Obsession

Shaping a convex abdomen and frowning.

Petra said, “How’d Blaise kill Moses?”

“Shot him.”

“With what?”

“This.22 he carries around. He’s got other stuff, but he carries that.”

“What other stuff?”

“Shotgun,.44, bunch of knives. The.22 fits in his pocket.”

“What make?”

“Cheap gun, Czechoslovakian or Romanian or something. He calls it his best friend, he got it on the street when he started dealing dope at thirteen. That’s what he killed those dope guys with.”

“Those nameless guys.”

“He just called them dope-fiend dead guys.”

“So you come back from the market and find Mosey dead. That would be the second time you walked into one of Blaise’s nasty scenes, but you stuck with him.”

“I was pretty frustrated,” said Fisk. “That’s what I was doing at Mary’s tonight. Came to tell her I had enough.”

“Instead you ended up getting intimate.”

“It’s what happens with us,” said Fisk. “We’ve got chemistry.”

“So your plan was to…”

“Turn Blaise in to you. You want him, go to 13466 Hillside View up in Mount Washington, it’s this house he’s been crashing in.”

“He?”

“He found it. I was going to leave tomorrow.”

Petra copied down the address, exited the room.

Milo was already on his phone, dialing SWAT. As he called in for a raiding party, Petra returned to Fisk, stayed on her feet, looking down at him. “Mary own that house?”

“No, it belongs to some deejay, got a karaoke machine, Blaise knows him from clubs.”

“Name?”

“The mail says Perry Moore.”

“Where is he?”

“Away,” said Fisk. “Playing on some cruise ship, Blaise said.”

“Does Mr. Moore know you’ve been staying at his house?”

Eye shift. “According to Blaise.”

“Blaise have a key?”

“He said he lost it.”

“How’d you gain entry?”

Fisk shifted in his chair. “He broke a window.”

“After he broke, you entered.”

“He said it was okay.” Fisk clicked his teeth together. Began rocking a leg.

“Something bothering you, Robert?”

“Still thirsty,” said Fisk. “Can I have that juice, now? Also an attorney?”

CHAPTER 41

Petra’s heavy foot and two a.m. quiet made Hollywood to Mount Washington a quick drive.

Blaise De Paine’s hideout was a little gray frame house atop a short, obscure street, just up the freeway from Chinatown where Moses Grant had been dumped. SWAT vehicles clogged the block. The altitude offered a misty, pine-interrupted view of a black damask sky.

An open garage door framed the bulk of the Hummer. Inside the house, clothing, food, and body odor clogged four slovenly rooms, but no sign of De Paine.

The second SWAT team was more subdued than the jocks who’d busted Fisk, everyone let down by big buildup, no action. A deputy commander had showed up to stage-direct, a thickset, bowlegged bald man named Lionel Harger, with meaty furrows sausaging his forehead and a multicrushed nose that sniffed the air with canine intensity.

He charged out of the house now, bounded across the porch, planted himself in front of Petra, folded his arms across a pigeon-chest. “Two in one night? We should charge you desk-folk by the hour.”

Milo said, “Be grateful you don’t get paid by the suspect.”

Harger’s chin jerked upward as if he’d been jabbed. “You’re that West L.A. so-called ace, does things…uniquely.” Corkscrew smile on the last word.

Milo said, “Beats administrative meetings and other random bullshit,” and made the most of his height.

Harger’s eyes bugged and his thorax swelled. “Concentrate on your clearance rate, Lieutenant. For comedy, stick with Robin Williams.”

He stomped away, began gathering his troops. The crime techs were swarming the property like picnic ants, examining the Hummer, flashlighting oil stains in the driveway, searching for tire tracks. The five-year-old Mazda Miata registered to Perry Moore was nowhere in sight. Petra had put an alert on it five minutes ago.

Lionel Harger strutted to an armored Ford Expedition, stopped to glare, got in, roared off.

Petra said, “Making friends and influencing people, Lieutenant Sturgis.”

Milo said, “Meathead doesn’t recall but he was one year ahead of me at the academy. Assorted sneaky individuals used to leave hostile printed matter in my locker. Ol’ Lionel could always be counted on to snicker when he just happened to pass by as I was unearthing some treasure.”

His turn to stomp away, over to the house, where he ducked under the yellow tape.

Petra said, “Everyone’s fading from sleep deprivation,” but her eyes were on high-beam. “Blaise is one lucky little monster, keeps slipping away.”

I said, “When he didn’t hear from Fisk, he probably got jumpy.”

“Any guess about where he’s gone?”

I shook my head.

“Reach Tanya?” she said.

“Left messages at her cell and Kyle’s.”

“This hour, they’re probably snoozing. Though when I was in college, I seem to recall three o’clock being midafternoon. Try again?”

I did. Same result.

She said, “At least that mansion’s got a good security system.”

Her cell beeped. Raul Biro informing her Robert Fisk had been taken to County Jail. She filled Biro in, turned back to me. “We’ll get Blaise eventually. Until we do, Tanya should take a semester off and go far away.”

Before I could answer, a tall, mustachioed tech came out to show her a rumpled red velvet jacket with gold-braid lapels. Hollywood Elite Custom Tailors label inside, low-rent address on the east end of the Boulevard, BDP monogram above that.

“That’s our boy,” she said.

“Snappy dresser,” said the tech. “He walks around like that, who knows, you might even find him.”

She pointed a finger. “Go dig, mole.” The tech laughed and returned to the house. “Think you can convince the kid to leave town until we find Blaise?”

“She’s got nowhere else to go,” I said.

“No other family?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Maybe we can come up with a plan-well, look who’s back walking jauntily.”

Milo took several long steps, waved us over to the house. When we got there, he said, “Out back.”

One of the techs had spotted soil disturbance at the rear of the skimpy yard, what looked to be recent excavation along a shaded strip created by a mock-orange hedge. Except for the hedge, the property was mostly dry dirt, landscaping not Perry Moore’s thing.

The hand-dig took awhile, several sets of hands scooping inch by inch.

At three forty-seven a.m., Coroner’s Investigator Judy Sheinblum nudged something soft two feet below the surface. A minute later, she was staring into a face wrapped in clear plastic.

Caucasian male, midthirties, brown hair, orange soul patch. Black-green sludge around the lips and eye sockets advertised the early signs of decomposition. Some fluid condensation on the surface of the plastic, but no maggots; the sheeting was industrial-strength and bound with drapery cord. Cool dry nights would slow things down.

Everyone from Mission Road agreed this was days, not weeks.

Further search of the house produced a cheap blue nylon wallet under a pile of dirty underwear. The photo on Perry Moore’s lapsed driver’s license matched the corpse. Five years ago, Moore’s hair and patch had been tomato red.

The body was lifted out, examined. A protuberance on the left side of Moore’s forehead looked like blunt-force injury. Then the hole in the back of Moore’s skull put the lie to that.

“Bullet’s still in there,” said Judy Sheinblum. “No exit because not enough force.”

“Twenty-two,” said Milo.

“That’s what I’d double-down on.” Sheinblum returned to the corpse.

Other techs continued to search for additional earth movement, found nothing. Petra ordered a cadaver dog, anyway, learned it would take a couple of days.