Survival of the Fittest (36 page)

“You don’t sound enthusiastic.”

“He’s good, Zev. As good as anyone I’ve ever worked with. He takes the job seriously.”

“Is he taking
you
seriously?”

About as seriously as could be expected. “Yes. No complaints.”

“And the psychologist?”

“He’s doing his best, as well.”

“But no brilliant new psychological analysis.”

“Not yet.”

He didn’t mention Petra Connor or Alvarado or any of the other detectives. Why complicate things?

“All right,” Carmeli finally said. “Just keep me fully informed.”

“Of course.”

After Zev hung up, Daniel bolted down the sandwich, said grace after the meal, then the
ma’ariv
prayers, and resumed reading
The Brain Drain.
Some of the details flew over his head—graphs, statistics; a very dry book, but maybe that was the point.

Dr. Arthur Haldane trying to obscure facts with verbiage and numbers. But the message came through:

Smart people were superior in every way and should be encouraged to breed. Stupid people were   .   .   . during good times, a nuisance. During bad times, an unnecessary obstruction.

Dry, but a best-seller. Some people needed others to lose in order to feel like winners.

He’d looked into Haldane’s background.

Yet another New Yorker.

The book listed him as a scholar at the Loomis Institute, but Sharavi’s Manhattan operative hadn’t traced any calls from Haldane to Loomis’s office. Haldane’s apartment was in Riverdale, in the Bronx.

“Decent place,” the operative had said. “Healthy rent, but nothing that special.”

“Family?”

“He’s got a wife and a fourteen-year-old daughter and a dog. A mini Schnauzer. They go out to dinner twice a week, usually Italian. One time they had Chinese. He stays in a lot, doesn’t go to church on Sunday.”

“Stays inside,” said Daniel.

“Sometimes for days at a time. Maybe he’s working on another book. He doesn’t own a car, either. The one phone we know about, we’ve secured, but he could be using E-mail and we haven’t found any password yet. That’s it, so far. Nothing more on Sanger and that sour-faced woman, either. Helga Cranepool. They both go to work, they go home. A boring bunch.”

“Boring and smart.”

“So you say.”

“So they say.”

The operative laughed. She was a twenty-eight-year-old Dutch-born woman whose cover job was photographer for
The New York Times.
No connection to the Israeli government except for the cash that was deposited for her each month in a Cayman Islands bank.

“Any pictures?” said Daniel.

“What do you think? Coming right through. Bye.”

The snapshot that slid through the fax machine was of a slight, bearded, gray-haired man in his late forties or early fifties. Curly hair, bushy at the sides, eyeglasses, pinched face. He wore a tweed overcoat, dark slacks, and open-necked shirt, and was walking the little Schnauzer.

Wholly unremarkable.

What did he expect, monsters?

Hannah Arendt had called evil banal and the intellectuals had all jumped on that because it fit in with their disparage-the-bourgeoisie philosophy.

But Arendt had maintained a long-term, pathetic, masochistic relationship with the anti-Semite philosopher Martin Heidegger, so her judgment, in Daniel’s opinion, was questionable.

From what he’d seen,
crime
was often banal.

Most of it was downright stupid.

But evil?

Not the evil he’d experienced in the Butcher’s dungeon of horrors.

Not this, either.

This was not humanity-as-usual.

He refused to believe that.

Gene tapped on the passenger window and Daniel unlocked the Toyota. The older man slipped in. In the darkness, his ebony face was nearly invisible, and his dark sportcoat, shirt, slacks, and shoes contributed to the phantom image.

Only the white hair bounced back some light.

“Hey,” he said, shifting around in the small car, trying to get comfortable.

The bowling alley would close soon but there were still enough cars in the lot for cover and Daniel had chosen a poorly lit corner. And a neighborhood where a black man and a brown man could talk in a car without the police swooping down.

Gene’s big Buick was parked across the asphalt.

“Seems you’re right, Danny Boy,” he said. “Sturgis has sleuthed me out. Asking about me a few days ago at Newton. But what can he do? I’m out of there.”

“He probably won’t do anything, Gene, because he’s busy and knows how to prioritize. But if the case goes completely sour, who knows? I’m sorry if this ends up complicating your life.”

“It won’t. What’s the felony, pulling a file?”

“And the shoes.”

Gene grinned. “What shoes—hey, I was Newton captain for seven years, always took an interest in unsolved cases, everyone knows that. Anyway, in answer to your question, Manny Alvarado is a very good detective. No fireworks, a plodder, but thorough.”

“Thanks.”

“You like this Tenney as a suspect?”

“Don’t know yet,” said Daniel. “He’s all we’ve got so far.”

“I like him,” said Gene. “At least from what you’ve told me—the timing, the whole disturbed loner thing. Anything at the conservancy, yet?”

“Tenney definitely never worked there or applied for a job under any name. No other parks, either.”

“Ah   .   .   . too bad. Still, he could have held on to his old city uniforms and used them to lure the kid. Believe me, the city’s sloppy when it comes to that kind of thing, and a naive kid like Irit, what would she know about the different uniforms?”

“True,” said Daniel. “We’ll keep looking.”

Not mentioning the other depressing fact: Tenney was nondescript; medium-sized, fair-haired, forgettable. Literally. The gang members from the park where Raymond Ortiz had been abducted hadn’t recognized Tenney’s snapshot. None of the park-goers had, and Tenney had worked there for two years.

Just another bland white face in a uniform.

Even reading on the job, he hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention.

“So,” said Gene, “you’re okay working with Sturgis, so far?”

Daniel said, “I’m fine with it, Gene. I think he’s good.”

“So they say.” Gene stretched his feet. He’d put on weight and his belly extended past the lapels of his sportcoat.

“You have doubts?” said Daniel.

“No,” Gene said quickly. “Not in terms of doing the job. They all say he’s good   .   .   . excellent, actually. Want me to be honest? The gay thing. I’m from a different generation, it puts me off. When I was a rookie, we used to bust gay bars. Which was wrong, no question about it, but the things I saw—I was just wondering about you, being religious.”

Same thing Zev had said. Belief in God made you an ayatollah.

“What I mean,” said Gene, “was with this kind of thing, you need a cohesive team. Top of everything else, Sturgis is a cowboy.”

“I’m fine,” said Daniel. “He’s professional. He concentrates on what’s important.”

“Good. Now for the Myers boy. I know you’re not going to like this but the reason I wanted to meet you was I went by that group home in Baldwin Hills, made like a cop, talked to the landlady and the other residents.”

Daniel kept his voice even. “That puts you at risk, Gene.”
Me, too, my friend.

“I was convincing, Danny, believe me. Sturgis already did telephonic interviews, so why not be more thorough? I told the landlady—a Mrs. Bradley—that I was following up on Sturgis’s interviews. She’s black, they all are, it didn’t hurt, believe me. And guess what? I talked to a fellow Sturgis hadn’t spoken to because he was out that day. Lived right next door to Myers. Closest thing Myers had to a friend.”

“Closest thing?” said Daniel. “Myers didn’t have real friends?”

“The picture I got was that Myers was hard to like, full of attitude. Didn’t hang out with the others, mostly stayed in his room reading braille and listening to jazz. This particular fellow likes jazz, too, so he and Myers had that in common. He’s a paraplegic in a wheelchair, says Myers was always after him to look into different exercises, vitamins, alternative remedies, try to rehab himself. The guy had been shot in the spine, said, “What the hell did he expect me to do, grow a new backbone?’ But he tolerated Myers because even though Myers could be a pain he really seemed to care. He also said Myers had been talking about going to school to become a psychologist. Anyway, the main thing I got out of this guy was that Myers didn’t like the trade school one bit. On the contrary: He hated it, was planning to write some article about it as soon as he graduated.”

“An exposé?”

“That’s what it sounded like, Myers never gave him specifics. It’s probably nothing but it does give us a victim with higher-than-average enemy potential. I figure the next step is, find out if there was anyone at the school who had an especially hostile relationship with Myers. Which makes sense on another level, because whoever got him into that alley probably also knew the neighborhood.”

“The director said there was no one Myers had problems with.”

“Maybe she didn’t know or maybe she’s lying to keep the school out of the spotlight. Heck, for all we know this Wilson
Tenney
got a job at the school and ran into Myers. As a custodian. Let’s say he stole stuff and Myers found out. Here’s Tenney, already killed three people—nonwhite people—and Myers was an abrasive black guy mouths off to him one time too many, threatens to blow the whistle.”

Daniel said nothing.

“It’s wild but it’s plausible,” said Gene. “You agree it should be looked into?”

“I’ll look into it.”

Gene shifted around again. “I’ve got time, just sitting around. I could go over to the school as one of those kindly retired gents looking to volunteer—”

“Thanks, but I’ll do it, Gene.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ve got the perfect equipment.” Daniel lifted his bad hand.

Gene’s mouth closed. Then he said, “How’re you going to pull it off without putting Sturgis’s nose out of joint?”

“I’ll find a way.”

Gene sighed. “Okay, just call me if you change your mind.”

“Believe me, I will. And Gene—”

“I know, keep my nose out of it.”

“I really appreciate everything—”

“But keep my nose out of it.” Gene laughed.

“How’s the packing going?” said Daniel.

Gene laughed some more. “Changing the subject? The packing’s finished. My illustrious life in boxes. I finally heard from the leasing agent. She’s got a couple who’ll take the house til the market gets better. Physical therapists, they work full-time at Luther King, so they should be able to keep up with the rent. I’m in good shape, ready to live the good life in the land of sun and sand.”

“Great,” said Daniel, pleased that Gene could think in positive terms without Luanne. Or at least fake it. “So the new house will be ready soon?”

“Five more days, they claim.” Gene slumped. “Guess I better get used to feeling useless.”

“You’ve been very useful, Gene.”

“Not really. A file, shoes, big deal   .   .   . to be truthful, it’s more than that, Danny. It’s the case itself. Ugly. Even for guys like us, it’s ugly. And pardon me for saying so, but it doesn’t sound as if you’re getting much movement.”

Chapter

42

On Wednesday morning, Milo called to tell me he’d caught up with Loren Bukovsky, the local Mensa chapter chairman.

“Not a bad fellow, understandably curious about why I was looking into Meta. I told him it was a financial thing, large-scale covert investigation, hinted around that it had something to do with stolen computers, and asked him to keep it to himself. He promised to and my sense is he might keep his word, because he doesn’t like Meta, thinks they’re “insufferables’ who look down on Mensa.”

“Because Mensa folk aren’t smart enough for them?”

“Bukovsky denies that. Emphatically.”

“What if Bukovsky doesn’t keep it to himself and it gets back to someone in Meta?”

“Then we deal with it. It could even work out to our advantage: One or more of their members turn out to be bad guys and show their hands and give us moving targets. Which is better than none.”

“That,” I said, “sounds like rationalization.”

“No, Alex, it’s the truth, you didn’t screw things up. As it stands, we’re nowhere with this group. Even Bukovsky, for all his hostility, didn’t know much about them, just that they’d started back east, cropped up in L.A. two or three years ago, then took a low profile.”

“Two years ago,” I said. “Right around the time of Sanger’s article. And publication of
The Brain Drain.”

“Next item: got hold of Zena Lambert’s tax returns for the last three years. Her sole income was the salary from PlasmoDerm. Before that she made no money at all. So how she started the store is still an open question.”

“Maybe a trust fund,” I said. “Like Andrew Desmond.”

He looked at me. “Andrew’s got rich parents?”

“Comfortable.” I gave him the profile.

“Sounds like a charming fellow,” he said. “The only other thing to report is Melvin Myers’s body was clean of drugs and Bob Pierce says none of the local crackheads knew him, so it wasn’t dope that got him in that alley.   .   .   . You’re really up for this secret-agent stuff, aren’t you?”

“Got my shoe-phone in gear.”

At 4:00 p.m., Daniel phoned.

“I’d like to show you the cover apartment on Genesee. You may never actually have to use it, but this way you’ll be accustomed to it.”

“I’ll meet you there. What’s the address?”

“I’m near your house,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll come by and take you.”

He was there ten minutes later and he gave me a brown paper Ralph’s Market bag. Inside was a change of clothes: lightweight black cotton pants, black cotton mock turtleneck washed nearly gray, baggy gray herringbone sportcoat with the label of Dillard’s department store in St. Louis on the inside breast pocket, rubber-soled black shoes from Bullock’s, L.A.