“That and an Uzi’ll buy you a Band-Aid if you ignore common sense.”
He marched past me. “Where’s the pooch?”
“With Robin.”
“Someone’s thinking right.”
My best friend is a gay LAPD homicide detective with inconsistent social skills. He’s had a key to the house for years but refuses to use it unless Robin and I are traveling and he checks the premises, unasked.
By the time I made it to the kitchen he’d commandeered a loaf of rye bread, a jar of strawberry preserves, a half-gallon of orange juice, and the butt-end of a four-day-old rib roast.
I said, “Hey kids, beef ’n’ jam, the new taste sensation.”
He cast off a gray Windbreaker, loosened a tie the color of strained peas, and settled his bulk at the table. “First conundrum of the day: carbs or protein. I opt for both.”
Brushing coarse black hair off a lumpy brow, he continued to stare at the food. Bright green eyes drooped more than usual. Where the light hit him wrong, his acne-pocked pallor was a hue no painter had ever blended.
I said, “Long night?”
“The night was fine, it was the damn morning that screwed things up. Four a.m., why can’t people get their faces blown off at a civil hour?”
“People as in multiple victims?”
Instead of answering, he troweled heaps of jam on three slices of bread, chewed the first piece slowly, inhaled the remaining two. Uncapping the juice, he peered inside, muttered, “Not much left,” and drained the container.
Contemplating the roast, he sliced, cubed, popped morsels of meat like candy. “Got any of that spicy mayo?”
I fetched some aioli from the fridge. He dipped, chewed, wiped his mouth, snorted, exhaled.
I said, “Male or female bodies?”
“One body, female.” Crumpling the juice carton, he created a wax-paper pancake that he pulled like an accordion, then compresed. “And for my next number, ‘Lady of Spain.’ ”
A dozen more pieces of roast before he said, “Female and from her figure, young. Then again, this is L.A. so maybe all that tone came courtesy of surgery, let’s see what the coroner has to say. No purse or ID, the blood says she was done right there. No tire tracks or footprints. No jewelry or purse and her duds were expensive looking, some designer I never heard of. Patrice Lerange. Ring a bell?”
I shook my head. “Robbery?”
“Looks like it. She had on fancy undies, too, silk lace—Angelo Scuzzi, Milano. So maybe she’s European, some poor tourist who got waylaid. The shoes were Manolo Blahnik, that I heard of.”
He chewed hard and his jaw bunched. “Looks like we’re talking two killers. The C.I.’s found shotgun pellets and wadding in the wound but also a .45 cartridge on the ground and the slug behind her, exactly where you’d expect it to be after blowing out the back of her skull.”
He ate more roast, contemplated a rare piece, put it aside.
“The major damage was to the face with a little pellet spray at the top of the chest. But they left her hands intact, so I’m not sure the face thing was hiding her identity, just plain old evil.”
“Your money or I shoot,” I said. “On second thought, I shoot anyway.”
“Goddamn savages … I know the face can mean personal, but this could come down to really ugly jack. Drive around Hollyweird at night, all those spacey Euro types are wandering the streets, thinking they’re gonna catch movie stars. If she was a tourist, she could’ve wandered into the wrong neighborhood.”
“Where was she found?”
“The Palisades, less than a mile short of Topanga. Bad guys had any consideration it woulda been the Sheriff’s problem.”
I said, “That’s a ways from wrong neighborhoods, and expensive clothes don’t say naïve tourist. Maybe she got waylaid on the Strip, or somewhere else on the Westside. A club date gone bad.”
“Wherever she started, she ended up far from the city. We’re talking mountains, ravines, open space, not much traffic. Maybe that was the point. She was left just off the road, a spot where the descent isn’t that steep. I’m figuring the bad guys walked her out of the car, took her goodies, had target practice.”
“Bullet and pellets.”
“All in the face. Almost like a ritual.”
“Who found her?”
“Some eighty-nine-year-old retired Unitarian minister combing for fossils.”
“Fossil hunting at four a.m.?”
“Three fifteen a.m. to be exact. He likes to do it when there’s no traffic, brings a flashlight, takes his time. Only thing he ever sees is animals—raccoons, rabbits, coyotes—and they’re not into archaeology. He said the entire area used to be submerged under seawater millions of years ago, he still finds goodies. He had two spiral shells in his sack, some petrified snails, too.”
“But no shotgun or .45.”
“I should be so lucky. No, he’s righteous, Alex, really shaken up. I had an ambulance brought just in case but they said his heart was strong for his age.” He drummed the table, wiped his face with one hand, like washing without water. “One mile south it’d be tan-shirts yanked out of a beautiful dream.”
“What were you dreaming about?”
“Not getting yanked out of bed at four a.m.”
“Lately you’ve been kind of bored.”
“Like hell I have. That was zen serenity.”
He ate more roast, topped with extra aioli.
“Spicy.”
“So what can I do for you?”
“Who says anything? I came to visit the dog.” Reaching into a pocket of the Windbreaker, he drew out a nylon chew bone. “This okay for her?”
“She prefers truffle-marinated elk rib, but it’ll do in a pinch. She’s out back with Robin. I’ve got some mail to catch up on.”
“Had your breakfast yet?”
“Just coffee.”
Swinging his attaché onto the table, he flipped it open, drew out his cell, downloaded a screen of thumbnail photos. Enlarging one, he handed the phone to me. “No breakfast, nothing to lose.”
The body lay on its face, supple-limbed even in death.
Wind or impact had lifted the hem of the dress nearly crotch high, but the legs hadn’t been spread, no sign of sexual posing.
Short dress. The flow of white silk.
Same for the blood-and-gore-splotched white scarf that swaddled what had once been a face. One backless silver shoe remained in place.
What had once been the face was a clotted horror.
Milo said, “You just turned a really bad color. Sorry.”
“Any idea what time she was killed?”
“Best guess is midnight to four and the old guy was there by three fifteen, so that narrows it.”
“I saw her from nine to nine thirty. She was young—twenty-five or so, sat ten feet from Robin and me. Extremely pretty, big dark eyes, but I can’t tell you about her hair because it was completely covered by the scarf. She was wearing a diamond watch, carried a white silk clutch, smoked a cigarette in an ivory holder and used a matching lighter. A few minutes in, she put on rhinestone-framed sunglasses. She seemed to be waiting for someone. There was a theatrical aspect to her behavior. Robin thought she was channeling Audrey Hepburn. No need to show Robin these pictures.”
He inhaled deeply, placed his hands flat on the table. “Where. Did. This. Happen?”
I described the Fauborg’s final night.
“Hotel swan song,” he said. “Hers, too. Oh, man … okay, so maybe she was staying there and I’ll get a name from the register.”
“Good luck but doubtful, no one was working the desk and the place looked cleaned out.”
“Someone will have a record.” He scratched the side of his nose. Sweat stained the table where his paw had rested. “This is weird, Alex.”
“All the cases we’ve worked, maybe it was due.”
“Anything else you want to tell me?”