the Forgotten Man (2005) (3 page)

"Sure, Pardy, take the swabs. I haven't killed anyone this week."

O'Loughlin checked his watch as if he suspected this was going to be a waste of time, but here we were and there was the dead man. Diaz called over a criminalist, and had me sign a waiver stating I knew my rights and was cooperating without coercion. The criminalist rubbed two cloth swabs over my left and right hands, then dropped each into its own glass tube. While the criminalist worked, I gave Pardy Joe Pike's name and number to confirm the call, then asked O'Loughlin if they made the murder for a botched robbery. He checked his watch again as if answering me was just another waste of time.

"We don't make it for anything right now. We're six blocks from Skid Row, Cole. We have more murders down here than any other part of the city. These people will kill each other over six cents or a blow job, and every goddamned murder clears the same. He sure as hell wasn't carrying government secrets."

No, he was carrying news stories about me.

"Sounds like you've got it figured out."

"If you'd seen as many killings down here as me, you'd have it figured, too."

O'Loughlin suddenly realized he was talking too much and seemed embarrassed.

"If we think of anything else to ask you, we'll follow up. Thanks for your cooperation."

"Sure."

He glanced at Diaz.

"Kelly, you good with letting Jeff have the lead on this? It'll be a good learning experience."

"Fine by me."

"You good with that, Jeff?"

"You bet. I'm on it."

Pardy turned away to call over the coroner's people, and O'Loughlin went with him. Two morgue techs broke out a gurney and began setting it up. I studied the body again. His clothes were worn but clean, and his face wasn't burned dark like the people who live on the streets. When I glanced up at Diaz, she was staring at him, too.

"He doesn't look homeless."

"He's probably fresh out of detention. That's good news for us; his prints will be in the system."

The alley was a long block between commercial storefronts and an abandoned hotel. The letters from the old neon HOTEL sign loomed over the dark street. I could read the hotel's faded name painted on the bricks-Hotel Farnham. But without the police lights, it would have been impossible to read. The darkness bothered me. The body was a good sixty feet from the near street, so he either took a shortcut he knew well or came with someone else. It would have been scary to come this way alone.

"It was you who found him?"

"I was over on Grand when I heard the shot-one cap. I ran past at first, but I heard him flopping around in here and there he was. I tried to get a handle on the bleeding, but it was too much. It was awful, man ... Jesus."

She raised her hands like she was trying to get them out of the blood, and I saw they were shaking. The clothes she wore were probably spares from another cop's trunk. She had probably changed out of her bloody clothes in the ambulance and washed with the alcohol. She probably wanted to throw away her blood-soaked clothes, but she was a cop with a cop's pay so she would wash them herself when she got home, then have them dry-cleaned and hope the blood came out. Diaz turned away. The coroner techs had their gurney up, and were pulling on latex gloves.

I said, "No wallet?"

"No, they got it. All he had were the clippings, a nickel, and two pennies."

"No keys?"

She suddenly sighed, and seemed anxious and tired.

"Nothing. Look, you can take off, Cole. I want to finish up and get home to bed. It's been a long night."

I didn't move.

"He mentioned me by name?"

"That's right."

"What did he say?"

"I don't remember exactly, something about trying to find you, but I was asking what happened-I was asking about the shooter. He said he had to find his son. He said he had come all this way to find his boy, and he never met you, but he wanted to make up the lost years. I asked him who, and he told me your name. Maybe that isn't exactly what he said, but it was something like that."

She glanced at me again, then looked back at his body.

"Listen, Cole, I've arrested people who thought they were from Mars. I've busted people who thought they were on Mars. You heard O'Loughlin-we got bums, junkies, drunks, crackheads, schizophrenics, you name it, down here. You don't know what kind of mental illness this guy had."

"But you still have to clear me."

"If you were home all night, don't worry about it. He'll be in the system. I'll let you know when the CI pulls a name."

I turned away from the body and saw Pardy staring at me. His pinched face looked intent.

"It's not necessary, Diaz. Don't bother."

"You sure? I don't mind."

"I'm sure."

"Okay, well, whatever; your call."

I started back to my car, but she stopped me.

"Hey, Cole?"

"What?"

"I read the articles. That was some hairy stuff, man, what you did saving that boy. Congratulations."

I walked away without answering, but stopped again when I reached the yellow tape. Diaz had joined O'Loughlin and Pardy as the coroner's people bagged the body.

"Diaz."

She and Pardy both turned. Rigor had frozen the corpse. The techs leaned hard on the arms to fold them into the bag. A hand reached out from the dark blue plastic like it was pointing at me. They pushed it inside and pulled the zipper.

"When you get the ID, let me know."

I left them to finish their job.

Chapter 3

E arly in the fall, three men stole my girlfriend's only son, Ben Chenier. An ex-LAPD officer named Joe Pike and I saved the boy, but many people died, including the three kidnappers. Bad enough, but those three men had been hired by Ben's own father and were not your garden-variety criminals-they were professional mercenaries wanted under the International War Crimes Act. What with all the bodies, Joe and I faced felony charges, but the governments of Sierra Leone and Colombia interceded along with-get this-the United Nations. The lurid nature of a father contracting the abduction of his own child fed a wildfire of sensationalist journalism, but even before the worst of it, Lucy Chenier concluded that life with yours truly was not worth the risk, so she took her son and went home. She was right to leave. Being with me wasn't worth a four A. M. phone call saying a murdered stranger claimed to be the father I never knew. I drove back to my house through a light rain, pretending my life was normal. When I reached home, I made scrambled-egg burritos, then turned on the early news. The lead story reported that the Red Light Assassin had struck again. The RLA had been killing traffic cameras for several weeks, and the camera death toll was now up to twelve, each camera snipered dead-center through the lens with a .22-caliber pellet gun. Web sites devoted to the Red Light Assassin had been set up; T-shirts bearing slogans like FREE THE RED LIGHT ASSASSIN sold on every freeway off-ramp; and all of it had come about because the city had installed traffic cameras to ticket rush-hour motorists who slid through the red. Which, in L. A.'s killer traffic, meant everyone. The news anchor tried to keep a straight face, but her co-anchor and the weather guy goofed on the rising "body count," and had themselves in spasms. No mention was made of the nameless man found murdered in a downtown alley. Murdered people were common; murdered cameras were news.

I turned off the television, then went out onto my deck, feeling listless and unfocused. The rain had shriveled to a heavy mist and the sky was beginning to lighten. Later, homicide detectives would be asking my neighbors if they had seen me entering or leaving my house last night. Pardy would probably flash a picture of the dead man, and ask if anyone had seen him in the area, and my neighbors would be left wondering what I had done. I thought I should call to warn them, but calling would look bad so I let it go. Mostly, I wanted to call Lucy, but I had wanted to call her every day since she left, so that wasn't new. I let that one go, too, and watched as the canyon slowly filled with light.

People who lived on the hillsides would soon emerge from their homes to inspect the slopes, searching for cracks and bulges. The world grew unstable when rain fell in Los Angeles. Soil held firm only moments before it could flow without warning like lava, sweeping away cars and houses like toys. The earth lost its certainty, and anchors failed.

A black cat hopped onto the deck by the corner of my house. He froze when he saw someone on the deck, all angry yellow eyes, but his fury passed when he recognized me.

I said, "Yes, I am standing in the rain."

He said, "Omp."

He walked along the side of the house keeping as far from the mist as he could, slipped into the dry warmth of the house, then licked his penis. Cats will do that. He probably thought I was stupid.

When my mother was twenty-two years old she disappeared for three weeks. She disappeared often, walking away without telling anyone where she was going, but always came back, and that time she came back pregnant with me. My mother never described my father in any meaningful way, and may not have known his name. I did not reveal these things to the reporters who mobbed me for interviews after the events with Ben Chenier, but somehow the information found its way into their stories. I regretted not having read the clippings Diaz found in the alley. One might have mentioned the situation with my father, which could have inspired the old man to fabricate his fantasy. That was probably it and I should probably forget it, but I wondered if he had tried to contact me. When I stopped going to my office, I turned off my answering machine and tossed the mail, but that was weeks ago. If the dead man had written to me since then, his letter might be waiting in my office.

I went inside, put out fresh food for the cat, then drove down through the canyon to the little office I keep on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Mail was scattered inside the door where the postman drops it through the slot. I gathered it together, put on a pot of coffee, then turned on my message machine. The Elvis Cole Detective Agency was officially back in business. Of course, since I had ignored everything offered to me for the past six weeks I didn't exactly have something to do.

I went through the mail. A lot of it was bills and junk, but seven pieces were what I thought of as fan mail: a handwritten marriage proposal from someone named Didi, four letters congratulating me for bringing three mass murderers to justice, an anonymous nude photo of a young man holding his penis, and a letter from someone named Loyal Anselmo who described Pike and me as "dangerous vigilantes no better than the monsters you murdered." Some people are never happy.

I kept four of the letters with the intention of sending thank-you notes and dumped the others. After thinking about it, I pulled Anselmo's letter from the trash and put it into a file I kept for death threats and lunatics. If someone murdered me in my sleep I wanted the cops to have clues.

I poured a cup of coffee and felt disappointed that nothing had led back to the dead man. It was possible he had written me and I had tossed his letter, but I could never know that. He could have called when my machine was turned off, but I would never know that, either.

I was trying to figure out a new avenue of detection when the phone rang.

"Elvis Cole Detective Agency. Back on your case, and just in time."

"It's me, Diaz. You at your office, or is this call being forwarded? I already tried your house."

"I'm at the office. Did you get an ID?"

"I'm sorry, we didn't. I thought for sure this dude would be in the system, but he's not. The coroner investigator ran him through the Live Scan as soon as they got to the morgue, but nothing came up."

The Live Scan was an inkless fingerprinting process that digitized fingerprints, and instantly compared them with files at the California Department of Justice in Sacramento. If nothing came up, then he had never served time or been arrested in California.

"Okay. What happens next?"

"Sacramento will roll the prints through NLETS. We still have a shot with the Feds, but it could take a few days. You said you got a lot of mail and calls you didn't answer-"

"I came in to check, Diaz. There's nothing. He could have sent something earlier, but I don't have anything now. I just went through the mail."

"I hate to ask this but I'm going to ask anyway. I'm going over to the morgue. Would you meet me there?"

"I thought Pardy had the case."

"Pardy does, and he's back from the medical examiner. He says the deceased is totally covered with these insane tattoos. I know you didn't recognize him, but maybe something in the ink will ring a bell."

I felt a little dig of anger, but maybe it was shame.

"He's not my father. There's no way."

"Just come look, Cole. One of his tats might give you a name or a place. What can it hurt?"

I didn't say anything, and Diaz pushed on.

"You know where the coroner is, down by the USC Medical Center?"

"I know."

"They have a parking lot in front. I'll meet you there in half an hour."