The Explorer was black turned to gray by weeks of dirt. Bird shit speckled the top and the hood.
Bennett Hacker avoided the freeway and took side streets west: through the downtown crush to Figueroa, then south to Olympic, past Staples Center, all the way to Robertson. Then a right on Pico, to Motor, southward to Washington, where the avenue dead-ended at the Sony studio lot. Another right turn, and we were heading for the Marina.
A circuitous route; it took nearly an hour. Hacker made no attempts at shortcuts or slick maneuvers. He drove the way he walked. Slow, easy, not even a lane change unless it was essential. He smoked constantly, rolled the window down and flicked butts.
Milo stayed three cars behind him, and there was no sign Hacker noticed. At Palms, Milo phoned Sean Binchy and told him to forget about joining the tail, it wasn’t looking complicated. Binchy was mired in bureaucracy and enjoying it: airline records, the border patrol, querying the IRS for Jerome Quick’s tax records.
Milo told him, “Glad it’s fun for you, Sean.”
At Washington, just east of Palawan Way, Bennett Hacker stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought himself a Slurpee, and I took a picture of him sipping through two straws. Still drinking, he got back in the Explorer, turned onto Via Marina and drove right past his apartment. Tossed the empty cup out the window where it bounced along the median.
He continued through the Marina- past Bobby J’s and a spate of other harborside restaurants- and pulled into a strip mall on the south end.
Coin Laundromat, liquor store, window grate company, boat outfitters.
HOG TRAIL MOTORCYLE SHOP.
Fat-lettered, Day-Glo banners above the garage entrance said a big sale was going on. Big shiny bikes, many of them chopped and customized, were arranged in a tilting chorus line out in front.
“Here we go,” said Milo. “A new toy for our civil servant.”
I photographed Hacker entering the shop and kept clicking away when he came out a few moments later talking with another man.
His companion bummed a cigarette. Big, solid guy in a white T-shirt and tight blue jeans. Work boots. His hands and arms and the shirt were grease-stained.
Multiple tattoos, slicked-back dark hair. Raymond Degussa looked heavier and older than his most recent mug shot. He’d grown back his mustache, now graying, and added a soul patch that emphasized a heavy lower lip.
“Well, well,” said Milo. “Mr. Ray does have a day job. Probably another cozy cash situation, like the club. No papers filed, no tax returns.”
“Look what’s on the floor to his right,” I said.
Three rolls of black tarpaulin. Neoprene; a shred had been found at Flora Newsome’s crime scene.
Milo’s jaw set.
“I don’t want to push good fortune,” I said, “but that window grate company over there has got to keep iron bars in stock. Talk about one-stop shopping.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Milo. “How about some more pictures?”
Click click click.
Degussa found a rag and wiped his hands. Bennett Hacker talked, and both of them blew smoke that vanished in the beach air. No expression on Degussa’s long, hard face.
Then he nodded and grinned and snapped the rag and flicked it ten feet away into a white bucket just past the Neoprene rolls. Two points. This one could shoot.
He peeled off his greasy T-shirt, revealed slab pecs, a hard, protruding belly, bulky hirsute shoulders, arms, and neck, a thick waist softened by love handles. Some definition, but mostly size. Prisons had free weights for bulking up, no fancy toning machines.
Crumpling the shirt, he returned inside the bike shop, came out wearing a short-sleeved black silk shirt that hung loose over the same jeans and boots.
“Untucked,” I said. “Wonder if he’s armed.”
“Wouldn’t shock me.”
I reloaded the camera and photographed Degussa and Hacker as they got in the Explorer. The SUV hooked an illegal U, returned to Washington, turned south on Inglewood and pulled to the curb just shy of Culver Boulevard, in front of a bar called Winners.
One of those clay-colored, cinder-block masterpieces with a Bud sign in the single fly-specked window and a HAPPY HOUR WELL-DRINKS discount banner above the door.
Milo spotted a space across the street, ten yards north. He hung his own illegal U and parked.
I click-clicked the front of the bar.
Milo said, “Too small for us to go in without being noticed, so we just wait.”
An hour later, Hacker and Degussa still hadn’t emerged. Half an hour in, Milo had chanced a walk down the block and a look-see around the back of the bar.
“The rear exit’s bolted. Eventually, they’ll have to show at the front.”
As we sat there, he checked with Sean Binchy a couple more times. No record, so far, of Jerome Quick or Angela Paul flying anywhere.
Jerry and Angie.
Gavin and Christi.
Like-father-like-son had spawned a nightmare, and I found myself feeling sympathy for Quick, no matter what else he’d done.
Milo groused, “No record at the Mexican border, but what the hell does that mean? After 9-11, you’d think they’d register every damn car, but they don’t, it’s still that stupid random crap. Leaving a big fat hole for Quick to walk through.”
I was about to commiserate when movement in front of Winners caught my eye.
“The party begins,” I said.
Hacker and Degussa and two women stood on the sidewalk as their pupils adjusted to the light.
A blonde, a brunette, both in their late thirties. Big hair, heavy in the hips and bust. The blonde wore a black tank top over epidermal jeans. The brunette’s tank was red. Backless high-heeled sandals gave them both a mincing, butt-jiggling walk. Alcohol added some wobble.
Faces that had once been pretty had been paved over by bad decisions.
Hacker stopped to light up, and Degussa stretched his arms around both the women. Cupped their breasts. The blonde threw her head back and laughed. The brunette made a playful grab for his groin.
Milo said, “Classy.”
The four of them got in the Explorer and returned to Hacker’s apartment, entering the subterranean garage through an electric gate.
“Party time,” said Milo, “and yet again, I’m not invited.”
CHAPTER 43
The building’s manager was a man in his sixties named Stan Parks. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and gray slacks, had thinning hair and a disapproving mouth. A thirty-year-old Caltech engineering diploma hung behind his desk. His office was on the ground floor, next to the elevator, and the rumble of the lift shook the room at random intervals.
He said, “Hacker has no lease, just a month-to-month. He and his roommate.”
“Raymond Degussa?”
“Raymond something. Let me check.” Parks tapped the keys of a laptop. “Yup, Degussa.”
“Did he move in the same time as Hacker?”
“Two months later. Hacker cleared it with me. I told him no subleases, the check had to come from him, no split obligations.”
“How are they as tenants?”
“They’re okay. Your month-to-months, they’re the ones who give you troubles. I prefer leases, but it’s not one of the best units, stayed vacant a long time.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just not one of our best. Not the harbor side, and the way the trees grow at that particular height you can’t see much of anything on the other side.”
“What trouble has he given you?”
Parks frowned and played with a pencil, stippling three fingertips, then passing the shaft between his fingers. “Look, I’m not just the manager, I’m part owner. So if there’s something going on that affects the building, I need to know.”