“This may sound strange, but did he ever dress in women’s clothing?”
“Not on the street.”
“You’re not surprised by the question?”
“At
Dark Nose,
one of the gyirls – she played Systema – was big, size sixteen, eighteen. Once in a while Dyale would joke around.”
“About her size?”
“No, no, the clothes. He put it on, then a wig, talked in a high voice. Very funny.”
“Goofing around.”
“What, he is weird that way?”
I shrugged.
She said, “This is a weird sexy murder?”
“Hard to say what it is.”
“Oh, boy… I guess I am lucky. Dyale was always nice to me, but who knows, eh? I am tired, now, Ah-lex. Too much talk.”
She walked me to the door, leaned in, kissed my cheek in a cloud of vanilla.
I thanked her again.
“Why not?” she said. “Maybe one day I’ll see California.”
“Did the chief get his money’s worth?” I asked Milo.
“I’ll let you know after I talk to him.”
“When’s that?”
“When the palace beckons.”
Five p.m., gloomy skies, heavy air in L.A. We were in a coffee shop on Santa Monica Boulevard renowned for omelets the size of manhole covers. Coffee for me, coffee and a plate of cinnamon crullers for him. Two hours ago, he’d finished a late lunch at Café Moghul. An interesting mix of cumin and his digestive cigarillo lingered on his clothing.
Before going to bed last night, I’d left him a message, summarizing what I’d learned in New York. Hadn’t heard back because he’d been surveilling Tony Mancusi until sunrise.
He rubbed his eyes. “Dale did the Safrans… okay, I got my money’s worth, let me pay for your uneaten hundred-dollar plate of lettuce.”
“Forty bucks,” I said. “Lettuce and scallops.”
“Whoopy doo.”
I’d been back since noon. He’d remained unreachable until four p.m. Revisiting Gilbert Chacon at the Prestige rental lot and getting Chacon to admit that he’d arrived late for work, found the chain propped up but the lock missing, rushed to Rite Aid on Canon and bought the cheap drugstore version we’d seen.
“Think there’s more to it?” I said.
“Someone bribed him to leave it off? Don’t think so, he offered to take a poly, cared more about losing his job than aiding and abetting.”
“However it happened, whoever picked the lock, kept it.”
“Sentimental.”
After leaving Chacon, he’d participated in a conference call with Texas authorities and detectives from six cities where Cuz Jackson claimed to have committed atrocities. Three dead ends, one unlikely, two possibles.
Plus Antoine Beverly, one big question mark.
The needle-and-gurney folk in the Lone Star State wanted to get things moving. The chief’s office had asked Milo to push on Antoine but there was no lead to follow other than locating Antoine’s boyhood friends.
No sign of either. “ Hollywood unmarkeds been cruising by Wilson Good’s house for the last forty-eight hours. Definitely no one home and St. Xavier’s starting to worry.”
I said, “Maybe he got really sick and ended up in the hospital.”
“We looked into that. Zip.”
“The coach has left the field,” I said.
“Funny thing ’bout that, huh? Like I said, all the fool had to do was cooperate. Wouldn’t that be something, Antoine coming down to some creepy kid-on-kid thing.”
Thinking about that made me tired. Or maybe it was no sleep in the cell-like hotel room followed by a bone-fusing six-hour plane ride.
I swigged coffee. Milo tore open a packet of Splenda but didn’t use it. “Good was Antoine’s age at the time of the disappearance. You see a fifteen-year-old capable of something like that?”
“They’re not myelinated.”
“Who
what
?”
“Myelin,” I said. “It’s a substance that coats nerve cells and plays a role in logical processing. Teens don’t have as much as adults. Some folks think that’s a good reason not to execute young criminals.”
“At what age does it turn normal?”
“Differs from person to person. Sometimes not till middle age.”
“Bad living through chemistry,” he said. “But we’re not talking some low-impulse stupid homicide. Baby-gangbangers pull that off all the time. If Good’s dirty for Antoine, we’ve got a teenager stealthy enough to murder his best buddy, smoothly cover it up, and go on living as an upstanding citizen. Serving as a pallbearer and crying his little eyes out.”
“Seeing yourself as moral and living with something that evil would be a hell of a burden, but people pull it off. Or Good could be one of those highly functioning psychopaths who’s managed to avoid trouble.”
“And now trouble comes visiting,” he said. “So he freaks out and splits.”
“Or Antoine’s death wasn’t a calculated crime. Couple of kids horsing around and something went horribly wrong. Good panicked and hid Antoine’s body. Now he’s terrified.”
“Maybe three kids. Antoine’s other pal is a junkie and a career criminal. That could be self-punishment.”
“Gordon Beverly said Maisonette had family problems, lived through a drive-by. Maybe his resources weren’t as strong as Good’s.”
“Bradley sentences himself to a lousy life, Wilson gets the house in the hills. Maybe that makes Good the really cold one… hell, it
could’ve
been premeditated. The Goods told us Antoine sold more subscriptions than anyone. What if those little bastards wanted to pocket his dough and he wouldn’t give it up?”
“The way those outfits generally operate, the kids hand in the forms and get paid later.”
“Okay, but my nose is telling me something happened among those three boys. Gotta find Mr. Good and start demolishing his illusions, but I can’t lose track of Mancusi and Shonsky. Speaking of which, Tony called Jean Barone yesterday, wanting to know when Mama’s will was going to be processed.”
“What’d she tell him?”
“What I told her to say: The wheels of justice grind slowly. The Tonester hung up without as much as good-bye. Maybe cranking up the pressure will lead him to do something stupid. Like meeting with whoever Dale Bright’s pretending to be.”
Snatching a cruller, he bit down hard, created a spray of crumbs. “Thanks for taking the trip, Alex. You believe Korvutz about not setting up the Safrans?”
“He had no incentive, the building was going to be vacated with or without the Safrans’ consent.”
“So what was Bright’s motive?”
“Killing’s fun when you can frame it as altruism. Sonia Glusevitch said Bright was the most helpful man she’d ever met.”
“The gal-pal,” he said. “Credible?”
“I think so.”
“Able but not often willing,” he said. “But not gay.”
“This guy defies classification.”
He finished the cruller, took another. “Frolicks in frocks, good with makeup. No record of him living in Washington, D.C., Maryland, or Virginia. Same deal with military service in Germany.”
“What a shock,” I said.
“Reinvent yourself. Pastime of the new millennium. Why didn’t he just run for office and save us all this grief.”
“Politics would be a poor fit,” I said. “He genuinely likes helping people.”
He laughed so hard crumbs bounced off his belly.
I said, “Dale and Tony could’ve met at some cross-dresser get-together. Tony complains about money problems, how his mother lives in a nice Westwood house while he’s forced to move to a dump because she’s turned off the tap. Dale decides to put in a fix. Maybe Tony has no idea what he’s initiated but maybe after he hears the details – a killer in costume – he suspects something.”
“The plaid cap,” he said. “He talked about his father wearing one just like it. If that was one of Dale’s little jokes, how’d he find out about Tony Senior’s sartorial habits?”
“Tony gabs, Dale’s a good listener. If Tony knows he’s partially responsible for Dale butchering his mother, that would explain the emotion we saw.”
“Barfing. But he doesn’t turn Dale in because he’s scared of being nabbed as an accessory.”
“What interests me is that Dale acted with no worry about Tony giving him up. He understands Tony’s psyche.”
“Or he’s biding his time.”
“Tony’s in jeopardy? I guess it’s possible. Either way, if surveillance doesn’t produce something soon, I’d think about confronting him directly.”
He made his way through the second cruller. “You really think this is evil altruism, Dale doesn’t get paid for his hits?”
“If we’re right about the Ojo Negro killings, he murdered his sister and Vicky Tranh and got rich. But if money was his sole reason for eliminating Leonora, all he had to do was sit in the woods and pick her off with a rifle. Instead, he dressed up in costume, showed himself, stole a car, engaged in incredible savagery. To me that says there was psychosexual payoff. And that fits with what Leonora told Mavis Wembley about Dale: secretly cruel as a child.”
“Tortures animals, volunteers at a shelter. He’s all about irony, isn’t he?”
“Irony and theater,” I said. “Think what it took to pull off Kat Shonsky’s murder: stealing a conspicuous car, stalking his prey, then abducting her, possibly in drag. Then returning the car to where it’s sure to be found and leaving token blood on the seat. Leaving the scarf where it would be seen immediately if Kat’s grave was unearthed.”
“That grave would’ve definitely been unearthed,” he said. “The permits for the sisters’ swimming pool had just come through.”
“Be interesting if Dale was aware of that.”
His eyebrows arched. “Someone the sisters know… wonder if they’re back from their cruise.”
He motioned the waitress over, handed her some bills.
“That’s way too much, Lieutenant.”
“Caught me in a weak moment, Marissa.”
“Honestly, Lieu-”
He placed a big hand over hers. “Take your kid to the movies.”
“You’re so sweet.” She tiptoed to buss his cheek, just about skipped away.
I said, “Random acts of kindness.”
“Me and Dale.”
He brushed memos into the trash unread, searched Kat Shonsky’s murder book for the names of the sisters who shared the burial lot.
“Susan Appel and Barbara Bruno… let’s go alphabetically.” Punching numbers so fast he hit the wrong button and had to try again.
“Mrs. Appel? Lieutenant Sturgis… I’m… yes, I know it was traumatic, ma’am, so sorry it was your… no, there’ll be no need to do any further digging, that’s not what I’m… absolutely, Mrs. Appel, and we do appreciate it, but I need to ask you one more question.”
He hung up, rubbing his face. “Doesn’t know anyone named Bright, Dale, Ansell, or otherwise. Would
never
know
anyone
capable of something so
terrible,
same goes for Sis because they have
exactly
the same social group.”
“Close-knit,” I said.
“They share real estate and haven’t sued each other. Might as well be conjoined. Let me try Bruno, anyway… nope, voice mail, no sense leaving a message, Appel’s bound to get to her first. Thanks for breakfast, I’m off to buy my Red Bull and sustenance, get ready for the wonders of Rodney Drive.”
“You paid for breakfast.”
“I was talking mental stimulation.”
“Want company?”
“Robin’s still busy on her project?”
“We’re catching dinner at seven, then she’s back to work.”
“So play with the dog – thanks for the offer, Alex, but doing that forty-eight-hour N.Y. turnaround is already beyond the call. Plus hanging with me when I’m brain-dead is not amusing. And don’t say you’ve already been there.”
Dinner was lamb chops, salad, beer. By nine p.m. Robin was back to carving and I was stretched on the sofa in my office reading the paper. Blanche curled next to me pretending to be interested in current affairs. At ten thirty I snapped awake, feeling itchy and too large for my skin. Blanche snored with gusto. I put her to bed, walked out back to the studio.
Robin sat at her bench, tapping and carving. “Oh, no. Poor you.”
“What?”
“You fell asleep and now you’re wired.”
“It’s that obvious?”
She put her chisel down, touched my face. “The leather couch. You’ve got marks from the seams.”
“Sherlocka,” I said.
“Want me to go with you?”
“Where?”
“One of your drives.”
“I wasn’t planning on driving anywhere.”
“No?” she said. “Okay, I’ll stop and we can play Scrabble.”
The fiddle-grain maple back of the dot-com guy’s mandolin sat on the spotless bench. Neat pile of shavings on the floor. “I do not obstruct genius.”
“Hardly,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“Maybe I’ll join Milo. He’s watching Tony Mancusi, may haul him in for questioning.”
She smiled. “Now I know it’s really you and not some alien clone. Give me a kiss and be off.”
I phoned from the road.
He said, “Your myelin will wither.”
“Probably have too much anyway.”
“Mr. Mature.”
“Not by choice.”
He’d borrowed a dented brown Camaro from the police lot, was parked ten yards cars north of Tony Mancusi’s building, positioned so streetlight glanced the rear of the car, avoided the driver’s seat.
He saw me, unlocked the car.
The interior reeked of sweat, tobacco, and pork. Three cartons of short ribs gnawed to the bone shared the backseat with a tub specked with fried rice, a collection of little plastic cups emptied of sweet-and-sour sauce, grease-spotted napkins, used Wash’n Dris, a pair of broken chopsticks. Three Red Bull cans had been crushed to disks. In Milo ’s lap was a tartan-patterned thermos.
His face and body fused into a single dark mass. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that he’d changed into black velour sweats, a nylon shoulder holster housing his 9mm, and new-looking Keds.
“Spiffy.”
He removed the earpieces from his iPod, clicked the machine off. “You say something?”
“Just hi.”
“I’d offer you some grub, but.”
“I ate.”
“Another high-tax-bracket salad?”
“We cooked.”
“Man of the people.”
“What were you listening to?”
“Stereotype to the contrary, not Judy or Bette or Liza or Barbra. Guess.”
“Doo-wop.”
“Beethoven.
Eroica.
”
“What a classy guy,” I said.
“Rick’s iPod. I took it by accident.”
We sat for an hour. Hollywood Patrol called in. No sign of Wilson Good.
By one thirty a.m., the tedium of surveillance started to hit me. I figured I’d give it another hour, return home to crash, get my time zones back in order.
Milo said, “Long as you’re here. Punch me if anything happens.” Pushing the bucket seat as far back as it would go, he lowered his head to the seat back. Twenty minutes later, he awoke with a frighteningly guttural start and wild eyes. “What time is it?”
“Ten to two.”
“Wanna nap yourself?”
“No, thanks.”
“Wanna split?”
“Maybe in a while.”
“Tedious. Told you so,” he said. “Nighty-night.”
“Must be nice to be right once in a while,” I said. “Emphasis on
once.
”
“My oh my, sleep deprivation brings out the vicious side – ” Something to his left made him turn sharply.
I followed his glance, saw nothing. Then the front door to Tony Mancusi’s building opened. As if Milo had smelled it.
A man stepped out to the street. Slumped, pudgy, shuffling gait.
Tony Mancusi walked south to his Toyota, got in, and drove toward Sunset.
Milo cranked down the driver’s window and watched. Most of my view was obstructed by parked cars but I could see the twin dots of taillights twenty yards up.
Mancusi covered a block and rolled through a stop sign.
“First violation,” said Milo, starting up his engine. “Hopefully, there’ll be others.”
The Toyota headed west on Sunset, passing Western Pediatric Medical Center and continuing through Hospital Row. At that hour, the boulevard was deserted until Vine, where the nightscape was peppered with drifters, addicts, minimum-wage workers waiting for buses.
Sparse traffic meant Milo had to stay well behind the Toyota but it also turned Mancusi’s taillights into beacons. The signage of a big-box office supplies barn lit up a red-sauce stain blotching the corner of his mouth. Toss in the black hair and the gray skin and you had Dracula with a penchant for trans fat.
Mancusi caught a red light at Highland, backed up illegally, switched into the left-turn lane.
Milo muttered, “Tony, Tony,” and stayed half a block behind.
The green arrow flashed, Mancusi turned into a darkened parking lot on the east side of the avenue. Headlights off as he rolled to a halt near a shuttered food stand.
Milo doused the Camaro’s lights and watched from across Highland.
A huge painted sign on the roof of the stand starred an elated pig sporting a sombrero and a serape.
Gordito’s Tacos.
Mancusi stayed in his car. Ninety seconds later, three women emerged from the shadows.
Big hair, micro-skirts, stilt-heels, purses on chains.
Loose-hipped and sashaying as they strolled over to Mancusi’s open driver’s window.
Huddled conversation, heads thrown back in laughter.
Two of the women left. The one who remained had a teased platinum do, a big shelf of bust, skinny legs. A red wife-beater exposed flat belly above a minuscule lipstick-pink skirt – no, hot pants, let’s hear it for tradition.
The blonde wiggled her way to the Toyota ’s passenger side, fussed with her hair, tugged at her top, got in.
“Guess Tony’s not gay,” I said.
Milo smiled.
Mancusi drove faster, taking Highland south to Sixth Street, turning left and speeding past Hancock Park and into Windsor Square, with its ancient trees, broad lawns, and landmark mansions.
A sudden turn took him north to Arden Boulevard, where he covered a block, stopped, parked in front of a mini-Tara.
Silent, dark street. Wide-open landscaping and a gap where a street tree had succumbed.
The Toyota ’s brake lights remained on. Ten seconds later, it pulled away, continued another block north, and parked again, this time facing a Georgian masterpiece nearly obscured by three monumental deodar cedars.
An equally massive sycamore on the parkway umbrellaed the car.
The lights went off.
The Toyota remained in place for ten minutes, then started up again and returned to Gordito’s Tacos.
Mancusi idled at the curb as the blonde got out. She fooled with the waistband of her hot pants, leaned in, said something through the passenger window. Whipped out a cigarette and smoked as the Toyota drove away.
Milo jogged across the street, flashed the badge. The blonde punched her thigh. Milo spoke. The blonde laughed the way she had when approaching Mancusi. Milo pointed to her cigarette. She stubbed it out. He patted her down, took her purse.
Holding her by the elbow, he guided her across Highland and straight to the Camaro.
No expression on his face. Her eyes were wide with curiosity.