The Murder Book

Marlene Baldassar as the source didn't sit right with me, and I thought about the trail we might've left.

My solo activities had consisted of the call to Larry Daschoff, dinner with Allison Gwynn, computer work at the Research Library. None of that was likely to attract attention.

Together, Milo and I had interviewed Marge Schwinn and Baldassar and Georgie Nemerov. I supposed either woman could've reported the conversation, but neither had been hostile, and I couldn't see why they'd have bothered.

Nemerov, on the other hand, had grown antsy when talking about his father's murder and Willie Burns's skip. Nemerov's bail bond business gave him close ties to the department. If John G. Broussard had been part of a fix, the department would care.

A third possibility was Milo's solo work on Janie Ingalls had attracted attention. As far as I knew that had been limited to phone work and unearthing old files. But he'd worked at the West L.A. station, sneaked around Parker Center.

Thinking he'd been discreet but he could've invited scrutiny- from clerks, other cops, anyone in a position to witness him nosing. John G. Broussard had sent a clear directive to tighten up discipline among the rank and file. The new chief had also waged war on the blue code of silence- talk about irony. Maybe cops informing on cops was the new LAPD zeitgeist.

The more I thought about that, the more it made sense: Milo was a pro, but he'd taken too much for granted.

Procedurally, he'd been outed.

That made me think about his continuing vulnerability. Twenty years in the department with one of the highest solve rates in Homicide, but that wasn't enough, would never be enough.

For two decades he'd functioned as a gay man in a paramilitary organization that would never be free of gut- level bias and still hadn't acknowledged the existence of homosexual cops. I knew- everyone knew- that scores of gay officers patrolled the streets, but not a single one had gone public. Neither had Milo, in a strict sense, but after those first brutal years of self-torment he had stopped hiding.

Department statisticians were happy to file his solves in the Assets column but the brass continued to retard his progress and made periodic attempts to get rid of him. Milo had collected secrets of his own along the way, finally managed to leverage his way to relative job security and seniority. He'd turned down the offer to take the lieutenant's exam twice because he knew the department's real intention was to shunt him to some desk job where they could pretend he didn't exist, while boring him to the point of voluntary retirement. Instead, he'd stayed on the detective track, had taken it as far as it would go: to Detective-III.

Maybe Pierce Schwinn had followed all that, come to respect Milo for holding his own. Offered Milo a perverse gift.

Normally, nothing heated Milo's blood like a good cold case. But this was a rethaw from his own past, and perhaps he'd gotten careless and turned himself into prey.

I thought of how Paris Bartlett had targeted Milo, ignored me.

Meaning I had room to move.

The timing was perfect, the logic exquisite: What were friends for?

CHAPTER 21

Alone, at his crappy little piss-colored desk, the washer churning the clothes he'd just loaded for background noise, Milo felt better.

Free of Alex, he felt better.

Because Alex's mind could be a scary thing- cerebral flypaper; stuff flew in but never left. His friend was capable of sitting quietly for long stretches when you'd think he was listening- actively listening the way they'd taught him in shrink school- then he'd let loose a burst of associations and hypotheses and apparently unrelated trivialities that turned out too often to be right-on.

Houses of cards that, more often than not, withstood the wind. Milo on the receiving end of the nonstop volleys, felt like a wobbly sparring partner.

Not that Alex pushed. He just kept supposing. Suggesting. Another shrink tactic. Try ignoring any of it.

Milo had never met anyone smarter or more decent than Alex, but hanging with the guy could be draining. How many nights' sleep had he lost because one of his friend's suggestions had hooked a barb in his brain?

But for all his bloodhound instincts, Alex was a civilian and out of his element. And he'd failed to mature in one regard: had never developed a proper sense of threat.

In the beginning, Milo had attributed it to the carelessness of an overenthusiastic amateur. It hadn't taken long to learn the truth: Alex got off on danger.

Robin understood that, and it scared her. Over the years she'd confided her fears to Milo- more nuance than complaint. And when the three of them were together and Alex and Milo lapsed into the wrong type of conversation and her face changed, Milo caught it quickly and changed the subject. Strangely enough, Alex, for all his perceptiveness, sometimes missed it.

Alex had to realize how Robin felt, yet he made no effort to change. And Robin put up with it. Love is blind and deaf and dumb… maybe she'd simply made a commitment and was smart enough to know it was damn near impossible to change anyone.

But now, she'd gone on that tour. And taken the dog. For some reason that felt wrong- the damn pooch. Alex was claiming to be okay, but that first day Milo'd dropped in, he'd looked really bad, and even now, he was different… distracted.

Something was off.

Or maybe not.

He'd poked a bit at Alex's resistance. Playing shrink to the shrink and why the hell shouldn't he? How could you have a real friendship when the therapy went only one way? But no luck. Alex talked the talk- openness, communication blah blah blah, but in his own articulate, empathetic, ever-so-disgustingly civilized way, the guy was pain-in-the-ass, dead-end immovable.

Now that he thought about it, had Alex ever been deterred? Milo couldn't remember a single instance.

Alex did exactly what Alex wanted to do.

And Robin… Milo'd offered his smoothest reassurances. And he supposed he'd done a decent job of keeping Alex out of harm's way. But there were limits.

Everyone stood alone.

He got up, poured himself a vodka and pink-grapefruit juice, rationalizing that the vitamin C counteracted the oxidation, but wondering how closely his liver resembled that medical journal photo Rick had shown him last month.

Erosion of hepatic tissue and replacement with fatty globules due to advanced cirrhosis.

Rick never pushed either, but Milo knew he wasn't happy with the fresh bottle of Stoli in the freezer.

Switch channels: back to Alex.

Other people's problems were so much more engaging.

He walked half a mile to a Budget Rent-a-Car on La Cienega and got himself a fresh blue Taurus. Driving east on Santa Monica, he crossed into Beverly Hills, then West Hollywood. Not much traffic past Doheny Drive, but at the West Hollywood border the boulevard had been narrowed to one lane in either direction and the few cars in sight were crawling.

West Hollywood, The City That Never Stopped Decorating, had been digging up the streets for years, plunging businesses into bankruptcy and accomplishing little Milo could see other than a yawning stretch of dirt piles and ditches. Last year, the ribbon had been cut on a spanking new West Hollywood fire station. One of those