“But you know, Alex, all we can do is advise her. Unless there’s a clear threat.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you take the baby.”
“Well, that’s good,” said Monica. “Because we’ve got far too many babies with no one to care for them.”
I hung up and summarized for Milo.
He said, “Yeah, yeah, I got the gist,” and gazed up at the seventh floor of the King William.
I said, “Sorry it didn’t pan out tonight,” and opened the passenger door.
He said, “Are you really?” Then: “Mea culpa, that was uncalled for.”
I said, “No sweat,” but his apology bypassed my brain and stuck in my gut and I felt myself bristling.
Wishing him luck, I headed for my car.
Driving home on streets emptied of rage and steel, I thought about the quandary posed by Oletha Dreiser and her baby.
Family unification at almost any cost was a long-standing doctrine at social services originally motivated by compassion but powered now by budgetary restrictions and the soulless grinding of a bureaucratic machinery that viewed kids as case numbers.
Short of obvious life-threatening danger, no court would sever Oletha’s attachment to Cody. I’d seen people far more impaired than her entrusted with parenthood.
The fact that too many kids died in foster care didn’t help, either. Last year, the toll had been three babies at three separate temporary homes. One was a neglected influenza, the second remained undetermined but was suspected to be a smothering. The last was a confirmed homicide committed by the foster mother’s gangbanger boyfriend.
A deputy D.A. had described that killing to me as a “big-time oops.”
Despite all that, Mommy as murderer would change the rules fast; Ree Sykes could forget about bureaucratic inertia as a shield.
Why had she taken the risk?
Once Milo caught up with her, what lay in store for Rambla?
I wondered how the two of them were coping with life on the run. Were they holed up in a sad little room like 709 at the Prince William, cooking with Sterno?
I wanted to believe Ree was too safety-conscious to put her child in jeopardy. That got tougher as I thought about the cold elimination of two human beings. Trying for an even three.
Winky Melandrano had served as Ree’s babysitter. Had she brought Rambla the night she ambushed and shot him?
Facts were piling up against her but I still had trouble reconciling that level of callousness with the woman I’d evaluated.
Devoted mother. Appropriate. Nurturing. I’d believed all that enough to put my endorsement in writing. But what if maternal devotion had degraded to a competitive blood sport?
The prize, twenty pounds of innocence.
Maybe … but even if I’d glossed Ree’s character, the motive Milo was ascribing to her seemed flimsy. If her goal was having Rambla to herself, why not simply disappear?
Because Connie was relentless and had the money to fund a long battle and needed to be taken care of first?
Fine, but that didn’t explain going after Melandrano and Chamberlain, men described as Ree’s lifelong friends.
Occasional lovers.
A wild night in the Malibu hills?
Complicated … if Ree wasn’t a killer, why had she vanished?
Maybe her disappearance hadn’t been voluntary. What if someone viewed her as an obstacle? The obvious candidate was Ree’s father. Brought into the game by Connie.
But if Connie had discovered his identity, why hadn’t she named him in her court papers?
And why focus on Winky and Boris?
Because naming them as possible fathers had nothing to do with the truth, it was just another ploy to cast Ree as a dissolute, sexually indiscriminate groupie.
If so, it was possible Connie had made a fatal error. Igniting a frightening man’s paternal urges, leading him to clear the deck of competition.
Connie out of the way, then Ree. Doing it quickly so that Ree’s disappearance would cast her as a suspect.
Easy enough to accomplish. So was leaving Ree’s car at the station, misdirecting the cops on a fruitless search.
A good planner. Meticulous.
But:
You left a speck of Connie’s blood on Ree’s carpet. An iota that flaked off shoes you thought you’d cleaned thoroughly.
You’re not quite as smart as you think you are. Dad.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked it intellectually. And hated it emotionally because of what it implied for Ree. And Rambla.
Child as Holy Grail. Property to be coveted, just like all the other crap cases I’d fielded in family court.
If I offered any of this to Milo, he’d point out that I had no evidence.
Neither do you, Big Guy.
No sense getting into it with him.
Also: I hadn’t a clue where to take it.
CHAPTER 34
Morning can bring clarity or confusion. By six a.m. the following day I was experiencing a strange mixture of both. I woke up thinking about Lonesome Moan, couldn’t shake the feeling that the band had occupied my dreams.
No nocturnal music video; Ree’s long-lived friendship with all four members was the issue.
Half the quartet had been marked for murder, the other half left out of the crosshairs.
Did that make Chuck-o Blatt a target? Along with the guitarist I hadn’t met — Spenser “Zebra” Younger?
Or was one of them Rambla’s dad?
I thought of Blatt’s protectiveness when we’d talked about Ree.
If you really are a psychologist and not spying for her fucking sister …
You know the kind of person she is. You hear me? You didn’t say nothing.
She’s a nice person.
Not just nice. Good.
Aggressive sort. Suspicious — he’d held back giving me anything of substance until I proved my identity. Had ended up supplying a rationale for Ree’s disappearance: Ree figured the bitch was going to keep harassing her.
Unlike his bandmates, Chuck-o was a hard-nosed businessman who’d managed to parlay gig money into ownership of three bars. Whom I’d watch handle an array of serious drinkers with effortless dominance.
Boris Chamberlain had his muscles and Blatt was built soft, but from what I’d seen Blatt was the likely alpha in the band. And alphas were all about protection, so who better to turn to when you were feeling threatened?
Especially if your relationship with the alpha had produced a child. Then there was the matter of Zebra Younger, a total question mark. If either man was in danger, warning them was the right thing to do. If one of them was Rambla’s murderous daddy, additional face-time would be interesting.
Either way, time for a return visit to Virgo Virgo.
At eleven a.m., I drove into the Valley. One parking spot was available across the street from the bar, situated ten yards west with a gently oblique view.
Papered over the Happy Hour!!! banner was a new announcement.
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
I remained in the Seville, playing my phone as I tried to find personal data on marvin blatt. Nothing. I tried charles, chuck, and chuck-o. The last led back to the Lonesome Moan website and I was figuring out my next step when a man approached the bar’s front door.
Seventyish, basset-faced, shiny blue suit well past salvation, white dress shirt, droopy tie.