A Cold Heart

Applauds.

Clapping for himself, more than Baby Boy.

Baby Boy finishes his first set and leaves. Shull’s watched him before, knows his habit of heading back to the alley for a smoke.

He sits for a moment, sipping, pla

Linus Brophy had said the killer was wearing a long, dark coat. Shull wore all black, habitually, when he night-crawled.

A big black coat would be perfect for concealing a big, sharp knife.

Ready for business, Shull makes his way to the alley, conceals himself in the shadows.

Waits.

Baby Boy shows up, lights a smoke. Shull studies him, taking his time.

Savoring the moment.

Finally, he approaches Baby Boy. Unaware of Brophy, but the wino’s presence turns out to be irrelevant.

Baby Boy, unsuspecting. A sweet guy, a warm guy. He’s used to the adoration of fans, and here’s another one. Shull’s demeanor nurtures the subterfuge: big smile, tossing out the heartfelt praise of a true believer.

The professor. Ingratiating himself the way he’d done with lots of artists.

None of them knowing he considers himself the ultimate artist.

A loser in real life, a legend in his own mind. Like Alex had said, psychological ca

If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em.

Petra shuddered.

Baby Boy, a trusting man, a naÏve man, smiles back.

Both of them smiling as Shull plunges the knife.

She put on her coat and left.

When she reached home, there was a message from Milo on her machine. “Call me, I’m up.”

She reached him on his cell. “You’re up late.”

“The bad guys don’t sleep, why should I. What’s up?”

She gave him a progress report.

Milo said, “Good work, very good. We’re closing in.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you earned your shut-eye, and I’ll be at the courthouse by nine tomorrow to see if Judge Davison is a little more open-minded.”

“Let me know.”

“You bet. Thanks, kid.”

“You’re welcome. Pop.”

43

The first time Eric Stahl saw the house, he knew it wasn’t an ideal situation.

All that was visible from the street were bleached wooden gates flanked by brick posts. Beyond the posts were six-foot-tall ivy-covered walls. Behind the walls, junipers and cypress towered, and some kind of vine sprawled.

Nice place. Shull had money.

It always came down to money.

Soon after he positioned himself down the hilly block, Stahl entertained a brief fantasy: scale the fence, B and E the house, find Shull doing something evil, and finish the bastard off the way bad guys deserved to be finished off.

Nice movie. Reality was that he sat and watched and waited.

Tonight, for some reason, his talent for inertia was being tested. By 9:30 P.M.- two hours after he’d arrived- the hero fantasy recurred.

He visualized how he’d do Shull. The neck snap, or if Shull resisted, a knife.

Eric Stahl, big hero, providing closure.

Ugliest word in the English language.

Justice was a close second. He wondered how long he could do this job.

Maybe forever. Maybe till tomorrow.

There were three positives to the layout: Shull’s house was positioned at the end of a cul-de-sac, meaning one way in, one way out. Parking was permitted on the west side of the road, allowing Stahl to find himself a spot between two other vehicles and avoid conspicuousness.

The best thing: This was an out-of-the-way street, hard to find without a map, no sidewalks, no reason for a casual pedestrian to come up here.

Nice for a bad boy…

By nine-forty-five, he still wasn’t sure if Shull was even home. Guy kept professor’s hours and according to Sturgis, not much of that. For all he knew, Shull was bunking in all day, had yet to emerge. Or, the bastard hadn’t come home at all, was somewhere below, in the flats of Hollywood, trolling city streets.

Digging art.

Since Stahl had arrived, only two cars had appeared within the first hour, each stopping well short of his surveillance spot. In both cases, the drivers were young women with terrific figures driving foreign compacts. Stahl watched them carry groceries to their cute little hill houses.

Poor choice of neighborhood for a woman alone. Too isolated, too far from help. Not that crowds kept you safe…

He wondered how the tight-bodied women would react when they found out they’d been neighbors to a very bad person. He imagined the usual, horrified newspaper quotes: “I had no idea.” “I can’t believe it, he seemed like a nice person.”

Believe it, ladies. Anything’s possible.

The night sky gelled and turned shiny- purplish black, like boysenberry jam. Black napalm. Stahl ate a ham sandwich and drank from his thermos of espresso and risked a couple of forays across the road so he could pee in the bushes. Then back to his car, where he kept his eyes out for either of the two vehicles registered to Shull: a one-year-old BMW and a two-year-old Ford Expedition.

The Beemer was probably Shull’s show wheels. The four-wheeler was what he used for exploration. Not a van- guys like Shull loved vans because you could turn one into a prison-on-wheels easily enough. But a trendy guy like Shull, living up here in the hills, would view a van as déclassé and the oversized SUV provided some of the same benefits: big, unobtrusive.

Lots of storage space.

A hundred to one Shull had blackened the windows.

Headlights brightening Stahl’s rear window made him slink down and turn his head.

Small vehicle.

A dark car- there it was, the BMW grille, zipping toward the end of the cul-de-sac. The BMW passed too quickly for Stahl to make out the driver in the darkness but when it stopped at the bleached gates, he sat higher and watched.

Electric gate. The car passed through. Exactly thirty seconds later, the gate closed- some sort of time-release mechanism.

Stahl waited until 11 P.M. before exiting his car. Figuring even a hip guy like Shull was probably buttoned down for the night. Had he arrived alone? No way to know.

Checking out the street and finding it dead, Stahl crossed the road again, peed, continued. Sticking close to the foliage; if anyone did appear, he could conceal himself in the brush.

He proceeded slowly, with rubber-soled silence, feeling loose, the old prowl-zen kicking in. Good trackers and snipers were born with it.

A neighborhood this remote should’ve been silent, but an insistent hum filtered up from the base of the foothills. The sounds of Hollywood, the real Hollywood, percolating a couple of miles below.

He got within yards of the bleached gate. Through the big trees fronting Shull’s property, distant lights sparked and blinked. A few stars in the sky, too, struggling to be noticed through the smog.

Guy had a terrific view.

The good life.

Stahl made it to the gate, surveyed the street again, got his nose up close and was able to inspect the gate’s construction without using his penlight. Two-by-fours, tongue-and-groove, arranged in a pretty chevron design and framed by heavier boards. The frame bottom was stout and steady, provided a nice toehold. He put his foot in place, lifted himself up high enough to peer over.