Kill the Messenger (12 page)

Her voice strained on the last sentence. Her relationship with her father had gone full circle, only this time around they were pals and he gave her the attention she had craved as a child. Craved so badly she had gone into her father’s profession to please him—consciously or not.

Parker said nothing for a moment, letting his gaze move without focus over the stuff on the desk. Abby Lowell continued her slow pace. She wanted out, he supposed. Not even innocent people wanted to be around cops. He had no way of knowing how innocent she was or wasn’t.

“You’re in charge of making the funeral arrangements?” he asked. “Does he have any other family?”

“He has a brother in upstate New York. He has a daughter from his first marriage, Ann. I haven’t seen her in years. I think she moved to Boston. And three ex-wives. None of them would cross the street to spit on his corpse.”

“You’re the only forgiving one in the bunch.”

She didn’t comment, didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken. She picked up a black Coach leather tote from the floor, and put it on the desk. It matched her boots.

“Do you mind if I smoke, Detective?” she asked, already digging a cigarette out of a pack of Newports.

He let her get it to her mouth, lighter poised, before he said, “Yes, I do.”

She cut him a look from under her brows and lit up anyway. As she blew a stream of smoke at the nicotine-stained ceiling, she said, “I only asked for form’s sake.”

She leaned against the side of the desk. Her profile belonged in an Erté drawing, the long, graceful, subtly curving lines of the early Art Deco movement. Her skin was like porcelain. Her hair spilled down behind her like a dark waterfall. There appeared to be nothing of Lenny in her looks. Parker wondered if the other daughter had been so lucky. He wondered if this one was trying to distract him.

“Did you speak to anyone last night after you left here, Ms. Lowell?”

“No. I went home.”

“You didn’t call your mother? Tell her her ex checked out?”

“My mother died five years ago. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” Parker said automatically. “You didn’t call a friend? A boyfriend?”

She sighed, impatient, stubbed out the cigarette, started to move again. “What are you trying to get at, Detective? If you have a question, ask it. We don’t have to play twenty questions about my personal life. I have arrangements to make, and I have a class at eleven. Can we get on with it?”

Parker cocked a brow. “A class? No day off to mourn, to try to grasp the idea that your father was murdered less than twenty-four hours ago?”

“My father is dead. I can’t change that.” Her pace picked up a step. “He was murdered. I can’t grasp that idea. I don’t know how anyone possibly could. What good would it do me to stay home in my pajamas, contemplating the meaninglessness of life?” she asked. “I may seem cold to you, Detective Parker, but I’m dealing with this the only way that makes any sense to me—moving forward, doing what has to be done because no one else is going to do it for me.”

“Cope now, fall apart later,” Parker said, rising from the bloodstained chair. He positioned himself where she had been, leaning against the end of the desk. “I’ve been a cop nearly twenty years, Ms. Lowell. I know survivors deal with grief in their own way.

“I had a case once,” he said. “A woman murdered in a carjacking. Her coat caught in the door when the perp shoved her out. She was dragged nearly a block. It was horrible. Her husband was a reasonably successful artist, a painter. His way of coping, of exorcising grief and guilt, and all the rest of it, was to lock himself in his studio and paint. He painted for thirty-six hours straight, no sleep, no food. For thirty-six hours he raged in that studio, hurling paint, brushes, cans, anything he could put his hands on. The whole time he was screaming and shouting and sobbing. His assistant called me because she was afraid he’d had a psychotic break, and worried he might try to kill himself.

“Finally everything went silent. The guy came out of the studio, spoke to no one, took a shower, and went to bed. The assistant and I went into the studio to see what he’d been doing all that time. He’d done a dozen or so big canvases. Incredible work, brilliant, miles beyond anything he’d done before. Pollock would have wept to see it. Every emotion tearing this man apart was up there, raw, angry, crushing grief.

“When the guy woke up, he went back into the studio and destroyed every one of them. He said they were private, not meant for anyone else to see. He buried his wife, and went on with his life.”

Abby Lowell was staring at him, trying to figure out how she was supposed to react, what she was supposed to think, what kind of trick this might be.

Parker spread his hands. “Everyone handles it the only way they can.”

“Then why were you judging me?”

“I wasn’t. I need to know the why of everything, Ms. Lowell. That’s my job. For instance, I need to know why it said in the
Times
this morning that you, a twenty-three-year-old student at Southwestern Law, discovered your father’s body.”

Something flashed in her eyes, across her face, there and gone. Not anger. Surprise, maybe. Then the poker face. “I don’t know. It isn’t true. You know it isn’t true,” she said defensively. “I was at the restaurant when I got the call. And I don’t know any reporters. I wouldn’t talk to them if I did.”

“And you didn’t speak to anyone after you left this office last night?”

Exasperation. “I told you. No.” She checked her watch, shifted her weight, put her hand on her purse.

“How about before? Did you call anyone from the restaurant or from your car on your way over here? A friend, a relative?”

“No. And I’m sure you can get my cell phone records if you don’t believe me.” She put the strap of her bag over her shoulder and looked toward the door to the front of the office. “I have to go,” she said bluntly. “I have a meeting with a funeral director at eleven.”

“I thought you had a class.”

The dark eyes snapped with annoyance. “The class is at one. I misspoke. I have a lot on my agenda, Detective. You know how to contact me if you need anything more.”

“I can find you.”

She started past him to leave. Parker reached out and gently caught her by the arm. “Wouldn’t you like to know when your father’s body is going to be released from the morgue? I’m sure the funeral director will need that information.”

Abby Lowell looked him in the eye. “His body won’t be released until after the autopsy. I’m told that could be several days, or as much as a week. I want everything arranged so I can get this over with as soon as possible.”

Parker let her go. She had the composure of a knife-thrower’s assistant, he had to give her that. He wondered if there was anything more behind it than a lonely little girl protecting herself.

His gaze drifted across the desk as he tossed these thoughts and observations around in his head. She’d left empty-handed, no sign of the things she had come here to look for. Lenny’s life insurance policy, his will.

He went out to the car, got the Polaroid camera out of the trunk, and went back in. He shot photographs of the desktop, the open filing cabinets, the floor around the desk. Then he carefully lifted a long black plastic envelope out of a half-opened desk drawer. In gold stamped letters across the front:
CITY NATIONAL BANK.
It was empty. The impression of a small key had been left in one frosted plastic pocket. Safe-deposit box.

Parker eased himself into Lenny Lowell’s big leather executive’s chair and looked around the room, trying to imagine what Lenny would have seen as he surveyed his domain. What he would have focused on. Abby’s photograph had been knocked over on his desk. He looked down beside the chair. A couple of travel brochures lay at cockeyed angles half under the desk. Parker inched them out with the toe of his shoe.

LOSE YOURSELF IN PARADISE. THE CAYMAN ISLANDS.

“Well, Lenny,” he said to the empty room. “I’d hope you’re in another paradise now, but I imagine you’ve gone where all scum defense attorneys go. I hope you took your sunscreen.”

                        
      16

Jace took The Beast to a bike shop in Korea Town, where he knew no one and no one knew him.

“I need some work done.”

The guy behind the counter was busy watching Court TV on a television hanging up near the ceiling. He barely flicked Jace a glance. “Three day.”

“No. I need it today. It’s an emergency.”

The counter guy scowled up at the TV screen. “Three day.”

“You don’t understand, sir,” Jace said, trying to lean into the guy’s field of vision. “I need the bike. I’m a messenger. I need the bike to work.”

“Three day.”

The guy still hadn’t looked at him. He suddenly pointed a finger at the television and went off in Korean. Martin Gorman, attorney to the stars, was standing at a podium bristling with microphones, giving a press conference. At the bottom of the screen, it read: “Tricia Crowne-Cole: Death of a Debutante.” By the photograph of the woman in the lower left-hand corner, she looked like maybe she’d been a debutante during the Kennedy administration.

Jace sighed, cleared his throat, thought about walking out, but he couldn’t spend the day looking for another bike-repair shop.

“I’ll pay extra,” he said. “I’ll pay cash. An extra twenty bucks.”

The clerk turned to him and said, “Twenty now. Come back in two hour.”

It pained Jace to give up the money, but he had no choice. So much for his tip from Lenny. He only had two hundred forty in his pocket. He thought of Eta and the advance, and felt a pang of something. Disappointment, fear, uncertainty. He didn’t want to believe she had talked to the cops. Family was everything to Eta, and she considered her messengers family.

“I’ll wait for it,” Jace said.

The clerk made a sour face. Jace held up the twenty, just out of the man’s reach.

“For twenty I want it done now.”

The man said something nasty under his breath, but he nodded. Jace lowered his arm and the clerk snatched the bill away from him so quickly, he was tempted to check his hand to see if he had fingers missing.

The guy working on the bikes in the back room had a goatee and a red rag on his head. He looked like a pirate. His hands were black with grease and oil. The clerk told him tersely that he had to stop what he was doing to fix Jace’s bike.

“Very important customer,” the clerk said, then went back to his own important matters.

The mechanic looked at Jace. “How much did you give him, man?”

“Why? Are you gonna shake me down too?” Jace asked. “I’m a bike messenger, for Christ’s sake. Do I look like I’m rolling in dough?”

“Nah, I’m not gonna shake you down,” he said. “I’m gonna shake him down.”

There were twelve Lowells listed in the phone book. Three of them had first names beginning with the letter
A:
Alyce, Adam, and A. L. Lowell. Abby Lowell was a student at Southwestern University School of Law, located on Wilshire Boulevard, about two miles west of downtown. Assuming that Lenny’s daughter lived near school, assuming that she had a listed phone number, A. L. Lowell was a good bet.

Jace put the rejuvenated Beast in the back of the Mini, and headed west. His two-way radio lay on the passenger’s seat, the crackle and chatter familiar and comforting in a way, like he wasn’t all alone, like he was surrounded by friends. Only he didn’t really have friends, he had acquaintances. And he sure as hell was alone.

His head was pounding, his ankle was throbbing. He pulled into a 7-Eleven and bought a desiccated hot dog, a cheese burrito, a bottle of Gatorade, and some Tylenol. Fuel for the engine. He took a five-finger discount on a couple of PowerBars. He didn’t like stealing, but his first obligation was to survive. That law overruled a petty misdemeanor.

He ate in the car, careful not to spill anything—Madame Chen was very particular about her Mini—and tried to figure out what he would do if he found Abby Lowell at home. Knock on the door and say, “Hi. I’m the guy the cops think killed your father”? No. Who would he say he was? A client of Lenny’s? A reporter looking for a story?

He liked that angle. Lenny’s clients were criminals. Why would she open the door to one? But a young reporter searching for the truth . . . If she didn’t slam the door in his face, he might get to ask some questions, and get some answers. She’d probably take a look at him through the peephole and call 911. He looked dangerous or crazy or both with his face beat up and a day’s growth of beard. Who in their right mind would open a door to him?

“Base to Sixteen. Base to Sixteen. Where you at, Lone Ranger?”

An electric jolt of surprise hit him and he jumped a little. Eta.

“Base to Sixteen. I got a pickup for you. Sixteen, do you copy?”

He looked at the radio, but let it alone, his mind racing. Were the cops standing there beside her, making her try to lure him in?

“Base to Sixteen. I got money, honey. Never let money wait.”

Did she mean Money, as in a customer? Or did she mean money, as in cash? Cash made good bait. Jace thought about the two cops in the alley. The guy in the hat and the curvy
chica.
He still wasn’t sure she was a cop, but the hat was. Homicide, he supposed.

Jace reminded himself that just because they knew where he worked didn’t mean they could find him. If worse came to worse, and things heated up, he could always grab Tyler and go. But that would have to be a last resort. The idea of uprooting Tyler, wrenching him out of the only real home he’d ever known, taking him away from the surrogate family that made him feel safe and loved, tore at Jace’s heart. But what else could he do?

The answer lay in his stomach like a rock, heavier than the burrito he’d eaten. He wouldn’t acknowledge it. His mother hadn’t raised him to quit, to cut and run. Tyler was his only family. Jace wouldn’t leave him.

A. L. Lowell lived in a two-story rectangular stucco building with a few understated Spanish details on the facade. Built in the twenties or thirties, when people had style. The neighborhood was a funky mix of West Hollywood edgy hip, Hancock Park yuppie chic, and mid-Wilshire working-class run-down. Depending on the street, the area was dangerous, quiet, rough, family-oriented, or a place where you could pick up a transsexual hooker.

Jace cruised past the building, looking for signs of life.

By the size of the place and the configuration of the windows, front and side, he figured there were four units, two up, two down. There was no concierge, no uniformed doorman.

He parked the Mini just around the corner and across the street, where he still had a vantage point of the front entrance but couldn’t be suspected of casing the place. And he sat and waited.

It was the middle of a cold, damp, gloomy day. No one wanted to be out. With all the trees lining the streets and standing sentinel in the yards, the quality of light was as dim as the interior of a forest. Huge old maple trees made a canopy over the street in front of A. L. Lowell’s building.

This was the kind of neighborhood Jace had always imagined he would have grown up in if his life had been normal. People here probably knew one another, stopped and chatted on the sidewalk as they were walking their dogs or pushing strollers. No one here lived in one location under one name, got their mail somewhere else under another name, picked up and moved out in the middle of the night.

A stooped elderly woman with a tall white poodle emerged from the Lowell building. Both she and the dog were wearing clear plastic rain hats tied under their chins. They came down the sidewalk at a snail’s pace, the dog dropping turds behind it as it walked, like a horse would. The woman didn’t seem to notice, not that she could have bent over to pick up the mess if she had. The pair crossed the street, in Jace’s direction.

It took them about a year to get past the Mini Cooper. Jace watched in the rearview mirror until woman and dog, still dumping shit as it went, were far enough down the block. Maybe the trail of turds was necessary for them to be able to find their way home. Like a trail of bread crumbs.

It was time to do something, plan or no. He got out of the car and casually walked across the street to the building. He was going to visit someone. No reason to act nervous or secretive.

The tenants’ names were each listed next to a call button on the wall beside the front door, but it didn’t matter, because the old lady hadn’t opened the door with enough force to make it latch when it closed behind her. Jace checked the apartment numbers and went in.

A central staircase led to the second floor, where there was one apartment on either side of the hall. Jace went to the neighbor’s door first, to listen for anyone home. The only sound was some kind of bird squawking and clucking to itself.

Jace knocked softly on the door to the Lowell apartment a couple of times. No one answered. He checked behind him, then tried the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it turned easily. He checked over his shoulder again, then went inside, wiped the knob off with the sleeve of his sweater, and closed the door behind him.

The apartment looked like the neighborhood had suffered an earthquake of huge magnitude. Everything that had been on shelves or in cabinets was on the floor, chairs were overturned. Someone had slashed the upholstery on the couch and an armchair, and pulled the stuffing out. Cereal boxes had been opened and dumped on the floor.

Jace took it all in, trying so hard to process everything that he forgot to breathe. Someone had been looking for something. He wondered if that something was taped to his belly.

Even trying to step carefully, he crunched something under his boot as he made his way past the kitchen and down the hall. The small bathroom was in the same shape, but someone had taken red lipstick and written on the mirrored medicine cabinet: NEXT YOU DIE.

“Holy crap,” he murmured. “This is a fucking movie. I’m living in a fucking movie.”

Only, in this movie the bullets were real, the bad guys were real, and people actually died.

Now he was breathing shallow, quick breaths. He had begun to sweat. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to gather himself, trying to think what to do.

He had to get out. The fleeting thought crossed his mind that he should find Lenny’s daughter and warn her. But how was he supposed to find her? Go sit in the hall of the Bullocks Wilshire Building at Southwestern Law and wait for her to happen past? Go wait in the car until she showed up here, then run up to her to tell her someone was threatening to kill her? She would probably think that someone was him.

He put his hands over his closed eyes and rubbed at the tension in his forehead.

The blow to his back was so unexpected, it took a second to register what was happening. Without his permission, Jace’s body hurtled forward. The sink hit him in the groin. His head bounced off the mirror. Stars of swirling color bursting before his eyes, he tried to shove backward. The assailant grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head against the medicine cabinet again and again. He heard the glass crack, felt a shard slice his cheek.

Maybe this was the part of the movie where he died in a surprise twist. This idiotic thought swam through his head as his assailant let him fall. His chin hit the porcelain sink with the force of a hammer. Then he was on the floor, waiting to be kicked at the least, shot at the worst, torn between wanting to fight back and wanting to lapse into unconsciousness, though he didn’t really have a choice.

Jace wasn’t sure how long he lay there, drifting in and out. Gradually, his vision came into sharper focus. The floor was a sea of old one-inch octagonal white tile with dingy grout. He could see the lines of the old white bathtub, and, nearer, the base of the pedestal sink, the rusty water lines that came out of the wall and snaked up under the sink to the faucets.

You have to get up, J.C. You have to get out of here.

He couldn’t seem to pass the message from his brain to his body.

Slowly, he became aware of something wet beneath his cheek. He brought himself to his hands and knees and saw the pool of blood smeared on the floor where his face had been. Head swimming, arms and legs trembling and rubbery, he grabbed the edge of the sink and slowly pulled himself to his feet.

His mouth and chin hurt like someone had hit him in the face with a bat. Blood dripped, bright red, into the bowl of the sink. The reflection looking back at him in the broken mirror was from a horror show. His right cheekbone and eyebrow were swollen from being slammed into the medicine cabinet. His cheek was cut and bleeding, his nose was bleeding. Some of the lipstick from the message on the mirror was smeared on his cheek like war paint.

Gingerly, he felt his nose to see if it was broken. The left side of his chin had a knot on it, already turning black and blue from bouncing off the sink. Wincing, he felt along the jawbone for a break. He’d split his lip and chipped a tooth.

The apartment was quiet. Jace hoped that meant his attacker had gone, rather than that he was waiting until Jace came around so he could beat on him again.

Still feeling weak, still trembling, he turned on the faucets, washed his face, washed his hands, found a towel, dried himself, and wiped the sink out. Bending over to mop up his blood from the floor, he went down on one knee as everything tilted around him. Somehow he ended up sitting on the floor with his back against the bathtub.

He had to get out of there. He wanted to go slowly, casually, so as not to draw attention to himself, but his face was going to attract plenty of attention if someone came near him, passed him on his way out, passed him on the street, saw him from a window as he got into the Mini and drove away.

The apartment door opened and closed. Jace sat up straighter, straining to listen. Someone going out or someone coming in?

He waited for some exclamation of surprise, but he heard nothing for a moment. If Abby Lowell had walked in to see the mess, to see that her home had been violated, she would have gasped or made some sound of being shocked. Maybe she would have gone back out to find a neighbor and get help. Call the cops.