MOSAICS: A Thriller (23 page)

“Nice of him to mention.”

“What d’you want me to say? You got your own problems.”

One of the wanted faces hanging from the wall sneered at me. “What problems?”

Ganz’s voice dropped. “Henkins, man. Don’t tell me she’s not all over you for taking her case.”

The sneer on the wanted face spread farther. “She’s not,” I said.

I heard a rattle, then a faked cough. When he came back, his voice sounded normal again. “Well, I did a little digging in the neighborhood closest to the water tank, inquired about old tenants, rumors, and such. Same old, same old. People with short memory minding their business. Most of it is projects, built in the ’eighties.”

“That would fit the bill,” I said. “About Henkins—”

“Problem is, people come and go. I got a list.”

“Good thinking. Have one of your blue suits go there and interview people. As for Henkins—”

“Working on that. It’s gonna take a while to go through the list. Did I mention life’s a bitch? Good night, Presius.”

He hung up and I never got a chance to ask him to clarify the Henkins statement.

I leaned back in my chair and chewed on a paperclip. I stared at my shoes, then at the sneering face on the wall. “What are you laughing at?”

The face stopped sneering and stared at the ceiling instead.

Things didn’t add up. They never do, really.

I called Satish. He’d already had his chowder, along with some degree of alcohol, I guessed from the silvery cheer in his voice. Jazz played in the background—Dizzy Gillespie’s
Salt Peanuts
.

“They pulled the patrol unit from the water tank scene,” I said.

“Not surprised. The news is out. Catching the guy at the scene now is like catching a fly with a shotgun.”

“Some people are good at that.”

“People can do the strangest things.”

The Jazz stopped. Clapping
sounds rushed through the phone then quieted down. I considered corpse wax and body dumps, fluorescent fibers, big pharma companies, shotguns and flies. I considered my own life, dangling over a cliff called genetic fate.

If there is such a thing as genetic fate
.

The Jazz resumed—
Wynton Marsalis, this time. Satish was saying something. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

“Go home, load my gun, and pack my camping gear.”

Silence, the clinking of silverware. And then: “Remember the boxer stance.”

“What for?”

“For the shotgun, Track. Good luck.” He closed the phone and the Jazz died.

TWENTY-ONE

____________

The last rim of light outlined the profile of the mountains. Colors blurred in a grainy black and white, and scents blossomed like night flowers. The air smelled of sagebrush and
toyon, of dry soil finally letting go of the heat of the day, of evening breeze tinged with a hint of humidity. It smelled of intimate things, wild scents that amplified and dispersed in the darkness, like melancholic tunes spilling down a deserted alley.

The noises were hushed, covered by the trilling of crickets and the hoot of a solitary owl.

The water tank looked like we’d left it. Despite my efforts to cover our tracks, the low trees still bore the signs of our visit. Green leaves were scattered all over on the ground. Freshly snapped branches drooped from where one of our men had stood the light boons. It had taken some effort to bring all our equipment up there and it still showed. I put down my backpack, got on my hands and knees and sniffed all around the corrugated metal. Will sniffed with me. Now that the reek of corpse wax had been unearthed, coyotes and raccoons had come to visit the place. The smell was still strong.

No unfamiliar smells, though
.

That was disappointing.

The Pain coiled around my ribs, sharp, intense, and short. Just a friendly reminder that it wasn’t gonna go anywhere without me. I let the wave wash off completely before moving again. Will came by my side and dropped something dirty and chewed and stinky on my face.

“Very thoughtful of you, pal, but I’m really not hun—”

I inhaled.
Bones
. I grasped it from my face and took a good look. It wasn’t human, that much I could tell. It looked like a femur, maybe a cat or a small dog. I crawled to the hole Will had dug and found more bones.

In the meantime, the mutt
had gone to work on a different site. “Will, wait! You’re turning the place into a gopher nest.”

I grappled with him and snatched another
cracked bone out of his mouth. Still small, still nothing larger than a cat. Brittle and dry, with no traces of tissue left. Maybe a couple of years old, give or take.

I pondered what to do about the animal bones Will had dug out, decided I wasn’t in the mood to keep them, so I buried them back and covered the holes.

Something clicked in my head.

The urge to follow the prey, stalk, chase, pound… kill and bury.

I know you, Byzantine Strangler
. I know you very well
.

I know you’ve been here, it doesn’t matter how long ago.

I called Will, left the tank and walked farther up, past the growth of low sagebrush rimming the hillside. Humming softly, the familiar expanse of downtown glowed in the distance, a flat constellation of intersecting boulevards and freeways.

I followed the lit-up Five with my eyes, then the Ten west, then tried to picture exactly where South L.A. was. The night breeze blew
in my face. It was mild and tepid and it smelled of wildflowers.

How hot was it in South Central right now?

I thought of Ricky Vargas, prowling, like me, but on different grounds, in a different jungle. On a different hunt.

I found a clearing
surrounded by shrubs, unrolled my sleeping bag, and set the backpack as a pillow. I’d brought one gun only, the revolver, which I unholstered and slid under the backpack.

Will sniffed and marked the whole area
before snuggling next to me.

Up in the sky Orion raised his bow. He pointed it to a lonely airplane that blinked its wake across the sky. Orion didn’t really care. He kept his bow high
toward Castor and Pollux and didn’t pay any attention to what us humans were doing down below.

I thought of headless babies and cats and dogs buried under the water cistern.

I thought of Detective Henkins, how she was supposed to be
all over me
about the Callahan case, according to Ganzberg. I thought of Lyons’s love affair, how he
still
loved his wife even though he regularly snuck into another woman’s bed. Lyons, MD and scientist, either a killer or the next victim immolated in the name of science. I thought of the arcane code at the back of the tiles, each tile a different color—a clue, a teaser, a challenge.

And then I thought of my own life, constantly balancing between reason and instinct, between what I let myself be and what I should
’ve been instead. Hanging between hunter and prey, angel and devil, life and death.

Your genes make you special, Ulysses.

You just told me my very special genes are going to kill me.

There’s a possibility, yes
.

Sometimes I wish doctors could legally lie.

I stared into the night sky, the low edges tainted by the yellow glow of the city. The rest was black vastness. Dapples of stars, like distant songs. They melted into Eva Cassidy’s voice singing
The Autumn Leaves
.

T
hanatos, god of Death.

Of all mortals, o
nly one tricked Death, King Sisyphus, who slyly chained Thanatos with his own shackles. He was punished to eternally roll a boulder up the incline of the Olympus. 

Eternity is the punishment for those who don’t die, Ulysses.

And so, you too, Ulysses, shall die
.

TWE
NTY-TWO

____________

Saturday, July 18

Coyotes h
owled, crickets chirped, owls hooted and cicadas sang. And I tossed and turned and didn’t sleep. The turd didn’t show up, either. I dozed off at the crack of dawn only to be awakened by the buzz of my cellphone a couple of hours later.

“Yello?”

Nothing.

I sat up, hoping the cell would get a better signal. “Hello?”

Still nothing. I didn’t recognize the number, so I hung up, lay down again and closed my eyes. The phone rang one more time.

“Yes?” I snapped.

“Detective?” A raucous voice, from far away. Tired, or maybe just straining through a bad connection. Spanish inflection. “It’s about Ricky.”

It took me a couple of synapses to connect the dots. I hadn’t slept much and I hadn’t had coffee either.
Ricky Vargas
. I was talking to his uncle, Vicente.

“What’d he do?”

“Nothin’… yet. He’s hanging out with those guys again. His
amigos.
” He put quotes around the words
amigos
and I heard the quotes through the phone. “Please help him drop those guys. You said you were his friend, you said—”

“Look. He’s not a minor any
more. He’s making his own choices.”

“They’re banging again. In the barrio. They don’t know what they’re doing, they—Help him, Detective. Please.
Me lo van a matar
.”

I promised him I’d do my best. He gave me the address where he was staying now, made me promise again, and then hung up.

I looked down onto the basin and the view was already hazy and hot. I sat there, contemplating for a minute longer.

My cell phone rang again. I didn’t even check the number.

“Yes?”

Nothing.

“Look, I can’t hear you, but I promise I’ll go talk to him, okay? I promised four times already!”

I waited for an answer. I heard a crackle and slow breathing. Something told me this wasn’t Vicente Vargas I was talking to.

“Your genes,” the voice said. Another long pause. “They’ll kill you.”

It took me a few moments to register the meaning. By then the voice had already hung up. Voices don’t have smells, damn it. I looked at the number, didn’t recognize it, dialed back. An electronic voice informed me that the number I’d called had been disconnected.

Damn quick, the bastard
.

I closed the cell,
pondered what to make of the last call and came up with nothing. So I packed up, went home, showered and had my usual couple of espressos. Satish called to let me know he was going to spend the weekend in San Diego for a family gathering to celebrate Karkidaka Vavu Bali. Satish was about as religious as Bill Maher, but when it came to Hindu festivals, he didn’t miss one.

I snorted. “Sat, didn’t you celebrate Vavu Bali last month?”

He chortled. “That’s because according to the Malayalam calendar the festival could’ve fallen on either the new moon in June or the one in July, and since we’re Indians and we prefer to celebrate rather than argue, we’re doing Vavu Bali twice this year.”

“At both new moons?”

“Yup.”

“Go to hell, Sat.”

*  *  *

I got out of my Charger and took a few minutes to let my body adjust to the sweltering temperature outside. It was late July and the thermo
meter was bound to hit the triple digits. The sky was yellow and the helicopters kept a close watch on the mountains—fire season was at the door. Perched on the hills, white houses sat in the sun like lazy cats. Skinny palm trees rolled up and down the sky, following the profile of the California landscape. Everything was fenced off: a vacant basketball court; a lime green house; a sandy condo.

And Satish is at the beach in San Diego
.

A few trash bins from the day before were still lined up along the sidewalk, slowly simmering reeks of leftover dinners, dirty diapers, and greasy food packaging. The streets had the noiseless emptiness of an afternoon siesta.

I walked to an apartment building painted in some new-age light blue: black railing, two stories, doors on the right side, car ports on the left side, and boxed hedges along the front, trimmed so evenly you could’ve stacked a deck of cards at the top. A loud TV shouted out of an open window, a phone conversation blabbered from somebody’s backyard.

I followed the driveway along a row of car porticos while olfactory trails from different cuisines—Asian, Mexican, Italian—clashed along the way. The communal
dumpster was tucked between a cinder wall bordering the next property and the side of the building. I donned latex gloves, scrunched my nose and squeezed behind it.

On Friday, January 30 a county pick-up truck came to pull out the apart
ment dumpster and found a body piled against the wall—Charlie Callahan’s body. Six months later, I didn’t have much hope to find anything. The place had been searched with a fine toothed comb by the SID field unit, washed off, then layered back with the weekly stinks of trash, gas exhaust, rain spatters. Charlie wasn’t rich, he didn’t have any priors and, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t on anybody’s radar. He had traces of meth in his pockets, but nothing turned up from his apartment or vehicle.

He was HIV positive
.

He was gay
.

Two paper bags stood in one corner
next to the dumpster. I took a peek inside. Trash—the usual lazy ass who came yesterday after the pick-up had already hauled the bin to the curbside and didn’t feel like walking to the street. I sniffed the edges of the bags and smelled something acidic. I poked a stick inside, moved a few cans, and glimpsed plastic bottles, bleach, a bottle of drain opener.

Acidic
drain opener.

A vehicle turned into the driveway and parked into one of the carports at the back.

I hooked the handle of the drain opener with the stick and pulled the bottle out. From its weight, I could tell it wasn’t completely empty. About a cup was still inside, I estimated.
A cup will do the trick
. I placed the bottle back, crouched by the wall, and followed the nooks and crannies of the cinder blocks, brushing my fingers along the edges.

I reenacted th
e events of January 30 in my head.

Charlie comes down on T
hursday night, wearing slippers. One flight down the stairs to toss out the trash, and then back home, or so he thinks.

Death sneaks from behind, wraps a ligature around his neck and pulls.

And then death watches him, as he collapses, his head scraping the cinder block bricks.

He faces
his assassin as he falls.

The assassin doesn’t touch him, just watches.

And maybe glimpses a paper trash bag left and has an idea.

Erase a face
.

Why?

Is this how the Byzantine Strangler got his first inspiration?

Somebody was
standing behind me. Low threat, no adrenaline, no gun oil, mild brand of aftershave, clean clothes—still smelled of laundry detergent. Dandruff shampoo, a whiff of gas exhaust still lingering in the air. Just got back from the gym or equivalent, showered, came home. A hint of sweat and rubber from a duffle bag with dirty clothes inside.

I slowly turned.

Handsome, wide hands, straight posture—the stance of a dancer. Not imposing, but not humble either. He smoothly ran a hand through his hair. It was a show, a man accustomed to the stage. The tilt of the head gave him away.

“Can I help you?” He licked his lips, making his smile glisten.

Smooth voice, too.

I smiled my cop smile. “How often do pipes clog around here?”

*  *  *

The espresso came in the right size cup. It had the right aroma, the right consistency and the right col
or. I poured sugar and it piled nicely on the surface and floated three seconds before flipping and sinking.

Not that I’m dogmatic about these things.

I stirred. He watched me stir.

I
downed it in two gulps, enjoyed, smacked my lips.

“How did
you like the espresso, Detective?”

“If I didn’t see you make it, I would’ve said I’d made it myself.”

David Labeaux’s smile smelled of Colgate and it was perfect, much too perfect. After a while I grew tired of it. His fingers fiddled with the tassel of a runner. He chuckled softly. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know you’re straight. I could tell right away. I won’t make a move on you. Plus—” He sighed, looked away. The tassel pirouetted in his wide fingers. “I’m building my life over, with somebody else. There’s only so much mourning you can do. At some point you need to move on.”

“I thought you and Charlie had split up.”

David cocked his head again, in that peculiar genderless way that’s neither masculine nor feminine. “We did. Last year. We stayed friends—after all, we were neighbors. And then, right after he got laid off, he came to see me one night, and—you know.”

No.
I didn’t know and I didn’t
want
to know.

He sat at the bar counter, opposite of me. Behind him, a window framed a cutout of acacia boughs wavering against a blue sky. Prisms of light brushed along champagne flutes and margarita glasses hanging upside down from ceiling racks.

“Don’t you want closure?” I asked, admiring the color coordinated walls, the sleek droplights, and the modern design furniture, the kind you glimpse leafing through a home décor magazine while waiting at the doctor’s office.

“What do you mean?”

A pool table stood askew between the bar counter and the entertainment center. There was a cue chalk on the far edge of the table. I plucked down one of the cues hanging from the wall and brought it to my nose. Nice quality wood. “Don’t you want to know who killed him?” I said, chalking the tip. I like the smell of chalk. It’s like a bass in a soul jazz tune. You hardly notice it, but if it’s not there you miss it.

He let go of the tassel brusquely, as if it burned. He ran a hand across his hair, less smoothly than he’d done before, then came around the countertop, dance-walking. He smelled elegant and refined, like his apartment. He smelled of a life of Martinis and strolls down Paseo Colorado, of expensive clothes and cocktail parties, of a life lived to be enjoyed except when
real
life happened, and things like HIV and murder came to shutter your dreams.

“We weren’t lovers in the literal
sense, you know. I mean, he’d tested positive, and I—” He swallowed. “Ghosts find a way to haunt you even when you don’t believe in them.”

He brushed a hand along the edge of the table, dragged the rack
toward the end rail and started filling it. I took aim and shot a couple of balls toward him.

He arranged the balls in the rack, then passed me the cue ball. “You break?”

“Sure.”

We
silently watched the balls scatter around the table, smacking against one another. I pocketed two.

“Good break,” he said, reaching for a cue. He studied the kitchen carefully. “The press didn’t treat him right. One of the most conservative journalists blew up the meth story. He
described Charlie as some uber-tattooed freak who liked to shoot up his veins.” He shook his head, sadly. “He wasn’t like that, you know?”

“Who was Charlie Callahan
?”

David st
ared vacantly at the kitchen. “A beautiful person. Young. Determined. Full of life.”

I didn’t pocket on my next shot, so I passed him the chalk. He handled it with care, his
genderless movements somewhat natural on his frame. We’re all chimeras in our own ways.

“Did things change after he got laid off?”

“He was devastated.” Strong shot, pocketed two. He ran his fingers behind his ear and chose a new angle. “He was scared he wasn’t going to find another job. And he needed a job desperately in order to afford the meds. That’s how I learned he was positive. He hadn’t told me before.”

“You learned
then
that he was positive?”

He leaned with one hip against the table and nodded. “He’d enrolled in this experimental vaccine trial, and I’d just heard in the news the preliminary results had been very promising
. He’d been careful, but sometimes—Anyway. You never think how vulnerable you are until it hits you.”

He looked me over with large, wet eyes.

“Do you happen to know if he ever saw a Dr. Liu while he was on the vaccine trial?”

He positioned the cue and hit the ball hard in the middle. A straight shot into the pocket. “No. Thompson’s the name I recall.” He frowned, head cocked to the side. “Funny.”