Duncan got out and went straight up to the guy, his arm extended for a handshake. “This is a surprise. Since when do they call out the big guns to be babysitters?”
The men shook hands. “I’ve been waiting for my invitation to your retirement party. I thought I’d find out personally what happened to it.”
“It’s coming, Gus. Engraved with a red ribbon.”
“Good, because I thought you’d forgotten about me,” Gus said. “Where’s it gonna be? The Sizzler?”
“Nothing so swanky.” Duncan gestured to Eve. “This is my partner, Eve Ronin. Eve, meet Gus Bellows, the most decorated cop in the Santa Monica Police Department. By that, I mean colored hair, fake teeth, and contacts.”
Gus grinned and shook hands with Eve. “Pleased to meet you, Eve. Be glad that he’s retiring. Donuts’ last two partners started out thin like you and a few years later died of morbid obesity.”
Eve grinned back, unaccustomed to being greeted warmly by veteran detectives on the LAPD or anywhere else. Most of them felt that they’d met her already on TV and decided they didn’t like her. “I’ve been popping Lipitor tablets like M&M’s since our first day.”
“Smart woman,” Gus said, then tipped his head toward the building, getting down to business. “Greg Nagy lives alone in a studio apartment on the third floor. Number 301. The management company gave me the keys so we don’t have to break down the door.”
“That was considerate of them,” she said.
Gus typed in a key code that opened the door to the lobby, which was just big enough to hold the wall of mailboxes, and led them to the elevator, which was beside the door to the parking garage. Eve opened the door and glanced at the cars. No Calabasas Corollas were in sight. The trio got into the elevator and put on gloves as they rode up to the third floor.
“What’s the rent on a studio here?” Duncan asked.
“Seventeen hundred a month.”
Duncan whistled. “That’s about as much as my mortgage.”
“This building is reserved for low-income individuals earning seventy grand a year or less.”
Eve was stunned. “That’s poverty wage in Santa Monica?”
“And all of Los Angeles County,” Gus said.
Duncan looked at Eve. “That’s insane. Give me one good reason why anybody lives in Southern California?”
“In-N-Out Burger.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I forgot.”
They got out and found themselves facing Greg’s studio apartment. Not the most desirable location in the building, she thought. He must hear people coming and going from the elevator at all hours of the day and night.
Gus used his key and opened the door to a narrow hallway, the bathroom on the left. At the end of the hall was the combined kitchen, bedroom, and living space with a window overlooking Seventh Street. To fit inside the hallway without colliding, the three of them had to walk in single file. Eve took the lead, followed by Duncan and Gus.
The kitchen was L-shaped, laid out along the intersection of two walls, with new appliances, contemporary cabinets, and a dozen cartons of sugary breakfast cereals lined up like a row of books on the faux granite countertops.
“The man’s a gourmet,” Duncan said.
Framed movie posters for The Terminator, Avengers: Endgame, and Skyfall decorated the wall above his bed, which also doubled as his couch, one side facing his desk and a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. She noticed a charger plugged into the wall for a missing iPhone. There was a MacBook on the desk beside a stack of screenplays bound with brass brads between heavy-paper covers with studio logos on the front, the movie titles written on the spines with Magic Markers.
Eve gestured to the scripts. “Looks like he’s a reader for a production company, synopsizing and criticizing screenplay submissions for executives who have no time to read themselves. It pays about fifty dollars a script.”
“And he’s an aspiring writer, which pays nothing.” Gus picked up another script off the kitchen counter and read the title page aloud. “Thrack of Oberon by Gregory Nagy. Sounds thrilling.”
Eve started taking pictures. Duncan opened up the desk drawer and sorted through Greg’s bills and papers.
“How do you know about readers?” Duncan asked.
“I made extra cash working as a reader when I was in college. It was easy to do in my spare time,” Eve said. “My mom had a boyfriend who was in development.”
“You mean he was an adolescent?” Duncan said, grinning.
“I mean his job was to give writers creative suggestions on rewriting their scripts until they were good enough to never get produced.”
Gus slid open the built-in closet. It was clean and well organized. Nagy’s clothes were hung and neatly folded. His shoes were lined up in rows on the floor. On the top shelf there were several shoeboxes. Gus pulled one down and lifted the lid.
“I guess he didn’t want any of his houseguests stumbling on these.” He held out the box to Eve and Duncan. It contained loose bullets, a Patek Philippe watch, and a few rings.
“He’s got the same kind of goodies as Dalander and Colter,” Duncan said. “They all seem to have kept some loot for themselves.”