CHAPTER 30

Milo said, “Drop me back at the station. Gonna run these numbers, then head over to the Hall of Records, see if I can find any other link between Jerry Quick and Sonny beyond tenancy. If I leave soon, I can make it downtown in time.”

“Want me to take you straight there?”

“No, this is gonna be tedious, I’ll do it alone. I also want to talk to Quick’s accountant. Luckily CPAs don’t get confidentiality. Any word from the Times on running the picture?”

“Not yet.”

“If your pal Biondi doesn’t come through, I’m having a chitchat with my habitually unresponsive capitan. He hates seeing my face, so maybe I can promise not to surface for another year if he goes over the heads of those losers in Community Relations and gets someone to push the media. With all the deceit on this one I don’t need a victim I can’t identify.”

“I’ll try Ned again.”

“Good,” he said. “Thanks. Let me know, either way.”

I phoned Coronado Island.

Ned Biondi said, “No one called you? Jesus. I’m sorry, Doc. I thought it was worked out. Okay, let me see what’s going on, I’ll get back to you ASAP.”

An hour later, the phone rang.

“Mr. Delaware?” Plummy, theatrical baritone. Every syllable, foreplay.

“Speaking.”

“This is Jack McTell. From the Los Angeles Times. You’ve got a picture you’d like us to run.”

“Picture of a homicide victim,” I said. “An LAPD detective would like it run, but his superiors don’t think it’s got enough of a hook for you.”

“Well,” he said, “I certainly can’t promise anything.”

“Should I bring it by?”

“If you choose.”

Times headquarters was on First Street, in a massive gray stone building that studded the heart of downtown. I got stuck in freeway mucus, trolled for parking, finally scored a space in an overpriced stacked lot five blocks away.

Three security guards patrolled the Times’s massive, echoing lobby. They let several people pass but stopped me. Two of the uniforms made a show of staring me down as the third called up to Jack McTell’s office, barked my name into the phone, hung up, and told me to wait. Ten minutes later, a young, crew-cut woman in a black sweater and jeans and hiking boots emerged from the elevator. She looked around, saw me, and headed my way.

“You’re the person with the picture?” A Times badge said Jennifer Duff. Her left eyebrow was pierced by a tiny steel barbell.

“This is for Mr. McTell.”

She held out her hand, and I gave her the envelope. She took it delicately, between thumb and forefinger, as if it was tainted, turned her back, and left.

I blew another twenty minutes waiting for the parking lot attendant to move six other cars and free the Seville. I used the time to leave Milo a message that the Times had the photo, and it was up to the editors’ good graces. By now, he was downtown, too, reading microfiche at the Hall of Records, just a couple of blocks away.

Cars were queued up at the 101 on-ramp, so I took Olympic Boulevard west. Avoiding another jam wasn’t all of it. That route took me past Mary Lou Koppel’s office building.

I made it to Palm Drive by three-thirty, hooked a left, and swung around into the back alley. Gull’s and Larsen’s Mercedeses were there, along with a few other late-model luxury cars. Next to the handicapped slot, a copper-colored van was stationed. A white stick-on sign on its flanks read:

THRIFTY CARPET AND DRAPERY CLEANING

A Pico address near La Brea. A 323 number.

The rear glass doors had been propped open with a wooden triangle. I parked and got out.

The corridor smelled like stale laundry. The polyester beneath my feet seeped and made little sucking sounds. At the far end of the hall, a man pushed an industrial shampooer in lazy circles.

Two doors of the Charitable Planning suite were propped open the same way. Mechanical groan from inside. I had a look.

Another man, short, stocky, Hispanic, wearing rumpled gray work clothes, guided an identical machine over the thin, blue indoor-outdoor felt that covered Charitable’s floor. His back was to me, and the din overrode my footsteps.

To the right was a small office. A swivel chair had been lifted and placed atop a scarred steel desk. Off in the corner was a rollaway typing table that hosted an IBM Selectric. On the desktop, next to the chair, were five rubber-banded bundles of mail.

I checked out return addresses. United Way, Campaign for Literacy, the Thanksgiving Fund, the Firefighters Ball. I flipped through all the bundles.

Everyone wanted Sonny Koppel’s money.

The rest of the suite was one enormous room with high, horizontal windows covered by cheap nylon drapes. Empty save for a couple of dozen folding chairs stacked against the wall. The Hispanic man flicked off the machine, straightened slowly, as if in pain, ran his hand through his hair, reached into his pocket for a cigarette, and lit up. Still with his back to me.

He smoked, was careful to drop the ash in his cupped hands.

I said, “Hi.”

He turned. Surprise, but no con wariness. He looked at his cigarette. Blinked. Shrugged. “No permisa?”

“Doesn’t bother me,” I said.

Resigned smile. No hardness around his eyes, no sloppy tattoos. “Usted no es el patron?”

You’re not the boss?

“No,” I said. “Not today.”

“Hokay.” He laughed and smoked. “Mebbe tomorrow.”

“I’m thinking of renting the space.”

Blank stare.

I pointed to the wet carpet. “Nice job-muy limpia.”

“Gracias.”

I left wondering what he’d cleaned up.

Sonny Koppel had been truthful about Charitable Planning, but what did that mean? Perhaps parceling out partial truths was a strategic defense.

All that B.H. square footage left vacant in case Mary Lou needed it.

If Milo was right about Gavin hanging around, spying, writing down license numbers, what had the boy seen?

Empty room. Two dozen folding chairs.

What more did you need for group therapy?

Had the sessions already begun?

What had gone on in there?

I drove a block away, pulled to the curb, and thought more about Gavin Quick.

Brain-damaged, but he’d managed to hold on to his secrets.

Or maybe he hadn’t. Perhaps he’d confided in his father, and that’s why Jerry Quick had cleaned out his room.

Now Quick was traveling, after stashing his wife at her sister’s. Business as usual, or was he on the run because he knew?

Eileen Paxton said Quick hired sluts as secretaries. The secretary I’d met had a dope bust and nails too long for typing.

House in Beverly Hills, but a shadow life?

Gavin had been murdered alongside a blond girl whom no one cared enough about to call in missing. All along, I’d wondered if she was a pro. Jerry and Gavin were both sexually aggressive.

Had the blonde been a gift from father to son? Another referral by Sonny Koppel?

Angie Paul claimed not to know her. Milo had noticed her blinking. I’d explained it away as a reaction to death.

The blonde.

Gavin’s type. Two miles north, in the high-priced spread, lived a blond girl who knew Gavin before his accident. A girl we still hadn’t spoken to.

The last time I’d followed Kayla Bartell she’d driven to a midday hair appointment. That meant she wasn’t holding down a nine-to-five job.