Obsession

“I guess it’s possible.”

“People with secrets parcel out what they want other people to know, right? If we’re going to start excavating this woman’s life, Tanya could learn things she doesn’t want to. Is she psychologically ready for that?”

“If she runs off excavating by herself, it could be worse.”

“She’d do that?”

“She’s a determined young woman.”

“Obsessive? Rick said Patty had tendencies in that direction. Did the kid start imitating her and that’s why you treated her?”

I stared at him. “Very good, Sigmund.”

“All these years absorbing your wisdom, something was bound to rub off.”

He opened his car door. “Get ready for a whole new world of false starts and dead ends.”

“Your optimism is touching.”

“Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience.”

“What’s pessimism?” I said.

“Religion without God.”

He got in the car, started up the engine.

I said, “I just thought of something. What about Isaac Gomez? He was compiling some pretty good databases.”

“Petra’s boy genius…yeah, maybe he’ll have some spare time. Hollywood went this whole year without a single murder. If it stays that quiet, the chatter has Stu Bishop vaulting to assistant chief.”

“What’s Petra been doing with herself?”

“My guess would be digging up cold cases.”

“Patty and Tanya’s first address was in Hollywood,” I said. “Back then there were plenty of murders. Maybe Petra will want to hear about this.”

“An unsolved she just happens to be working on? Wouldn’t that be screenplay-cute. Sure, call her. Talk to Dr. Gomez, too, if Petra’s cool with that.”

“Will do, boss.”

“Keep up that attitude, assistant, and you just might make the grade.”

I took Laurel Canyon south to the city, used the red light at Crescent Heights and Sunset to call Hollywood Division and asked for Detective Co

“She’s out,” said the civilian clerk.

“Is Isaac Gomez still working there?”

“Who?”

“Graduate student intern,” I said. “He was doing research on-”

“Not listed,” said the clerk.

“Could you co

“Voice mail’s down.”

“Do you have another number for her?”

“No.”

I drove east. At Fuller and Sunset, a group of Nordic-looking tourists risked a crosswalk sprint and nearly got pulverized by a Suburban. Naive Europeans, pretending L.A. was a real city and walking was legal. I could hear Milo laughing.

As I neared La Brea, development continued its encroachment: big-box outlets and strip malls and chain restaurants sweeping through blocks that had once hosted by-the-hour motels and ptomaine palaces.

Some things never change: Hookers of both primary genders and a few that couldn’t be determined were working the street with ebullience. My eyes must’ve been restless because a couple of them waved at me.

Heading north to Hollywood Boulevard and hooking a right, I cruised past the Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theatre, the tourist traps attempting to feed off the overflow, continued to Cherokee Avenue. Just past the hustle of the boulevard sat a couple of padlocked clubs, mean and sad the way nightspots get during the daylight. Trash was piled at the curb and birdshit pollocked the sidewalk.

Farther north, the block had been rehabbed a bit, with relatively clean multiplex apartment buildings promising Security elbowing shabby prewar structures that offered no illusion of safety.

The first address on Tanya’s list matched one of the old ones. A three-story, brick-colored stucco building a short walk below Franklin. Plain front, frizzy lawn, limp beds of overwatered succulents struggling to breathe. As tired-looking as the homeless guy pushing a shopping cart nowhere. He made split-second, paranoid eye contact, shook his head as if I were hopeless, and trudged on.

A cloudy glass door cut through the center of the brick-colored building, but two ground-floor units in front had entrance from the street. Tanya remembered drunks knocking on the door, so my bet was on one of those.

I got out and tried the handle on the glass door. Cold and unpleasantly crusty but unlocked.

Inside, a back-to-front hallway carpeted in gray poly smelled of mold and orange-scented air freshener. Twenty-three mail slots just inside the door. Liver-colored doors lined the murky space. Lots of interviews, if it ever came to that.

A door at the rear of the hall opened and a man stuck his head out, scratched the crook of one arm. Sixty or so, gray hair flying like dandelion fuzz, haloed by sickly light. Scrawny but potbellied, wearing a blue satin Dodger jacket over striped pajama bottoms.

He scratched again. Worked his jaws and lowered his head. “Yeah?”

I said, “Just leaving.”

He stood there, watching until I made good on that promise.

South on Highland took me through two miles of film labs, tape-dupe services, costume warehouses, prop shops. All those people who’d never be thanked on Oscar night.

Between Melrose and Beverly a few dowager apartment buildings clung to twenties elegance. The rest didn’t even try. A turn onto Beverly took me around the southern edge of the Wilshire Country Club and into Hancock Park.

Hudson Avenue is one of the district’s grandest streets, and the second address on Tanya’s list matched a massive, multigabled, slate-roofed, brick Tudor piled atop a sloping lawn that had been ski

This was where Patty and Tanya had just moved when they first came to see me. Renting space in a house. The owners of this house didn’t appear to need the extra income. Patty had been certain the move hadn’t been stressful for Tanya. Face-slapping contrast with the sad building on Cherokee made me a believer, and I wondered now about the specifics of the transition.

I sat there and enjoyed the view. No one came out of the mansion or any of its stately neighbors. But for a couple of lusty squirrels in a sycamore tree, no movement at all. In L.A. luxury means pretending no one else inhabits the planet.

I put in a call to Patty’s oncologist, Tziporah Ganz, left a message with her service.

One of the squirrels scampered over to the left-hand lemon tree, got hold of a juicy one, and tugged. Before it could complete the theft, one of the double doors opened and a short, dark-haired maid in a pink uniform charged out wielding a broom. The animal faced off, then thought better of it. The maid turned to reenter the mansion and noticed me.

Stared.

Another hostile reception.

I drove away.

Address three was a quick drive: Fourth Street off La Jolla. Tanya had returned to my office just after leaving there for Culver City.

The house turned out to be a Spanish Revival duplex on a pleasant leafy street of matching structures. The only distinguishing feature of the building where the Bigelows had lived was a concrete pad in lieu of a lawn. The only vehicle in sight was a deep red Austin Mini with vanity plates that read PLOTGRL.

Solidly middle-class, respectable, but a whole different planet after Hudson Avenue. Maybe Patty had wanted more room than rented mansion space afforded.

My final stop was a solid forty-minute drive in thick traffic to a grubby stretch of Culver Boulevard just west of Sepulveda and the 405 overpass.

The lot bore six identical gray-framed, tar-roofed boxes that ringed the crumbled remains of a plaster fountain. Two brown-ski