good. What do they want? To drag in the ACLU and lose a good detective in the bargain? Ed Davis was a homophobe. He's gone and it's not so bad.'
'What about the other detectives?'
He shrugged. 'They leave me alone. We talk business. We don't double - date.'
Now the lack of recognition by the men at Angela's made sense.
Some of Milo's initial altruism, his reaching out to help me, was a little more understandable, too. He knew what it was like to be alone. A gay cop was a person in limbo. You could never be one of the gang back at the station, no matter how well you did your job. And the homosexual community was bound to be suspicious of someone who looked, acted like and was a cop.
'I figured I should tell you, since we seem to be getting friendly.'
'It's no big deal, Milo.'
'No?'
'No.' I wasn't really all that comfortable with it. But I was damn well going to work on it.
A month after Stuart Hickle stuck a .22 in his mouth and blasted his brains all over my wallpaper, I made some major changes in my life.
I resigned my job at Western Pediatric and closed down my practice. I referred all my patients to a former student, a first - rate therapist who was starting out in practice and needed the business. I had taken very few new referrals since starting the groups for the
Kim's Korner families, so there was less separation anxiety than would normally be expected.
I sold an apartment building in Malibu, forty units that I'd purchased seven years before, for a large profit. I also let go of a duplex in Santa Monica. Part of the money - the portion that would eventually go to taxes - I put in a high - yield money market. The rest went into tax - free municipals. It wasn't the kind of investing that would make me richer, but it would provide financial stability. I figured I could live off the interest for two or three years as long as I didn't get too extravagant.
I sold my old Chevy Two and bought a Seville, a seventy - nine, the last year they looked good. It was forest - green with a saddle - colored leather interior that was cushy and quiet. With the amount of driving I'd be doing, the lousy mileage wouldn't make much difference. I threw away most of my old clothes and got new stuff - mostly soft fabrics - knits, cords, rubber soled shoes, cashmere sweaters, robes, shorts, and pullovers.
I had the pipes cleaned out on the hot tub that I'd never used since I bought the house. I started to buy food and drink milk. I pulled my old Martin out of its case and strummed it on the balcony. I listened to records. I read for pleasure for the first time since high school. I got a tan. I shaved off my beard and discovered I had a face, and not a bad one at that.
I dated good women. I met Robin and things really started to get better.
Be - kind - to - Alex time. Early retirement six months before my thirty - third birthday.
It was fun while it lasted.
3
Morton Handler's last residence - if you didn't count the morgue - had been a luxury apartment complex off Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. It had been built into a hillside and designed to give a honeycomb effect: a loosely connected chain of individual units linked by corridors that had been placed at seemingly random locations, the apartments staggered to give each one a full view of the ocean. The motif was bastard Spanish: blindingly white textured stucco walls, red tile roofs, window accents of black wrought iron. Plantings of azalea and hibiscus filled in occasional patches of earth. There were lots of potted plants sunk in large terra - cotta containers: coconut palms, rubber plants, sun ferns, temporary - looking, as if someone planned on moving them all out in the middle of the night.
Handler's unit was on an intermediate level. The front door was sealed, with an LAPD. sticker taped across it. Lots of footprints dirtied the terrazzo walkway near the entrance.
Milo led me across a terrace filled with polished stones and succulents to a unit eater - cornered from the murder scene. Adhesive letters spelling out the word MANGER were affixed to the door. Bad jokes about Baby Jesus flashed through my mind.
Milo knocked.
I realized then that the place was amazingly silent. There must have been at least fifty units but there wasn't a soul in sight. No evidence of human habitation.
We waited a few minutes. He raised his fist to knock again just before the door opened.
'Sorry. I was washin' my hair.'
The woman could have been anywhere from twenty - five to forty. She had pale skin with the kind of texture that looked as if a pinch would crumble it. Large brown eyes topped by plucked brows. Thin lips. A slight under bite Her hair was wrapped in an orange towel and the little that peeked out was medium brown. She wore a faded cotton shirt of ochre - and orange print over rust - colored stretch pants. Dark blue tennis shoes on her feet. Her eyes darted from Milo to me. She looked like someone who'd been knocked around plenty and refused to believe that it wasn't going to happen again at any moment.
'Mrs. Quinn? This is Dr. Alex Delaware. He's the psychologist I told you about.'
'Pleased to meet you, Doctor.'
Her hand was thin and cold and moist and she pulled away as quickly as she could.
'Melody's watchin' TV in her room. Out of school, with all that's been goin' on. I let her watch to keep her mind off it.'
We followed her into the apartment.
Apartment was a charitable word. What it was, really, was a couple of oversized closets stuck together. An architect's postscript. Hey, Ed, we've got an extra four hundred square feet of corner in back of terrace number 142. Why don't we throw a roof over it, nail up some drywall and call it a manager's unit? Get some poor soul to do scutwork for the privilege of living in Pacific Palisades…
The living room was filled with one floral sofa, a masonite end table and a television. A framed painting of Mount Rainier that looked as if it came from a Savings and Loan calendar and a few yellowed photographs hung on the wall. The photos were of hardened, unhappy - looking people and appeared to date from the Gold Rush.
'My grandparents,' she said.
A cubicle of a kitchen was visible and from it came the smell of frying bacon. A large bag of sour cream - and - onion - flavored potato chips and a six pack of Dr. Pepper sat on the counter.
'Very nice.'
'They came here in 1902. From Oklahoma.' She made it sound like an apology.
There was an unfinished wooden door and from behind it came the sound of sudden laughter and applause, bells and buzzers. A game show.
'She's watchin' back there.'
'That's just fine, Mrs. Quinn. We'll let her be until we're ready for her.'
The woman nodded her head in assent.
'She don't get much chance to watch the daytime shows, being' in school. So she's watchin' 'em now.'
'May we sit down, ma'am?'
'Oh yes, yes.' She flitted around the room like a mayfly, tugging at the towel on her head. She brought in an ashtray and set it down on the end table. Milo and I sat on the sofa and she dragged in a tubular aluminum - and - Naugahyde chair from the kitchen for herself. Despite the fact that she was thin her haunches settled and spread. She took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one up and sucked in the smoke until her cheeks hollowed. Milo spoke.
'How old is your daughter, Mrs. Quinn?'
'Bonita. Call me Bonita. Melody's the girl. She's just seven this past month.' Talking about her daughter seemed to make her especially nervous. She inhaled greedily on her cigarette and blew little smoke out. Her free hand clenched and unclenched in rapid cadence.
'Melody may be our only witness to what happened here last night.' Milo looked at me with a disgusted
