Jonathan Kellerman - Private Eyes

“Us and them,” I said.

He didn’t answer. I regretted bringing it up. Trying to lighten things, I said, “Nifty business card. When’d you get it?”

“Couple of days ago- insta-print on La Cienega on the way to the freeway. Got a box of five hundred at bulk rate- talk about your wise investment.”

“Let me see.”

“What for?”

“Souvenir- it may turn out to be a collector’s item.”

He grimaced, put his hand in his jacket, and pulled one out.

I took it, snapped the thin, hard paper, and said, “Classy.”

“I like vellum,” he said. “You can always pick your teeth with it.”

“Or use it for a bookmark.”

“Got something even more constructive,” he said. “Build little houses with them. Then blow them down.”

Back at Sussex Knoll, he pulled up beside the Seville.

I said, “What’s next for you?”

“Sleep, hearty breakfast, then financial scumbags.” He put the Porsche in neutral and revved the engine.

“What about McCloskey?” I said.

“Wasn’t intending to go to the funeral.”

Revving. Drumming the steering wheel.

I said, “Any ideas about who killed him and why?”

“You heard all of ’em back at the mission.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay.” He sped away.

My house seemed tiny and friendly. The timer had switched the pond lights off and it was too dark to tell how my fish eggs were doing. I crept upstairs, slept for ten hours, woke up Monday thinking of Gina Ramp and Joel McCloskey- bound together, again, by pain and terror.

Was there a link between Morris Dam and what had happened in the back alley, or had McCloskey been simply another piece of Skid Row garbage?

Murder with a car. I found myself thinking about Noel Drucker. He had access to lots of wheels and plenty of time on his hands during the Tankard’s indefinite hiatus. Were his feelings for Melissa strong enough to knock him that far off the straight and narrow? If so, had he been acting on his own, or at Melissa’s bidding?

And what of Melissa? It made me sick to think of her as anything other than the defenseless orphan Milo had portrayed to the detectives. But I’d seen her temper in action. Watched her channel her grief into revenge fantasies against Anger and Douse.

I recalled her and Noel, entwined on her bed. Had the plan to get McCloskey been hatched during a similar embrace?

I switched channels:

Ramp. If he was innocent of causing Gina’s death, perhaps he’d avenged it.

He had lots of reasons to hate McCloskey. Had he been at the wheel of the death car, or had he hired someone? The poetic justice would have been appealing.

Todd Nyquist would have been perfect for the job- how would anyone connect a surf-jock from the west side with the downtown death of a brain-damaged bum?

Or maybe Noel was Ramp’s automotive hit man, not Melissa’s.

Or maybe none of the above.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

An image flashed across my eyes.

The scars on Gina’s face.

I thought of the prison McCloskey had sent her to for the rest of her life.

Why waste time worrying about the reason he had died? His life had been a case study in wretchedness. Who’d miss him other than Father Andrus? And the priest’s feelings probably had more to do with theological abstraction than human attachment.

Milo had been right to brush it off.

I was playing head-games rather than making myself useful.

I stood, stretched, said, “Good riddance,” out loud.

Dressing in khakis, shirt and tie, and a lightweight tweed jacket, I drove to West Hollywood.

The Hilldale address Kathy Moriarty’s sister had given me was between Santa Monica Boulevard and Sunset. The house was a graceless box, the color of week-old newspaper, on a thirty-foot lot, shielded nearly to the roof by an unkempt eugenia hedge. The roof line was flat, layered with Spanish tiles painted black. Flat black- it looked like an amateur job, some of the terra cotta showing through in places, the hue that of a poorly dyed brown shoe.

The eugenia hedge ended at a short, collapsing driveway- asphalt struggling with weeds in the couple of feet not taken up by a twenty-year-old, bird-bombed, yellow Oldsmobile. I parked across the street, walked across a dry, clipped lawn packed harder than the asphalt. Four paces took me to a three-step cement porch. Three addresses in black metal letters were nailed to the right of the gray plank door. A piece of adhesive tape, now darkened to the old-paper tint of the house, covered the doorbell ringer. An index card with KNOCK in red ballpoint was wedged between the bell frame and the stucco. I followed instructions and was rewarded, seconds later, with a “Hold On!” in a sleepy-sounding male voice.

Then: “Yeah?” from behind gray wood.

“My name is Alex Delaware and I’m looking for Kathy Moriarty.”

“How come?”

I thought of Milo’s suggestions of subterfuge, decided I had no stomach for that, and opted for technical truth:

“Her family hasn’t seen her in a while.”

“Her family?”

“Her sister and brother-in-law. Mr. and Mrs. Robbins, in Pasadena.”

The door opened. A young man clutching a handful of paintbrushes in his right hand looked me up and down. No surprise, no suspicion. Just an artist’s eye gauging perspective.

He was in his late twenties, tall and solidly built, with dark hair combed back and tied in a foot’s worth of ponytail that dangled over his left collarbone. His face was heavy and soft-featured under a low flat forehead and shelf brows. The gestalt was simian- more gorilla than chimp- helped along by black eyebrows that met in the middle and a wash of black stubble that ran up past his cheekbones, swooped down his neck till it merged with his chest hair. He wore a black polyester tank top emblazoned with the logo of a skateboard company in tomato-red letters; baggy, flowered, orange-and-green knee-length shorts, and rubber beach sandals. His arms were coated with dark, coiling hair just past the elbow. The skin above that was hairless and white and slabbed with the kind of muscle that would pump up easily but looked slack and unused. A dried patch of baby-blue paint stained one bicep.

I said, “Sorry to disturb you.”

He glanced at the brushes, then back at me.

I pulled out my wallet, found the business card I’d taken from Milo last night, and handed it to him.

He studied it, smiled, studied me, and gave it back. “I thought you said your name was Del-something.”

“Sturgis is in charge. I’m working with him.”

“An op,” he said, grinning. “You don’t look like one- at least not like the ones on TV. Guess that’s the point of it, though, isn’t it? TrÈs in communicado.”

I smiled.

He studied me some more. “A lawyer,” he finally said. “Defense, not prosecution- or maybe some kind of professor. That’s how I’d cast you, Marlowe.”

“Do you work in the movies?” I said.

“No.” He laughed and touched a paintbrush to his lips. Lowering it, he said, “Though I guess I do. Actually. I’m a writer.” More laughter. “Like everyone else in this town, right? But not screen plays- God forbid screenplays.”

His laughter rose in pitch and lingered, hovering on the brink of giddy. “You ever write one?”

“Nope.”

“Give yourself time. Everyone’s got a hot property-’cept me. What I do for a living is graphic art. Airbrush-photorealism to sell products. What I do for fun is art -art- sloppy freedom.” Waving the brushes. “And what I do to stay sane is writing- short pieces, post-modern essays. Had a couple published in the Reader and the Weekly. Mood-based urban fiction- how music and money and the whole L.A. experience make people feel. The different things L.A. evokes in people.”