To Die in Beverly Hills

'He had an accident. I need to look inside the apartment. I'd appreciate it if you'd let me in. You may accompany me if you wish.'

'There was a Beverly Hills detective here last night. He asked to look in the apartment too, but didn't say a word about Lee being…' The woman gulped. 'I just thought that he was in some sort of trouble.'

'Did the detective go in the apartment?'

'No. I wouldn't let him in. And I'm not going to let you in either. I don't think it's legal to hand over someone's apartment key. In fact, I called an attorney last night and he told me not to let any policeman in any apartment no matter what they said.'

'I take it you understand that Mr. Sheboygan is deceased,' Carr said. 'That he is dead and will not be paying any more rent?'

The woman adjusted her scarf. 'I don't see where that makes any difference one way or the other.'

Carr closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. 'Did Mr. Sheboygan live alone?'

'He had a roommate. I don't know his name. He moved out a couple of weeks ago.' She paused for a moment. 'What kind of accident was it?'

'A gun accident. I really do need to look through his apartment. As I said, you can accompany me inside to see that nothing is disturbed.'

'This is Beverly Hills, officer. Apartment managers in this city don't just hand apartment keys over to police types. If something turned up missing from the apartment I'd be responsible.'

Carr made his best kindness-to-animals expression. 'Ma'am, I am a federal law enforcement officer. All I want to do is look around in a dead man's apartment for a few minutes. I'm not a burglar.'

The woman folded her arms across her chest. 'Just how do I know that?'

Carr dug an identification card bearing his photograph and signature out of his pocket. He handed it to her. She glanced at it and handed it back. 'Anyone can get a card like that these days.'

Carr shrugged. 'You're certainly within your rights to say no. Thank you for your time.'

'You're quite welcome,' the woman said.

As Carr turned to leave he heard the door shut firmly behind him.

FOUR

Carr stood outside the woman's apartment for a moment. He looked around. None of the sunbathers around the pool seemed to notice him. A brass number 19 was affixed to an apartment on the second floor facing the pool. Carr left using the front entrance. To his left was a driveway, which he followed to a rear parking lot.

Using steps that were out of the line of sight from the manager's apartment, he trotted to the second-floor balcony. Staying close to the wall, he walked to apartment 19. Though he expected no answer, he rang the doorbell of the apartment and waited awhile. He tried the lock. It was secure. Having fished a credit card out of a wallet that Sally had given him for his birthday, he took another look around. He was still invisible to the tenants. Deftly, he probed the credit card between the door and jamb. The lock clicked. He opened the door and went inside. Having closed the door behind him, he flicked on a wall switch.

The living room was decorated with expensive modern furniture that Carr guessed came along with the apartment. There was an enormous oak wall unit stacked with stereo equipment, and on a driftwood coffee table were some locksmithing trade journals and a book entitled The Dos and Don'ts of Burglar Alarms. Carr picked up one of the magazines. The address label had Sheboygan's name and address.

In the bedroom, Carr saw that the king-sized bed was unmade. Shelves on the wall were filled with items reflecting a typical California life-style — tennis rackets, sports car hats, a jogging suit. The closet was bursting with clothes bearing Beverly Hills men's store labels. There were lots of pairs of shoes, mostly handmade with English labels.

In the dresser drawers, Carr found stacks of silk shirts. Under one of the stacks was a zebra-skin shoulder holster. In the corner of the same drawer was an inch-high stack of color snapshots. The photograph on top was of Leon Sheboygan, wearing nothing but a flat cap, posed on the edge of his bed with a naked brunette. The smiling pair held up champagne glasses. The small-breasted woman looked fortyish and had a tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder. Other shots showed her engaged in various sex acts with Sheboygan. In one photograph Sheboygan used the neck of a champagne bottle as a dildo while the woman drank from a champagne goblet.

Other photos depicted a naked man who looked to be Sheboygan's age, only with gray-streaked hair, mounting a freckled, bored-looking redhead with abdominal stretch marks. At the bottom of the stack was a color photograph of a naked Amanda Kennedy sitting cross-legged on the bed littered with jewelry as Sheboygan, who wore only a T-shirt, knelt behind her. As she gave the finger to the camera, the smiling and red-eyed Sheboygan appeared to be affixing the clasp of a necklace with an expensive looking, star-shaped gold medallion around her neck.

Carr shoved the photographs in the pocket of his suit coat.

On top of the dresser, among laundry receipts and other pocket litter, was a black-and-white photograph of Sheboygan and the man with the gray-streaked hair sitting in a bar at a table covered with cocktail glasses, cigarette packages. A matchbook was visible leaning against an ashtray, though the painting on it was indecipherable. Sitting between them was a young blonde woman with extremely short hair and the brunette. He shoved the photograph in his pocket with the others.

In the kitchen drawer next to a wall phone, Carr found a scrap of paper covered with scribbled phone numbers. He stuffed it in his pocket. Having returned to the front door, he peeked out of the peephole. The lady manager exited her apartment and headed up the steps and down the balcony toward him. He flicked off the lights and held his breath. The woman strode past the door and knocked on an apartment door farther down. Someone answered the door. The woman asked to borrow something. A man's falsetto voice offered her a glass of Chablis (which he pronounced 'Shabliss'). She accepted and stepped into the apartment. The door closed.

A few minutes later, Carr opened the door quietly and crept out the way he came in.

Sitting at his desk, Carr leafed through a copy of Sheboygan's multipage arrest record, which he'd picked up from the Sheriff's Department Records Bureau on his way back to his office. The list of arrests, beginning when he was a teenager, reflected that Sheboygan (real name Leon Adolph Sheboygan III) had been arrested for the first time when he was sixteen years old. The yellowed and dog-eared burglary report for the arrest recounted, in police language, that he had been caught trying to pawn a set of golf clubs stolen from his next-door neighbor's house. A juvenile-court judge named Pregerson had sentenced him to a year in a county road camp.

Carr noted that with the passage of time, there was more time between arrests and fewer convictions. Also, Sheboygan's residence address, as listed on the face sheet of each arrest form, moved inexorably west from a trailer court in San Bernardino to apartments in Alhambra, Pasadena, Glendale, West Los Angeles and, finally, Beverly Hills. As the rent got higher, so did the lawyer's fees. The names in the fill-in box on the arrest report labeled Attorney Representing: were changed from names Carr recognized as the ex- public defender's, with offices near the county courthouse, to those with offices in Beverly Hills. The arrest package read like that of thousands of other crooks Carr had reviewed through the years. A biography of learning from experience.

Carr's final note was that there were no arrests in Beverly Hills. He tossed the file in a drawer and pulled the scrap of paper he'd taken from Sheboygan's apartment from his coat pocket. He picked up the phone and dialed the first number. The phone rang.

'Go,' mumbled a man with a deep voice who sounded as if he might have just woken up.

'This is Charlie,' Carr said. 'I'm trying to get in touch with Lee Sheboygan. Do you know where I can find him?'

The man yawned. 'You can probably find him at the cemetery,' he said. 'He got wasted by the cops.'

'No shit.'

'They caught him inside a house…which Charlie is this?'

'Charlie Carr. I need to get in touch with Lee's ex-roommate. Do you know where I can find him?'

'I never met any of his friends…who the fuck is this?'