Billy Straight

“I'm very sorry, very very very sorry!”

Petra sat down next to the woman and chanced putting her arm around the heaving shoulders. Beneath the knit fabric were small bones. Petra smelled makeup, breath mints, Chanel No. 5. “Let's find somewhere to go.”

Vivian Boehlinger straightened and pointed at the interrogation rooms. “Not with him!”

“No,” said Petra. “By ourselves.”

No one was in the vending machine room, so she guided the woman in and closed the door. No lock. She placed a chair against it, sat down, motioning for Vivian Boehlinger to choose one near the folding table that served as the D's snack center.

“Coffee?”

“No thank you.” Subdued voice now, that post-tantrum shame/fatigue. Small hands folded in a black-knit lap. Under the fluorescence, Petra could see hints of deep facial lines, muted expertly by makeup. The eyes were tormented, devoid of hope. So disturbing in contrast- everything else about the woman was so well put together.

“I'm sorry,” she repeated.

“It's really okay, ma'am. Situations like this-”

“When all this is over, I'm going to leave him.”

Petra didn't speak.

Vivian Boehlinger said, “I was going to do it this year. Now I'll have to wait. Thirty-six years of marriage, what a joke.” She shook her head, made a terrible sound, more parrot squawk than laugh.

“He has affairs with sluts,” she went on. “Thinks I'm stupid and don't know.” Another bird sound. It made Petra's flesh crawl. “Cheap, slutty affairs. And now Lisa's gone.”

Odd juxtaposition, but maybe not. Tabulating her miseries. Petra waited for her to take it further, but all she said was “My Lisa, my pretty Lisa.”

Several more minutes of silence, then: “Ma'am, do you think Cart Ramsey did it?”

“I don't know.” Quick answer. She'd thought about it. She gave a pitiful shrug and sniffed. Petra fetched a paper napkin. Dab, dab.

“Thank you. You're very sweet. I don't know what to think.” She sat up straighter, higher. “John thinks he can buy everything. He offered Lisa money not to marry Carter and, when that didn't work, even more money to divorce him. So idiotic- Lisa was going to divorce Carter anyway. She told me. If John had ever communicated with her, he could have saved himself the offer. Which is all it was. Lisa divorced Carter, but did John keep his end of the bargain?”

A scary smile spread across the thin lips. Lipstick and liner had been used to extend the coral borders and radically change the mouth's contours. Without her morning routine, this woman would be unrecognizable.

“He didn't pay up?” said Petra.

“Of course not. He didn't give Lisa one dime. Said he hadn't been serious, it was for Lisa's own good anyway, she had nothing to complain about. Lisa didn't care, she knew who she was dealing with. But still. Don't you think that's terrible?”

“How much did he offer Lisa?”

“Fifty thousand dollars. So now he comes up with half?” She shook her head. “Don't expect him to pay any reward, Detective. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks they're going to get paid by John- do I think Carter did it? I don't know. To me, he always seemed civil. Then Lisa told me he hit her, so I don't know.”

“How many times did she say he hit her, ma'am?”

“Just the once. They had a tiff, Carter lost control and hit her. More than a slap- her eye was blackened and her lip was split.”

“Just once,” said Petra.

“Once was too much for Lisa.” That sounded boastful. Daughter asserting herself in a way mother never could? “She told me she wouldn't tolerate it. And I agreed with her. For all the things her father did over thirty-six years, he never laid a hand on me. If he had, who knows what I'd have done.” She lifted her purse, hefted it like a weapon. “Of course, I didn't know Lisa was going to go on television. If she'd told me about that, I probably would have advised against it.”

“Too public?”

“Tasteless. But I'd have been wrong. Why keep it all inside? What's the point of being quiet and pretty and tasteful?”

She cried some more, dabbed. “Do I think Carter did it? Why not? He's a man. They're responsible for all the violence in the world, aren't they? Am I as sure as John? No. Because no one's ever as sure as John.”

She got up. “I know you're trying your best, Detective. John wants blood, but I only want… something I'll never get- my little girl back. Now, if you'd be so kind as to call me a cab.”

“Certainly, ma'am.” Petra stayed with her, holding the door. “Here's my card. If you think of something, anything, please let me know.”

The two of them returned to the hallway. The door to Interrogation One was still closed.

“Your poor black friend,” said Vivian Boehlinger. “John's prejudiced- I really despise him.”

“I'll call that cab,” said Petra. “Where to?”

“The Beverly Wilshire. He's staying at the Biltmore.”

Barely after 9 A.M. and she was exhausted; the time spent with the Boehlingers had sapped her energies. Poor Wil was still in there.

What a pair, even allowing for tragedy. No marital role model for Lisa. How much free will did any of us have?

The message stack had grown; four more tips on the boy. She dreaded Dr. B.'s follow-up calls.

In some cases, you bonded with the victim's family. Here she was, wanting to punch Dr. B.'s lights out, creeped out by Mrs. B.'s avian laugh. Not good at all. And Stu still hadn't arrived. Obviously, he didn't give a damn anymore. Which didn't fit a career opportunity thing. So maybe it was marital.

She did some fruitless follow-up with Missing Persons on Flores, was putting down the phone when Stu said, “Good morning.”

Freshly shaved, every hair in place. He wore a beautiful slate-gray gabardine suit, pearl-gray shirt, smoke-and-red paisley tie. So perfectly composed.

It pissed her off.

“Is it?” she said.

He turned around and left the squad room.

39

Sam Ganzer didn't park the Lincoln carefully. The twenty-year-old land yacht was too wide for each of the spaces behind the shul, so he used both of them.

Who was there to complain? The synagogue, once a social center for Venice's Jews, had been reduced to a weekend facility, Sam's maintenance calls the only thing that opened its doors before Friday night.

Even on the weekend it was sometimes hard to get ten men together for a minyan. Beth Torah wasn't Orthodox enough for the yarmulke-clad yuppies who'd gentrified Venice, so they started their own congregation a few blocks away, brought a bearded fanatic rabbi from New York, installed a partition between the men and the women. The old, mostly left-wing crowd who patronized the shul wouldn't hear of it.

That had been five years ago. Now most of the regulars had died off. Eventually, Sam knew, Beth Torah would close down, the property sold. Maybe the yuppies would reclaim it, which would be better than yet another cheap business added to the dozens that lined Ocean Front Walk. Sam didn't mind the yuppies as much as some of the old socialists did. He had a deep-rooted distrust of authority but was, at heart, a businessman. Meanwhile, he'd park any damn way he pleased.

He felt he'd live forever. For seventy-one, his body was working okay. His brother Emil, living down in Irvine, not religious at all, was seventy-six. Good stock: generations of thickset, robust metalsmiths and carpenters honed by bone-numbing Ukrainian winters.

It had taken pure evil to cut down most of the Ganzer tree.

Mother, father, three younger brothers, two sisters shipped off to Sobibor, never seen again. Avram, Mottel, Baruch, Malkah, Sheindel. Had they made it to America, what would their names have been? Sam's best guess was Abe, Mort, Bernie, Marilyn, Shirley. Last week, he'd raised the question with Emil, who didn't want to talk about it.