The Crime Writer (19 page)

“H
i, Big Brother.”

“Hello, Junior,” I said for the fifteenth time.

“You mind if I turn on the radio, Big Brother?”

I finally caved. “Would you stop calling me that?”

Clapping, Junior fell against my passenger door, weak with laughter. He wore a sweatshirt with the hood raised over his baseball cap in case we needed to pull over and rob a 7-Eleven.

“Just look at the damn printouts before we get to court.”

I’d zipped home after lunch at Chic’s to feed Xena scrambled eggs with diced bell peppers. She’d shown her appreciation by crapping on my hearth. Once I’d cleaned up after her, I’d hopped on the Internet and printed out pictures of Volvo wagons through the years. Junior’s attention was a scarce commodity, but we’d already determined that what he’d seen was clearly not one of the recent not-your-mama’s Volvos. He couldn’t distinguish between the 200s, the 700s, and the 800s, but he was pretty sure it hadn’t been a 900 series, with the rounded corners, introduced in ’91. Though it spanned too many years to be particularly helpful, the range of models he liked included Morton Frankel’s 760.

“I tole you, homes, all this suburban shit look the same to me. Now, if it had some
rims
”—bouncing in his seat—“yeah, boy, then I tell you who, what, where, when, and
why.
”

“And you’re sure the cops haven’t called you yet?”

“Hayell yeah, I’m sure. You think Ms. Caroline gonna lose the message if the LAPD come callin’ for my ass?”

She hadn’t been there when I’d picked him up. “Will she be back when I drop you?” After he shrugged, I cleared my throat. “She’s…Do you know what happened to her? Her face, I mean?”

“What happened to yours?”

Fair enough.

“Course I know.” Junior studied me with his smooth brown eyes. “Oh, homes. Oh,
homes
!” Now with the elbows-out dance bump. “Big Brother and Ms. Caroline sittin’ in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage—”

I screeched into a parking space and hopped out before the baby carriage’s arrival. We were, thankfully, on time, but Judge Celemin wasn’t. Or at least he pretended to be running late, his occasional glances an indication that he was taking pleasure in making me and Junior wait on the uncomfortable bench in the rear of the courthouse.

I checked my watch again—2:15. Forty-five minutes to quittin’ time for Morton Frankel. I assumed he’d come home for a post-work shower, and I wanted to be parked by his apartment to see what he drove up in.

The judge bumped a few more hearings ahead of ours and then dragged through some paperwork. By the time he called Junior up—the public defender materializing as though he’d been summoned electronically—and tacked three more months onto his probation, it was ten till.

I hurried Junior back to the car. He seemed pleased about the ruling. “I don’t
never
want to leave Ms. Caroline. She the
shiznit.
” He eyed me. “Ain’t she?”

Frankel’s place was close to the courthouse. I wouldn’t have time to take Junior back and get there in time. I drove quickly, letting Junior distract himself by working my radio like a video game. The ploy only lasted so long.

“Where we going?”

“I’m having you neutered.” I slowed in front of a run-down three-story complex on a street spotted with fabric stores and taquerías. Five black teenagers squatted on the strip of brown lawn next door, hugging their knees and rolling dice. In the brief parking lot, the space corresponding to Frankel’s apartment number was empty. I cruised the neighboring blocks looking for a Volvo.

Not the ride of choice in Lincoln Heights.

At ten past I cruised up to the curb opposite the complex and threw a few quarters into the meter. The air smelled of car exhaust and boiling hot dogs from the cart parked up the sidewalk beside a bus stop. I was concerned that the teenagers might spot us after a while, but they seemed engrossed in their game.

“This that guy’s pad, ain’t it, homes?”

A pickup truck rolled to the front of the complex. Morton Frankel tapped the driver—a worker I recognized from the yard—on the shoulder and climbed out. Junior noted my rigid posture but didn’t say anything. Frankel walked up the unenclosed staircase, reappearing on the second floor. He swung open his door, threw his jacket and lunch pail inside, and headed back down. Reaching ground level, he started walking toward us.

Before my heart rate could get up a good head of steam, Frankel cut left up the street. Junior blew out his breath. I reminded myself that fourteen-year-olds, no matter how nefarious, also get scared. Stalking a rapist with my juvenile delinquent, I guessed, would knock me from contention for Big Brother of the Year.

Once Frankel was up the block, I pulled out after him.

“Where’s his fucking car?”

“That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe he’s taking the bus.”

“This L.A., homes. Nobody take the bus.”

“Not everybody has a Huffy.”

“Stay further back, homes. Don’t you watch no
T.J. Hooker
?”

“I was watching
T.J. Hooker
before you boosted your first car.”

“
Boosted
? The word, Grampa, is ‘jacked.’”

And so on.

We followed Frankel another few blocks before he turned in to a body shop. I parked across the street by a rental-car lot—plenty of vehicles for the Guiltmobile to blend into. Mort disappeared into the office, a prefab shack. He emerged a few seconds later, rolled a cigarette, and smoked it.

One of the garage doors slid up, and out coasted a brown Volvo wagon.

For an older car, it was in great condition. A few cracks in the paint, but perfectly clean. Clearly Frankel took a lot of pride in his 760. Or he was taking care to keep it free of evidence.

A mechanic with arm-sleeve tattoos hopped out, and Mort gave him a handshake and a shoulder bump. You keep an old car looking that good, you’d better be friends with your mechanic. The guy walked Mort to the right front wheel well and ran his hand over the perfect curve. Mort followed suit, then nodded, impressed with the work.

Why fix the dent? Because he loved his car? Because he wanted to eliminate a potential identifier? Because he’d dented it dragging Kasey Broach’s corpse inside?

He pulled a checkbook from his back pocket, leaned over the hood, and signed.

With his left hand.

A hundred eighty-five pounds, left-handed, diabolical gleam in the eyes. Just like me, but with a better gleam.

I stared at his close-cropped brown hair.

I just need one strand. Like you took from me.

I drove back and reclaimed my old spot across the street from the complex. A few minutes later, Mort pulled in to his parking space, slid a Club security bar onto the steering wheel, cranked the window down a few turns, and disappeared into his apartment.

I slapped Junior’s knee. “I gotta get you back.”

“Thass it? Homes, you gots to get your
evidence.
You gots to break in to the car, see what you can find.”

That was my plan, but I wasn’t about to tell Junior. “If I find anything, the cops can claim I planted it to get my own ass off the hook.”

“Thass why you need me. I’m a
witness.
Plus, you can’t argue with no
hair.
”

Hearing my own thinking spoken back to me by a fourteen-year-old was a powerful indication that I needed more sleep. “Why’d he leave the window down?”

“He don’t keep nuthin’ worth nuthin’ in there, and he don’t want no one to break a window to find that out. And it ain’t worth cutting through a Club to steal no old-ass Volvo. Now, go check the headrest.”

“Thanks, but no.”

“
No?
You gots to have ethics, homes.”

“Ethics? Breaking in to his car would show I have ethics?”

“Yeah. Like I won’t tag no trees or Lutheran churches.
Ethics.
You got a stone-cold killer out there, and you the only one knows who, and you too bitch-ass to pluck a hair off the headrest?”

“What if the cops come?”

Junior checked his watch. “It’s shift-change time at the Hollenbeck Station. Streets are clear of cops.”

“How would you know that?” I waved him off. “Never mind. I’m an idiot.” I stared nervously at the black teenagers still playing dice on the lawn a few feet from the parking lot. “Those guys just watched him pull up. They’ll know I’m not the owner.”

“What would you do in one-a your books?”

“Create a diversion.”

He snickered. “Like light a fire?”

“No. Something clever.”

“Hows about this?” Before I could stop him, Junior climbed out of the Highlander and onto the roof. I scrambled out, looked up to see him cupping his hands around his mouth.
“Yo! Why’s there so many niggers up in here?”

He leapt from the roof, seeming to bounce on the sidewalk, and took off up the street in a sprint. I leaned back against my car as the five young black men blew past me in angry pursuit.

Diversion. Clever. Right.

I stole across the street to the parking lot, keeping a nervous eye out to see if the commotion would draw Frankel from his apartment. Ducking through the Volvo’s open window, I scoured the headrest. Not a single hair. The interior looked freshly vacuumed. Of course—they’d given it a cleaning at the body shop. I reached down and popped the trunk, taking a deep breath before lifting it open.

No blood puddles. No remnants of plastic drop cloth. No stainless-steel boning knife. The worn carpet bore lines from the industrial vacuum.

I slammed the trunk and turned for my car when I looked up and saw Mort filling his doorway, staring at me over the second-floor railing. I jerked back, startled, the soles of my sneakers scraping asphalt.

Whether he’d caught a clear look at my face or seen me at his open trunk, I couldn’t tell. He came off his step, moving toward the stairs. I walked a few paces up the sidewalk away from him as if continuing on course, pretending to talk on the cell phone. The adrenaline surge left my senses heightened. I listened for his approach, waited to feel the vibration of his charging footsteps rising from the sidewalk. I sensed him behind, shadowing me maybe twenty yards back.

You’re in the real world now. Watch that you don’t get yourself killed.

When I risked a glance back, he’d turned off down another street. Keeping a full block between us, I followed. He got to the corner and paused, looking in the window of a clothing store. He took a pen from a slit by his breast, tugged something from his back pocket, and jotted on it. I crossed the street so I could make out the window display while keeping my reflection out of view. Mannequins draped with sequined dresses and cheap suits, a few broken down into inhuman segments and left floating in a mound of uncut fabric to the side. Mort gazed back up through the window, transfixed. A few of the mannequins were bare-chested or naked, stiff and pale like the dead. Was he admiring the smooth, waxy skin?

Whatever he was holding slipped from his hands. He took a step back, still admiring the contorted human forms, then vanished around the corner.

I waited a few minutes before approaching. He’d dropped a matchbook, the creased cover sporting a skull and bones. I crouched, picked it up, thumbed up the flap.

Jagged writing on the underside.

I SEE YOU.

I rose sharply, breath firing in my throat. A movement in the window snared my attention. Standing among the posed plastic bodies, his leering face a few inches from the glass, was Morton Frankel.

M
ort pulled back from the window, knocking aside a mannequin, and jumped off the display ledge, running for the door. I bolted.

Dodging honking cars, I sprinted across the street, tangling up with a pissed-off biker on the far side. Mort was at the curb, waiting for a break in traffic. I yanked my cuff free from the bike chain and ran up the street. A bus was just starting to pull out from a stop. I drew beside it, banging the side and yelling. It stopped with an angry hiss, rear doors yawning. Mort hurdled the biker and kept coming.

Afternoon commuters overloaded the bus. I shoved through them, tripping over paper bags and knees, waiting to hear the doors suck closed, but they held open on a lethargically timed delay. Horns bleated; the bus was nosed out into the slow lane.

I stumbled up to the front, the bus driver now joining the protests. Through five or six arms dangling from straps, I saw the rear doors begin to slide closed.

A thick hand snaked into the gap, blocking the rubber bumpers.

As Mort pried the rear doors apart, the front ones opened in unison.

I ducked down, slid off the front stairs on my ass, spitting out onto the curb in time to see Mort’s boot vanish up into the bus. The doors snapped shut with a pneumatic wheeze, and the bus veered out into a stream of traffic.

Standing, I dusted myself off. The bus passed, Mort’s face a blur through the smudged side window. He caught sight of me and moved to the rear, bucking like a dog in shallow water. He cleared the people on the back bench as if parting curtains, leaning forward menacingly, breath fogging the glass.

I stepped out into the now-empty lane, meeting his gaze as the bus accelerated through the intersection.

His lips moved.
I see you.

“I see you, too,” I said.

As I jogged back to the Highlander, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

Junior said, “I’m at the corner of Daly and Main. Gas station.”

I was more relieved than I would have thought possible.

“How’d you get this number?”

“Ms. Caroline.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“That you leave me to get chased by a buncha black guys so you could break into a murderer’s Volvo.” He laughed. “Juss kidding, homes. I say I wandered off to get me some eats.”

I hopped into my car and headed to pick him up. He’d managed to run nearly three miles. I found him sitting on the concrete wall by the bathrooms, smoking a cigarette. He was new to the game, still working on a cool-looking exhale. I parked and walked over. I debated telling him how worried I’d been, but it would have been awkward for us both.

“What happen?” he asked.

I told him.

“Big Brother got some
moves.
” He held up his hand, and we high-fived. “Even if he is old.”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

“Like I said.” He tapped the pack of Marlboro Reds against the heel of his hand awkwardly, a trick he’d probably just picked up.

“When I was a kid, my grandfather caught me smoking and made me finish the whole pack,” I said. “Every last one. I got so sick I never smoked again.”

“Yeah? Any other a’ them folk tales you got to tell?”

“No. But why don’t you give it a go?”

He shrugged. “’ Kay.” He teased out another cigarette and held it up ceremonially before lighting it. He went after it quick and hard, the cherry lurching several millimeters a pull. He finished, lit the next off the butt.

After he’d smoked two more, I asked, “How do you feel?”

“Great.”

The next three cigarettes he seemed to enjoy even more.

“How about now?”

“Million bucks.”

By the ninth he’d mastered the French inhale. By the thirteenth he was blowing smoke rings. He crushed the fifteenth on the wall between his knees, paused to stretch his arms happily to the sky, then lit up another.

I climbed up on the wall, sat next to him.

“Bum one off you?” I asked.

Caroline looked me in the eye as if she were sizing up an opposing boxer. Her index finger moved from her chest to mine. “There’s no chemistry here.”

“It’s just dinner,” I said.

She crossed the shag rug and settled behind her desk, as if she felt better with a large object between us.

I peered at the photographs on the bookshelves. Group-home kids of all ethnicities lined up for the Matterhorn, like a carefully cast Disney brochure photo. A crew of counselors around a campfire, kids sprawled in the foreground and across laps. On the side of the desk, there was a picture of Caroline laughing, arm around a black kid in his early teens. She was younger, her face unmarred yet by injury, and her beauty was radiant. I pointed at the picture. “Who’s that?”

She slammed the photo flat and slid it into a drawer.

I said, “I meant the boy.”

She flushed. Her collar fluttered from the pivoting fan. With quiet dignity she reached back into the drawer, removed the picture, and propped it up again. “That was J.C. I had a lot of jobs before this one.”

I checked my watch. “I called Kasey Broach’s apartment manager this morning. If his answering machine is to be believed, he’s available only from six to six-thirty. To implement the Caroline Raine home-visit rule, I’ve got to get moving. I’d love you to take up my invitation to dinner tonight, but your deliberation is getting unflattering, and I’m fragile.”

Her lips twitched—not quite a smile. “Don’t invite me to dinner because you think it’s doing me some favor.” She stared at me evenly. “I’m just fine on my own.”

“Yeah, you seem great—the picture of well-adjusted, just like me. That’s why I think you and I could use each other.” I walked over, paused by the door. “Eight o’ clock?”

She gave me a faint nod.

The counselor with the bitten-down fingernails stood just outside in the hall, pretending to tidy up the telephone table.

She looked up as I passed. “You hurt her, I’ll kick your ass.”

“I hurt her,” I said, “I’ll help you.”