It stiffened both detectives’ gun-hands and prickled the short hairs on the nape of my neck.
They advanced. Again, neither of them held me back so I walked through the opening after they did.
Dim bedroom. Sparse but massive, likely created by combining two sleeping chambers.
This floor was cushioned by a snowdrift of white flokati rug. A black leather base held a bed wider than a king, draped tautly in silver silk. Pillows in hues that recalled the books out front were scattered on the bed and the rug. A doorless entry to the right revealed a slate, walnut, and smoked-glass bathroom.
Milo pointed to the wall facing the bed.
Covered by gray flannel drapes except where it wasn’t.
An eight-foot gap revealed the handle of a sliding glass door that led to a marble-floored balcony.
The southern view, barely encumbered by a waist-high glass railing aiming for invisibility.
I imagined what would be seen. Planes landing at LAX. Miles of the neighborhoods avoided by people who lived in the Wilshire Corridor.
From this high, everything would be beautiful.
Today it wasn’t.
At the rightmost periphery of the window was a hint of brown wicker and orange cushion. High-end, weather-resistant outdoor furniture.
Resting near the edge of the cushion was a bare foot.
Small, white. Inert.
Milo charged.
* * *
—
We burst onto the balcony, three sets of eyes camera-clicking.
Amanda Burdette, prone on her back, on a stylish brown wicker chaise.
Face as gray as her shapeless dress.
The hem of the dress riding up, legs white as the marble floor where they weren’t encased by a black body shaper.
On the floor, a coil of rubber tubing and a used syringe.
Ruby dot in the crook of her left arm.
Thurston Nobach, in a white, hooded caftan that trailed onto the floor, had been standing with his back to her, enjoying the view. Behind him, a pulsating tide of sound, the beeps, chitters, and burps of the city. Muted by altitude but not vanquished.
Milo’s and Binchy’s “Police! Freeze!” duet caused him to wheel. His lower jaw dropped like a dump-truck scoop.
Staring at us. Long hair ponied, the tail flopping against his shoulder. Harder, rougher face than in his website photo. Thirty-seven but I’d have guessed ten years older.
I’ve seen that in psychopaths: oozing through life apparently glib. But their bodies know different and their cells die in rebellion.
Nobach’s mouth slammed shut, surprise giving way to rage.
As the photo from Warsaw had suggested, tall man, just below Milo’s six-three. High-waisted, broad-shouldered, hints of muscularity beneath the billowing caftan.
He said, “What the fuck gives you the right?” Looked at Milo’s gun, then Sean’s, and added his own roar to the city sonata.
Fisting his hands and bracing his body. Arrogant enough to dare warfare?
Milo sidestepped him, offering Binchy direct access to Nobach. That confused me until I saw him reach for the secondary bulge in his pocket—what I’d assumed to be a second weapon.
He drew out a squat white plastic cone with a clear plastic spout at the bottom and a clear plastic push-button at the top.
Naloxone nasal spray. LAPD patrol officers carry it now, and so do county sheriffs. Not so much detectives. This Boy Scout had come prepared.
As he bent over Amanda and inserted the cone into her nostril, Thurston Nobach shoved Sean aside and hurled himself at the chaise.
Sean body-blocked him. Nobach roared again, louder, and clamped his hands around Sean’s neck.
Sean’s one of those habitual optimists who mainline good cheer. Despite years as a cop, that had worked out just fine. Now it threw him off.
Unprepared.
He struggled to free his gun-arm but Nobach had pressed against him so close that the limb was immobilized.
Nobach’s large hands blanched as they pressed harder. Sean’s eyes rolled and he gave up on the weapon, gasped, and flailed at Nobach’s grip with his free arm.
Milo was just starting to turn away from Amanda when Nobach planted his feet wide and swung Sean toward the waist-high glass barrier.
Sean’s gun clattered to the floor as he fought to resist. Nobach’s rage won out and Sean’s upper body tilted over the glass.
I dove forward, taking hold of Sean’s shirt and pulling him back. Nobach struck out at my face with one hand, missed as he tried to push Sean over with the other.
For less than a second, Nobach and I played tug-of-war with Sean’s body. Then he said, “Fuck this,” let go, and swung at me.
What could’ve been a bone-crusher grazed my right cheek as I feinted to the left and concentrated on pulling Sean to safety.
Sean, gasping, saw his gun on the floor and went for it.
Milo moved on Nobach.
Nobach weighed his options.
I shouted, “ABD pretentious asshole.”
Nobach’s eyes went blank. He round-housed his fist toward me. I stood there as if ready to take it, then moved to the left just before he reached me.
Forward inertia murdered his balance. Staggering, fighting for stability, he tried to plant his feet but got caught up in the puddling hem of his caftan.
He kicked at the cloth violently.
Tripped and pitched forward.
Long-legged and high-waisted. The wrong center of gravity when you were fighting a thirty-two-inch railing.
Arms aloft, mouth a black O, he went over.
Binchy watched him, saucer-eyed. I rubbed my left cheek. Heating up and swelling. Maybe more than a graze but nothing felt broken.
Stirring from the chaise drew me away from the pain. A series of gurgles, coughs, and mewls as Amanda Burdette came to.
Milo said, “There you go, kid,” and lightly slapped her face.
She looked up at him, groggily.
“You’re okay, kid.”
Cloudy eyes flinched, shut, opened.
It took a few moments for anything close to lucidity to appear.
“There you go, kid,” said Milo.
“Go away,” she said. “I don’t like people.”
CHAPTER
48
Even a high-end building needs somewhere to put garbage. The pink tower’s refuse-storage facility consisted of eight industrial dumpsters tucked into a caged square at the rear of the structure.
Directly below the south-facing units, but no reason to look down when up was so beautiful.
Thurston Nobach landed atop the left-most bin.
Postmortem photos didn’t reveal much in the way of humanity. More like a clotted stain, which Milo termed “Beyond apropos.”
Once Nobach’s parents were notified of his death, they reacted the way people used to getting their way do: mustering a battalion of lawyers to draft a demand letter, ordering immediate release of all information and material related to the cruel, callous, negligent police behavior leading to the death of an innocent young man in the privacy of his own home. Page two announced intention to file criminal charges against the perpetrators of said behavior, to be named. The final page tacked on a civil suit for damages related to…
Multiple copies were couriered simultaneously to the mayor, the D.A., several state and federal legislators, the local office of the FBI, and the city councilwoman and county supervisor whose districts encompassed the Wilshire Corridor.
That died quickly when the lawyers had a look at the contents of evidence obtained at Thirsty Nobach’s condo and a unit in the building he “managed.”
Radio silence. New goal: damage control.
* * *
—
Futile goal. Six hours after Nobach went over the glass, Maxine Driver called me at home. I was in the kitchen, ice pack pushed to my face, Robin and Blanche trying not to look upset.
“Sorry,” she said. “I got caught up in convention nonsense—serving on an inane committee but you know how it is. Anyway, the serendipity I mentioned was a historian from Emory on the same committee—maybe kismet, huh? Turns out his much younger wife was here as an R.A. and she interviewed to be an advisor for that program. She didn’t get it, Alex, but she knows who did—”
“Thurston Nobach.”
Silence. “You got there without me.”
“No big deal, Maxine.”
“We’re still pals?”
“You bet.”