April Smith - Good Morning, Killer

“Did they give you medication?”

“They just give me medication and you talk to someone and they release you. I’m taking medication right now,” said Willie. “I’m a depressed person right now. I personally knew Sylvester Stallone in the HBD. He was killed in nineteen seventy.” Willie said these things with the same measured dullness as before. I felt as if I were in the presence of something enormous, like the pulsing of the stars.

I gave him ten bucks and said, “Take care of yourself.”

“What did you say your name was?”

I gave him another card.

“Thank you. I’m generally around here, if you want to talk to me.”

“God bless,” said Andrew.

We left him sitting cross-legged in the doorway, a mound of bedroll and scraggly white hair.

“Sometimes they whip up a vehicle and leave me someplace,” he called after us.

As we walked through the deserted street, I laid my head against Andrew’s shoulder, certain that they did.

And I dreamed we were in Amsterdam, walking hand in hand, and it was wet and cold and there were lights on the canals.

Out of nowhere came the smell of cooking onions and the low chatter of the TV. I sat up in bed, awake, heart pounding, late for something I could not remember. Stocks were being traded in New York, but here it was still dark, a little after 6 a.m., Day Three. And the girl was still missing.

We had spent the last two nights in my apartment in Marina Del Rey, averaging about four hours’ sleep, which meant you were never out of the roar. Your eyes might be closed, but case points kept flipping through your brain: Jumpy parents. Employee records. Tax returns. A man with a camera. Sylvester Stallone. Rich kids talking rap and smoking weed and a voice in the night, fifteen years old, begging for some hopped-up piece of shit to bestow upon her the privilege of her life.

We had a bulletin out on the van that had been hovering around the Third Street Promenade: a dark green 1989 Dodge, identified separately by both youngsters, Stephanie and Ethan, after looking through police files. The Korean gang member, David Yi, who had stolen a load of spandex from the Meyer-Murphy factory and had been convicted, at least in part by testimony from Juliana’s dad, was at present serving four years in state prison on a plea bargain and not considered to be a suspect.

We’d had briefings every day at the police station, in a windowless lounge next to a kitchen that our techs had transformed into a command post: secured phones, a white board on an easel, a chain of laptops to input Rapid Start — software designed to track every byte of information relevant to the investigation, from interviews to lab reports, photos, computer searches, archives and dust bunnies under the bed. Rapid Start was a cutting-edge tool for examining the particulars and getting the overview. One pair of Big Eyes would be responsible for reading every page of Rapid Start every day: looking for patterns, searching out disconnects — the unanswered questions and the links.

Big Eyes. That would be me.

The case had a name:

UNSUB

Juliana Meyer-Murphy — Victim

Santa Monica Kidnapping

And that’s all we had.

Halfway out of bed I stole one more moment, to inhale the slow rich bloom of coffee and listen with pleasure to Andrew banging cabinet doors in the kitchen. My grandmother’s quilt lay on the carpet where it had been kicked; jasmine-scented massage oil stood, uncapped, next to a vibrator in full view on the nightstand. I slipped it back under the bed. We had been short of time that morning, forced to take the express route — which, in a tender way, seemed in keeping with our newfound teamwork on the job. He had been right, at the beach, in the parking lot, when he said it would be a kick. More than right. We were free and we were flying. We were hanging in that buoyant pocket in the sky.

I swung into the living room. Milky white light was coming through the curtains. As I drew them back, rows and rows of boats docked at the huge Marina were becoming visible in random jigsaw pieces out of a pale mist — hulls, rigging, motors, masts.

“Sleep well?” Andrew wiggled his nose with obnoxious smugness, then went back to assembling breakfast burritos.

“Pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

He said, “Aren’t you?”

A fresh copy of today’s LA Times lay on the counter. Flipping to the local section I saw no mention of the Santa Monica kidnapping.

“Looks like we still haven’t made the news.”

“From your lips.”

Mortified that her daughter, Stephanie, had sent Juliana on a fool’s errand, spunky Mrs. Kent organized a “community response,” apparently believing that she and her TV director husband knew more about crime fighting than we did. Laurel West Academy parents came running, with posters, fliers, search parties at the ready and showbiz contacts speed-dialing the story to the national news — exactly wrong. I thought we had been clear on Day One that she would not discuss the case. You didn’t want to panic the suspect, have him escalate to murder if the victim wasn’t already dead. Special Agent in Charge Robert Galloway had not been pleased. This was not the slick “new politics” of an efficient Bureau. This was anarchy. I had to go back to the Kents’ and kick privileged ass. Get them to understand we had a media blackout in effect on this case.

“Don’t you like my new furniture?”

“Yeah,” said Andrew absently, “it’s nice.”

I put my arms around him. “Nicer than that dark old stuff in your father’s place.”

“You are like a little terrier,” he said. “Don’t you ever let go?”

Holding tighter, “Nope.”

I had finally sprung for a whole new deal, all at once, on sale at Plummers. I am a klutz with colors, it was the worst day of my life, but three hours later I staggered out of there having committed to a blonde wood (actually particle board) entertainment center which faced a couch and two small wicker love seats on either side of a coffee table.

The coffee table was a dark varnished rose with a dandy drawer in which I kept a Colt.32 my enlightened grandfather had given to me when I went to college, as protection against what he called “the blacks,” as if I were to single-handedly hold off a revolutionary siege at UC — Santa Barbara. When I was arranging the furniture, I stowed the gun in the drawer. Poppy would be proud. The apartment was fortified.

The matching cushions on the love seats and couch were a bold tropical pattern in deep plums and greens, which more or less went with the dark gray carpeting. I had one of those curving chrome lamps you can bend all the way down to read by and some glass vases with dried flowers, which I bought at the farmers’ market that weekend, giddy with success. The entertainment center almost had enough shelves for the hundreds of mystery and sci-fi paperbacks I was always trading and borrowing, no longer in piles along the wall.

The place looked like a grown-up lived there. A grown-up who kept tonic and limes in the refrigerator, turkey bologna, hummus, some very nice imported Colby cheese, one percent milk, OJ with calcium, always a couple of beers, usually a leftover pasta primavera or soggy salad in a box, fruit in the bin and Zen muffins in the freezer, along with a slew of frozen diet entrées. A grown-up whose most-used appliance was the blender, with an industrial-sized crock of vanilla protein powder at the ready.

And there was this man in my kitchen, wearing a black short-sleeved knit shirt that had to stretch to get around hard, polished biceps, a zipper at the neck with some logo dangling off, tight jeans with a thick belt that pushed his alleged love handles up (sleek as a bull, he was always fighting ten invisible pounds), loafers, no socks. Long, crazy hours had taught Andrew to keep a change of clothes neatly folded in a gym bag in his trunk.