He was standing near the curb and hopped into the Seville before the car had come to a full stop.
"Where to?" I said.
"Anywhere."
I continued up Butler, took a random turn, and cruised the modest residential streets that surround the West L.A. station. When I'd put half a mile between us and his desk, he said, "There is definitely a God and He's jerking my chain. Payment for old sins."
"What sins?"
"The worst one: failure."
"Willie Burns is another cold one?"
"Willie Burns is an old perp on a cold one. Wilbert Lorenzo Burns, DOB forty-three and a half years ago, suspicion of homicide; I picked it up right after I transferred. And guess what, another file seems to have gone missing. But I did manage to find one of Burns's old probation officers, and he came up with some old paper and there it was: Achievement House. Willie'd finagled a summer placement there, lasted less than a month, and was booted for absenteeism."
"A homicide suspect and he's working with problem teens?"
"Back then he was just a junkie and a dealer."
"Same question."
"Guess Willie never told him about his background."
"Who'd he kill?"
"Bail bondsman name of Boris Nemerov. Ran his business right here in West L.A. Big, tough guy, but he sometimes had a soft heart for cons because he himself had spent some time in a Siberian gulag. You know how bail bonds work?"
"The accused puts up a percentage of the bail and leaves collateral. If he skips trial, the bondsman pays the court and confiscates the collateral."
"Basically," he said, "except generally the bondsman doesn't actually pay the initial bail with his own money. He buys a policy from an insurance company for two to six percent of the total bail. To cover the premiums and make a profit, he collects a fee from the perp- usually ten percent, nonrefundable. If the perp goes fugitive, the insurance company shells out to the court and has the right to collect the collateral. Which is usually a piece of property- Grandma letting her beloved felon offspring tie up the cute little bungalow where she's lived for two hundred years. But seizing the cottage from poor old Grandma takes time and money and gets bad press and what do insurance companies want with low-rent real estate? So they'd always rather have the perp in hand. That's why they send out bounty hunters. Who take their cut."
"Trickle-down economics," I said. "Crime's good for the GDP."
"Boris Nemerov made out okay as a bondsman. Treated people like human beings and had a low skip rate. But he sometimes took risks- forgoing collateral, discounting his ten percent. He'd done that for Willie Burns because Burns was a habitual client who'd never let him down before. Last time Burns presented himself to Nemerov, he had no collateral."
"What was the charge?"
"Dope. As usual. This was after he was fired at Achievement House and didn't show up at his probation appointment. Up till then, Burns had been nonviolent, as far as I could tell. His juvey record began at age nine and it was sealed. His adult crime career commenced the moment he was old enough to be considered an adult: one week after his eighteenth birthday. Petty theft, drugs, more drugs. Yet more drugs. A whole bunch of plea bargains put him back on the street, then he finally had to stand trial and got probation. The last bust was more serious. Burns was caught trying to peddle heroin to some junkies on the Venice walkway. The junkie he picked was an undercover officer and the arrest came during one of those times when the department claimed to be fighting The War On Drugs. All of a sudden, Burns faced a ten-year sentence and the court imposed a fifty-thousand-dollar bond. Burns went to Boris Nemerov, as usual, and Nemerov posted for him and accepted Burns's promise to work off the five grand. But this time, Burns skipped. Nemerov called around, trying to locate Burns's family, friends, got zilch. The address Burns had listed was a parking lot in Watts. Nemerov started to get irritated."
"Started?" I said. "Patient fellow."
"Cold winters on the steppes can teach you patience. Eventually, Nemerov put the bounty hunters on Burns's trail, but they got nowhere. Then out of the blue, Nemerov got a call from Burns. Guy claimed to want to give himself up but was scared the hunters were gonna shoot him in his tracks. Nemerov tried to put his mind at ease, but Burns was freaking out. Paranoid. Said people were after him. Nemerov agreed to pick up Burns personally. East of Robertson, near the 10 East overpass. Nemerov set out late at night in this big old gold Lincoln he used to tool around in, never came home. Mrs. Nemerov went crazy, Missing Persons prioritized it because Boris was well-known at the station. Two days later, the Lincoln was found in an alley behind an apartment on Guthrie, not far from the meeting place. Those days, the neighborhood was serious gang territory."
"Meeting Burns alone there didn't worry Nemerov?"
"Boris was self-confident. Big, jolly type. Probably thought he'd seen the worst and survived. The Lincoln was stripped and gutted and covered with branches- someone had made a half-baked attempt to conceal it. Boris was in the trunk, bound and gagged, three holes in the back of his head."
"Execution," I said.
"No good deed goes unpunished. Del Hardy and I got the case and worked it all the way to nowhere."
"You would think something like that would make the papers. Burns's name pulled up zilch."
"That I can explain. Nemerov's family wanted it kept quiet, and we obliged. They didn't want Boris's lapse in judgment made public- bad for business. And they had quite a few favors to pull in- reporters' kids who'd been bailed out. Cops' kids, too. Del and I were ordered to do our job but to do it very quietly."
"Did that hamstring you?"
"Not really. Finding Burns wasn't going to be accomplished by feeding the press. The Nemerovs were decent folk- first everything they'd gone through in Russia and now this. We didn't want to upset them, everyone felt bad about the whole thing. The business almost went under, anyway. The insurance companies weren't pleased, wanted to sever all ties. Nemerov's widow and son agreed to eat all fifty grand of Burns's forfeited bail and begged for a chance to prove themselves. They managed to hold on to most of their policies. Eventually, they got their heads above water. They're still in business- same place, right around the corner from the station. Nowadays they're known for never giving an inch."
"And Willie Burns's trail went cold," I said.
"I dogged him for years, Alex. Anytime I had a lull, I checked on the asshole. I was sure he'd turn up eventually because a junkie's unlikely to change his ways. My bet was he'd end up incarcerated or dead."
"Maybe he did end up dead," I said. "The Nemerov family had access to professional searchers. Even good folk can develop a thirst for revenge."
"My gut says no, but if that's what happened, it's a definite dead end. I'm starting to feel like I'm back in junior high, staring at tests I flunked."
"Maybe it's only one big test," I said. "Maybe Willie Burns knew Caroline before she was sent to Achievement House- one of the black guys Dr. Schwartzman saw Caroline hanging with. Burns's murdering Nemerov could've been nothing new for him, because he'd killed before. At a party in Bel Air."
"Burns's record was nonviolent, Alex."
"Till it wasn't," I said. "What if the nonviolent crimes were the ones he never got caught for. Was he only into heroin?"
"No, poly-drug addict. Heroin, acid, pills, meth. Since the age of ten."
"Ups and downs," I said. "Unpredictable behavior. Put someone like that in contact with an unbalanced kid like Caroline, stick both of them at a dope party where two not-too-bright street girls show up, and who knows what might happen? Caroline's family suspected- or knew she'd been part of something bad and sent her to Achievement House. Willie split back to the streets but found his way over to Achievement House to visit Caroline. Stupid move, but junkies are impulsive. And no one caught on. He worked there for a month, was fired because of absenteeism."