Jonathan Kellerman - Blood Test

The interior walls of the house had been torn down to create a thousand square feet of skylit living space. The furniture was bleached wood, the walls oyster white. The scent of lemon oil was in the air. There were maritime lithographs, a salt-water aquarium, a small but well-stocked kitchen, a partially folded futon bed. Everything in its place, neat as a pin.

In the center of the room was a sunken area half-filled by a bottle green velvet modular couch. We stepped down and sat. He offered us coffee from a pot that had already been set out on the table.

He poured three cups and sat across from us, still smiling, still scared.

“Detective Sturgis—” he looked from me to Milo who identified himself with a nod — “over the phone you said this had to do with Nona Swope.”

“That’s correct, Mr. Carmichael.”

“I have to tell you at the outset, I’m afraid I won’t be of much help. I barely know her—”

“You messengered with her several times.” Milo pulled out his pencil and pad.

Carmichael laughed nervously. “Three, maybe four times. She didn’t stick around very long.”

“Uh huh.”

Carmichael drank coffee, put the cup down, and cracked his knuckles. He had iron-pumper’s arms, each muscle defined in bas relief and roped with veins.

“I don’t know where she is,” he said.

“No one said she was missing, Mr. Carmichael.”

“Jan Rambo called and told me what it was all about. She said you took my file.”

“Does that bother you, Mr. Carmichael?”

“Yes, it does. It’s private and I don’t see what it has to do with anything.” He was trying to assert himself but despite the muscles there was something preternaturally meek and childish about him.

“Mr. Carmichael, you were pretty keyed up over the phone and you’re just as nervous in person. Want to tell us why?” Milo sat back and crossed his legs.

It’s always pathetic when someone physically impressive starts to fall apart, like watching a monument crumble. I saw the look on the blond man’s face and wanted to be somewhere else.

“Tell us about it,” said Milo.

“It’s my own damned fault. Now I’m going to pay.” He got up, went into the kitchen, and came back with a bottle of pills.

“B-twelve. I need it when I’m stressed out.” He unscrewed the lid, shook out three capsules, swallowed, and washed them down with coffee. “I shouldn’t be taking in so much caffeine but it calms me down. Paradoxical reaction.”

“What’s on your mind, Doug?”

“My working at Adam and Eve has been a — a secret. Until now. I knew all along it was risky, that I might run into someone who knew me. I don’t know, maybe that was part of the thrill.”

“We’re not interested in your private life. Just in what you know about Nona Swope.”

“But if it leads somewhere and ends up in court I’m gonna be subpoenaed, right?”

“Could happen,” admitted Milo, “but we’re a long way from that. Right now we just want to find Nona and her parents so we can save a little boy’s life.”

The detective went on in great detail about Woody’s lymphoma. He’d retained everything I told him and was throwing it back in Carmichael’s handsome face. The blond man tried hard not to listen but failed. He took all of it in, obviously pained. He seemed a sensitive one and I found myself liking him.

“Jesus. She told me she had a sick brother but she never said how sick.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“Not much. Really. She didn’t say much about anything. Talked about wanting to be an actress — the usual delusional stuff you hear from most of the girls. But she didn’t seem depressed like you’d expect with a brother that sick.”

Milo changed the subject.

“What kind of gigs did you two do?”

Returning to the topic of his work made Carmichael anxious again. He tangled his fingers together and twisted. Knots rose on the heavy arms.

“Maybe I should get an attorney before we go any further.”

“Suit yourself,” said Milo, pointing to the phone.

Carmichael sighed and shook his head. “No. That would only complicate things even more. Listen, I can give you some insights into Nona’s personality if that’s what you’re after.”

“It would help.”

“But that’s all I’ve got. Insights, no facts. How about you forget where you got them from?”

“Doug,” said Milo, “we know who your father is and we know all about the bust, so stop dancing around, okay?”

Carmichael looked like a stallion in a burning stable, ready to bolt despite the consequences.

“Don’t panic,” said Milo. “We couldn’t care less about that stuff.”

“I’m not some kind of pervert,” Carmichael insisted. “If you traced me that far back you know how it happened.”

“Sure. You were a dancer at Lancelot’s. After the show one of the ladies in the audience picked you up. Sex for money was discussed and she busted you.”

“She entrapped me. The cunt!”

Lancelot’s was a male stripper joint in west L.A. catering to women who thought liberation meant aping the crudest aspects of male behavior. The club had long been the object of neighborhood complaints and a couple of years back the police and the fire inspectors had paid it lots of attention. A harassment suit by the owner had ended that.

Milo shrugged. “Anyway, daddy got you off, the file was closed, and you promised to behave yourself.”

“Yeah,” said Carmichael, bitterly. “End of story, right? Only it wasn’t that simple.” The blue eyes burned. “Dad commandeered my trust fund — money left to me by my mom. It was illegal, I’m sure of it, but the lawyer in charge of the trust is one of Dad’s California Club buddies and before I knew it the old man had all of it under his control. And me by the balls. It was like being a kid again, having to ask permission for everything. He forced me to go to school, said I had to make something of myself. Christ, I’m thirty-six and I’m in junior college! If I get good grades there’ll be a place for me at Carmichael Oil. What a crock. Nothing’s gonna change me into someone I’m not. What the hell does he want from me?”

He looked at us beseechingly, wanting support. My instinct was to give it to him but this wasn’t therapy. Milo let him cool down before he spoke.

“And if he finds out about your current job, kaput, eh?”

“Shit.” Carmichael stroked his beard. “I can’t help it. I like doing that kind of thing. God gave me a great body and a great face and I get off on sharing it with other people. It’s like acting but private, so it’s better, more intimate. When I used to dance I could feel the women’s eyes on me. I played to them, treated them good. I wanted them to cream right there. It felt so — loving.”

“I told this to your boss and I’ll tell it to you,” said Milo, “we don’t give a damn who fucks who in this city. It only becomes a problem when people get cut or shot or strangled in the process.”

Carmichael didn’t seem to have heard.

“I mean it’s not like I’m hooking or anything,” he insisted. “I don’t need the money — in a good week I pull in six, maybe seven hundred bucks.” He dismissed that kind of money with a wave of his hand, operating from the distorted value system of one born into wealth.

“Doug,” said Milo, with authority in his voice, “stop defending yourself and listen: we don’t care about what you do with your dick. Your file will stay sealed. Just tell us about Nona.”

The message finally got through. The look on Carmichael’s face was that of a child who’d received an unexpected gift. I realized that I kept thinking of him as a big kid because, except for the manly outer husk, everything about him was childlike, immature. A classic case of arrested development.