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  “Any word where she was going?”

  “Not a hint. And I didn’t ask. This is no surrogate family. It’s a business. I don’t play mommy and I don’t want to be treated like one. Skin comes and skin goes—this city’s full of perfect bodies who think their buns are gonna make ’em rich. Some learn faster than others. High volume, high turnover. Still,” she admitted, “that redhead had something.”

  “Anyone else who’d know anything about her?”

  “Can’t think of anyone. She kept to herself.”

  “What about the guys she messengered with?”

  “Guy. Singular. She was only here a week. I don’t remember his name offhand, and I’m not gonna comb through the files to find it. You guys have just been handed a big freebie.” She pointed to the file. “You can even keep it, okay?”

  “Tax your memory,” pressed Milo. “It’s not like it’s a big deal—how many studs do you have in your stable?”

  “You’d be surprised,” she said, stroking the marble desktop. “Meeting adjourned.”

  “Listen,” he persisted, “you’ve been minimally helpful but it doesn’t make you Suzy Citizen. It’s hot outside, you’ve got great air conditioning in here, a fantastic view. Why sweat it at the station, waiting who knows how long for your lawyer to show up?” He held out his hands, palms up, and gave her a boyish grin. “Want to try again?”

  The muddy eyes narrowed and her face turned nastily porcine. She pressed a button and Leon materialized.

  “Who was the guy teamed up with that redhead, Swope?”

  “Doug,” he said without hesitation.

  “Last name,” she snapped.

  “Carmichael. Douglas Carmichael.”

  Turning to us: “Okay?”

  “The file.” Milo held out his hand.

  “Get it.” She ordered and the Jamaican fetched. “Let them look at it.”

  Milo took the folder from him and we walked to the door.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” she protested hoarsely. “That’s an active one. You can’t take it!”

  “I’ll make a Xerox, mail you back the original.”

  She started to argue then stopped midsentence. As we left I could hear her screaming at Leon.

  8

  ACCORDING TO his file, Doug Carmichael lived in the upscale part of Venice, near the Marina. Milo had me call him from a phone booth near Bundy while he used the radio to find out if anything had come in on the Swopes.

  A phone machine answered at Carmichael’s. Classical guitar music played in the background while a rich baritone said, “Hi, this is Doug,” and strove to convince me that receipt of my message was really important for his emotional well-being. I waited for the beep, told him it was really important to call Detective Sturgis at West L.A. Division, and left Milo’s number.

  I got back in the car and found Milo with his eyes closed, head tilted back against the seat.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “I got a machine.”

  “Figures. Zilch from this end, too. No Swopes spotted from here to San Ysidro.” He yawned and growled and started up the Matador. “Moving right along,” he mumbled, steering into the broth of westbound traffic, “I haven’t eaten since six. Early dinner or late lunch, take your pick.”

  We were a couple of miles from the ocean but a mild easterly wind was blowing and it wafted a hint of brine our way. “How about fish?”

  “Righto.”

  He drove to a tiny place on Ocean at the mouth of the pier that resembles a thirties diner. Some nights during the dinner hour it’s hard to find a parking space in the back lot among all the Rolls, Mercedes, and Jags. They don’t take reservations or plastic, but people who know seafood are willing to wait and don’t mind paying with real money. At lunch it’s significantly more relaxed and we were seated at a corner table immediately.

  Milo drank two lemonades, which they squeeze fresh and serve unsweetened, and I nursed a Grolsch.

  “Trying to cut down,” he explained, holding up his glass. “Rick’s been on my case. Preaching and showing me slides of what it does to the liver.”

  “That’s good. You were hitting it pretty hard for a while. Maybe we’ll have you around a little longer.”

  He grunted.

  The waiter, a cheerful Hispanic, informed us that there’d been a huge albacore run and a prime load had come up from San Diego that morning. We both ordered some and shortly were feasting on huge grilled steaks of the white tuna, baked potatoes, steamed zucchini, and chunks of sourdough bread.

  Milo devoured half his meal, took a long swallow of lemonade, and gazed out the window. A chrome sliver of ocean was visible above the rooftops of the ramshackle buildings that hid in the shadow of the sagging pier.

  “So how you been, pal?” he asked.

  “Not bad.”

  “What do you hear from Robin?”

  “I got a card a few days ago. The Ginza at night. They’re wining and dining her. Apparently it’s the first time they’ve entertained a woman that way.”

  “What is it they’re after, exactly?” he asked.

  “She designed a guitar for Rockin’ Billy Orleans and he played it onstage in Madison Square Garden. The music trades interviewed him after the concert and he raved about the instrument and the fantastic female luthier who’d created it. The U.S. rep for a Japanese conglomerate picked up on it and sent it to his bosses. They decided it was worth mass-producing as a Billy Orleans model and invited her over there to talk about it.”

  “Maybe she’ll end up supporting you, huh?”

  “Maybe,” I said glumly and signaled the waiter for another beer.

  “I see you’re real overjoyed about it.”

  “I’m happy for her,” I said quickly. “It’s the big break she’s been waiting for. It’s just that I miss her like crazy, Milo. It’s the longest we’ve been apart and I’ve lost my taste for solitude.”

  “That all of it?” he asked, picking up his fork.

  I looked up sharply. “What else?”

  “Well,” he said, between mouthfuls, “I may be totally off base here, Doctor, but it seems to me that this Japanese thing puts a new perspective on your—pardon the expression—relationship.”

  “How so?”

  “Like for the past couple of years, you’ve been the one with the bread, right? She makes a living, but the life the two of you’ve been leading—Maui, theater tickets, that incredible garden—who pays for it?”

  “I don’t get the point,” I said, annoyed.

  “The point is that despite your pretending it ain’t so, you guys have had a traditional setup. Now she’s got the chance to become a big shot and it could all change.”

  “I can handle it.”

  “Sure you can. Forget I brought it up.”

  “Consider it forgotten.” I looked down at my plate. All of a sudden my appetite was gone. I pushed the food away and fixed my gaze on a flock of gulls raiding the pier for bait scraps. “You insightful bastard,” I said. “Sometimes you’re spooky.”

  He reached across the table and patted my shoulder. “Hey, you’re not a very subtle guy. Everything registers on that lean and hungry face.”

  I rested my chin in my hands. “Things were going along so nice and simple. She kept the studio after she moved in, we prided ourselves on giving each other room to move. Lately we’d started talking marriage, babies. It was great, both of us moving at the same pace, mutual decisions. Now,” I shrugged, “who knows?” I took a long swallow of the Dutch brew. “I’ll tell you, Milo, they don’t cover it in the psych books, but there’s such a thing as the paternal urge and at thirty-five I’m feeling it.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve felt it, too.”

  My stare was involuntary.

  “Don’t look so surprised. Just because it’s never gonna happen doesn’t mean I don’t think about it.”

  “You never can tell. They’re getting pretty liberal.”

  He loosened his belt a notch and
buttered a piece of bread. “Not that liberal.” He laughed. “Besides, Rick and I are not equiped for motherhood or whatever you wanna call it. Can’t you just see it—me shopping at Toys “ O” Us and Dr. Fastidious changing diapers?”

  We shared a good laugh over that.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I didn’t mean to bring up a sore point, but it’s something you’re gonna have to deal with. I did. For most of my life I made my own way. My parents didn’t give me squat. I’ve been working at one dodge or another since eleven, Alex. Paper routes, tutoring, picking pears, construction, a little time out for the M.A., then Saigon and the force. You don’t get rich in Homicide, but a single guy can get by nicely. I was lonely as hell but my needs were met. After I met Rick and we started living together, it all changed. You remember my old Fiat—piece of shit that it was. I never drove anything but garbage and unmarkeds. Now we tool around in that Porsche like a pair of coke dealers. And the house—no way I could ever have had a place like that on my salary. He goes shopping at Carrols or Giorgio, picks me up a shirt or tie. I’m not a—kept man, but my lifestyle has changed. For the better, but that hasn’t made it easy to accept. Surgeons make more than cops, always have, always will, and I’ve finally accommodated myself to it. Makes you stop and think about what women go through, huh?”

  “Yup.” I wondered if Robin had been faced with the type of adjustment he’d described. Had there been a struggle that I’d been too insensitive to notice?

  “In the long run,” he said, “it’s better if both parties feel like adults, don’t you think?”

  “What I think, Milo, is that you’re an amazing guy.”

  He hid his embarrassment behind the menu. “If I remember correctly the ice cream is good, right?”

  “Right.”

  Over dessert he had me tell him more about Woody Swope and childhood cancer. He was shocked, like most people, that it was the second most common cause of death in children; only accidents kill more.

  The mechanics of the Laminar Airflow rooms particularly fascinated him and he asked me detailed, analytical questions until my fund of answers was exhausted.

  “Months in that plastic box,” he said, troubled. “And they don’t freak out?”

  “Not if it’s handled right. You’ve got to orient the child to time and space, encourage the family to spend as much time there as possible. You sterilize favorite toys and clothes and bring them in, provide lots of stimulation. The key is to minimize the difference between home and hospital—there’s always going to be some, but you can buffer it.”

  “Interesting. You know what I’m flashing on, don’t you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “AIDS. Same principle, right? Lowered resistance to infection.”

  “Similar but not identical,” I said. “The laminar airflow filters out bacteria and fungi in order to protect the kids during treatment. But the loss of immunity is temporary—after chemotherapy’s over, their systems rebound. AIDS is permanent and AIDS victims have other problems—Kaposi’s Sarcoma, viral infections. The modules might protect them for a while, but not indefinitely.”

  “Yeah, but you gotta admit, it’s a hell of an image: Santa Monica Boulevard lined with thousands of plastic cubes, each one with some poor guy wasting away inside. You could charge admission, raise enough money to find a cure.”

  He let out a bitter laugh.

  “The wages of sin,” he shook his head. “Enough to make you a Puritan. I hear the horror stories and thank God I’m monogamous. Rick’s been fielding a lot of shit from both sides. Last week a patient came to the E.R. with a mangled arm—bar fight—and glommed onto the fact that Rick was gay. Probably a paranoid guess, because Rick doesn’t exactly swish, but he didn’t deny it when this turkey demanded to know if they were giving him a faggot doctor. The guy refused to let Rick touch him, screamed about AIDS—no matter that he’s bleeding all over the place. So Rick walked away. But the rest of the docs were up to their elbows in shit—Saturday night and they were wheeling ’em in one after the other. It threw the whole system out of whack. Everyone ended up getting pissed at Rick. He was a goddamn leper for the rest of the shift.”

  “Poor guy.”

  “Poor guy is right. The man was top of his class, chief resident at Stanford, and he’s taking this kind of crap? He came home in a dark mood. The hell of it is, night before, he was telling me that working with gay patients—especially the ones who came in bleeding—was making him antsy. I did heavy-duty therapy that night, Alex.”

  He spooned the last bit of ice cream into his mouth.

  “Heavy-duty,” he repeated and brushed the hair out of his eyes. “But hey, that’s what love’s all about, right?”

  9

  MILO BEGGED off the case during the drive back to the Sea Breeze Motel.

  “I can’t take it any further,” he said apologetically. “All we’ve got at this point is a missing persons squeal, and that’s stretching it.”

  “I know. Thanks for coming down.”

  “No big deal. It was a break from routine. Just so happens I’ve got a particularly cruddy routine right now. Gang shooting—two cholos blown away—liquor store clerk ripped with a broken bottle, and a real sweetheart—a rapist who shits on his victims’ abdomens when he’s through with them. We know he’s attacked at least seven women. The last one ended up more than defiled.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Jesus won’t forgive this creep.” He frowned and turned on Sawtelle toward Pico. “Each year I tell myself I’ve witnessed the depths of depravity and each year the scumbags out there prove me wrong. Maybe I should have taken the exam.”

  Fifteen months ago he and I had exposed a prominent orphanage as a brothel catering to pedophiles, solving a handful of murders in the process. He’d been a hero and had been invited to take the lieutenant’s exam. There was no doubt he’d have passed, because he’s brilliant, and the brass had let him know the city was ready for a gay loot as long as he didn’t flaunt it. He’d debated it internally for a long time before turning it down.

  “No way, Milo. You would have been miserable. Think back to what you told me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I didn’t give up Walt Whitman to push paper.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  Prior to his hitch in Vietnam, Milo had been enrolled in the graduate program in American Lit at Indiana U., contemplating life as a teacher, hoping the academic world would be a setting where his sexual preferences would be tolerated. He’d gotten as far as an M.A. and then the war had turned him into a policeman.

  “Just imagine,” I reminded him, “endless meetings with desk jockeys, considering the political implications of taking a leak, no contact with the streets.”

  He held up a hand and feigned suffering.

  “Enough, I’m gonna puke.”

  “Just a little aversive therapy.”

  He pulled the Matador into the motel lot. The sky had darkened in anticipation of twilight and the Sea Breeze benefited from it aesthetically. Take away the sunlight and the place looked almost habitable.

  The office was brightly lit and the Iranian clerk was visible behind the counter, reading. My Seville was the lone occupant of the lot. The half-empty pool looked like a crater.

  Milo stopped the car and let the engine idle.

  “You understand about my stepping out of this?”

  “Of course. No homicide, no homicide detective.”

  “They’ll probably be back for the car. I had it impounded so they’ll have to check in to get it back. They do, I’ll call you and give you a chance to talk to them. Even if they don’t show, we’ll probably find out they’re back home, no harm done.”

  He realized what he’d said and grimaced.

  “Shit. Where’s my head? The kid.”

  “He could be all right. Maybe they’ve taken him to another hospital.” I wanted to sound hopeful but memories—the pain on Woody’s face, the bloodstain on th
e motel carpet—eroded my faith in a happy ending.

  “If they don’t treat him that’s it, right?”

  I nodded.

  He stared out the windshield. “That’s one kind of murder I’ve never dealt with.”

  Raoul had said the same thing in different words. I told him so.