I switched off the set.
Lights out. The blackout drapes did their job well.
My heart was as dark as the room.
26
I beat the wakeup call by more than an hour. After showering, shaving, and dressing, I drew open the drapes on a view of the red-brick building across the street. Men in white shirts and ties were framed in its windows, sitting at desks, talking into phones, and stabbing the air with pens. Down below, the streets were clogged with double-parked cars. Horns blatted. Someone was using a compression drill. Even through the sealed windows I could smell the city.
I phoned Robin at just past nine L.A. time. We told each other we were fine and chatted for a while before she put Milo on.
'Talk about bicoastal,' he said. 'Expedition or escape?'
'Bit of both, I guess. Thanks for taking care of the lady and the tramp.'
'Pleasure. Got a little more info on Mr. Gritz. Traced him to a small town in Georgia and just got finished talking to the police chief. Seems Lyle was a weird kid. Acted goofy, walked funny, mumbled a lot, didn't have any friends. Out of school more than he was in, never learned to read properly or speak clearly. His home life was predictably bad, too. No father on the scene, and he and his mother lived in a trailer on the outskirts of town. He started drinking, slid straight into trouble. Shoplifting, theft, vandalism. Once in a while he'd get into a fight with someone bigger and stronger than himself and come out the loser. Chief said he locked him up plenty, but he didn't seem to care, jail was as good as his home, or better. He used to sit in his cell and rock and talk to himself, as if he was in his own world.'
'Sounds more like the early signs of schizophrenia than a developing psychopath,' I said. 'Onset during adolescence fits the schizophrenic pattern, too. What
'Not really. But maybe he changed when he grew up, got smoother.'
'Mr. Silk,' I said.
'Maybe he's a good faker. Always was. Faked looking nuts, even back then- psychopaths do that all the time, right?'
'They do,' I said. 'But did this police chief sound like someone easily fooled?'
'No. He said the kid was nuts but had one thing going for him. Musical talent. Taught himself to play guitar and mandolin and banjo and a bunch of other instruments.'
'The next Elvis.'
'Yeah. And for a while people thought he might actually make something of himself. Then one day, he just left town and no one heard from him again.'
'How long ago was this?'
'Nineteen-seventy.'
'So he was only twelve. Any idea why he left?'
'Chief had just busted him for drunk and disorderly again, gave him the usual lecture, then added a few bucks for him to get some new clothes and a haircut. Figured maybe if the kid looked better he'd act better. Lyle walked out of the police station and headed straight for the train depot. Police chief later found he used the money to buy a one-way ticket to Atlanta.'
'Twelve years old,' I said. 'He could have kept traveling and ended up in Santa Barbara, been taken in by de Bosch as a charity case- de Bosch liked to put forth the humanitarian image, publicly.'
'Wish I could get hold of school records. No one seems to have any. Not the city or the county.'
'What about federal? If de Bosch applied for government funding for the charity cases, there might be some kind of documentation.'
'Don't know how long those agencies hold on to their records, but I'll check. So far I'm drawing a blank on this bastard. First time he shows up in California is an arrest nine years ago. No NCIC record prior to that, so that's over a decade between his leaving Georgia and the beginnings of his West Coast life of crime. If he got busted for petty stuff in other small towns, it might very well not have been entered into the national computer. But still, you'd expect something. He's a bad egg, where the hell was he all that time?'
'How about in a mental institution?' I said. 'Twelve years old, out on his own. God knows what could have happened to him out on the street. He might have suffered a mental breakdown and got put away. Or, if he was at the school the same time as Delmar Parker, maybe he observed Delmar's death and broke down over that.'
'Big assumption, he and Delmar knowing each other.'
'It is, but there are some factors that might point in that direction: he and Delmar were around the same age, both were Southern boys a long way from home. Maybe Gritz finally made a friend. Maybe he even had something to do with Delmar stealing the truck. If he did and escaped death but saw Delmar die, that could have pulled the rug out from under him, psychologically.'
'So now he's blaming the school and de Bosch and everyone associated with it? Sure, why not? I just wish we could push it past theory. Place Gritz in Santa Barbara, let alone the school, let alone knowing the Parker kid, et cetera, et cetera.'
'Any luck finding Parker's mother?'
'She doesn't live in New Orleans, and I haven't been able to find any other relatives. So where does this Silk- Merino thing come in? Why would a Southern boy pick himself a Latino alias?'
'Merino's a type of wool,' I said. 'Or a sheep- the flock following the shepherd, and getting misled?'
'Baaa,' he said. 'When are you planning to see Rosenblatt's kid?'
'Couple of hours.'
'Good luck. And don't worry, everything here's cool. Ms. Castagna lends a nice touch to the place, maybe we'll keep her.'
'No, I don't think so.'
'Sure,' he said, chuckling. 'Why not? Woman's touch and all that. Hell, we can keep the beast, too. Put up a picket fence around the lawn. One big happy family.'
• • •
New York was as clear as an etching, all corners and windows, vanishing rooflines, skinny strips of blue sky.
I walked to the law firm, heading south on Fifth Avenue, swept along in the midtown tide, comforted, somehow, by the forced intimacy.
The shop windows were as glossy as diamonds. People wearing business faces hurtled toward the next obligation. Three-card monte players shouted invitations, took quick profit, then vaporized into the crowd. Street vendors hawked silly toys, cheap watches, tourist maps, and paperback books stripped of their covers. The homeless squatted in doorways, leaned against buildings. Bearing crudely lettered signs and paper cups, their hands out, their eyes leeched of expectation. So many more of them than in L.A. but yet they seemed to belong, part of the city's rhythm.
Five Hundred Fifth Avenue was a six-hundred-foot limestone tower, the lobby an arena of marble and granite. I arrived with an hour to spare and walked back outside, wondering what to do with the time. I bought a hot dog from a pushcart, ate it watching the throng. Then I spotted the main branch of the public library, just across Forty- second Street, and made my way up the broad, stone stairs.
After a bit of asking and wandering, I located the periodicals room. The hour went fast as I checked four-year- old New York newspapers for obituaries on Harvey Rosenblatt. Nothing.
I thought of the psychiatrist's kind, open manner. The loving way he'd spoken about his wife and children.
A teenaged boy who'd liked hot dogs. The taste of mine was still on my lips, sour and warm.
My thoughts shifted to a twelve-year-old, leaving town on a one-way ticket to Atlanta.
Life had sneak attacked both of them, but Josh Rosenblatt had been much more heavily armed for the ambush.
