Survival of the Fittest (48 page)

Pick up, friend, pick up, pick up   .   .   .

“Hello?”

“Gene? It’s me. I can’t talk long. I need your help.”

Knocking on the door. Dov’s voice, “Hey, you drown or what? How long does it take to pee?”

“Wait til you reach my age,” Daniel called out.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said Gene.

Chapter

56

Zena was at the store when i made the confirmation call.

“How gallant of you to verify, A.”

“Just wanted to make sure you weren’t too worn out from the party.”

“Me? Never. On the contrary, bursting with energy. I shall prepare comestibles—pasta with clams, Caesar salad, fruit of the vine.”

“The woman cooks, too.”

“Oh,
do
I.” She laughed. “I simmer and sometimes I boil over. I’ll leave a key in the empty flowerpot near the door. I’ll be ready.”

At 9:30 I put on an Andrew uniform: gray shirt, baggy gray pants, the same tweed sportcoat. The same cologne.

Starless night, a washed-slate sky, the air reeking of wet paper, damp around the edges.

I took La Brea to Sunset. The boulevard was rife with spandex and leather, delusions passing as hope. East of Western it changed: darkened buildings hemmed by shadow-strewn corners, everything murky, grubby, too quiet.

I drove automatically, slowly, as if riding a track, reached Lyric just after ten o’clock, and climbed the winding road, now stripped of cars.

Rondo Vista was mortuary silent. Zena’s garage was closed and one car was parked in front of her house. Fifty-eight T-bird. Pink with a white top, faded and scarred.

Had to be hers.

The same faint light from her window. Setting the mood?

I parked and headed for the door. The covered pathway was dark, the dead spider plants shuddered in the night breeze. Feeling an inexplicable pang of first-date anxiety, I groped til I found the key in the pot, resting atop a mound of bone-dry planter’s mix.

Music from inside.

Electric guitars played slowly.

Beautiful, dreamy music.

“Sleepwalk,” by Santo and Johnny.

Zena setting the mood. I remembered the song from my childhood. She hadn’t been born when it hit the charts.

I unlocked the door, expecting to find her downstairs in the bedroom, maybe some kind of cute note directing me to the stuffed animals.

She was right there in the living room.

Lit by a single pole lamp with a weak blue bulb.

Theatrical.

Nude, on the sofa.

She reclined, one arm extended along the top of the couch, like Goya’s “Naked Maja.” Wide-eyed with eagerness, her tiny white body perfectly formed, pearly in the steely light. Nipples pink and erect, oversized for the small, white breasts, black hair sprayed static. Her legs were spread just enough to offer a view of bleached-blond pubic patch. Her other arm rested on her flat, smooth belly.

I smelled clam sauce but the lights were out in the kitchen.

No preliminaries. How to get out of this—

“Hi,” I said.

She didn’t speak. Or move.

I came closer, was inches away before I saw the ligature around her neck. Copper wire, biting into the slender stem, so tight it had been invisible.

Wide, wide blue eyes. Not seductiveness. Surprise, the final surprise.

I turned to run, was caught by the elbows from behind.

A knee in the small of my back sent a jolt of pain up my spine and made my legs give way.

Then hands around
my
neck, more pain, different—an entire new definition of pain, as the back of my head exploded.

Chapter

57

Milo’s driver was named Ernest Beaudry and he was coal-black, maybe thirty, handsome, impassive, a devout Baptist, with a bristly mustache that looked laser-trimmed and an eighteen-inch neck turned to asphalt by shaving bumps.

The car was a blue unmarked Ford, same model as Milo’s but newer and much cleaner, parked in the West L.A. station lot. Beaudry stayed close to Milo as they approached it, held the door open for him.

“Some service, Officer.”

Beaudry didn’t answer, just shut the door and got into the driver’s seat.

He managed the car skillfully. Driving was one of his favorite things. As a kid he’d fantasized about becoming a professional race driver til someone told him there were no black ones.

The police radio was on, reciting that night’s epic poem of coded violence, but Beaudry wasn’t listening. Turning out of the lot, he headed for the 405.

“Downtown?” said Milo.

“Yup.”

As they got on the ramp, Milo said, “So what’s this about?”

No answer, because Beaudry had none, and even if he had, he was smart enough to keep it zipped. The 405 was clogged with nighttime airport traffic and they barely moved for a while.

Milo repeated the question.

“No idea, sir.”

A few car lengths later: “You work for Chief Wicks?”

“Yup.”

“Assigned to the motor pool?”

“Yup.”

“Well,” said Milo, “all these years on the force and I never got driven before. So this is my lucky day, huh?”

“Looks like it.” Beaudry let his left hand sink to the driver’s-door handrest as he one-fingered the wheel.

Traffic started moving.

“Okay, I’ll just sit back and enjoy this,” said Milo.

“There you go.”

Sturgis stretched his legs and closed his eyes. They cruised slowly but steadily.

Nice and easy—then Beaudry heard, “Shit—Jesus.”

Rustling motion on the passenger side. Beaudry glanced to the right and saw that Sturgis was sitting up.

“Oh—Jeesus, I can’t—” The last word was guillotined by a gasp and Beaudry saw Sturgis slump, one hand on his barrel chest, the other fighting to loosen his tie.

“What’s the problem?”

“Stomach—chest—probably just gas   .   .   . the shit I had for dinner—oh, man, here’s another
—Jesus,
it hurts like a mother—oh, shit, this is not—”

Sturgis sat up again, suddenly, as if pierced by something. Gasping, rasping, yanking the tie loose but holding on to the limp fabric. Clutching the left side of his chest. Beaudry heard a button pop and plink against the dashboard.

“You all right—”

“Yeah, yeah—get the hell over to Parker, maybe they’ve got a—no   .   .   . I dunno—oh
shit
!”

The long legs stiffened, knees knocking against vinyl. Sturgis’s eyes were shut now, and his color looked bad—grayish, his face screwed up tight.

“Ever have this before?” said Beaudry, fighting to sound calm.

Milo’s response was a deep, bearish moan.

“Sir, have you ever experie—”

“Ohh! Jeez—get me—oh
—ah
!” Sturgis arched his back, bit his lip, and Beaudry heard fast, rough breathing.

Beaudry said, “I’m getting you to a hospital—”

“No, just get me—”

“No choice, sir—where’s the closest one—Cedars, okay, Robertson exit’s just a ways up, hold on—”

“No, no, I’m oka
—ahh
!”

Left hand back on the wheel, Beaudry switched to the fast lane and floored the unmarked, using his right hand to snatch the handset and call in an emergency.

No one answered at Deputy Chief Wicks’s office. Of course; they’d asked him to bring Sturgis straight to that conference room on the fifth floor, some kind of high-level detective stuff—what was the extension there? No idea. Should he go through the Parker switchboard? No, they’d made it clear this was confidential. Meaning they were trusting him with more than just chauffeuring, probably preparing him for something bigger and better—

Meanwhile, his charge was moaning and gasping like a fish out of water, sounding like he was gonna die right here in the car—look how heavy he was, probably didn’t exercise, ate all kinds of garbage—just his luck, Ernest Beaudry’s golden luck. All that clean living and raising his kids right, doing his job without a hitch, getting assigned to the motor pool and making Delores happy because he wouldn’t get shot by some crackhead. Pushing for motor pool because his uncle had started that way and made sergeant even with all the departmental racism. Because his uncle and other relatives had told him a smart young guy like him, with presence, could do even better. Driving, the connections you made, maybe he’d get to drive for the chief.

Heck, driving could
make
you a chief. Daryl Gates had started off driving for Saint William Parker. Then again, look where Daryl Gates had ended up, so maybe it was just the opposite and driving was really
bad
luck, a curse, a hex. This sure wasn’t a good sign, he wished Sturgis would just stop having his heart attack, decide it
had
been gas, start breathing normally again—

Silence. Oh, no— “You all right?”

No answer. But Sturgis was still breathing, Beaudry could see the big belly heaving.

“It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “We’ll take good care of you, almost there.”

Sturgis’s face screwed up tighter as he seized again and landed almost prone on the seat, sliding down. Thank God he had his seat belt on. Bucking and heaving   .   .   . that wheezing—

Robertson, 1 mile. Beaudry checked the rearview and slid across all four lanes, raced down the exit ramp, which was thank-God clear, ran an amber-to-red at National, and jetted north. Cedars just a couple miles away.

Don’t die here, man, at least wait til we get there—Pico, Olympic, another iffy amberoo, some cross-traffic that honked at him.

Forget
you,
I am
allowed,
I am the
po-
lice—Wilshire, Burton, here we go, here we go, here we go—Cedars,
yes
! Swing in on Alden, into the covered parking lot, up to the emergency entrance—no one there, Sturgis quieter—but looking worse—was he still breathing, oh, Lord, please give him just a few more breaths—CPR? No, no, no, of course not, not with all these doctors around   .   .   .

“We’re here, just hold on, man,” he said, slamming the car into park. “Help’s right on the way.”

He left the engine running and track-starred into the E.R. reception area, yelled at the sleepy-looking clerk that an officer needed help.

The place was full of sick old people and accident victims, various species of lowlife. Before the clerk could answer, Beaudry ran past them and grabbed the first person in uniform that he saw—a nurse, Filipina—then a female intern in scrubs, the three of them hustling to the unmarked.

“Where?” said the intern, red-haired, looking maybe sixteen, but her badge said S. Goldin, M.D.

“Right here.” Beaudry threw open the unmarked’s passenger door.

No one inside.

His first thought was that Sturgis had been gripped by another attack, had somehow opened the door, fallen out, crawled somewhere to die.   .   .   . He ran around the car to check, then looked under the vehicle.

“Where?” said the intern, now looking skeptical.

She and the nurse stared at Beaudry. Taking in
his
badge, the uniform, the two stripes, the Sam Browne loaded with gear, the nine-millimeter.

Figuring, he was for real but what the hell was his
story
?

Beaudry raced around the parking lot, looking over, under, between every damn vehicle, greasing up his uniform, soaking his tapered-to-the-muscle shirt with stress sweat.

When he came back, Intern S. Goldin repeated, “Where? What’s going on, Officer?”

Now Beaudry was breathing hard and his own chest hurt.

Stand tall, show no stress.

“Good question,” he said.

So much for family advice. Driving was
definitely
a hex.

Chapter

58

Newly retired police captain Eugene Brooker, thirty pounds overweight, slightly hypertensive, and a non-insulin-dependent diabetic, walked uphill.

Old man and the mountain; some image. When his daughters inquired about his health, he always said, “Feel like a kid.”

So, live the lie tonight.

Danny’s surprise call—talking twice as fast as usual, from that consulate bathroom—had ended with, “It’ll probably be nothing. Do what you can, Gene, but don’t put yourself in danger.”

Sneaking a phone into the john? Why were Danny’s own people doing this to him?

He trudged up Lyric, staying in the shadows when he could. He’d parked his car a long way down on Apollo, brought the only two weapons handy: the old service revolver, which he’d continued to clean and oil out of habit, and the nine-millimeter that he kept in his bedside nightstand. No long guns because all three of his were already packed away in the U-Haul and they were for quail, not people. Another reason: Rifles were too conspicuous. An overtly armed black man walking the hills at night was beyond a joke.

Up, up, and away.   .   .   . He forced himself to breathe slowly. How long had it been since he’d done real-life, break-a-sweat police work? He didn’t even want to think about it.

Pathetically out of shape, but with the diabetes you had to be careful about your exercise—who was he kidding, since college football and walking a beat on Central, he hadn’t done a damn thing, athletic-wise.   .   .   .

Climb every mountain, ford every stream, huff huff, the old Nikes nice and quiet.

He’d memorized the address on Rondo Vista.

Slow and steady, it wouldn’t do to have a heart attack up here and end up roadkill or worse.

No reason to hurry, probably a quiet night, as Danny had said. Just a precaution for the shrink’s sake.

Danny hadn’t had time to give many details. The main thing was that a cop named Baker, whom Gene didn’t know, might be part of it, so watch out for him, he drove a Saab convertible.

A cop behind all that blood? It could make the Rodney King case look like musical comedy. Beyond that, all Gene knew was that a crazy girl was also part of it and the shrink was on an undercover date with her.

Why a shrink for bait?