True Detectives

He liked that notion, kept most of his head focused on the job but allowed a small corner to be decorated by fantasy.

Big-snouted chromed monsters-Duesenbergs and Packards and Rolls Phantoms-tooling up this very drive on a warm night like this one. Liveried chauffeurs, laughing passengers. Bud-vases, champagne buckets in the trunk-the boot.

Gleaming chariots cruising up silently, dropping off the likes of Harlow and Gable and Cooper and Hedy Lamarr in the porte cochere of a fifty-room wedding-cake mansion. The entire place alive with golden light and witty chatter.

Slim stylish people in gowns and evening jackets talking in that clipped, self-satisfied almost English accent, highball glasses lofted gracefully by manicured hands.

A life filled with one cocktail party after another-in the mansion's great hall, a grand piano-Gershwin himself plinking the keys.

Billiards, brandy, cigars for the men.

Bird-chatter giggles and frothy girl-drinks for the women.

Everyone loving their life… as he trudged, ever watchful for threat, Aaron imagined the mansion's interior. Soaring arched windows offering heart-stopping views. The city spread in repose, a woman of leisure.

From that to Mason Book and Ax Dement in Hyundais and pickups, buying sex at the Eagle Motel. Smoking up and sniffing H in a damned state park.

Guilt and atonement. That crazy woman…

Aaron stopped, listened. Just the traffic buzz, a little louder now.

No parties tonight.

Not the type anyone enjoyed.

He completed another forty yards before the drive finally straightened and the cypresses ended and he was facing a wide, unadorned circular driveway of the same ugly concrete.

No vehicles in sight.

Nothing remotely Tuscan.

Nothing remotely Golden Age.

The house was one-story, free-form, a long, low knife fashioned of iron girders and glass.

Glass-on-glass, no apparent seams. Wedge-like-a spaceship, perched on the edge of a cliff, pointy snout extending well over the precipice.

Prepared to launch.

Below oblique steel struts fastening the structure to the cliff, miles of light. Free fall into oblivion. Staring at it made Aaron feel dizzy and he looked away to clear his head.

Not a trace of green anywhere around the house. A cold, deliberate structure.

Nowhere to hide once he set out across the motor court.

All that glass. Lights on in room after transparent room.

White, wide rooms, the kind of low, black leather furniture Aaron liked.

So cold; maybe it was time to reconsider his décor.

Empty.

Then it wasn't.

♦

Mason Book, wearing a too-large black robe, face gaunt, yellow hair wild, appeared around a white wall and walked-more like hobbled- toward the front of the house-right into the wedge that hovered above empty space.

The actor stood there, staring straight ahead.

Protected by darkness, Aaron jogged forward, positioned himself ten feet from the house, with a side view of the knife-point.

He peered under the building. Just enough backyard for a bright blue infinity pool.

Still no dogs, no alarms and all those interior lights put Mason Book on full display-like one of those performance art pieces.

Book had no clue someone could be watching. Let's hear it for false confidence. Too many years being buffered from reality.

He stumbled, barely caught his balance. His robe fell open.

Lousy ski

Like a kid ready for takeoff.

Aaron edged closer.

Sad kid, weeping.

CHAPTER 35

Moe was driving home, talking to Liz on his cell, when Call Interruption beeped. He said, “Can you hold for a sec, honey?”

Liz laughed. “Something tells me you won't be dropping by after all.”

If it's a lead, from your mouth to God's ears. He said, “Nah, it's probably something stupid.” It wasn't.

Raymond “Ramone W” Wohr sat in yellow psych-ward pajamas in one of the therapy rooms used by the jail shrinks.

A little nicer than the usual County interview space, but not by much.

Moe and Petra gave Wohr the upholstered chair they'd jammed in a corner, pulled up the pair of plastic seats, and faced their quarry.

Wohr was one of those long-legged types who shrank when seated. A rash had broken out on his bald head. The side fringes hung greasy and limp. In less than a day, jail pallor had set in. Moe wondered if it was some sort of fear reaction, not absence of sunlight.

Or the overhead fluorescence wasn't being kind to Ramone's seamed, sagging, bleary-eyed, gap-toothed, addict face. The huge mustache was ragged, more gray than brown. His hands shook. A gray-blue tat ran up his neck. Crude blue band fashioned of circles and squares and X's. Like a tie gone awry.

It was just after one a.m. and Petra's tenth call of the evening had finally a

Ramone had been booked nearly twenty-four hours ago, shoved right into the general population. News of his pedo bust had arrived before him and though Wohr's cellmates were nonviolent types, a flurry of less-than-veiled threats from a couple of hypermuscular gangbangers in the adjoining cell had caused Wohr to whine, bitch, and moan. Finally the mope had attracted the attention of a jailer who really didn't want to have to deal with another in-house death-stomp.

The problem was where to put Wohr. High Power and the psych ward were full up and the felony charge didn't qualify him for trustee status. Finally, he was stashed in temporary quarters: a tiny reading room in a far corner of the jail's inmate library, where he was tossed a blanket and told to go to sleep.

The space was vacant because furniture could be used as weaponry. Jailers doing pass-bys woke him up every few hours with flashlight glare and foot nudges. Your basic solitary confinement and Ramone W was an empty-eyed wraith by the time a psych bed emptied after an agitated bipolar rapist stroked out.

The transfer had taken place twelve hours ago, but the paperwork lagged.

“Anyway, we've got him,” Petra told Moe. “Meanwhile, I've got Vice guys looking for Delishus. Where are you?”

“Turning right around and heading for the freeway.” After hours of futile traces on bar pay phones, he ached for sleep. “I can be there in twenty.”

“I'll meet you in front.” A beat. “This is your baby, I'm just there for backup.”

He couldn't figure out if she'd said that out of good ma

Raymond Wohr said, “I still don't get why I got busted.” Not even convincing himself.

Moe said, “No one told you the charges?”

“Yeah, but…”

“You molested a minor, Ramone.”

Wohr didn't answer.

“Pedo is serious stuff, Ramone.”

Wohr scratched an eyelid.

“You made our job easy,” said Moe. “Put on quite a show for Officer Ke

“Aw, man.” As if he was the aggrieved party.

Moe said, “Aw, man, what?”

“She said she was twenty.”

“Who did?”

“Deli-whatever she calls herself.”

“Too bad she looks ten.”

“Not to me,” said Wohr. “It's a case of… how you see things.”

“You wear glasses, Ramone?”

“Huh?”

Moe repeated the question.

“No.”

“To you she looked twenty. To everyone else, she looks ten. She's a minor and you got caught with your dick in her mouth.”

Wohr's scratching hand lowered to the crook of his arm. Old tracks, but no fresh punctures. Along with the bag of weed, granules of what was sure to be cocaine had been scraped from a pocket of his jeans. Along with a pay-as-you-go cell Petra had already submitted for analysis.