Jonathan Kellerman - Twisted

“Who are we talking about?”

“Omar Selden. A seriously bad person. Gangbanger, though you wouldn’t know to look at him. Half white, half Mexican, something like that. You’ll have him in your records, he did some time for robbery. But never for what he really did.”

“Which was?”

“Killing people,” said Leon. “Lots of them, according to what he told Marcella. Even if half true, he’s a monster.”

“He bragged about killing to Marcella?”

“It impressed her,” said Leon. “Stupid girl.”

“Who’d this Selden kill?”

“He claimed to be the head hit man for his gang- VVO. Said he’d also done freelance work in prison. A hundred bucks and he’d hit someone. I told Marcella it was bullshit ’cause that’s what I thought at the time. I was wrong.”

VVO was Venice Vatos Oakwood. Tight band of low-grade psychopaths, supposedly inactive until last year when they’d resumed shooting people in broad daylight.

Petra remembered one case Milo Sturgis had worked. Family man, clerk at a Good Guys store, mistaken for a VVO dropout and hit while strolling his two-year-old near Ocean Park. The baby spattered with blood, wide-eyed, mute. The shooter, a fourteen-year-old turned out to be learning disabled. Nearsighted, never taken in for a damn eye checkup.

Lyle Leon said, “Once I paid him off, I thought we were free of him. The whole year I never heard from him again so I figured it was okay to return to Venice- the girls had really enjoyed the summer. Then stupid Marcella spots Selden on the walkway. I turn my head for a second and she’s winking at him. And he’s winking back, soon they’re off on the sand, talking. Couple of days later- couple of nights later- he drops by.”

Leon shook his head. “You saw Marcella. Fat, dumpy, those stupid shoes she insisted on wearing. Sandra’s a hard-body, put her in a thong bikini, some Rollerblades, she’d turn heads. So who does Selden develop a thing for? Marcella. And Marcella falls for it.”

Teenagers, thought Petra. Even scam artists couldn’t control them.

Then she flashed on Leon’s leering description of Sandra and wondered where his head was at. Hepatitis A. Unhealthy sexual practices.

Tension filled the car. Mac and the others wondered, too.

“Sandra’s a hard-body,” she said.

“Hey,” said Leon. “I’m being objective. Sandra could attract attention if she wanted to.”

If he wanted her to. Using the girl as a distraction while he and Marcella pulled the scam of the moment. But Marcella had picked up an unwelcome admirer.

She said, “Sandra has hepatitis.”

Leon was silent.

“You knew, Mr. Leon. You showed up with her at the clinic. Did you ever get her any serious medical help?”

“It’s self-limiting. That’s medical talk for it goes away by itself.”

“You’re a doctor, too,” said Petra.

“Listen,” said Leon, “I took good care of those girls. For ten years, on and off, they lived with me and ate well and learned to read and I never touched them. Not once.”

Petra recalled the cramped quarters of the Brooks Avenue shack. A grown man and two hormone-suffused girls.

And the blue ribbon for fatherhood goes to…

She said, “So Omar Selden and Marcella reignited their affair.”

“It wasn’t an affair,” said Leon. “The first summer she snuck away to be with him and he fucked her silly. Idiot doesn’t use a condom and he’s amazed when she gets knocked up. For all I know, he shared her with his friends, wasn’t even the father. One thing he made painfully clear: He wasn’t going to be a father. He threatened me until I paid him off and promised to finance the abortion. Thousand bucks, out of my pocket. A year later, Marcella winks at him and he’s back. The week before the murder, I’m alone in the house ’cause I let the girls go to a concert, some new band at the Troubador. I dropped them off at ten, was supposed to pick them up at two A.M. By eleven I’m back in Venice, mellowing out. At eleven-thirty, the door explodes and Selden is standing over me. He kicked it in, is standing over me, saying where’s my son? Idiot assumed it was a son, all that macho bullshit. I told him there was no baby, I’d done exactly what he wanted. He says ‘No way, man, I never said that.’ I try to reason with him.”

Leon sucked in his breath. His cheek twitched.

“First I think he’s listening, then suddenly, he swells up- I swear you could see him inflate, like he’s hooked up to a bicycle pump. All red in the face, veins bulging, screaming that I’m a murderer.”

A longer tremor, snakelike, coursed from Leon’s brow down to his chin. His lips trembled.

“That’s when I realize he’s nuts. Last summer he was freaking out because she was pregnant, couldn’t wait for her to get rid of it. Now he’s screaming for his kid. I try to calm him down, he grabs my hair, yanks my head back, suddenly he’s got a gun out and he’s jamming it against my throat, grinding. It hurt like hell. He starts talking in this insane whisper about how he’s going to blow my tongue out for lying. Finally, I manage to talk him down.”

“What deal did you make with him?” said Petra.

Leon didn’t answer.

“I’m sure you’re a persuasive fellow, Lyle, but charm alone wouldn’t talk a guy like Selden down.”

Leon stared straight ahead.

Mac said, “You did something you’re ashamed of. We can all live with that if this sad story leads somewhere.”

Leon tightened up again.

“The deal was,” he said, “that I’d let him have another go at Marcella. So he could knock her up again. Have his fucking baby.”

No one spoke. The Caddy felt hot and close. Leon’s cinnamon cologne had turned sour, polluted by fear-sweat.

He said, “I never intended to follow through. We made an appointment, for the following night, and the idiot left looking happy. The moment I was sure he was really gone, I packed all our stuff out of there, picked up the girls at the Troubador, and left.”

“Where’d you go?” said Petra.

“Another place.”

“Where?”

“We have places,” said Leon.

“What kind of places?”

“Houses, apartments, short-term rentals.”

“Give us an address, Mr. Leon, or face a Hindering an Investigation charge.”

Leon twisted to face her. “I call you and I’m hindering?”

“You call us and tell us a self-aggrandizing story.”

“I tell you how I screwed up and it’s self-aggrandizing?”

“Stop echoing.”

Leon said, “That’s what shrinks do and it works.”

Petra got in his face. “You’re not a shrink! Give us an address now !”

“Okay, okay… I took them to a place in Hollywood.” He recited an address on North McCadden. “If you go there, it’ll be vacant. I’m scared as hell, living out of my car.”

The sympathy ploy. She said, “Then I guess you shouldn’t drive too far.”

“Listen to me- ” He touched her wrist. She glared and he pulled back. “Selden won’t let go of this. You saw what he did to Marcella. To those other kids. On top of that, I don’t know where Sandy is. The day after Marcella was killed, she disappeared. All she had to do was stay put in the apartment for one day, but when I got back she was gone.”

“Back from where?”

“I had business to take care of.”

“What kind of business?”

“Getting some cash together, what’s the difference? The plan was for Sandy to wait and then we’d leave L.A. Instead, she split on her own.” Leon’s eyes shut. “I’m thinking, somehow she got spotted by Selden or one of his homeboys.”

“Selden’s everywhere?”