Faye Kellerman - Milk and Honey

“Wait. Don’t send me off like that.”

“Love you,” she said.

“Love you, too.”

Head pounding, Decker stretched, then filled the dog bowl with food. He opened the kitchen drawer and took out a vial of aspirin. He washed down two pills with a cold Dos Equis and looked at his watch. Six-fifteen—still plenty of daylight left to work out the horses. The temperature had dropped to a comfortable 82 degrees. An hour with the animals, another hour of study, a couple of hours of sleep, then a date with gumshoes from six over the mountains.

Hooray for Hollywood.

The Hollywood substation was a brick building—square and windowless—landscaped with three Monterey pines sprouting from a rectangular patch of dirt. Across the street were the requisite cheap motel—a place to spend the night when your man was in jail—and two bailbonds’ store-fronts whose doors never closed.

Decker climbed the front steps and entered the reception area. The room was walled with redbrick and yellow plaster, the front desk colored Day-Glo orange. The flooring was ancient yellow tile, the grout permanently blackened. In the center of the room, inlaid in the tile, was a red-and-black granite “Hollywood Boulevard” pavement star, the words LAPD HOLLYWOOD STATION #6 inlaid in brass. A hype was leaning against a coke machine, swaying on his feet to keep his balance. A fat man stood against the side wall, sipping coffee, checking his watch against the station’s clock. Two teenage black girls, wearing shorts and tank tops, sat on the attached bench at the back of the room, their fingers twirling the cornrows of their hair, lips slightly parted, eyes fixed upon the star as if it represented a myriad of fallen dreams.

Decker showed his gold badge to the desk sergeant and went inside the detectives’ reception room. The detective manning the phones had an amoebic ink stain on the pocket of his shirt. He was balding and needed a shave.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Decker from Foothill,” Decker said. “I’m looking for George Andrick.” He showed the detective his badge.

“I’m Rados,” he said. He regarded the chalkboard duty roster. “Andrick’s on Robbery. He’s in the field. Should be back soon.”

“Then I’ll grab myself some coffee and wait at his desk.”

Rados handed Decker an unused Styrofoam cup. “Help yourself to the swill in the back.”

“Thanks.”

Cup in hand, Decker entered the squad room. It was bigger than Foothill’s, carpeted, and had metal desks instead of tables. Each unit was indicated by burnt-wood signs hanging from the ceiling. Robbery was in the back, left side, sandwiched between the lockers and CAPS—crimes against persons. Andrick’s place of honor was in the middle-left of a capital I-shaped arrangement of desks. A supervising detective sat at the head of the I, reading a memo, his lips curled into a sneer. He looked to be in his late forties, his face scored with wrinkles, his shoulders packed with muscle. He noticed Decker’s badge and stood. They were about the same height.

“Medino,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Decker. I called earlier. I understand Andrick was the field investigator for a rape case couple of days ago. Perp was booked here, transferred downtown. His name was Abel Atwater.”

Medino said. “The gimp.”

“That’s him.”

“Scrawny thing.”

“I’d like to look over the file.”

“Andrick has it locked, and I don’t have the key.”

“I’ll wait.”

Medino shrugged. “Suit yourself. Coffeepot’s over to the right.”

“Thanks.”

Decker poured himself a cup—black mud. He sipped as he walked back to the desk. “You guys have gotten carpets and new desks.”

“No thanks to the city. Some civilian donated them. Only thing the city’s given us this past year was a few push-button phones. Their idea of state-of-the-art equipment.”

“At least you got the phones.”

“Yeah,” Medino said. “But only one per unit. City doesn’t want us to become too spoiled. The individual dicks still have rotaries. Just look at the crappy colors they give us—pinks and blues and reds. Now how can you have a professional image with a pink phone? Place looks like a nursery school.”

“I noticed the playpen back there.”

Medino nodded. “We get our share of kids dumped at the doorstep.”

“I just got one of those,” Decker said. “She wasn’t dumped at the station. I found her wandering the streets. No one’s claimed her.”

“How old?”

“Two.”

“Black?”

“White.”

Medino shrugged.

Decker said, “Her pajamas had blood on them.”

“That’s unusual,” Medino said. “Kid okay?”

“Appears to be fine,” Decker said. “Can’t say I’m feeling too optimistic about her mama, though.”

“Another one bites the dust,” Medino said. “What’s your connection to the gimp? He wanted for something out there?”

“He’s an old buddy of mine,” Decker said.

Medino whistled. “You should start hunting for some new friends.”

“How deep is his shit?”

“From what I remember, neck high and still rising.”

“What do you know about the victim?” Decker said. “Besides the fact that she was a whore.”

“Not much more than that,” Medino said.

“Do you know if she had a rep for tricking with rough johns?”

“No idea,” Medino said. “Why don’t you go upstairs and try Vice?”

Decker asked, “Chris Beauchamps still work Vice here?”

“Baby-faced Beau?” Medino said. “You bet. One of our best undercover men. Looks so fucking sincere. I think he came in about an hour ago. Go up and talk to him. I’ll buzz you when Andrick is back on my nifty new push-button intercom. LAPD goes high tech.”

“Myra Steele,” Beauchamps said. “Yeah, I’ve got a file on her somewhere.”

Decker stared at the Vice detective, finding it hard to take the kid seriously. Surfer-blond hair, deep blue eyes, Malibu tan—the kind of looks that screamed party hardy, let’s shoot the curl.

Beauchamps pulled out a folder and said, “Here we go. Old Myra Steele, aka Plum Pie, Cherry Pie, Brown Sugar—a lot of them use that moniker.” He handed Decker a file. “The only thing I have on her was a bust three months ago.”

“That bust happened when Letwoine Monroe was still her pimp,” Decker said, scanning the papers. “Before he was whacked.”

“Right,” Beauchamps said.

Decker asked, “Was he whacked in Hollywood?”

“I don’t know where he was whacked, but we found him here, stuffed in the trunk of a black Caddy stolen from North Hollywood.”

Decker said. “Myra Steele doesn’t look eighteen to me. She barely looks pubescent.”

“Her birth certificate says eighteen,” Beauchamps said. “And she’s pubescent, believe me. I’ve seen her on the streets couple of times since, her tits are more than ample for the halters she wears. Those photos knock a couple of years off of her.”

“Who’s Myra’s old man now?” Decker asked.

“Letwoine’s ladies were divided by the other pimps in the area,” Beauchamps said. “Some went to a Mideastern prick named Yusef Sabib, some went to Willy Black, a couple went to Clementine—”

Decker groaned.

“I thought he was your buddy,” Beauchamps said, smiling.

Straight white teeth. Guy should be selling toothpaste instead of busting whores.

Decker said, “Everyone needs a pet maggot. Do you know who Steele went with?”

“No,” Beauchamps said. “And she didn’t volunteer his name when Andrick asked her. I know that ’cause Andrick asked me if I knew the name of her man. I put the word out, but so far have come up blank. There’s some new dudes in town—Cubans. Marielitos. Meanest sons of bitches I’ve ever had the pleasure of dealing with. Into weird cult things—”