Jonathan Kellerman - Heartbreak Hotel

“What, ten, twenty, fifty? Compared with her net worth, we’re talking chump change. Wouldn’t it be smarter to try to butter her up and score big?”

“You take what you can,” I said. “Beyond that, you get to express your feelings.”

“Also, how would they know they were excluded?”

“Good question.”

“Got plenty of those,” he said. “Enough for tonight, I’m getting heartburn — not the dinner, my fragile emotional state.”

After he left, I got on the computer.

Monark turned out to be a popular brand-word attached to bicycles, boats, golf equipment, auto parts, and beer. Lots of bands, also, many from Scandinavia.

Pairing the keyword with gangster caused the search-engine gods to inquire if I really meant gangsta and sent me back to the bands.

Monark and midget brought up a few sites specializing in vintage toys. Monark bikes tended to be grouped with midget cars, but never had the twain met.

An hour plus produced nothing. Milo was right. Enough for tonight.

The following morning, I reached Ruben Eagle at the hospital and told him about Thalia.

He said, “Oh, no! She was a wonderful person, who the hell would do that?”

“How did you meet her?”

“She walked into the clinic one day and asked for me. I was swamped and had no idea who she was. It took a while to get to her but she waited patiently. I come out, see this cute little old woman, she smiles and hands me a check for ten thousand dollars. I was stunned. Getting Development to pay attention is always a challenge and a donor just walks in? She didn’t ask for a tour, didn’t want to be stroked like most of them. Someone killed her, Alex? Grotesque. What a screwed-up world.”

“How much contact did you have with her?”

“We invited her to affairs but she never showed up. Once a year, before Christmas, she’d bring bags of toys for the kids and give me a check. The second one utterly blew me away. Fifty thou. And that’s what it became for the next few years. It changed our whole budgetary setup, basically she became our patron saint. Now she’s — who the hell would do something like that? She was almost a hundred, for God’s sake, next month was her birthday, we were going to surprise her with a cake.”

“Are you aware of anyone she had problems with?”

“No one here, that’s for sure,” said Ruben. “My staff adored her. This is repugnant, Alex. I know bad things can happen to anyone but someone lasting that long, and then... it’s fucked up. ”

First time I’d heard him swear. “Any idea how she found out about you?”

“When she gave me the second check, I walked her out to her limo and asked. She told me she was referred by Belinda Wojik. Know her?”

“I don’t.”

“She was one of my residents, stayed for a few years on staff then went into private practice. When I called Belinda to thank her, she seemed surprised. Said she’d talked about her work but didn’t push for a donation. But gift horse and all that. I really can’t believe this, Alex.”

Milo phoned at 11 A.M., sounding shockingly happy.

“Print tech came by early this morning. The place was wiped clean but she pulled up a couple of latents on the doorjamb and there was an AFIS match, scrote named Gerard Waters. History of money crimes but no violence. Physically he’s a match for Mr. Pudgy. Got a driver’s license last month, actually lived where he said he did. I just spoke to his landlord. Waters cut out a few days ago, owed rent. West L.A., not your zip code socioeconomically, but not that far geographically. I’m going over there, up to you, but if you feel like it—”

“You know the answer.”

“Not really,” he said. “Mostly I’m still trying to figure out the questions.”

The address was minutes from the West L.A. station so I left the Seville in the staff lot and Milo drove. As he turned onto Butler Avenue, he handed me a sheet of paper. “This is who we’re looking for.”

Gerard Brian Waters was forty-three years old, five-seven, two hundred four pounds, with gray hair and brown eyes. Daffy Duck tattoo on his left calf, crude rendition of crossed sabers on his right shoulder blade. Inked in places where viewing would be optional.

Not a face the camera loved, even accounting for the indignities of arrest and booking. Broad, pouchy, the skin rough and grainy, an off-kilter nose, spiky hair, a skimpy chin-beard devoid of mustache.

The mugshot was seven years old but Gerard Waters looked closer to fifty than thirty-six. Living in confinement can do that to you, and he’d spent a quarter of his life in various penal institutions. Charges ranged from shoplifting to drug possession to larceny. Most of the lockups were local jails but Waters’s most recent stint had been four years at a federal prison in Colorado for passing bad checks.

“No blood and guts on his record,” said Milo, “so they put him in minimum security. Model prisoner until he walked away from a work detail raking leaves in a park. That doubled a two-year sentence.”

“How close was he to getting out?”

“Six months.”

“For the sake of half a year, he loses two,” I said. “Impatient fellow. Any idea what he’s been up to since?”

“Other than defrauding an innkeeper and cutting out on his rent? Nope. He got full release, no parole, so he wasn’t reporting to anyone.”

I thought of Thalia’s question about criminal specialization. My response that it was a misconception.

“No blood and guts in his background,” I said. “But you know how it is.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Milo. “A few they get caught for, a bunch they get away with.”

Gerard Waters’s last known address was a block east of Sawtelle and the same distance north of Olympic. A neighborhood of modest one-story houses where elegant Japanese nurseries had once thrived along with the hardworking people who ran them. Sparse reminders of that time were a few sushi bars on Sawtelle and a scatter of landscaping niceties: topiary conifers, beds of Zen grass, bamboo peg border markers. But most of the front lots had regressed to weedy grass and uninspired planting.

The house we were looking for sported no Asian elements but it had been maintained well, with a lush lawn, thriving roses, long-established birds of paradise and hydrangea.

A man stood in front, hose in hand, watering grass that couldn’t get any greener. Sixties, medium-sized and narrow-shouldered, he was completely bald with a sun-spotted pate and a white croquet-wicket mustache that right-angled past a thin lower lip. Dressed for outdoor chores in a Catalina Jazz Club T-shirt, cargo shorts, and plastic sandals.

He turned off the water and walked to the curb, hose in hand.

Milo said, “Mr. Duke?”

“Yeah, I’m Phil.” Resonant radio baritone. “Don’t know what else I can tell you about the bum.”

“Mr. Waters rented a room in this house.”

“Had an extra bedroom, used to be my daughter’s then she got married. Nice room, including a shower and separate exit out back. I never rented before, figured why not and put it on Craigslist. Live and learn.”

“Not an ideal tenant.”

“First month he paid on time, second he was late, it kept getting later.”

“He pay with a check?”

“Nah, cash,” said Phil Duke. “Last month he didn’t pay at all. I called a lawyer, he said eviction was a real hassle, everything favors the tenant. So I tried talking to Waters. So sorry, didn’t mean it, some sort of bank problem, I’ll pay you by the end of the month. Instead, one night when I was out, he packed up and left. Took some of my plates and cups, to boot. Last time I do that.”