Bad Love (21 page)

“Nuthin’.”

“But you definitely know him?”

“I seen him around.”

“When’s the last time you saw him around?”

He closed his eyes. Opened them. “A week.”

“A week definitely, or a week maybe?”

“I think — I dunno, man.”

“Any idea where he is now?”

“To get rich.”

“To get rich?”

“Yeah, that’s what he said — he was drinking and partying, you know. And singing — sometimes he liked to sing — and he was singing about hey, man, I’m gonna get rich soon. Gonna get me a car and a boat — that kind of shit.”

“Did he say how he was going to get rich?”

“Nah.” A hint of threat sharpened his eyes. Fatigue wiped it out. He slumped.

“He didn’t say how?” I repeated.

“No, man. He wuz partying and singing — he was nuts. That’s
it
, man.”

“Is Gritz a first name or a last name?”

“
Dunno
, man.” He coughed, hit his chest, wheezed, “Fuck.”

“If I told you to see a doctor, you’d shine me on, wouldn’t you?”

Gap-toothed grin. “You gonna pay me to go?”

“What if you had a disease you could give to her — or the baby?”

“Gimme more money.” Holding out a hand again.

“The baby needs to see a doctor.”

“Gimme more money.”

“Who’d Gritz hang out with?”

“No one.”

“No one at all?”

“I dunno, man. Gimme more money.”

“What about a guy named Hewitt?”

“Huh?”

“A guy named Dorsey Hewitt? Ever see Gritz with him?”

I described Hewitt. The boy stared — not that much blanker than his general demeanor, but enough to tell me his ignorance was real.

“Hewitt,” I repeated.

“Don’ know the dude.”

“How long have you been hanging out here?”

“Hunerd years.” Phlegmy laugh.

“Hewitt killed a woman. It was on the news.”

“Don’t got cable.”

“A social worker named Rebecca Basille — at the Westside Mental Health Center?”

“Yeah, I heard something.”

“What?”

Grin. “Music. In my head.” He tapped one ear and smiled. “It’s like rock and soul, man. The def cool no-fool.”

I sighed involuntarily.

He brightened, latching on to my frustration like a buzzard on carrion. “Gimme
money
, man.” Cough. “
Gimme
.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?”

“Yeah.”

Tapping one foot. Waiting for the straight man.

“What?” I said.

“The baby’s mine.” Smile. His remaining teeth were pink with fresh blood.

“Congratulations.”

“Got a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Then gimme
money
. I aks around for you, man. You come back and I tell you everything I aksed.”

I counted what I had in my wallet.

Two twenties and three singles. Gave him all of it. The jacket, too.

He scrambled back through the fence and disappeared. I hung around until his footsteps died, then walked back to the car. The air had cooled — sudden shifts were becoming the rule this autumn — and a soft wind from the east was nudging scraps of garbage off the sidewalk.

I gassed up the Seville at a station on Olympic and used the pay phone to get the number of the nearest Social Services office. After being put on hold several times and transferred from bureaucrat to bureaucrat, I managed to reach a supervisor and tell her about the infant living under the freeway.

“Was the baby being mistreated, sir?”

“No.”

“Did the baby look malnourished?”

“Actually, no, but—”

“Were there bruises or scars anywhere visible on the baby’s body or other signs of abuse?”

“Nothing,” I said. “The mother was caring for the baby, but they’re living in filthy conditions out there. And the boy who might be the baby’s father has a cough that sounds tubercular.”

“Was the
baby
coughing?”

“Not yet.”

“For a tuberculosis investigation, you’d have to call public health. Ask for a communicable disease officer.”

“There’s nothing you can do?”

“Doesn’t sound like there’s anything we should be doing, sir.”

“How ’bout getting the baby some shelter?”

“They’d have to ask, sir.”

“The baby would?”

“The legal guardians. We don’t just go out looking for people.”

Click.

The dial tone was as loud as the freeway. I felt nuts. How did the certifiable psychotics handle it?

I wanted to call Robin. Then I realized I hadn’t memorized my new phone number, didn’t even know the name of the house’s owner. I called Milo. He was at his desk and gave me the seven digits, then said, “Before you hang up, I just got through with Myra Paprock’s file. She wasn’t a therapist. Real estate agent, killed on the job. Showing a house and somebody cut her, robbed her, raped her, and wrote “bad love’ on the wall with her lipstick.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Yeah. In the photos, the lipstick looks like blood.”

“Real estate agent,” I said. “That’s sometimes a second career. Maybe she worked as some kind of therapist first.”

“If she did it’s not down here in the file, and the Van Nuys guys seem to have done a pretty thorough job. Plus Shipler — the beating victim — wasn’t a shrink, either, so I don’t see any obvious mental health connection here.”

“What did he do?”

“Janitor. Night custodian at Jefferson High. I haven’t gotten his file yet, but I had a records clerk over at Central give me the basics.”

“Was he killed on the job, too?”

“Nope, in the comfort of his own home.”

“Where’d he live?”

“Budlong Avenue — South L.A.”

“Black?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened to him?”

“Pounded to mush and the house was trashed.”

“Robbery?”

“Doubtful. His stereo, TV, and some jewelry were left behind.”

“What, then? Someone looking for something?”

“Or someone got really angry. I want to read the whole file — got a call in for it.”

“Real estate agent and janitor,” I said. “Doesn’t make any sense. Any connection between them?”

“Other than “bad love’ on the wall, there doesn’t seem to be any. Nothing matches. She was thirty-five, he was sixty-one. He was killed early morning — right after he finished work on the nightshift — and she got it in the middle of the day. She was stabbed, he was clubbed. There were even differences in what the killer used to write “bad love.’ Shipler’s was done in molasses from his fridge.”

“In both cases the killer was opportunistic — used something of the victim’s.”

“Weapons, too,” he said. “She was killed with a kitchen knife from the house she was showing, Shipler with a fireplace poker that was identified as his. So?”

“I don’t know, maybe it indicates some kind of power thing — dominance over the victims — turning the victims against themselves. Like using my tree branch on the koi. Were there any bondage or S&M overtones to either murder?”

“Paprock’s bra was wrapped around her neck, but the coroner said it was done when she was already dead. Far as I can tell there were no sexual overtones at all to Shipler.”

“Still,” I said, “the message was important. It must mean something to the killer.”

“I’m sure it does,” he said, without enthusiasm.

“Did Shipler live alone?”

“Yeah, divorced.”

“What about Paprock?”

“No match there, either. Married, two kids.”

“If nothing was taken from Shipler’s house,” I said, “what was the assumed motive?”

“A gang thing — there was lots of activity in Shipler’s neighborhood, even back then. Lots more, now. Like you said before, a trashed house could mean someone looking for something. Central figured dope. Figured Shipler was involved on some level and “bad love’ was some sort of gangbanger slogan they hadn’t heard of yet. They checked it out with the CRASH detail and
they
hadn’t heard of it, but new stuff comes up all the time.”

“Did Shipler turn out to be involved in gangs or dope?”

“Far as I can tell, he had no record, but plenty of scrotes slip through the cracks. In terms of there being no burglary, Southwest figured it was punks panicking and leaving before they could take anything. Which is consistent with gang wannabees — new recruits out on a virgin adventure.”

“An initiation thing?”

“Yeah, they start ’em young. Automatics in the diapers. Speaking of which, I caught my little truant bastards on the Palms robbery — thirteen and fifteen. No doubt they’ll get referred for some kind of therapy. Want a referral?”

“No, thanks.”

“Cynic.”

“Was there gang activity where Paprock was killed?”

“A little, on the fringes. It’s mostly working-class tough — north end of Van Nuys. No one made the gang assumption in that one, but maybe if Van Nuys had talked to Southwest, they would have. Neither of them knew about the other case — still don’t.”

“Going to tell them?” I said.

“First I’m gonna read Shipler’s file thoroughly, see what I can pull out of it. Then, yeah, I’ll have to tell them, do the old network blah blah. Both cases are real cold — be interesting to see what kind of responses I get. Hopefully the whole thing won’t deteriorate into endless memories. Though if “bad love’ shows up anywhere in
Stoumen’s
file, we’ve got interstate blah blah.”

“Hear from Seattle, yet?”

“Very briefly. They’re sending down records — it’ll probably take a week or so. Both detectives on that one are retired and unavailable. Probable translation: burnouts gone fishing. If anything provocative comes up in the file, I’ll bug ’em anyway.”

“What about the FBI records on other “bad love’ murders?”

“Not yet.
Them
gears grind slowly.”

“A real estate agent, a janitor, and “bad love,’ ” I said. “I still think it has something to do with that conference. Or de Bosch himself — Paprock and Shipler could have been his patients.”

“So why would someone kill them?”

“Maybe it’s another patient, mad about something.”

“Then what’s
your
connection?”

“I don’t know. . . . Nothing makes sense, dammit.”

“You learn anything from Jeffers?”

“No one at the center remembers Hewitt having any friends. But she referred me to Hewitt’s lawyer and he gave me a name and possible address.” I described my encounter with the people under the freeway.

“Gritz,” he said. “As in hominy.”

“With a “z.’ Could be a first name or a last, or just a nickname.”

“I’ll run it through.”

“The kid I spoke to said he’s been gone about a week. He also said Gritz was talking and singing about getting rich.”

“Singing?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Oh those romantic hoboes, strumming around the campfire.”

“Maybe Gritz had some kind of job lined up, or maybe it’s baloney. The kid could very well have been putting me on. For what it’s worth, he said he’d ask around, I should come back later.”

“Getting rich,” he said. “
Everyone
talks and sings about it. That Calcutta place might be the dregs, but it’s still L.A.”

“True,” I said. “But wouldn’t it be interesting if Gritz really did expect to get paid for something — like killing my koi, and other nasties.”

“Hitman on a fish? So who’s doing the hiring?”

“The anonymous bad guy — I know, it’s a ridiculous idea.”

“At this point nothing’s ridiculous, Alex, but if someone was looking to hire a nighttime skulker, would they choose a homeless nutcase?”

“True. . . . Maybe what Gritz was hired for was to scream on tape — to imitate Hewitt because he knew what Hewitt sounded like.”

“Imitate?” he said. “Those voice tracks sounded identical to me, Alex. Though we may never be able to verify it. I talked to the voiceprint guy over at the sheriff’s, and screams
are
useless, legally. In order to make a match that can be used in court, you need two samples, minimum of twenty words on each and the exact same phrases. Even then, it gets challenged a lot and thrown out.”

“What about for nonadmissible comparison?”

“Matching screams is still an iffy business. It’s words that have unique characteristics. I asked the sheriff to give a listen anyway. He said he’s backlogged but would try to get to it eventually. . . . Why would someone want to imitate Hewitt?”

“I don’t know — I can’t help but think the tape’s part of a ritual. Something ceremonial that means something only to the killer.”

“What about the kid on the tape?”

“Could be a homeless kid — someone from Little Calcutta or some place like it. Living down there could explain the robot quality of the voice — despair. You should have seen it, Milo. The boy’s teeth were rotting, he had a tubercular cough. The girl was naked, wrapped up in a sheet, trying to feed the baby. If I’d offered enough money, I probably could have
bought
the baby.”

“I’ve seen it,” he said softly.

“I know you have. I have too. It’s all around. But I haven’t really let it register for a while.”

“What’re you gonna do, solve everyone’s problems? Plenty of your own to deal with, for the time being. You get names on the freeway people?”

“Not the girl.
He
calls himself Terminator Three.”

He laughed. “No one else down there besides them and the baby?”

“No one I could see, and I was flashing ten-dollar bills.”

“Real smart, Alex.”

“I watched my back.”

“Yeah.”

“The kid said the place fills up at night. I could go back after dark and see if anyone else knows Gritz.”

“You’re really in the mood to get your throat cut, aren’t you?”

“If I had a macho cop with me I’d be safe, right?”

“Don’t count on it. . . . Yeah, okay, it’s probably a waste of time, but that makes me feel
right
at home.”

Robin was still working in the garage, hunched over her bench, wielding shiny sharp things that resembled dental picks. Her hair was tied up and her goggles were lodged in her curls. Under her overalls, her T-shirt was tightened by perspiration. She said, “Hi, doll,” as her hands continued to move. The dog was at her feet and he stood and licked my hand as I looked over Robin’s shoulder.