“If the incentive was there.”
Driver was a history professor at the U., an elegant, erudite daughter of Korean immigrants with a special affection for freedom. Her academic interest was criminal life in prewar L.A. Last year, she’d provided information that had helped close the murder of a one-hundred-year-old woman. Her payback was access to a fat blue file that nourished four academic papers and a keynote presentation at an international criminology conference in Bonn.
I switched my cell to hands-off and called her campus extension.
She said, “Alex. Another juicy one?”
“Juicy but not historical.”
I gave her the basics.
She hummed a few bars of “The Wedding March” and said, “Here comes the victim? Crazy—sure, why not, if you give me another murder book. Maybe I’ll explore a new topic: the relationship between tribal rites of passage and violence.”
“If Lieutenant Sturgis solves it, I’m sure that could be worked out.”
“You’re working with him again?” she said. “I like him. More sensitive than he lets on and overwhelmingly authentic.”
“That he is.”
Milo gave an aw-shucks pout.
Maxine Driver said, “So what exactly can I help you with?”
“The class schedule of a specific student.”
“That’s it?”
“So far.”
“There’ll be more?”
“Depends.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Divulging personal data is a big no-no, Alex. Privacy for the tots and all that.”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
She laughed. “Like I care? Name.”
“Amanda Burdette. She’s a sophomore, made her own major.”
“Ah, one of those bullshit DIYs,” she said. “Amanda Burdette…is she by any chance a rude little pretentious kind of spectrumy pain in the ass?”
I said, “That could describe her.”
“Pale? Like one of those Victorian chicks who ate chalk? Arrogant mien utterly unjustified by reality?”
“Amazing, Maxine.”
“What is?”
“Forty-three thousand students and you know the one we’re looking at.”
“I know her because I had her in one of my upper-division seminars. Twice-a-month spiel on social structure, the department stuck me with it. A dozen kids and she was conspicuous because of her attitude. She’d come in late, flounce to the back, and make a big show of ignoring me—head in a book that had nothing to do with the class. Always some dreary existential thing, Sartre and the like. If we made eye contact, she’d smirk and pull the book higher.”
“Making a statement.”
“Making a screw-you statement,” she said. “I was so looking forward to flunking her but she had the gall to hand in a terrific finals bluebook, so what could I do? Little bitch can write and abstract. I could’ve downgraded her to B plus and gotten away with it, but who needs the headache? She got an A minus. So what’d she do to get Milo interested?”
“Maybe nothing, Maxine, and you know the drill.”
“Yeah, yeah, the old cloak-and-dagger. Fine, last time it worked out great. I’ll call my secret contact at a secret place to remain unnamed—nephew at the registrar’s office, oops. Anything else?”
“A home address would be helpful.”
“The police can’t dig that up?”
“She’s got no driver’s license or social network presence.”
“One of those,” she said. “I call them burrowers. Little fanged shrews who bury themselves underground and emerge periodically to wax obnoxious. A lot of them seem to live with Mommy and Daddy and eschew motor vehicles.”
“Her mommy and daddy are in Calabasas. I was figuring an address near campus, a bike and/or Uber.”
“Makes sense, let me see what I can find.”
“Thanks, Maxine.”
“You can’t tell me anything?”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, well,” she said. “I’ll have to sustain myself with fantasy. As in Milo ends up busting the little twit for something horrendous, she goes on trial, I’m in the courtroom the day she’s sentenced, positioned where she has to look at me. She hears the bad news, we make eye contact, I hold up a Camille Paglia.”
Academic’s notion of revenge.
“A wedding,” she said. “Obviously she’s not the bride and I can’t see her as a chirping bridesmaid.”
I looked at Milo. He nodded.
“She’s the groom’s sister.”
“The plot thickens,” said Driver. “Okay, nice hearing from you, Alex. Tribal rituals gone bloody—weddings, bar mitzvahs—hey, circumcisions, my husband would love that.”
CHAPTER
11
VCR Staffing Specialists occupied a ground-floor office in a squat two-story brick building. High-rises and strip malls abounded in East Brentwood. This building had been forgotten by time and developers. But maybe not for long: A For Sale sign was nailed to the brick, just right of a pebble-glass door.
A lobby floored in grimy fake terrazzo opened to a brown-carpeted hallway. VCR’s suite was toward the back. Dead bolt below the doorknob but the knob turned.
Inside was an empty waiting room decorated with prints of Paris street scenes from the nineteenth century and the type of black-and-white celebrity photos you see in dry cleaners and other places celebrities never go.
Small desk, one chair. Hard gray tweed sofas said no one of import waited here.
Another wooden door centered the wall behind the desk. Voices filtered through. Muffled but not enough to conceal emotional tone.
Male voice, female voice, talking over each other.
Milo rapped hard and the conversation stopped.
The male voice said, “You hear something?”
The female voice shouted, “If you’re so damn curious, go check.”
Denny Rapfogel, flushed and sweaty and rolling a black plastic pen between his fingers, opened the door. He blurted, “What the?” then checked himself and offered a queasy smile.
His too-tight, green aloha shirt was patterned with Martini glasses and cocktail shakers. Off-white linen pants bagged to the floor, puddling over olive-green basket-weave loafers.
From behind him came a bark worthy of a watchdog: “Who?”
“The cops from the wedding.”
“Why?”
“How the hell would I know?”
Corinne Rapfogel came into view, jostling past her husband. The impact jellied his jowls. The skin where his jaw met his earlobes reddened and his shoulders rose. Still, the seasick smile endured.
Corinne’s smile was huge and white. “Oh, hi, guys.” New voice, soft and kittenish.
Alicia Bogomil’s plan was to doll up to get the job done. Corinne Rapfogel had dolled down for her work space, even accounting for wedding versus everyday.
She wore a blousy light-blue dress that hung past her knees, chipped white patent flats on her feet. Dark hair was tied back carelessly, with errant strands shooting out from the sides of her head, more than a few gray filaments glinting. Reading glasses perched atop a shiny nose. Like a lot of faces accustomed to heavy makeup, hers looked unformed and blurred without it.
Despite all that, she began vamping, working stubby eyelashes, cocking her head to one side, her hip to the other.
Milo said, “Ms. Rapfogel.”
“Pu-leeze, we’re old friends by now, right? Corinne.” Taking hold of Milo’s hand and holding on for too long.
Denny Rapfogel said, “They’re not here to socialize, this is business.” To us: “Hopefully good business—you solved it?”
Milo freed his hand. “I wish, sir. We’re here for a follow-up, tried calling but no one answered so we thought we’d—”
Corinne Rapfogel said, “What can we follow you up on, guys?”
Milo said, “First off, has anything new occurred to you?”
“Occurred,” she said, as if learning a foreign word on a self-teaching tape. Long, sweeping leftward movement of her eyes. “No, can’t say that it has.”
Denny said, “You’re saying no progress at all? More I’ve been thinking about it, more pissed I get. They ruined our day.”
Milo said, “The dead woman’s day didn’t go too well, either.”
“The woman,” said Denny. “You’re not going to tell me you don’t know who she is.”
“Unfortunately—”
“Christ. What’s the problem? With social media, who can’t be identified?”