Mahakian passed his files to one of the suits and dashed out. He was a nice man. Good-looking, about Leslie’s age. A long heart-to-heart with him could be good grief therapy for her of another sort. I wondered whether he was married.
Leslie had said she couldn’t feel anything because of the sedative. Her reactions were flat. I planned to call her when the sedative had had time to wear off, to hear what she really thought. I knew it would be a big-time flame-out.
We stepped into the hall just as the elevator doors closed behind Leslie and Mahakian.
Mike said to me, “Quite a letter.”
“Quite,” I said. “George wasn’t about to take the fall alone, was he? Not even posthumously. I feel so awful for Leslie.”
“She’ll be okay.” Mike pushed the elevator call button.
“Tweedledee and Tweedledum,” I was saying as the doors slid open for us.
“What is?”
“George and Randy. To be sure, a deadlier combination than Tweedledee and Tweedledum, but as alike in their way.”
“You mean stubborn?” Mike pushed the lobby button and we started down. “Isn’t that what George kept saying about Randy, that he was stubborn?”
“I mean that if either of them wanted something, he thought any means to attain it was legit, even baby-selling and murder. What a couple of puds. My God, Attila the Hun had a finer moral code than those two.”
“Well sure, but old Attila was a big old bleeding-heart liberal leftist.”
I laughed. “What makes you think so?”
“He had to be as far left as you can go,” Mike said, leading me out through the deserted lobby. “Have you ever heard anyone described as being to the left of Attila? Never. It’s always ‘He’s further to the right than Attila the Hun.’ Therefore, if everyone is to his right…”
“Take me home,” I said.
Mike and I were both feeling the loss of two nights’ sleep. Ever macho, Mike said he was fine to drive, but I had to keep him talking all the way up the freeway. He gave up the effort just about the time the first orange glow of dawn lit the sky over the San Gabriels. He pulled off the freeway in downtown L.A., weaving like a drunk up Figueroa, and parked in the lot across from the Original Pantry. The Pantry never closes – it can’t, even in a riot, because there’s no lock on the door.
Mugs of coffee helped a little. Looking without interest at a plate covered with eggs, bacon, hash browns, I suggested we get a room at the Hilton and crash for a while where the telephones couldn’t reach us. Elizabeth was due to be brought in sometime during the midmorning, and there wasn’t time to go home, sleep, and come back.
Instead, we went to Parker Center, where there are a few cots stashed around so that morning-watch troops – the patrol shift on duty from midnight to eight – can get a little sleep when they have court scheduled during the day.
Mike found me a cot in a sort of closet behind the third-floor offices. The bed was narrow and hard, and had a tiny hard pillow, like the headrest in a coffin. My sleep was as close to death as I think I’ve ever gotten. At least it felt that way. I wasn’t out very long, two hours at the most, before I was awakened by the morning sounds of working people. I was sitting on the edge of the cot, running my fingers through my hair, when Mike came in to get me. I was rumpled and grouchy and in dire need of repair. Mike, on the other hand, had shaved and put on a fresh shirt.
“Feel better?” he asked, damnably chipper.
“I think so. You wouldn’t just have another clean shirt in your locker, would you?”
“I might.”
I went into the closest rest room and did the best I could with the materials I had to work with, liquid soap, water, and a borrowed comb. Mike knocked on the door and handed through a red cotton golf shirt with “Robbery-Homicide” and a cartoon gangster with a tommy gun embroidered on the left breast. I traded my wrinkled oxford-cloth for his shirt, tucking it into the top of my 501s as I opened the door.
Everyone I saw in the hall wore regulation button-down and flannel and had a gun riding a belt holster. I felt conspicuously civilian.
Mike said, with a gleam in his eye, “Elizabeth Ramsdale is on her way up.”
“Her way up from where?”
“Guest registration. I want to talk to her before they book her.”
“I want to be there,” I said.
Mike took my arm. “I think you’ve earned that privilege. Just stand at the back and look menacing. For some reason, some women are more intimidated by another woman than by a man. Just go along with everything I say and don’t ever look surprised. And for God’s sake don’t ever contradict me. Got it?”
“Got it.” I felt suddenly energized.
We were waiting in an interrogation room when Elizabeth was led in, handcuffed, by a pair of uniformed women officers.
After a night in the Cabo jail, followed by an escorted flight north, Elizabeth was a bit mussed, though her expensive haircut was money well spent, and she had enough tan that she didn’t need makeup. For a monster, she was very nice-looking, and smaller, more slender than I had expected. There was something about her that put me off, as if the exquisite frame beneath her face had been formed out of stainless steel instead of ordinary bone. She was slender inside a blue jail-issue jumper. She had turned up the collar, rolled the cuffs, pushed up the sleeves. With her haughty carriage, she could easily have passed among the yacht-club set. Except maybe for the handcuffs.
Mike pulled out a chair for her.
“I’m Detective Flint, Mrs. Ramsdale. We spoke night before last. And this is MacGowen. Have a seat.”
He left the cuffs on her.
I leaned against the wall, maybe three feet to her side, with my arms crossed, doing my best woman-officer impression. Mike stood, too, facing Elizabeth across the table. First thing, Mike dropped the doctored photograph of Ricco Zambotti onto the table in front of her. I watched her face fade about two days’ worth of tan when she saw it. She didn’t say anything.
“Coast Guard flew in Mr. Zambotti last night, Mrs. Ramsdale.”
“Did you say flew him in? Where’s my boat?”
“Afraid you have to write off the boat.” Mike shook his head, sympathetic. “Ricco’s quite a talker when he gets going. You want to hear about it?”
“I want my attorney.”
“Sure thing.” Next to Ricco’s picture, Mike laid down the enhanced image Guido had made of George. Elizabeth’s big eyes grew wider. She drew her full bottom lip between her teeth and bit it.
“You should be more careful about the friends and enemies you make, Mrs. Ramsdale,” he said, his voice friendly. He was being Uncle Ned out on the front porch. “You hooked yourself up with some real conversational folks. Now, I personally cannot see how one little bitty woman could have pushed around two great big men. So, I thought maybe you would like a chance to make your own statement. You know, correct any errors or false impressions they may have given.”
“I want my lawyer,” she said.
“No problem,” he said. “Let’s just clear up a few details while we’re here. The big picture is obvious enough, it’s just that I don’t have a real good handle on who did what and when they did it. Goes around and around in my mind, stuck. That ever happen to you? You get something stuck in your head? I do, all the time. This ditty is stuck in there right now, going round and round:
“About the Shark, the phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
“That’s Melville,” he said. “Herman Melville. You ever have to memorize little poems like that in school? Boy, I did. Every time I try to sort out this case, I start thinking about that poem. In a way, I guess it is like a bunch of fish swimming around down there. Only, you can’t tell one fish from the other. Except for the shark. Even that is pretty murky, Mrs. Ramsdale. Maybe you can help me out. The waters are so stirred up, I can’t tell for sure which one of you is the shark.”