Jonathan Kellerman - Rage

“When do you want me there?” I said.

“Really?” she said.

“Really.”

“That’s great- you’re sure?”

“Hey,” I said. “I need special time, too.”

“Oh, boy,” she said. “You don’t know what you’ve just done for my spirits. Is there any way you could make it by tomorrow? I could take the train and be at the hotel by the time you arrived.”

“Which hotel?”

“When I traveled with my parents we always stayed at the St. Regis. The location’s perfect- Fifty-fifth off Fifth- and they’ve got butler service on every floor.”

“Nice touch, if the butler’s not intrusive.”

“He won’t be if we bunk in and never call him.”

“Which bunk do I get?” I said. “Upper or lower?”

“I was thinking more in terms of share-zies.”

“I’ll bring a flashlight and we’ll play pup tent.”

“Alex, it’s incredibly flexible of you to do this.”

“Not in the least,” I said. “I’m acting out of pure self-interest.”

“That,” she said, “is the best part.”

I booked a nine a.m. flight out of LAX, scrounged at the back of my closet for the gray tweed overcoat I never wore, found a similarly neglected pair of gloves and scarf, packed a carry-on, and went for a run.

Beverly Glen was seventy degrees and clear, let’s hear it for winter. Weather’s a trivial reason for living somewhere unless you’re honest.

I set out hoping for endorphin-laced serenity. My brain had other ideas and I wondered about Rand. My body stayed tight and heavy as I huffed and kicked up dust and my brain pulled a split screen: looking out for passing cars on one side, as time flashed back on the other.

When I returned home, I called Milo’s house. No answer. Then, I tried the Westside substation and asked for Lieutenant Sturgis. It took awhile for Milo to come on the line and I was still breathing hard.

“Didn’t know you cared,” he said.

“Ha.”

“What’s up?”

“I’m meeting Allison in New York. Tomorrow.”

He murdered a few bars of “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” “Where you staying?”

“St. Regis.”

“Nice. The last time the department sent me to New Yawk was for that post-911 security seminar, and they vouchered me at a shitty dive in the thirties. While you’re there, get me a Knicks shirt at the NBA store.”

“No prob.”

“I was kidding, Alex. The Knicks ?”

“Optimism’s good for the soul,” I said.

“So is logic. Am I correct in assuming that you called for some reason other than to boast about the superiority of your accommodations over mine?”

“You brought that up.”

“If you were really the sensitive guy you claim to be, you would’ve lied.”

I said, “The St. Regis has butler service.”

“I’m weeping into my case stack. Which, currently, is low. Per an interdepartmental memo, we are now experiencing an official drop in crime.”

“Congratulations.”

“Not my doing. Probably karmic crystals or chanting or the moon in scorpio-squatting or the Great Baal of Randomness… what’s on your mind?”

I told him.

“That one,” he said. “You didn’t like working it.”

“It wasn’t fun.”

“Duchay give any hint what he wanted?”

“He sounded troubled.”

“He should be troubled. Eight years at the C.Y.A. for murdering a baby?”

“Any professional guesses about why he didn’t show?”

“Changed his mind, couldn’t get it together, who knows? He’s a lowlife, Alex. He was the stupid one, right?”

“Right.”

“So toss in a lousy attention span, or whatever label you guys are putting on it nowadays, in addition to his being a lowlife thrill-killer who’s been thoroughly criminalized after being locked up with gangbangers for eight years. How old is he, now?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Lowlife at the height of his criminal hormone overload,” he said. “I wouldn’t take any bets on his experiencing any serious personality enhancement. I’d also not take his calls, from now on. He’s probably more dangerous than he was eight years ago. Why get involved?”

“Looks like I’m not,” I said. “Though I didn’t pick up any threat or hostility over the phone. More like- ”

“He’s troubled, yeah, yeah. He calls you from Westwood, which isn’t that far from your place. Semi-illiterate but he managed to find your number.”

“He’d have no reason to resent me.”

Silence.

“The plan was to meet him away from my place,” I said.

“That’s a start.”

“I’m not minimizing what he did, Milo. He, himself, admitted hitting Kristal. But I always felt Troy Turner was the primary force behind the murder and Rand got caught up in the situation.”

“Put him in another situation and he’ll get caught up again.”

“I suppose.”

“Hey,” he said. “You called me, not another shrink. Meaning you were looking for hard truth, not empathy and understanding.”

“I don’t know what I was looking for.”

“You craved sage detective advice and Uncle Milo’s instinctual protective stance. Now that the former has been dispensed, I’ll do my best to provide the latter while you’re gallivanting up Fifth Avenue with a lovely lady on your arm.”

“That’s okay- ”

“Here’s the plan,” he said. “Though it falls well outside of my job description, I will drive by your house at least once a day, twice if I can swing it, pick up your paper and your mail, be on the lookout for shady characters lurking around the premises.”

“Gallivanting,” I said.

“You do know how to gallivant? Put one foot in front of the other… and just blow.”

At one p.m. he called back. “When were you planning to leave for New York?”

“Tomorrow morning. Why?”

“A body showed up last night in Bel Air, dumped in some bushes near the 405 North on-ramp. White male, young, six-two, two hundred, shot in the head, no wallet or I.D. But wadded down in the little front pocket of his jeans was a piece of paper. Greasy and frayed, like it had been pawed a lot. The writing, however, was still legible and guess what it was: your phone number.”

I met Milo in his office on the second floor of the Westside sub station. It’s a windowless cell, formerly a utility closet, set away from the collaborative buzz of the big detective’s room. There’s barely room for a two-drawer desk, a file cabinet, a pair of folding chairs, and a senile computer. The station’s a no-smoking zone but sometimes Milo puffs panatelas, and the walls have yellowed and the air smells like a dozen old men.

He’s six-three, and when he pays attention to his diet, two-sixty. Hunched at the undersized desk, he’s a cartoon.

It’s a setup unbefitting a lieutenant, but he’s not the typical lieutenant, and he claims it’s fine with him. Maybe he means it, maybe having a second office helps- an Indian restaurant a few blocks away where the owners treat him like royalty.

The leap from Detective III to brass had resulted from leverage he’d never sought: ugly secrets unearthed about the former police chief.

The deal was that he’d get a lieutenant’s salary, avoid the executive obligations that normally went with the job, and be allowed to work cases. As long as he functioned solo and stayed out of everyone’s hair.

That chief was gone and the new one seemed intent on shaking things up. But so far Milo’s situation had escaped scrutiny. If the current regime was as results-oriented as it claimed, maybe his solve rate would afford him some grace.