The Remake (24 page)

She worked steadily for several more hours and he did not catch her eye again. Finally, Casey hung up the phone for the last time. She glanced at him, maybe the third time she’d looked at him all day.

“I’m ready to go home,” she said. “Do you have an armored car for me?”

“Stay put,” R.J. said. “I’ll have the car sent around.” He stood up and felt his joints creak from the tense inactivity. He
stepped into the hall and the cops there glanced up at him. “She’s ready to go home,” R.J. said.

“Oh, happy day,” said the cop on the left, a stocky guy with a red mustache. He plucked his radio from his belt and passed the word as R.J. went back into Casey’s office.

“Long day,” R.J. said.

She shrugged. “There are a lot of those,” she said. “But today was probably worse than most. Robert Brickel didn’t come back from lunch.”

“Oh, yeah? Who’s Robert Brickel?”

“You know. That awful-looking guy with the goatee that works out of Janine’s office. He’s so flaky, I wonder why she puts up with him.”

“He must know where some bodies are buried,” R.J. said.

“He must. He’s been late often enough, but to just take off the whole afternoon like that—He’d better have something good on Janine. He didn’t even call in.”

R.J. felt something run up his spine and back down again. It was a very small thing, very light-footed, and he frowned, waiting for it to take another run so he could see what it was. “Casey,” he said as the thing tickled him again.

She glanced at him, one eyebrow raised.

“This guy, Robert Brickel. What’s his job?”

She made a face. “Jesus, R.J., he’s the hatchet man. He does all Janine’s dirty work. Fires people. Runs the filing system. Keeps her schedule. Like that. Why?”

The little thing grew a few sizes and stuck around his throat. “Would it be fair to call Brickel Janine Wright’s assistant?”

Casey’s jaw dropped. “Oh my God,” she said.

“Yeah. Mine too.”

“Oh my God. Of course. Oh, R.J. what a bunch of jerks we are—”

But he was already stepping out and talking to the cop outside her door.

CHAPTER 28

They found Robert Brickel in the morgue with a John Doe tag on his toe. They were lucky to have found him at all. His body had been in the water at one of the large flood control dams in the Valley, the one out in the North Valley near the Foothill Freeway.

A party of Japanese tourists found him. They’d heard there were cranes living in the park around the dam. They’d come to photograph birds and had seen the body floating. They never found their cranes. But they’d taken some great pictures of the body. Then they had told their tour guide, bowing a lot. The tour guide had hissed and bowed back. Then he had called the consulate.

The consulate was unable to bow over the telephone, but his office called the cops, who fished the body out while the Japanese tourists took some more great pictures.

The cops didn’t bow, either. But they did take some more pictures before they loaded the body onto the wagon and drove it to the morgue.

And at 3:00
A.M.,
R.J., Portillo, and Angelo Bertelli stood looking down at the body.

“That’s him,” R.J. said.

Portillo nodded. “Yes. I agree. I will tell the captain and he can arrange a formal identification.” He turned away and left the large cold room for the telephone outside.

“Uncle Hank,” R.J. said.

Portillo stopped and turned back, looking irritated. “Yes, RJ.?”

“You can tell Davis one more thing.”

Portillo sighed with exasperation, as if he thought R.J. was going to suggest he tell Davis to jump up his own ass. “What’s that?”

But R.J. gave him a big grin instead. He let the grin just hang there for a minute. It felt good, and he went with it until Portillo started to turn away again. “Uncle Hank? I didn’t do this one.”

Portillo stopped dead. “Say it again,
hijo
?”

“I said, I didn’t do it. Couldn’t have. I’ve been sitting in the middle of fifteen cops all day.” He nodded at the body. “We know he was killed sometime this afternoon while I was warming a chair next to two uniforms. So unless they helped me carry the body, I didn’t do it.” R.J. felt the grin turn just a little mean, but he didn’t care. “Tell Davis that.”

The expression of annoyance dropped off Portillo’s face and for a moment, his jaw just dangled. Then he slammed his mouth shut with a click you could hear across the room.
“Hijo de puta más grande en el mundo,
” he muttered. R.J. was impressed; Portillo had a puritanical attitude toward profanity. If he was using it himself, he must have been floored by what R.J. had said.

“Wish I could say that in Italian,” Angelo said.

Portillo shook his head, and then he was smiling, too. He stepped back to R.J. and clapped him on the back. “I will tell Davis right now,” he said with a wicked grin. “I have his home number.” And he whirled away to the telephone.

R.J. and Bertelli watched him go, then turned back to the body on the slab.

“Ugly-looking guy,” Angelo commented.

“The water didn’t do much for his looks,” R.J. said. “But he didn’t start with much, either.”

“The preliminary report says head wounds and/or drowning,” Angelo said. “I’d give a shiny new nickel to know which. If he was killed at the dam, or someplace else—”

“It won’t make any difference, Angelo. This killer is going to be one jump ahead of us. There won’t be any witnesses, and there won’t be any evidence that means a damn. We’re going to have to either track him down or catch him in the act.”

“What can I say, R.J. I like evidence.”

“You have to. You’re a cop.”

Angelo went back to looking at the corpse, but R.J. felt like Bertelli was really looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. R.J. didn’t care. He was feeling happier than he had in weeks. It looked like he was finally off the hook with the cops. After a minute, Angelo cleared his throat.

“So, um, R.J.,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Uh, ahem.”

R.J. looked at his friend. Normally, Angelo could talk to anybody about anything. “Something in your throat, Detective? Cold air in here getting to you?”

“Throat? No. Nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

“Uh—”

“Angelo, for Christ’s sake!”

“I was wondering about Casey,” Angelo said in a rush.

“Oh.” R.J.’s good mood drained out of him, almost as though Angelo’s question had poked a hole in his chest. “Seems like you ask me that a lot.”

“Yeah, well.” Angelo shrugged. “Seems like it’s, you know. There to ask. A lot.”

“Maybe it is, at that.” R.J. sighed. “What do you want to know?”

“You know. Where things stood wit you two. Hey, you don’t have to say nothin’ if you don’t want.”

“That’s good,” R J. said. “Because I don’t know what to say.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean, I thought this thing yesterday might give us a chance to talk. Get squared away, you know.”

“So?”

“So she sits at the desk all day with a phone stuck to the side of her face. Says maybe two words at the end of the day, that’s it.”

“Nothin’ meaningful, huh.”

“Not to me. It’s business on the phone, then she goes home with the two cops assigned to her. I don’t even get a good night.”

“On account of you were rushing around with this?” Angelo said, pointing his chin at the corpse.

“Yeah, maybe. No. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Angelo nodded. “Uh-huh. And I should just pick my answer there, right?”

“Shit, Angelo, I would have found a way to say good night if it had been me.”

“It ain’t you, buddy. It’s her. And she’s got a whole different set of signals.”

“What is that, some kind of Italian folk wisdom? I mean, what does that mean, a different set of signals?”

Angelo spread his hands. “I mean, this is why people talk, R.J. Because if somethin’ don’t get said, then what isn’t said, and the
way
it isn’t said, always means something different to everybody. Ain’t no two people the same that way, know what I’m saying?”

“Not really, no.”

“I mean, she don’t say good night, and to you that’s rejection, right?”

“That’s right. What else could it be?”

“The fuck do I know, what else? It could mean, I’ll see you later, so why bother to say good night now, huh?”

R.J. blinked. “You think she meant that?”

“Uh, not in this case, no. But you see what I’m saying?”

“Yeah, maybe. I guess so.”

“I’m just saying you gotta talk to her, R.J. That’s all.”

“How can I talk to her when she’s always on the phone?”

Angelo shrugged. “Call her.”

“What. On the phone? Call her on the phone, Angelo?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’m sitting five feet from her all day and she doesn’t say a word, why should she talk to me on the phone?”

“What do I know. She likes the phone. Call her up, R.J.”

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that, Angelo,” R.J. said. He looked around the room, taking one last look at the body of Robert Brickel. “Let’s get out of here.”

They left the morgue and walked out to join Portillo. He was hanging up the telephone with a look on his face like he’d just won a long court case.

“Captain Davis wanted to be sure your whereabouts were accounted for,” Portillo said. “Including your lunch break.”

R.J. nodded. “He’s a thorough guy. You have to admire that.”

“I told him that a good cop must learn to live with conclusive proof.” And Portillo smiled again. “He was not pleased. I woke him up.”

“Goddamn that’s great,” Bertelli said, and he reached for the phone. “You’ve inspired me, Lieutenant. I’m gonna call Kates at home and tell him, too.”

R.J. laughed. One of the lab techs looked up at him. Laughter was not a sound they heard much here at the morgue. R J. didn’t care. He hadn’t heard it much himself lately, and it felt good.

“What’s next, Uncle Hank?”

“I think we go to Detective Bertelli’s list of suspects, R.J. In fact, it has occurred to me—you remember this Minch person?”

“The guy that edits the film magazine. Yeah, I remember. What about him?”

“He lives in La Crescenta, R.J.”

R.J. shrugged. “And?”

“And La Crescenta is just a few miles from where the body was found. Maybe three freeway exits.”

“Damn.”

“Yes. I think we have a new hot suspect.”

CHAPTER 29

La Crescenta is maybe a thousand feet higher up than Glendale. Through the window of Portillo’s car, R.J. noticed the smog thin out and then disappear as they climbed higher, driving up the freeway. They took an off-ramp and turned onto Foothill Boulevard, the main street in the area.

SCREEN SCREAM
magazine had an office on Foothill Boulevard near a gas station and an Armenian grocery store.

“This is unofficial,” Portillo said as he nosed the car into a spot in the cracked blacktop of the almost empty parking lot. “I had better wait here.”

“I’m gonna go along,” Bertelli said. “Unofficially.”

R.J. glanced at Angelo, who shrugged. “That way, if this guy is it, I got a gun. Which you aren’t licensed to pack out here. But hey—youse can do all the talking.”

“Hell, butt in if you want, Angelo,” R.J. said. “It’s your lead.” He opened the car’s door. “I just hope we don’t need your equalizer.”

They didn’t. But it was a near thing.

The office wasn’t much. Just one small room with a big closet. The closet was bulging with back issues, clippings, stacks of newspapers. The office was equipped with a computer, a telephone, a VCR and monitor, and Ed Minch.

Ed Minch wasn’t much more than a beard and an attitude. He could work three fingers on his right hand. His left hand was strapped to his wheelchair. So were his legs and his head.

Their suspect was a quadriplegic.

“What the fuck do
you
want, asshole?” Minch snarled as R.J. stutter-stepped to a surprised stop in the doorway.

R.J. shook his head and looked at Angelo, who shrugged. It was obvious from one look that Minch could not have committed the murders. Still, who knew that he might know about them?

R.J. had stopped in shock when he saw the wheelchair. Now he moved on into the room. “Are you Ed Minch?”

The head twitched slightly. There was a little
whee
noise and the chair spun to face R.J. “No. Ed Minch was a human being. I’m a roadkill that won’t go away. What the fuck is it to
you
who I am?”

“I need to ask you a few questions.” R.J. reached for one of his business cards. “My name is—”

“I know who you are, shit-for-brains. And I don’t give a rat’s ass what you need.” The
whee
noise came again and the chair spun away, back to the monitor.