Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (32 page)

    
“And why
is that, baby?”

    
“’Cause
if you see the world through a lie, it’s not the real world. And pretty soon,
you don’t know what’s true anymore. You start to believe in the fake.”

    
Raszer
smiled and parked the cell phone against his shoulder. With his hands free, he
reached carefully for the dripping taco. He had it within three inches of his
lips again when a call-waiting signal bleeped in his ear.

    
“Hang on
a sec, honey,” he said, setting the taco back on the bench. “I’ve got another
call. It may be the police.”

    
“Okay,
Daddy.”

    
He
pressed the R
eceive
button, leaving a greasy imprint, and answered, “Raszer.”

    
“Raszer
. . . it’s Detective Aquino. Up in Azusa.”

    
“Oh,
Detective . . . good. Did you get my message? I wanted to tell—”

    
“Right,”
said Aquino. “I saw it on the news. How fast can you get up here?”

    
Raszer’s
mouth went dry. “Is it Emmett?”

    
“No. I
need an ID. Can you meet me at the Malthus Mortuary on Foothill?”

    
“Who’s
dead?” said Raszer. “Hang on . . . I’ve got my daughter on the other line.”

    
“I’ll
see you there,” said Aquino, and clicked off, leaving Raszer in the dark.

    
“Brigit,
honey,” he said, knowing how oddly disconnected he must sound to her. “I guess
I’ve gotta go.”

    
“What’s
wrong, Daddy?” she asked. “Now you sound even weirder.”

    
“Everything’s
okay, sweetheart,” he said, though he knew she would not be reassured until she
heard his voice in the familiar register again. “It’s just work.”

    
“Be
careful, Daddy,” she said. “Please.”

    
“I
will,” he said. “I promise. Bye, baby.”

    
He
flipped the phone shut and muttered, “Damn,” under his breath. He hated leaving
her with worries, and hated mortuaries almost as much.
Whose corpse could it be
? He took one last look at the taco. Its
corner had drooped over the edge of the bench, leaking chile verde sauce onto
the ground. His mouth watered. He reached for it, hoping for one bite before
leaving. The phone rang again. “Damn!” he repeated.

    
“Raszer,
it’s Borges,” said the Lieutenant. “I got your page. Sorry for the delay. I’ve
got federal agents crawling all over me. Have you got the girl?”

    
“I’m the
one who’s sorry, Luis,” Raszer replied. “They got to her first.”

    
“Who got
to her?”

    
“The bad
guys. In the limo. I don’t know how, but they caught her just as she was
leaving the building. I couldn’t get around the block fast enough. Goddamn
one-way street. I tailed them as far as a fleet-service lot in Boyle Heights,
but they had a second car waiting. She’s gone . . . at least for now.”

    
Raszer
left his dinner on the bench and made for his car, stomach rumbling.

    
“This
doesn’t sound right,” said Borges. “She had to be in on it. How else could they
get the timing so right?”

    
Raszer
pulled open the car door, dropped into the worn leather bucket, and started the
car. “Right . . . or else they had an inside man.”

    
“What’s
that mystic eye of yours tell you, Raszer? Is she square?”

    
Raszer
threaded his way up Cesar Chavez Avenue and ramped onto the I-5 North, headed
for the Pasadena Freeway. “I wouldn’t call her square.”

    
“What
about the fleet service. Did you get anything on the car?”

    
“Not on
the pickup car,” said Raszer. “Except that it was another Lincoln. But on the
drop-off, yeah. It had phony diplomatic plates and was rented by something
called Southeastern Supply Corp., Sofia, Bulgaria. Renter was an ‘A. Bacus.’
Honduran license. You’re going to want to talk to the fleet manager, Estevez.
Greasy character.”

    
“Estevez,”
Borges repeated. “I know him. Everybody in Boyle Heights knows him.
Greasy
doesn’t begin to describe what
he’s into. Spell the name of the renter . . . ”

    
“What?”

    
“A.
Bacus,” said Borges. “Spell it out.”

    
“A-b-a-c-u-s.”

    
“Abacus,”
said Borges.

    
“Christ,”
said Raszer. “I need to get my blood sugar back up.”

    
He shot
through the tunnel and onto Highway 2 North, going eighty-five.

    
“And
some sleep,” Borges said. “I’m gonna need your help with Scotty. We may not
have him long. The feds want custody. They’re already singing ‘national
security.’ You know, when they put the FBI and the CIA under the same tent, I
thought it was a good idea. It just turned out to be a better way to keep us
all out of the circus.”

    
“I
phoned Scotty’s parents,” said Raszer. “Did you hear from them?”

    
“Yeah.
They’ll be here tomorrow. The mother . . . she was pretty upset, no?”

    
“Oh,
yeah,” said Raszer. “How do you make sense of shit like this? Listen . . . ”
Raszer took a cigarette from his pack and parked it between his lips. “If you
get some time with Scotty before they take him away, see if you can find out
any more about how these guys got to him. He was out there playing this crazy
game, with no compass, no direction home. He was looking for God—”

    
“And
found the Devil instead,” said Borges.

    
“Right,”
said Raszer. “Or the Devil found him.”

    
Raszer
flipped off the phone and tossed it on the passenger seat. He lit the cigarette
and sped east on the Foothill Freeway. As he searched his mental photo files,
he realized—with a perverse sense of relief—there was probably only one body
anonymous enough to require his identification.

“That’s him,” Raszer said with a nod. “The
old-timer up at the Follows Camp said his name was
J.Z.
 
J.Z. what, I couldn’t
tell you.”

    
“John
Zimmerman,” said Detective Aquino. “We actually found an old unemployment comp
stub in his underwear—which he obviously hadn’t changed for a while. It was his
only ID. He probably kept it in case he forgot who he was. He must’ve been
living up there, in that shed, for almost forty years. How does a man—”

    
“I don’t
know,” said Raszer, scrolling his eyes across the old squatter’s pale, wasted
form. The skin stretched over his rib cage was so thin that there hardly seemed
to be blood in it. “Jesus, there wasn’t much of him, was there, under all those
rags?”

    
“Ninety-one
pounds naked,” said Aquino. “The clothes on his back weighed almost as much. He
had to have been living off his own muscle tissue. When there wasn’t any more
to metabolize, he just stopped living.” The detective cocked his chin in the
direction of a tall, lab-coated man in the corner whose hair was styled in a
monk’s tonsure. “Isn’t that right, Isadore?”

    
“Yes,”
said the man. “His stomach was empty. He was consuming himself.”

    
Raszer
peered into the shadows. He hadn’t even noticed the mortician on entering, but
now he was impossible to miss. He gave a nod.

    
“Isadore
handles all my autopsies,” said Aquino. “He does better bodywork than all the
guys in L.A., only the funeral trade pays better than the county.”

    
“I guess
he’s a good man to know, then,” said Raszer. “Where’d you find him?”

    
“Isadore?”

    
“No,”
Raszer said with a chuckle, then indicated the corpse.

    
“In the
shed. About three o’clock this afternoon. God, what a smell. I got to
thinking—after you ran off—about that little blue sack you brought me last
night. That if the old guy was a scavenger, he might have picked up something
the killers left behind. Or been able to give me something, anything, to
corroborate Emmett’s story.”

    
Raszer
aimed an index finger at J.Z.’s thin blue line of a mouth. The upper lip had already
molded itself against the toothless gums behind. “He wasn’t about to say much.
Our killers made sure of that.”

    
“Yeah,”
Aquino said under his breath. “Mostly I just wanted to see for myself. I don’t
know how we missed him the first time. We went through those sheds.”

    
“He
probably cleared out when he saw you coming. Or maybe the killers scared him
into the woods. I’d find a cave to hide in if somebody cut out my tongue.”
Raszer considered his next words. “The man who was killed today in Silver
Lake—he was the DJ at the rave that night. I found one of his business cards up
at the Coronado . . . ”

    
“You’re
finding all sorts of things we missed,” said Aquino, rubbing the black stubble
on his chin. “Maybe you are a ‘psychic detective.’”

    
“I got
lucky,” Raszer said. “I pick a thread and follow it. Sometimes it gets pretty
tangled, but eventually—”

    
“You
find your way.”

    
“Right.
But anyhow, that’s not my point.”

    
“What’s
your point?”

    
“The DJ
. . . they cut out his tongue, too. Just for show.”

    
“So you
think it’s some kind of autograph?”

    
“Maybe,”
said Raszer. “From what I’ve been able to learn, these guys practice their own
version of omerta. That’s probably how they manage to blend in—to come and go
without a trace. What I picture is four guys who look like chauffeurs.
Mannequins. Identical black suits. Identical haircuts. And they go from one
rented Lincoln Town Car to another, never saying a word more than is absolutely
necessary.” He shot a glance at the body, then one at the mortician, and then
asked Aquino, “Can we get out of here?”

    
“Sure,”
said the cop. “Let’s do that. Have you eaten?”

    
“Only my
own muscle tissue,” said Raszer.

    
At that
moment, Aquino’s young deputy strode in holding a dry cleaner’s garment bag.
His heels clicked on the tiled floor. The echo made the place feel colder.

    
“Just in
time,” said Aquino, taking the bag and discharging the deputy. “The old guy was
wearing this when he died. Looked pretty stylish for a vagrant. I thought you
might like to have it back.”

    
“My
duster?” said Raszer.

    
“Didn’t
think you’d see it again, did you?” Aquino replied, handing Raszer the garment
bag. “We had it cleaned for you. Super rush job. The smell should be out of
it.”

    
“Let’s
hope,” said Raszer.

    
“We’re
going to drop in unexpectedly on the Lee family. Henry’s mom. Sometimes that’s
best. Then I’ll take you over to the Falls for a steak, and you can tell me all
about what happened in the city today.”

    
“I’ll
tell you whatever I can, Detective. A steak buys a lot from a hungry man.”

Aquino made a U-turn on the dark side street and
grunted. “I always miss this turn at night. The Lees are on the one street that
doesn’t have streetlights. I think they like it that way. As you’re about to
see, they don’t welcome visitors.”

    
“Are
they still welcome down at the Kingdom Hall?” Raszer asked.

    
“Even
more since that night,” Aquino replied. “It was like the church threw a tent
over the house. Silas Endicott kept them in the flock. Paid regular visits. My
guess is, he kept hoping he’d learn something about how Katy went so wrong.”

    
“Because
Henry and Katy were close?”

    
“Because
Henry and
Ruthie
—Katy’s sister—were
close. And two summers ago, Katy decided she wanted to be Ruthie. I don’t think
Silas could make sense of that. He’d given up on Ruthie; she was her mother’s girl.
But Katy, she was
his
.”

    
Aquino turned onto a cul-de-sac that backed up to
the San Gabriel’s runoff basin and a chain-link fence bearing an ancient sign
from the Department of Water Power that read: T
respassers
W
ill
B
e
V
iolated
.