Therapy (29 page)

“He didn’t say on what.” She laughed. “As if.”

“Did he ever talk to you about being suspicious of anyone?”

“Huh?” she said. “Like some spy thing?”

“Like that,” I said.

“No. Can I get going. Pu-leeze? I’m supposed to meet Ellie over at Il Fornaio, and I don’t want to go over the parking limit. Paying for parking sucks.”

“So does paying for cosmetics,” I said.

“Hey,” she said, “I thought that was over with.”

“What else can you tell me about Gavin?”

“Nothing. He was out of my life, running with skanks—you think that’s why he was killed? Running with bad people?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“There you go,” she said. “It pays to be good.”

CHAPTER

31

I
had her go into the pharmacy and get a shopping bag. Dumping the stolen goods in the bag, I said, “Leave it inside the door.”

Sudden, bone-white pallor flashed through her makeup. “Don’t make me go in there. Please.”

She placed a hand on my sleeve. No seductiveness; her knuckles were white.

“Okay,” I said. “But you have to promise to be good.”

“I do. Can I go? Ellie’s waiting.”

*

Gavin had bragged to Kayla about all the sex he was getting from the blonde. Maybe that was trying to one-up the old girlfriend. But it also fit the call girl theory.

Christa or Crystal.
I tried Milo again. His cell remained switched off.

Listening to Kayla Bartell, learning about the sad stumble that had been Gavin Quick’s life, had sapped my energy. Allison and I were due to meet for dinner at seven, and I resolved to push all of it out of my head.

I pretty much stuck to that, but by evening’s end, I found myself talking to Allison about the Quick family’s meltdown, wrong turns and bad luck, the death of intimacy.

An unnamed girl in a stainless-steel drawer, body stitched back together and relegated to cold storage.

Like the therapist she was, Allison mostly listened, and that kept me going. I knew I was being morose but didn’t want to stop talking. As I pulled up to her house, my own voice hurt my ears.

“Sorry,” I said. “What a fun guy.”

She said, “Why don’t you sleep over?”

“You want more of this?”

“I’d like you to stay the night.”

“I’ve never known you to be a masochist.”

She shrugged and played with my index finger. “I like seeing you first thing in the morning. You always look really happy to see me, and there’s no one else I can say that about.”

*

We went straight to her bedroom, got undressed, shared a chaste, closed-mouth kiss, slipped easily into sleep. I woke up three times in the middle of the night, twice to think discouraging thoughts and once because I felt myself being jostled. I forced my eyes open, saw Allison hovering over me, breasts dangling, grasping a corner of the comforter and looking none too awake herself.

I said something that would’ve been “Huh?” had my tongue been working.

“You were . . . covered up,” she said, groggily. “I didn’t see you moving, wanted to . . . check.”

“M’fine.”

“Guh . . . night.”

*

Morning light seared my eyelids. I left Allison sleeping, went into her kitchen, took in the paper, searched for a picture of the dead girl, didn’t find it. Allison had morning patients and would be up soon, so I got to work on breakfast.

Moments later, she shuffled in sniffing the air, wearing an oversized khaki T-shirt and fluffy slippers, face creased by bed wrinkles, hair topknotted carelessly.

“Eggs,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Y’sleep okay?”

“Perfectly.”

“Me too.” She yawned. “Did I snore?”

“No,” I lied.

“Sank like a stone,” she said. “Boom.”

No memory of waking up to make sure I was okay. She’d cared about me in her dreams.

*

I was back home for fifteen minutes when Milo phoned from his car. His breathing was harsh, as if he’d run uphill. “I tried reaching you at nine.”

“Spent the night at Allison’s.”

“Good for you,” he said. “What’s your schedule like today?”

“Open. I might have a first name on the blond girl. Crystal or Christa.”

“How’d you find
that
out?”

“Kayla Bartell. It’s a bit of a story—”

“Tell me when I get there, I’m already at Sepulveda and Wilshire. The pooch still bunking with you?”

“No, he’s gone.”

“Okay, then, I’ll eat this beef jerky myself.”

*

He entered the house wearing a sad gray suit, mud brown shirt, gray poly tie, and chewing on the thickest rope of dehydrated meat I’d ever seen.

“What is that?” I said. “Python jerky?”

“Buffalo, low-fat, low-salt. Special deal at Trader Joe’s.” His hair was flat, and his eyes were red. We went into the kitchen.

“Tell me the story.”

I recounted my talk with Kayla.

He said, “Little klepto, huh? And you played bad cop. Nice work.”

“It was probably illegal.”

“It was a chat between two adults.” He twisted the knot of his tie. “Got any coffee left?”

“Didn’t make any.”

“No prob, I’m wired, anyway . . . Christa or Crystal. Why’d Kayla peg her for a stripper?”

“Because Gavin said she was a dancer,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “name a girl Crystal and what’s more likely? That she’ll get a Ph.D. in biomechanics, or end up shaking her tail for tips?” He removed his jacket and tossed it over a chair. Since he’d arrived, the air was turbulent.

“Kayla also said she looked like a doper.”

“The coroner found nothing in her system. What about the
Times
?”

“They run on their own schedule,” I said. “Why’d you ask about mine?”

He took a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. Typed list.

1. 1999 Ford Explorer. Bennett A. Hacker, 48, Franklin Avenue, Hollywood.

2. 1995 Lincoln sedan. Raymond R. Degussa, 41, post office box in Venice.

3. 2001 Mercedes Benz sedan, Albin Larsen, 56, Santa Monica.

4. 1995 Mercedes Benz sedan, Jerome A. Quick, 48, Beverly Hills.

“DMV data from Gavin’s list,” he said.

“Gavin copied down his father’s license number?”

“Weird, no? Could it be a brain damage thing? Do you guys have a name for it?”

“Overinclusiveness . . . But something else jumps out at me. Quick’s car is listed last. You’d think spotting his father’s car would have caught Gavin’s attention first.”

“Unless he listed the cars in order of arrival, and Daddy arrived last.”

“Good point,” I said. “So what are you thinking, some sort of meeting?”

He nodded. “Quick and Albin Larsen and the other two. The big question is why was Gavin surveilling Daddy? It smells to me like Daddy was up to no good, and that’s why he cleaned out Gavin’s room—getting rid of any evidence his kid mighta come up with. Then he left town—his kid’s just been murdered, and he’s off traveling again, leaving the wife alone, doing business. It smells
ripe
, Alex. The mistake ol’ Jerry made was not clearing out Gavin’s clothes.”

He picked up the list, refolded it, put it back in his pocket. “It’s not much. But to my mind, it changes everything. Let me tell you about the other guys on the list.”

I said, “The con cleaning the building—Kristof—said his parole officer was named Hacker.”

He sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m impressed. Yeah, he’s a PO working out of the downtown office, and Raymond Degussa’s one of his former clients. Major client, string of arrests for assault, larceny, extortion, armed robbery, dope. Degussa beat a bunch of raps, pleaded out others, did some county time, finally got tagged for fifteen years on a strong-arm robbery beef. San Quentin, time shaved for good behavior, and he seems to have behaved himself during parole, checked in with Hacker regularly, got free and clear two years ago. I called over to Q and spoke with an assistant warden who’s relatively new to the job and didn’t know Degussa. What she dug up for me was that he was a dominant con, no gang membership, but he never got victimized. They figured him for a supplier of some kind because he always had cigarettes and candy. He was also a suspect in at least two inmate murders, but there was no evidence.”

“Career bad guy,” I said. “Two suspected murders, and he got time shaved for good behavior?”

“Without evidence he did. Prison administrators have their own agenda: They’re always overcrowded, want to move guys out. And wonder of wonders, Degussa appears to be rehabilitated. Not a single brush with the law since being off parole.”

“A friendly parole officer would help that,” I said. “Successful rehabilitation. Albin Larsen would like that. Maybe Degussa was one of his pet projects. Or Mary Lou Koppel’s. What weapon was used in those prison murders?”

“A blade; in prison it’s always a blade.”

“Any impaling?”

“Nothing about that in his file.”

“Degussa went away on a strong-arm robbery,” I said. “Any weapon at all?”

“Just intimidation.”

“Did Bennett Hacker spend any time at any of those satellite offices?”

“Flora Newsome,” he said.

“She worked in parole. It seems awfully coincidental.”

“Yeah . . . I didn’t want to ask too much. If Hacker’s dirty, I don’t want him to know I’m snooping around. But I’ll do what I can to sniff behind the scenes.”

He drummed the table. “I’m getting that feeling—the stew is starting to simmer. But everything’s still at arm’s length—like I’m cooking in someone else’s kitchen.”

He got up, paced the room, tugged at his tie. “The way I see it, Gavin convinced himself he was gonna be some kind of investigative reporter, was nosing around in his dad’s affairs. Or, he’d noticed funny goings-on at the therapy building, first. Started doing some serious surveillance, took notes.”

“A psychologist, a parole officer, and a con,” I said. “Without Jerry Quick, it could just be some sort of treatment arrangement.”

“
Precissimoso.
Jerry being there takes it in a whole other direction. Jerry’s a womanizing hustler who hires someone like Angie Paul for his front gal. He’s also Sonny Koppel’s tenant. And Sonny’s Mary Lou’s business partner in the halfway houses, the moneyman. The one who referred Jerry to Mary Lou in the first place.”

“Have you found any business dealings between Sonny and Quick?”

“Not a damn thing. And I dug deep, yesterday
and
early today.”

He slouched over to the fridge, returned drinking pink grapefruit juice from a carton. “Can’t find a speck of
dirt
on ol’ Sonny. No slumlord problems, no criminal complaints, no one in Organized Crime has ever heard of him. So far he’s coming across as exactly what he claims to be: a guy who owns a lot of properties. He was also being straight about giving away big bucks. Franchise Tax Board says Charitable Planning is on the up-and-up as a tax-exempt foundation. Sonny files his papers on time and donates at least a million every year.”

“To whom?”

“The poor, the sick, the halting. Every worthy disease, plus Save the Bay, Nourish the Trees, Coddle the Spotted Owl, whatever.”

“Saint Sonny,” I said.

“If it looks too good to be true . . . I don’t know what that meeting was about, but the only thing that makes sense is they’re all involved in something shady. Maybe Sonny got a hook into Jerry Quick because Quick’s always cash shy. But I still can’t figure out what use Quick would be to him. Putting that aside for the moment, what kind of scam could a bunch of shrinks pull off that would make big bucks?”