Jonathan Kellerman - The Murder Book

Clever boy, but the search had been futile: no such person as Paris Bartlett.

Which he supposed he'd known right away, apart from the moniker having a phony ring, Bartlett, all hair and teeth and eagerness, had had that actor thing going on. In L.A. that didn't necessarily mean a SAG card and a portfolio full of headshots. LAPD liked guys who were good at pretending, too. Channeled them into undercover work. Nowadays, that meant mostly Narcotics, occasionally Vice when the word came down to run yet another week or two of hooker rousts for public relations.

Years ago undercover had meant another Vice game, a regularly scheduled weekend production: Friday and Saturday night operations put together with military lust. Staking out targets and delineating the enemy and moving in for the attack.

Bust the queers.

Not naked aggression, the way it had been back before Christopher Street, when gay bars were ripe for routine, big-time head-breaking. Most of that ended by the early seventies, but Milo had caught the tail end of the department's fag-bashing fervor: LAPD masked the raids as drug busts, as if hetero clubs weren't fueled by the same dope. During his first month at West L.A. he'd been assigned to a Saturday night bivouac against a private club on Sepulveda near Venice. Out-of-the-way dive in a former auto-painting barn where a hundred or so well-heeled men, believing themselves to be secure, went to talk and dance and smoke grass and gobble quaaludes and enjoy the bathroom stalls. LAPD had a different notion of security. The way the supervisor- a hypermacho D II named Reisan who Milo was certain was tucked deeply in the closet- laid out the plan, you'da thought it was a swoop on some Cong hamlet. Squinty eyes, military lingo, triangulated diagrams scrawled on the board, give me a break.

Milo sat through the orientation, struggling not to succumb to a full-body sweat. Reisan going on about coming down hard on resisters, don't be shy about using your batons. Then, leering, and warning the troops not to kiss anyone because you didn't know where those lips had been. Looking straight at Milo when he'd cracked wise, Milo laughing along with the others and wondering: Why-the-hell-is-he-doing-that? Fighting to convince himself he'd imagined it.

The day of the raid, he called in sick with the flu, stayed in bed for three days. Perfectly healthy, but he worked hard at degrading himself by not sleeping or eating, just sucking on gin and vodka and rye and peach brandy and whatever else he found in the cupboard. Figuring if the department checked on him, he'd look like death warmed over.

V.N. combat vet, now a real-life working detective, but he was still thinking like a truant high school kid.

Over the three days, he lost eight pounds, and when he stood his legs shook and his kidneys ached and he wondered if that yellow tinge in his eyes was real or just bad lighting- his place was a dingy hovel, the few windows it offered looked out to airshafts, and no matter how many bulbs he used, he could never get the illumination above tomb-strength.

The first time in three days that he tried food- a barely warmed can of Hearty Man chili- what he didn't heave whooshed out the other end. He smelled like a goat pen, his hair felt brittle, and his fingernails were getting soft. For a full week later, his ears rang and his back hurt and he drank gallons of water a day just in case he'd damaged something. The day he returned to the station, a transfer slip- Vice to Auto Theft, signed by Reisan- was in his box. That seemed a fine state of affairs. Two days later, someone slipped a note through the door of his locker.

How's your bunghole, faggot?

He pulled into the Healthy Foods lot, stayed in the Taurus, scanned the parking lot for anything out of the ordinary. During the drive from his house to the station, then from Budget to the market, he'd been on alert for a tail. Hadn't picked up any, but this wasn't the movies, and the hard truth was, in a city built around the combustion engine, you could never be sure.

He watched shoppers enter the market, finally satisfied himself that he hadn't been followed, and crossed over to the row of small stores- rehabbed shacks, really- that sat across from Healthy Foods. Locksmith, dry cleaners, cobbler, West Hollywood Easy Mail Center.

He flashed his badge to the Pakistani behind the mail-drop counter- pile up those violations, Sturgis- and inquired about the box number listed on the Jeep's registration. The clerk was sullen, but he thumbed through his circular Rolodex and shook his head.

"No Playa del Sol." Behind him was the wall of brass boxes. A sign advertised FedEx, UPS, rubber stamps, While-U-Wait gift-wrapping. Milo spotted no ribbons or happy-face wrapping paper. This was all about secrets.

"When did they stop renting?" he said.

"Had to be at least a year ago."

"How do you know?"

"Because the current tenant has been renting for thirteen months."

Tenant. Milo pictured some leprechaun setting up house in the mailbox. Tiny stove, refrigerator, Murphy bed, thumbnail-sized cable TV blaring The Pot of Gold Network.

"Who's the current tenant?" he said.

"You know I can't tell you that, sirrr."

"Aw shucks," said Milo, producing a twenty-dollar bill. Keep those felonies coming…

The Pakistani stared at the bill as Milo placed it on the counter, closed his hand over Andrew Jackson's gaunt visage. Then he turned his back on Milo and began fiddling with one of the empty mailboxes and Milo reached over and took hold of the Rolodex and read the card.

Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Block

Address on Cynthia Street. Just a few blocks away.

"Know these people?" said Milo.

"Old people," said the Pakistani, still showing his back. "She comes in every week, but they don't get anything."

"Nothing?"

"Once in a while, junk."

"Then why do they need a POB?"

The clerk faced him and smiled. "Everyone needs one- tell all your friends." He reached for the Rolodex, but Milo held on to it, thumbing back from Bl to Ba . No Bartlett. Then up to P . No Playa del Sol.

The Pakistani said, "Stop, please. What if someone comes in?"

Milo released the Rolodex, and the clerk placed it under the counter.

"How long have you been working here?"

"Oh," said the clerk, as if the question was profound. "Ten months."

"So you've never dealt with anyone from Playa del Sol."

"That is true."

"Who worked here before you?"

"My cousin."

"Where is he?"

"Kashmir."

Milo glared at him.

"It's true," said the man. "He had enough of this place."

"West Hollywood?"

"America. The morals."

No curiosity about why Milo wanted to know about Playa del Sol. Given the guy's line of work, Milo supposed he'd learned not to be curious.

Milo thanked him, and the clerk rubbed his index finger with his thumb. "You could show your thanks in another way."

"Okay," said Milo, taking a very low bow. "Thank you very much ."

As he left, he heard the man utter something in a language he didn't understand.

He drove to the Cynthia Street apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Block, pretended to be a census taker, and enjoyed an affable five-minute chat with the possibly hundred-year-old Selma Block, a blue-caftaned, champagne-haired pixie of a woman so bent and tiny she might very well have fit into one of the mailboxes. Behind her sat Mr. Block on a green-and-gold sofa, a mute, static, vacant-eyed apparition of similar antiquity whose sole claim to physiologic viability was the occasional moist and startling throat clear.

Five minutes taught Milo more about the Blocks than he'd wanted to know. Both had worked in the Industry- Selma as a costume mistress for several major studios, Irwin as an accountant for MGM. Three children lived back East. One was an orthodontist, the middle one had gone into "the financial world and became a Republican, and our daughter weaves and sews hand-fashioned-"