Jonathan Kellerman - Survival Of The Fittest

“Bernard Eustace.”

“I assume you've contacted him.”

His gold eyes were steady. “We tried. He died fourteen months ago.”

“How?”

“Auto accident. He was visiting his parents in Mississippi, drove off the road late at night.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“It's recorded as an accident, Alex. Maybe it was. Milo and I agree that digging further right now is too risky because the crash site is rural, any questions from out-of-town police will be conspicuous.”

The fingers of his good hand had bowed, tips pressing into the tabletop.

“Mississippi,” I said. “Was Eustace black?”

“White. A historian, not a psychologist. We may eventually talk to his wife, but right now, following Farley Sanger and your meeting Zena Lambert seem more useful. Are you ready?”

“Yes. Where's Milo?”

“He'll be following you but we thought it better that you didn't know where he was. That way you'd be less likely to look his way accidentally. I'm sure you don't doubt his protectiveness.”

“Not a shred of doubt,” I said.

Before I left, I stopped in to see Robin again. The shop was quiet, all machines switched off, her apron still folded on a workbench, as she talked on the phone, her back to me.

Spike barked and trotted forward and Robin turned. “I'll call you when it's done. Bye.”

She put the phone down. “You look- like a French cinematographer.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Depends if you like French cinema- it does have a certain… hungry elegance. C'mere.”

We embraced.

“What's that cologne?” she said.

“Andrew's scent. Do you find it alluring?”

“Oh, yeah. Baguettes and pessimism.” She pulled away, held me at arm's length. “You're certainly giving them their money's worth. When will you be back?”

“Depends on how it goes,” I said. “Probably sometime this afternoon.”

“Give me a call as soon as you can. I'll get us something for dinner.”

I held her tighter. Her hand reached up and touched my bristly head. Paused. Stroked.

“Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,” I said.

“If I run out of.000 sandpaper, I'll draft you into service.”

She pulled away again. Studied me. “Definitely different.”

“Overkill,” I said. “It's a bookstore visit in Hollywood, not sneaking into Iran, but they're the professionals.”

“Have you seen Hollywood recently?”

I chuckled. Thought about Nolan's Hollywood.

She stroked my head some more. “Three kids, that blind man. Some things grow back.”

Down in front, parked next to Daniel's Toyota, was the Karmann Ghia from the Genesee garage, cream-colored, not yellow, in the sunlight, with a scarred hood and a dented door.

He handed me a small color photo.

Headshot of a young woman with a narrow face, white-blond hair cut almost as short as mine.

Her features were good but her skin was beyond pale- Kabuki white. Black liner enlarged her blue eyes and emphasized a hypermetabolic glow. Despite that, she looked bored. Resentful. I resisted the urge to interpret; standing in line at the DMV could make anyone feel that way.

“Driver's license?” I said.

He nodded, took the picture from me, and put it in his pocket. “The store is at 2028 Apollo Avenue. Good luck.”

We shook hands and he drove off.

The Karmann Ghia's seat was adjusted to my height and the car started up easily. Plenty of power, as Daniel had promised. The interior was trashed- torn upholstery and headliner, crumpled paper cups and fast-food boxes tossed behind the seat.

The AM-FM radio was old enough to be original. I turned it on. KPFK. The guest was a black “sociopolitical theoretician and author” who believed Jewish doctors had created AIDS in order to kill off inner-city babies. The host let him preach for paragraphs at a time, then threw him grounders that evoked more hatred.

Daniel was a planner and I wondered if he'd preset the dial.

Getting me in the mood.

I switched to jazz and drove.

Spasm's address put the store just past the border between Hollywood and Silverlake. I passed Sunset's Hospital Row and the Hillhurst intersection, where the boulevard veers southeast toward downtown- today just a smog-shrouded theory. Then a quick left on Fountain, which I followed until it became a side street, yielding to two lanes of dips and curves- Apollo.

The street was planted with huge, untrimmed trees. Old trees; this was the kind of one-story, mixed-use neighborhood you see only in older parts of L.A.

Mostly it was auto-body shops and printing plants and used-tire yards, but interspersed among the dreary lots were liquor stores and other small businesses, and small houses- some converted to commercial use, some still sporting gardens and laundry lines, one a Pentecostal church.

A nail parlor, a tattoo parlor, a botÁnica advertising crystals and herbs. Unmarked buildings, many with FOR LEASE signs. Looking down on all of it were the steep embankments of Silverlake, weedy and tree-shrouded where they weren't toasted golden. Dry spots; primed for the arsonist's match.

The hillside was planted with uneven rows of residences, like shrubs sprouting from a careless garden. Some of the houses flamingoed on stilts, others rested at skeptical angles on tremor-throttled foundations. I saw cracks snaking down stucco, parted seams, roofs missing entire sections of shingle, porch beams bent like reeds. The whole neighborhood looked off-kilter. A mile away, the city was excavating a subway.

The 2000 block appeared and I spotted Spasm right away.

The black window was the tipoff. Small black plastic letters were placed near the top of a gray door, illegible from the street.

Empty curb; no problem parking. As I got out I made out spasm books.

On both sides of the store were body shops, then an acre of asphalt bearing the badge of an official police tow yard. Across the street was a mom-and-pop taco joint, its doors shut, a CLOSED sign hanging on the knob.

It was impossible to tell if Spasm was open for business but when I pushed the gray door, it yielded and I stepped into a long, skinny, tunnel-like charcoal-colored room vibrating with loud calypso music. Skimpy lighting was turned even murkier by the tinted lenses of my glasses but I kept them on and tried to affect an air of mild curiosity.

To the left, a bald, wildly tattooed man sat at a checkout booth and smoked energetically. Leather vest over blue-and-crimson flesh. He was swaying to the music, didn't look up.

The booth was three panels of plywood pushed up against the wall. On the floor were loose piles of throwaway papers - The Reader, The Weekly, The Maoist Exile Wanderer- flyers for Divas in Drag: Where You Can Be What You Want To Be; MaidenHead in Concert; Tertiara Malladonna: A One-Wimin Show About Tampon-Sucking and Rice Confiscation; Uncle Suppurato's Body-Piercing Studio, schedules of night readings in Barnhard Park of poetry concerned with “quantum physics and gum disease.”

Leather Vest continued to ignore me as I passed him. Both side walls were lined with slanting shelves of books displayed face-out. Accent lights brightened the covers. Toward the back was a cable-and-plank staircase leading to an upper loft. On the back wall, another gray door.

Three customers on the ground floor: a wan-looking, clean-cut man in his twenties with bad posture and a fearful frown. He wore a madras button-down shirt, khakis, and sneakers, and glanced over his shoulder nervously as I approached. I could imagine him masturbating in his car, dreading discovery, yet hoping for it. The paperback in his hand said Cannibal Killers.

The other two browsers were a man and woman in their late forties, both with pemmican faces shellacked with a sun-and-booze luster. Long hair, missing teeth, lots of beads, a shopping bag full of scraps. Had their tie-dyes and serapes been clean, they could have been traded on Melrose as antiques.