The Murder Book (4 page)

That one stuck in Milo’s head for a while: Kyle Rodriguez’s beefy bronze corpse slumped over the jewelry case. The image kept him up for more than a few nights. Nothing philosophical or theological, just general edginess. He’d seen plenty of young, healthy guys die a lot more painfully than Kyle, had long ago given up on making sense out of things.

He spent his insomnia driving around in the old Fiat. Up and down Sunset from Western to La Cienega, then back again. Finally veering south onto Santa Monica Boulevard.

As if that hadn’t been his intention all along.

Playing a game with himself, like a dieter circling a piece of cake.

He’d never been much for willpower.

For three consecutive nights, he cruised Boystown. Showered and shaved and cologned, wearing a clean white T-shirt and military-pressed jeans and white tennies. Wishing he was cuter and thinner, but figuring he wasn’t that bad if he squinted and kept his gut sucked in and kept his nerves under control by rubbing his face. The first night, a sheriff’s patrol car nosed into the traffic at Fairfax and stayed two car lengths behind his Fiat, setting off paranoia alarms. He obeyed all the traffic rules, drove back to his crappy little apartment on Alexandria, drank beer until he felt ready to burst, watched bad TV, and made do with imagination. The second night, no sheriffs, but he just lacked the energy to bond and ended up driving all the way to the beach and back, nearly falling asleep at the wheel.

Night three, he found himself a stool in a bar near Larabee, sweating too damn much, knowing he was even tenser than he felt because his neck hurt like hell and his teeth throbbed like they were going to crumble. Finally, just before 4
A.M.
, before sunlight would be cruel to his complexion, he picked up a guy, a young black guy, around his own age. Well-dressed, well-spoken, education grad student at UCLA. Just about the same place as Milo, sexual-honesty wise.

The two of them were jumpy and awkward in the guy’s own crappy little grad student studio apartment on Selma south of Hollywood. The guy attending UCLA but living with junkies and hippies east of Vine because he couldn’t afford the Westside. Polite chitchat, then… it was over in seconds. Both of them knowing there would be no repeat performance. The guy telling Milo his name was Steve Jackson but when he went into the bathroom, Milo spotted a date book embossed WES, found an address sticker inside the front cover. Wesley E. Smith, the Selma address.

Intimacy.

A sad case, Kyle Rodriguez, but he got over it by the time Case Seven rolled around.

A street slashing, good old Central Avenue, again. Knife fight, lots of blood all over the sidewalk, but only one db, a thirtyish Mexican guy in work clothes, with the homemade haircut and cheap shoes of a recently arrived illegal. Two dozen witnesses in a nearby
cantina
spoke no English and claimed blindness. This one wasn’t even detective work. Solved courtesy of the blues — patrol car spotted a lurching perp ten blocks away, bleeding profusely from his own wounds. The uniforms cuffed him as he howled in agony, sat him down on the curb, called Schwinn and Milo,
then
phoned for the ambulance that transported the wretch to the jail ward at County Hospital.

By the time the detectives got there, the idiot was being loaded onto a gurney, had lost so much blood it was touch-and-go. He ended up surviving but gave up most of his colon and a bedside statement, pled guilty from a wheelchair, got sent back to the jail ward till someone figured out what to do with him.

Now, Number Eight. Schwinn just kept munching the burrito.

Finally, he wiped his mouth. “Beaudry, top of the freeway, huh? Wanna drive?” Getting out and heading for the passenger side before Milo could answer.

Milo said, “Either way,” just to hear the sound of his own voice.

Even away from the wheel, Schwinn went through his jumpy predrive ritual. Ratcheting the seat back noisily, then returning it to where it had been. Checking the knot of his tie in the rearview, poking around at the corner of his lipless mouth. Making sure no cherry-colored residue of decongestant syrup remained.

Forty-eight years old but his hair was dead white and skimpy, thinning to skin at the crown. Five-ten and Milo figured him for no more than 140, most of it gristle. He had a lantern jaw, that stingy little paper cut of a mouth, deep seams scoring his rawboned face, and heavy bags under intelligent, suspicious eyes. The package shouted dust bowl. Schwinn had been born in Tulsa, labeled himself Ultra-Okie to Milo minutes after they’d met.

Then he’d paused and looked the young detective in the eye. Expecting Milo to say something about his own heritage.

How about Black Irish Indiana Fag?

Milo said, “Like the Steinbeck book.”

“Yeah,” said Schwinn, disappointed. “
Grapes of Wrath.
Ever read it?”

“Sure.”

“I didn’t.” Defiant tone. “Why the fuck should I? Everything in there I already learned from my daddy’s stories.” Schwinn’s mouth formed a poor excuse for a smile. “I hate books. Hate TV and stupid-ass radio, too.” Pausing, as if laying down a gauntlet.

Milo kept quiet.

Schwinn frowned. “Hate sports, too — what’s the point of all that?”

“Yeah, it can get excessive.”

“You’ve got the size. Play sports in college?”

“High school football,” said Milo.

“Not good enough for college?”

“Not nearly.”

“You read much?”

“A bit,” said Milo. Why did that sound confessional?

“Me too.” Schwinn put his palms together. Aimed those accusatory eyes at Milo. Leaving Milo no choice.

“You hate books but you read.”

“Magazines,” said Schwinn, triumphantly. “Magazines cut to the chase — take your
Reader’s Digest
, collects all the bullshit and condenses it to where you don’t need a shave by the time you finish. The other one I like is
Smithsonian
.”

Now there was a surprise.

“Smithsonian,”
said Milo.

“Never heard of it?” said Schwinn, as if relishing a secret. “The museum, in Washington, they put out a magazine. My wife went and subscribed to it and I was ready to kick her butt — just what we needed, more paper cluttering up the house. But it’s not half-bad. They’ve got all sorts of stuff in there. I feel educated when I close the covers, know what I mean?”

“Sure.”

“Now
you
,” said Schwinn, “they tell me you
are
educated.” Making it sound like a criminal charge. “Got yourself a master’s degree, is that right?”

Milo nodded.

“From where?”

“Indiana U. But school isn’t necessarily education.”

“Yeah, but sometimes it is — what’d you study at Indiana
Yoo
o?”

“English.”

Schwinn laughed. “God loves me, sent me a partner who can spell. Anyway, give me magazines and burn all the books as far as I’m concerned. I like science. Sometimes when I’m at the morgue I look at medical books — forensic medicine, abnormal psychology, even anthropology ’cause they’re learning to do stuff with bones.” His own bony finger wagged. “Let me tell you something, boy-o: One day, science is gonna be a big damn deal in our business. One day, to be doing our job a guy’s gonna have to be a scientist — show up at a crime scene, scrape the db, carry a little microscope, learn the biochemical makeup of every damn scrote the vic hung out with for the last ten years.”

“Transfer evidence?” Milo said. “You think it’ll get that good?”

“Sure, yeah,” Schwinn said, impatiently. “Right now transfer evidence is for the most part useless bullshit, but wait and see.”

They had been driving around Central on their first day as partners. Aimlessly, Milo thought. He kept waiting for Schwinn to point out known felons, hot spots, whatever, but the guy seemed unaware of his surroundings, all he wanted to do was talk. Later, Milo would learn that Schwinn had plenty to offer. Solid detective logic and basic advice. (“Carry your own camera, gloves, and fingerprint powder. Take care of your own self, don’t depend on anyone.”) But right now, this first day, riding around — everything — seemed pointless.

“Transfer,” said Schwinn. “All we can transfer now is ABO blood type. What a crock. Big deal, a million scrotes are type O, most of the rest are A, so what does
that
do? That and hair, sometimes they take hair, put it in little plastic envelopes, but what the fuck can they do with it, you always get some Hebe lawyer proving hair don’t mean shit. No, I’m talking serious science, something nuclear, like the way they date fossils. Carbon dating. One day, we’ll be anthropologists. Too bad you don’t have a master’s degree in anthropology… can you type okay?”

A few miles later. Milo was taking in the neighborhood on his own, studying faces, places, when Schwinn proclaimed: “English won’t do you a damn bit of good, boy-o, cause our customers don’t talkie mucho
English
. Not the Mexes, not the niggers, either — not unless you want to call that jive they give you English.”

Milo kept his mouth shut.

“Screw English,” said Schwinn. “
Fuck
English in the ass with a hydrochloric acid dildo. The wave of the future is science.”

They hadn’t been told much about the Beaudry call. Female Caucasian db, discovered by a trash-picker sifting through the brush that crested the freeway on-ramp.

Rain had fallen the previous night and the dirt upon which the corpse had been placed was poor-drainage clay that retained an inch of grimy water in the ruts.

Despite a nice soft muddy area, no tire tracks, no footprints. The ragpicker was an old black guy named Elmer Jacquette, tall, emaciated, stooped, with Parkinsonian tremors in his hands that fit with his agitation as he retold the story to anyone who’d listen.

“And there it was, right out there, Lord Jesus…”

No one was listening anymore. Uniforms and crime-scene personnel and the coroner’s man were busy doing their jobs. Lots of other people stood around, making small talk. Flashing vehicles blocked Beaudry all the way back to Temple as a bored-looking patrolman detoured would-be freeway speeders.

Not too many cars out: 9
P.M.
Well past rush hour. Rigor had come and gone, as had the beginnings of putrefaction. The coroner was guestimating a half day to a day since death, but no way to know how long the body had been lying there or what temperature it had been stored at. The logical guess was that the killer had driven up last night, after dark, placed the corpse, zipped right onto the 101, and sped off happy.

No passing motorist had seen it, because when you were in a hurry, why would you study the dirt above the on-ramp? You never get to know a city unless you walk. Which is why so few people know L.A., thought Milo. After living here for two years, he still felt like a stranger.

Elmer Jacquette walked all the time, because he had no car. Covered the area from his East Hollywood flop to the western borders of downtown, poking around for cans, bottles, discards he tried to peddle to thrift shops in return for soup kitchen vouchers. One time, he’d found a working watch — gold, he thought, turned out to be plated but he got ten bucks for it, anyway, at a pawnshop on South Vermont.

He’d
seen the body right away — how could you not from up close, all pale in the moonlight, the sour smell, the way the poor girl’s legs had been bent and spread — and his gorge had risen immediately and soon his franks-and-beans dinner was coming back the wrong way.

Jacquette had the good sense to run a good fifteen feet from the body before vomiting. When the uniforms arrived, he pointed out the emetic mound, apologizing. Not wanting to annoy anyone. He was sixty-eight years old, hadn’t served state time since fifteen years ago, wasn’t going to annoy the police, no way.

Yessir, nossir.

They’d kept him around, waiting for the detectives to arrive. Now, the men in suits were finally here and Jacquette stood over by one of the police cars as someone pointed him out and they approached him, stepping into the glare of those harsh lights the cops had put all over the place.

Two suits. A skinny white-haired redneck type in an old-fashioned gray sharkskin suit and a dark-haired, pasty-faced heavyset kid whose green jacket and brown pants and ugly red-brown tie made Elmer wonder if nowadays
cops
were shopping at thrift shops.

They stopped at the body first. The old one took one look, wrinkled his nose, got an annoyed look on his face. Like he’d been interrupted in the middle of doing something important.

The fat kid was something else. Barely glanced at the body before whipping his head away. Bad skin, that one, and he’d gone white as a sheet, started rubbing his face with one hand, over and over.

Tightening up that big heavy body of his like
he
was ready to lose his lunch.

Elmer wondered how long the kid had been on the job, if he’d actually blow chunks. If the kid did heave, would he be smart enough to avoid the body, like Elmer had?

’Cause this kid didn’t look like no veteran.

T
his was worse than Asia.

No matter how brutal it got, war was impersonal, human chess pieces moving around the board, you fired at shadows, strafed huts you pretended were empty, lived every day hoping you wouldn’t be the pawn that flipped. Reduce someone to The Enemy, and you could blow off his legs or slice open his belly or napalm his kids without knowing his name. As bad as war got, there was always the chance for making nice sometime in the future — look at Germany and the rest of Europe. To his father, an Omaha Beach alumnus, buddying up to the krauts was an abomination. Dad curled his lip every time he saw a “hippie-faggot in one of those Hitler beetle-cars.” But Milo knew enough history to understand that peace was as inevitable as war and that as unlikely as it seemed, one day Americans might be vacationing in Hanoi.

War wounds had a chance of healing
because
they weren’t personal. Not that the memory of guts slipping through his hands would fade, but maybe, somewhere off in the future…