On the way out, I stopped at a pay phone and checked in with my service.
Last guy in L.A. with no cell phone. It had taken me years to buy a VCR, a good deal longer to get cable hookup. I'd stalled at getting a computer even after the libraries at the U. abandoned their card catalogs. Then my electric typewriter broke and I couldn't find replacement parts.
My father had been a machinist. I stayed away from machines. Lived with a woman who loved them. No sense introspecting.
The operator said, 'Only one, it just came in. A Detective Connor. That's not the one who usually calls you, is it?'
'No,' I said. 'What did she want?'
'No message, just to call.'
Petra had left her number at Hollywood Division. Another detective answered and said, 'She's out, want her mobile?'
I got through. Petra said, 'Milo asked me to let you know that we found Eldon Salcido. He thought you might want to take a look at him.'
Milo sending a message through her, rather than calling himself. Knowing he and I were firmly planted on opposite sides of the Doss investigation.
Had Safer warned him off, or was he opting for discretion on his own? Either way, it felt weird.
'Did he say why I should take a look?'
'No,' she said. 'I assumed you'd know. It was a short conversation. Milo sounded pretty hassled, still fighting to get warrants on that fat cat.'
'Where'd Salcido show up?'
'On the street. Literally. Messed up-beat up. Looks like he ran into the wrong bunch of butt-kickers. A resident coming out to collect the morning paper found him. Salcido was lying in the gutter. His pockets were empty, but that doesn't mean he was robbed, he might not have carried a wallet. One of our cars got the call, recognized him from a picture I hung up in the squad room. He's at Hollywood Mercy.'
'Conscious?' I said.
'Yes, but uncooperative. I left your name with the nurses.' She gave me a room number.
'Thanks,' I said.
'If you have any problems, call me. If you learn anything interesting from Salcido, you can call me, too.'
'Because Milo's busy.'
'Seems to be. Isn't everyone?'
'Better than the alternative,' I said.
'You said it. By the way, I'm seeing Billy tomorrow. We're going over to see the new science center at Exposition Park. Anything you want to pass along?'
'Best regards and continue doing what he's doing. And keep busy. Not that he needs me to tell him that.'
She laughed. 'Yes, he's a wonder, isn't he?'
CHAPTER 30
IT TOOK FORTY minutes on the 10 East and surface streets to get to the shabby section of East Hollywood where Beverly meets Temple.
Second hospital of the day.
Hollywood Mercy was five stories of earthquake-stressed, putty-colored stucco teetering atop a scrubby knoll that overlooked downtown. The building had an inadequate parking lot, a cracked tile roof, some nice ornate moldings from the days when labor was cheap, most with chunks missing. City ambulances ringed the entry. The front vestibule was crowded with long lines of sad-looking people waiting for approval from clerks in glass cages. CAT scans, PET scans, MRIs; the same high-tech alphabet I'd seen at St. Michael's, but this place looked like something out of a black-and-white movie and it smelled like an old man's bedroom.
Mate's bedroom.
His son was recuperating on the fourth floor, in something called the Special Care Unit. An unarmed security guard was posted at the swinging doors that led to the ward, and my I.D. badge got me waved through. On the other side was a chunky corridor five doors long with a nurses' station at the end. A black man with a shaved head sat near a stack of charts, writing, and a lantern-jawed, straw-haired woman in her sixties tapped her finger to soft reggae thumping from an unseen radio. I announced myself.
'In there,' said the female nurse.
'How's he doing?'
'He'll survive.' She pulled out a chart. A lot thinner than Joanne Doss's encyclopedia of confusion. A Hollywood Division police report was stapled to the inside front cover.
Eldon Salcido had been found beaten and semiconscious at 6:12 A.M. in the gutter of a residential block of Poinsettia Place, north of Sunset.
Three blocks from his father's apartment on Vista.
Paramedics had transported him, and an E.R. resident had admitted him for repair and observation. Contusions, abrasions, possible concussion later ruled absent. No broken bones. Extreme mental agitation and confusion, possibly related to preexisting alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness or some combination of all three. The patient had refused to identify himself, but police at the scene had supplied the vitals. The fact that Salcido was an ex-con with a felony record was duly noted.
Restraints ordered after the patient assaulted staff.
'Who'd he hit?' I said.
'One of our predecessors, last shift,' said the male nurse. 'Her big crime was offering him orange juice. He knocked it out of her hand, tried to punch her. She managed to lock him in and called security.'
'Another day in paradise,' said the woman. 'Probably a candidate for detox, but our detox unit shut down last month. You here to evaluate him for transfer?'
'Just to see him,' I said. 'Basic consult.'
'Well, you might end up doing it for free. We can't find a Medi-Cal card on him and he isn't talking.'
'That's okay.'
'Hey, if you don't care, I sure don't. Room 405.'
She came out from behind the counter and unlocked the door. The room was cell-size and green, with a lone, grilled window that framed an air shaft, a single bed and an I.V. bottle on a stand, not hooked up. The vital-signs monitor above the headboard was switched off and so was the tiny TV bracketed to the far wall. A low industrial buzz seeped through the window.
Donny Salcido Mate lay on his back, bare-chested, shackled with leather cuffs, staring at the ceiling. A tight, sweat-stained top sheet bound him from the waist down. His trunk was hairless, undernourished, off-white where it wasn't blue-black.
Blue coils squirmed all over him. Skin art, continuing around his back and down both arms. Pictorial arms striped by bandages. Dried blood crusted the edges of the dressings. A swatch of gauze banded his forehead, a smaller square bottomed his chin. Purpling bruises cupped both eyes and his lower lip was a slab of liver. Other dermal images peeked out from within the coils: the leering face of a nightmarishly fanged cobra, a flabby, naked woman with a sad mouth, one wide-open eye emitting a single tear. Gothic lettering spelling out 'Donny, Mamacita, Big Boy.'
Technically well-done tattoos, but the jumble made me want to rearrange his skin.
'A walking canvas,' opined the straw-haired nurse. 'Like that book by the Martian Chronicles guy. Visitor, Mr. Salcido. Ain't that grand?'
She walked out and the door hissed shut. Donny Salcido Mate didn't budge. His hair was long, stringy, the burnt bronze of old motor oil. An untrimmed beard, two shades darker, blanketed his face from cheekbone to jowl.
No resemblance to the mug shot I'd seen. That made me think of the beard Michael Burke had grown when adopting his Huey Mitchell persona in Ann Arbor. In fact, Donny's hirsute face bore a resemblance to Mitchell's. But not the same man. None of that cold, blank stagnancy in the eyes. These rheumy browns were bouncy, heated,
