Gridiron

'Who?'

'You know that shitty-lookin' building on Olympic Boulevard? The Loyola Law School?'

'With the chain-link fencing and the steel walls?'

'That's the one.'

'That's a law school? Jesus, I thought that was a gaol. Maybe it says something about Frank Gehry's opinion of lawyers.'

'Maybe you're right. Anyway, Frank Gehry is the leading exponent of LA's fuck-you school of architecture.'

'Could be the guy's just a realist. I mean, LA's not exactly the kind of city where you want people thinking they can just drop by and say hello.'

They turned on to Hope Street and Curtis pointed. 'That looks like it there,' he said.

The two men got out and started to walk towards the building.

Dominated by a Fernando Botero bronze on top of a fountain, and lined with silver dollar eucalyptus trees, the Hope Street Piazza was a pointed, elliptical shape measuring about forty metres end to end. As it narrowed towards the farthest of the two extremities, a series of white marble steps rose through a shortened perspective that seemed to make the approach to the building something grander and more monumental. Frank Curtis paused in front of the fountain, glanced up at the fat lady reclining above it and then at the small crowd of Chinese men and women who were grouped behind a police barrier near the foot of the steps.

'How do they do it?' he said. 'These scene-of-crimes buzzards. What is it? Some kind of ghoulish telepathy?'

'Actually, I think they're here to demonstrate,' said Coleman. 'About the Yu Corporation's human-rights record or something. It was on TV.'

He looked up at the sculpture. 'Hey, you ever fuck a really fat one?'

'Nope,' laughed Curtis, 'can't say I have.'

'I did.'

'As fat as this little girl here?'

Coleman nodded.

'You're an animal.'

'It was something, Frank, I tell you. You know what? It made me feel like I'd done my bit for the human race.'

'Really?' Curtis was more interested in reading the sign beside the fountain:

Warning

For your own safety please do not drink the water in this fountain. It has been treated with an anti-corrosion agent to protect the sculpture. Consume it at your own risk.

'Too bad if you're a thirsty illiterate, eh?' said Curtis.

Coleman scooped some water in the palm of his hand, sipped some, spat it out again and then grimaced.

'There's no danger of anyone drinking that,' he said. 'It tastes like car polish.'

'Some of the folks round the Nickle like a nice drop of car polish. It's quicker than methylated spirits.'

They continued towards the building, unaware of the nature of the hexagonal concrete paving beneath their feet. Called Deterrent Paving it was part of the same harassment strategy, which also included the fountain's supply of Choke Water devised by Ray Richardson himself against the area's many derelicts. Every night one hexagonal block in seven was raised hydraulically to a height of eight inches, like the armour on the back of some pale antediluvian creature, to discourage any homeless people from sleeping there.

The two men stopped at the foot of the steps and, shielding their eyes against the strong sun and the reflected white glare of the concrete facade, stared up at the colourless cluster of tubular steel columns and horizontal trusses that denned the Gridiron's front elevation. The building seemed to be divided into ten zones, each suspended from a truss by a single line of steel hangers. Each of these massive horizontals was supported in turn by a steel mast made of clusters of individual steel columns. In spite of himself Frank Curtis was impressed. This was what he imagined when he thought about science-fiction: some inhuman, white-faced machine, a blank-faced emissary from a palsied, godless universe.

'Let's hope they're friendly,' he muttered.

'Who?'

'The aliens who built this fuckin' thing.'

They ran up the steps, flashed their badges to the patrolman standing by the door and ducked under the police line. Once inside they passed through another glass door and found themselves confronted by the massive tree that dominated the atrium. 'Now that's what I call a house plant,' said Curtis.

'I guess now you won't have to ask the architect why the building had to be so big. Will you look at the size of that thing?'

A patrolman and a security guard walked towards them. Curtis hung his badge over the edge of his coat pocket and said, 'LAPD Homicide. Where's the body?'

'Fourth level,' said the patrolman. 'The computer centre. CSIU and SID are up there now, sir.'

'Well, show us to our seats, son,' said Curtis, 'before we miss the start of the show.'

'If you'll follow me please, gentlemen,' said the guard.

They walked to a waiting elevator car and stepped inside.

'Data centre,' said the guard.

The doors slid shut and the car started to move.

'That's a neat trick,' observed Curtis. 'You the guy that found him?'

'No, sir,' said the guard. 'I'm Dukes. I just came on shift. It was Sam Gleig who found Mr Yojo. He was the night detail. He's with the other officers, upstairs.'

They walked along a balcony overlooking the atrium which was marked by a series of lights set into the floor a couple of inches in front of the glass barrier.

'What's this?' asked Curtis pointing down at their feet. 'The runway?'

'In case of fire,' explained Dukes. 'So as you don't fall over the edge if the building fills with smoke.'

'Thoughtful.'

They turned down a corridor and approached the bridge that led into the computer room. Coleman was hanging back, leaning over the balcony to look across the span of the building.

'Will you look at this joint, Frank? It's incredible.'

'Come on, Toto,' called Curtis. 'We're not in Kansas any more.'

'You don't know the half of it,' said Dukes. 'Man, this place is like Star Trek.'

'Take charge of the landing party, Mr Coleman,' said Curtis. 'I want some answers.'

'Aye-aye, sir.' Coleman reached for a cigarette and then changed his mind when he saw the No Smoking sign on the computer-room door. Halon 1301 sounded none too friendly.

The crime scenes investigation unit and the scientific investigations division were working quickly and quietly, the subject of their scrutiny still seated in his chair.

'Jesus, this room,' someone was saying. 'I couldn't live in a room without a window.'

'You want to put that down as a probable cause of death?'

Over the years Curtis had become familiar with most of the scientific personnel; he knew that the faces he didn't recognize would have something to do with the victim himself. Friends or colleagues. He told Coleman to clear them out and where necessary get their statements. Only then did he take a closer look at the body.

The coroner's assistant, a tall, suitably cadaverous man with lank hair and tinted glasses, straightened and waited for the detective to conclude his cursory examination.

'Jesus, Charlie. The guy looks like he spent the weekend on the beach at Bikini Atoll.'

Curtis stepped back and wafted the foul air away from his nose and mouth.

'What did he do? Shit himself to death?'

'Sure smells like it.'

'He died in the chair, right?'

'Looks that way, doesn't it?'

'Only it's never proved to be lethal before, unless you were Ethel Rosenberg. Come on, Charlie. Are there any medical grounds for suspicion?'

Charlie Seidler shifted his negligible shoulders.

'On the face of it, hard to say.'

Curtis glanced eloquently at Yojo's blue and bloody features and grinned.

'Are we talking about the same face, Charlie? Take another look at him, will you? I mean, you don't get two black eyes like that 'cause you got careless with your make-up pencil. And where did all that blood on his shirt come from?'