“She had no chest,” said Slinky. “Don’t want to yelp her cold, not especially now with her all murdered, but to be honest, sir, she had leetle boobarellas and was a totally non-dancer. But I’m not saying she was nothing. Her butt was nice and her face was hot.”
“Hot face,” agreed Catwoman. “I am totally dis-amayed that anyone would hurt her.”
“Find out who did it,” said Slinky, “and fuck him up.”
Milo hung up. The phone receiver landed with a horse-hoof clop. Out of a jacket pocket came another plastic-wrapped panatela. Again, he rolled it between his palms, creating tobacco dust. He does that more often, now, rarely smokes.
A wrist-snap lob landed the trashed brown cylinder in the wastebasket.
I said, “No net. Impressive.”
“Huh.” He crumpled a few departmental memos and shot them in, too.
A third cigar emerged. How many could he fit into a pocket?
He studied it, put it back. “So let’s sum up blue Monday. Lotsa talk, no solid info.”
I said, “Everyone gave a consistent picture of her.”
“But they can’t even agree on her name.” He swiveled and faced me. “Any of them could be lying and what happened is related to the club and someone knows it. Or they’re leveling and it’s still related to the club. Or the wedding. Or the bachelorette party. Or something else completely. Why the hell would she go back there?”
He shot to his feet like a bottle rocket, leaving the chair creaking in relief. Stretching, he grazed his fingers on the ceiling. Sitting back down heavily, he set off a new chorus of squeaks and pressed a finger to his pocked brow.
“Know what’s flashing in here? My two least favorite words: ‘Anything’s possible.’ Tell me something that narrows it down. You can lie, too.”
I said, “The description of her street clothes, her backpack, and her books makes me wonder about a moonlighting student.”
“Moonlighting coed? Kind of a cliché.”
“Clichés endure because they’re often based on truth.”
“Using her spare time to catch up on classes,” he said. “Or Johnson was right and she was doing puzzles.”
“Maybe both,” I said. “In any case, we just met another student who’s sweet as a wolverine.”
“Little Amanda. My my my.” He sat back and grinned. “Could you lend me some neurons?”
* * *
—
He phoned the campus police at the U., spoke to a fellow lieutenant named Morales and asked about missing students.
Only one active case, a young man from Shanghai who’d taken a trip to San Diego a week ago and hadn’t returned.
“If you can solve that, I’m your new BFF,” said Morales. “Chinese consulate’s calling me daily, along with various Feds and an intern for some assemblyman from San Gabriel. Like we control the brats when they’re here, let alone when they leave. If your girl’s not Chinese, please don’t tell me she’s some other kind of foreigner.”
“Don’t know what she is,” said Milo. “Don’t even have a name.”
“Oh, man, you’re at square minus one,” said Morales. “Good luck.”
Glib, no curiosity. Busy with his own problems.
Milo said, “I do have some possible names. Kimba, Kimby, Kimmie-Lee, Kimberly.”
Morales said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Wish I was.”
“Nah, none of those ticks any boxes here.”
“One more: Amanda Burdette.”
“Whole different name for the same girl?”
“Different girl and Burdette’s definitely a student,” said Milo. “It’s possible she knew my vic.”
Morales said, “Got forty-three thousand two hundred seventeen students to deal with—hey, here’s a fun idea: Let’s go down the list, one by one. By the time we’re ten percent done, we’ll be pension-eligible.”
He laughed. “Not trying to make your life difficult, my friend, but no Kims or Amandas are on our radar and I can’t help you. Unless your girls are part of that anti-fascist pain-in-the-dick bunch, likes to bust things up for stupid reasons. We got four of those idiots being naughty on CC last week. Breaking windows at a ninety-year-old professor’s house because he brought some speaker to class they didn’t approve of, thank God he didn’t have a heart attack. Skinny little assholes in those Guy Fawkes masks, a couple move like they’re probably females.”
“Masks,” said Milo. “Good luck on that one.”
“Ha,” said Morales. “Now you’re getting even.”
* * *
—
During the conversation, I’d googled missing u. student and paired it with Kim-names.
Only one hit, on a crime history site: Twenty-two years ago, a local girl named Kimberly Vance had vanished. Not from the U., from the old school across town where I taught pediatric psych. Ancient history but I told Milo about it, anyway.
He said, “Guess what, I worked that one.”
“That’s Southwest Division.”
“So it is.”
“How’d it become a West L.A. homicide?”
“It became a West L.A. non-homicide. Rich sorority girl, ran off with a married professor, he took her to a free-love weekend up in Big Sur, got some weed in her, took her clothes off, and then she had second thoughts and hitchhiked back. Took her three days to reach L.A. Besides the prof, the biggest danger was getting run over by a semi.”
“Same question: Why’d you work it?”
“Special request from above.” He smiled. “You’ll notice there was no follow-up story.”
“Family with influence.”
“Family who donated to the mayor’s reelection committee.”
“Too bad our girl has no obvious connections,” I said.
“Our girl’s business as usual,” he said, loosening his tie. “Give me your tired, your poor, your dead.”
CHAPTER
9
The ride from the station to my home in Beverly Glen ranges from fifteen minutes to an hour, depending on the whims of the commuting gods. This time I made it in twenty, snaking up the unmarked road on the west side of the canyon and hooking onto the former bridle path that sometimes turns to slush before connecting to my private road. All in a two-wheel-drive vehicle not meant for the ride. The Seville’s been good to me; I reciprocate.
The house that Robin and I share is a crisp white piece of geometry surrounded by green. She designed it and contracted the build when the little wooden thing I bought soon after I began working was burned to the ground by a psychopath. The lot sits high, smaller than it looks but benefiting from the borrowed landscape of unseen neighbors. On clear days you can catch glimpses of ocean above the pine-tops. When the haze sets in, the contours of trees soften and that’s not bad, either.
I parked next to Robin’s truck and climbed to the entry terrace. We decided to under-furnish because stuff can get the best of you and neither of us likes to cull. Daylight is inevitably kind and the oak floors still echo, creating a comforting, musical prelude to solitude.
I called out Robin’s name, got no reply. Changing into sweats, I sorted some mail in the kitchen and drank coffee from the pot she’d left. Walking out back through the kitchen door, I stopped by the rock edge of the fishpond, netted a few pine needles, tossed pellets to the koi, and enjoyed their conditional love. When the slurping ended and the fish began to meander, I continued to Robin’s studio.
She stood over her bench, wearing magnifying eyeglasses and a shop apron with four front pockets. No music from hidden speakers this afternoon. Both of her hands were occupied and her greeting was a brief smile before she returned to the work at hand.
Special concentration required for delicate work: sealing a crack on the face of a 1938 Martin D-45 guitar. Three-hundred-thousand-dollar instrument. The man who’d owned it for seventy-two years had picked it up in a Bakersfield pawnshop and played it in cowboy bars running up and down California’s interior spine. He’d died on stage, ninety years old, smoking Luckies and breathing through a tracheotomy hole. Rasping the first verse of “Amazing Grace” as his heart gave out.
His heirs couldn’t wait to cash in.
The crack was long and threatening to open and not in a good location: treble side of the sound hole, trailing to the bridge, requiring a micro-surgical splice. Robin had spent a week locating the right sliver of Adirondack spruce in Nashville, giving the wood time to get used to L.A.