Jonathan Kellerman - Survival Of The Fittest

The author bio on the back flap.

Arthur Haldane, Ph.D., resident scholar, the Loomis Institute, New York City.

I brought it back to Sharavi.

“Oh,” he said. “I bought the book yesterday, haven't gotten around to reading it… So there's an institute in addition to the foundation.”

“Maybe other money you didn't trace.”

He turned the book over, opened it, and inspected the table of contents. “May I use your phone?”

He made a calling-card connection, spoke briefly in Hebrew, hung up, returned to the table.

“A best-seller,” I said. “If any of the royalties were returned to Loomis, that kills their tax-free status. With their cash depletion, they might have been willing to take the risk.”

“Both Sanger and that securities analyst, Helga Cranepool, work in financial fields. Her specialty's farm commodities.”

“Loomis's product,” I said. “Assuming they still farm.”

“Oh, they do,” he said. “Not in America, overseas. Cotton, hemp, jute, alfalfa and other feeds, various packing materials. They own plantations in Asia and Africa. I'd assume because of the lower wages.”

“Oh, for them mint-julep days,” I said. “Does the foundation keep offices out here?”

“Not under the Loomis name. I'm looking into it.”

“Fifth Avenue suite in New York and all we know about them here is a possible link to a bookstore in Silverlake. Bit of a contrast.”

“We know they're snobs,” he said. “Maybe it extends to their view of California.”

I made coffee while he sat, motionless, almost entranced. When I brought back two mugs, he thanked me and gave me a white envelope. In it were a social-security card, Visa, MasterCard, Fedco membership, Blue Shield enrollment, all made out to Andrew Desmond.

“Health insurance,” I said. “What's the deductible?”

He smiled. “Ample.”

“In case I get hurt?”

“I'll do my best to take care of you.”

“What about a driver's license?”

“We'll need a photo for that and I want to wait til Thursday or Friday when your beard's thicker. I'll have some educational credentials for you at that time, also. We've come up with an L.A.-based, unaccredited psychology program that closed down ten years ago. Even if by some strange coincidence you happened to meet another alumnus, it was home-study, no contact between the students.”

“Sounds perfect.”

He squared the stack of papers. “Few civilians would disrupt their life to this extent, Alex.”

“I'm a masochist. And frankly, I think we're overdoing the espionage bit.”

“Better that than the opposite. Should you need a home away from home, you've got one. I was able to get a place in the city. Genesee Avenue. The Fairfax district.”

He waved his good hand around the room. “I'm afraid it's nothing like this, but the neighbors don't pry.”

From his pocket came a ring bearing several keys. He spread them on the table, touched each in turn.

“Front and back doors, garage, your car. It's a Karmann Ghia, ten years old, but customized with a new engine, and runs better than it looks. It's in the garage.”

He slid the keys across the table.

“Sounds like you've thought of everything,” I said.

“If only that were possible.”

Milo rang the bell just after ten-thirty and Petra Connor was with him. She was dressed in a pantsuit again, this one chocolate brown, wore less makeup, and looked younger.

Milo said, “Superintendent Sharavi, Detective Petra Connor, Hollywood Division.”

They shook hands. Connor's dark eyes shifted to me, then to the false ID.

“Something to drink?” I said.

“No, thanks,” she said.

Milo said, “If you've got coffee left, I'll have some. Where's Robin?”

“Out in back.”

I filled a mug and Milo studied my social-security card. “Just finished interdivisional show-and-tell. Pierce couldn't make it, McLaren and Hooks were out on other cases, so it was Alvarado, Detective Connor, and me.”

Connor twisted a cameo ring. “Thanks for letting me in on this. I recontacted Malcolm Ponsico's parents in New Jersey but once again, they were no help. And I couldn't tell them it might not be suicide, my line was I was just touching base. I also looked into Zena Lambert's background and it's spotless. She left PlasmoDerm voluntarily, wasn't fired, nothing iffy in her personnel file, and she's the registered owner of the bookstore, so it looks like an attempt at self-employment.”

She looked at Milo.

He said, “The only morsel that came up at the meeting was that Alvarado dug through Recreation Department files and found a guy named Wilson Tenney who'd worked at the park where Raymond Ortiz was abducted and was fired a few weeks later because of personality problems. Wouldn't take orders, showed up when he wanted to, sat on a bench and read instead of raking. They warned him several times, finally gave him the boot. Tenney contested the firing, made noises about a lawsuit, reverse discrimination because he was a white male, but then he just went away.”

He handed me a sheet printed with a photocopied driver's license. Tenney was thirty-five, five ten, one fifty. Green eyes, shoulder-length hair, light brown, unless the black and white copy was inaccurate. Hard eyes, tight mouth. If you were looking for something. Nothing else remarkable about the face.

“Angry man,” I said. “Resentment of minorities. Reading on the job because he's a self-styled intellectual? Interesting.”

“We ran him through, and he's as clean as Lambert and didn't go crosstown for a job at the conservancy. He did split from his last known address- apartment in Mar Vista. And guess what he drives?”

“A van.”

“Seventy-nine Chevy, lapsed registration, so that raises the hunch quotient a bit. If he's living on the street, he's not on the dole, no welfare applications.”

“He might have a history of psychiatric treatment,” I said. “Could be hospitalized.”

“Alvarado's already starting to check public hospitals; at this point, private places would be impossible to crack. I also dropped by that Mensa president's place- Bukovsky. It's his business, an auto-parts yard, and he wasn't in. I decided not to leave a card. Suggestions, so far?”

“No,” said Sharavi, “just information.” He repeated what he'd told me about Sanger and the Loomis Foundation.

“Fifth Avenue,” said Milo. “And maybe they're silent partners with the creep who wrote that book… maybe partners with Zena Lambert, bankrolling Spasm. One way for a clerk to go self-employed overnight.”

“Venture capital for a new utopia,” I said.

“And if the store brings in money,” said Sharavi, “maybe it goes back to the Loomis Foundation. Interesting way to launder.”

“So you'll keep checking Sanger's travel records?” said Milo.

Sharavi nodded.

“What about the editor, Cranepool?”

“She lives alone in an apartment on East Seventy-eighth Street, works long hours at the brokerage house, comes home and rarely goes out except to shop and run errands.”

Three photos came out of his pocket. The first landed upside down and he left it that way. The second was a snapshot of a tall, beefy man around forty with sloping shoulders that good tailoring couldn't conceal. His hair was dark and combed straight back and his features were thick, slightly flattened. Dark eyes, droopy lids. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, navy tie, and carried a soft leather attachÉ. The camera had caught him walking down a crowded street looking preoccupied.

The third featured a tight-lipped, harried-looking woman ten years older, wearing a bulky beige sweater and dark green plaid slacks. Light brown hair was pulled back from a broad face. Large gold earrings, gold-rimmed glasses. More flattened features and I asked if she and Sanger could be related.