The Rabbit Factory (21 page)

If she was waiting for a response, she got one. But she couldn't see it. I was rock hard and my pulse rate had doubled.

"I understand," she said. "I'm very sorry about your wife, and I'm sorry if I shocked you." She laughed. "You should see the look on your face."

"I've been off the market a while. I don't remember women being so aggressive."

"Not women. Me. I see what I want, and I go after it. It doesn't hurt if I've had a couple of drinks first."

"I'm flattered, but I gotta tell you, these days, I'm not that good a catch."

"That wouldn't have been a problem," she said. "Right now,

I'm totally focused on my career. Anything I do catch, I throw back."

She stood up abruptly. "If you don't mind, why don't you finish your drink and give me a five-minute head start. I don't think either of us want to stand around the garage and make small talk while they bring up our cars." I nodded, grateful not to have to stand up. She blew me a kiss, turned around, and walked toward the door. I sat there sipping my beer and watched her walk away. The voice inside my head knew better than to say a word.

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I dreamt about Amy. We were living together in a huge house. I'm not sure if we were married, but we seemed happy. We were having drinks in the library, when the doorbell rang. Joanie. She still loved me and wanted me back. Amy laughed and said, "You had him; you left him; he's mine now."

Joanie sat down on the cold marble floor. She was wearing a flimsy white nightgown. Her lips were blue, and she was shivering. She hugged her knees and began to rock back and forth, sobbing. I put my arms around her, and she whispered in my ear, "I won't leave you, I won't leave you." Then a loud series of beeps interrupted her. Amy had hit the burglar alarm and called for the police. I begged Joanie to leave before the cops showed up, but she refused.

The beeping got louder and louder and finally became part of my reality. It was the alarm clock. I fought not to wake up. I wanted to spend one more minute with Joanie. I wanted to hold her and tell her how much I loved her, but consciousness crept in, and the dream was over. I stared at the ceiling and tried to bring Joanie back as real as she had been in my sleep.

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But the best I could do was conjure up a two-dimensional image. It felt like I'd lost her all over again.

I got out of bed, peed, opened the back door for Andre and the front door for the LA. Times. I hopped on the stationary bike and read while I pedaled. There was a picture of Ronnie Lucas on the front page. America's Boy Next Door Slain in Churchyard. The inside pages had more pictures and eight stories related to Lucas's death, including the standard recap of Sal Mineo, Rebecca Schaeffer, and other Hollywood celebrities who were murdered in their prime.

The reporting was sketchy at best. Easy for me to say, since I knew more of the facts than Los Angeles's paper of record. There was no mention of a link to the Elkins murder or to Lamaar as the ultimate target. The lead article had the bare bones story of the soup kitchen, the baseball bat, and the homeless man, but most of the articles were rehashes of Lucas's show business career. Even the TV reviewer whose column is usually in the back of The Living Section had a Page One story. Apparently, dying sells more papers than living.

I drove to work with the radio tuned to KFWB, the all-news station that alternated between traffic, weather, and the Ronnie Lucas murder. By the time I pulled into the parking lot, they were on their fifth update, and so far the crime had not been solved, which made me feel relevant, since I had specifically come in to work this morning to solve it.

Terry was at his desk drinking black coffee out of a bacteria infested I Love New York mug he hasn't washed in six years. Every now and then he wipes it out with a paper towel and tells me not to worry. "Our coffee tastes like Lysol," he says, "so I figure it kills germs on contact."

"Morning," I said. "According to the radio, you haven't cracked the Lucas case yet, but they only report on it every three minutes. You might have solved it during my long walk from the parking lot." "You're in luck," Terry said. "The killer is still at large. Make that killers. Jessica just made it official. Elkins was whacked by someone five-foot-eight. Lucas's killer was about six-foot-four. Two vies, two perps." "How'd it go with Brian?" I asked.

"He's gay. We slept together. How'd it go with you and Amy?"

"She's gay too. So we didn't sleep together."

Terry's phone rang, and he picked it up. "Biggs." He looked up at me. "Pick up; it's Falco," he said.

Detective F.X. Falco was with the Sheriff's Office in Ulster County, New York. We sent him out to talk to Eeg. I picked up the other phone. "Good morning," I said. "You got both of us. How you doing?" "I'm fine," he said, "but my girlfriend just called. She's in labor. So I'm in the car, heading home, and calling from my cell, which is not great police procedure, but I figured you'd rather get the big picture now. I tried to get Mr. E. to come in and have a sit-down at our facilities but he flat-out refused. He agreed to let me visit him at home. He lives in Woodstock." "The Woodstock?" Terry asked. "Where they had the rock concert?"

"That's a myth. The concert was fifty miles away. Woodstock itself is your basic unexciting small town in upstate New York, and Mr. E. is a respected citizen and a pretty popular Town Councilman." "Clinton was a pretty popular President," Terry said. "It's not

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necessarily a character endorsement. How did Eeg do on the five questions?"

When you do a long-distance interrogation, like we were doing with New York, the investigating officers come up with five questions for the interrogating officer to ask the suspect. They generally cover areas like alibis and motive, but they're always case-specific and usually structured in a way that the first few questions are soft enough to lull the suspect into a comfort zone. The last one or two are more loaded and hopefully will rattle the guilty.

"First I asked if he'd been out of town in the past week," Falco said, "and he said he hasn't been out of the area since Christmas. Then he got all put out and he wanted to know what this was about, so I asked if he heard about the Ronnie Lucas murder, which, of course, he had. Then I asked if he had a grudge against Lamaar. The answer was an unqualified yes. He hates them with a passion and he didn't try to hide it. Then I told him that Lucas was shooting a movie for Lamaar and that there were indications that someone with a grudge might have hired a professional to kill him."

"Let me guess," Terry said. "He went batshit." >'.'ŚŚŚ "Did he ever," Falco said. "He started yelling that the people from Lamaar were trying to frame him for murder. Before he could cool down I hit him with the bank account question."

We had told Falco to ask Eeg if his bank accounts would show any unusual withdrawals in the past six months. If Eeg had hired a hit man, even if he had buried the financial transaction, just having the cops zero in on that area might unnerve him. A good detective should be able to read that. We didn't know much about Falco, but he sounded like a sharp guy.

"How did he react?" I asked.

"I might as well have asked him where he hid the weapons of mass destruction. He freaked. He said if those cocksuckers at Lamaar want to check his bank account, tell them it's a billion dollars short, because they screwed his father out of what should now rightfully be his." "So he makes no bones about being at odds with Lamaar," I said.

"Not at odds. At war. He'd like to bring the company to its knees."

"Sounds like a first-class motive to me," Terry said.

"Yeah, but nothing about the way he handled the questions made me think he was anything more than just pissed off. Until just at the very end. He was all worked up about the Lamaar people trying to look at his bank records, so I fanned the flames. I said they had a right, even though I'm not really sure they do. I made it sound like Lamaar was in the driver's seat and he better cooperate with them. He goes into a tear-ass rage and screams, 'If those bastards at Lamaar think they're nailing me for those murders, they're crazy.'" "Those murders,'" Terry said. "Plural. How did he know about the second murder? Lucas is all over the news, but the Elkins job has a tight lid on it." "Bingo," Falco said. "I never said Word One about Elkins. Eeg's the one who called it a multiple homicide. Hey, I'm turning into my driveway. Gotta go." "Thanks a lot," I said. "Now get your girlfriend to a hospital."

"Worst case, I'll deliver it myself," he said. "Done it before, but never my own. Good working with you guys. I'll call you after she pops."

"Good luck," Terry said, but the phone was already dead.

"Murders," I said. "How does a guy three thousand miles away from the action know about the second murder, when nobody in L.A. knows?" "Maybe he contacted the dead. Had a heart-to-heart with Rambo."

"I think we better have a heart-to-heart with Mr. Eeg," I said. "Let's talk to the boss and see if we can accept Rose's offer of a free plane ride." "You do the talking," Terry said, as we headed toward Kilcullen's office. "If I ask him, we'll wind up going by Greyhound." "No problem," Kilcullen said. "Fuck the asshole D.A.'s Office and their stupid fucking rules. Ike Rose can pay my goddam proctology bill if it will help solve these murders and get the Governor out of my rectum." Three anal references in five seconds. The man was in rare form. "Anything else?" he said.

"Yeah," Terry said. "We talked to Ike Rose. He agreed to ask the Governor to give us a little breathing room." We smiled and waited for a hearty Irish "Thank you, lads." Instead he said, "Why the fuck did you do that?" Then he waved us out of his office. "That went well," Terry said. "He thinks we're idiots, but he gave us his blessing to fly on the corporate jet. Let's have EX. set up a look-see with Eeg." "Better wait till the girlfriend pops first. The man sure has got a way with words, doesn't he?"

"One quick personal question," Terry said. "If you slept with Amy, would you have told me?"

"I would have called you at home before I took off the condom," I said.

We worked the phones all day eliminating people on Brian's grudge list, which he kept adding to as the day dragged on. We were eating hoagies for dinner when Jessica called to say that she had nothing new except some clothing fibers she found on Lucas's body. "But since he was bumping up against a hundred homeless people, the fibers are meaningless, unless you nail the killer and he's wearing the matching outfit." "You sound fried," I told her. "Go home."

"I will," she said. "Give me some good news before I go."

"Let's see," I said. "Our best suspect is an upstanding town councilman who was three thousand miles away when the murders went down, but he has a rock-solid motive for shopping at Hertz Rent-a-Killer." "Good luck. You guys get anything else?"

I picked up the souvenir chunk of Kilcullen's bullet-riddled Brunswick and found a semi-smooth place to rub my thumb on it. "Yeah," I said. "Bowling trophies."

h

CHAPTER 41 ,

Thank God for earthquakes. While I was asleep they had one in Japan that the LA. Times decided was devastating enough to push the Ronnie Lucas story below the fold. I stood outside my front door in my bathrobe and breathed deeply. It had April showered during the night, and the air tasted almost sweet. Very un-Southern California.

According to the paper, today was a Friday, a detail that might otherwise have escaped me. Was it only Monday when Terry called and said, We got a live one? Hard to believe that I had only earned four days pay since that call.

I woke up thinking about the same two things that were haunting me when I went to bed the night before. Who was killing Lamaar employees, and what should I wear when I saw Diana tonight? Not necessarily in that order.

At times like this, I lean towards blue. My eyes aren't as blue as Big Jim's, and they're not in the same league as Joanie's, but they had been blue when I was younger and now had brown speckles that the Department of Motor Vehicles called HZL. Nothing sets off hazel eyes, but I have a slate blue sweater that

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Marshall Karp

Joanie gave me that makes my eyes as blue as they're ever going to get. Plus it's cashmere, so women enjoy touching it. I'd put a white Oxford shirt on underneath and the gray slacks that do the most for my ass. Black briefs, shined shoes, a condom in my wallet, and I'd be ready to go. Harry High School gets dressed for the Sock Hop. From out of nowhere, I remembered what Amy had said last night. The two of us naked, except I was wearing my gun. I distinctly recall the phrase "fucking our brains out on my Calvin Klein sheets." I wondered if Diana would prefer me with or without a gun. The lower half of my bathrobe started to stir. The phone rang. "Hold that thought," I said to my robe, and I went back into the house. Caller ID let me know it was Big Jim. No doubt he was calling to beg forgiveness for not letting me help him raise my thirty-two-year-old brother. "You have reached the Lomax residence," I said in a monotone. "Mike can't come to the phone, but if you say 'uncle' and leave a message of apology and contrition, he will get back to you whenever the fuck he pleases. Beep." I waited for Big Jim's bombastic reply. "Uncle," he said softly.

"What?" I said. "I'm not sure I heard you correctly."

"I ain't saying it twice," he said.

"I can't believe you said it once. What's going on?"

"Frankie needs a bigger shovel than the one I got. I've dug him out of deep shit in the past, but this time, I need your help. Come over after work?" "I don't have an after work. Didn't you hear about the Lucas murder?"

"Son of a bitch. Of course I heard. I just didn't make the

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The Rabbit Factory

connection. Lucas was Victim Number Two. He worked for Lamaar, right?" "He had a big fan club at Lamaar. All their accountants loved him." "Did you get another flipbook? Two fingers?"

"That is privileged police information, so I won't respond. But I will tell you that you laid out the pattern for me a day before it actually happened." "Does that make me a suspect?" he asked. "No, you're just a jerk for thinking you could handle Frankie's problems on your own." "You sure you can't come over tonight?" "Besides the workload, I've got a date with Diana tonight."