Survival Of The Fittest

“Wes Baker training rookies again. I didn't know, but we don't have much contact with the boys in blue… Listen, Alex, this isn't the best time- or place- to have this discussion. Lemme get over to Newton, check out the year-old abduction file, and if nothing else comes up, I can drop by this evening. If you'll be home.”

“No plans not to be,” I said, realizing I'd been home for nearly an hour and hadn't gone back to see Robin. “If I go out, I'll call you.”

“Fine. I'm heading over to the East Side now. Sayonara.”

Robin was taking off her goggles when I walked in, and she reached for the vacuum cleaner. At the sight of the hose, Spike began barking furiously. He despises the industrial age. Canine Luddite. When he saw me he stopped, cocked his head, started to trot forward, then changed his mind and returned to attacking the vacuum canister.

Robin laughed and said, “Stop.” She tossed a Milk-Bone in a corner and Spike went after it.

We kissed.

“How was your day?” she said.

“Unproductive. Yours?”

“Quite productive, actually.” She tossed her curls and smiled. “Don't hate me.”

“Because you're beautiful?”

“That, too.” She touched my cheek. “What went wrong, Alex?”

“Nothing. Just lots of seek and very little find.”

“That little girl's murder?”

“That and another case. A suicide that will probably never be explained.”

She put her arm through mine and we left the studio, Spike at our heels, breathing excitedly, Milk-Bone crumbs dotting his pendulous flews.

“I don't envy you,” she said.

“Don't envy what?”

“Hunting for explanations.”

She showered and changed into a charcoal-gray pantsuit and diamond stud earrings and said how about meat, that Argentinian place we'd tried a few months ago.

“Baked garlic appetizers?” I said. “Not very social.”

“It is if we both indulge.”

“Sure, I'll eat a whole bowl. Afterward we can tango or lambada, whatever, and fume up each other's faces.”

Suddenly she swooned into my arms. “Ah, Alessandro!”

She set Spike up with water and snacks while I changed and left messages at Milo's West L.A. desk, his home in West Hollywood, and the number he used for his after-hours private-eye business, Blue Investigations.

He'd begun the moonlight gig several years ago after the department took him off duty for punching out a superior who'd endangered his life and banished him to the Parker Center data-processing office in hopes of nudging him off the force. He'd managed to regain his detective position and it had been a while since he'd solicited private work, but he'd held on to the exchange.

Symbol of freedom, I supposed. Or insecurity. For all the talk of diversity and open recruitment, the role of a gay detective was far from comfortable.

Had that been Nolan's problem?

Never married. But he was only twenty-seven.

Relationships with women in the past, but, as far as Helena knew, nothing recent.

As far as Helena knew. Which wasn't very far at all.

I thought of Nolan's apartment. Mattress on the floor, no food in the fridge, the dingy furniture. Even accounting for the trashing, not exactly a swinging bachelor lair.

A loner. Flirting with all sorts of philosophies, shifting from one political extreme to the other.

Had self-denial been the latest?

Or had he divested himself of material pleasures because he just didn't care anymore?

Or wanted to punish himself.

Lehmann had used the word sin but when I'd asked him about guilt he'd said he wasn't a priest.

Somewhere along the line, had he judged Nolan?

Had Nolan judged himself? Passed sentence and carried out the execution?

For what?

I pictured the young cop in Go-Ji's, surrounded by the night denizens he'd been assigned to rein in.

Drawing out his service gun, putting it in his mouth.

Symbolic, as so many suicides are?

Final fellatio?

Stripping himself bare in front of other sinners?

Policemen committed suicide more frequently than civilians, but few did it publicly.

“Ready?” Robin called from the door.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Let's tango.”

16

The Observer

The psychologist.

His presence complicated matters: attend to him or Sturgis?

Sturgis was the professional, but so far all the big policeman had done was stay in his office all day.

On the phone, probably.

Predictable.

The psychologist was a bit more adventurous. He'd gone on two outings.

Perhaps he could be used to advantage.

The first trip had been to that duplex on Sycamore to meet the pleasant-looking but tense-faced blond woman.

Her tension made him think: patient? Some kind of on-the-street therapy?

Of course, there was another possibility: a girlfriend; the guy was stepping out on the woman with the auburn hair who lived with him. A beauty, some kind of sculptress. He'd seen her carrying blocks of wood from her truck to the rear of the house.

He watched the psychologist and the unhappy woman talk, then go inside the duplex. Liaison with one while the other one chipped away?

The blond woman was trim and nice-looking but nothing like the sculptress. And the two times he'd seen the sculptress with the psychologist the affection had seemed genuine. Touching each other a lot, that eagerness.

But logic had little to do with human behavior.

Terrible things had taught him about the self-destructive element that ran through the human soul like a polluted stream.

They stayed inside for twenty minutes, then went out to the garage. The psychologist didn't seem to be relating to her in a romantic way, but maybe they were having a rough time.

No, there was no hostility. She was talking and he was listening as if he cared.