Jonathan Kellerman - Devil's Waltz

A sign in the lobby said the restaurant wouldn’t be serving for another half hour but the cocktail lounge was accepting sandwich orders.

A middle-aged, tuxedoed woman with improbable red hair worked behind the bar. A few serious drinkers sat at the padded horseshoe chewing ice cubes, snuffling salted freebies, and devoting what little attention they had left to an auto-chase scene on the tube. The TV was mounted on a ceiling bracket. It reminded me of the one I’d just seen in Cassie’s room.

The hospital... dominating my thoughts the way it had years ago. I loosened my tie, sat down, and ordered a club sandwich and beer. When the bartender turned to prepare it, I went to the pay phone at the back of the lounge and called Parker Center.

“Records,” said Milo.

“ Doctor Sturgis?”

“Well, if it isn’t Doctor Hard-to-Get. Yeah, I figured easiest way to get some action in that place was use the title.”

“If only it were so,” I said. “Sorry for the delay getting back to you but I was tied up with Vicki Bottomley, then Cassie and her parents.”

“Anything new?”

“Not much, except the Joneses seemed a little cool.”

“Maybe you’re threatening them. Getting too close.”

“Can’t see why. As for Vicki, she and I had a little psychodrama — I was trying to clear the air, leaned on her a bit. She accused me of suspecting her of harming Cassie. So I asked her if she was, and she went nuclear. Ended up giving me a sanitized version of her son’s story and adding something I hadn’t known: Reggie gave her a book as a Mother’s Day gift. True-crime thing about some nurse in New Jersey who murdered babies.”

“Some gift. Think she was trying to tell you something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should tell Stephanie to pull her off the case and see what happens. If Stephanie can be trusted. Meanwhile, this Dawn Herbert thing. On top of being murdered, she was a bit of a kleptomaniac.”

I gave him my blackmail theory. “What do you think?”

“Uh-huh... well,” he said, clearing his throat, “that’s certainly a good question, sir, but that information’s not currently available on our present data base.”

“Bad time to talk?”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” A moment later, he lowered his voice: “Brass coming through on tour, some kind of police-biggie convention this weekend. I’m off in five minutes. How about late lunch, early dinner — let’s say half an hour?”

“Started without you,” I said.

“What a pal. Where are you?”

I told him.

Still talking quietly, he said, “Good. Order me a pea soup with a ham bone and the breast of chicken with the cornbread stuffing, extra stuffing.”

“They’re only making sandwiches right now.”

“By the time I get there, they’ll be serving real food. Tell ’em it’s for me. Remember the order?”

“Soup, bone, chicken, extra stuffing.”

“They ever remake The Thirty-nine Steps , you can play Mr. Memory. Have ’em time the order so nothing’s cold. Also a dark draft. The Irish stuff — they’ll know what I mean.”

I returned to the bar, relayed Milo’s order to the bartender, and told her to delay my sandwich until he arrived. She nodded, called the kitchen, then served my beer with a dish of almonds. I asked her if she had a newspaper.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing toward the barflies. “No one around here reads. Try the machines out front.”

I went back to Hillhurst and caught a faceful of sunglare. Four coin-op newspaper dispensers lined the sidewalk. Three were empty; one of them was vandalized and graffitied. The last one was fully stocked with a tabloid promising SAFE SEX, RAUNCHY GIRLS, AND DIRTY FUN.

I went back into the lounge. The channel had been switched to an old western. Square jaws, moping dogies, and long shots of scrubland. The barflies stared up at the screen, entranced. As if it hadn’t been filmed just over the hill, in Burbank.

Thirty-six minutes later Milo appeared, waving me over as he strode past the bar, toward the restaurant section. I took my beer and caught up with him. His jacket was over his shoulder and his tie was tucked into his waistband. The band was crushed by the weight of his belly. A couple of the lushes looked up and watched him, dulled, but still wary. He never noticed. But I knew he would’ve been pleased to see how much cop-scent he still gave off.

The main dining room was empty except for a busboy running a manual carpet-sweeper over a corner. A stringy old waiter appeared — American Gothic on a crash diet — bearing soft rolls, Milo’s ale, and a plate of cherry peppers and stuffed olives.

“Him, too, Irv,” said Milo.

“Certainly, Mr. Sturgis.”

When the waiter left, Milo touched my beer glass and said, “You’re replacing that with dark draft, lad. From the weariness in your eyes, I’d say you’ve earned it.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad. Can I have a two-wheeler without training wheels too?”

He grinned, tugged his tie lower, then loosened the knot completely and pulled it off. Running his hand over his face, he sat back in the booth and snorted.

“How’d you find out about Herbert’s murder?” he said.

“From her former landlords.” I summarized my talk with Bobby and Ben Murtaugh.

“They seem on the level?”

I nodded. “They’re still pretty shaken.”

“Well,” he said, “there’s nothing new on the case. She’s on file as a Central Division open. The overall picture is a sadistic-psycho thing. Very little physical evidence.”

“Another low-probability one?”

“Uh-huh. Best bet on these wacko ones is the bad guy does it again and gets caught. Nasty one, too. She was hit over the head, had her throat cut and something wooden shoved up her vagina — coroner found splinters. That’s about all they’ve got physically. It happened near a punk club operating out of a garment contractor’s place in the Union District. Not far from the Convention Center.”

“The Moody Mayan,” I said.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“The Murtaughs.”

“They got it half right,” he said. “It was the Mayan Mortgage . Place went out of business a couple of weeks later.”

“Because of the murder?”

“Hell, no. If anything, that would have helped business. We’re talking the night-crawler scene, Alex. Spoiled kids from Brentwood and Beverly Hills putting on Rocky Horror Show duds and playing ‘Look, Mom, no common sense.’ Blood and entrails — someone else’s — would be just what they’re looking for.”

“That fits with what the Murtaughs said about Herbert. Grad student by day, but she used to punk herself up at night. Used the kind of hair dye that washes out the next morning.”

“L.A. shuffle,” he said. “Nothing’s what it seems... Anyway, the place probably closed down because that crowd gets bored easily — the whole kick is to move from place to place. Kind of a metaphor for life itself, huh?”

I did a finger-down-the-throat pantomime.

He laughed.

I said, “Do you know this particular club?”

“No, but they’re all the same — fly-by-night setups, no occupancy permits, no liquor licenses. Sometimes they take over an abandoned building and don’t bother to pay rent. By the time the landlord catches on or the fire department gets around to shutting them down, they’re gone. What’ll change it is a couple hundred clowns getting roasted.”

He raised his glass and buried his upper lip in foam. He wiped it and said, “According to Central, one of the bartenders saw Herbert leave the club shortly before two A.M. with a guy. He recognized her because she’d been dancing at the club and was one of the few heavyset girls they let in. But he couldn’t give any specifics on the guy other than that he was straight-looking and older than her. The time frame fits with the coroner’s ETD of between two and four. The coroner also found cocaine and booze in her system.”