Jonathan Kellerman - Breakdown

Not a trace of Nordic accent.

I said, “Wow.”

“I’ve been known to wow.” He studied the remaining half cookie. Rotated it and said, “This could be the sun on an alien planet. I used to be an astronomer. Then I switched to engineering.” Tapping his right foot on the extended gas pedal. “Made these in Cal Tech, everyone wants one but I keep the formula to myself.”

I sat there as he worked on the other cookie half. Focused, meticulous, not a single falling crumb.

When he finished, I said, “So you and Zelda were friends.”

“Acquaintances,” said Brett. “Two ships passing on the street. How’s her boy? Judith said you knew the boy, your interest is the boy.”

“I saw him five years ago, would love to know he’s okay.”

“She felt bad about giving him up but I told her it was the right thing to do. Why wouldn’t he be okay?”

“With Zelda living on the street and now, deceased—”

“No problem,” said Chet Brett. “She gave him up before she hit the street.”

“Really.”

“Really really really really really. I met her soon after she hit the street. He wasn’t with her, I never saw him.”

“Where was he?”

“All she said was she missed him, was thinking of getting him so she could be with him. I told her not to, it wouldn’t work out, kids need TV and she had nowhere to plug in.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Time,” he said. “That’s also a magazine. It was... when she was out on the street. Near a flop on Fourth and L.A., I was eating beans out of a can, cut my finger opening it, blood was getting into the beans, everyone thought it was ketchup.”

“Near a flop.”

“Not inside,” said Chet Brett. “You could get a room with bugs if you saved up. I did. Zelda never did but I was outside anyway, eating red red beans. She showed up looking like a slim actress and put a blanket down next to my sleeping bag. Wrong thing for her to do, she was too young and clean for the adventurous life. When I found out she was an actress, I told her to go on auditions. You never know. Maybe she did. She’d be gone for days, come back looking like she’d lost something.”

“You have no idea when—”

“Let’s estimate. That’s how I built these.” Tapping the pedal. “Sometime between the world wars. Up in Scandinavia, all those northern lights, we use a different system of calendar computing. Not Gregorian, not Julian, we use Olafian. It makes predictions more difficult but also more relaxed.”

“Ah.”

“Ah so,” said Brett. “That’s Chinese for ‘there you go, Shogun. Give me a double letter.’ ”

He reached for a packet of cheese crackers, opened it carefully.

“So you never met Zelda’s son.”

“Never. But he’s okay. I feel it right here.” Patting the empty Oreo packet. “Way the cookie crumbles.”

“Did Zelda ever talk about Ovid?”

“That was his name?” said Chet Brett. “She just called him ‘my son.’ What else does a mother need to know? Sometimes she’d cry. Then she’d cry some more. One time I told her she needed to tell me what was bothering her so she could relax. She said she’d given him up because she had no money to take care of him but she wanted him back. I told her she did the right thing, why make a child starve? It didn’t make her feel better. But she listened.”

He scratched his head for a long time, reached down and crinkled the snacks in his lap. “Usually I can make people feel better. Next year, I’m going to be a psychiatrist. Maybe that’ll help.”

He began work on a cracker.

“Did Zelda ever talk about her mother?”

“She had one? No.”

“A sister?”

“Nope.”

“Did she mention anyone in her family—”

“She wasn’t into mentioning. Just lots of crying. Maybe she wore herself out. Emotionally. You can’t lubricate for that.”

“True. Anything else you want to tell me?”

“I like your shirt. Goes with your complexion.”

“Thanks.”

“That’ll be twenty bucks.”

I reached for my wallet.

Chet Brett said, “Just kidding, I can’t take payment. Not until I pass my boards. Next year, it’s going to cost you.”

I drove away wanting to feel reassured but knowing what I’d just heard was as reliable as a campaign promise.

Time to try Earl Cohen.

“Crazy man, probable dead man. What’s next.”

I realized I’d thought out loud. Talking to myself. As long as you didn’t move your lips — or held a cellphone to your mouth — you were fine.

At the next red light, I punched numbers.

“Earl Cohen’s office.”

“Dr. Alex Delaware calling for Mr. Cohen.”

“He’s in a meeting. Would you like his voicemail?”

“Please. So he’s okay?”

“Pardon — oh, that.” She laughed. “He’s fine.”

Cohen’s recorded voice, stronger than a year ago, declared: “This is Earl. Speak.”

I spoke.

My private line rang moments after I stepped into the house.

Earl Cohen said, “Hopefully you’re not in need of my services.”

“Not married.”

“Your gain is my loss.”

“You sound good, Mr. Cohen.”

“Meaning why am I not dead? What can I tell you? Nothing a few spare parts didn’t take care of. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m looking for information on some people who were around thirty years ago—”

“Thirty years ago? Gee whiz, we wrote on stone tablets back then. So you reach out to Methuselah? Who are these cave people?”

“Enid and Averell DePauw.”

“I see.” Cohen’s tone had changed. Guarded. “Never represented any of them.”

“But you know them.”

“I’d like to know why you’re interested.”

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“I’m able to deal with complications.”

“Could we meet? Drinks or dinner, on me.”

“I don’t drink, nor am I currently hungry. Are you conducting this inquiry for yourself or for that heavyset police fellow — Sturgis?”

“It’s related to police work.”

“Is anyone else involved?”

Strange question.

I said, “No.”

“What I’m getting at, Doctor, is my own brand of complications. An official inquiry, I talk to you and suddenly I’m getting calls from civil servants.”

“No, nothing like that. Sturgis doesn’t even know I’m calling.”

“And I’m not having this conversation with Sturgis because...”

“I’m doing my own research. No sense drawing him in if there’s nothing to learn.”

“You’re seeing if I have anything to offer first, in order to conserve his energy? From the looks of him, he conserves quite a lot of energy. All right, remember where I talked to the two of you, last year? I don’t mean my office, our alfresco meeting.”

I said, “The park at Doheny and Santa Monica. Walking distance to your house.”

“You remember — and you’re older than thirty! I can be there in an hour or so. I assume you look the same. I don’t.”

He appeared five minutes after I got to the park, walking from the west as he had the last time. True to his word, he’d changed. So much so that I might not have recognized him.

Meager white hair was dyed an uneasy meld of brunette and copper, accentuating the spots where it thinned to the scalp. He’d put on considerable weight, inflating from gaunt to average build, his skeletal face round and padded.

Last year, he’d worn an overcoat on a warm afternoon. Today was cool and he had on apricot-colored linen pants secured by a brown knit belt, a corn-yellow dress shirt, maroon slip-ons. Every plodding step exposed pale ankles.

At times he seemed to falter but when he reached me and proclaimed, “Doctor!” he shook my hand with vigor.