Serpentine: An Alex Delaware Novel Read online

  I said, “Cause of death?”

  He gave me a pitying smile. “Was he murdered, Doc? That would be juicy but nope, some disease, forget which. But here’s something that is juicy: The house was right on Mulholland, maybe two miles east of where they estimate Dorothy was found in that torched Caddy. I say estimate because if the site was recorded, it’s lost.”

  Milo said, “Interesting.”

  “I thought so,” said Galoway. “A picture’s forming, right? Good-looking chick leaves her old man, comes down here, gets with a rich older guy who gives her a Caddy to tool around in. Then things go bad. I mean they had to, right, for a car like that to get sacrificed? That tells me getting rid of her was a priority. Now I’m feeling some energy. I put it all together and tell my new captain and he gives me that dick-on-the-face look, says you have any actual evidence? I say not yet. A few days later, I’m re-transferred.”

  “What was your captain’s name?”

  “Alomar. Gregory Alomar, real bastard. Probably also dead, he smoked like a stack, ate crap, had a gut out to there. Even if he is alive, it’s not like he’s going to admit being in someone’s pocket. But sure, go for it, I’d be interested in what he has to say.”

  Galoway finished the muffin. “Yum. I may get some takeout, bring it back home for my after-golf snack tomorrow. You play?”

  Milo shook his head. “Not enough patience.”

  “Exactly why you should try it, Milo. Good training for the soul. You, Doc?”

  “Nope.”

  “I thought docs spent their Wednesdays on the course.” To Milo. “So did I help?”

  “Big-time,” said Milo.

  “Really?” said Galoway. “That’s terrific. Maybe I could’ve been a homicide D.” He laughed. “God forbid.”

  “Do you have time to show us the spot where she died, Du?”

  “Now?”

  “If possible.”

  “Hmm. Sure why not, might as well spend some time in Los Angle-eeze. As Mayor Yorty used to say. Remember him? Sam the Man? My dad loved him—I grew up in Highland Park, this whole thing is bringing back La-La memories. I’ll go home to Ojai thanking my lucky stars.”

  * * *

  —

  We waited as Galoway bought a bagful of herbaceous goods at the counter. He swung it as we walked him half a block to his car.

  The “old Jag” was a red F-type convertible new enough to sport a paper plate.

  Milo said, “Pretty wheels.”

  “A boy needs a hobby. Got room to take one of you.”

  “How about meeting us in front of the station, we’ll get our drive and follow you.”

  “Your choice,” said Galoway. “We’ve got three routes. Closest east-west-wise is Beverly Glen but it lets you off north of Mulholland so I don’t see the point. Closest to the site is Laurel but that means hassling city traffic to get there. So I say let’s split the difference and take Coldwater. That work for you?”

  “Sounds good, Du.”

  “Excellent.” Galoway clapped Milo’s back. “This is kind of fun for an old failure like me. Hope you’ve got something with an engine. You don’t want to be eating my dust.”

  * * *

  —

  He tailed us to the station, idled noisily at the curb until we exited the staff lot in Milo’s Impala.

  “That’s it, huh? The big V-8, should be fine.” Swinging a U-turn, he sped north to Santa Monica Boulevard and turned right.

  Milo said, “Ebullient fellow,” and pressed down on the throttle.

  I said, “Maybe it’s golf.”

  * * *

  —

  Galoway’s route was Santa Monica Boulevard east through Beverly Hills, then a left on Walden Drive where he crossed Sunset. A right onto Lexington took us into the shade of fifty-foot Canary Island pines that should never have succeeded in L.A. and the massive estates they sentried. Galoway’s approach to motoring emphasized advanced tailgating techniques and speed limits as suggestions. Amber lights meant acceleration. Same for the onset of red lights.

  Milo bore down hard as the red Jaguar headed north on Beverly Drive, soon transformed to Coldwater Canyon. Just past a small park to the left, a sightseeing bus blocked the street, a driver on speaker lying to wide-eyed tourists about celebrity addresses.

  Galoway passed on the left, narrowly missing a head-on with a southbound gardener’s truck.

  Milo braked hard and cursed, nudged forward, finally managed his own loop around the bus. The Jaguar was a faint red speck in the distance, rocketing through the high-end suburbia that was Beverly Hills POB.

  A five-car queue at the light south of the Mulholland East junction allowed us to catch up.

  Milo wiped sweat from his face. “Amazing he made it to his sixties.”

  Green-lit, the four cars in front of Galoway continued on Coldwater toward Studio City as he swung a radical right onto Mulholland Drive.

  The terrain changed immediately, luxury housing ceding to stretches of dry brush and drought-puckered hillside specked by the occasional stilt-propped box. I came to L.A. as a sixteen-year-old college freshman, wondered how hill-houses on chopsticks stayed up. Then storms and quakes came and they didn’t. In SoCal, optimism’s the fossil fuel.

  As we traveled east, straightaways shriveled and the road became a succession of S-curves that ribboned through wilderness. Guardrails girded some sections of pavement but plenty of stretches were unprotected.

  Where the road wasn’t bordered by trees and scrub and rocks, it offered eye-blink views of steep gorges slaloming down to the city-sized table that had become the San Fernando Valley. At its highest, the sky was unruffled blue. Below that, a mucoid gray cloud hovered.

  Galoway picked up speed, brake-tapping at the apex of hairpins then immediately speeding up on the exit swoop.

  I said, “Looks like he took high-performance driving.”

  “Or he’s just nuts.”

  Two more miles of white-knuckle road-churning took us to the Laurel Canyon junction where another red light forced the Jag to snort and wait. When released, the red car bulleted up a sharp rise east of Laurel and raced past a small enclave of ranch houses that looked as if they’d been dropped in place simultaneously. Then, more uninhabited land, broken only by Fire Hazard warning signs and reduced speed limits.

  About a mile in, Galoway swung an abrupt left across the road and screeched to a stop inches from a particularly battered section of guardrail. By the time we pulled up next to him, he was out of the Jaguar beaming, sunglasses hanging from a neck chain.

  “Man, that was the most fun I’ve had since I took the Skip Barber course at Laguna Seca. You get to strip brakes, end up doing two hours around the track in a Formula Four. I was the oldest guy there but they loved me.”

  Milo said, “This is the place?”

  His failure to chitchat demolished Galoway’s smile. He put his shades on. Mirrored lenses. The mouth below them was a hyphen. “It’s an estimate. And logical. Take a look around, my friend. You see any addresses? Only thing I had to go on was Seeger’s notes. He put down something like one point three miles past Laurel. Am I remembering it wrong after twenty years? Can’t promise no, so give or take.”

  He turned his back, folded his arms across his chest.

  Milo walked to the edge of the cliff and stood next to him. “Thanks for taking the time, Du.”

  “Sure,” said Galoway, grudgingly. “What the diff, anyway? It’s not like after all this time you’re going to get DNA in the brush down there. You saw what it was like coming up here. No people. Anywhere near here would be easy to pull off a car-dump at night.”

  He ticked a finger. “No streetlights, it’s late enough, only thing you’re going to encounter are owls and deer and cah-yotes.”

  Milo got on one knee and craned downward.
r />   Galoway said, “Now you’re going to ask me where she landed and I’m going to tell you not a clue.” He kicked the guardrail. “Was this here back then? No idea. But there’s plenty of places still not railed. Wherever it went down, it’s got to be a dead drop for, what, at least five hundred feet? Light it up, push it over, business taken care of.”

  He rubbed his palms together.

  I said, “Who discovered the car?”

  Galoway snorted. “You’d think someone would write that down in the book but you’d be wrong.”

  Milo said, “Any idea where the book got filed?”

  Galoway swiveled and faced him. “I wish. It was a loser when I got it and I went nowhere fast. Which was the plan, Alomar didn’t want me there. When I quit I handed all my paperwork over to some clerk.”

  He turned toward the view. “All that crud over the Valley.” Down came the shades. The eyes behind them were weary. “Don’t mean to be touchy, I guess this brings back bad memories. Working my ass off and accomplishing nothing—you want to see Des Barres’s place?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Nah,” said Galoway. “We’re here already.”

  * * *

  —

  He led us another 1.9 miles past a spot where another group of houses appeared. Not the homogeneous development just past Laurel. The more typical L.A. random toss of bungalows and mansions and everything in between.

  Again, without warning, the Jag made a sudden stop in front of a property on the south side of Mulholland.

  Du Galoway got out, expressionless, and pointed to arched iron gates. Returning to the Jag, he flashed a brief smile. “Anything else?”

  Milo said, “Can’t think of anything.”

  “Good luck, then.” Hooking an oblivious U-ey, Galoway rumbled back toward Laurel.

  Milo put on the hand brake and said, “Making friends and losing them.”

  * * *

  —

  The property Galoway had indicated was on the corner of Mulholland and Marilyn Drive, hedged by twelve feet of dense, emerald-green ficus. The hedge ran along both streets, far enough on either arm to suggest a huge spread.

  We walked to the gates. Two feet lower than the hedge, beefy iron pickets fashioned decades ago and updated by mint-green paint and gilded spearhead finials. A gently curving cobbled road climbed past an alternating array of Mexican fan palms, sagos, and Italian cypresses. At the top of the drive, the barest hint of white wall and red-tiled roof.

  Milo said, “This was never anything but serious real estate. Time to learn more about Mr. Des Barres.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  Sunset Boulevard was relatively fluid, so Milo took Laurel Canyon down to the Strip.

  We cruised past dormant nightclubs, hair and nail salons, strip joints, skin palaces, sex shops, and cannabis cafés. Everything topped by gigantic recording- and movie-biz billboards. Some of the boards were electronic and kinetic. More movement up there than among loitering addicts, shuffling homeless, misdirected foreign tourists, and the occasional hooker hungry enough to venture out during daylight.

  At San Vicente, Milo said, “On paper, Galoway sounded like the least likely source of info. Go know. What do you think of his conspiracy theory?”

  “He was set up to fail? Maybe.”

  “It happens. But then why open it up at all?”

  I said, “We could be talking departmental politics. A token attempt to appease someone, nothing happens, the nets get hauled.”

  “Who would the brass want to appease? Don’t see an optometrist from up north having much pull down here.”

  “A guy like Des Barres might. So contrary to Galoway’s suspicions, he could be a would-be hero not a suspect. Dorothy was his love interest, he wanted to know what had happened to her and why.”

  “Galoway got the case fourteen years after it happened, Alex. Long time to get all sentimental.”

  I thought about that. “Des Barres died soon after Galoway took over, from some sort of disease. Terminal illness can change your perspective.”

  “I guess. Either way, time to learn more about him. Another long-dead person.”

  “Want me to call Maxine and see if he has an interesting past she knows about?”

  Maxine Driver was a history prof at the U., the daughter of Korean immigrants who’d disappointed her parents by rejecting med school to become an expert on L.A. gangsters. In the past, she’d traded information for early access to closed-case files. Her work product: academic papers, book chapters, presentations at conferences.

  Milo said, “Des Barres was a tycoon who hung with sketchy types?”

  “A tycoon who shacked up with a much younger woman and gave her a Caddy.”

  “Good point—sure, ask her. Meanwhile, I’ll buy a dust mask and see if I can find the book.”

  “Galoway said it didn’t amount to much.”

  “Anything’s better than nada.”

  He shifted forward in the driver’s seat, jaw jutting, eyes narrow.

  Work-mode.

  Hooked.

  * * *

  —

  No answer at Maxine’s campus office. I was leaving a message on her cell when she broke in.

  “Just saw it was you. What’s up, Alex?”

  “Looking for anything you have on a guy named Anton Des Barres.” I went through the same spelling recitation Galoway had given.

  She said, “French guy or a guy with a French name?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell, Alex. He a small-timer?”

  “Not a hood,” I said. “A rich guy who owned a company that made surgical equipment. But there are hints of playboy so I thought he might’ve hung with some of your people.”

  “My people.” She laughed. “Now you sound like my dad. You could be right, swinging types have always been drawn to the demimonde. Surgical equipment as in scalpels?”

  “I believe so.”

  “This some sort of Ripper deal?”

  “A shooting thirty-six years ago.” I gave her the basics on Dorothy Swoboda.

  “Des Barres was her boyfriend and hence a suspect?”

  “It’s not at that level, yet.”

  “What got this going after all this time?”

  “She had one child, a three-year-old daughter. She’s pushing forty, retired, rich, and curious.”

  “Retired from what?”

  “Gym wear. Company called Beterkraft. She started it and sold it.”

  “That’s hers? Love their stuff. Use it all the time.”

  “Happy to pass that along, Maxine.”

  “Like she’d ever care about a starving academic struggling to avoid the assault of time. So in terms of Des Barres, we’re talking big money, hence big influence, hence trying to dig up dirt.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why not?” she said. “I’m getting a little bored with Bugsy and Mickey and their ilk, this could lead me in an interesting direction. Notorious unsolveds. Enriched, of course, by a whole bunch of scholarly theory. And we have worked well together, Alex.”

  “That we have.”

  “So tit for tat?” she said. “Same as before.”

  “No problem.”

  “You’re authorized by Milo to deal.”

  “Can’t imagine he’d object.”

  “I sure hope not. The last one, I got three peer-reviews plus coverage on the U.’s website. Insulated me from having to take over as department head when the rotation reached me.”

  “No interest in bossing people around?”

  “On the contrary, I love bossing people around, ask my husband. Problem is nowadays leadership means contending with Orwellian word-warp, chronically whining students, and terminally mewling faculty members. Utter
the wrong syllable, you face a tribunal. You haven’t encountered that at the old-school med school?”

  “I’m not important enough,” I said.

  “You’re a full prof, no?”

  “Still have the title but I don’t get paid and the last time I lectured was a year ago. Third-year pediatric residents. Too exhausted to protest anything.”

  “Ha. Maybe my parents were right. Wrong field. Let me think about that for a sec…nah. All right, I’ll see what I can find about Monsieur Des Barres. What was the name of his company?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “What do you know?”

  “He was in his sixties twenty years ago, had a big place on Mulholland.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Hmm…you do understand that his not being a gangster lowers the chance of him cropping up in my database. Unless he was a thinly veiled bad guy with a respectable front who appears in a footnote or a side reference. And those guys usually ran restaurants and clubs, they didn’t get into surgical steel.”

  “Understood. But like you said, maybe a hanger-on.”

  “Just so you don’t get your hopes up,” she said.

  “I will be appropriately pseudo-pessimistic.”

  “And Milo?”

  “He’ll be genuine pessimistic and I’ll give him emotional support.”

  “Ha. Okay, soon as I get back, I’ll start digging.”

  “Where are you?”

  “One guess.”

  “A convention.”

  “What tipped you off?” she said. “The despair in my voice?”

  “Where’s the idea-fest?”

  “New Haven, talk about rarefied hot air.”