Jonathan Kellerman - Dr. Death

"He wasn't prepared," I said. "It came up in the course of the conversation."

"What, like 'How's it going, Richard?' 'Peachy, Doc- and by the way I have an alibi'?"

I didn't answer.

He said, "Buying a hotel. Guy like that, rich honcho, gotta be used to delegating. Why would he do his own dirty work? So what the hell's an alibi worth?"

"The job done on Mate, all that anger. All that personal viciousness. Did it smell like hired help to you?"

"Depends upon what the help was hired to do. And who got hired." He reached out, placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. I felt like a suspect and I didn't like it. "Do you see Doss as capable of setting it up?"

"I've never seen any signs of that," I said in a tight voice.

He released his hand. "That sounds like a maybe."

"This is exactly why I didn't want to get into it. There's absolutely nothing I know about Richard Doss that tells me he's capable of contracting that level of brutality. Okay?"

"That," he said, "sounds like expert-witness talk."

"Then count yourself lucky. 'Cause when I go to court I get paid well."

We stared at each other. He shifted away, looked past me, up at Zoghbie's house. Two California jays danced among the branches of the sycamore.

"This is something," he said.

"What is?"

"You and me, all the cases we've been through, and now we're having a wee bit of tension."

Veneering the last few words in an Irish brogue. I wanted to laugh, tried to, more to fill time and space than out of any glee. The movement started at my diaphragm but died, a soundless ripple, as my mouth refused to obey.

"Hey," I said, "can this friendship be saved?"

"Okay, then," he said, as if he hadn't heard. "Here's a direct question for you: Is there anything else you know that I should know? About Doss or anything else?"

"Here's a direct answer: no."

"You want to drop the case?"

"Want me to?"

"Not unless you want to."

"I don't want to, but-"

"Why would you want to stay on it?" he said.

"Curious."

"About what?"

"Whodunit, whydunit. And riding around with the po-lice makes me feel oh-so-safe. You want me off, though, just say so."

"Oh Christ," he said. "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah."

Now we both laughed. He was sweating again and my head hurt.

"So," he said. "Onward? You do your job, I do mine-"

"And I'll get to Scotland afore ye."

"It ain't Scotland I care about," he said. "It's Mulhol-land Drive-gonna be interesting hearing what Mr. Doss has to say. Maybe I'll interview him myself. When are you seeing the daughter-what's her name?"

"Stacy. Tomorrow."

He wrote it down. "How many other kids in the family?"

"A brother two years older. Eric. He's up at Stanford."

"Tomorrow," he said. "College stuff."

"You got it."

"I may be talking to her, too, Alex."

"She didn't carve up Mate."

"Long as you've got a good rapport with her, why don't you ask her if her daddy had it done."

"Oh sure."

He shifted into drive.

I said, "I wouldn't mind getting a look at Mate's apartment."

"Why?"

"To see how the genius lived. Where is it?"

"Hollywood, where else? Ain't no bidness like shooow bidness. C'mon, I'll shooow you-fasten your seat belt."

MATE'S BUILDING WAS on North Vista, between Sunset and Hollywood, the upper level of a seventy-year-old duplex. The landlady lived below, a tiny ancient named Mrs. Ednalynn Krohnfeld, who walked stiffly and wore twin hearing aids. A sixty-inch Mitsubishi TV ruled her front room, and after she let us in she returned to her chair, folded a crocheted brown throw over her knees and fastened her attention upon a talk show. The skin tones on the screen were off, flesh dyed the carotene orange of a nuclear sunburn. Trash talk show, a pair of poorly kept women cursing at each other, setting off a storm of bleeps. The host, a feloniously coiffed blonde with lizard eyes behind oversize eyeglasses, pretended to represent the voice of reason.

Milo said, "We're here to take another look at Dr. Mate's apartment, Mrs. Krohnfeld."

No answer. The image of a hollow-eyed man flashed in the right-hand corner of the screen. Gap-toothed fellow leering smugly. A written legend said, Duane. Denesha's husband but Jeanine's lover.

"Mrs. Krohnfeld?"

The old woman quarter-turned but kept watching.

"Have you thought of anything since last week that you want to tell me, Mrs. Krohnfeld?"

The landlady squinted. The room was curtained to gloom and barricaded with old but cheap mahogany pieces.

Milo repeated the question.

"Tell you about what?" she said.

"Anything about Dr. Mate?"

Head shake. "He's dead."

"Has anyone been by recently, Mrs. Krohnfeld?"

"What?"

Another repeat.

"By for what?"

"Asking about Dr. Mate? Snooping around the apartment?"

No reply. She continued to squint. Her hands tightened and gathered the comforter.

Duane swaggering onstage. Taking a seat between the harridans. Giving a so-what shrug and spreading his legs wide, wide, wide.

Mrs. Krohnfeld muttered something.

Milo kneeled down next to her recliner. "What's that, ma'am?"

"Just a bum." Fixed on the screen.

"That guy up there?" said Milo.

"No, no, no. Here. Out there. Climbing up the stairs." She jabbed an impatient finger at the front window, slapped both hands to her cheeks and plucked. "A bum-lotsa hair-dirty, you know, street trash."

"Climbing the stairs to Dr. Mate's apartment? When?"

"No, no-just tried to get up there, I shooed him away." Glued to the orange melodrama.

"When was this?"

"Few days ago-maybe Thursday."

"What did he want?" said Milo.

"How would I know? You think I let him in?" One of the feuding women had jumped to her feet, pointing and cursing at her rival. Duane was positioned between them, relishing every strutting-rooster moment of it.

Bleep bleep bleep. Mrs. Krohnfeld read lips and her own mouth slackened. "Such talk!"

Milo said, "The bum, what else can you tell me about him?"

No answer. He asked the same question, louder. Mrs. Krohnfeld jerked toward us. "Yeah, a bum. He went…" Jabbing over her shoulder. "Tried to go up. I saw him, yelled out the window to get the hell outa there, and he skedaddled."

"On foot?"

Grunt. "That type don't drive no Mercedes. What a louse." This time, directing the epithet at Duane. "Stupid idjits, wasting their time on a louse like that."

"Thursday."

"Yup-or Friday… look at that." The women had raced toward each other and collided, alloying into a clawing, hair-pulling cyclone. "Idjits."

Milo sighed and rose. "We're going upstairs now, Mrs. Krohnfeld."

"When can I put the place up for rent?"

"Soon."

"Sooner the better-idjits."

The steps to Mate's unit were on the right side of the duplex, and before I climbed I had a look at the rear yard. Not much more than a strip of concrete, barely space for the double carport. An old Chevy that Milo identified as Mate's was parked next to an even older Chrysler New Yorker. Unused laundry lines sketched crosshatch shadows across the cement. Low block fencing revealed neighbors on all sides, mostly multiple-unit apartment buildings, higher than the duplex. Throw a barbecue down here and lots of people would know the menu.

Mate had chased headlines, desired no privacy in his off-hours.

An exhibitionist, or had Alice Zoghbie been right? Not cued into his surroundings.

Either way, easy victim.

I mentioned that to Milo. He sucked his teeth and took me back to the entrance.

Mate's front door was capped by a small overhang. Ads from fast-food joints littered the floor. Milo picked them up, glanced at a few, dropped them. Yellow tape banded the plain wood door. Milo yanked it loose. One key twist and we were in. A single lock, not a dead bolt. Anyone could've kicked it in.