Time Bomb (30 page)

A group of black men in their early twenties loitered midway down the alley. When they saw the Ford cruising toward them, they stared defiantly, then sauntered away and disappeared into one of the garages.

Milo said, “Strictly speaking, this isn’t Watts—that’s farther east. But same difference.”

He turned off the engine and pocketed the keys, then unclasped the shotgun.

“This is where it happened,” he said. “Novato. You want to stay in the car, feel free.”

He got out. I did the same.

“Place used to be a major crack alley,” he said, looking up and down, holding the shotgun in one hand. “Then it got cleaned up—one of those neighborhood group things. Then it got bad again. Depends what week you’re here.”

His eyes kept moving. To each end of the alley. To the garage doors. I followed his gaze and saw the pock and splinter of bullet holes in stucco and wood—malignant blackheads among the graffiti blemish. The ground was struggling clumps of weeds, garbage, used condoms, cellophane packets, empty matchbooks, the cheap-jewelry glitter of foil scraps. The air stank of dog shit and decomposed food.

“You tell me,” said Milo. “Can you think of any reason for him to come down here except for dope?”

The sound of a car engine from the north end of the alley made both of us turn. Milo lifted the shotgun and held it with both hands.

What looked like another unmarked. A Matador. Sage-green.

Milo relaxed.

The car nosed up next to the Ford. The man who got out was about my age, medium-sized and trim, very dark, clean-shaven, with a medium Afro. He wore a banker’s pin-striped gray suit, white button-down shirt, red silk tie, and glossy black wing-tips. Square-jawed and straight-backed and very hand-some, but, despite the good posture, tired-looking.

Milo said, “Maury.”

“Milo. Congratulations on the promotion.”

“Thanks.”

The two of them shook hands. Smith looked at me. His face was beautifully shaved and fragrant with good cologne. But his eyes were weary and bloodshot under long thick lashes.

Milo said, “This is Dr. Alex Delaware. He’s a shrink, called in to work with the kids at Hale School. He was the one who discovered the connection between the Burden girl and your guy. Been a department consultant for years but had never done a ride-along. I thought Southeast might be instructive.”

“Doctor,” said Smith. His grip was very firm, very dry. To Milo: “If you wanted to be instructive, how come you didn’t give him his own shotgun?”

Milo smiled.

Smith took out a pack of Marlboros, lit one, and said, “Anyway.”

Milo said, “Where exactly did it go down?”

“Far as I can remember,” said Smith, “just about exactly where you’re parked. Hard to recall with all the shootings we get around here. I brought the file—hold on.”

He went back to his ear, opened the passenger door, leaned in, and pulled out a folder. Handing it to Milo, he said, “Don’t show the pictures to the doctor here unless you want to lose yourself a consultant.”

“That bad?”

“Shotgun, from up close—you know what that does. He must have put his hands up in a defensive reflex because they got shredded to pieces—I’m talking confetti. The face was . . . shotgun stuff. Barely enough blood left in him by the time the crime-scene boys arrived. But he was dope-positive all right. Coke and booze and downers—regular walking pharmacy.”

Milo thumbed through the folder, his face impassive. I moved closer and looked down. Sheets of paper. Lots of typewritten police prose. A couple of photos taped to the top. Living color. Long-view crime-scene shots and close-ups of something lying face-up on the filthy asphalt. Something ragged and wet that had once been human.

My stomach churned. I looked away but struggled to remain outwardly calm.

Smith had been watching me. He said, “I guess you guys see that stuff—medical school and all that.”

“He’s a Ph.D.,” said Milo.

“Ph.D.,” said Smith. “Philosophy doctor.” He stretched his arm down the alley. “Any ideas about the philosophy of a place like this?”

I shook my head and smiled. As Milo read, Smith kept checking the alley. I was struck by the silence of the place—a sickly, contrived silence, like that of a mortuary. Devoid of birdsong or traffic, the hum of commerce or conversation. I entertained postnuclear fantasies. Then all at once, noise intruded with all the shock and harshness of an armed robber: the scream and wobble of an ambulance siren from afar, followed by high-pitched human screams—an ugly duet of domestic violence—from somewhere close. Smith gave a distasteful look, glanced at Milo’s shotgun, opened his suit jacket, and touched the butt of the revolver that lay nestled in his shoulder holster. Then silence again.

“Okay. Let’s see. Ah, here’s the toxicology,” said Milo, flipping pages. “Yeah, the guy was definitely fried.”

“Deep-fried,” said Smith, sniffing. “Why else would he be down here?”

Milo said, “One thing I wonder about, Maury. The kid lives in Venice. Ocean Front’s a pharmacy in its own right—why bother coming down here?”

Smith thought for a moment and said, “Maybe he didn’t like the brand they were selling locally. People do that now—get picky. The businessmen we’re dealing with nowadays are into packaging and labeling. Dry Ice, Sweet Dreams, Medellin Mouton—choose your poison. Or maybe he was a businessman himself—selling, not buying, came here to collect something the boys over in Venice weren’t providing.”

“Maybe,” said Milo.

“Why else?” said Smith. “Anyway, don’t lose too much sleep over it. If I wasted my time trying to second-guess junkies and wet-heads, might as well nail my foot to the floor and run in circles all day.” He puffed on his cigarette.

Milo said, “Yeah, saw your stats on the last report.”

“Grim,” said Smith. “Wholly uncivilized.”

He smoked and nodded, tapped one wing-tip and kept looking up and down the alley. The silence had returned.

Milo returned the file to him. “Not much in the way of background on him—no priors, no history, no family.”

“Phantom of the opera,” said Smith. “Sucker came right out of nowhere, no files on him anywhere. Which fits if he was an amateur businessman. They’re getting crafty. Organized. Buying phony paper, moving around a lot, hiding behind layers, just like the corporations do. They’ve even got subsidiaries. In other cities, other states. Novato told his landlady he was from somewhere back east—that’s as specific as I got. She forgot exactly where. Or didn’t want to remember.”

“Think she was lying?”

“Maybe. She was something, that one—flaming commie, didn’t like cops, wasn’t shy about telling you. Being with her was like being back in the sixties, when we were the enemies. Before
Miami Vice
made it hip to oink.”

Smith laughed at his own wit, smoked, and said, “Nice to be hip, right, Milo? Take it to the bank, try to get a loan.”

Milo said, “She tell you
anything
?”

“Diddly.” It was all I could do to get her to let me in her house. She was real uppity. Actually called me a
cossack
—asked me how did it feel to be a black cossack. Like I was some kind of traitor to the race.
You
get anything out of her?”

“Couldn’t,” said Milo. “She’s gone. Disappeared four days after Novato got hit. No one’s seen or heard from her since.”

Surprise widened Smith’s weary eyes. He said, “Who’s on the case?”

“Hal Mehan out of Pacific. He’s on vacation, back in two weeks. From what I can gather, he did the usual missing-persons stuff, found out she hadn’t packed or taken money out of the bank. Followed it for a couple of weeks and told her friends to hire a P.I. or forget about it. Told her neighbor it looked like foul play out on the streets.”

Smith’s foot tapped faster. “Mehan know about Novato?”

“The friends say they told him.”

Smith said, “Hmm.” His eyes half-closed.

Milo said, “Yeah, I know, he coulda told you. Shoulda. But the bottom line is you didn’t lose anything. He dead-ended, moved on to greener pastures. The next-door neighbor saved her mail—I just had a look at it. Not much of it, just junk and a few bills.”

Smith continued to look perturbed. “Who are these friends of hers? No one in the neighborhood seemed to know much about her. Only one who knew anything at all was the guy next door, some kind of English rabbi. He the one who saved the mail?”

Milo nodded. “Just spoke to him. The friends were a few old folk she knew from temple. Acquaintances more than friends. According to them she wasn’t sociable, kept to herself.”

“That’s true,” said Smith. “Man, that was some little old battle-ax.”

“They also said she didn’t have any family. Same as Novato.”

Smith said, “Think that means anything?”

“Who knows?” said Milo. “Coulda been misery loving company. Two loners finding each other.”

Smith said, “Black kid and an old white woman? Some company. Or maybe the two of them were up to something, huh? When I went around there on the Novato thing, saw how hostile and radical she was, how she didn’t even want me to come
inside,
I asked around about her being involved in a dope thing. Asked the neighbors about people coming in and out at weird hours, fancy cars parked outside—the usual thing. No one knew anything.”

“No one still does,” said Milo. “There’s one other thing you should know. A few days after she was gone, someone burglarized her place. The rabbi’s too. Took small stuff, trashed everything, wrote nasty stuff on the walls.”

“What kind of nasty stuff?”

“Anti-Semitic. And something about remembering John Kennedy, in red paint they’d stolen from the garage. That jibe with any of the gang stuff you’ve been seeing?”

Smith said, “Kennedy? No. There’s some punk band—the Dead Kennedys. That’s all that comes to mind.” He thought. “If they got the paint right there, doesn’t sound like they came to paint.”

“Could have been just an opportunist junkie,” said Milo. “Asshole got caught up in the intruder high and got artistically inspired.”

Smith nodded. “Like a shitter.” To me: “There’re these guys break into houses, steal stuff, and dump a load on the floor. Or the bed. What do you think of that, psychologically? Or philosophically?”

“Power trip,” I said. “Forbidden fruit. Leave a signature someone’ll remember. Same as the ones who ejaculate. Or eat all the food in the fridge.”

Smith nodded.

“Anyway,” said Milo, “just thought you should know about all this.”

“Thanks,” said Smith. “In terms of a dope thing, I ran Novato through NCIC, the moniker files, DEA, called every smart narc in the Department as well as the Sheriff’s guys. Nothing. The kid had no name in the business.”

“Maybe he was a newcomer,” said Milo. “Trying to move in on someone and it got him dead.”

“A newcomer,” I said. “Novato. I’m pretty sure that’s Spanish for ‘novice.’”

Both of them looked at me.

I said, “Latin name on a black kid. It could be an alias.”

“El Novato, huh?” said Smith. “Well, it’s not a moniker—least not one of the ones we’ve got on file. Guess it could be an alias.” He enunciated and put on a Spanish accent. “El Novato. Kind of like El Vato Loco. Sounds like something out of Boyle Heights, but this bro was black.”

“Anything left of the fingers to print?” said Milo.

Smith shook his head. “You saw the pictures.”

“How’d you ID him?”

“Wallet in pocket. He had a driver’s license—that’s it—and a business card from the place he worked at, some grocery. I called his boss, asked him about any family to notify. He said he didn’t know of any. Later, after no one had claimed the body, I called the boss again, told him if he wanted, he could claim it, give it a decent burial.”

“Spoke to him, too,” said Milo. “He cremated it.”

“Guess that’s a decent burial,” said Smith. “Doesn’t make much difference one way or the other when you’re that way, does it?”

More screams from down the alley. The same two people tearing at each other with words.

Smith said, “I’ll probably be back in the near future, pick up one of
their
bodies. Anything more you want to know about Novato?”

Milo said, “That’s all that comes to mind, Maury. Thanks.”

“Far as I’m concerned, Milo, good riddance. If he was a businessman on top of doping, and getting hit slowed his business, I’m even happier. One less piece of shit to keep track of.”

Smith dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel.

“How well did the Burden girl know Novato?”

“They were seen talking to each other. Probably means nothing. I’m just following the chain wherever it leads. If there turns out to be a connection, I’ll call you in.”

“Yeah,” said Smith. “That’d be real nice. Meantime, how about you remember me when the West L.A. roster opens up. I put in an application last year—no vacancies. Wouldn’t mind getting over to civilized territory. Catch a little breathing time between homicidal incidents. Your promotion, you could have some say in it, right?”

“That kind of thing gets handled higher,” said Milo, “but I’ll do my best.”

“Appreciate it. Could use some civilization.”

“So he was a doper,” I said, after Smith had driven away. “So much for Dinwiddie’s expertise.”

“Wishful thinking,” said Milo, “does strange things to the old judgment quotient.”

He avoided the streets on the way back, getting on the Harbor Freeway and taking it through the downtown interchange into the West Side of town. Neither of us said much. Milo seemed eager to get away.

I got to Linda’s apartment at eight. She came to the door wearing a black silk blouse, gray jeans, and black western boots. Her hair had been done up, fastened by a silver comb. She had on large silver hoop earrings, blush that accented her cheekbones, more eye shadow than I’d seen before, and a look of reserve that forced its way through her smile. I was feeling it, too—a reticence, almost a shyness. As if this were a first date: everything that had happened two nights ago had been a fantasy, and we needed to start from scratch.

She said, “Hi, right on time,” took my hand, and led me inside. There was a bottle of Chablis and two glasses on the coffee table, along with dishes of sliced raw vegetables, crackers, dip, and cubes of cheese.