Jonathan Kellerman - Time Bomb

She held the cigarette at arm’s length. “Yes, I know.”

Milo took it and ground it out in an ashtray.

She said, “Been talking to my husband?”

“It’s my job,” he said. “Protect and serve. Got a few more questions for you. Hate groups. Anything new on the local scene?”

“Not particularly, just the usual fringies. Maybe a slight upswing in incidents that seems to be related to the situation in Israel- a lot of the printed material we’ve been seeing lately has been emphasizing anti-Zionist rhetoric: Jews are oppressors. Stand up for Palestinian rights. A new hook for them since the U.N. passed the Zionism-is-racism thing. Basically a way for them to sanitize their message. And some of the funding for the worst anti-Semitic literature is coming from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Syria, so I’m sure that’s got something to do with it.”

“Who’d be breaking into houses and painting anti-Semitic slogans on the walls?”

“That sounds kind of adolescent,” she said. “Why? Are you getting a lot of that? If you are, we should know about it.”

“Just one incident. At the place Ike used to live and the apartment next door. His landlady was Jewish and the next-door neighbor’s a rabbi, so it probably has nothing to do with Ike.”

“Milo,” she said, “you don’t think he was killed because of his work here?”

“Nothing points to that, Judy.”

“But you’re not ruling it out. You’re here because you have at least some suspicion he might have been killed because of his race.”

“No, Judy,” he said, “I’m a long way from that.”

“Kennedy,” I said softly.

It was the first time I’d spoken since we entered the room. Both of them stared at me.

“Yeah,” said Milo. “There is something else. Along with the anti-Semitic stuff, they wrote, Remember John Kennedy! That make any sense to you?”

“Could,” she said, “depending on which John Kennedy you’re talking about.”

“What do you mean?”

“If they scrawled “John F . Kennedy that wouldn’t make much sense. But there was another John Kennedy. Confederate veteran. Lived in Pulaski, Tennessee, and started a social club for other Confederate veterans called the Ku Klux Klan.”

I said, “Punks who know history?”

Milo didn’t say anything.

We left, taking along the carton of books Ike Novato had checked out.

I said, “What do you think?”

Milo said, “Who the hell knows?”

“Seems to me it’s starting to smell more like politics than drugs. Both Novato and Gruenberg have a strong interest in Nazis. Both get killed. Someone breaks into their apartment and paints racist slogans.”

Milo frowned, rubbed his face. Then his beeper went off.

I said, “Want me to find a phone?”

“Nah, I’ll call from your place.”

He did and put down the phone. “Gotta go, fresh d.b. Don’t worry- nothing to do with Nazis. Paraplegic in a rest home on Palm- looks like natural causes.”

“How come the D-Three goes out on something like that?”

“One of the attendants pulled my guy aside and told him the paraplegic had been pretty healthy the day before- and this wasn’t the first funny death they’d had there. Place was full of health code violations, patients getting beaten, sitting in their own shit, not getting their medicine. Owner of the home is politically connected. My guy got nervous. Wanted to know procedure . Procedure is I go out there and play nursemaid.”

He walked to the door. “Got any plans for tonight?”

“Nothing.”

He pointed at the carton of books. “Got time for some reading?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a lot of stuff there. You might wanna check first for notes in margins, underlining, that kind of thing. Barring that, maybe a trend in the kind of books he chose- a subpattern, something more specific than just an interest in Nazis. Depending on how complicated it gets over in Palms, I’ll try to get back tonight, see if you’ve come up with anything.”

“Am I being graded?”

“Nah, it’s pass/fail. Just like real life.”

Mahlon Burden had left a message at four.

“He said to tell you,” the operator said, “that he’s free to pick up where the two of you left off. Any time.”

“Thanks.”

“He sounded kind of eager,” she said. “Burden. Why’s that name familiar?”

I told her I had no idea, hung up, finished a long-overdue report, then sat down with the carton of books at seven o’clock.

The first volume I picked up was an English translation of Mein Kampf. I flipped the pages, found no notes in the margins or underlining.

The second book was entitled This Must Not Happen Again: The Black Book of Fascist Horror by Clark Kinnaird. Large print, small press, publication date of 1945.

Flipping through these pages revealed a note in the margin of page 23. The adjoining text read:

“Unless it is understood that the Germans made their heinousities as well as their war profitable they are incomprehensible.”

What followed was a description of the financial benefits the Nazis had reaped from the racial laws that allowed them to confiscate Jewish property. Next to it, someone had neatly printed in pencil:

“Same old story: power and money, no matter what wing.”

I turned more pages, found no more notes. Just a clearly written chronology of World War II and lots of pictures, the same kinds I’d seen in the Exhibit Room. I got caught up in the horrors and was still reading at nine-fifteen, when Milo returned.

He said, “Anything?”

“Not yet. How was the rest home?”

“Nothing overly weird, homicide-wise. Despite what the attendant said, the patient did have a history of respiratory problems. Have to wait on the coroner for a definite cause of death.”

He gave a disgusted look. “Place was a real Disneyland- all those empty eyes. Remind me to amend my will: First signs of infirmity, have me taken out to the desert and shot. You hungry?”

“Not really.” I held up the book.

“Hey,” he said, “if I only took nutrition when life was pretty, I’d goddam starve to death.”

We drove to a sushi bar on Wilshire near Yale. It had been a while since we’d been there and the place had undergone a redecoration: pine bar and shoji screens and samisen music thrown over for purple and black velvet walls, smoked mirrors, laser-art rock posters, and a sound system that would have done DeJon Jonson proud. Same chefs, but new costumes- black pajamas and headbands. They brandished their knives and shouted greetings over the disco beat.

Milo looked at them and said, “Reminds me of the fucking Cong.”

“Wanna try someplace else?”

He scanned the array of raw fish at the bar and shook his head. “Comestibles still look good. I’m too tired to go hunting.”

We took a table as far away from the noise as possible, ordered hot sake and ice water and lots of food. He finished quickly, called the waitress back, and ordered more shrimp and yellowtail. Just as it arrived, he said, “Oh, shit.”

“What.”

“Beeper just went off.”

“I didn’t hear it.”

“That’s ’cause it didn’t make a sound. I’ve got it on Silent/Vibrate- I can feel it buzzing in my pocket. Rick insisted on it- same one he’s got. So when we go to the theater, we won’t be offensive to the other theater goers. ’Course, the last time we went to the theater was back in ’85.”

I said, “Sounds like something out of Burden’s catalogue. Pretty high-tech for the Department.”

“What Department? Rick bought it. Promotion gift.” He wiped his mouth and got up. “Be back in a sec. Don’t touch my shrimp.”