37

"Everything's surreal," said Lucy.

It was 9 A.M. and I'd finally reached her at the Brentwood house.

"In what way?"

"One moment I'll be talking to him and it feels so real. Then I'll wake up and realize I've been dreaming and the truth hits me… I guess that's normal."

"Very much so."

"I've been doing nothing but sleeping. Can't help it, I feel drugged. Every time I try to get up, I just want to crawl right back. Should I force myself to stay awake?"

"No, let nature take its course."

"God, I miss him!"

She started to cry.

"I'm not angry at him, he couldn't help it. Getting hold of such strong stuff, not knowing… When he was hungry for it, he couldn't think about anything else."

More tears.

"Such pain… what a waste. My heart feels as if it's really breaking- I don't know if I'll ever feel totally good again."

"Everything takes time, Lucy."

"I can't do hypnosis, can't focus on anything- I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for."

"Later. We'll do it later. All I can do now is cry and sleep- I don't even want to talk. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Lucy."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she mocked herself. "Sorry for the world. For Carrie Fielding and the others. And Puck. And Karen. I haven't forgotten her. I won't forget."

Three psychopaths in the forest.

Barnard learning something about it. Dead.

The Sheas, living on the sand.

Doris Reingold, alive and poor. Gambling away her payoff?

Spirited out of town by Tom Shea. Into hiding, or something more final?

I played with it some more. Barnard kept popping up in my thoughts, like one side of a loaded die.

If he'd been murdered because he was a blackmailer, the conspicuous nature of his death made sense: A corpse on a motel bed had plenty of educational value.

Who'd done the shooting? The murder had taken place a full year after Karen's disappearance. By then, Mellors- or whatever his real name was- was working for App, and Trafficant had vanished.

And M. Bayard Lowell was living in splendid isolation in Topanga Canyon.

I didn't see the Great Man risking a meeting at a sleazy motel.

And why that particular dirty-sheets dive?

Because it catered to hookers? Mo Barnard had described Felix as a womanizer. Had he been lured there with the promise of another payoff- the bigger one he'd pressed for? Happy to enjoy a quickie while he waited?

I pictured him, pants down and happily expectant, on a narrow gray bed in a darkened room, porno on video, booze on the nightstand.

A woman in hotpants and spike heels. She smiles and ducks into the bathroom with a wink and a "One minute, honey."

The toilet flushes. Water runs. Barnard concentrates on the movie, oblivious to the door opening.

Someone rushes to the side of the bed and begins squeezing off rounds.

Someone with a key. The clerk paid off? The hooker in on it, too?

But, still, why that motel? Three miles east, Hollywood was crammed with mattress palaces.

Maybe because the killer knew that place well enough to set up an inside job.

The police had never suspected. According to Milo, the motel was a chronic trouble spot, so one more felony- even a homicide- would be no great surprise.

Barnard had led a pathetic life, spending his days prying into other people's secrets, taking money to look into cold cases.

Twenty years later, his own file was stone cold.

An inconsequential man. Had the papers even bothered to write up his death?

This time I stayed closer to home and used the main Santa Monica library on 6th Street. Barnard's name wasn't listed in the computers for that year or any other. But a search under homicide struck gold in the newspaper files:

Motel, homicide at. Police say the Adventure Inn on the Westside is site of numerous crimes, the latest the murder of a retired private investigator.

The full article was tucked into a bottom corner of the last page of the Metro section.

HOMICIDE PROMPTS IRE ABOUT MOTEL

The early morning shooting death of a retired private investigator in a Westside motel has prompted increased citizen concern about the hostelry. Police confirm a history of criminal activity at the Adventure Inn on 1543 South La Cienega Boulevard, including numerous arrests for prostitution, narcotics, disorderly conduct, and assault. Despite complaints by neighbors, police claim they are legally powerless to close the business down.

The victim, Felix Slayton Barnard, 65, of Venice, was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in Room 11 by the motel's clerk, Edgely Sylvester, during a morning room check. Sylvester reported hearing and seeing nothing, and by the time police arrived all other residents had vacated the premises. "No surprise," said a bystander, refusing to be named. "They register by the half-hour."

Sylvester denied any personal knowledge of prostitution at the motel. When asked how he could have failed to hear three gunshots, he said, "There's a lot of traffic."

Questioned about why steps couldn't be taken to close the motel, Captain Robert Bannerstock of the LAPD's Westside Division said, "It's a free country. All we can do is go out and investigate occurrences. People need to be careful about where they spend the night."

Ownership of the motel is registered to a Nevada corporation, The Advent Group, and attempts to reach the manager, Darnel Mullins, were unsuccessful.

Darnel Mullins.

Denton Mellors.

Inside job.

Meet me at the Adventure Inn, Felix. There'll be a room reserved for you- have a whore on the house.

I looked up Darnel Mullins in every Southern California phone book the library owned. No Darnels; over a dozen D's spread around various counties. Thirty-five minutes on the pay phone in the entrance eliminated most of them. The rest weren't home.

Roadblocked again.

I sat at a library table, drumming my fingers until I thought of another route.

The clerk. Edgely Sylvester.

Thank God it was an unusual name- and listed in the Central L.A. book on the 1800 block of Arlington.

I took Pico east, toward the center of town. La Cienega was a couple of miles before Arlington, and I veered south and drove to 1543.

Still a motel, now called the Sunshine Lodge and painted turquoise blue. Three arms of cinder block around a dipping, pitted parking lot.

Two pickup trucks in the lot. I pulled in next to one of them. Room 11 was in the northwest corner, catercorner from the office. A DO NOT DISTURB sign hung from the doorknob.

I went into the office. A Korean man sat behind the desk, watching Korean language TV. A wall dispenser sold pocket combs and condoms, and a wire rack on the desk was stuffed with maps to the stars' homes. Robin had shown me one last year, given out by a record company as a party favor. Marilyn Monroe was still alive and living in Brentwood, and Lon Chaney was haunting Beverly Hills.

The clerk eyed me and said, "Room?"

Not knowing what to say, I left.

Edgely Sylvester's neighborhood was just past the old Sears store near La Brea, not far from the Wilshire Division police station. The house was a two-story brown craftsman bungalow subdivided into apartments. The front lawn had been turned into parking spaces. A rusting Cadillac Fleetwood and a twenty-year-old Buick Riviera shared it.