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He met him halfway, a new story brewing, plausible stuff to satisfy a savvy cop. Face to face, he said, “I’m with the Sheriff’s.”
Niles laughed. “You a little bit confused about your jurisdiction, Deputy?”
The “Deputy” was all scorn, like a synonym for “cancer.” Da
Niles bored in with his eyes. “You sleep in those clothes, Deputy?”
Da
“You ever hear of carrying a razor on all-nighters, Deputy?”
“You ever hear of professional courtesy, Niles?”
Sergeant Gene Niles looked at his watch. “A man who reads the papers. Let’s try this. How’d you get up here twenty-two minutes after we logged the squeal at the station?”
Da
“A year ago I’d have reamed you for that.”
“A year ago you were going places. Do you want to hear about my homicide or do you want to sulk?”
Niles picked a piece of lint off his blazer. “The dispatcher said it looks like a queer job. I hate queer jobs, so if you’ve got another queer job, I don’t want to hear about it. Roll, Deputy. And get yourself some decent threads. Mickey Kike’s got a haberdashery, and I know he gives all his prat boys a discount.”
Da
He settled into his car to wait for Layman’s findings; stretching out on the front seat, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, knowing Doc would be four hours or more on the examinations. Sleep wouldn’t come; a hot day started sizzling, warming up the car, making the upholstery sticky. Da
Heat reflecting off the windshield and too many brain wires short-circuiting on angles lulled Da
Layman was standing near the ramp, eating lunch off an examination slab, a body sheet for a tablecloth. He saw Da
“That bad?”
“You look scared, too.”
Da
Layman wiped his mouth with a sheet corner. “Here’s a few more scares for you, then. Times of death—twenty-six to thirty hours ago. Both men were anally raped—O+ secretor semen. The wounds on their backs were pure zoot stick, identical in size and fiber content to Martin Mitchell Goines. The missing-finger man died from a throat gash made by a sharp, serrated knife. No cause of death on the other man, but I’d be willing to bet barbiturate OD. On our missing-finger friend I found a vomit-coated, punctured capsule, right up under the tongue. I tested some powder in it and got a home compound—sodium secobarbital, one part, one part strychnine. The secobarbital would hit first, inducing unconsciousness, the strychnine would kill. I think missing finger got indigestion, puked up part of his Mickey Fi
Da
Layman said, “Not human, but human. I found O+ saliva and human gastric juices on the wounds, and the bites were too frenzied and overlapping to make casts from. But—I got three individual tooth cuts—too large to ascribe to any known human dental abstract and too shredded at the bottom to identify on any single-tooth forensic index. I also took a glob of dental mortar paste out of one of the wounds. He wears dentures, Da
Chapter Fourteen
Ellis Loew performed the ceremony in his office, Mal and Dudley Smith official witnesses. Buzz Meeks stood by the conference table, right hand raised; Loew recited the oath: “Do you, Turner Meeks, hereby swear to loyally and conscientiously perform the duties of Special Investigator, Grand Jury Division of the District Attorney’s Office for the City of Los Angeles, upholding the laws of this municipality, protecting the rights and property of its citizens, so help you God?”
Buzz Meeks said, “Sure.” Loew handed him an ID holder replete with license photostat and DA’s Bureau shield. Mal wondered how much Howard Hughes was paying the bastard, guessing at least three grand.
Dudley joined Meeks and Loew in a back-slapping circle; Mal credited an old rumor still holding: Meeks thought he was behind the shooting that got him his pension, Jack D. blowing it, then forgetting his grudge when the okie was no longer LAPD. Let him think it—anything to keep his new colleague as far away as two cops working the same job could be.
And Dudley. And maybe Loew now, too.
Mal watched the three share a toast, Glenlivet in crystal glasses. He took his notepad down to the far end of the table, Meeks and Dudley trading one-liners, Ellis shooting him a scowl that said, “Let’s work.” Loew’s half nod acknowledged that their bad blood was just temporary. Mal thought: he should owe me, now I owe him. He picked up his pen to doodle, his knuckles throbbed, he knew Loew was right.