When the Bough Breaks (15 page)

Milo began throwing open windows and I realized that the house felt as hot as a blast furnace, fueled by the hydrocarbons emitted by decomposing organic matter. A quick answer to the energy crisis: Save kilowatts, kill a friend …

I couldn’t take any more. I ran for the door, gasping, and flung away the handkerchief when I reached the outdoors. I gulped hungrily at the cool night air. My hands shook.

There was lots of excitement on the block now. Neighbors—men, women and children—had come out of their castles, pausing in the
middle of the evening news, interrupting their defrosted feasts to gawk at the blinking crimson lights and listen to the stuttering radio static of the squad car, staring at the coroner’s van that had pulled up to the curb with the cold authority of a parading despot. A few kids rode their bikes up and down the street. Mumbling voices took on the sound of ravaging locusts. A dog barked. Welcome to suburbia.

I wondered where they’d all been when someone had gotten into Bruno’s house, battered him into jelly, closed all the windows and left him to rot.

Milo finally came out, looking green. He sat on the front steps and hung his head between his knees. Then he got up and called the attendants from the coroner’s office over. They had come prepared, with gas masks and rubber gloves. They went in with an empty stretcher and came out carrying something wrapped in a black plastic sheath.

“Ugh. Gross,” said a teenage girl to her friend.

It was as eloquent a way to put it as any.

12

T
HREE MORNINGS
after we discovered the butchery of Bruno, Milo wanted to come over to review the salesman’s psychiatric file in detail. I postponed it until the afternoon. Motivated by instincts that were unclear to me, I called André Jaroslav at his studio in West Hollywood and asked him if he had time to help me refresh my karate skills.

“Doctor,” he said, the accent as thick as goulash, “such a long time since I see you.”

“I know, André. Too long. I’ve let myself go. But I hope you can help me.”

He laughed.

“Tsk, tsk. I have intermediate group at eleven and private lessons at twelve. Then I am going to Hawaii, Doctor. To choreograph fight scenes for new television pilot. Girl policeperson who knows judo and catches rapists. What do you think?”

“Very original.”

“Ya. I get to work with the redheaded chickie—this Shandra Layne. To teach her how to throw around large men. Like Wonder Woman, ya?”

“Ya. Do you have any time before eleven?”

“For you, Doctor—certainly. We get you in shape. Come at nine and I give you two hours.”

The Institute of Martial Arts was located on Santa Monica at Doheny, next to the Troubador nightclub. It was an L.A. institution, predating the Kung Fu craze by fifteen years. Jaroslav was a bandy-legged Czech Jew who’d escaped during the fifties. He had a high, squeaky voice that he attributed to having been shot in the throat by the Nazis. The truth was that he’d been born with the vocal register of a hysterical
capon. It hadn’t been easy, being a squeaky-voiced Jew in postwar Prague. Jaroslav had developed his own way of coping. Starting as a boy he taught himself physical culture, weight-lifting and the arts of self-defense. By the time he was in his twenties he had total command of every martial arts doctrine from saber-fencing to hopkaido, and a lot of bullies received painful surprises.

He greeted me at the door, naked from the waist up, a spray of daffodils in his hand. The sidewalk was filled with anorectic individuals of ambiguous gender, hugging guitar cases as if they were life preservers, dragging deeply on cigarettes and regarding the passing traffic with spaced-out apprehension.

“Audition,” he squeaked, pointing a finger at the door to the Troubador and glancing at them scornfully. “The artisans of a new age, Doctor.”

We went into the studio, which was empty. He placed the flowers in a vase. The practice room was an expanse of polished oak floor bordered by whitewashed walls. Autographed photographs of stars and near-stars hung in clusters. I went into a dressing room with the set of stiff white garments he gave me and emerged looking like an extra in a Bruce Lee movie.

Jaroslav was silent, letting his body and his hands talk. He positioned me in the center of the studio and stood facing me. He smiled faintly, we bowed to each other and he led me through a series of warm-up exercises that made my joints creak. It had been a long time.

When the introductory
katas
were through, we bowed again. He smiled, then proceeded to wipe the floor with me. At the end of one hour I felt as if I’d been stuffed down a garbage disposal. Every muscle fiber ached, every synapse quivered in exquisite agony.

He kept it up, smiling and bowing, sometimes letting out a perfectly controlled, high-pitched scream, tossing me around like a bean bag. By the end of the second hour, pain had ceased to be obtrusive—it had become a way of life, a state of consciousness. But when we stopped I was starting to feel in command of my body once again. I was breathing hard, stretching, blinking. My eyes burned as the perspiration dripped into them. Jaroslav looked as if he’d just finished reading the morning paper.

“You take a hot bath, Doctor, get some chickie to massage you, use a little witch hazel. And remember: practice, practice, practice.”

“I will, André.”

“You call me when I get back, in a week. I tell you about Shandra Layne and check if you’ve been practicing.” He poked a finger in my gut, playfully.

“It’s a deal.”

He held out his hand. I reached out to take it, then tensed, wondering if he was going to throw me again.

“Ya, good,” he said. Then he laughed and let me go.

The throbbing agony made me feel righteous and ascetic. I had lunch at a restaurant run by one of the dozens of quasi-Hindu cults that seem to prefer Los Angeles to Calcutta. A vacant-eyed, perpetually smiling girl swaddled in white robes and burnoose took my order. She had a rich kid’s face coupled with the mannerisms of a nun and managed to smile while she talked, smile as she wrote, smile as she walked away. I wondered if it hurt.

I finished a plate heaped with chopped lettuce, sprouts, refried soya beans and melted goat cheese on
chapati
bread—a sacred tostada—and washed it down with two glasses of pineapple-coconut-guava nectar imported from the holy desert of Mojave. The bill came to ten dollars and thirty-nine cents. That explained the smiles.

I made it back to the house just as Milo pulled up in an unmarked bronze Matador.

“The Fiat finally died,” he explained. “I’m having it cremated and scattering the ashes over the offshore rigs in Long Beach.”

“My condolences.” I picked up Bruno’s file.

“Contributions to the down payment on my next lemon will be accepted in lieu of flowers.”

“Get Dr. Silverman to buy you one.”

“I’m working on it.”

He let me read for a few minutes then asked, “So what do you think?”

“No profound insights. Bruno was referred to Handler by the Probation Department after the bad-check bust. Handler saw him a dozen times over a four-month period. When the probationary period was over so was the treatment. One thing I did notice was that Handler’s notes on him are relatively benign. Bruno was one of the more recently acquired patients. At the time he started therapy, Handler was at his nastiest, yet there are no vicious comments about him. Here, in the beginning Handler calls him a ’slick con man.’” I flipped some pages. “A couple of weeks later he makes a crack about Bruno’s ’Cheshire grin.’ But after that, nothing.”

“As if they became buddies?”

“Why do you say that?”

Milo handled me a piece of paper. “Here,” he said, “look at this.”

It was a printout from the phone company.

“This,” he pointed to a circled seven-digit code, “is Handler’s number—his
home number, not the office. And this one is Bruno’s.”

Lines had been drawn between the two, like lacing on a high-topped shoe. There’d been lots of connections over the last six months.

“Interesting, huh?”

“Very.”

“Here’s something else. Officially the coroner says it’s impossible to fix a time of death for Bruno. The heat inside the house screwed up the decomposition tables—with the flack they’ve been getting they’re not willing to go out on a limb and take the chance of being wrong. But I got one of the young guys to give me an off-the-record guess and he came up with ten to twelve days.”

“Right around the time Handler and Gutierrez were murdered.”

“Either right before or right after.”

“But what about the differing m.o.’s?”

“Who says people are consistent, Alex? Frankly there are other differences between the two cases besides m.o. In Bruno’s case it looks like forced entry. We found broken bushes under a rear window and chisel marks on the pane—used to be a kid’s room. Glendale P.D. also thinks they’ve got two sets of heelprints.”

“Two? Maybe Melody really saw something.”
Dark men. Two or three
.

“Maybe. But I’ve abandoned that line of attack. The kid will never be a reliable witness. In any event, despite the discrepancies, it looks like we might be on to something—what, I don’t know. Patient and doctor, concrete proof that they maintained some kind of contact after treatment was over, both ripped off around the same time. It’s too cute for coincidence.”

He studied his notes, looking scholarly. I thought about Handler and Bruno and then it hit me.

“Milo, we’ve been held back in our thinking by social roles.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Roles. Social roles—prescribed sets of behaviors. Like doctor and patient. Psychiatrist and psychopath. What are the characteristics of a psychopath?”

“Lack of conscience.”

“Right. And an inability to relate to other people except by exploiting them. The good ones have a glib, smooth façade, often they’re good-looking. Usually above-average intelligence. Sexually manipulative. A predilection to engage in cons, blackmail, frauds.”

Milo’s eyes opened wide.

“Handler.”

“Of course. We’ve been thinking of him as the doctor in the case and assuming psychological normalcy—he’s been protected, in our eyes, by his role. But take a closer look. What do we know about him?
He was involved in insurance fraud. He tried to blackmail Roy Longstreth, using his power as a psychiatrist. He seduced at least one patient—Elaine Gutierrez—and who knows how many more? And those putdowns in the margins of his notes—at first I thought they were evidence of burnout, but now I don’t know. That was cold, pretending to listen to people, taking their money, insulting them. His notes were confidential—he never expected anyone else to read them. He could hang it all out, show his true colors. Milo, I tell you the guy comes across like your classic psychopath.”

“The evil doctor.”

“Not exactly a
rara avis
, is it? If there can be a Mengele, why not scores of Morton Handlers? What better façade for an intelligent psychopath than the title of Doctor—it yields instant prestige and credibility.”

“Psychopathic doctor and psychopathic patient.” He mulled it over. “Not buddies, but partners in crime.”

“Sure. Psychopaths don’t have buddies. Only victims and accomplices. Bruno must have been Handler’s dream come true if he was plotting something and needed one of his own kind for help. I’ll bet you those first sessions were incredible, the two of them hungry hyenas, checking each other out, looking over their shoulders, sniffing the ground.”

“Why Bruno, in particular? Handler treated other psychopaths.”

“They were too crude. Short-order cooks, cowboys, construction workers. Handler needed a smooth type. Besides, how do we know how many of those guys were deliberately misdiagnosed like Longstreth?”

“Just to play devil’s advocate for one second—one of those jokers was in law school.”

I thought about it for a minute.

“Too young. In Handler’s eyes a callow punk. In a few years, with degree in hand and a veneer of sophistication, maybe. Handler needed a businessman type for what he wanted to pull off. Someone really slick. And Bruno appears to have fit that bill. He fooled Gershman, who’s no idiot.”

Milo got up and paced the room, running his fingers through his hair, creating a bird’s nest.

“It’s definitely appealing. Shrinker and shrinkee pulling off a scam.” He seemed amused.

“It’s not the first time, Milo. There was a guy back East a few years ago—very good credentials. Married into a rich family and started a clinic for juvenile delinquents—back when they still called them that. He used his in-laws’ social connections to organize fund-raising soirées for the clinic. While the champagne flowed, the j.d.’s were busy burglarizing
the partygoers’ townhouses. They finally caught him with a warehouse full of silver and crystal, furs and rugs. He didn’t even need the stuff. He was doing it for the challenge. They sent him away to one of those discreet institutions in the rolling hills of southern Maryland—for all I know he’s running the place by now. It never hit the papers. I found out about it through the professional grapevine. Convention gossip.”

Milo pulled out his pencil. He started writing, thinking out loud.

“To the marble corridors of high finance. Bank records, brokerage statements, businesses filed under fictitious names. See what’s left in the safe-deposit boxes after the IRS has done its dirty work. County assessor for info on property ventures. Insurance claims out of Handler’s office.” He stopped. “I hope this gets me somewhere, Alex. This goddamn case hasn’t helped my status in the department. The captain is aiming for promotion and he wants to show more arrests. Handler and Gutierrez weren’t ghetto types he can afford to let fade away. And he’s running scared that Glendale will solve Bruno first and make us look like shmucks. You remember Bianchi.”

I nodded. A small-town police chief in Bellingham, Washington, had caught the Hillside Strangler—something the L.A.P.D. war machine hadn’t been able to do.

He got up, went into the kitchen and ate half of a cold chicken standing over the sink. He washed it down with a quart of orange juice and came back wiping his mouth.