“I’m almost twenty,” she said. “Sorry, thanks for the compliment. It’s just that…look at Jordan. All that rage because he couldn’t shake his dependency. Mommy taught me the importance of taking care of myself. I am not going to be one of them.”
“Them?”
“Weak, self-pitying people. I can’t afford to be that way.”
“I understand. But all I see is someone smart enough to ask for help when she needs it.”
“Thank you…I really feel I’m okay, what we did today was amazingly helpful.” She shook her arms to demonstrate. “Rubber girl. I’ll practice. If I forget something, I’ll get right in touch.”
I didn’t answer.
“I promise,” she said. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
At the front door, she said, “Thanks for trusting me, Dr. Delaware. No need to walk me down.”
I watched her descend to her van. She never looked back.
Monday, the blinking light was a message from my service. Detective Sturgis had phoned.
I told Milo about Lester Jordan’s angry missive.
He said, “So the guy was an asshole, we saw that in person.”
“Maybe it clarifies things. From the note it’s clear that Patty helped him through an O.D., but there was no hint she supplied him with anything other than TLC.”
He said, “Great. Meanwhile, the hills are alive with the sound of suspects. I located a three-year-old black Hummer registered to Quick-Kut Music, address on the fourteen hundred block of Oriole Drive. I’m meeting Petra in an hour at Sunset and Doheny-near Gil Turner’s liquor store. Come fly with us, if you’re so inclined.”
The bird streets worm their way into the hills above the Strip, just east of Trousdale Estates, skinny, sinuous, haphazardly paved feats of engineering.
Mockingbird, Warbler, Thrasher, Skylark, Tanager.
Blue Jay Way, where George Harrison sat alone in a rental house, waiting for a press agent who’d made a wrong turn, staring out at a vast table of city shrouded by night and fog.
Easy to lose your way up there. Random cul-de-sacs and no-warning dead ends say someone in the city planner’s office had enjoyed playing darts. Grades are treacherous and jogging’s a life-threatening procedure due to the lack of sidewalks, Porsches and Ferraris buzzing the curb. The houses, many of them hidden behind hedges and walls, range from Palladian palaces to no-style boxes. They butt up against each other like rush-hour straphangers, teeter over the street. Squint a certain way on the bird streets and the hills seem to be trembling even when the ground is still.
The good part is heart-stopping views, some of the best in L.A., and seven- to eight-figure property values.
A twenty-eight-year-old music thief would need a serious income supplement to swing it and the obvious answer was dope. Despite that, I meant what I’d told Milo about Patty not being involved in the dope trade. Jordan’s note was personal-rage at losing an emotional safety net, not concern about being cut off from his supply.
Patty’s sin had been doing her job too well.
Yet she’d committed another iniquity, something serious enough to haunt her for years. And Lester Jordan had probably died because of it.
When I got to the liquor store, Milo stepped out of his unmarked, unfolding a map and wondering out loud if the topography of Oriole Drive allowed a decent vantage spot. Taking the padded envelope without comment, he dropped it onto the passenger seat and returned to the map.
Petra drove up in her Accord.
The two of them studied the street grid, decided to park at the bottom of Oriole and walk. Petra’s car would be the transport vehicle because it was unobtrusive.
“Not cool enough to be a local,” she said, tapping the hood, “but maybe they’ll think I’m a personal assistant.”
She drove north on Doheny Drive, used her stick shift to keep it smooth.
Milo said, “Nice gear-work, Detective Connor.”
“Had to drive better than my brothers.”
“For self-esteem?”
“Survival.”
Every second property seemed to be under construction or renovation, and the side effects abounded: dust, din, workers darting across the road, gouges in the asphalt inflicted by heavy machinery.
As we climbed, the houses got smaller and plainer, some of the punier ones obviously subdivides of old estates. Oriole Drive began with the thirteen hundred block. We parked at the base and began a steep upward hike.
Petra’s long, lean legs were made for climbing and my self-punishing runs made the grade no big challenge. But Milo was panting and trying hard to hide it.
Petra kept an eye on him. He forged ahead of us. Wheezed, “You…know…CPR?”
She said, “Took a refresher last year but don’t you dare, Lieutenant.”
Glancing at me. I threw up my hands.
The scrape-scrape of his desert boots became our marching cadence.
A No Outlet sign appeared at the advent of the fourteen hundred block.
Fourteen sixty-two meant the top of the hill or close to it.
Milo gasped, “Oh, great.” Rubbed his lower back and trudged.
We passed a huge white contemporary house, then several plain-faced fifties boxes. What the Orwellian dialect known as Realtor-Speak would euphemize as “midcentury charmers.”
The part about “drop-dead views” would be righteous.
Milo pressed forward. Mopping his face with a handkerchief, he sucked in air and pointed.
Empty space where 1462 should’ve been.
What remained was a flat patch of brown dirt not much bigger than a trailer pad and surrounded by chain link. The gate was open. A construction permit packet hung on the fence.
A man stood at the far end of the lot, a few feet from the precipice, staring out at smoggy panorama.
Milo and Petra checked nearby vehicles. The closest was a gold BMW 740, parked at the crown of the cul-de-sac.
“Car’s not much bigger than the property,” he said. “L.A. affluence.”
Petra said, “That’s why I don’t paint landscapes.”
Unmindful of us, the man lit a cigarette, gazed, and smoked.
Milo coughed.
The man turned.
Petra waved.
The man didn’t return the gesture.
We walked onto the lot.
He lowered his cigarette and watched us.
Early forties, five eight or nine, with heavy shoulders, bulky arms and thighs, and a hard, round belly. A square, swarthy face was bottomed by an oversized chin. He wore a pale blue dress shirt with French cuffs, chunky gold cufflinks shaped like jet planes, sharply creased navy slacks, black croc loafers grayed by dust. The top button of the shirt was undone. Gray chest hair bristled and a gold chain nestled in the pelt. A thin red string circled his right wrist. A beeper and a cell phone hung from his waistband.
Wraparound Ray-Bans blocked the windows to his soul. The rest of his face was a tight mask of distrust.
“This is private property. If you want a free view, go to Mulhol-land.”
Petra flashed the badge.
“Police? What, he’s gone crazy?”
“Who, sir?”
“Him. Troupe, the lawyer.” Cocking his head toward the house to the south. “I keep telling him, all the permits are in order, there’s nothing you gonna do about it.”
Some kind of accent-familiar but I couldn’t place it.
“Now, what, he’s again yelling about the noise? We graded a week ago, how can you grade without noise?”
“We’re not here about that, Mr…”
“Avi Benezra. Then what do you want?”
I got the accent. A few years ago, we’d worked with an Israeli police superintendent named Daniel Sharavi. Benezra’s inflections were harsher, but similar.
Petra said, “We’re looking for the residents of 1462.”
Benezra removed his glasses, revealed soft, hazel eyes, squinting in amusement. “Ha, ha. Very funny.”