"Stupidity," he told her. "They"ve got a description of a murder suspect-someone who may or may not have murdered this Herbert character-and they thought it bore a resemblance to yours truly."
She put her hand to her mouth.
He laughed. "Not even close, Steph. Last time I was that thin was back in high school." To me: "Can we get to work now?"
"I"ve never stopped," I said. "Do you have any information on Vicki Bottomley?"
Huenengarth waved a hand at Milo. "Tell him."
"We"ve done phone traces from her home to the Jones house and Chip"s office."
"We?" said Huenengarth.
"Him," said Milo. "Federal warrant. Next week he sprouts a f.u.c.king pair of wings."
"Find anything?" I said.
Milo shook his head. "No calls. And none of Bottomley"s neighbors have seen Cindy or Chip around, so if there is a link, it"s pretty d.a.m.n hidden. My intuition is she"s got nothing to do with it. She"s certainly not the main poisoner. Once the chips fall, we"ll see if she fits in, anywhere."
"So where do we go now?"
Milo looked at Huenengarth. Huenengarth looked at me and held his hand out toward the couch.
"Been sitting all day," I said.
He frowned and touched his tie. Stared at everyone else.
Milo said, "Any more federal doublespeak and I"m outa here."
"All right," said Huenengarth. "First, I want to reiterate my demand of total discretion-total cooperation from both of you. No improvisation. I mean it."
"In return for what?" I said.
"Probably enough technical support to bust Cindy. Because I"ve got federal warrants on Chuck Jones, and with a two-minute phone call I can include Junior and everything he owns in the deal. We"re talking audio, video, home, place of business-they go bowling, I can have someone peeking from behind the pins. Give me two hours alone in their house and I can rig it with peep-toys you wouldn"t believe. Got a camera that goes right in their TV so when they"re watching it, it"s watching them. I can toss the house for insulin or whatever c.r.a.p you"re looking for and they"ll never know it. All you have to do is keep your mouths shut."
"Ca.s.sie"s room is the one that needs to be rigged," I said. "And the bathroom connecting it to the master bedroom."
"Tile walls in the bathroom?"
"Tile walls and one window."
"No problem-whatever toys I don"t have at hand, I can have delivered in twenty-four hours."
Milo said, "Your tax dollars busy at work."
Huenengarth frowned. "Sometimes they are."
I wondered if he knew what a joke was. Stephanie didn"t care if he did; her expression said he danced on water.
"I"ve got a meeting scheduled at the house tomorrow night," I said. "I"ll try to change it to the hospital. Can you have your equipment ready by then?"
"Probably. If not, it will be soon after-day or two. But can you a.s.sure me the house will be totally empty? I"m ready to pounce on Daddy, I can"t afford any screwups."
I said to Stephanie, "Why don"t you call Chip and Cindy in for a meeting? Tell them something came up on the lab tests, you need to examine Ca.s.sie and then speak with them. Once they get there, make sure they stay for a long time."
"Fine," she said. "I"ll keep them waiting, tell them the labs got lost or something."
"Action, camera," said Huenengarth.
"How come you can get Chip included in the warrant?" I asked him. "Is he involved in his father"s financial dealings?"
No answer.
I said, "I thought we were being frank."
"He"s a sleaze, too," Huenengarth said, irritated.
"The fifty parcels he owns? Is that really one of Chuck"s deals?"
He shook his head. "The land deal"s for s.h.i.t-Chuck"s too smart for that. Junior"s a loser, can"t hold on to a dollar. Gone through plenty of Daddy"s already."
"What"s he spending it on besides land?" I said. "His life-style"s pretty ordinary."
"Sure, on the surface it is. But that"s just part of the image: Mr. Self-made. It"s a crock. That d.i.n.ky junior college he teaches at pays him twenty-four thousand a year-think you can buy a house in Watts on that, let alone that entire tract? Not that he owns it, anymore."
"Who does?"
"The bank that financed the deal."
"Foreclosure?"
"Any minute." Big smile. "Daddy bought the land at a bargain price, years ago. Gave it to Junior, the idea being that Junior would sell at the right time and get rich on his own. He even told Junior when the right time was, but Junior didn"t listen."
The smile became a lottery-winner"s grin. "Not the first time, either. Back when Junior was at Yale, he started his own business: compet.i.tion with Cliff Notes because he could do it better. Daddy bankrolled him, hundred thousand or so. Down the drain, because apart from its being a harebrained scheme, Junior lost interest. That"s his pattern. He has a problem with finishing things. A few years later, when he was in graduate school, he decided he was going to be a publisher-start a sociology magazine for the lay public. Another quarter of a million of Daddy"s dough. There"ve been others, all along the same lines. By my calculation, around a million or so urinated away, not including the land. Not much by Daddy"s standards, but you"d figure someone with half a brain could do something constructive with that kind of grubstake, right? Not Junior. He"s too creative."
"What went wrong with the land?" I said.
"Nothing, but we"re in a recession and property values dropped. Instead of cashing in and cutting his losses, Junior decided to go into the construction business. Daddy knew it was stupid and refused to bankroll it, so Junior went out and got a loan from a bank using Daddy"s name as collateral. Junior lost interest as usual, the subcontractors saw they had a real chicken on their hands and started plucking. Those houses are built like garbage."
"Six phases," I said, remembering the architectural rendering. "Not much completed."
"Maybe half of one phase. The plan was for an entire city. Junior"s own personal Levittown." He laughed. "You should see the proposal he wrote up when he sent it to Daddy. Like a term paper-delusions of grandeur. No doubt the bank"ll go to Daddy first, before taking over the deed. And Daddy may just divvy up. Because he loves Junior, tells everyone who"ll listen what a scholar his baby boy is-another joke. Junior changed his major a bunch of times in college. Didn"t finish his Ph.D.-the old boredom thing."
"One thing he has stuck with is teaching," I said. "And he seems to be good at it-he"s won awards."
Huenengarth let his tongue protrude through his small lips as he shook his head. "Yeah. Formal Organizations, New Age Management Techniques. We"re talking Marxist theory and rock "n" roll. He"s an entertainer. I"ve got tapes of his lectures, and basically what he does is pander to the students. Lots of anti-capitalist rhetoric, the evils of corporate corruption. You don"t have to be Freud to figure that one out, right? He likes rubbing the old man"s face in it-even the wife"s part of that program, wouldn"t you say?"
"In what way?"
"C"mon, Doctor. Milo, here, told me you found out about her military career. The woman"s a s.l.u.t. A lowlife loser. On top of what she"s doing to the kid. Can"t exactly be what the old man had in mind for Junior."
He grinned. Scarlet again, and sweating heavily. Nearly levitating off his chair in rage and delight. His hatred was tangible, poisonous. Stephanie felt it; her eyes were thrilled.
"What about Chip"s mother?" I said. "How did she die?"
He shrugged. "Suicide. Sleeping pills. Entire family"s f.u.c.ked up. Though I can"t say I blame her. Don"t imagine living with Chuck was any barrel of primates. He"s been known to play around-likes "em in groups of three or four, young, chesty, blond, borderline intelligence."
I said, "You"d like to get all of them, wouldn"t you?"
"I"ve got no use for them," he said quickly. Then he got up, took a few steps, turned his back on us, and stretched.
"So," he said. "Let"s aim for tomorrow. You get "em out, we move in and play Captain Video."
"Great, Bill," said Stephanie. Her beeper went off. She removed it from her belt and examined the digital readout. "Where"s your phone, Alex?"
I walked her into the kitchen and hung around as she punched numbers.
"This is Dr. Eves. I just got . . . What? . . . When? . . . All right, give me the resident on call. . . . Jim? This is Stephanie. What"s up? . . . Yes, yes, there"s a history of that. It"s all in the chart. . . . Absolutely, keep that drip going. Sounds like you"re doing everything right, but get me a full tox panel, stat. Make sure to check for hypoglycemic metabolites. Check all over for puncture wounds, too, but don"t let on, okay? It"s important, Jim. Please. . . . Thanks. And keep her totally isolated. No one goes in. . . . Especially not them . . . What? . . . Out in the hall. Leave the drapes open so they can see her, but no one goes inside. . . . I don"t care. . . . I know. Let it be on my head, Jim. . . . What? . . . No. Keep her in ICU. Even if things lighten up . . . I don"t care, Jim. Find a bed somewhere. This one"s crucial. . . . What? . . . Soon. Soon as I can-maybe an hour. Just- What? . . . Yes, I will. . . . Okay. Thanks. I owe you."
She hung up. Her face was white and her chest heaved.
"Again," I said.
She looked past me. Held her head.
"Again," she said. "This time she"s unconscious."
31.
Quiet night on Chappy Ward. No shortage of empty rooms.
This one was two doors down from 505W. Ca.s.sie"s room.
That cold, clean hospital smell.
The images on the TV I was watching were black-and-white and fuzzy and small, a miniaturized, capsulated reality.
Cold and clean and a medicinal staleness-though no one had been in this room for a long time.
I"d been in it most of the day and all of the evening.
Into the night . . .
The door was bolted shut. The room was dark, except for a focused yellow parabola from a corner floor lamp. Double drapes blotted out Hollywood. I sat on an orange chair, as confined as a patient. The piped music barely leaked through from the hallway.
The man who called himself Huenengarth sat across the room, near the lamp, cradled by a chair identical to mine that he"d pushed up to the empty bed. A small black hand radio rested in his lap.
The bed was stripped down to the mattress. Resting on the ticking was a sloping paper ramp. Government doc.u.ments.
The one he was reading had kept his interest for more than an hour. Down at the bottom was a line of numbers and asterisks and a word that I thought was UPDATE. But I couldn"t be sure because I was too far away and neither of us wanted to change that.
I had things to read, too: the latest lab reports on Ca.s.sie and a brand-new article Huenengarth had shoved at me. Five typed pages on the subject of pension fraud by Professor W. W. Zimberg, written in starchy legalese with lots of words blacked out by a broad-tipped marker.
My eyes went back to the TV. No movement on the screen other than the slow drip of sugar-water through plastic tubing. I inspected the small, colorless world from edge to edge. For the thousandth time . . .
Bedclothes and railings, a blur of dark hair and puffy cheek. The I.V. gauge, with its inlets and outlets and locks . . .
I sensed movement across the room without seeing it. Huenengarth took out a pen and crossed something out.
According to doc.u.ments he showed Milo in the deputy chief"s office, he"d been in Washington, D.C., the night Dawn Herbert was butchered in her little car. Milo told me he"d corroborated it, as the two of us drove to the hospital just before sunrise.
"Who exactly is he working for?" I said.
"Don"t know the details but it"s some sort of covert task force, probably in cahoots with the Treasury Department."
"Secret agent man? Think he knows our friend the colonel?"
"Wondered about that myself. He found out pretty d.a.m.n fast that I was playing computer games. After we got out of the D.C."s office, I shot the colonel"s name at him and got a blank stare, but it wouldn"t surprise me if the two of them attended some of the same parties. Tell you one thing, Alex-a.s.shole"s more than just a field agent, got some real juice behind him."
"Juice and motivation," I said. "Four and a half years to avenge his father. How do you think he managed the million-dollar budget?"
"Who knows? Probably kissed the right a.s.s, stabbed the right back. Or maybe it was just a matter of the right person"s ox getting gored. Whatever, he"s a smart cookie."
"Good actor, too-getting that close to Jones and Plumb."
"So one day he"ll run for President. Did you know you were going twenty over the limit?"
"If I get a ticket, you can fix it for me, right? Now that you"re a real policeman again."
"Yeah."
"How"d you pull it off?"
"I didn"t pull off anything. When I got to the D.C."s, Huenengarth was already there. He gets right in my face, demands to know why I"ve been tracing him. I think about it and tell him the truth, because what"s my choice? Play hard to get and have the department cite me for improper use of departmental time and facilities? He then proceeds to ask me lots of questions about the Jones family. All this time, the D.C. is just sitting behind his desk, hasn"t said a word, and I figure this is it, start thinking private enterprise. But soon as I finish, Huenengarth thanks me for my cooperation, says it"s a shame, the crime rate being what it is, that a guy with my experience is sitting in front of a screen instead of working cases. The D.C. looks as if he just sucked pigs.h.i.t through a straw, but he keeps quiet. Huenengarth asks if I can be a.s.signed to his investigation-LAPD liaison to the Feds. D.C. squirms and says sure, getting me back on active duty was the department"s plan all along. Huenengarth and I leave the office together and the minute we"re alone he tells me he doesn"t give a f.u.c.k about me personally, but his case on Jones is just about to break and I"d better not get in his way while he moves in with the killing thrust."
"Killing thrust, huh?"
"Gentle soul, probably doesn"t wear fur . . . Then he said, "Maybe we can cut a deal. Don"t f.u.c.k me up and I"ll help you." Then he told me how he knew about Ca.s.sie from Stephanie, but hadn"t done anything because there wasn"t enough evidence, but maybe now there was."
"Why all of a sudden?"
"Probably because he"s close enough to getting Grandpa and wouldn"t mind doing a total destruct on the family. I also wouldn"t be surprised if on some level he enjoys seeing Ca.s.sie suffer-the curse of the Jones family. He really hates them, Alex. . . . On the other hand, where would we be without him? So let"s use the h.e.l.l out of him, see what happens. How does this look on me?"