"That's him,' said Santos. 'Tall - he wears glasses. Not such good skin - some zits here and here.' Touching her jawline and her temple. 'Like he had it bad when he was younger, you know, and it didn't all heal up?'
Six-two fit Linus Brophy's description of Baby Boy's killer. Would a skinny kid have been able to overpower Vassily Levitch? Sure, given the element of surprise.
'Shy,' said Petra. 'What else?'
'He's like one of those - someone who'd like computers, want to be by himself, you know? He's got tons of computer stuff up there, too. I don't know much about that kind of thing, but it looks expensive. With his daddy paying the rent, I just figured... he's a good tenant, though. No problems. I hope he isn't in trouble.'
'You'd hate to lose him as a tenant,' said Stahl. 'You bet,' said Santos. 'This business, you never know what you're gonna get.'
On the way back to the station, just as the sun began to set, Petra spotted an elderly man and woman walking slowly up Fountain Avenue followed by a large, white, yellow-billed duck.
Blinking to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, she stopped, backed up until she was even with the couple. They kept plodding, and she coasted at their pace. Two munchkins in heavy overcoats and knit caps, veering toward androgynous twinhood, the way very old people sometimes do. Ninety or close to it. Each step was labored. The duck was unleashed and trailed them by inches. Its waddle looked a trifle off-balance.
The man looked over, took the woman's arms, and they stopped. Nervous smiles. Probably some animal regulation being violated, but who cared about that.
'Nice duck,' said Petra.
'This is Horace,' said the woman. 'He's been our baby for a long time.'
The duck lifted a foot and scratched its belly. Tiny black eyes seemed to bore into Petra's. Protective.
She said, 'Hey there, Horace.'
The duck's feathers ruffled.
'Have a nice day,' she said, and pulled away from the curb.
Stahl said, 'What was that?'
'Reality.'
Two days after the meeting with Petra and Stahl, Milo asked me to come along for a second interview with Everett Kipper.
'It's a drop-in, this time,' he said. 'I called ahead, but Kipper's in meetings all day.'
'Why the renewed interest?' I said.
'I want to talk to him about GrooveRat, see if Yuri Drummond ever expressed an interest in interviewing Julie. Petra and Stahl haven't been able to get hold of actual copies, but Drummond's looking more interesting. He's a twenty-four-year-old loner, real name of Kevin, lives in a one-bedroom pad on a scruffy part of Rossmore. Hasn't been seen for several days - isn't that intriguing? The zine sounds like a vanity deal, delusional. Daddy's a lawyer, pays the rent and probably the printing costs. He wouldn't give Petra the time of day. I'm talking a real clam-up.'
'He's a lawyer,' I said.
'Petra picked up definite family tension. Kevin sounds like the family weirdo, and Daddy was definitely not pleased to be discussing him.'
'A loner,' I said.
'What a shock, huh? He's got a history of jumping from project to project - from obsession to obsession. Exactly the fanatical personality you described. He's also a pack rat, his landlady says his apartment's piled high with boxes. Including toys. So maybe kill trophies are part of his collection. He started doing the zine in his senior year. Petra found one partial copy, and Drummond lists himself as the entire editorial staff. He asked an outrageous subscription price, but there's no evidence anyone ever paid.'
'Where'd he go to school?'
'Charter College, which is pretty selective, so he's probably smart - just like you've been saying. And he's tall - six-two - which would synch with what the wino witness saw. All in all, it's not a bad fit. Stahl's staking out his apartment, and Petra's still trying to learn more about GrooveRat - to see if anyone distributed it. If we can locate back issues and find the articles on Baby Boy and China and hopefully Julie, we'll ask for a warrant and won't get one. But it's something.'
The orchestration of the murders had set me thinking of a killer in his thirties or forties, and twenty-four seemed young. But maybe Kevin Drummond was precocious. And for the first time since the Kipper case had opened, Milo's voice was light. I kept my mouth shut. Drove to Century City.
The same ovoid waiting room, the same toothy woman at the front desk. No initial alarm, this time, just a chilly smile. 'Mr Kipper's gone to lunch.'
'Where to, ma'am?'
'I wouldn't know.'
Milo said, 'You didn't make the reservation?'
'No reservation,' she said. 'Mr Kipper prefers simple places.'
'Business lunches at simple places?'
'Mr Kipper prefers to eat by himself.'
'What about the people he's been meeting with all morning?'
The receptionist bit her lip.
Milo said, 'It's okay. He pays your salary, you need to do what he tells you. The city pays mine, and I'm just as determined.'
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It's just...'
'He doesn't want to talk to us. Any reason?'
'Not that he mentioned. He's like that.'
'Like what?'
'Not much of a talker.' She bit her lip. 'Please...'
'I understand,' said Milo. Sounding as if he really did.
We left the office, took the elevator down to street level. Dark-suited men and women streamed in and out of the building.
'If she's telling the truth about a simple place,' he said, 'my guess is one of the food stands in the Century City Mall a block away. Meaning he probably walked and will return this way.'
Three massive granite planters filled with rubber trees punctuated the plaza in front of Kipper's building. We chose one and sat on the rim.
Twenty minutes later, Everett Kipper appeared, walking alone. This time his suit was the color of a blued revolver, tailored snug, also four-button. White shirt, pink tie, a flash of gold at his cuffs as he moved toward his building with that bouncing stride. The business
crowd in front had thickened, and he passed us, unmindful.
We got off the ledge and jogged toward him. Milo said, 'Mr Kipper?' and Kipper whipped around with the practiced tension of a martial arts fighter.
'What now?'
'A few more questions, sir.'
'About what?'
'Could we talk up in your office?'
'I don't think so,' said Kipper. 'Cops in the office is bad for business. How long will this take?'
'Just a few moments.'
'Step over here.' He led us behind one of the rubber trees. The plant cast spatulate shadows on his round, smooth face. 'What?'
Milo said, 'Ever hear of a magazine called GrooveRat?
'No. Why?'
'We're trying to trace any articles that might have been written about Julie.'
'And this magazine wrote one?' Kipper shook his head. 'Julie never mentioned it. Why's that important?'
'We're conducting a careful investigation,' said Milo.
Kipper said, 'The answer's still no. Never heard of it.'
'Are you aware of any publicity Julie received recently?'
'She got none, and it bugged her. Back in New York, when she had her gallery show at Anthony, she got plenty. The New York Times mentioned the show in their arts section, and I think some of the other papers did, too. She remembered that. Being obscure was part of what was painful.'
'What else was painful?'
'Failure.'
'No publicity at all for the light and Space show?'
Kipper shook his head. 'She told me Light and Space sent a notice of the group show to the L.A. Times, but they didn't deign to run it... wait a second, there was one magazine that did want an interview - not the one you mentioned. Nothing with Rat in the title... what was it... shit. Not that it mattered. Julie was pretty jazzed about it, but in the end they crapped out.'
'Canceled?'
'She waited, but the writer stood her up. She was not happy, called the editor and bitched. In the end they ran a piece - something short, probably to mollify her.'
'Review of the show?' I said.
'No, this was before the show, maybe a month. For all I know Julie called them herself. She was trying to drum up publicity for herself. For the comeback.' Kipper tweaked his nose. 'She really believed she had a shot.'
'She didn't?'
Kipper looked as if he wanted to spit. 'The art world, I... what was the name of the magazine... Scene something, a wiseass name... she showed me a copy. Looked vapid to me, but I didn't say anything because Julie was excited... Scene... SeldomScene something. Now, I'm out of here.'
He turned and walked away. The flaps of his suit coat billowed. No breeze blew through the plaza. Creating his own turbulence.
SeldomSceneAtoll was listed in West Hollywood, on Santa Monica near La Cienega, and the address turned out to be a genuine office building - two-story, chocolate brick,
squeezed between a florist and a strip mall full of cars and short tempers. Milo left the unmarked in a loading space in the mall lot, and we entered the building through a door emblazoned with a NO SOLICITORS sign.
The directory listed theatrical agencies, nutritionists, a yoga school, business managers, and JAGUAR TUTORIALS/SSA in a second-floor suite.
'Sharing space,' I said. 'No media empire.'
'Jaguar Tutorials,' said Milo. 'What, they train you to become a predator?'
The ambience said none of the occupants had made it to stardom/health/wealth: shabby gray halls, filthy gray carpeting, dehydrated plywood doors, a reek that said quirky plumbing, an elevator whose lights didn't respond to a button push.
We took the stairs, breathing in insecticide and dancing around sprinkles of dead roaches.
He knocked on the Jaguar/SSA door, didn't wait for a reply, and twisted the knob. On the other side was a smallish single room set up with four movable workstations. Cute little computers in multicolored boxes, scanners, printers, photocopiers, machines I couldn't identify. Electrical cord linguini coiled atop the vinyl floor.
The walls were covered with enlargements of framed SSA covers, all of a type: maliciously lit, photos of young, malnourished, beautiful people lolling in body-conscious clothing and radiating contempt for the audience. Lots of vinyl and rubber; the duds looked cheap but probably required a mortgage.
Male and female models, Nefertiti eye makeup for both. Slashes of purplish cheek blush for the skinny
women, four-day beards for their male counterparts.
A dreadlocked, dark-skinned man in his late twenties wearing a black and bumblebee yellow striped T-shirt and yellow cargo pants hunched at the nearest PC, typing nonstop. I glanced at his screen. Graphics; Escher by way of Tinkertoys. He ignored us, or didn't notice. Mini-earphones produced something that held his attention.
The two central stations were unoccupied. At the rearmost computer, a young woman in her midtwenties, also plugged in aurally, sat reading People. Chubby and baby-faced, she wore a black patent-leather jumpsuit and red moonwalker shoes, bobbed in time to what seemed to be a three-four beat. Her hair was unremarkable brown, sprayed into a fifties bouffant. She turned toward us, arched an eyebrow - an eyebrow tattoo - and the beefy steel ring piercing the center of the arch flipped up, then clicked down. The loop in her upper lip remained stationary. So did the score of studs lining her ears and the painful-looking little knoblet parked in the center of her chin.
'What?' she shouted. Then she yanked out the earphones, kept bobbing her head. One two three one two three. Waltz of the young and metallic.
'What?' she repeated.
Milo's badge elicited twin tattoo arches. The outlines of her mouth had been inked in permanently, as well.
'So?' she said.
'I'm looking for the publisher of SeldomSceneAtoll.'
She thumped her chest and made ape sounds. 'You found her.'
'We're looking for information on an artist, Juliet Kipper.'
'What's up with her?'
'You know her?'
'Didn't say that.'
'Nothing's up with her, anymore,' said Milo. 'She was murdered.'
The eyebrow ring drooped, but the face below it remained bland.
'Whoa whoa whoa,' she said, and she got up, walked over to the graphics guy, jabbed his shoulder. Looking regretful, he pulled off his phones.
