ll live, but surgery will take at least a month. Meanwhile, I’ve got a rental. If I’m lucky, the district won’t hassle me when it comes time to divvy up.”

She pushed her fork around on her dessert plate. The thing that keeps bugging me is: Why my little clunker? It was parked on the street with all the others. How’d they know who it belonged to?”

“Someone probably saw you in it.”

“Meaning someone was watching me? Stalking me?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I doubt we’re talking about anything that sophisticated. More likely someone spotted you, knew you were associated with the school, and decided to strike out.”

Opportunism. I knew why the word had leaped into my mind. All this exposure to politics. Ugliness.

“So you think it was someone local?” she said.

“Who knows?”

“Stupid punks,” she said. “I won’t let them dominate my life.”

A moment later, she said, “So what’s my next step? Start toting a gun?” She smiled. “Maybe not such a bad idea after all. Like I told you, I’m a crack shot.”

“Hope I stay on your good side.”

She laughed, looked down at what remained of her dessert. “Want any of this? I’m full.”

I declined, called for the check, and paid Solicitous. As we got up from the table I noticed simultaneous movement from a table on the other side of the lattice. As if we were sitting next to a mirror. The synchrony was so strong that it actually gave a second look to make sure we weren’t. But it was two other people- the vague outlines of a man and a woman. I thought nothing of it as we headed toward the car, but as I drove away from the curb, another car pulled out right behind us and stayed on our tail. I felt my chest tighten, then remembered the similar fantasy I’d had just a few days ago. The paranoia that had caused me to pull off Sunset into the service station.

Brown Toyota. What appeared to be two people. A couple. Absorbed with each other. Now another couple, right behind us, but from the spacing of the headlights, this car was larger. A midsized sedan. No flicker.

Okay. Definitely not the same car. Nothing odd about two couples leaving a restaurant at the same time. And heading this way on Melrose was the logical route for anyone living west of Hancock Park.

Ease up, Delaware.

I looked in the rearview mirror. Headlights. Same ones? The glare prevented me from seeing who was inside.

Ridiculous. I was letting all the talk of plots and counter-plots go to my head.

“What’s wrong?” said Linda.

“Wrong? Nothing.”

“All of a sudden you’re all tensed up. Your shoulders are all crunched.”

The last thing I wanted to do was feed her anxiety. I consciously relaxed, tried to look more casual than I felt. Snuck another glance in the rearview mirror. Different set of headlights, I was pretty sure. A caravan of headlights, stretching for blocks. Typical weekend jam-up on Melrose…

“What is it, Alex?”

“Nothing. Really.” I turned off Melrose onto Spaulding and pulled a therapist switcheroo: “How about yourself? Still thinking about the car?”

“Got to admit I’m a little edgy,” she said. “Maybe we should have stuck to the boredom pledge.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I can get you bored again, really quick.” I cleared my throat and put on a whiny, pedagogical tone: “Let’s talk educational theory. The topic of the day is, ahem, curriculum adjustment. Macro- and micro-variables of a variety of contemporary text offerings that contribute to greater, ahem, student participation while holding constant class size, budgetary factors, and the, ahem, cement/asphalt ratio of the surrounding play areas in a suburban school prototype, as defined by-”

“All right, I believe you!”

“- the Harrumph-Pshaw Educational Coercion Act of 1973-”

“Enough!” She was laughing hard.

I looked in the mirror. No headlights. Stretched my arm across the seat and touched her shoulder. She scooted closer, rested a hand on my knee, then removed it. I put it back.

She laughed and said, “Now what?”

“Tired?”

“More like wired.”

“Want to help me hang the print?”

“That kind of like ‘come up and see my etchings’?”

“Same general idea.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm what?”

“Hmm yes.”

I squeezed her shoulder, drove home feeling relaxed. Except for the two dozen times I checked my rearview mirror.

“I love everything about this place,” she said, stretching out on the leather sofa and undoing her hair. “The view, the pond- it’s simple but you’ve done a lot with it. Feels bigger than it is. How long have you been living here?”

“Almost seven years.”

“Out here that just about makes you a homesteader.”

“Got the wagon train out in back,” I said, holding up the Bellows. “How does this look?”

“Little to the left.” She got up. “Here, I’ll hold it. You take a look for yourself.”

We exchanged places.

She said, “What do you think?”

“Perfect.”

I measured, hammered the nail, hung the print, straightened the frame. We returned to the sofa and looked at it.

“Nice,” she said. “That’s a good place for it.”

I kissed her without restraint. Her arms went around me. We clinched till we lost breath. Her hand settled on my fly. Gently squeezing. I began unbuttoning her blouse, got two buttons loose before she said, “Whoa,” and lifted her hand.

“Something the matter?”

She was flushed and her eyes were shiny. “No, nothing… It’s just… every time we get together, we just do it? Bam?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

The white lashes fluttered like down. She took my face in her hands. “You really that chivalrous?”

“Not really. But all that talk about your being a crack shot has me worried.”

She laughed. Turned serious just as quickly. “I just don’t want it to be… easy come, easy go. Like everything else in this town.”

“That’s not for me either.”

She looked uncertain, but kissed me again. Deeply. I got into it.

She squirmed.

I backed off. She pulled me closer, held me to her. My heart was racing. Or maybe it was hers.

“You want me,” she said, as if amazed at her own power.

“Oh, yeah.”

A moment passed. I could barely hear the gurgle of the pond.

“Oh, what the heck,” she said, and put her hand back.