CHAPTER 7

Schwinn told Milo to drop Tonya off on Eighth near Witmer, down the block from the Ranch Depot Steak House.

"Get yourself a hunk of beef, darling." Slipping her some bills. "Get yourself a lovely T-bone with one of those giant baked potatoes."

"Mr. S.," came the protest. "I can't go in there dressed like this, they won't serve me."

"With this they will." Another handful of paper pressed into her hand. "You show this to Calvin up front, tell him I sent you- you have any problem, you let me know."

"You're sure?"

"You know I am."

The rear door opened, and Tonya got out. The smell of sex hung in the car. Now the night filtered in, cool, fossil-fuel bitter.

"Thank you, Mr. S." She extended her hand. Schwinn held on to it.

"One more thing, darling. Hear of any rough johns working the Temple-Beaudry area?"

"How rough?"

"Ropes, knives, cigarette burns."

"Ooh," said the hooker, with pain in her voice. "No, Mr. S., there's always lowlife, but I heard nothing like that."

Pecks on cheeks. Tonya clicked her way toward the restaurant, and Schwinn got back in front. "Back to the station, boy-o."

Closing his eyes. Self-satisfied. At Olive Street, he said: "That's a very intelligent nigger, boy-o. Given the opportunity a free, white woman woulda had, she woulda made something of herself. What's that about?"

"What do you mean?"

"The way we treat niggers. Make sense to you?"

"No," said Milo. Thinking: What the hell is this lunatic about?

Then: Why hadn't Schwinn offered the hooker to him?

Because Schwinn and Tonya had something special? Or because he knew?

"What it says," offered Schwinn. "The way we treat niggers, is that sometimes smart doesn't count."

Milo dropped him off at the Central Division parking lot, watched him get into his Ford Fairlane and drive off to Simi Valley, to the wife who liked books.

Alone, at last.

For the first time since the Beaudry call, he was breathing normally.

He entered the station, climbed the stairs, hurried to the scarred metal desk they'd shoved into a corner of the Homicide room for him. The next three hours were spent phoning Missing Persons bureaus at every station and when that didn't pay off, he extended the search to various sheriff's substations and departments of neighboring cities. Every office kept its own files, no one coordinated, each folder had to be pulled by hand, and MP skeleton crews were reluctant to extend themselves, even on a 187. Even when he pressed, emphasized the whodunit aspect, the ugliness, he got resistance. Finally, he hit upon something that pried cooperation and curses on the other end: the likelihood of news coverage. Cops were afraid of bad press. By 3 A.M., he'd come up with seven white girls in the right age range.

So what did he do, now? Get on the horn and wake up worried parents?

Pardon me, Mrs. Jones, but did your daughter Amy ever show up? Because we've still got her listing as missing and are wondering if a sackful of tissue and viscera cooling off in a coroner's drawer just might be her?

The only way to do it was preliminary phone contact followed by face-to-face interviews. Tomorrow, at a decent hour. Unless Schwinn had other ideas. Something else to correct him about.

He transcribed all the data from his pad onto report sheets, filled out the right forms, redrew the outline of the girl's body, summarized the MP calls, created a neat little pile of effort. Striding across the room to a bank of file cabinets, he opened a top drawer and pulled out one of several blue binders stored in a loose heap. Recycled binders: When cases were closed, the pages were removed and stapled, placed in a manila folder, and shipped over to the evidence room at Parker Center.

This particular blue book had seen better times: frayed around the edges with a brown stain on the front cover vaguely reminiscent of a wilting rose- some D's greasy lunch. Milo affixed a stickummed label to the cover.

Wrote nothing. Nothing to write.

He sat there thinking about the mutilated girl. Wondered what her name was and couldn't bring himself to substitute Jane Doe.

First thing tomorrow, he'd check out those seven girls, maybe get lucky and end up with a name.

A title for a brand-new murder book.

Bad dreams kept him up all night, and he was back at his desk by 6:45 A.M., the only detective in the room, which was just fine; he didn't even mind getting the coffee going.

By 7:20, he was calling families. MP number one was Sarah Jane Causlett, female cauc, eighteen, five-six, 121, last seen in Hollywood, buying dinner at the Oki-burger at Hollywood and Selma.

Ring, ring ring. "Mrs. Causlett? Good morning, hope I'm not calling too early…"

By 9 A.M., he was finished. Three of the seven girls had returned home, and two others weren't missing at all, just players in divorce dramas who'd escaped to be with noncustodial parents. That left two sets of distraught parents, Mr. and Mrs. Estes in Mar Vista, Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs in Mid-City. Lots of anxiety, Milo withheld facts, steeled himself for the face-to-face.

By 9:30 a few detectives had arrived, but not Schwinn, so Milo placed a scrawled note on Schwinn's desk, left the station.

By 1 P.M., he was back where he started. A recent picture of Misty Estes showed her to be substantially obese with short curly hair. West L.A. Missing Persons had misrecorded her stats: 107 pounds instead of 187. Oops, sorry. Milo left the tearful mother and hypertensive father standing in the doorway of their GI Bill bungalow.

Jessica Jacobs was approximately the right size, but definitely not the girl on Beaudry: She had the lightest of blue eyes, and the victim's had been deep brown. Another clerical screwup, no one bothering to note eye color in the Wilshire Division MP file.

He left the Jacobs house sweating and tired, found a pay phone outside a liquor store at Third and Wilton, got Schwinn on the line, and gave a lack-of-progress report.

"Morning boy-o," said Schwinn. "Haul yourself over here, there might be something."

"What?"

"Come on back."

When he got to the Homicide room, half the desks were full, and Schwinn was balancing on two legs of his chair, wearing a nice-looking navy suit, shiny white-on-white shirt, gold tie, gold tie tack shaped like a tiny fist. Leaning back precariously as he chomped a burrito the size of a newborn baby.

"Welcome home, prodigious son."

"Yeah."

"You look like shit."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Schwinn gave one of his corkscrew smiles. "So you learned about our excellent record-keeping. Cops are the worst, boy-o. Hate to write and always make a mess out of it. We're talking barely literate."

Milo wondered about the extent of Schwinn's own education. The topic had never come up. The whole time they'd worked together, Schwinn had parceled out very few personal details.

"Clerical screwups are the fucking rule, boy-o. MP files are the worst, because MP knows it's a penny ante outfit, most of the time the kid comes home, no one bothers to let them know."

"File it, forget it," said Milo, hoping agreement would shut him up.

"File it, fuck it. That's why I was in no big hurry to chase MP."

"You know best," said Milo.

Schwinn's eyes got hard. Milo said, "So what's interesting?"

"Maybe interesting," Schwinn corrected. "A source of mine picked up some rumors. Party on the Westside two days before the murder. Friday night, upper Stone Canyon- Bel Air."

"Rich kids."

"Filthy rich kids, probably using Daddy and Mommy's house. My source says there were kids from all over showing up, getting stoned, making noise. The source also knows a guy, has a daughter, went out with her friends, spent some time at the party, and never came home."