Victims

CHAPTER
33

Milo played database piano on my computer with the grim concentration of a lonely kid at an arcade.

No residential listings, driver’s license, or criminal record for Loyal Steward.

He said, “Big surprise,” and called Deputy Chief Maria Thomas. She was miffed about being interrupted at home and balked at disturbing the chief. Milo began with tact, eased into bland persistence, ended up with barely veiled menace. Like a lot of bureaucrats, she had a weak will when confronted with dedication.

Within minutes, the chief had phoned Milo and Milo was doing a lot of blank-faced listening. Soon after, a senior Beverly Hills detective named Eaton rang in.

Milo started to explain.

Eaton said, “It came straight from my boss, like I’m gonna say no?”

When Milo hung up, Petra said, “Maybe one day I can be a loo- tenant.”

“That’s like wishing for wrinkles, kid.”

Six the following morning found eight people surveilling the office building on Bedford Drive where a yet-to-be-identified man pretended to be Dr. Bernhard Shacker. Downtown Beverly Hills was yawning itself awake, vanilla swirls of daylight scratching their way through a gray-satin sky. A few delivery trucks rumbled by. But for a scatter of joggers and put-upon citizens ruled by the intestinal tracts of fluffy dogs, the sidewalks were bare.

BHPD knew the building, couldn’t recall a problem there since three years ago when a plastic surgeon and his wife had been hauled off for mutual domestic violence.

“They start whaling on each other in the waiting room,” said B.H. detective Roland Munoz. “Anorexic women with stitched-up faces are sitting there, freaking out.”

An hour into the watch, a custodian unlocked the building’s brass front doors. Tenants had keys and the alarm code and could come and go 24/7 but none had appeared after nine the night before when Munoz and Detective Richard Eaton had earned overtime watching the last trickle of weary health-care providers, none of them Shacker, exiting. Between nine and this morning, hourly drive-bys by B.H. patrol cars had spotted no activity in or around the structure. Not an ironclad assurance, but confidence was high that the identity thief had yet to appear.

The rear alley door was also key-operated and Sean Binchy watched it from the front seat of a borrowed Con Edison van, accompanied by Munoz, a jovial man whose mood was even rosier because he’d rather be doing this than responding to false intruder calls phoned in by hysterical rich people. Lost cats, too; last week a woman on North Linden Drive had 911’d on “Melissa.” Making her sound like a human in jeopardy, not an Angora up a tree.

The building offered no on-site parking but doctors and their staffs got a discount at the private pay facility two doors south that opened at six thirty. This early, plenty of metered street parking remained available but only seven vehicles had seized the opportunity. Milo ran the tags. Nothing interesting.

He and I were stationed on the east side of Bedford Drive, twenty yards north of the brass doors, in a silver, black-windowed Mercedes 500 that he’d borrowed from the LAPD confiscation lot. The former owner was an Ecstasy dealer from Torrance. The interior was spotless black calfskin, the brightwork polished steel, the white bunny-rabbit headliner and matching carpeting sucked free of lint. A strong shampoo fragrance lingered, mixed in with the smell of honey-roasted peanuts.

Milo had told me to “dress B.H.”

“Meaning?”

“Knock yourself out so you blend in with the hoohahs.”

The best I could come up with was jeans and a gray wool pullover emblazoned with an Italian designer’s surname. The sweater was a ten-year-old gift from the sister I never saw. Other people’s names on my clothing make me feel like an impostor; this was the first time I’d worn it.

Milo’s costume consisted of a royal-blue velour tracksuit piped with thick strands of silver lame resembling rivulets of mercury. Oversized designer logo on the sleeves and on one thigh, some sort of hiphop artiste I’d never heard of. The outfit managed to be too large for him, settled in folds, tucks, and wrinkles a shar-pei would covet.

I’d controlled myself but now I said, “Congrats.”

“For what?”

“High-bidding on Suge Knight’s storage bin.”

“Hmmph. Got it at the Barneys sale. VIP night, if you will. In case you find that relevant.”

“My job, everything’s relevant. How’d you get vipped?”

“Store manager was in a car crash, Rick saved his nose.”

A slim, dark figure zipped past us, heading north.

Petra dressed in black bicycle pants and pullover neared completion of her second square-block jog. The role Milo had assigned her was a variant of her normal morning routine and she ran like she meant it.

Up near Wilshire, a grubby homeless person in shapeless gray-brown tatters shuffled, bobbed his ski-capped head, gazed up at the morning sun, jaywalked east.

Moe Reed had volunteered for that part.

Milo’d said, “Clean-cut kid like you?”

“I did it last year, El Tee. Checking out a bad guy in Hollywood.”

Petra had said, “He was convincing, trust me.”

“Fine,” said Milo. “We’ll get you some bum duds.”

“No need,” said Reed. “Still have the threads from last year.”

“Wash ’em?”

“Sure.”

“Then you won’t be authentic, but hey, go for it.”

Observers Seven and Eight were two female B.H. officers patrolling in a black-and-white on a ten-minute circuit. Shimoff’s second drawing of Grant “Shearling” Huggler was taped to their dashboard along with a description of faux-Dr.-Shacker that I’d supplied. Nothing unusual about a conspicuous police presence in Beverly Hills. Response time was three minutes and citizens liked seeing their protectors.

By six thirty, the pay lot had opened and cars trickled in. Thirteen more street spots had been taken. Every tag checked out clean except for a woman with an address on South Doheny Drive who owed over six hundred bucks in parking tickets. This morning, her Lexus was being driven by an Asian woman in a white housekeeper’s uniform doing a pickup at the deli on the corner.

No sign of either suspect and that remained the status by eight a.m. when patients began showing up at the brass doors.

Same for nine a.m., ten, ten thirty.

Milo yawned, turned to me. “When you were in practice when did you start work?”

“Depended,” I said.

“On what?”

“The patient load, emergencies, court. Maybe all he does is insurance work. That could mean easy hours.”

“Insurance companies hire a murderous fraud.” He smiled. “Maybe he put that on his application.”

He got out, loped to the deli, ordered something, and scanned the three customers at the counter. A few minutes later, he returned with bagels and overboiled coffee. We ate and drank and lapsed into silence.

At eleven a.m., he stretched and yawned again and said, “Enough.” Radioing Reed, he instructed the young detective to alter his bum-shamble from Wilshire to Bedford where he could keep an eye on the building’s entrance. Then he informed everyone else that he was going inside to have a look.

I said, “I’ll go, too. I can point him out to you.”

He thought about that. “Doubt he’s in there but sure.”

As we walked through the blue-carpeted, oak-paneled hallway, his oversized tracksuit flapped, eliciting a few amused looks.

My designer sweater didn’t seem overly humorous but two young women in nurses’ uniforms smiled at me then broke into muted giggles as I passed.

Just a coupla wannabe clowns providing comic relief.

We took the stairs to the second floor where Milo cracked the door and scanned the corridor.

Suite 207 was just a few feet away.

The nameplate on Shacker’s door was gone.

He went and had a close look, waved me over. The glue outlines surrounding the sign were visible. Recent removal.

“Shimoff’s too good an artist,” he said. “Bastard saw his prodigy’s face on TV, burrowed straight underground.”

He radioed the detail, told them the suspects were unlikely to show but to stay in place, anyway. We took the stairs back down, searched the directory for the building’s manager, found no listing. A clerk at the ground-floor Dispensing Apothecarie had a business card on file.

Nourzadeh Realty, headquartered in a building on Camden Drive, right around the corner. The name on the card was the managing partner, Ali Nourzadeh. He wasn’t in and Milo spoke to a secretary.

Ten minutes later, a young woman in a red cowl-neck cashmere sweater studded with rhinestones at neck and cuffs, black tights, and three-inch heels arrived with a ring of keys big enough to burglarize a suburb.

“I’m Donna Nourzadeh. What seems to be the problem?”

Milo flashed his card, pointed to the glue-frame. “Unless your signs tend to fall off, looks like your tenant cut out.”

“Darn,” she said. “You’re sure?”

“No, but let’s have a look inside.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“Why not?”

“The tenant has rights.”

“Not if he abandoned the office.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We will once we go in.”

“Hmm.”

“Donna, how long has Dr. Shacker been renting?”

“Seven months.”

Shortly before he’d screened Vita Berlin using fake credentials. Maybe he’d offered Well-Start a bargain fee that got them slavering.

Milo said, “Was he a good tenant?”

Donna Nourzadeh thought about that. “We never heard any complaints from him and he paid six months up front.”

“How much was that?”

“Twenty-four thousand.”

Milo eyed the keys.

Donna Nourzadeh said, “He did something?”

“Quite likely.”

“You don’t need a warrant?”

“Like I said, if Dr. Shacker left prematurely, you control the premises and all I need is your permission.”

“Hmm.”

“Call your boss,” said Milo. “Please.”

She complied, spoke in Farsi, selected a key, and moved toward the lock. Milo stilled her with a big index finger atop a small wrist. “Better I do it.”

“What do I do in the meantime?”

“Other business.”

He took the key. She hurried away.

The tiny white waiting room was unchanged from the time I’d seen it. Same trio of chairs, identical magazines.

Same new-age music, some sort of digitalized harp solo streaming at low volume.

The red light on the two-bulb panel was lit. In session.

Milo freed his 9mm, approached the door to the inner office and knocked.

No answer. He rapped again, tried the doorknob. It rotated with a squeal.

Stepping to the left of the door, he called out, “Doctor?”

No answer.

Louder: “Dr. Shacker?”

The music switched to flute, a nasal arpeggio, vibrating with the subtlety of a human voice.

An unhappy human, keening, whining.

Milo nudged the door another inch with his toe. Waited. Afforded himself another half inch and peeked through.

Cherry-sized lumps sprouted along his jawline. His teeth clicked as he holstered his gun.

He motioned me to follow him in.