Bones (38 page)

11:29 a.m. PDT

From: rivrboat38

To: hardbod2673

don’t like sixty. deserve more but ok i just want away what’s wrong? you ask that? LOL. MEGA LOL!!!!

12:05 p.m. PDT

From: hardbod2673

To: rivrboat38

no LOL here. i care. take care of u.

12:11 p.m. PDT

From: rivrboat38

To: hardbod2673

best take care is $$$. no more talk.

12:14 p.m. PDT

From: hardbod2673

To: rivrboat38

talk helps everything will be ok promise we still good right?

Cybersilence.

Moe Reed explained.

Sitting behind a rough-edged, smoked-glass-slab desk, Aaron Fox listened.

Fox’s office was hermetically silent.

Milo had directed Reed to sum up the situation, maybe as part of training the younger detective.

Or, was there a chance he wanted to get the brothers talking?

No sense conjecturing; he’d never admit it.

Fox remained expressionless. When Reed finished, he said, “Murderous little bitch. I knew she was bad news but not that bad. You’re sure Huck’s up to it?”

Reed said, “We’re not, but he says yes.”

“And that’s worth something?”

“He’s what we’ve got, Aaron, and we’ll be watching, okay? She’s the one suggested the beach, it really is an open spot.”

Fox said, “It’s open all right, but what’s to stop her from paying him off, then having him followed?”

“If she does, we’ll be ready.”

Fox tamped down the collar of a white-on-white silk shirt. “Another possibility is Weir positions himself on the deck of the house with a nightscope rifle and nails the poor sucker. Shots synchronize with the incoming tide, noise wipes out the sound.”

Reed said, “We’ll be watching Weir’s office and the house. He shows up there, we reevaluate.”

Not mentioning Robin’s call to Weir’s office, claiming to be a prospective client. The secretary taking her bogus name and volunteering that Mr. Weir was in meetings all day, she’d be sure he got the message.

Fox said, “Reevaluate as in call it off?”

“Reevaluate as in reevaluate.”

“La Costa’s private sand, Moses. How’re you going to get access?”

Reed’s neck swelled. “All of a sudden you’re Dudley Downer?”

“I’m a realist, bro. Leads to longevity.”

“We got access from a neighbor. Our watch car’ll be stationed across PCH. Everything’s covered. This is the plan, Aaron. Up to you.”

Fox ran a finger around the circumference of a silver-disk desk clock. “It’s already four, what’s to say Weir hasn’t gotten there and hunkered down?”

Milo said, “We’re on it, Aaron.”

“Okay, okay… Malibu neighbor, huh? You guys have the right friends. Anyone I might have heard of?”

Reed said, “Someone Dr. Delaware knows.”

Fox stretched. Onyx cuff links gleamed. “Sounds like Dr. Delaware and I need to get better acquainted. Okay, I’ll go get the toys.”

After he left the room, Milo said, “Nice work space, sure beats civil service.”

Fox’s place was on San Vicente near Wilshire, the southeast corner of Beverly Hills. The décor was skinny Italian leather seating, charcoal felt walls, chrome and brass and glass and cubist lithographs. The building was a twenties duplex, one of the last carryovers from the street’s former life as a quiet residential byway. Now the structure shared space with commercial and professional buildings.

Fox’s “Workland” had once been a master bedroom. Big and bright, with a rear view of a cactus garden, soundproofed padding beneath the felt. Playland — his living quarters — was on the second story, accessed through a teak spiral staircase, probably salvaged from a yacht.

Reed said, “He probably writes the whole building off. Aaron needs his deductions.”

Fox returned with a brown suede carrying case, settled back behind the glass desk. Fishing out a black box the size of a cigarette pack, he laid it down, added what looked to be a pen, then a tiny white button attached to a cord and a pin-jack. Similar wires spaghettied from the other components. The whole kit could fit in a trouser pocket.

Fox’s mocha hands passed over the equipment, like a battle priest blessing armaments. “One-stop shopping, gentlemen.”

Milo said, “That’s all of it?”

“Plus my laptop. Feed’s programmed to interface, one keystroke and we’ve got DVDs for posterity.”

“Cute.”

“Private enterprise.”

Milo pointed to the little black box. “That’s the recorder?”

“Recorder and transmitter,” said Fox. “This here” — touching the white button — “is the camera. Don’t ask me what it cost. We’re talking high-def infrared, cuts through the dark like a knife through trans fat.” Deft fingers rolled to the pen. “Decent mike, but truthfully, not spectacular. Manufacturer claims a two-thousand-foot range, I’ve found one thousand to be closer to the truth, and sometimes it blanks out. High-tech industry’s like Congress, promises more than delivers. For best results, have your mope stay no more than ten feet from her. I’ve got another one, a little more reliable, but it’s embedded in a jeans jacket, if he gets hugged hard enough, it could be detected.”

“How much wiring of our mope do we have to do?” said Reed.

“Recorder goes in his pants pocket, we cut a hole in there, run one cable up to the pen in his shirt pocket, I substitute the button for one of his and install the video feed. Any of you guys sew?”

Silence.

“Great, so now I’m your tailor. Be sure he’s wearing a shirt with a pocket and that it already has buttons the same color. And don’t even think of asking me to donate one of mine. There are limits.”

Reed said, “He’s wearing a blue button-down with white buttons. Brand new, courtesy his lawyer.”

“Wallenburg,” said Fox. “I thought she was corporate. What’s her connection to him anyway?”

“It’s complicated,” said Milo. “Ever work with her?”

“I wish — hey, maybe if this works out, you can put in a good word and she’ll send me some of those Enron-Worldcom cases.”

Reed said, “Maybe
if
?”

“I wish you the best,” said Fox, “but hardware’s one thing, the human factor’s another. When
I
play with these toys I’m in charge — wearing it myself, or rigging up one of my freelances. My people usually have SAG cards. You’re working with a guy with mental problems.”

“He’s motivated,” said Reed.

“Good intentions, and all that?”

Milo said, “Road to heaven.”

“If you say so.”

Travis Huck’s reaction to the plan had changed his demeanor. Evaporation of fear, a smile almost broad enough to hide his lopsided mouth. I wondered if his concept of heaven included early arrival but said nothing. What would be the point?

Aaron Fox said, “You’re sure all you want me to do is sit on my ass and check the feed?”

“That’s it,” said Milo.

“Aw, shucks.”

“You want action, Aaron, you can always come back to the real job.”

“Gee, why didn’t I think of that. I guess billing for my time on this — not to mention having the department insure my gear — is a fantasy.”

Milo said, “I’ll guarantee full coverage of the hardware on my own ticket. And who knows, everything works out you might get the dough Simone owes you.”

“Oh, I’ll get it,” said Fox. “One way or the other.”

S
even fifty p.m., La Costa Beach, Malibu.

The world has compressed, its boundaries the black-rimmed rectangle of a nineteen-inch laptop screen.

Green-and-gray world, tinted by infrared illumination. In the background, waves roll in a lazy, almost sexual rhythm.

A man stands by the tide line, motionless.

I sit at a long table of ancient pine. My seat affords me an oblique view of the screen. Milo faces the laptop, moves his face close to it at times, then he retreats, polishing off more Red Bull.

Aaron Fox is positioned to his left. He drinks sparingly, almost daintily, from his personal bottle of Norwegian Fjord Spring Water. In between swallows, he chews cinnamon gum.

Moe Reed stands in a corner and watches the ocean.

The table is a seven-foot trestle, waxed and knotted and criss-crossed with scars that look calculated. It fills most of the dining space of a house ten lots north of the late Simon Vander’s beach escape. Like Vander’s place, this residence is a smallish two-story box on battered, creosote-coated pilings, worth eight figures. Unlike Vander’s wood-sheathed bungalow, its walls have been stuccoed whale-belly blue, its windows upgraded to copper-tinted, rust-resistant double-hungs. The interior is cozy, under a beamed ceiling, wired for concert-hall sound and cutting-edge video. The walls are dead-white diamond plaster, set sparingly with the type of art that gets people cracking wise about their kids being able to paint just as well.

The furniture’s at odds with all that, a carryover from the house’s former life as a “rural beach cottage.” Rattan and wicker and chunky easy-use wood pieces, many of which resemble the thrift-shop discards they are, are set up carelessly over faded machine-made Oriental rugs slightly soured by mold. The kitchen is barely big enough for two people to stand in. A stainless-steel Sub-Zero and purplish granite counters overachieve.

Décor doesn’t matter, tonight. I suspect it never matters much, with a western wall of sliding glass offering a fine view of the Pacific.

The doors are open, the ocean shouts, I catch glimpses of stars above the overhang of the deck.

My eyes return to the screen.

The miniature world remains inert. I touch the smooth, waxed surface of the table. Nice; maybe it really was “rescued” from a monastery in Tuscany, as the house’s current resident claims.

She’s the sister of the owner, sponging happily. Her brother is an expatriate British rock star, now on reunion tour in Europe. Moe Reed gave me credit for finding the place but the real connection was Robin, who’d worked on the star’s guitars years ago, when he had to pay her on the installment plan.

The beach house joins four other residences in his real estate portfolio: Bel Air, Napa, Aspen, a pied-à-terre in the San Remo on Central Park West.

The sister is a fifty-three-year-old self-described “production assistant” named Nonie who doesn’t bother to tell us her last name, as if we don’t deserve more than the minimum. Tall and white-blond and sun-seamed; her midriff blouse reveals a navel that should never have been pierced. She works hard at looking thirty, hasn’t labored at anything else for years. Her attitude is imperiously clear: Police work is one step above septic-scrubber and Milo and Reed and Fox and I should be genuflecting every ten seconds for the privilege of using her borrowed space.

Her brother would not approve of such frost. Terming her “an insufferable mooch” when Robin reaches him in Lisbon, he agrees readily to donate the house.

“Thanks, Gordie.”

“Sounds exciting, luv.”

“Hopefully it won’t be.”

“What — oh, yeah, of course. Either way, it’s yours for as long as you need it, luv. Thanks for cleaning the bridge pickup on the Tele. Just played it in front of seventy-eight thousand people and it
sang.
”

“That’s great, Gordie. You’ll tell Nonie we’ll be showing up?”

“Did it right off, told her to cooperate fully.
She
gives you any trouble, tell her there’s always her own pathetic dive.”

Gordie’s call notwithstanding, Nonie chooses to be cranky. Milo adopts a more diplomatic approach than that suggested by Gordie, listening patiently as Nonie drops name after name, flicks her hair, drinks brandy, struggles pathetically to bask in her sibling’s reflected fame.

When she stops to take a breath, he gets her talking about the table from Tuscany, applauds her good taste without laying it on too thick. Despite the fact that she’s never actually come out and claimed she found it.

She peers at him suspiciously, but is eventually won over by his persistence and her own need to feel important.

When the time is right, he gives her a hundred dollars and asks her to leave for her own safety, have a nice dinner on LAPD. The money comes out of his own pocket. Nonie looks at the cash. “The places I go, this might cover drinks.”

Milo peels off more bills. She accepts them with a look of great personal sacrifice, fetches her Marc Jacobs bag, puts on her Prada shawl, stomps toward the door on her slingback Manolos.

Moe Reed walks her outside to her Prius. Remains with her until she hangs a reckless right turn onto Pacific Coast Highway, narrowly avoids collision with an oncoming SUV, speeds off amid a chorus of horns.

Before Reed returns to the house, he gazes south, though he has no hope of spotting Detective Sean Binchy a hundred fifty yards away, stationed in an unmarked sedan in front of a shuttered pizza joint. A cheap laptop sits on the passenger seat, programmed to stream the same feed Aaron Fox has rigged into his computer. Getting the “inferior piece of crap” to cooperate has turned out to be the biggest hitch so far, with Aaron Fox cheerfully demeaning civil service “snitware” before finally succeeding. Even after the connection is made, transmission is spotty, sound obscured by the traffic on PCH.

Binchy received the laptop from Milo at six p.m., has already been watching the Vander house for an hour when we arrive at Gordie’s. No one has entered or exited and the garage door has been left open per Travis Huck’s instructions.

Huck stands in the sand.

Eight o’clock arrives. Passes.

Eight oh five, ten, twelve… we wonder if this will fizzle.

The garage door left open is a positive sign, and we cling to it.

Eight fifteen. Huck seems undisturbed. Then I remember he’s not wearing a watch.

It finally happens at eight sixteen, sudden and jarring as a heart attack.

Moe Reed is the first to notice. He points at the screen, nearly levitates from his seat.