Remember Me, Irene

biggest mover and shaker in Las Piernas.”

“You’re wrong, Irene. All kinds of people end up as homicide victims. Thepress may treat them differently, but that doesn’t mean the cops will.”

“Forgive me if I’m a little slow to buy that.”

She shrugged. “Believe what you want to. Me, when I was working homicide, I didn’t care if the victim was a prince or a pauper. I wanted to nail the killer. I didn’t want that son of a bitch walking around thinking he was too smart to get caught, thinking he beat me.

“Besides, if you don’t think the police are doing the job they should be doing on this case, you’ve got a powerful way to put pressure on them.”

“Which reminds me of something, Rachel. Can I borrow your phone?”

I dialed John Walters’s home phone number.

John listened patiently as I told him about finding Lucas.

“Well,” he said, “sorry about your friend. Sounds like you’ve had a tough day. Tell you what. Tomorrow, come in a couple of hours late if you like. But before the end of the day, I want you to do some serious work on Moffett’s resignation.”

“What?”

“Yeah, take a couple of hours off. Ido have a heart-no matter what you tell the interns.”

“Serious work on Moffett?Is that what I heard you say?”

“Exactly. You tell me some cock-and-bull story about some bum causing everything from Watterson’s suicide to Moffett’s resignation. You’ve pulled this kind of shit on me before, so I know to let you have a little time to spend the morning trying to find out what happened to your friend, or you’re not going to have your mind on your work.”

“This wasn’t some ruse, John,” I said, trying to hold on to my temper. “I’ll admit, there have been times when I wasn’t exactly working on a story in the way you asked me to-”

“-Oh, yes, Ms. Kelly. Ithas been known to happen. Like the time you spent the day sailing when you were supposedly doing an investigative piece on the harbor?”

“That harbor piece won a CNPA!”

“And theExpress is proud of that award. But the California Newspaper Publishers Association didn’t give it to you for anything that skipper taught you on the way to Catalina.”

Not for the first time, I cursed the storm that came up that day, trapping me in Avalon with a guy who turned out to be a bigger drip than anything that fell from the sky.

“Look, John, I don’t have time to dredge up old history. This is different. Lucas Monroe is the key to all of this. You should have Mark down here on this.”

“Mr. Baker is busy with other assignments.”

“If not Mark, then-”

“Then nobody.”

“Nobody!”

“Nobody. Irene, think like a reporter, will you? The death of your friend is not newsworthy.”

“Why? Because he’s black? Because he’s homeless? Because he died in a part of town that everyone wishes would just sink into the core of the earth?”

“You know what Wrigley’s going to say if I start printing stories about druggies OD-ing and bums croaking in abandoned hotels?”

“This is not about-”

“You’ve heard his speech. Right after he tells me that our subscribers do not want to open the morning paper and read about dirtbags dying-good riddance, etc.-he’ll ask me if I’d like to try another line of work.”

“It’s a bullshit policy and you know it. If we aren’t going to print anything about ‘dirtbags,’ then pull Wrigley’s name off the masthead.”

“I’ll tell him you suggested it. I’m certain it will cause him to reconsider his position.”

“I hate this crap,” I said, my anger not lessened by defeat. “I absolutely hate it. The policy’s wrong. And you’re wrong, too, John. You’re wrong about Lucas. He wasn’t-” Something caught in my throat, and I couldn’t speak. I was thinking of the man who had patiently taught me one of the most difficult subjects I’d ever studied. A man who had given me a great gift, the ability to tell at least a few of the lies from a few of the truths-a man I respected, no matter what had become of him since those student days. That man, reduced to this.

“Kelly, listen to me,” John said. “I’m not trying to insult the memory of this friend of yours. I’ve got nothing against him. I’m just trying to get you to see it from the paper’s point of view. I know you’re upset-hell, if I could, I’d give you the whole day off tomorrow. But I’ve got a nasty feeling that if we don’t get a handle on this Moffett thing, theTimes is going to beat us in our own backyard.”

“What, they’re going to put out an extra supplement this week? They care less about Las Piernas than Wrigley cares about the homeless.”

“Maybe. But I wouldn’t like to see it happen, would you?”

“No. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. Thisis about Moffett and Watterson. Too many coincidences. I’ve got to follow up on this, John.”

“On your own time, Kelly. Like sailing.”

I handed the phone back to Rachel. I knew she could tell that I hadn’t gotten very far with the paper, but she didn’t rub it in.

ALITTLE LATER, we answered questions from a group of people who weren’t too happy about climbing up over a dozen flights of stairs. Reed Collins and Vince Adams had drawn the assignment; I had met them once or twice before, but didn’t know them well. Frank had spoken highly of them, though, and I wondered if this was part of what Rachel meant when she talked to Frank about TLC. Reed explained that Frank would be up in a minute, but procedure required them to talk to me alone first. We showed them where the body was; my second look wasn’t much longer than the first. Reed and Vince had us wait in the hall for a few minutes while they talked to a pair of technicians.

When they came out of the room, they wanted to question us separately. Vince talked to Rachel, Reed talked to me-vacancy rates being what they were at the Angelus, we didn’t have a problem finding separate rooms.

It took a while to explain to Reed why we had been looking for a homeless man, and why we had looked in this hotel. I could see that I was doing just as terrific a sales job on him as I had on John Walters-no one was buying that Lucas had influenced Las Piernas’s rich and powerful. Reed never said that he doubted my theories- which I admit were only half-formed at the time-but his questions all led away from any talk of Ben Watterson or Allan Moffett.

“Can you describe this man Corky?” he asked.

The other questions were in a similar vein-always returning to the other homeless men.

“This Toes,” Reed said. “Are you sure this is what he said? It seems a little jumbled.”

“Two Toes.He’s a little jumbled.”

“So how can you be certain you’re remembering it correctly?”

“I’m not. I didn’t take notes or record him, so it may not be absolutely accurate. But I’m pretty good at recalling conversations.”

“Well, yes, I guess you need to be able to do that in your line of work.”

We talked a little longer, then he walked out into the hall, leaving me alone. While the door was open, I saw Carlos Hernandez, the county coroner, go by. Hernandez was followed by two men wrestling with a stretcher.

A few seconds later, Frank came in. He didn’t say anything, just walked up to me and put his arms around me. It was the best thing that happened to me all day.

“POSTMORTEM LIVIDITY,” Carlos said. He was standing in the hall outside the room. I could hear the photographer at work, the quiet conversation of the men who were gathering physical evidence. “The patterns prove that someone moved his body after he died.”

“The pennies on his eyes ought to be proof that someone else was in there,” I said.

“The pennies tell you someone was here after he lost consciousness,” he corrected. “But the discoloration of