Survival of the Fittest (34 page)

“Fine.”

When he showed up carrying a black vinyl satchel, Robin and I were in the living room playing hearts and she got up to get the door. We rarely played cards; her idea.

I made the introductions. Robin knew about the break-in and the bugging, but she smiled evenly and shook Sharavi’s hand.

I heard the dog door slam shut, then Spike’s mini-gallop across the kitchen floor. He raced into the living room, snorting and panting. Stopping several feet from Sharavi, he tightened his neck muscles and growled.

Robin stooped and tried to calm him. Spike barked and wouldn’t stop. “What’s the matter, handsome?”

“He doesn’t like me,” said Sharavi. “I don’t blame him. When I was here, I had to put him in the bathroom for a few minutes.”

Robin’s smile withered.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Castagna. I used to have a dog of my own.”

“C’mon, handsome, we’ll let them do business.” Spike followed her back into the kitchen.

“You’re still willing to do this?” he said.

“Any reason I shouldn’t be?”

“Sometimes people get enthusiastic, then they reconsider. And Ms. Castagna—”

“She’s fine with it.”

We sat down and he placed the satchel on the table. “I’ve learned more about the New York lawyer, Farley Sanger. His last trip to Los Angeles was two weeks before Irit’s murder. He stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel and as far as we can tell, conducted business for his firm. So far, we’ve got no records of his being back since, but those kinds of things can be hidden.”

He removed papers. “Still no trace of Meta. After the publicity from Sanger’s article, the group either dissolved or went underground. When it was active, the meetings were held in a building on Fifth Avenue. A very exclusive building and this particular suite houses the Loomis Foundation—a charitable group started by a wealthy Louisiana farming family over one hundred years ago. A relatively small foundation, from what we can tell. Last year they gave out less than three hundred thousand dollars. One-third went to a psychological study of twins in Illinois, another third to agricultural research, and the rest to various scientists conducting genetic studies.”

“Did the twin research have a genetic bent, also?”

“The researcher’s a professor of comparative biology at a small college. These are the data.” He handed me a stapled reprint.

The journal was
Proceedings of the Loomis Foundation,
the title:
Homogeneity of Traits and Longitudinal Patterns of Encoded Behavior in Monozygotic Twins Separated at Birth.

“Loomis   .   .   . sounds familiar. What do they farm?”

“Tobacco, alfalfa, cotton. The Loomis family prided itself on its geneology—links to European nobility, that kind of thing.”

“Prided?” I said. “They’re no longer around?”

“The family name died out but a few cousins remain and they run the business and the foundation. No new cash has been added to the principal for years.”

“Is there any record of their funding Meta?”

“Not so far, but the fact that Meta used their office says something.”

“And controversy from Sanger’s article could attract unwanted attention.”

“Exactly. So maybe that’s why the group was disbanded.”

“Or moved to L.A.,” I said. “Loomis—one sec.” I went into my office and pulled
The Brain Drain
from a shelf.

The author bio on the back flap.

Arthur Haldane, Ph.D., resident scholar, the Loomis Institute, New York City.

I brought it back to Sharavi.

“Oh,” he said. “I bought the book yesterday, haven’t gotten around to reading it.   .   .   . So there’s an institute in addition to the foundation.”

“Maybe other money you didn’t trace.”

He turned the book over, opened it, and inspected the table of contents. “May I use your phone?”

He made a calling-card connection, spoke briefly in Hebrew, hung up, returned to the table.

“A best-seller,” I said. “If any of the royalties were returned to Loomis, that kills their tax-free status. With their cash depletion, they might have been willing to take the risk.”

“Both Sanger and that securities analyst, Helga Cranepool, work in financial fields. Her specialty’s farm commodities.”

“Loomis’s product,” I said. “Assuming they still farm.”

“Oh, they do,” he said. “Not in America, overseas. Cotton, hemp, jute, alfalfa and other feeds, various packing materials. They own plantations in Asia and Africa. I’d assume because of the lower wages.”

“Oh, for them mint-julep days,” I said. “Does the foundation keep offices out here?”

“Not under the Loomis name. I’m looking into it.”

“Fifth Avenue suite in New York and all we know about them here is a possible link to a bookstore in Silverlake. Bit of a contrast.”

“We know they’re snobs,” he said. “Maybe it extends to their view of California.”

I made coffee while he sat, motionless, almost entranced. When I brought back two mugs, he thanked me and gave me a white envelope. In it were a social-security card, Visa, MasterCard, Fedco membership, Blue Shield enrollment, all made out to Andrew Desmond.

“Health insurance,” I said. “What’s the deductible?”

He smiled. “Ample.”

“In case I get hurt?”

“I’ll do my best to take care of you.”

“What about a driver’s license?”

“We’ll need a photo for that and I want to wait til Thursday or Friday when your beard’s thicker. I’ll have some educational credentials for you at that time, also. We’ve come up with an L.A.-based, unaccredited psychology program that closed down ten years ago. Even if by some strange coincidence you happened to meet another alumnus, it was home-study, no contact between the students.”

“Sounds perfect.”

He squared the stack of papers. “Few civilians would disrupt their life to this extent, Alex.”

“I’m a masochist. And frankly, I think we’re overdoing the espionage bit.”

“Better that than the opposite. Should you need a home away from home, you’ve got one. I was able to get a place in the city. Genesee Avenue. The Fairfax district.”

He waved his good hand around the room. “I’m afraid it’s nothing like this, but the neighbors don’t pry.”

From his pocket came a ring bearing several keys. He spread them on the table, touched each in turn.

“Front and back doors, garage, your car. It’s a Karmann Ghia, ten years old, but customized with a new engine, and runs better than it looks. It’s in the garage.”

He slid the keys across the table.

“Sounds like you’ve thought of everything,” I said.

“If only that were possible.”

Milo rang the bell just after ten-thirty and Petra Connor was with him. She was dressed in a pantsuit again, this one chocolate brown, wore less makeup, and looked younger.

Milo said, “Superintendent Sharavi, Detective Petra Connor, Hollywood Division.”

They shook hands. Connor’s dark eyes shifted to me, then to the false ID.

“Something to drink?” I said.

“No, thanks,” she said.

Milo said, “If you’ve got coffee left, I’ll have some. Where’s Robin?”

“Out in back.”

I filled a mug and Milo studied my social-security card. “Just finished interdivisional show-and-tell. Pierce couldn’t make it, McLaren and Hooks were out on other cases, so it was Alvarado, Detective Connor, and me.”

Connor twisted a cameo ring. “Thanks for letting me in on this. I recontacted Malcolm Ponsico’s parents in New Jersey but once again, they were no help. And I couldn’t tell them it might not be suicide, my line was I was just touching base. I also looked into Zena Lambert’s background and it’s spotless. She left PlasmoDerm voluntarily, wasn’t fired, nothing iffy in her personnel file, and she’s the registered owner of the bookstore, so it looks like an attempt at self-employment.”

She looked at Milo.

He said, “The only morsel that came up at the meeting was that Alvarado dug through Recreation Department files and found a guy named Wilson Tenney who’d worked at the park where Raymond Ortiz was abducted and was fired a few weeks later because of personality problems. Wouldn’t take orders, showed up when he wanted to, sat on a bench and read instead of raking. They warned him several times, finally gave him the boot. Tenney contested the firing, made noises about a lawsuit, reverse discrimination because he was a white male, but then he just went away.”

He handed me a sheet printed with a photocopied driver’s license. Tenney was thirty-five, five ten, one fifty. Green eyes, shoulder-length hair, light brown, unless the black and white copy was inaccurate. Hard eyes, tight mouth. If you were looking for something. Nothing else remarkable about the face.

“Angry man,” I said. “Resentment of minorities. Reading on the job because he’s a self-styled intellectual? Interesting.”

“We ran him through, and he’s as clean as Lambert and didn’t go crosstown for a job at the conservancy. He did split from his last known address—apartment in Mar Vista. And guess what he drives?”

“A van.”

“Seventy-nine Chevy, lapsed registration, so that raises the hunch quotient a bit. If he’s living on the street, he’s not on the dole, no welfare applications.”

“He might have a history of psychiatric treatment,” I said. “Could be hospitalized.”

“Alvarado’s already starting to check public hospitals; at this point, private places would be impossible to crack. I also dropped by that Mensa president’s place—Bukovsky. It’s his business, an auto-parts yard, and he wasn’t in. I decided not to leave a card. Suggestions, so far?”

“No,” said Sharavi, “just information.” He repeated what he’d told me about Sanger and the Loomis Foundation.

“Fifth Avenue,” said Milo. “And maybe they’re silent partners with the creep who wrote that book   .   .   . maybe partners with Zena Lambert, bankrolling Spasm. One way for a clerk to go self-employed overnight.”

“Venture capital for a new utopia,” I said.

“And if the store brings in money,” said Sharavi, “maybe it goes back to the Loomis Foundation. Interesting way to launder.”

“So you’ll keep checking Sanger’s travel records?” said Milo.

Sharavi nodded.

“What about the editor, Cranepool?”

“She lives alone in an apartment on East Seventy-eighth Street, works long hours at the brokerage house, comes home and rarely goes out except to shop and run errands.”

Three photos came out of his pocket. The first landed upside down and he left it that way. The second was a snapshot of a tall, beefy man around forty with sloping shoulders that good tailoring couldn’t conceal. His hair was dark and combed straight back and his features were thick, slightly flattened. Dark eyes, droopy lids. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, navy tie, and carried a soft leather attaché. The camera had caught him walking down a crowded street looking preoccupied.

The third featured a tight-lipped, harried-looking woman ten years older, wearing a bulky beige sweater and dark green plaid slacks. Light brown hair was pulled back from a broad face. Large gold earrings, gold-rimmed glasses. More flattened features and I asked if she and Sanger could be related.

“Good question,” said Sharavi. “I’ll try to find out.”

I examined the shot of Helga Cranepool some more. She was in motion but a fast lens had captured her without blur—stepping out of a door holding two white shopping bags. The window behind her displayed apples and oranges. The lettering on one of the bags said
D’AGOSTINO.

“He was on his way to a business lunch,” said Sharavi. “We found her grocery shopping on Lexington Avenue on Saturday.”

“Both of them are pretty grim-looking,” said Petra Connor.

“Maybe being brilliant’s not what it’s cracked up to be,” said Milo.

Sharavi flipped the first photo over. Farley Sanger in a red polo shirt and canvas hat, a pretty blond woman, and two blond children sitting in a motorboat still moored to a dock. Flat, green water, hints of marsh grass at the periphery.

Sanger still looked unhappy and the woman seemed cowed. The children had turned away from the camera, showing thin necks and yellow hair.

“Not exactly Norman Rockwell,” said Connor.

Milo asked if he could have the pictures and Sharavi said sure, they were copies for him.

I thought about the fact that he’d waited til Milo arrived to display them. Waited to let loose with details.

Cop-to-cop. I was a very small part of this.

“Onward,” said Milo. “The Melvin Myers stabbing. I met with Mrs. Grosperrin, the director at Myers’s trade school. At first she kept describing Myers as the perfect student. Too perfect, so I pressed her and she finally admitted he could also be a giant pain: quick temper, chip on his shoulder, always looking for signs of discrimination against the handicapped, complaining the school patronized the students instead of treating them like adults, the facilities sucked, the course offerings sucked. Grosperrin figured it was because Melvin’s mother had cooped him up for so long, now he was feeling his oats. She said Myers saw himself as a crusader, tried to turn the student council into some big deal—greater voice for the students, more respect from the administration.”

“A leader but abrasive,” I said. “Someone who could have made enemies.”

“Grosperrin denied he’d had any conflict with anyone, claimed the faculty understood where he was coming from and admired him. For his spunk, quote unquote.”

“What about the people at Myers’s group home?”

“Four residents, I talked to three and the landlady, over the phone. They said basically the same thing. Melvin was bright, but he could piss you off with his smart mouth.”

“Still,” said Connor, “none of the other victims was abrasive. It sounds like who they
were
made them victims, not what they
did.
”

“Did Mrs. Grosperrin have any idea what could have lured Myers into that alley?” said Sharavi.

“None,” said Milo. “But one thing’s for sure: He didn’t get lost. She said he knew the area like the palm of his hand, had trained himself to memorize the entire downtown grid. So someone offered him motivation to walk through that alley. And that’s where we stand. You schedule a time for visiting the bookstore yet, Alex?”