Pena shook his head violently. “What I know is one day he didn’t show up. I called him, he didn’t call me back. I figured another flake, it’s L.A. He was always a little spacey.”
I said, “How so?”
“Spacey, you know—spaced out. I’d ask him to do something, sometimes he’d hear me, sometimes he wouldn’t. He wasn’t any great shakes—don’t want to bad-mouth him if he’s dead but it wasn’t a big loss. What happened to him?”
Milo said, “He stopped living, Bob.”
“I mean—was it…bad?”
“Haven’t heard of too many fun deaths, lately.”
“Oh, God.” Pena slumped, shook his head.
“So,” said Milo. “How ’bout that CCTV footage?”
“I told you, it’s not here. Goes directly to the company.”
“Kind of a screwy system, Bob. What if you have an incident here—armed terrorists shoot the place up, serial killer goes from room to room and cannibalizes brats—hell, what if North Korea drops a bomb on your roof? You’d want to look at footage pretty quickly, no?”
Silence.
“Bob?”
Pena’s response floated above whisper-level. “That happened, I’d ask the company.”
“Well,” said Milo, “any of that ever happens, I hope Sandra or whoever does a better job than they’re doing now. And you know what, we’re going to take the burden of decision off your shoulders, Bob. With all the people dying here, getting a court order to search your tenant rolls will be a snap.”
He patted Pena’s shoulder with terrifying gentleness. “One other thing. Bob. If I suspect you’ve concealed or monkeyed with those rolls before I get access to them, I’ll have you cuffed, booked, and sitting in a cell faster than you can say obstruction of justice.”
Pena’s shoulders sagged. “Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“Do what you gotta do.” Smiling wanly, Pena picked up his sandwich. Held it out. “Want it? Lost my appetite.”
“Tsk,” said Milo.
“Do what you gotta do,” Pena repeated. “Free country.”
* * *
—
We returned to the unmarked where Milo put his cell on speaker and speed-dialed Assistant D.A. John Nguyen.
Nguyen listened to the specifics. “So the company’s either hiding something or they’re just bureaucratic assholes. Unfortunately, either way, you’ve got no grounds to pry their cold, dead fingers from their corporate info.”
“C’mon, John.”
“Being a shithead isn’t a crime, Milo. If it was, both state legislatures and the governor would be eating jail food.” Nguyen laughed. “Which is a cool fantasy, no? You can try getting paper from one of your sap judges but don’t hope for much. Problem is, you’re not dealing with a specific suspect. This is a civil matter, judges don’t want to wade in that septic tank.”
“I’m gonna go for it.”
“It’s your time and effort. Don’t call me up and bitch, ’cause I’m gonna say—”
“I told you so.”
“Toi da noi voi anh roi.”
“What’s that?”
“I told you so in Vietnamese.”
“Sounds nicer.”
“Not when my mother says it—tell you what I’ll do. I’ll check out this company, see if they’ve got any local liabilities—not just a few people croaking on dope. The kind of civil stuff certain judges will take on.”
“Such as?”
“High rate of tenant complaints, poor maintenance, rent gouging, lax payment of property taxes and utilities, failure to comply with inspections. Something serious comes up, leveraging a bit of stupid footage shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Thanks, John. How do you say it in Vietnamese?”
“No idea, Mom never thanks me.” Nguyen laughed. “Oh, yeah. Kam ung.”
CHAPTER
36
Phone back in pocket, Milo consulted his Timex. “Still early. Not that I’ve accomplished anything. You up for another try with Susie’s mom or should I drop you at home?”
I said, “I’m free.”
He said, “If that’s a statement of spiritual and emotional well-being, I find it offensively smug.”
* * *
—
We were back in the Valley half an hour later. Focusing the online map revealed Mentor Place as a twig in a bramble of side streets. Milo GPS’d and followed the directions of a sultry female robot. Three brief twists off Laurel followed by two equally stunted straightaways and a surprise right turn finally got us there.
The kind of place where GPS made a difference: a stunted, two-block afterthought, narrower than any other in the neighborhood.
Probably a converted back alley from the Valley’s postwar boom, when ranches and citrus groves buckled before an influx of sun-seekers, G.I.’s at loose ends, industrious optimists, and self-inventors of varying morality. A human tsunami, flooding the region with hope and recklessness and avarice, every inch of loam up for bid.
The houses lining Mentor Place fit the notion of barrel-bottom: old, small, undistinguished, and from the frequent cracks and skewing, structurally iffy.
The street merited even more than L.A.’s usual level of municipal neglect. The road was puckered and potholed, curbs had crumbled, fissured sidewalks shrugged upward where burrowing tree roots had triumphed. The trees were a random assortment placed at irregular intervals and in need of grooming. Some of them—carobs and jacarandas and orchids—had dropped blossoms and branches and pollen that collected in heaps of unexploited mulch. A few were dead and listed ominously.
The house where Susie Koster had lived as a teen was still green—one tone lighter than lime—and scraped yellow in spots. As promised by the assessor, the squat box shared an unfenced lot with three identical bungalows, two painted white, one daring to be mauve. A few geraniums ran along the front of one of the white houses. Otherwise, the entire property was flat brown dirt backed by twenty dense feet of eugenia hedge.
Decades ago, a parasite had killed off acres of estate-concealing eugenia on the Westside, the pests hopping from mansion to mansion. Maybe isolation and neglect had its advantages.
No cars in any of the driveways. Working people.
Milo looked at his watch again. “No way I want to leave her a note, might as well kill some time.”
He spent the next forty minutes judge-shopping. No one was willing to give him access to the Strathmore resident files. Several normally cooperative jurists expressed doubts he’d proven the occurrence of any crime.
I ignored his grumbling and used the time to pull up a custody report due in a week. Reading and re-reading my findings, then creating a separate file for the revisions I needed to make. I was nearly done when Milo said, “Action.”
Two cars had driven onto the property, a mini-convoy of sorts. The first, a squat black Fiat 500, rolled up in front of the mauve house. A young blue-haired woman in all-black spandex got out, arms filled by three squirrel-sized black Chihuahuas. Black Goth lips parted as she smiled and waved at the driver of the second car.
Blue Buick LaCrosse, freshly waxed but some of the paint had surrendered to age and sunlight. Dorothy Koster gave Chihuahua Girl a return wave and a warm smile. Both of them unaware of our presence across the street.
Susan Koster’s mother wore a pink-and-white waitress uniform and white flats and clutched a bag of groceries. She said something pleasant sounding to her neighbor.
The younger woman laughed and let loose the dogs. They scampered up to Dorothy, who knelt, put down her bag, and was ready when one of the tiny pooches jumped into her arms. Full-on mouth kiss. Same for the other two.
I thought of Will Burdette’s canine battalion. Blanche, always happy to see me.
Milo said, “Enjoy these few minutes, Dorothy.”
All three dogs continued to dance around the woman in pink. After a few moments she threw back her head in laughter and wiggled her fingers and the trio raced back to their owner.
Milo sighed. “Let’s give her a chance to get settled.”
And then we’ll unsettle her.
* * *
—
Five minutes later, he was letting a pitted brass knocker fall on a catch plate.
Within seconds, Dorothy Koster had opened the door. Still in her uniform, Dotty embroidered above the right breast pocket.
Smiling, but surprise killed that. “Yes?”
Milo introduced himself.
She said, “Police? What’s going on?”