Gregg Hurwitz - The Crime Writer

"I think guys like you are exploitive bastards," Cal continued. "You dream up terrorist cells and serial killers, and you feed off real people's fears and live large doing it. Doesn't enough shit go wrong in the world without you glorifying it? You played around in the dark, and you don't like what you came out with. No concern of mine. Not anymore."

"Okay," I said. "Done being morally superior in front of the new kid?"

"For the moment."

"Then we'll just pretend we both forgot your one-hour-drama concept you told me about. The one with the detective who works too many overtimes tracking the wasn't it the Red Glove Killer? and his wife just don't understand?"

Cal pushed past me, knocking my shoulder. Sam looked concerned, unsure whether to step up on me with some tough-guy face time or scurry after the scoutmaster.

"The boys at RHD are too busy asserting their own superiority to take a fresh look at these murders," I said after him.

Cal pivoted, mouth jerked left in a scowl. "Kaden and Delveckio? Boy, I'd sure love to show up those fancy detectives from Homicide Special. If only I had a crazy novelist to give me an in."

Sarcasm aside, he'd been following the case, as I'd bet he had.

I withdrew the pages I'd rolled and stuffed into my back pocket and held them out. "This is the case to date. From my perspective. If you were smart and ambitious, you'd realize you have an exclusive line into a major investigation."

"I'm neither." But he was staring at the sheaf of paper a bit too hungrily for someone who'd just eaten a double-double.

"Take it anyway. It's only twelve chapters. You can read it in the bubble bath. I'm gonna come bother you in a while for something or something else and you'd best have done your homework so when we're smoking cigars on my nice deck you can look sufficiently foolish about all the conclusions you jumped to."

I swung the rolled pages so they tapped Sam in the chest, and, looking confused, he took them. I walked out before he could throw them at me.

I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on my desk, bleary-eyed from focusing on court transcript pages, indecipherable signatures on evidence reports, and grainy newspaper photographs of yours truly. My focus remained jumpy, half on the page, half in my head, an agitation of unfinished thoughts. It was only a few minutes past five, but already the sun had dipped below the row of palms cresting the west canyon ridge. Backlit fronds, even after my twenty years in L.A., made me pause with admiration.

Imports like the rest of us, palms had been brought to Los Angeles centuries ago by Spanish missionaries. I'd read that they were dying out here, the latest wave nearing the ends of their hundred-year life spans. Local bureaucracies had determined that broad-canopy trees better fought auto emissions. Vegas casinos had driven prices beyond municipal reach. Falling fronds bugged the yuppies, scratched up their MINI Coopers. Tree-trimmer saws spread deadly fungi. But despite it all, the palms were hanging on. With their discreet roots and flexible trunks, they're survivors. They don't come down in storms. They bow with the wind. They crawl along shady ground before goosenecking north into sunlight. They're scrappy and tenacious and beautiful and useless, like most anything that survives in Los Angeles. I hoped they'd endure. Imagining L.A. without palm trees was like picturing a lion without fur.

I tried the lab for the fifth time, and miraculously Lloyd picked up. After I said hello, his voice got tight. "You can't call me. Especially here."

"I've been looking into a few things. About the Broach case. I need to talk."

A pause indicated I'd piqued his curiosity. "Don't come here."

"After work?"

"Janice isn't doing so hot."

"I'm sorry to hear things are bad."

I could hear him breathing into the receiver, and then he said, quietly, "Thank you."

"I'm sure you don't need any more on your plate, but I would really appreciate a few minutes of your time. Can I make it easier? I'll come to you, pick up dinner, whatever."

I heard some muttering in the background. Then Lloyd's voice changed and he said to me, "Yeah, okay, Freddy. I'll get on it tomorrow. I was just leaving." Then he hung up.

I swung by Henry's Tacos en route to Lloyd's house in North Hollywood, then stopped at a liquor store and picked up a bottle of Bacardi 8, his favorite, and a two-liter of Coke. He lived off a deadend street threading behind an overgrown park, in a big old Valley house with build-ons, rambling halls, and a barn gate guarding a gravel driveway. I slipped the rusty latch and headed down the unlit drive. The house was rotated away from the street, affording from within a good view of the park but making it inhospitable, offering up only the seemingly private kitchen door.

Lloyd was in the detached garage just past the house, fussing over the equipment in the rear of his van. Floor-to-ceiling industrial shelves crowded the van and a backed-in car hibernating beneath a black cover. I approached, and he started at my greeting. The van, as always, was crammed with endless equipment and oddities. Fingerprint tape lifts. Garden loppers for cutting ribs. Colored dental stone for casting impressions of shoe prints. I'd once spent a morning driving around with him while he'd collected seventeen brands of motor oil, trying to match a stain left where a getaway car had idled.

He was stuffing various vials and pill bottles into a knapsack, and he paused wearily at my approach. "She's on more pain meds than I can keep track of," he said, as if continuing a conversation.

"Thanks for seeing me, Lloyd. With everything you have going on."

The van's rear door, which rested heavily against the sleeping car, whined when he swung it shut. I followed him in. I'd been here before, picking him up, dropping off manuscripts, but this was my first time inside. The house was dark, a few lamps illuminating splotches of kitchen and family room. Dishes overrunning the sink, clean plates and bowls stacked on the counters as if no one had the energy to lift them into the cabinets. A swirl of crocheted blankets on the couch, bed pillows mixed with the cushions. The air felt humid from recent cooking. A portly woman sat in an armchair, watching a Spanish talk show and sipping a cup of tea.

"Hullo, Meester Wagner."

"How'd she do today?"

"She do fine. She do jess fine."

Lloyd handed her a roll of bills, and the woman rinsed out her mug in the sink, nodded warmly, and plodded out the door. There was no car out front and no bus stop for blocks.

Looking around made clear why Lloyd had blown off the first message I'd left him. With everything he was contending with, the last thing he needed was a maybe-psychotic murderer dropping by.

"I'm sorry for the mess. Janice is an only child, both parents passed. We don't get much help." Lloyd lowered his head, pausing as if to catch his breath. "Make yourself at home. I'll be right back."

He squared himself toward the hall but remained frozen for a moment, gathering his will. At the end of the long, dark corridor, a seam of light showed beneath a doorway. Lloyd shrugged the knapsack strap up into place and headed toward it.

I cleared a space on the kitchen table and unpacked the food. A fall of light as the door down the hall opened, and I heard murmuring and the soothing rush of medical equipment before the sounds were cut off by the closing door. I got a few glasses from the counter, filled mine with water. A toothbrush leaned from a cup by the dish-soap dispenser. By the door a lone Birkenstock stood out from a mound of shoes, bearing the stain of a woman's foot, a simple image I found distressing. I thought about the second car out in the garage, unused. Lloyd probably didn't have the heart to sell it yet.