Joseph Wambaugh - Hollywood Crows

The deputy district attorney said, “Did you speak to Mrs. Aziz’s attorney about a family trust or wills involved in this case? As a motive for murder?”

“That was one of my first questions to him,” Bino Villaseñor said. “Margot’s executor is her father in Barstow, and everything she has goes to her son, Nicky Aziz.”

The district attorney said, “And how about the estate of Ali Aziz?”

“His lawyer informed us that he is the executor, and all of Ali Aziz’s assets go to Nicky Aziz.”

The deputy district attorney said, “As far as you are concerned, then, this is a case of self-defense and not a murder, am I correct?”

“Correct,” Bino Villaseñor said. “At least for now.”

The deputy district attorney said, “And her lawyer will not produce Margot Aziz for further questions unless by subpoena?”

“Correct,” the detective said. “The last thing he said to me was that she’s going on an extended vacation to get away from the press, possibly on a cruise. He said that her son has been taken to his grandparents’ home in Barstow, and that Margot Aziz would not be returning to Hollywood until what he called the ‘ugly scandal’ is no longer in the news. He said that she’s distraught and mentally exhausted.”

The bureau commander said, “You did a good job, Detective. And you look a bit exhausted too. Why don’t you go home.”

“I got a few good rounds left in me, Chief,” said Bino Villaseñor, “but on this one, I’m shadowboxing with ghosts.”

At the end of that long day, the sergeant in charge of the Community Relations Office told all Crows at a very solemn meeting that Bix Ramstead’s family was planning to have a private funeral service as soon as the coroner released Bix’s body to their mortuary. Then their sergeant told a few anecdotes from happier times he’d had with Bix, and he invited others to do the same.

Ronnie Sinclair had to dab at her eyes several times while others were talking about Bix, and she declined when asked if she’d like to say anything about her partner. Ronnie wanted to tell them about the time Bix became an angel to a dying child, but she knew she’d never be able to get through it.

TWENTY-ONE DAYS AFTER the bodies of Bix Ramstead and Ali Aziz were put into the ground at different cemeteries, a cruise ship of Norwegian registry was docked at the port of Istanbul. The entry to Istanbul through the Bosporus, with Europe on one side and Asia on the other, had been thrilling, and Margot Aziz was looking forward to exploring the Turkish port city with other passengers she’d met.

Margot had had no trouble at all finding passengers, especially among the single men, who wanted to be her escort whenever they’d gone ashore at other ports. But none of them interested her very much, and she’d decided to visit the Topkapi Museum and the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul with Herb and Millie Sloane, a married couple from San Francisco.

At the end of their exhausting day, they decided to dine at a highly recommended restaurant rather than return to the ship at the dinner hour. They enjoyed a feast, sampled local wine, and had a very pleasant time. When they got back to the ship, Margot told the Sloanes that she was tired and didn’t feel like going to the shipboard nightclub show that her friends planned to attend. The last thing she said to them was that she needed a good night’s sleep.

The only thing that had spoiled things for Margot that day was the need to respond to a few annoying calls from Jasmine McVicker, whining about how she should have been invited along as a companion. Margot couldn’t make her understand how suspicious it would have looked at this time and decided that the girl was an idiot. She’d have to pay her off and get Jasmine out of her life sooner rather than later. But for now Margot needed rest.

An hour later, Margot Aziz staggered from her stateroom and screamed for the steward. He was a German named Hans Bruegger, who said in his statement that Margot Aziz seemed to be experiencing muscle spasms. He said that her backbone arched and she went into convulsions. She was taken from the ship and rushed to the finest hospital in Istanbul but died of asphyxiation in less than an hour.

The Turkish authorities made immediate inquiries, and at the request of the U.S. State Department, Margot’s body was released and flown to California for the postmortem and time-consuming toxicology tests. However, a Turkish pathologist publicly ventured an opinion, based on symptoms and a cursory examination, that he saw indications of something akin to the poison used to kill rats and other pests. The word strychnine appeared in news reports. The restaurant where Margot had dined was visited by Turkish health officials, but they could find nothing amiss. And the Sloanes gave statements saying that they’d experienced no ill effects from what they’d eaten and drunk at the restaurant. No rat poison was found anywhere. Nor was pesticide containing strychnine found anywhere on the ship.

When the body of Margaret “Margot” Osborne Aziz arrived home, local reporters engaged in lots of speculation about whether her cruel death could be another case of an American being mysteriously poisoned abroad. It didn’t take long for TV reporters to introduce a sinister suggestion that infuriated Turkey’s tourist industry, namely that Americans were no longer safe from extremists in any Muslim country, democracy or not.

An angry spokesman for the Turkish Consulate General in Los Angeles said that in his opinion, Margot Aziz’s death had nothing to do with Muslims and that suicide should at least be considered as a motive for her poisoning. He suggested that the recent tragic shooting of her husband may have been too much for her to bear. That statement outraged Margot Aziz’s lawyer, who called it preposterous, and it brought another furious response from James and Teresa Osborne, Margot’s parents in Barstow, California, who were in the process of becoming legal guardians of their wealthy grandson, Nicky Aziz.

There were two people in the city of Los Angeles who were nearly as upset as her parents over the death of Margot Aziz. One was a beautiful Amerasian dancer whose only payday for her nerve-racking work had been the $4700 she’d stolen from the desktop in Ali Aziz’s office on the night he was murdered. Jasmine McVicker spent three days in bed grieving after the report of Margot’s death appeared on the TV news. She would forever wonder if somehow Margot could have been a murder victim herself. The thought of it terrified her.

The other Los Angeles resident who was profoundly distressed by Margot Aziz’s death was a Mexican pharmacist on Alvarado Street. He had no idea if his former client Ali Aziz could have been a murder victim, but he feared that Margot Aziz probably was. And he thought he knew how it might have happened.

His wife noticed that the pharmacist seemed obsessed with news concerning the case, and she wondered why he had become so diligent about attending Mass, not just on Sunday but sometimes during the week as well. She often saw him on his knees in front of a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, his fist pressed to his heart, as though begging forgiveness.

And at Hollywood Station, Detective Bino Villaseñor said to the homicide D3, “When spouses commit murder, the women use poison, the guys use guns. In this case, the woman used a gun and the guy-”

“Is dead,” the D3 said. “Ghosts can’t poison people, not even in Istanbul. Let it go, Bino. This case is closed.”

“I guess I’ll have to,” said the old detective. “But something’s wrong here, and somebody knows it.”

That week, Leonard Stilwell decided that it was time to launch his legitimate business enterprise. He’d also decided that Junior the Fijian was to be his partner, but Junior didn’t know it yet. Early in the afternoon, the time when Junior usually woke up, Leonard knocked on the door of his apartment to spring it on him.