Джонатан Келлерман - Serpentine

“What was your captain’s name?”

“Alomar. Gregory Alomar, real bastard. Probably also dead, he smoked like a stack, ate crap, had a gut out to there. Even if he is alive, it’s not like he’s going to admit being in someone’s pocket. But sure, go for it, I’d be interested in what he has to say.”

Galoway finished the muffin. “Yum. I may get some takeout, bring it back home for my after-golf snack tomorrow. You play?”

Milo shook his head. “Not enough patience.”

“Exactly why you should try it, Milo. Good training for the soul. You, Doc?”

“Nope.”

“I thought docs spent their Wednesdays on the course.” To Milo. “So did I help?”

“Big-time,” said Milo.

“Really?” said Galoway. “That’s terrific. Maybe I could’ve been a homicide D.” He laughed. “God forbid.”

“Do you have time to show us the spot where she died, Du?”

“Now?”

“If possible.”

“Hmm. Sure why not, might as well spend some time in Los Angle-eeze. As Mayor Yorty used to say. Remember him? Sam the Man? My dad loved him—I grew up in Highland Park, this whole thing is bringing back La-La memories. I’ll go home to Ojai thanking my lucky stars.”

—

We waited as Galoway bought a bagful of herbaceous goods at the counter. He swung it as we walked him half a block to his car.

The “old Jag” was a red F-type convertible new enough to sport a paper plate.

Milo said, “Pretty wheels.”

“A boy needs a hobby. Got room to take one of you.”

“How about meeting us in front of the station, we’ll get our drive and follow you.”

“Your choice,” said Galoway. “We’ve got three routes. Closest east-west-wise is Beverly Glen but it lets you off north of Mulholland so I don’t see the point. Closest to the site is Laurel but that means hassling city traffic to get there. So I say let’s split the difference and take Coldwater. That work for you?”

“Sounds good, Du.”

“Excellent.” Galoway clapped Milo’s back. “This is kind of fun for an old failure like me. Hope you’ve got something with an engine. You don’t want to be eating my dust.”

—

He tailed us to the station, idled noisily at the curb until we exited the staff lot in Milo’s Impala.

“That’s it, huh? The big V-8, should be fine.” Swinging a U-turn, he sped north to Santa Monica Boulevard and turned right.

Milo said, “Ebullient fellow,” and pressed down on the throttle.

I said, “Maybe it’s golf.”

—

Galoway’s route was Santa Monica Boulevard east through Beverly Hills, then a left on Walden Drive where he crossed Sunset. A right onto Lexington took us into the shade of fifty-foot Canary Island pines that should never have succeeded in L.A. and the massive estates they sentried. Galoway’s approach to motoring emphasized advanced tailgating techniques and speed limits as suggestions. Amber lights meant acceleration. Same for the onset of red lights.

Milo bore down hard as the red Jaguar headed north on Beverly Drive, soon transformed to Coldwater Canyon. Just past a small park to the left, a sightseeing bus blocked the street, a driver on speaker lying to wide-eyed tourists about celebrity addresses.

Galoway passed on the left, narrowly missing a head-on with a southbound gardener’s truck.

Milo braked hard and cursed, nudged forward, finally managed his own loop around the bus. The Jaguar was a faint red speck in the distance, rocketing through the high-end suburbia that was Beverly Hills POB.

A five-car queue at the light south of the Mulholland East junction allowed us to catch up.

Milo wiped sweat from his face. “Amazing he made it to his sixties.”

Green-lit, the four cars in front of Galoway continued on Coldwater toward Studio City as he swung a radical right onto Mulholland Drive.

The terrain changed immediately, luxury housing ceding to stretches of dry brush and drought-puckered hillside specked by the occasional stilt-propped box. I came to L.A. as a sixteen-year-old college freshman, wondered how hill-houses on chopsticks stayed up. Then storms and quakes came and they didn’t. In SoCal, optimism’s the fossil fuel.

As we traveled east, straightaways shriveled and the road became a succession of S-curves that ribboned through wilderness. Guardrails girded some sections of pavement but plenty of stretches were unprotected.

Where the road wasn’t bordered by trees and scrub and rocks, it offered eye-blink views of steep gorges slaloming down to the city-sized table that had become the San Fernando Valley. At its highest, the sky was unruffled blue. Below that, a mucoid gray cloud hovered.

Galoway picked up speed, brake-tapping at the apex of hairpins then immediately speeding up on the exit swoop.

I said, “Looks like he took high-performance driving.”

“Or he’s just nuts.”

Two more miles of white-knuckle road-churning took us to the Laurel Canyon junction where another red light forced the Jag to snort and wait. When released, the red car bulleted up a sharp rise east of Laurel and raced past a small enclave of ranch houses that looked as if they’d been dropped in place simultaneously. Then, more uninhabited land, broken only by Fire Hazard warning signs and reduced speed limits.

About a mile in, Galoway swung an abrupt left across the road and screeched to a stop inches from a particularly battered section of guardrail. By the time we pulled up next to him, he was out of the Jaguar beaming, sunglasses hanging from a neck chain.

“Man, that was the most fun I’ve had since I took the Skip Barber course at Laguna Seca. You get to strip brakes, end up doing two hours around the track in a Formula Four. I was the oldest guy there but they loved me.”

Milo said, “This is the place?”

His failure to chitchat demolished Galoway’s smile. He put his shades on. Mirrored lenses. The mouth below them was a hyphen. “It’s an estimate. And logical. Take a look around, my friend. You see any addresses? Only thing I had to go on was Seeger’s notes. He put down something like one point three miles past Laurel. Am I remembering it wrong after twenty years? Can’t promise no, so give or take.”

He turned his back, folded his arms across his chest.

Milo walked to the edge of the cliff and stood next to him. “Thanks for taking the time, Du.”

“Sure,” said Galoway, grudgingly. “What the diff, anyway? It’s not like after all this time you’re going to get DNA in the brush down there. You saw what it was like coming up here. No people. Anywhere near here would be easy to pull off a car-dump at night.”

He ticked a finger. “No streetlights, it’s late enough, only thing you’re going to encounter are owls and deer and cah-yotes.”

Milo got on one knee and craned downward.

Galoway said, “Now you’re going to ask me where she landed and I’m going to tell you not a clue.” He kicked the guardrail. “Was this here back then? No idea. But there’s plenty of places still not railed. Wherever it went down, it’s got to be a dead drop for, what, at least five hundred feet? Light it up, push it over, business taken care of.”

He rubbed his palms together.

I said, “Who discovered the car?”

Galoway snorted. “You’d think someone would write that down in the book but you’d be wrong.”

Milo said, “Any idea where the book got filed?”

Galoway swiveled and faced him. “I wish. It was a loser when I got it and I went nowhere fast. Which was the plan, Alomar didn’t want me there. When I quit I handed all my paperwork over to some clerk.”

He turned toward the view. “All that crud over the Valley.” Down came the shades. The eyes behind them were weary. “Don’t mean to be touchy, I guess this brings back bad memories. Working my ass off and accomplishing nothing—you want to see Des Barres’s place?”