The Murder Book (56 page)

Milo stared at the house, same hostility as when he’d eye-zapped the guard in the Cossacks’ lobby. Before I could ask what was up, he U-turned, headed south, then west to Muirfield, where he cruised slowly to the end of the block and stopped at a property concealed behind high stone walls.

“Walt Obey’s place,” he said, before I could ask.

Stone walls. Just like the Loetz estate that neighbored the party house. The kill spot. Build walls, and you could get away with plenty.

Janie Ingalls abused by two generations of men. A closed-circuit camera atop one gatepost rotated.

Milo said, “Say cheese.” Waved. Jammed the Mustang into
DRIVE
and sped away.

He dropped me back home, and I slept until 5
P.M.
, woke in time to turn on the news. The Cossack brothers’ deaths missed the network affiliate broadcasts but was featured an hour later on a local station’s six o’clock spot.

The facts were just as Georgie Nemerov had reported: Single-car accident, probably due to excessive speed. Thirty seconds of bio identified Garvey and Bobo as “wealthy Westside developers” who’d built “some controversial projects.” No identifying photos. No suspicion of foul play.

Another death occurred that night, but it never hit the L.A. news because it went down ninety miles north.

Santa Barbara News-Press
item, forwarded to me by e-mail, with no accompanying message. The sender: [email protected]. That was a new one.

The facts were straightforward: The body of a sixty-eight-year-old real estate executive named Michael Larner had been found two hours ago, slumped in the front seat of his BMW. The car had been driven into a wooded area just north of the Cabrillo exit off the 101, on the outskirts of Santa Barbara. A recently fired handgun sat in Larner’s lap. He’d died of “an apparent single wound to the head, consistent with self-infliction.”

Larner had come to Santa Barbara to identify the body of his son, Bradley, forty-two, the recent victim of a heart attack, who’d also — irony of ironies — succumbed in a car. Bradley’s vehicle, a Lexus, had been discovered just a few miles away, on a quiet street on the north end of Montecito. The grieving father had left the morgue just after noon, and investigators had come up with no accounting of his whereabouts during the three hours leading up to his suicide.

A homeless man had discovered the body.

“I was going in there to take a nap,” reported the vagrant, identified as Langdon Bottinger, fifty-two. “Knew something was wrong right away. Nice car like that, pushed up against a tree. I looked inside and knocked on the windows. But he was dead. I was in Vietnam, I know dead when I see it.”

A
fter dropping Alex off, Milo turned on the Mustang’s radio and dialed to KLOS. Classic rock. Van Halen doing “Jump.”

Kicky little thing, the ’Stang. Something with a little zip.

“Used to be owned by Tom Cruise’s gardener,” the multipierced girl at the alternative rental yard had told him. Night owl; she worked the midnight-to-eight shift.

“Great,” said Milo, pocketing the keys. “Maybe it’ll help on auditions.”

The girl nodded, knowingly. “You go out for character roles?”

“Nah,” said Milo, heading for the car. “Not enough character.”

He returned to John G. Broussard’s digs on Irving, sat and watched for hours. The chief’s wife emerged at 1:03
P.M.
, escorted to the driveway by a lady cop who held open the driver’s door of the white Caddy. Mrs. B. drove toward Wilshire and was gone.

Leaving John G. alone in the house? Milo was fairly certain Broussard wasn’t in the office; he’d phoned the chief’s headquarters, impersonated a honcho from Walt Obey’s office, was told very politely that the chief wouldn’t be in today.

No surprise, there. Yet another anti-Broussard piece had run in the morning
Times
. The Police Protective League griping about poor morale, dumping it all in Broussard’s lap. Commentary by some law prof, psychoanalyzing Broussard. The clear implication was that the chief’s temperament was a poor fit for modern-day policing. Whatever the hell that meant.

Add all that to the events of last night — and Craig Bosc’s report to the chief — and Broussard had to know the walls were closing in.

John G. had always been the most cautious of men. So what was he doing now? Upstairs in his bedroom closet, picking out a cool suit from a rack of dozens? It was almost as if he didn’t care.

Maybe he didn’t.

Milo kept watching the Tudor digs, stretched his legs, ready for the long haul. But five minutes later a dark green sedan — an unmarked Ford, blackwalls, pure LAPD — backed out of the driveway.

Solitary driver. A tall man, rigid at the wheel. The unmistakable outline of the chief’s noble profile.

Broussard turned south, just like his wife had. Stopped at Wilshire and sat there for a long time, with his left-turn signal blinking — what a good example — waited for the traffic to thin before swinging smoothly onto the boulevard.

Heading east. So maybe he
was
going to work. Toughing it out, show the bastards.

One way to find out.

Broussard stuck precisely to the speed limit, gliding in the center lane, signaling his right turn on Western well within DMV parameters. He drove south, past Washington Boulevard, picked up the 10 East and engineered a textbook entry into the afternoon flow.

Freeway traffic was moderately heavy but steady, perfect tail situation, and Milo had no trouble keeping an eye on the Ford as it passed through the downtown interchange, stayed on the 10, and exited at Soto, in East L.A.

The coroner’s office?

And Broussard did drive to the clean, cream morgue building on the west end of the County Hospital complex, but instead of turning in to park among the vans and the cop cars, he kept going, continued for another two miles. Made a perfect stop at a narrow street called San Elias, turned right, and did a 20 mph cruise through a residential neighborhood of tiny bungalows packaged by chain link.

Three blocks up San Elias, then the street dead-ended and the green Ford pulled over.

The terminus was marked by twenty-foot-high iron double gates, rich with flourishes and topped by Gothic arches. Above the peaks, the iron had been bent into lettering. Milo was a block away, couldn’t make out what they spelled.

John G. Broussard parked the Ford, got out, locked it, tugged his suit jacket in place.

Not dressed for the office — the chief never showed up at Parker Center out of uniform. Lint-free, all those razor-presses, his chest festooned with ribbons. During ceremonial occasions, he wore his hat.

Thinking he was a fucking general or something, said the scoffers.

Today Broussard wore a navy suit tailored snugly to his trim physique, a TV blue shirt, and a gold tie so bright that it gleamed like jewelry from a block away. Perfect posture accentuated the chief’s height as he walked to the big iron gates with a martial stride. As if presiding at some ceremony. Broussard paused, turned a handle, stepped through.

Milo waited five minutes before getting out. Looked over his shoulder several times as he covered the block on foot. Feeling antsy, despite himself. Something about Broussard…

When he was halfway to the gates, he made out the lettering.

Sacred Peace Memorial Park

The cemetery was bisected by a long straight pathway of decomposed granite, pink-beige against a bordering hedge of variegated boxwood. Hollywood junipers formed high green walls on three sides, too bright under a sickly gray sky. No orange trees in sight, but Milo could swear he smelled orange blossoms.

Twenty feet in, he came upon a statue of Jesus, benevolent and smiling, then a small, limestone building marked
OFFICE
and fringed with beds of multicolored pansies. A wheelbarrow blocked half the path. An old Mexican man in khaki work clothes and a pith helmet stooped in front of the flowers. He turned briefly to look at Milo, touched the brim of the helmet, returned to weeding.

Milo circumvented the wheelbarrow, spotted the first row of gravestones, kept going.

Old-fashioned markers, upright, carved of stone, a few of them tilting, a handful decorated by sprigs of desiccated flowers. Milo’s parents had been buried in a very different ambience, huge place, not far from Indianapolis, a suburban city of the dead bordered by industrial parks and shopping malls. Mock-Colonial buildings with all the authenticity of Disneyland, endless rolling green turf fit for a championship golf course. The markers in his parents’ cemetery were brass plaques embedded flat in the bluegrass, invisible until you got close. Even in death Bernard and Martha Sturgis had been loath to offend…

This place was flat and tiny and treeless except for the bordering junipers. Two naked acres, if that. Full up with gravestones, too — an old place. Nowhere to hide, and finding Broussard was easy enough.

The chief was standing off in a corner in the lower, left quadrant of the cemetery. Second-to-last row, a snug, shady place. His back was to Milo as he faced a marker, big, dark hands laced behind his ramrod back.

Milo walked toward him, making no effort to squelch the sound of his footsteps. Broussard didn’t turn.

When Milo got to the gravesite, the chief said, “What took you so long?”

The stone that had occupied Broussard was charcoal granite edged with salmon pink and carved beautifully with a border of daisies.

Jane Marie Ingalls.
MAY SHE FIND PEACE IN ETERNITY

Entry and exit dates spelled out a sixteen-year-three-month life span. A tiny smiling teddy bear had been chiseled above Janie’s name.

A gray-blue juniper berry had lodged in the bevel that created the bear’s left button eye. John G. Broussard stooped and plucked it out and placed it in a pocket of his jacket. The suit was double-breasted, blue with a maroon chalk stripe. Suppressed waist, high side vents, working buttonholes on the sleeves.
Look, ma, I’m custom-made.
Milo remembered Broussard’s terrific threads and poreless skin during the interrogation twenty years ago.

The thousandth time he’d thought about that day.

Up close, the chief hadn’t changed much. The graying hair, a bit of crease at the corner of his lips, but his complexion glowed with health, and his huge hands looked strong enough to crack walnuts.

Milo said, “You come here a lot?”

“When I invest in something, I like to keep an eye on it.”

“Invest?”

“I bought the marker, Detective. Her father didn’t care. She was going to end up in a potter’s field.”

“Guilt offering,” said Milo.

Broussard remained still. Then he said, “Detective Sturgis, I’m going to examine you for listening devices, so relax.”

“Sure,” said Milo, stifling the “Yes, sir” on the tip of his tongue. No matter how hard he tried, Broussard made him feel small. He drew himself up as the chief turned, faced him, did an expert pat-down.

That figured. An ex–IA man would have experience with wires.

Finished, Broussard dropped his hands and maintained eye contact. “So what is it you want to tell me?”

“I was hoping you’d have things to tell me.”

Broussard’s lips didn’t move, but a glint of amusement brightened his eyes. “You’d like some sort of confessional statement?”

“If that’s what’s on your mind,” said Milo.

“What’s on your mind, Detective?”

“I know about Willie Burns.”

“Do you?”

“The tax rolls say the place where he hid out on 156th — where your partner Poulsenn got nailed — was owned by your wife’s mother. The night Willie took Janie Ingalls to the party he was driving a borrowed car. Brand-new white Cadillac, beautifully maintained. Your wife likes those, has owned six Caddies in the last twenty years, all white. Including the one she’s driving at this very moment.”

Broussard stooped and brushed dust off Janie Ingalls’s headstone.

“Burns was family,” said Milo.

“Was?” said Broussard.

“Very much
was
. It went down last night. Just like you choreographed.”

Broussard straightened. “There are limits to protection. Even for family.”

“What was he, a cousin?”

“Nephew,” said the chief. “Son of my wife’s eldest brother. His siblings were all respectable. Everyone in the family went to college or learned a trade. Willie was the youngest. Something went wrong.”

“Sometimes it works out that way,” said Milo.

“Now you’re sounding like that shrink friend of yours.”

“It rubs off.”

“Does it?” said Broussard.

“Yeah. Hanging around with the right people is good for the soul. Vice versa, too. Musta been a burden, you playing by the rules, taking all that racist crap, climbing the ranks, meanwhile Willie’s going on his merry way shooting and selling smack. Lots of potential for bad PR. But you did your best to help him, anyway. That’s why he never served much jail time. You hooked him up with Boris Nemerov, probably went his cash bonds. And at first he came through for Nemerov, kept you looking good.”

Broussard remained impassive.

Milo said, “Musta been a strain, associating with a known felon.”

“I never broke the law.”

Milo’s turn to keep quiet.

Broussard said, “There’s always flexibility in the law, Detective. Yes, I carried him. My wife adored him — remembered him as a cute little kid. To the family he was
still
the cute little kid. I was the only one seemed to realize he’d metamorphosed into a reprobate junkie. Maybe I should’ve seen it, sooner. Or let him deal with the consequences, earlier.”

The chief’s posture relaxed a bit. Bastard was actually slumping.

Milo said, “Then Willie got himself in a whole new level of trouble. Witnessed a very nasty 187 and got paranoid and told you they were going to pin it on him.”

“Not paranoia,” said Broussard. “Reasonable apprehensiveness.” He gave a cold smile. “Black junkie with a felony record versus rich white boys? No one intended to bring Willie to trial. The plan was to float rumors, plant evidence, have Willie OD somewhere, call in an anonymous tip, and close the case.”