Jonathan Kellerman - Twisted

Suddenly all the energy generated by her brainstorm with Isaac was gone. She walked over to his desk. He stopped typing, cleared his screen. An Albert Einstein screensaver popped up. Genius in a funny bow tie. Wild hair. But ol’ Albie’s eyes…

Isaac closed the laptop. Something he didn’t want her to see?

She said, “Want some dinner?”

“Thanks, but I can’t.” He looked down at the linoleum and Petra prepared herself for a lie. “Promised my mother I’d spend some time at home.”

“That’s nice.”

“She cooks these enormous meals and gets deeply hurt if no one’s around to eat them. My father does his bit but it’s not enough, she wants all of us. My younger brother tends to stays out late and sometimes my older brother eats on the job, comes home and goes straight to sleep.”

“Leaving you,” said Petra.

He shrugged. “It’s the weekend.”

“I really do think it’s nice, Isaac. Mothers are important.”

He frowned. Klara, her kids…

“You okay?” said Petra.

“Tired.”

“You’re too young for that.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “I don’t feel very young.”

Petra watched him tramp off, lugging the laptop and his briefcase. Something was definitely weighing him down. That junkie, Jaramillo, putting on some kind of pressure? Maybe she’d disobey the Downtown gang guys and confront the kid.

No, that would be a really bad idea.

Still, they’d put her in a bad position. Drafting her into the unpaid job of keeping an eye on the kid with no authority to do anything.

Babysitting, just as it had been all along.

Could she let Isaac go down without a warning? Could she afford not to?

Meanwhile, she’d use him on the June 28 killings.

The mess he’d foisted on her in the first place.

Her head hurt. Time for dinner. Another solitary night. Maybe Eric would call sometime during the weekend.

As she cleared her desk, he phoned, as if she’d conjured him. “Free?”

“Just about. What’s up?”

“Doing things,” he said. “I’d like to tell you about them.”

“I’d like to hear about them.”

They met just after six at a Thai café on Melrose near Gardner, a place favored by faux-depressed hipsters and wannabe performers. But the food was good enough to override the self-conscious atmosphere.

Petra figured she and Eric fit in, at least superficially. He was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt, black jeans that drooped on his skinny frame, the crepe-soled black oxfords he favored on stakeout, his oversized, multizone military wristwatch.

Eric was as far as you could get from hip. But add up the clothes, the close-cropped haircut, the indoor complexion, the deep-set eyes and emotionless face and he looked every bit the misunderstood artiste.

With her black Donna Karan pantsuit and matching loafers, she figured she’d be taken for a stylish career woman. Maybe someone in the entertainment biz.

Hah!

The place was already starting to fill but they got seated immediately, served quickly, ate their papaya salads and panang curry with silent enthusiasm.

“So,” said Petra, “what you been doing?”

Eric put down his fork. “Looking seriously into private work. The licensing requirements don’t seem too tough.”

“Don’t imagine they would be.” He’d done military special op work, spent a tour as an M.P. detective before signing on with LAPD. All that had taught him endless patience for surveillance. Perfect for private work.

“The question,” he said, “is do I go out on my own or hook up with an established p.i.”

“So you’re definitely doing it.”

“Don’t know.”

“Whatever you decide is okay,” she said.

He rolled the fork’s handle.

Petra’s warning system, already primed by too much frustration at work, went on full alert. “Something else on your mind?”

The frost in her voice made him look up.

“Not really.”

“Not really?”

He said, “Are you upset?”

“Why would I be?”

“At me. For quitting.”

She laughed. “No way. Maybe I’ll join you.”

“Bad day?”

One eye started to itch and she rubbed it.

He said, “Paradiso?”

“That, other stuff.”

He waited.

She was in no mood to talk. Then she was, pouring it out: shunted aside on Paradiso, Schoelkopf dissing her in front of the others. Zero progress on the June 28 killings, with the target date a week away.

“Someone’s going to die, Eric, and I can’t do a thing about it.”

He nodded.

“Any ideas?” she said.

“Not about that. As far as Selden, you’re right about the photography angle.”

“Think so?”

“Definitely.”

“You’d pursue it?”

“If it was my case.”

“Well,” she said, “go and tell the geniuses in charge.”

“Geniuses are rarely in charge.” His eyes slitted and he picked at his salad. Petra wondered if he was thinking about Saudi Arabia. Or a sidewalk café in Tel Aviv.

An uneasy expression slithered onto his face.

“What?” she said.

He looked at her blankly.

“You’re holding back, Eric.”

He rolled the fork some more and she braced herself for yet another put off.

He said, “If I go out on my own, it’ll mean less money. Until I build up a clientele. I haven’t been LAPD long enough to get a city pension, all I have is my military pension.”

“That’s decent money.”

“It pays the bills but I couldn’t buy a house.” He returned to his food, chewed slowly- excruciatingly slowly, the way he always did. Petra, a rapid eater, table habits borne of growing up with five ravenous brothers, typically sat idly as he finished. Most of the time it amused her. Or she rationalized that she should learn to emulate him. Now she wanted to flip his switch onto High, squeeze some emotion out of him.

She said, “A house would be nice but it’s not necessary.”

He placed the fork on the table. Shoved his plate away. Wiped his mouth. “Your place is small. So’s mine. I thought… if the two of us…” His shoulders rose and fell.

Petra’s chest grew warm. She touched his wrist. “You want to move in together?”

“No,” he said. “Not the right time.”

“Why not?” she said.

“Don’t know,” he said, looking about twelve years old.

She thought about the magnitude of his loss. What it took for him to express himself emotionally even at this level. Heard herself saying, “I don’t know either.”

FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 8:23 P.M., THE GOMEZ APARTMENT, UNION DISTRICT

The kitchen was hot and fragrant, not even a trace of Isaiah’s asphalt leaking through the savory steam.

His mother washed dishes, pivoted to accept Isaac’s cheek peck. “You’re early.” Not true; it sounded like an accusation. “No more work?”

“It’s the weekend, Ma.”

“You’re not too busy to eat with us?”

“I smelled your food from miles away.”

“This? It’s not fancy, just tamales and soup.”

“Still smells great.”

“A new kind of beans, black ones but bigger. I saw them in the market, the Korean said they would be good.” She shrugged. “Maybe he’s right.”

“Sounds pretty fancy to me.”

“When someone gets married, I’ll make a real meal.” She began puttering at the stove. “Also rice with onions and a little chicken. This time I added more chicken stock and some carrots. I do that for Dr. Marilyn and it comes out good. I cooked a fresh whole chicken to get the stock and put the white meat in the tamales. Whatever’s left is in the refrigerator. Mostly skin, but you can snack on it now if you’re hungry.”