Jonathan Kellerman - Therapy

The manager’s unit was just to the right, and a man stood in the open doorway. Young, short, maybe thirty, with a head shaved clean and a little frizzle of chin beard. He wore gym shorts, a baggy white T-shirt that read WOLF TRAP 2001, and rubber flip-flops.

When we reached him, he said, “I was expecting uniforms.”

“You get a lot of uniforms?”

“You know, noise calls and such.”

Milo flashed his ID.

“Lieutenant? Is this serious or something?”

“Not yet, Mr…”

“Chad Ballou.” He extended his hand for a soul-shake, thought better of it, and rotated into the conventional position.

Milo said, “Lots of noise calls?”

Ballou’s eyes traced the tiers. “Not more than you’d expect with all these people. I tell the tenants to let me know first if there’s a problem, but sometimes they don’t. Which is fine, I don’t really want to deal with their stuff.”

“You manage the units full-time?” said Milo.

Chad Ballou said, “Relatively full-time. My parents own the place. I’m at CSUN, studying classical guitar. They think I should study computers. The deal is I do this instead of their just giving me money.” He smiled cheerfully. “So what’s up?”

“We’re looking for Angela Paul.”

Ballou touched his chin growth with his right hand. His nails were longish and glossed. Those on his left hand were clipped short. “Paul… Forty-three?”

“That’s the one.”

“The stripper.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“She put it on her lease application,” said Ballou. “Brought in pay stubs from a club to prove it. My folks wouldn’t have approved, but I said, hey, why not? Her income’s better than a lot of the losers who try to get in.” Ballou grinned. “They put me in charge, I figure it’s up to me to decide. Anyway, she’s been no problem, pays her rent. What’s the deal?”

“We want to question her about an ongoing investigation.”

“Have you tried her unit?”

“No answer.”

“Guess she’s out.”

“She out a lot?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Ballou.

“You have a pretty good view from your place,” said Milo.

“When I’m here, I’m mostly practicing or studying. Unless there’s a complaint. And she never complained about anything.”

“She have visitors?”

“I couldn’t tell you that, either. I haven’t really seen her much. Forty-three’s all the way on the north end, upstairs. She can take the corner staircase down to the parking lot door, go in and out without being noticed.”

“So you’ve never seen her with anyone else?”

“Nothing registers.”

Milo showed him the shot of the blond girl.

Ballou’s eyes widened. “She looks dead.”

“She is.”

“Wow- so this is really serious. Is she going to be in trouble- the stripper? All I need is for some big mess that freaks out my parents.”

Milo waved the photo. “Never seen her?”

“ Never. What happened to her?”

“Someone made her dead.”

“Jesus… you’re not going to tell me if I have something to worry about?”

“If Angie Paul’s body is lying moldering in her unit, you might.”

Chad Ballou blanched. “Shit- you’re serious?”

“You mind taking a look?”

“I’ll give you the key,” said Ballou. “You look.”

“Legally,” said Milo, “that would pose a problem. You as the manager, have a right to make reasonable inspections. Say, if there’s a suspected gas leak, or a circuit goes out. Any maintenance issue.”

Ballou stared at him. “Moldering… sure, sure- can I just open the door, and you look?”

“Fine.”

“Should we do it now?”

“In a sec,” said Milo. “First tell me where Ms. Paul does her stripping?”

“That I can do. That I can definitely do.”

We followed Ballou into his apartment. Neat, sparse, devoid of character, with a sixty-inch digital TV in the front room along with three classical guitars on stands. The set was tuned to MTV. Heavy metal band, high volume. Ballou turned it down, saying, “I’m eclectic.”

In the kitchen, next to the fridge, stood a trio of three-drawer files. Ballou opened the center drawer and fished out a black file folder. He opened it, thumbed, said, “Here we go,” and held out a sheet of paper.

Angie Paul’s rental application. She’d claimed income of three thousand a month net, and a note in the margin said, “Verified.” Under place of employment, she’d listed “The Hungry Bull Club, W.L.A. branch (Exotic Dancer).” My eyes dropped to the bottom of the form. Personal references.

1. Rick Savarin (manager, THB)

2. Christina Marsh (coworker)

Christa or Crystal.

I said, “You ever check out her references?”

Ballou said, “She showed me pay stubs.”

“What about previous landlords?” said Milo. “Isn’t it standard to call them?”

“I think,” said Ballou, “that she said she was from out of town.”

“Where?”

“Is this going to matter? Oh, man.”

Milo said, “Where out of town?”

“I don’t remember. She made enough money to handle the rent easily and came up with first, last, and damage deposit. So she stripped, big deal. She’s been an okay tenant.”

Milo folded the application and put it in his pocket. “Let’s have a look at her place.”

Angie Paul’s unit was similar in dimension to Ballou’s. Also neatly kept, with a smaller TV, cheap furniture, cotton throws, a couple of rose-and-kitten prints on the walls. The smell of heavy, musky perfume reached the doorway where I stood near Chad Ballou.

Milo disappeared into the bedroom area. Ballou tapped his foot, and said, “So far, so good?”

I smiled. It didn’t comfort him.

A minute later, Milo emerged saying, “Nothing moldering. When Ms. Paul shows up, don’t tell her we were here but give me a call.” He handed Ballou a card.

“Sure… can I lock up?”

“Yup.”

The three of us descended the stairs, and Milo had Ballou point out Angie Paul’s parking slot. Empty.

“She still driving a ’95 Camaro?”

“Think so,” said Ballou. “Yeah, bright blue.”

We returned to the Seville. Half past midnight. No parking ticket.

“Lady Luck’s smiling down on us,” said Milo. “Finally.”

I said, “Christina Marsh.”

“Yeah, could be.”

I started up the engine and he slapped a manic cha-cha beat on the dashboard. Three Scotches and Lord knew how many consecutive work hours, and he was running a mental marathon.

“Good morning,” I said.

“You tired?”

“Not a bit.”

“Me neither. When’s the last time you visited a strip joint?”

“Not for a while.”

“I’ve been to a few,” he said. Big grin. “Seen women strip, too.”

The Hungry Bull, West L.A. branch, was on Cotner off Olympic, in an industrial zone that smelled like rubber cement. Next to the club was a Rolls-Royce junkyard, husks of once-glorious chassis and auto viscera piled high behind chain-link.

Not much farther was a co-op art gallery where a gifted painter had been strangled to death in a bathroom. The last case Milo and I had worked together. If he was thinking about that, he wasn’t showing it.

The club was housed in a windowless hangar painted matte black. Double-quilted chromium doors looked tacked on. A neon sign promised strong drinks and beautiful women.

The industrial setting was perfect: no daytime neighbors with NIMBY fever, no one to complain about the hyperdisco two-four boogie beat punching through black stucco.