“What do you want then?”
He gave her his card.
“Homicide?” Her eyebrows rose but she remained
impassive. “Who bit it?”
“Maybe no one, maybe a whole bunch of people. Right
now it’s a suspicious disappearance. Family from down near the border. The
sister worked for you. Nona Swope.”
She dragged deeply and the Sherman glowed.
“Ah, Nona. The red-haired beauty. She a suspect or a
victim?”
“Tell me what you know about her,” said Milo, taking
out his pad.
She removed a key from a desk drawer, stood, smoothed
her skirt, and went to the files. She was surprisingly short—five one or two. “I
guess I’m supposed to play hard to get, right?” She inserted the key in the
file lock and twisted. A drawer slid open. “Refuse to give you the information,
scream for my lawyer.”
“That’s Leon’s script.”
That amused her. “Leon’s a good guard dog. No,” she
said, taking out a folder, “I don’t care much if you read about Nona. I’ve got
nothing to hide. She’s nothing to me.”
She settled back behind the desk and passed the folder
across to Milo. He opened it and I looked over his shoulder. The first page was
an application form filled out in halting script.
The girl’s full name was Annona Blossom Swope. She’d
listed a birthdate that made her just twenty and physical measurements that
matched my memory of her. Under residence she’d claimed a Sunset Boulevard
address—Western Pediatric Medical Center—with no phone number to go along with
it.
The eight-by-ten glossies had been taken in the office—I
recognized the leather furniture—and they’d framed her in a variety of poses,
all sultry. The photos were black-and-white and shortchanged her by their
inability to capture her dramatic coloring. Nevertheless, she had what
professionals call
presence
and it came through in these pictures.
We thumbed through the photos—Nona in a string bikini
rolled down over her pelvis, Brazilian style; Nona braless in a sheer tank top
and jeans, nipples budding through the fabric; Nona making love to an all-day
sucker; Nona, feline, in a filmy negligee with a fuck-you look in her dark
eyes.
Milo whistled softly. I felt an involuntary tug below
the waist.
“Quite a gal, eh?” asked Jan Rambo. “A lot of skin
passes through these portals, gentlemen. She stood out from the rest of them. I
started calling her Daisy Mae because there was a naive quality to her. Limited
life experience. Despite that, she was a little girl who knew her way around,
know what I mean?”
“When were these taken?” asked Milo.
“First day she got here—what’s it say, a week ago? I
took one look at her and called the cameraman. We shot and developed ’em the
same day. I saw her as a good investment, started her off on messenger service.”
“Doing what, exactly?” he pushed.
“Doing messenger work,
exactly.
We’ve got a few
basic skits—doctor and nurse, professor and coed, Adam and Eve, dominatrix and
slave or vice versa. The old clichés, but your average yahoo can’t break out of
clichés even when it’s fantasy time. The client picks the skit, we send out
couples, and they do it like a message—you know, Happy Birthday, Joe Smith,
this is from the boys in the Tuesday night poker group and, presto, the show is
on. It’s all legal—they joke around, but nothing that challenges the penal
code.”
“How much does that run the poker buddies?”
“Two hundred. Sixty goes to the messengers, split
fifty-fifty. Plus tips.”
I did some quick mental arithmetic. Working half-time
Nona could have pulled in a hundred dollars a day or more. Big bucks for a
country girl barely out of her teens.
“What if the client is willing to pay more to see
more?” I asked.
She looked sharply at me. “I was wondering if you
talked. Like I said before, the messengers are free to do what they want on
their own time. Once the skit is over, it’s their own time. You like jazz?”
“Good jazz,” I answered.
“Me, too. Like Miles and Coltrane and Bird. Know what
makes them great? They know how to improvise. Far be it from me to discourage
improvisation.”
She took out another Sherman and lit it from the one
smoldering in her mouth.
“That’s all she did, huh?” asked Milo. “Skits.”
“She could’ve done more—I had plans for her. Movies,
magazine layouts.” The meaty face creased into a smile. “She was cooperative—took
off her clothes without batting an eye. They must raise ’em wild in the
country.” She rolled the cigarette between stubby fingers. “Yeah, I had plans
but she split on me. Worked a week and—” She snapped her fingers—“poof.”
“Any word where she was going?”
“Not a hint. And I didn’t ask. This is no surrogate
family. It’s a business. I don’t play mommy and I don’t want to be treated like
one. Skin comes and skin goes—this city’s full of perfect bodies who think
their buns are gonna make ’em rich. Some learn faster than others. High volume,
high turnover. Still,” she admitted, “that redhead had something.”
“Anyone else who’d know anything about her?”
“Can’t think of anyone. She kept to herself.”
“What about the guys she messengered with?”
“Guy. Singular. She was only here a week. I don’t
remember his name offhand, and I’m not gonna comb through the files to find it.
You guys have just been handed a big freebie.” She pointed to the file. “You
can even keep it, okay?”
“Tax your memory,” pressed Milo. “It’s not like it’s a
big deal—how many studs do you have in your stable?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said, stroking the marble
desktop. “Meeting adjourned.”
“Listen,” he persisted, “you’ve been minimally helpful
but it doesn’t make you Suzy Citizen. It’s hot outside, you’ve got great air
conditioning in here, a fantastic view. Why sweat it at the station, waiting
who knows how long for your lawyer to show up?” He held out his hands, palms
up, and gave her a boyish grin. “Want to try again?”
The muddy eyes narrowed and her face turned nastily
porcine. She pressed a button and Leon materialized.
“Who was the guy teamed up with that redhead, Swope?”
“Doug,” he said without hesitation.
“Last name,” she snapped.
“Carmichael. Douglas Carmichael.”
Turning to us: “Okay?”
“The file.” Milo held out his hand.
“Get it.” She ordered and the Jamaican fetched. “Let
them look at it.”
Milo took the folder from him and we walked to the
door.
“Hey, wait a minute!” she protested hoarsely. “That’s
an active one. You can’t take it!”
“I’ll make a Xerox, mail you back the original.”
She started to argue then stopped midsentence. As we
left I could hear her screaming at Leon.
ACCORDING TO his file, Doug Carmichael lived in the
upscale part of Venice, near the Marina. Milo had me call him from a phone
booth near Bundy while he used the radio to find out if anything had come in on
the Swopes.
A phone machine answered at Carmichael’s. Classical
guitar music played in the background while a rich baritone said, “Hi, this is
Doug,” and strove to convince me that receipt of my message was
really
important for his emotional well-being. I waited for the beep, told him it was
really
important to call Detective Sturgis at West L.A. Division, and left Milo’s
number.
I got back in the car and found Milo with his eyes
closed, head tilted back against the seat.
“Anything?” he asked.
“I got a machine.”
“Figures. Zilch from this end, too. No Swopes spotted
from here to San Ysidro.” He yawned and growled and started up the Matador. “Moving
right along,” he mumbled, steering into the broth of westbound traffic, “I
haven’t eaten since six. Early dinner or late lunch, take your pick.”
We were a couple of miles from the ocean but a mild
easterly wind was blowing and it wafted a hint of brine our way. “How about
fish?”
“Righto.”
He drove to a tiny place on Ocean at the mouth of the
pier that resembles a thirties diner. Some nights during the dinner hour it’s
hard to find a parking space in the back lot among all the Rolls, Mercedes, and
Jags. They don’t take reservations or plastic, but people who know seafood are
willing to wait and don’t mind paying with real money. At lunch it’s
significantly more relaxed and we were seated at a corner table immediately.
Milo drank two lemonades, which they squeeze fresh and
serve unsweetened, and I nursed a Grolsch.
“Trying to cut down,” he explained, holding up his
glass. “Rick’s been on my case. Preaching and showing me slides of what it does
to the liver.”
“That’s good. You were hitting it pretty hard for a
while. Maybe we’ll have you around a little longer.”
He grunted.
The waiter, a cheerful Hispanic, informed us that
there’d been a huge albacore run and a prime load had come up from San Diego
that morning. We both ordered some and shortly were feasting on huge grilled
steaks of the white tuna, baked potatoes, steamed zucchini, and chunks of
sourdough bread.
Milo devoured half his meal, took a long swallow of
lemonade, and gazed out the window. A chrome sliver of ocean was visible above
the rooftops of the ramshackle buildings that hid in the shadow of the sagging
pier.
“So how you been, pal?” he asked.
“Not bad.”
“What do you hear from Robin?”
“I got a card a few days ago. The Ginza at night. They’re
wining and dining her. Apparently it’s the first time they’ve entertained a
woman that way.”
“What is it they’re after, exactly?” he asked.
“She designed a guitar for Rockin’ Billy Orleans and
he played it onstage in Madison Square Garden. The music trades interviewed him
after the concert and he raved about the instrument and the fantastic female
luthier who’d created it. The U.S. rep for a Japanese conglomerate picked up on
it and sent it to his bosses. They decided it was worth mass-producing as a
Billy Orleans model and invited her over there to talk about it.”
“Maybe she’ll end up supporting you, huh?”
“Maybe,” I said glumly and signaled the waiter for
another beer.
“I see you’re real overjoyed about it.”
“I’m happy for her,” I said quickly. “It’s the big
break she’s been waiting for. It’s just that I miss her like crazy, Milo. It’s
the longest we’ve been apart and I’ve lost my taste for solitude.”
“That all of it?” he asked, picking up his fork.
I looked up sharply. “What else?”
“Well,” he said, between mouthfuls, “I may be totally
off base here, Doctor, but it seems to me that this Japanese thing puts a new
perspective on your—pardon the expression—
relationship.”
“How so?”
“Like for the past couple of years, you’ve been the
one with the bread, right? She makes a living, but the life the two of you’ve
been leading—Maui, theater tickets, that incredible garden—who pays for it?”
“I don’t get the point,” I said, annoyed.
“The point is that despite your pretending it ain’t
so, you guys have had a traditional setup. Now she’s got the chance to become a
big shot and it could all change.”
“I can handle it.”
“Sure you can. Forget I brought it up.”
“Consider it forgotten.” I looked down at my plate.
All of a sudden my appetite was gone. I pushed the food away and fixed my gaze
on a flock of gulls raiding the pier for bait scraps. “You insightful bastard,”
I said. “Sometimes you’re spooky.”
He reached across the table and patted my shoulder. “Hey,
you’re not a very subtle guy. Everything registers on that lean and hungry
face.”
I rested my chin in my hands. “Things were going along
so nice and simple. She kept the studio after she moved in, we prided ourselves
on giving each other room to move. Lately we’d started talking marriage,
babies. It was great, both of us moving at the same pace, mutual decisions.
Now,” I shrugged, “who knows?” I took a long swallow of the Dutch brew. “I’ll
tell you, Milo, they don’t cover it in the psych books, but there’s such a
thing as the paternal urge and at thirty-five I’m feeling it.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve felt it, too.”
My stare was involuntary.
“Don’t look so surprised. Just because it’s never
gonna happen doesn’t mean I don’t think about it.”
“You never can tell. They’re getting pretty liberal.”
He loosened his belt a notch and buttered a piece of
bread. “Not
that
liberal.” He laughed. “Besides, Rick and I are not
equiped for motherhood or whatever you wanna call it. Can’t you just see it—me
shopping at Toys “ я” Us and Dr. Fastidious changing diapers?”
We shared a good laugh over that.
“Anyway,” he said, “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore
point, but it’s something you’re gonna have to deal with. I did. For most of my
life I made my own way. My parents didn’t give me squat. I’ve been working at
one dodge or another since eleven, Alex. Paper routes, tutoring, picking pears,
construction, a little time out for the M.A., then Saigon and the force. You
don’t get rich in Homicide, but a single guy can get by nicely. I was lonely as
hell but my needs were met. After I met Rick and we started living together, it
all changed. You remember my old Fiat—piece of shit that it was. I never drove
anything but garbage and unmarkeds. Now we tool around in that Porsche like a
pair of coke dealers. And the house—no way I could ever have had a place like
that on my salary. He goes shopping at Carrols or Giorgio, picks me up a shirt
or tie. I’m not a—kept man, but my lifestyle has changed. For the better, but
that hasn’t made it easy to accept. Surgeons make more than cops, always have,
always will, and I’ve finally accommodated myself to it. Makes you stop and
think about what women go through, huh?”