Schwinn seemed bored with that one, too, but he did show his stuff. In a manner of speaking. Telling Milo to check out former employees, ten to one that's the way it would shake out. Dropping Milo off at the station and heading off for a doctor appointment, then calling in sick for the rest of the week. Milo did three days of legwork, assembled a list, zeroed in on a janitor who'd been fired from the jewelry store a month ago for suspected pilferage. Turned the guy up in an SRO hotel on Central, still rooming with the brother-in-law who'd been his partner in crime. Both bad guys were incarcerated and Pierce Schwinn showed up looking pink and healthy, and saying, "Yeah, there was no other possibility- did you finish the report?"
That one stuck in Milo 's head for a while: Kyle Rodriguez's beefy bronze corpse slumped over the jewelry case. The image kept him up for more than a few nights. Nothing philosophical or theological, just general edginess. He'd seen plenty of young, healthy guys die a lot more painfully than Kyle, had long ago given up on making sense out of things.
He spent his insomnia driving around in the old Fiat. Up and down Sunset from Western to La Cienega, then back again. Finally veering south onto Santa Monica Boulevard.
As if that hadn't been his intention all along.
Playing a game with himself, like a dieter circling a piece of cake.
He'd never been much for willpower.
For three consecutive nights, he cruised Boystown. Showered and shaved and cologned, wearing a clean white T-shirt and military-pressed jeans and white tennies. Wishing he was cuter and thinner, but figuring he wasn't that bad if he squinted and kept his gut sucked in and kept his nerves under control by rubbing his face. The first night, a sheriff's patrol car nosed into the traffic at Fairfax and stayed two car lengths behind his Fiat, setting off paranoia alarms. He obeyed all the traffic rules, drove back to his crappy little apartment on Alexandria, drank beer until he felt ready to burst, watched bad TV, and made do with imagination. The second night, no sheriffs, but he just lacked the energy to bond and ended up driving all the way to the beach and back, nearly falling asleep at the wheel.
Night three, he found himself a stool in a bar near Larabee, sweating too damn much, knowing he was even tenser than he felt because his neck hurt like hell and his teeth throbbed like they were going to crumble. Finally, just before 4 A.M., before sunlight would be cruel to his complexion, he picked up a guy, a young black guy, around his own age. Well-dressed, well-spoken, education grad student at UCLA. Just about the same place as Milo, sexual-honesty wise.
The two of them were jumpy and awkward in the guy's own crappy little grad student studio apartment on Selma south of Hollywood. The guy attending UCLA but living with junkies and hippies east of Vine because he couldn't afford the Westside. Polite chitchat, then… it was over in seconds. Both of them knowing there would be no repeat performance. The guy telling Milo his name was Steve Jackson but when he went into the bathroom, Milo spotted a date book embossed WES, found an address sticker inside the front cover. Wesley E. Smith, the Selma address.
Intimacy.
A sad case, Kyle Rodriguez, but he got over it by the time Case Seven rolled around.
A street slashing, good old Central Avenue, again. Knife fight, lots of blood all over the sidewalk, but only one db, a thirtyish Mexican guy in work clothes, with the homemade haircut and cheap shoes of a recently arrived illegal. Two dozen witnesses in a nearby cantina spoke no English and claimed blindness. This one wasn't even detective work. Solved courtesy of the blues- patrol car spotted a lurching perp ten blocks away, bleeding profusely from his own wounds. The uniforms cuffed him as he howled in agony, sat him down on the curb, called Schwinn and Milo, then phoned for the ambulance that transported the wretch to the jail ward at County Hospital.
By the time the detectives got there, the idiot was being loaded onto a gurney, had lost so much blood it was touch-and-go. He ended up surviving but gave up most of his colon and a bedside statement, pled guilty from a wheelchair, got sent back to the jail ward till someone figured out what to do with him.
Now, Number Eight. Schwinn just kept munching the burrito.
Finally, he wiped his mouth. "Beaudry, top of the freeway, huh? Wanna drive?" Getting out and heading for the passenger side before Milo could answer.
Milo said, "Either way," just to hear the sound of his own voice.
Even away from the wheel, Schwinn went through his jumpy predrive ritual. Ratcheting the seat back noisily, then returning it to where it had been. Checking the knot of his tie in the rearview, poking around at the corner of his lipless mouth. Making sure no cherry-colored residue of decongestant syrup remained.
Forty-eight years old but his hair was dead white and skimpy, thinning to skin at the crown. Five-ten and Milo figured him for no more than 140, most of it gristle. He had a lantern jaw, that stingy little paper cut of a mouth, deep seams scoring his rawboned face, and heavy bags under intelligent, suspicious eyes. The package shouted dust bowl. Schwinn had been born in Tulsa, labeled himself Ultra-Okie to Milo minutes after they'd met.
Then he'd paused and looked the young detective in the eye. Expecting Milo to say something about his own heritage.
How about Black Irish Indiana Fag?
Milo said, "Like the Steinbeck book."
"Yeah," said Schwinn, disappointed. "Grapes of Wrath. Ever read it?"
"Sure."
"I didn't." Defiant tone. "Why the fuck should I? Everything in there I already learned from my daddy's stories." Schwinn's mouth formed a poor excuse for a smile. "I hate books. Hate TV and stupid-ass radio, too." Pausing, as if laying down a gauntlet.
Milo kept quiet.
Schwinn frowned. "Hate sports, too- what's the point of all that?"
"Yeah, it can get excessive."
"You've got the size. Play sports in college?"
"High school football," said Milo.
"Not good enough for college?"
"Not nearly."
"You read much?"
"A bit," said Milo. Why did that sound confessional?
"Me too." Schwinn put his palms together. Aimed those accusatory eyes at Milo. Leaving Milo no choice.
"You hate books but you read."
"Magazines," said Schwinn, triumphantly. "Magazines cut to the chase- take your Reader's Digest, collects all the bullshit and condenses it to where you don't need a shave by the time you finish. The other one I like is Smithsonian."
Now there was a surprise.
"Smithsonian," said Milo.
"Never heard of it?" said Schwinn, as if relishing a secret. "The museum, in Washington, they put out a magazine. My wife went and subscribed to it and I was ready to kick her butt- just what we needed, more paper cluttering up the house. But it's not half-bad. They've got all sorts of stuff in there. I feel educated when I close the covers, know what I mean?"
"Sure."
"Now you," said Schwinn, "they tell me you are educated." Making it sound like a criminal charge. "Got yourself a master's degree, is that right?"
Milo nodded.
"From where?"
" Indiana U. But school isn't necessarily education."
"Yeah, but sometimes it is- what'd you study at Indiana Yooo?"
"English."
Schwinn laughed. "God loves me, sent me a partner who can spell. Anyway, give me magazines and burn all the books as far as I'm concerned. I like science. Sometimes when I'm at the morgue I look at medical books- forensic medicine, abnormal psychology, even anthropology 'cause they're learning to do stuff with bones." His own bony finger wagged. "Let me tell you something, boy-o: One day, science is gonna be a big damn deal in our business. One day, to be doing our job a guy's gonna have to be a scientist- show up at a crime scene, scrape the db, carry a little microscope, learn the biochemical makeup of every damn scrote the vic hung out with for the last ten years."