He asked me to meet him for lunch at Cafe Moghul, an Indian restaurant on Santa Monica, a few blocks from the West L.A. station. The place turned out to be a storefront blocked by gilt-flecked, madras curtains. An unmarked Ford LTD was parked near the entrance in a Loading Only space, and cheap plastic sunglasses that I recognized as Milo ’s sat atop the dashboard.
The place was magenta-walled and hung with machined tapestries of huge-eyed, nutmeg-skinned people and spire-topped temples. An ultrasoprano voice sang plaintively. The air was a mix of curry and anise.
A sixtyish woman in a sari greeted me. “He’s over there.” Pointing to a table along the rear wall. No need for guidance; Milo was the only customer.
In front of him was a quart-sized glass of what looked to be iced tea and a plate of fried things in various geometric shapes. His mouth was full, and he waved and continued masticating. When I reached the table, he half rose, wiped grease from his chin, washed down the baseball-sized bolus that orangutaned his cheeks, and pumped my hand.
“The mixed appetizers combo,” he said. “Have some. I ordered entrees for both of us- the chicken tali, comes with rice, lentils, side vegetable, the works. The vegetable’s okra. Which is usually about as appealing as snot on toast, but they do it good. Little mango chutney on the side, too.”
“Hi,” I said.
The shy woman brought a glass, poured me tea, and departed.
“Iced and spiced, lots of cloves,” he said, “I took liberty there, too.”
“How nice to be nurtured.”
“How would I know?” He reached for a triangular pastry, muttered, “Samosa,” and gazed at me from under heavily lidded, bright green eyes. Since Robin had moved out, I’d been trying to convince him I was okay. He claimed to believe me, but his body language said he was reserving judgment.
“No nurturance for the poor detective?” I said.
“Don’t want it. Too tough.” He winked.
“How’re you doing?” I said, mostly to prevent him from focusing on my mood.
“The world’s falling apart but I’m fine.”
“Freelancing’s still fun?”
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
“What would you call it?”
“Bureaucratically sanctioned isolation. I’m not allowed to have fun.” He bared his teeth in what I knew was a smile; someone else might have taken it for hostility. I watched him toss another appetizer down his gullet and drink more tea.
Last year, he’d run afoul of the police chief before the chief retired, managed to play some cards, and ended up with a lieutenant’s title and salary but not the desk job that came with promotion.
Effectively banished from the robbery-homicide room, he was given his own windowless office down the hall- a converted interrogation space, figurative miles from the other detectives. His official title was “clearance officer” for unsolved homicide cases. Basically, that meant deciding which cold files to pursue and which to ignore. The good news was relative independence. The bad news was no built-in backup or departmental support.
Now he was working a fresh case. I figured there was a back story, and he’d tell me when he was ready.
He looked in good trim, and the clarity in his eyes suggested he’d stuck to his resolution to cut down on the booze. He’d also resolved to start walking for exercise, but the last few times I’d seen him, he’d griped about his instep.
Today, he had on a coarse, brown, herringbone sport coat way too heavy for a California spring, a once-white wash-and-wear shirt and a green polyblend tie embroidered with blue dragons. His black hair was freshly cut in the usual style: long and shaggy on top, cropped tight at the temples. Sideburns, now snow-white, reached the bottoms of his fleshy ears. He called them his skunk stripes. The restaurant’s lighting was kind to his complexion, rendering some of the acne pits as craggy contours.
He said, “The artist’s name was Juliet Kipper, known as Julie. Thirty-two, divorced, a painter in oils. As they say.”
“Who says?”
“Arty types. That’s the way they talk. A painter in oils, a sculptor in bronze, an etcher in drypoint. Paintings are ‘pictures’ or ‘images,’ one ‘makes’ art, blah blah blah. Anyway, Julie Kipper: apparently she was gifted, won a bunch of awards in college, went on for an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design and attracted New York gallery attention soon after graduation. She sold a few canvases, seemed to be moving forward, then things tightened up, and she ran into financial problems. She moved out here seven years ago, did commercial illustration for ad agencies to earn a living. A year ago, she got serious again about fine art, found herself gallery representation, took part in a couple of group shows, did okay. Last Saturday was her first solo show since she left New York.”
“Which gallery?”
“Place called Light and Space. It’s a cooperative run by a bunch of artists who use it mostly to showcase their own stuff. But they also support what they call distinctive talent, and Julie Kipper was deemed as such by their review committee. I get the feeling these people don’t earn a living by their art. Most of them have day jobs. Julie had to pay for her own party- cheese and crackers and cheap wine, a jazz trio. About fifty people drifted in and out during the evening and six of the fifteen paintings were red-dotted- that means ‘sold’ in art lingo. They actually put little red dots on the title tag.”
“Any of the co-op members twang your antenna?”
“They come across as a peace-loving bunch, nothing but good words about Julie, but who knows?”
“Someone ambushed her in the ladies’ room of the gallery. After hours. Close confines- just a sink and a toilet and a mirror. There was a bump on the back of her head- coroner says not serious enough to knock her out, but the skin was broken and traces of her blood were found on the rim of the sink. Coroner’s guess is she was thrashing and her head knocked against it.”
“Anyone else’s blood?”
“I should be so lucky.”
“A struggle,” I said. “How big a woman was she?”
“Small,” he said. “Five-four, hundred and ten.”
“Any skin under her fingernails?”
“Not a molecule, but we did find some talcum powder. As in the stuff they use inside rubber gloves.”
“If that’s what it means,” I said, “it implies careful preparation. How long after hours did it happen?”
“The show closed at ten, and Julie stayed behind to clean up. One of the co-op artists helped her, a woman named CoCo Barnes. Who I don’t see as a suspect because A, she’s in her seventies and B, she’s the size of a garden troll. Just after eleven, Barnes went back to check and found Julie.”
“Is she hard of hearing, as well?” I said. “All that thrashing around?”
“No mystery there, Alex. The gallery’s one big front room, but the bathrooms are out back, separated by a solid-core door that leads to a small vestibule and a storage area that feeds to a rear alley door. Plus the bathroom door’s also solid. Top of that, there was music playing. Not the jazz combo, they’d already packed out. But Julie had brought a stereo system and backup tapes for when the band took breaks. She switched it on while they straightened. Barnes not hearing a thing makes total sense.”
The smiling woman brought shallow, round stainless-steel trays crowded with small saucerlike dishes. Basmati rice, lentils, green salad, okra, nan bread, tandoori chicken. A ramekin of mango chutney.
“Nice variety, huh?” said Milo, picking up a chicken wing.
“You’re assuming the killer got in through the alley. Was the rear door forced?”
“Nope.”
“How soon after ten did Julie go back to the bathroom?”
“ CoCo can’t recall. She remembers realizing Julie’d been gone for a while just before she checked. But the two of them had been busy cleaning. Finally, she had to go herself, made her way back there and knocked on the bathroom door and when Julie didn’t answer, she opened it.”
“Self-locking bathroom?”
He thought. “Yeah, one of those push-button dealies.”
