justice? Adeline Bertrand in a ninja suit?
Finally Chic got fed up with my lack of known lethal adversaries and jumped topics. 'The second body,' he said. 'Why rope on the ankles, tape on the wrists?'
'Tape is easier on wrists. Rope can be tricky.' Preston averted his eyes, sipped his drink. 'You said the cotton rope is a specialty bondage item. We could look into which places stock it around L.A.'
'Let the police do the procedural shit,' Chic said. 'That's what they're good at.'
'What are we good at?' I asked.
A long pause. 'Not the procedural shit.'
'I think the rope's a red herring,' I said. 'I think he used it to throw investigators off the trail.'
The people across from us whispered a bit more, and then finally the well-dressed man stood and headed toward me. Chic said, 'Handle it with a smile.'
The man approached. 'You're Andrew Danner, aren't you? I just wanted to let you know I'm sorry for what you went through. I don't know much about it, but I think you caught a bum break.'
'Thanks very much.'
We shook hands. Before leaving, he glanced over at Chic. 'Nice hands, Bales, ya donkey.'
He returned to his table. Preston and I got busy eating to hide our smiles as Chic nodded, egging us on. Our main courses arrived, and, my humor and appetite back, I took a few moments to indulge in my agnolotti with mascarpone. When I looked up, Chic was studying the crime-scene photos. The top one, presumably the first taken, showed Kasey Broach in peaceful repose. With no sign yet of cop or criminalist intrusion, her body seemed dropped into the composition by an ambitious graphic designer. Her bare flesh and the white film of bird shit on the hood of the abandoned car were the only smears of light in the dark scene.
Chic said, 'Where'd you get these?'
I'd neglected to mention them when he'd picked me up from Parker. I told him I stole them from the interrogation room.
He whistled his admiration, then turned one print sideways, appraising the graffiti artist's terminated composition on the ramp's underbelly. 'That's some serious spray work.'
Preston said, 'Let's focus on the body.'
Chic slid a second photo out from the sheaf, this one showing a number of officers standing around or squatting by the chain-link. A hexagon outlined with police tape now staked off the corpse. Feathers dusted the spray-painted concrete, stuck to the ramp. The camera flash had brought out the glitter of shattered beer bottles.
'Lookie here,' Chic said. 'Our first real lead.'
Preston, peering over Chic's shoulder, shrugged.
'It tells a story, Story Man, you just ain't reading it.'
I seized the photo and scrutinized it. 'I don't see it.'
Chic slid out from the booth, bringing me with him. 'Then lemme show you.'
Chapter 15
There was no chalk outline, no bloodstain, no sad tendrils of crime-scene tape to commemorate the body that had been here less than seventy-two hours before. Just the crumbling asphalt, the beat-down coupe, and me and Chic. Vehicles hummed overhead. The ground smelled of urine and beer. The sun was in its descent, and Rampart was no place to get caught after dark. Chic spread his arms wide.
'Wah-lah.'
'Wah-lah what?'
Chic pointed at the cloud of elaborate spray paint brightening the bottom of the freeway ramp. The artist had stretched the proportion of the piece to fit the rising concrete so that when viewed straight on it looked as if it were in normal perspective. Even so, I wasn't sure what it was. Explosions and protuberances and bubble letters, all impressively three-dimensionalized. The piece had been left unfinished, the right half fading off into gray concrete. Feathers stuck to the lower fringe, dried into the paint.
'Oh,' I said. 'Oh.'
I followed Chic over a trampled section of chain-link.
'Cops got here in a hurry, right?' he asked. 'And the criminalist?'
'That's what I was told. Nearby having a burrito.'
'Patrolmen see the body. Criminalist shoots the picture, captures how it is before everyone fucks up the evidence, all that. Then what's the first thing they do?'
'Secure the scene.'
'Secure the scene. Which means they check this here shadow.' He ducked into the dark triangular recess where the ramp met ground. An outburst of pigeons, spooked from their nighttime roosts atop the supporting beams, disrupted the relative quiet. Chic stumbled back toward me, waving his arms, pigeons squawking around his head. He'd gotten more than he'd bargained for. His retreat detracted from the solemnity of his account, but he brushed himself off, picked something off his tongue, and continued, unfazed.
'Cops scared up the pigeons. The stray feathers got stuck to the paint.' Chic beckoned for the crime-scene photos and showed me the one that had captured Broach's body before the crime scene had been blocked off no feathers yet in evidence. 'Which means the paint was still wet. And that means' a finger raised with academic emphasis 'the tagger was at work spraying the ramp that night when he was interrupted.' He flicked his head at the painting's terminated edge. 'What makes a tagger run? A car. What's the first car that showed up, scared him away?'
'The killer dumping the body.'
Chic's wide grin broke across his face. 'We got ourselves a maybe witness.'
I stared at the coupe's hood, white with droppings. 'The Case of the Telltale Bird Shit.'
'In-fuckin'-deed.'
'How do we locate the spray painter?'
Chic indicated the colorful work overhead. 'You're looking at his signature, Colonel Sanders. That's what a tag is.'
We'd fallen into familiar roles. Chic was one of my most useful rough-draft readers, adept at inlaying street logic to a character's motive or transforming a run of dialogue into alleyway patter. I watched him chewing his lip, another adviser turned accomplice.
He held his eyes on the graffiti an extra beat, as if committing it to memory, then said, 'Lemme poke around on it, call some of my brothers.'
Spread throughout Los Angeles were about twenty-seven of Chic's gold-incisored brothers, who appeared in various guises to fix a car, bartend at a party, unload a new flat-screen. Most, like him, were Philly transplants. A few he might actually have been related to.
The breeze swirled up debris, knocked from the beams during the pigeon eruption. I crouched over a fallen nest, larger than I would have thought. Inside was a ring of stiff plastic wrap, about twice the circumference of a beer holder, still boasting a Home Depot price sticker.
I no longer heard the whistle of the wind, the cooing of the displaced pigeons, the cars overhead. I no longer heard anything but the pounding of my heart.
It was wrapping for a roll of electrical tape.
Chapter 16
The door swung open, and for a moment there was nothing but darkness, a curl of pale hand on the knob, and the incessant chirping of crickets. Then Lloyd stepped forward into the throw of light from the outdoor lamp and said, 'The hell is this, Drew?'
