Jimmy wanted to laugh. The rap was total bullshit. He had seen the look that crossed Brimley’s face when he thought no one was looking. Brimley’s gift was that he was the good cop and the bad cop all in one, a terrifying combination. No wonder suspects were quick to spill their secrets. Jimmy was just glad he didn’t have anything that Brimley wanted.
Chapter 31
“Happy now?” Sugar didn’t introduce himself. Old buddies like the two of them didn’t need introductions.
Silence on the line.
“I told you not to do anything, didn’t I? Let sleeping dogs lie, that’s what I said. Now they’re up and yapping.”
“Who is this?”
“Yeah, okay, this is a wrong number.” Smart. At least the man still had his wits about him. “You didn’t do the job on your own, I know that much. You always need help. Now I got this fellah showing up at my place unannounced, asking questions. Somebody else to worry about. Somebody else needs quieting down.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Sugar looked out across the Pacific, the waves the color of blood. “ ‘Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailor’s delight.’ The question for you, my old friend, is what time is it? Morning or night?”
“Listen carefully. Please. I didn’t do—”
“Morning or night?”
“I didn’t do anything. I give you my word.”
“It was an
accident?
” said Sugar. “That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Accidents—accidents do happen. Some men invite misfortune upon themselves . . .”
Sugar held the phone lightly, watching the sunset. It was his favorite time of day, the stillness filling his chest, quieting his heart.
“The dogs you spoke of—I’m concerned too. I trust you can put them back to sleep?”
On the edge of the horizon, Sugar watched a fishing boat caught in the setting sun, its rigging on fire as it headed home.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
Sugar broke the connection. Let
him
worry for a change.
Holt winced as the dog’s howling undulated up from somewhere below. “I thought you said your building didn’t allow pets.”
“The kids in two-eleven just got a puppy,” said Jimmy, not looking up from the papers spread across the kitchen table. “Looks like a dachshund and collie mix. Wish I had been there for the conception.”
Holt shut the window, then sat down beside him. She opened one of Brimley’s notebooks. “I still can’t believe Brimley loaned you his raw notes.”
Jimmy flipped through another one, skimming now. He had to strain to read the handwriting. It was a routine interview of one of Walsh’s neighbors, a banker who hadn’t heard anything the night Heather Grimm was killed. Hadn’t seen anything either. There had been a football game on that evening, and he liked listening with the volume turned way up to catch the crowd noise. Brimley must have been bored with the banker—the margin of the notebook was covered in doodles, rods and reels and sailing ships. A sketch of a hooked marlin wasn’t half bad, the marlin leaping in the air, an odd smile on its face. Fisherman humor or cop humor, Jimmy couldn’t decide.
Holt chewed her thumbnail as she stared at the page. “Helen Katz. She got into an argument at the ME’s office with Dr. Boone. Right in the middle of an autopsy. Helen may be the only person in the world to confront a man holding a stainless-steel blade.”
Jimmy looked up.
Holt kept reading. “I didn’t get any specifics, just that it was something about his findings in the Walsh case. A cop from Anaheim PD said Boone tried to pull attitude, and Katz came back at him so hard he dropped the liver he was weighing.”
“How did this cop know to contact you?” Holt didn’t answer, but Jimmy saw her smile anyway. “Thanks, Jane.”
“Thank Helen Katz. I think she’s got a crush on you.”
Jimmy laughed.
Holt tapped the open page with her forefinger. “No wonder Brimley didn’t like your suggestion that Heather went to the beach to seduce Walsh. This is his second—no, his third meeting with Mrs. Grimm. She had gotten a visit from Walsh’s attorneys the previous day. They were intimating the same thing. Mrs. Grimm was very upset, weeping. Brimley jotted down that she was on medication. Tranquilizers.” She squinted at the page, tilted it slightly. “Looks like Valium.”
“She overdosed on Valium a few months later. Valium and a pint of vodka.”
“Brimley was a good detective,” said Holt. “A lot of cops wouldn’t have noted the medication his subject was taking. You can tell he’s angry—the attorneys’ business card is clipped to the pages, with a note to himself to call them.”
“Since when do defense attorneys pay attention to the investigating officer?”
“You’d be surprised. Sometimes a cop, just by making it clear that he or she is not going to slack off until the verdict comes down, can cause an attorney to shift his strategy. You’d think a DA would carry more weight with a defense team, but it doesn’t necessarily work that way, because all a prosecutor has to work with is what the police uncover. A good cop, a
dedicated cop,
can make a difference.”
Jimmy looked at her. He knew why she had a law degree but had never practiced, why she had gutted her way through the Academy, taking flak for her finishing-school manners and accent, finally earning the grudging respect of her colleagues by working harder and longer. She just liked scaring the shit out of bad guys, whether they wore three-piece suits or gang colors. “I love you, Jane.”
Holt pretended she didn’t hear him, but she was blushing as she went back to the notes. “Remember those transcripts you showed me a few weeks ago? Walsh’s defense team had deposed a couple of Heather’s classmates who hinted at drug usage and some sexual activity too. They were going to go after her hard, but something dissuaded them, made them come to the bargaining table. I think Brimley paid them a visit.”
“Maybe he made them realize that he wasn’t going to allow Heather to be victimized again.” Jimmy riffed through the stack of notebooks until he found the one he wanted. “Right here. His first interview with the mother, he did a walk-through of the house. He listed all the posters and photographs on Heather’s walls, the books on her bookshelf, the stuffed animals on her bed, even the
names
of them. I passed right over it before, but now I see what he was doing.”
“Exactly. Those are the kinds of details that the DA’s office loves to present to the jury. It makes the victim flesh and blood again, shows the jury who she really
was,
not the image that the defense team wants to present. Brimley did right by Heather.”
Jimmy read through the mother’s first interview again. He could almost hear her voice crack as she told Brimley about the last time she had seen her daughter. Mrs. Grimm had been in a hurry, had been late for work. She didn’t kiss her daughter good-bye, didn’t even tell her to drive carefully. She always did that too. Not that day.
“Are you okay?” Jane touched his hand. “Why don’t we finish this up later?”
“Last week I talked with a woman whose son had been murdered in a drive-by, a kid, barely thirteen. I sat in her living room, and she told me about her boy while her daughter translated. The woman’s voice never wavered, never broke, but she kept dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. You would have thought she was made of steel, except for her tears, and when I looked into her eyes, the grief—it was bottomless. Nothing was going to fill the hole inside her.” Jimmy fumbled a piece of folded paper out of the notebook. “Now I read Brimley’s notes, and I know Mrs. Grimm had the same hole inside her, only she was all alone, without any family to help her through it, just herself, day after day in that house with Heather’s things everywhere and TV crews camped out on the sidewalk. Just herself and her memories.” He stared at a photograph of Heather Grimm, an eight-by-ten that Brimley had copied and tucked into his notes, her face creased down the middle, right through her beautiful smile.
Holt took the photograph out of his hands and put her arms around him.
Jimmy leaned into her, felt her heart beating against him. “How do you do it, Jane?”
“What?”
“You know what I mean. How do you do it?”
“You get tough, or pretend you have.” Holt held him tighter. “Then you go home, have a few drinks, and cry by yourself. Or with someone you trust.”
Jimmy drifted, feeling Holt’s warm tears on his neck.
Chapter 32
Desmond pulled a driver out of his golf bag and sighted down the shaft. “Watch your mouth with Trunk.”
“What does that mean?” said Jimmy.
“Trunk doesn’t like reporters, he doesn’t like wiseasses, and he doesn’t like white boys. You’re three for three.”
Jimmy and Desmond Terrell waited on the first tee of the Golden Wedge Country Club, the most exclusive golf course in southern California, members only, strictly enforced. The fact that Napitano was a board member wouldn’t have been enough to get them on the premises, but last year Nino had bid thirty-seven thousand dollars at the club’s charity auction for the right to play a round of golf with three nonmembers. Nino didn’t ask why Jimmy needed entree to Golden Wedge, he just knew it had something to do with the article Jimmy was working on. Nino didn’t ask about the article either.
Surprise me,
dear boy. You haven’t disappointed me yet
was all he said, perched behind his desk, slurping oyster shooters, his eyes bright and orgasmic at the possibilities.
Jimmy wished he was as confident as Napitano. Brimley’s field notes hadn’t given him any breakthroughs, but after Sugar had warned him about the meter maids yesterday, Jimmy had spent a few hours searching the traffic records of Hermosa Beach. No vehicle registered to Mick Packard or his production company had been ticketed the day Heather Grimm was murdered. Not that day or any other day. If Packard had been watching the beach house, he kept the meter fed.
The sun peeked through the surrounding trees. It was barely 6 A.M., and the fairways were shimmering with dew, the air crisp. Desmond picked infinitesimal bits of grit out of the grooves of his driver with a tee. He was a gray-haired black man of medium height, smooth skinned and fit, wearing light brown trousers and a matching polo shirt. His golf shoes were shined bright. A former cop, Desmond looked more like a tenured college professor, soft spoken and serene. Jimmy would have trusted Desmond with his life, and with the truth too—as much of it as he knew, anyway.
Desmond bent down and grazed a hand across the grass. “Look at this. Not a weed, not a sign of crabgrass, no brown spots. I bet the White House lawn isn’t as well taken care of. I should ask the groundskeeper what he uses on it.”
It was a beautiful course, but Jimmy didn’t care about golf. He just wanted to talk to Trunk about Willard Burton. His attempts to locate Burton had failed; the pageant photographer’s business license had lapsed eight years ago and had not been renewed, his last known address vacated the day after Heather Grimm was murdered. According to Desmond, Abel “Treetrunk” Jones had worked vice all over L.A. Trunk had arrested Burton once, said he had stories to tell, but he wasn’t telling them—not even to Desmond—without a round of golf at the Golden Wedge, the “whitest course in the West.” Desmond thought it was pretty funny.
“Where is he?” asked Jimmy.
“He’ll be along presently.”
Jimmy pulled out one of his own thrift-store clubs, swung it like a baseball bat, and almost hit himself in the head. Stupid game. He put the club back into his bag before he hurt himself. “Heather Grimm’s agent sent her to Walsh’s beach house to seduce him. I’m sure of it. I just don’t think Heather knew what she was getting herself into.”
“I doubt she did.” Desmond stood just back of the first tee, adjusting his grip on the driver. “The way you described her—young girl, full of vanity and ambition—I expect she thought Walsh was going to fall for her. Make her a star.”
“The agent knew what was happening. That nine-one-one call from a phone booth had to be part of the setup. No way someone makes a call like that, then doesn’t step forward to tell their story. Or
sell
their story.”
“It happens. Not often, but it happens. Some folks have enough money, or they just don’t want the attention.”
“That’s what Brimley said. I think you’re both wrong.”
“I’ve been wrong before. I expect Detective Brimley has also.”
“The agent wasn’t working for Heather, she was using her. She was working for someone else. Someone who wanted to set Walsh up, maybe for statutory rape, maybe for murder. But the agent is the only one who knows what really happened.”
“Not exactly.” Desmond cocked his hips, taking a half-swing in slow motion. “There’s the husband.” He took a full swing, and the clubhead grazed the ground, sending wisps of grass skyward. “And there’s the man who killed Heather Grimm.” He looked at Jimmy. “Unless you think it was really Garrett Walsh who killed her. You said he didn’t remember. Drugs make people do crazy things, things they couldn’t imagine themselves doing. Maybe he
did
kill that girl.”
“Walsh didn’t do it.”
“You sure of that?”
Jimmy glanced back toward the clubhouse again. “Where
is
he?”
“Throwing up probably.”
Jimmy looked over at him.
“Trunk is sick.” Desmond wiped the clubhead with his hand. “He’s on disability leave. Pancreatic cancer.”
“Jeeeeeeeeeemy!”
Napitano hurtled toward them in a golf cart, a tall emaciated black man beside him, hanging on for dear life. The cart skidded up to the first tee, missed Jimmy by inches, and pulled up beside their cart. “
Buon
giorno,
” chirped Napitano, dressed in white shorts and a white dinner jacket.
“How are you doing, Trunk?” said Desmond.
“Better, now.” Trunk stared at Jimmy. His skin was a deep black, his hair in patches. His head and hands were enormous—no way they belonged with his pipe-cleaner arms and hollowed-out torso. He wore a Raiders football jersey and baggy paisley knickers, the waistband cinched with a belt that had been shortened, new holes punched in. “What are you looking at, motherfucker?” He still had a big man’s voice.
“Good to meet you too,” said Jimmy.
“How are you and Nino getting along?” asked Desmond, stepping in.
Trunk grinned, his teeth as incongruously large as his hands. He clapped Napitano on the back. “This little fella puked right along beside me. Everybody else cleared out when they heard me unloading in the shitter, but Nino just walked over, grabbed the next stall, and let loose, the two of us going at it in stereo. You believe that, Desmond?”
“Vomiting is an ancient Roman tradition.” Napitano smoothed his dinner jacket. “It is a healthy thing, to make room for more eating.”
“You hear that, Desmond?” said Trunk. “Maybe I’m I-talian.”
Desmond just smiled.
“Where’s your clubs, Nino?” asked Jimmy.
“I do not play golf. I joined the club because at first they did not want me. Now I just come to drive the carts and to hear the cursing of the other players. Their frustration—it is a symphony to me.”
Trunk clapped Napitano on the back again.
“We should get started,” said Jimmy. “The foursome behind us is getting antsy.”
Trunk looked over and saw four short white men in designer outfits, the leather bags in the back of their carts stuffed with titanium clubs. “They’ll wait.” He got out of Napitano’s cart slowly, carefully—he seemed so frail that if he moved too quickly, one of his arms would snap off. “Nice course, eh Desmond? They always keep the best for themselves, don’t they?”
“You’ve got the honors, Trunk,” said Desmond.
Trunk pulled his driver out and bent down on one knee to tee up his ball, not resisting when Desmond had to help him up. He stood over the ball, adjusting his hips, taking his time, looking around to see who was watching, enjoying himself. The air smelled clean and green. His first shot dribbled about ten yards. He didn’t leave the tee but reached instead into his pocket. The next ball went a little farther. The third one landed almost a hundred yards away; a weak shot but straight and true. He must have been good when he still had some muscle to go with that frame. “I’ll take that one.” No one argued.
Desmond was up next. He took a practice swing, then uncorked a deep drive, two hundred and fifty yards at least, but hooking into the rough.
Jimmy reached for his club.
“Put that back,” growled Trunk. “I didn’t come here to play golf with
you.
I’ll talk with you, but I’m only playing with Desmond.”
“Fine.” Jimmy shoved his club back into his bag and jumped behind the wheel of the cart. Desmond started to climb in beside him, but Trunk stopped him.
“Ride with my man Nino, Des. Whiteboy’s going to caddy for me this eighteen.”
Desmond smiled at Jimmy, grabbed his clubs, and put them in Nino’s cart.
“What are you waiting for, whiteboy?” said Trunk. “Go fetch my clubs.”
Jimmy flipped the finger at Napitano and Desmond, who were enjoying the show, then transferred Trunk’s clubs for him. He slid into the cart and started the engine.
“Pick up my mulligan,” said Trunk.
Jimmy stopped the cart, got out, and picked up Trunk’s first ball. He got back in, drove another thirty yards, and did the same thing with the second ball.
Trunk held out his hand for the ball. “You should run. I don’t like being kept waiting.”
“Yaz, boss.”
Trunk looked at him hard but didn’t say anything.
It went like that for the first four or five holes. Trunk hit two or three or four balls before he liked his lie; Jimmy drove and chased down Trunk’s mulligans. On the third hole Napitano opened a wicker picnic basket and pulled out a bottle of champagne and some fried egg and bacon sandwiches. Jimmy was sent to bring Trunk a taste. Then sent back to bring him refills. Then stood by waiting while Trunk threw up again, handing him a towel when it was over.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Trunk said softly, as Jimmy helped him back into the cart. He fished a fat joint out of his knickers, hands shaking. Desmond and Napitano had pulled over about fifty yards ahead, talking as they waited for them to catch up. Trunk fired up the joint, took a deep drag, then slowly exhaled. “This is strictly medicinal.”
Jimmy plucked the joint from him, took a hit himself, and passed it back. “An hour of being your caddy, and I could use some medicine too.”
Trunk laughed.
“How long have you and Desmond been friends?” asked Jimmy.
“From the first minute I met him. How about you?”
“Same.”
Trunk watched him. The whites of his eyes were yellowed. “Let’s you and me just drive to the seventh tee and wait for Desmond. I’m tired. I thought playing here would be good for me. I mostly played public courses, rocks and divots and scalped greens. This country club—it’s nice, but I’m tired.” They drove in silence, Trunk puffing the joint, passing it over when he felt like it. “You ain’t asked me anything,” he said finally. “I keep waiting, but you don’t get to it.”
“I figure it’s up to you.”
“That’s a first. Never met a reporter yet who wasn’t in a hurry to get in and get out.”
Jimmy parked the cart on a grassy slope off the asphalt track and parked under a large tree, where it was cool and shady. He took the remnant of the joint from Trunk’s thick fingers and held it up to his lips so Trunk could get the last of it.
“Thanks,” said Trunk, exhaling. He wiped his forehead. They waited, watching Desmond far down the fairway, sauntering toward his ball. “Desmond says you’re looking for some heavy-tonnage pageant hawk wears lots of rings.” He kept his eyes on Desmond. “She don’t come to mind, but all that means is she was smart enough not to get caught.” Desmond’s shot hooked left, and Trunk shook his head. “I keep telling him not to drop his shoulder.”
“Good luck telling Desmond anything.”
Trunk looked over at Jimmy, then went back to Desmond. “I popped Willard Burton once—kiddie porn. Must have been ten years ago.” He stopped to listen to a crow squawking overhead, breathing heavily but smiling as though he were listening to his favorite tune. “Slimebag beat the bust. I had him dead to rights, but he had a hotshot attorney who argued that Burton had a constitutional right to take nudie pictures of little girls. Lawyer even brought up
Alice in
Wonderland
to prove it. Did you know the guy who wrote that book was a perv too?” He rested his hands on his knees. “Makes makes me almost glad I never had kids.”
Jimmy noted the
almost
but didn’t say anything.
“Burton getting a walk like that pissed me off. Police work is more personal than most cops will admit, but I got nothing to lose now. I kept an eye out for Burton, that’s all I’m going to say. I would see him sometimes hanging around junior high football games, scoping out cheerleaders, passing out his business card. I heard he worked the beauty contest circuit for a while too, but I never nailed him again. I think he knew I was watching, because one day he was just gone.”
“Gone?”
“Just dropped off the face of the earth. Must have been eight or nine years ago.”
“Right after Heather Grimm was murdered.”
Trunk considered it and nodded. “I just figured good riddance. Then Desmond calls me a few days ago and says you’re looking for him. Says maybe Burton’s involved in a homicide.” He lifted his head up with an effort and locked eyes with Jimmy. “I had to sit down, I was so happy. Getting a second chance at him
now—
”
“If I had known that, I could have saved Nino thirty-seven thousand dollars. You probably would have settled for a nine-hole course off the Pomona Freeway.”
Trunk smiled. “I’d have settled for a round of miniature golf, you dumb cracker.” His head drooped, his neck too weak to support it.
Jimmy looked away, now wanting to embarrass him. He watched Desmond on the sixth green, lining up his putt. “Do you know anyone who can help me find Burton?”
Trunk raised his head again and sat up. “Don’t—don’t I count?” “You said you had lost track of him.”
“I bumped into him a couple years ago.” Trunk peered at the sixth green. “I didn’t even recognize him at first. He’d cut off his beard, dyed his hair, got rid of his glasses too, but it was him. He calls himself Felix Watson now, which ain’t much of an improvement if you ask me, but I guess it’s a name without a history. . . .
Sweet.
”
Jimmy followed his gaze and saw Desmond walking over to the cup to retrieve his putt, heard Napitano applauding from his nearby cart.