“Not exactly five star,” I said, getting out of the
Seville. “And far from the hospital.”
Beverly frowned.
“I tried to tell them that when I saw the address but
there was no convincing the father. Said he wanted to be near the beach where
the air was good. Even launched into a speech about how the whole hospital
should move to the beach, how the smog was harmful to patients. I told you, the
man is weird.”
The front office was a glass booth on the other side
of a warped plywood door. A thin, bespectacled Iranian with the numb demeanor
of a habitual opium smoker sat behind a chipped, hinged plastic counter poring
over the Motor Vehicle Code. A revolving rack of combs and cheap sunglasses
took up one corner, a low table covered with ancient copies of throwaway travel
magazines squatted in the other.
The Iranian pretended not to notice us. I cleared my
throat with tubercular fervor and he looked up slowly.
“Yes?”
“What room is the Swope family in?”
He looked us over, decided we were safe, said, “Fifteen,”
and returned to the wondrous world of road signs.
There was a dusty brown Chevy station wagon parked in
front of Room 15. Except for a sweater on the front seat and an empty cardboard
box in the rear deck, the car was empty.
“That’s theirs,” said Beverly. “They used to leave it
parked illegally by the front entrance. One time when the security guard put a
warning sticker on the windshield, Emma ran out crying about her sick child and
he tore it up.”
I knocked on the door. No answer. Knocked again
harder. Still no response. The room had a single grimy window, but the view
within was blocked by oilcloth curtains. I knocked one more time, and when the
silence was unbroken, we returned to the office.
“Excuse me,” I said, “do you know if the Swopes are in
their room?”
A lethargic shake of the head.
“Do you have a switchboard?” Beverly asked him.
The Iranian raised his eyes from his reading and
blinked.
“Who are you? What do you want?” His English was
heavily accented, his manner surly.
“We’re from Western Pediatric Hospital. The Swopes’
child is being treated there. It’s important that we speak to them.”
“I don’t know anything.” He shifted his glance back to
the vehicle code.
“Do you have a switchboard?” she repeated.
A barely visible nod.
“Then please ring the room.”
With a theatrical sigh, he dragged himself up and
walked through a door at the rear. A minute later he reappeared.
“Nobody there.”
“But their car’s there.”
“Listen, lady, I don’t know cars. You want a room,
okay. Otherwise, leave alone.”
“Call the police, Bev,” I said.
Somehow he must have sneaked in a hit of amphetamine
because his face came alive suddenly and he spoke and gesticulated with renewed
vigor.
“What for police? What for you cause trouble?”
“No trouble,” I said. “We just need to talk to the
Swopes.”
He threw up his hands.
“They take walk—I see them. Walking that way.” He
pointed east.
“Unlikely. They’ve got a sick child with them.” To
Bev: “I saw a phone at the gas station on the corner. Call it in as a
suspicious disappearance.”
She moved toward the door.
The Iranian lifted the hinged counter and came around
to our side.
“What do you want? Why you make trouble?”
“Listen,” I told him, “I don’t care what kind of nasty
little games you’ve got going on in the other rooms. We need to talk to the
family in fifteen.”
He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket. “Come, I
show you, they not here. Then you leave me alone, okay?”
“It’s a deal.”
His pants were baggy and they flapped as he strode
across the asphalt, muttering and jingling the keys.
A quick turn of the wrist and the lock released. The
door groaned as it opened. We stepped inside. The desk clerk blanched, Beverly
whispered Ohmigod, and I fought down a rising feeling of dread.
The room was small and dark and it had been savaged.
The earthly belongings of the family Swope had been
removed from three cardboard suitcases, which lay crushed on one of the twin
beds. Clothing and personal articles were strewn about: lotion, shampoo, and
detergent leaked from broken bottles in viscous trails across the threadbare
carpeting. Female undergarments hung limply over the chain of the plastic swag
lamp. Paperback books and newspapers had been shredded and scattered like
confetti. Open cans and boxes of food were everywhere, the contents oozing out
in congealing mounds. The room reeked of rot and dead air.
Next to the bed was a patch of carpet that was clear
of litter, but far from empty. It was filled with a dark brown amoebalike stain
half a foot across.
“Oh no,” said Beverly. She staggered, lost her
balance, and I caught her.
You don’t have to spend much time in a hospital to
know the sight of dried blood.
The Iranian’s face was waxen. His jaws worked
soundlessly.
“Come on,” I took hold of his bony shoulders and
guided him out, “we have to call the police now.”
It’s nice to know someone on the force. Especially
when that someone is your best friend and won’t assume you’re a suspect when
you call in a crime. I bypassed 911 and called Milo’s extension directly. He
was in a meeting but I pushed a bit and they called him out.
“Detective Sturgis.”
“Milo, it’s Alex.”
“Hello, pal. You pulled me out of a fascinating
lecture. It seems the west side has become the latest hot spot for PCP labs—they
rent glitzy houses and park Mercedes in the driveway. Why I need to know all
about it is beyond me but tell that to the brass. Anyway, what’s up?”
I told him and he turned businesslike immediately.
“All right. Stay there. Don’t let anyone touch
anything. I’ll get everything moving. There’s gonna be a lot of people
converging so don’t let the girl get spooked. I’ll crap out of this meeting and
be there as soon as I can but I may not be the first, so if someone gives you a
hard time, drop my name and hope they don’t give you a harder time because you
did. Bye.”
I hung up and went to Beverly. She had the drained,
lost look of a stranded traveler. I put my arm around her and sat her down next
to the clerk, who’d progressed to muttering to himself in Farsi, no doubt
reminiscing about the good old days with the Ayatollah.
There was a coffee machine on the other side of the
counter and I went through and poured three cups. The Iranian took his
gratefully, held it with both hands, and gulped noisily. Beverly put hers down
on the table, and I sipped as we waited.
Five minutes later we saw the first flashing lights.
THE TWO uniformed policemen were muscular giants, one
white and blond, the other coal-black, his partner’s photographic negative.
They questioned us briefly, spending most of their time with the Iranian desk
clerk. They didn’t like him instinctively, and showed it in the way L.A.P. D.
cops do—by being overly polite.
Most of their interrogation had to do with when he’d
last seen the Swopes, what cars had come in and out, how the family had been
behaving, who had called them. If you believed him, the motel was an oasis of
innocence and he was the original see-no-evil, hear-no-evil kid.
The patrolmen cordoned off the area around room
fifteen. The sight of their squad car in the center of the motor court must
have ruffled some feathers—I saw fingers drawing back corners of curtains in
several of the rooms. The policemen noticed, too, and joked about calling Vice.
Two additional black and whites pulled into the lot
and parked haphazardly. Out of them stepped four more uniforms, who joined the
first two for a smoke and a huddle. They were followed by a crime scene
technical van and an unmarked bronze Matador.
The man who got out of the Matador was in his
midthirties, big and heavily built, with a loose, ungainly walk. His face was
broad and surprisingly unlined, but bore the stigmata of severe acne. Thick
drooping brows shadowed tired eyes of a startling bright green hue. His black
hair was cut short around the back and sides but worn full on top in defiance
of any known style. A thick shock fell across his forehead like a frontal
cowlick. Similarly unchic were the sideburns that reached to the bottom of his
soft-lobed ears and his attire—a rumpled checked madras sportcoat with too much
turquoise in it, a navy shirt, gray-and-blue striped tie, and light blue slacks
that hung over the tops of suede desert boots.
“That one’s got to be a cop,” said Beverly.
“That’s Milo.”
“Your friend—oh.” She was embarrassed.
“It’s okay, that’s what he is.”
Milo conferred with the patrolmen then took out a pad
and pencil, stepped over the tape strung across the doorway to room fifteen,
and went inside. He stayed in there awhile and came out taking notes.
He loped over to the front office. I got up and met him
at the entrance.
“H’lo, Alex.” His big padded hand gripped mine. “Hell
of a mess in there. Not really sure what to call it yet.”
He saw Beverly, walked over, and introduced himself.
“Stick with this guy,” he pointed to me, “and
inevitably you’re going to get into trouble.”
“I can see that.”
“Are you in a hurry?” he asked her.
“I’m not going back to the hospital,” she said. “All I’ve
got, otherwise, is a run at three thirty.”
“Run? Oh, like in cardiovascular stimulation? Yeah, I
tried that but the chest began to hurt and visions of mortality danced before
my eyes.”
She smiled uneasily, not knowing what to make of him.
Milo’s great to have around—in more ways than one—when your preconceptions get
overly calcified.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be out of here long before then.
Just wanted to know if you could wait while I interview Mr.—” he consulted the
pad, “Fahrizbadeh. Shouldn’t take long.”
“That would be fine.”
He escorted the desk clerk outside and over to
fifteen. Beverly and I sat in silence.
“This is horrible,” she said, finally. “That room. The
blood.” She sat stiffly in her chair and pressed her knees together.
“He could be okay,” I said without much conviction.
“I hope so, Alex. I really do.”
After a while Milo returned with the desk clerk, who
slunk behind the counter without a glance at us and disappeared into the back
room.
“Very unobservant guy,” said Milo. “But I think he’s
on the level, more or less. Apparently his brother-in-law owns the place. He’s
studying business administration at night and works here instead of sleeping.”
He looked at Beverly. “What can you tell me about these Swope people?”
She gave him a history similar to the one I’d received
in the Laminar Airflow Unit.
“Interesting,” he reflected, chewing on his pencil. “So
this could be anything. The parents taking the kid out of town in a hurry,
which might not be a crime at all unless the hospital wants to make a thing out
of it. Except if that was the case, they wouldn’t leave the car behind.
Hypothesis B is the cultists did the job with the parents’ permission, which is
still no crime. Or without, which would be good old-fashioned kidnapping.”
“What about the blood?” I asked.
“Yeah, the blood. The techs say O positive. That tell
you anything?”
“I think I remember from the chart,” said Beverly, “that
Woody and both of the parents are O. I’m not sure about the Rh factor.”
“So much for that. It’s not a hell of a lot anyway,
not what you’d expect if someone got shot or cut—” He saw the look on her face
and stopped himself.
“Milo,” I said, “the boy’s got cancer. He’s not
terminally ill—or wasn’t as of yesterday. But his disease is unpredictable. It
could spread and invade a major blood vessel, or convert to leukemia. And if
either of those occur, he could suddenly hemorrhage.”
“Jesus,” said the big detective, looking pained. “Poor
little guy.”
“Isn’t there something you can do?” demanded Beverly.
“We’ll do our best to find them but to be honest it
won’t be easy. They could be just about anywhere by now.”
“Don’t you put out A.P.B.’s or something like that?”
she insisted.
“That’s already been done. As soon as Alex called I
got in touch with the law in La Vista—it’s a one-man show run by a sheriff
named Houten. He hasn’t seen them but he promised to keep a lookout. He also
gave me a good physical description of the family and I put it over the wire.
Highway patrols got it, as well as L.A. and San Diego P.D.s and all the
decent-sized departments in between. But we’ve got no vehicle to look for, no
plates. Anything you’d like to suggest in addition to all of that?”