The Murder Book

'Turn it off,' said Schwinn.

Milo twisted the key and listened to street sounds. Distant traffic from Santa Monica, a few bird trills, someone unseen playing a power mower. The street was poorly kept, litter sludging the gutters. He said, 'Besides being a juicehead, how's the father marginal?'

'One of those walking-around guys,' said Schwinn. 'Name of Bowie Ingalls, does a little of this, little of that. Rumor has it he ran slips for a nigger bookie downtown- how's that for a white man's career? A few years ago, he was working as a messenger at Paramount Studios, telling people he was in the movie biz. He plays the horses, has a chicken-shit sheet, mostly drunk and disorderly, unpaid traffic tickets. Two years ago he got pulled in for receiving stolen property but never got charged. Small-time, all around.'

Details. Schwinn had found the time to pull Bowie Ingalls's record.

'Guy like that, and he's raising a kid,' said Milo.

'Yeah, it's a cruel world, isn't it? Janie's mother was a stripper and a hype, ran off with some hippie musician when the kid was a baby, overdosed in Frisco.'

'Sounds like you've learned a lot.'

'That what you think?' Schwinn's voice got flinty, and his eyes were hard, again. Figuring Milo was being sarcastic? Milo wasn't sure he hadn't meant to be sarcastic.

'I've got a lot to learn,' he said. 'Wasting my time with those MP clowns. Meanwhile you're getting all this-'

'Don't lick my ass, son,' said Schwinn, and suddenly the hatchet face was inches from Milo's and Milo could smell the Aqua Velva and the salsa verde. 'I didn't do dick, and I don't know dick. And you did way less than dick.'

'Hey, sorry if-'

'Fuck sorry, pal. You think this is some game? Like getting a master's degree, hand in your homework, and lick the teacher's ass and get your little ass-licking grade? You think that's what this is about?'

Talking way too fast for normal. What the hell had set him off?

Milo kept silent. Schwinn laughed bitterly, moved away, sat back so heavily against the seat that Milo's heavy body rocked. 'Let me tell you, boy-o, that other shit we've been shoveling since I let you ride with me- niggers and pachucos offing each other and waiting around for us to pick 'em up and if we don't, no one gives a shit- you think that's what the 187 universe is all about?'

Milo's face was hot from jawline to scalp. He kept his mouth shut.

'This…' said Schwinn, pulling a letter-sized, baby blue envelope from an inside suit pocket and removing a stack of color photos. Twenty-four-hour photo lab logo. The Instamatic shots he'd snapped at Beaudry.

He fanned them out on his skinny lap, faceup, like fortune-teller's cards. Close-ups of the dead girl's bloody, scalped head. Intimate portraits of the lifeless face, splayed legs…

'This,' he said, 'is why we get paid. The other stuff clerks could handle.'

The first seven murders had gotten Milo to think of himself as a clerk with a badge. He didn't dare agree. Agreement seemed to infuriate the sonofa-

'You thought you were gonna get some fun for yourself when you signed up to be a Big Bad Homicide Hero,' said Schwinn. 'Right?' Talking even faster, but managing to snap off each word. 'Or maybe you heard that bullshit about Homicide being for intellectuals and you've got that master's degree and you thought hey, that's me! So tell me, this look intellectual to you?' Tapping a photo. 'You think this can be figured out using brains?'

Shaking his head and looking as if he'd tasted something putrid, Schwinn hooked a fingernail under a corner of a photo and flicked.

Plink, plink.

Milo said, 'Look, I'm just-'

'Do you have any idea how often something like this actually gets closed? Those clowns in the Academy probably told you Homicide has a seventy, eighty percent solve rate, right? Well, that's horseshit. That's the stupid stuff- which should be a hundred percent it's so stupid, so big fucking deal, eighty percent. Shit.' He turned and spit out the window. Shifted back to Milo. 'With this'- plink plink- 'you're lucky to close four outta ten. Meaning most of the time you lose and the guy gets to do it again and he's saying 'Fuck you' to you just like he is to her.'

Schwinn freed his fingernail and began tapping the snapshot, blunt-edged index finger landing repetitively on the dead girl's crotch.

Milo realized he was holding his breath, had been doing it since Schwinn launched the tirade. His skin remained saturated with heat, and he wiped his face with one hand.

Schwinn smiled. 'I'm pissing you off. Or maybe I'm scaring you. You do that- with the hand- when you're pissed off or scared.'

'What's the point, Pierce?'

'The point is you said I learned a lot, and I didn't learn dick.'

'I was just-'

'Don't just anything,' said Schwinn. 'There's no room for just, there's no room for bullshit. I don't need the brass sending me some… fly-by-night master's deg-'

'Fuck that,' said Milo, letting out breath and rage. 'I've been-'

'You've been watching me, checking me out, from the minute you started-'

'I've been hoping to learn something.'

'For what?' said Schwinn. 'So you can add up the brownie points, then move on to an ass-warming job with the brass. Boy-o, I know what you're about-'

Milo felt himself using his bulk. Moving closer to Schwinn, looming over the skinny man, his index finger pointing like a gun. 'You don't know shi-'

Schwinn didn't yield. 'I know assholes with master's degrees don't stick with this.' Tap tap. 'I know I don't wanna waste my time working a whodunit with a suck-up intellectual who all he wants to do is climb the ladder. You got ambition, find yourself some suck-up job like Daryl Gates did, driving Chief Parker's car, one day that clown'll probably end up chief.' Taptaptap. 'This ain't career-building, muchacho. This is a whodunit. Get it? This likes to munch on your insides, then shit you out in pellets.'

'You're wrong,' said Milo. 'About me.'

'Am I?' Knowing smile.

Ah, thought Milo. Here it comes. The crux.

But Schwinn just sat there, grinning, tapping the photo.

Long silence. Then suddenly, as if someone had pulled the plug on him, the guy slumped heavily, looking defeated. 'You have no idea what you're up against.' He slipped the photos back in the envelope.

Milo thought: If you hate the job, retire, asshole. Grab your pension two years early and waste the rest of your life growing tomatoes in some loser trailer park.

Long, turgid moments passed.

Milo said, 'Big whodunit, and we're sitting here?'

'What's the alternative, Sherlock?' said Schwinn, hooking a thumb at the pink building. 'We go in there and talk to this asshole and maybe his daughter's the one who got turned into shit, or she's not. One way, we've crawled an inch on a hundred-mile hike, the other way, we haven't even started. Either way we got nothing to be proud of.'

CHAPTER 8