The Murder Book

Now that he thought about it, had Alex ever been deterred? Milo couldn't remember a single instance.

Alex did exactly what Alex wanted to do.

And Robin… Milo'd offered his smoothest reassurances. And he supposed he'd done a decent job of keeping Alex out of harm's way. But there were limits.

Everyone stood alone.

He got up, poured himself a vodka and pink-grapefruit juice, rationalizing that the vitamin C counteracted the oxidation, but wondering how closely his liver resembled that medical journal photo Rick had shown him last month.

Erosion of hepatic tissue and replacement with fatty globules due to advanced cirrhosis.

Rick never pushed either, but Milo knew he wasn't happy with the fresh bottle of Stoli in the freezer.

Switch cha

Other people's problems were so much more engaging.

He walked half a mile to a Budget Rent-a-Car on La Cienega and got himself a fresh blue Taurus. Driving east on Santa Monica, he crossed into Beverly Hills, then West Hollywood. Not much traffic past Doheny Drive, but at the West Hollywood border the boulevard had been narrowed to one lane in either direction and the few cars in sight were crawling.

West Hollywood, The City That Never Stopped Decorating, had been digging up the streets for years, plunging businesses into bankruptcy and accomplishing little Milo could see other than a yawning stretch of dirt piles and ditches. Last year, the ribbon had been cut on a spanking new West Hollywood fire station. One of those architectural fancies- peaks and troughs and gimcracks and weird-shaped windows. Cute, except the doors had proved too narrow for the fire engines to squeeze through, and the poles didn't allow the firefighters to slide down. This year, West Hollywood had embarked on a sister-city deal with Havana. Milo doubted Fidel would approve of Boystown nightlife.

Among the few businesses the roadwork couldn't kill were the all-night markets and the gay bars. A guy had to eat and a guy had to party. Milo and Rick stayed in most nights- how long had it been since he'd cruised?

And now, here he was.

He found himself smiling, but it felt like someone else's mirth.

Because what the hell was there to be happy about? Pierce Schwi

Attracting attention.

Playa del Sol. That toothy putz Paris Bartlett. First thing he did after ditching Alex was to check city records for a business registration on Playa. Nothing. Then he ran Bartlett through every database he could think of. Like that could be a real name.

Taking a giant risk because what he'd told Alex had been true: As a civilian he was forbidden to use departmental resources, he was treading felonious water. He'd put up a firewall by using the ID numbers of other cops for the requests. Half a dozen IDs of cops he didn't care for, jumping around different divisions. His version of identity theft; he'd been collecting data for years, stashing loose bits of paper in his home safe because you never knew when your back was go

Clever boy, but the search had been futile: no such person as Paris Bartlett.

Which he supposed he'd known right away, apart from the moniker having a phony ring, Bartlett, all hair and teeth and eagerness, had had that actor thing going on. In L.A. that didn't necessarily mean a SAG card and a portfolio full of headshots. LAPD liked guys who were good at pretending, too. Cha

Years ago undercover had meant another Vice game, a regularly scheduled weekend production: Friday and Saturday night operations put together with military lust. Staking out targets and delineating the enemy and moving in for the attack.

Bust the queers.

Not naked aggression, the way it had been back before Christopher Street, when gay bars were ripe for routine, big-time head-breaking. Most of that ended by the early seventies, but Milo had caught the tail end of the department's fag-bashing fervor: LAPD masked the raids as drug busts, as if hetero clubs weren't fueled by the same dope. During his first month at West L.A. he'd been assigned to a Saturday night bivouac against a private club on Sepulveda near Venice. Out-of-the-way dive in a former auto-painting barn where a hundred or so well-heeled men, believing themselves to be secure, went to talk and dance and smoke grass and gobble quaaludes and enjoy the bathroom stalls. LAPD had a different notion of security. The way the supervisor- a hypermacho D II named Reisan who Milo was certain was tucked deeply in the closet- laid out the plan, you'da thought it was a swoop on some Cong hamlet. Squinty eyes, military lingo, triangulated diagrams scrawled on the board, give me a break.

Milo sat through the orientation, struggling not to succumb to a full-body sweat. Reisan going on about coming down hard on resisters, don't be shy about using your batons. Then, leering, and warning the troops not to kiss anyone because you didn't know where those lips had been. Looking straight at Milo when he'd cracked wise, Milo laughing along with the others and wondering: Why-the-hell-is-he-doing-that? Fighting to convince himself he'd imagined it.

The day of the raid, he called in sick with the flu, stayed in bed for three days. Perfectly healthy, but he worked hard at degrading himself by not sleeping or eating, just sucking on gin and vodka and rye and peach brandy and whatever else he found in the cupboard. Figuring if the department checked on him, he'd look like death warmed over.

V.N. combat vet, now a real-life working detective, but he was still thinking like a truant high school kid.

Over the three days, he lost eight pounds, and when he stood his legs shook and his kidneys ached and he wondered if that yellow tinge in his eyes was real or just bad lighting- his place was a dingy hovel, the few windows it offered looked out to airshafts, and no matter how many bulbs he used, he could never get the illumination above tomb-strength.

The first time in three days that he tried food- a barely warmed can of Hearty Man chili- what he didn't heave whooshed out the other end. He smelled like a goat pen, his hair felt brittle, and his fingernails were getting soft. For a full week later, his ears rang and his back hurt and he drank gallons of water a day just in case he'd damaged something. The day he returned to the station, a transfer slip- Vice to Auto Theft, signed by Reisan- was in his box. That seemed a fine state of affairs. Two days later, someone slipped a note through the door of his locker.

How's your bunghole, faggot?

He pulled into the Healthy Foods lot, stayed in the Taurus, sca

He watched shoppers enter the market, finally satisfied himself that he hadn't been followed, and crossed over to the row of small stores- rehabbed shacks, really- that sat across from Healthy Foods. Locksmith, dry cleaners, cobbler, West Hollywood Easy Mail Center.

He flashed his badge to the Pakistani behind the mail-drop counter- pile up those violations, Sturgis- and inquired about the box number listed on the Jeep's registration. The clerk was sullen, but he thumbed through his circular Rolodex and shook his head.