The Rabbit Factory (16 page)

"At least you can go back," Mark said. "I'm not welcome any more. They frown on faculty members getting arrested for cocaine possession." "Sorry to hear that," Ronnie said, slowly dishing up the man's breakfast. "But whatever you did in the past, you're in the right place now. There's a lot of recovering addicts in this room. They have meetings here every day at noon. I'd be glad to introduce you around to some of the guys." "I don't want to be no trouble."

"It's no trouble. Helping people get back on their feet is what we do. Let me know if there's anything special I can do for you." "I could use a couple of extra sausages."

Ronnie added more food to the man's plate. "It's nice to meet a fellow Munsterite, although I gotta say, you don't have much of a Hoosier accent. Where you from originally?"

"Eastern Europe, but with my drug problem I don't stay in one place too long." He looked down at his tattered Nikes. "Nice to meetcha. Go Mustangs."

"Go Mustangs," Ronnie said, echoing Mark's rhythm and tone, which had turned his high school cheer into a chant of despair.

He watched the big man shuffle away. Good guy, Ronnie thought, and wondered if he'd ever see him again.

He would see him one more time. Forty minutes later Mark approached Ronnie in the parking lot and asked if they could spend a few minutes talking. "Maybe help me get my life straightened out," he said.

Ronnie felt like he had made a breakthrough, and the two of them walked over to a cluster of palm trees so they could talk in private.

When they were out of sight, away from the prying eyes, judgmental ears, and gossiping tongues of those homeless buttinskis, the man who called himself Mark and claimed to be from Munster, Indiana, produced a baseball bat from his greasy, threadbare raincoat and bashed in Ronnie Lucas's skull.

"Thanks for breakfast," the man said, as he set the brain spattered bat alongside the bloody heap that had only moments ago been the Twenty-Third Most Powerful Person in Hollywood.

Andre totally ignored me. I was trying to pick his poodle brain on whether I should call Diana today or not. I already had Terry's opinion. "Call her every five minutes," he had said last night over beers. But Andre was too busy pushing my cereal bowl around the floor. He finally wedged it into a corner and with a few flicks of his tongue nailed the last of the rogue Cheerios that were clinging to the side of the dish. "Not that you care, but I'm going to call her tonight," I said, as Andre headed for the toilet bowl to wash down his breakfast. Thirty seconds later she called me. "Hi, this is Diana Trantanella," the perky voice on the other end of the phone said. "This is so amazing. I was just talking about you."

"Really? To whom?"

"Andre. He's my dog. You may think that's a little weird."

"Not at all. I have a cat, Blanche. Your name hasn't come up yet, but I'll see if I can work it into the conversation. I called your cell yesterday to ask you a favor, but I didn't leave a message, because I decided it was more business than personal.

Marshall Karp

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Then I was going to call you at the police station, but I decided I didn't want to interrupt your homicide investigation. So now I'm calling you at home. Overthinking is part of my charm." "It's okay. I've been overthinking about calling you. What's the favor?"

"I told you I'm a nurse at Valley General. What I didn't tell you was that I work in the Pediatric Oncology Unit. My patients are kids with terminal illnesses. Some of them are in remission, but a lot of them are not so lucky." "That's gotta be a tough job," I said.

"It's the best job in the world. I love coming in to work every day. But some nights I go home and cry my eyes out." Her voice cracked. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "The best thing we do is the 'I Have A Dream' Program. The kids tell us what they want to do or who they want to meet, and if it's humanly possible, we make their dream come true. A lot of kids want to meet basketball players or movie stars, or sit in the dugout at a Dodger game. One girl wanted to meet Senator Feinstein, and we were able to arrange it."

"And I'm guessing one of these kids wants to meet somebody I know."c

"Oh, it's somebody you know, alright. It's you."

"Me? You're kidding. Are you sure he asked for Mike Lomax? Y'know a lot of kids confuse me with Shaquille O'Neal."

She laughed. "His name is Hugo Cordner. He's fourteen and he devours books. His favorite characters are smart people who solve murders. Everyone from the Hardy Boys to Sherlock Holmes to Alex Cross. But they're fictional. He wants to meet a real live detective who catches murderers." "And you just happened to tell him that you know one?"

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The Rabbit Factory

"No. I wouldn't do that to him or you. I don't want to put pressure on you to say yes, and I wouldn't want to disappoint him if you say no." "Yes," I said without hesitating. "I don't think I've ever been anybody's dream before, but I'll do what I can to not disappoint him." "Thank you," she said.

"I've been thinking that I owe you a more civil dinner than the one we had at Big Jim's house the other night." "Well, you don't owe me one, but it sure would be nice."

"How's Friday night?"

"Perfect. Why don't you meet me at Valley General about six, spend some time with Hugo, and we can have dinner afterwards." We hung up. Big Jim will be tickled, I thought. But I'd be damned if I'd tell him just yet. The phone rang again. Busy morning. I grabbed it.

"What are you wearing?" It was Terry.

"The usual. Blue blazer, gray slacks, women's panties. Why do you ask?" "Because there's a good chance your picture's gonna wind up on the front page of every newspaper in the country." "I doubt it. Lots of cops wear ladies' underwear. It's no longer that newsworthy." "We got another live one. A second homicide in the rabbit case. This is a biggie. Ronnie Lucas." "Whoa! The kid from TV Daze? Ronnie Lucas, the actor?"

"He's currently playing dead in a church parking lot at Fourth and Pico." "Pico isn't our turf," I said. "How did we get the call?"

"Jessica Keating is on the scene. She sent for us. There is no

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Marshall Karp

question in her curly blonde head that this is connected to the rabbit homicide." "I'm on my way," I said. "What's the exact address?"

"Just go to Fourth and Pico. Look for the yellow tape and a couple of hundred photographers." Terry is cynical, but he knows what to expect. A celebrity homicide in Tinseltown is a magnet for anyone with a camera. The paparazzi come out in such large numbers that rumor has it that whenever an A-List Hollywood personality is murdered, brokers tell their best clients to buy Kodak stock. "I'll be there in ten minutes, at which point I will commence shooting photographers," Terry said. "What's your E.T.A.?" "Ten and a half," I said. "Don't shoot them all. I look fantastic. I want one alive to shoot me."

Fourteen minutes later I threaded the Acura through a maze of cop cars, news vans, and rubberneckers, and found a convenient parking spot on the sidewalk, a block from the action. I badge-flashed my way to the scene.

There weren't many cars in the parking lot, but the place was crawling with bums. I know the PC term is 'homeless,' but I have no idea whether these people had homes to go to or not. Most of them were dressed in clothes that Goodwill would reject. About a dozen were clutching plastic garbage bags, and one wispy-haired man of indeterminate age and race was hanging onto a shopping cart like it was the last lifeboat off the Titanic. Call me politically incorrect, but they looked like bums to me.

I could hear Terry before I spotted him. He was barking orders at three uniformed cops he had just recruited to be Bum Wranglers.

"Don't let any of them go," he yelled. "I want their names, some kind of address or how to get in touch with them. They're all material witnesses." Several shutters clicked in his direction

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and he exploded. "And get those effing reporters back behind the tape, or I'll cap their lenses and their knees!" That little piece of drama caused a chain reaction of rapid-fire shutter clicking. Terry Biggs, Media Darling of the Moment, had ignored his own fashion advice and was wearing a shit-brown suit and one of his trademark stained ties. He gave me a quick wave and went back to the uniforms.

I did a 360° eyeball of the scene and counted nine photographers, all shoving cameras and microphones into the face of any bum, hobo, vagrant, or filthy person who would talk to them.

However, unlike most citizens of Los Angeles, these bums did not aspire to fifteen minutes of fame. They'd rather have cash. I watched several members of the press corps dig into their wallets, while the homeless deftly shoved green wads into their pockets. God bless the American economy.

While my partner worked the perimeter, I headed for the chalk outline. Jessica Keating was kneeling next to the body. She didn't have the same look of professional disassociation she'd had two days ago at Familyland. Her face was taut, bothered. I knelt down beside her. "This one got to you," I said.

She let out a long, slow sigh. "I know I'm not supposed to get emotional about dead people, but this one really sucks. A decent guy with a wife and kids starts out his day as a healthy, productive member of God's Green Earth and winds up with his brains beaten out before lunch."

"You sent for us. You think this is connected to the Family land job?"

She held up a flipbook in her gloved hand. Same drawing of a closed fist on the cover page. Then she flipped the pages,

and two animated fingers popped up, making the sign of the V. "It doesn't mean 'V for Victory,'" she said.

"Victim Number Two," I said.

A baseball bat covered with blood, hair, and chunks of gray matter was on the ground. "And that's the murder weapon." I said it, rather than asked it.

"Conveniently located," she said, "so even the dumbest cop could find it."

I took a closer look, but I didn't pick it up. "It doesn't look very Lamaar-like," I said. "It's just a baseball bat."

"Here's where we separate the dumb cops from the smart ones." She stood up. Gratefully, I stood too. I was too old to be kneeling next to dead people for extended periods of time. I arched my back into a stretch. This is the way cats stretch, I thought. From there, my brain made a sharp left turn and suddenly I was thinking about my new cat friend, Diana Trantanella.

Jess didn't stretch or let her mind wander. "Ronnie Lucas did a movie for Lamaar called The Bat That Couldn't Miss," she said. "It's about a Little Leaguer who's in a batting slump, and Ronnie, who's the coach, gives him this special bat that he says belonged to Mark McGwire, so it can't miss. The kid starts using it, and of course, now he's full of confidence, so he starts hitting again."

"What are you doing watching kid flicks?" I said. "You don't have kids."

"Gabe and Liana, my sister's kids. She lets me baby-sit if I promise not to say the 'F word.' Anyway, at the end of the movie, it's the Big Game, and the bat breaks. Now the kid can't hit. Bottom of the ninth, he's got two strikes against him. Ronnie calls time out, and he tells the kid, 'It's not really the bat that's

I got the talent. It's you.' Bam, the kid hits a grand slam home run and wins the game."

"Just like Dumbo the Elephant with the feather," I said. "Same premise. He didn't need the feather to fly. It was all inside him." "How do you know that? You don't have kids either."

"Yeah, but I was one. Dumbo's a classic. It's like fifty years old."

"Anyway," she said, "they came out with a bat that had the movie logo on it and Ronnie Lucas's autograph. This is it." "We've already got people checking gift shop receipts at Familyland," I said. "Maybe if our killer bought the bat and the jump rope at the same time..." "He didn't. This is off the record," she said, dropping her voice. "Based on the angle of the rope marks, I'm positive that the guy who killed Elkins was five-foot-eight or nine. But the angle of the blows to Lucas's head indicates that the killer was six-four or six-five. I won't know for sure till I get back to the lab." "But the flipbooks..." I started to say.

"I know. The flipbooks say one killer. But I think the geometry is saying short man, tall man--two different killers. The only other hypothesis is that the killer wore eight-inch platform shoes when he committed the second murder."

Terry was headed our way, talking into his cell phone. Just as he reached me he slammed it shut. "Damn telemarketers. Why do they always seem to call during a major homicide investigation? You and Keating look more bummed out than usual. What's the bad news?"Ť I told him about the second flipbook. It didn't surprise him. It fit our serial killer theory. Then Jessica hit him with her tall

man, short man scenario.

"Two killers," he said. "We are totally fucked."

"Not as fucked as Ronnie Lucas," Jessica said.

"Who was that on the phone?" I asked.

"The usual suspects," he said. "First Amy Cheever. She and Curry are on their way over here. She asked what we could do to keep this out of the press. I suggested repealing the First Amendment. Then Kilcullen called. The Governor wants to know how long it's going to take us to find out who the hell is killing the valued employees of one of the state's most valued taxpayers. Unquote." I shrugged. I didn't know what to say to the Governor. I didn't know what to say to Kilcullen. I didn't even know what I was going to say to Hugo Cordner, the fourteen-year-old boy who was hoping to meet a real live smart LAPD cop who catches murderers.

-- 183

It took us about three hours to interview eighty-three homeless people. Except for the few who offered up dubious addresses like "under the 101 by Sepulveda," or "behind the dumpsters at Vons on Robertson," I could now vouch for the fact they were indeed homeless. Most of them were also penniless, some were toothless and a few were mindless. But despite the fact that they had more than their fair share of Hep C, Hep B and HIV, very few were hopeless.

As a group they seemed to be much more upbeat than eighty-three random Los Angelinos you might find at the Century City Mall. One of them was so optimistic about life's possibilities that he had a cell phone. No roof over his head, but he made sure he had a mobile connection to his service in case they had any openings for film extras. There's no people like show people. If you live in L.A. long enough, you come to despise that phrase.