Silent Partner

“Wholesome,” said Milo. He pulled out a cigar, said, “You got me started on these again,” lit up, and blew soapy-looking smoke out the window.

“What is that? Panamanian?”

“Transylvanian.” He puffed with enthusiasm. Within seconds the car was fogged.

We cruised past La Brea, past Western. No more cafe scene, just fast-food stands, pawnshops, discount outlets, and darker skin tones. Through the window came laughter and transistor music seasoned with bursts of Spanish. Families strolled the boulevard- parents young enough to be kids themselves, marshaling broods of black-haired cherubs.

“Now that’s wholesome,” I said.

He nodded. “Cream of the crop- I mean it. Poor devils ransom everything they own to the goddam coyotes, get raped, robbed, and ripped off trying to make it over the fence. Then we treat ’em like vermin and send ’em back, as if the goddam country wasn’t built on immigration- hell, if my forebears hadn’t stowed away on a steamer and snuck in through Canada, I’d be digging potatoes somewhere out in County Cork.” He thought about that. “Seen postcards of County Cork. Maybe better off?”

We passed through the Hospital Row that stretched between Edgemont and Vermont, rode past Western Peds, where I’d spent so much of my life.

“Where’re we going?” I asked.

“Just keep driving.” He ground the cigar out in the ashtray. “Listen, there’s something else I should tell you. After I left you yesterday, I took a drive out to Newhall and spoke to Rasmussen’s old lady- Seeber.”

“How’d you find her? I never gave you her name.”

“Don’t worry, your virtue’s intact. Newhall sheriffs took her statement on the accident. I got the address from that.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Seems to have made a good recovery- already has another guy shacking up with her. Skinny Casanova with junkie eyes and dirty arms, thought I was raiding and was halfway out the window before I calmed him down.”

He stretched, yawned. “Anyway, I asked her if Rasmussen had been working much recently. She says no, his temper had gotten him into too many scrapes. Nobody wanted him on their crew. She’s been supporting the both of them for the past six months with the roach wagon gig. Then I popped the matter of the thousand bucks he left her on the pillow, and she almost wet her pants. Even though the sheriffs released the money to her, she’s scared I’m gonna confiscate it- what’s left of it. Chances are Junkie’s shoveled most of it up his arm.

“I calm her down, tell her if she cooperates she can keep it, keep all the rest of it too. She gives me this look that says ‘How’d you know about all the rest of it?’ Bingo. I say, how much was it, Carmen? Fess up. She hems and haws, tries to play hard- to-get- gives it her best shot, but she really doesn’t have much will and finally she just blurts everything out: D.J. had come into lots of money recently, was throwing it around, buying expensive parts for his truck. She’s not really sure of the exact amount- ya know? But she found ya know forty-four hundred more in one of his ya know socks.”

“How long ago was recently?”

“Couple of weeks ago. At least one week before everyone started dying.”

I kept driving, past the Silverlake district and Echo Park, toward the western edge of downtown, where skyscrapers rose out of a tangle of freeway loops and back streets, glinting silver and bronze against a mud-bottomed sky.

“If it was cash for kill,” he said, “you know what that means. Premeditation- someone’d been planning that contract. Setting it up.”

He told me to turn left on an unmarked alley that climbed north of Sunset and tunneled between two building-supply lots. We passed dumpsters stuffed to the rim, graffiti’d rear walls, piles of plywood discards, damaged window screens, and hacked-up packing crates. Another quarter mile and we were weaving on cracked asphalt through weed-choked lots. At the back of some of the lots were lean-to shacks that looked ready to crumble. The alley angled and turned to dirt. Fifty yards later it terminated at a cinder-block wall. To the left, more dead grass; to the right of it a crow’s-eye view of the freeway.

“Park,” said Milo.

We got out. Even this high up, the traffic roared from the interchange.

The block wall was topped by barbed wire. Cut into the block was a round-topped wooden door scraped raw by time and the elements. No lock, no handle. Just a rusty metal spike imbedded in the wood. Looped around it was a leather thong. Hanging from the thong was an old, corroded cowbell. A tile sign over the door said: RUE DE OSCAR WILDE.

I looked up at the barbed wire, said, “Where are the gun turrets?”

Milo frowned, picked up a rock, and hit the cowbell. It gave off a dull clunk.

All at once, from the other side of the wall came a rising tide of animal sounds. Dogs, cats- lots of them. And barnyard clatter: poultry clucks. Goat bleats. The animals got closer, louder- so loud that they almost blocked out the sound of the freeway. The goats were the loudest. They made me think of voodoo rites, and the back of my neck tingled.

“Don’t say I never took you anywhere interesting,” said Milo.

The animals were scratching at the other side of the wall. I could smell them.

Milo called out, “Hello.”

Nothing. He repeated the greeting, pounded the cowbell several times.

Finally a whiny, crackling voice of indeterminate gender said, “Hold your frigging water. Who’s there?”

“Milo.”

“So? What do you want me to do? Break open the frigging Mouton Rothschild?”

“Opening the door would be a good start.”

“Wouldn’t it just.”

But the door did push open. An old man stood in the doorway, wearing only a baggy pair of white boxer shorts, a red silk scarf around his neck, and a long puka-shell necklace that rested on a hairless chest. Behind him an army of quadrupeds bounced and squealed and churned up the dust: dozens of dogs of uncertain pedigree, a couple of battle-scarred tomcats, and in the background, chickens, geese, ducks, sheep, several black Nubian goats, which licked the dust and tried to chomp our cuffs.

“Cool it,” said Milo, swatting.

The old man said, “Down, quiet,” without enthusiasm. He walked through the opening, closed the door behind him.

He was midsized and very thin, but flabby, with stringy arms and knobby, varicosed legs, narrow, sagging, grandmother’s breasts, and a protuberant belly. His skin had been sun-baked the color of bourbon and had an oily sheen. The hair on his head was skimpy white fuzz, as if he’d coated his bare pate with glue, then dipped it in cotton wool. He had a weak chin, big beak nose, and narrow-set eyes that squinted so tightly they appeared sealed shut. A shaggy white Fu Manchu mustache ran down the sides of his mouth, continuing past the jawline and dangling an inch.

He looked us over, frowned, spat on the ground.

Gandhi with gastritis.

“Afternoon, Ellston,” said Milo. “Nice to see you’re in your usual good cheer.” The sound of his voice set the dogs howling.

“Quiet. You’re upsetting them- way you always do.” The old man came up to me and stared, running his tongue along the inner wall of one cheek, scratching his head. He gave off a strange blend of odors: children’s zoo, French cologne, mentholated unguent.

“Not bad,” he said finally, “but Rick was cuter.”

He touched my shoulder. I stiffened involuntarily. His stare hardened and he spat again.

Milo stepped closer to me. “This is Dr. Alex Delaware. He’s a friend.”