to fuck up his life worse even than mine, and he didn't have a handy brain tumor to get him off the hook. Pretending to wash my hands, I let the water push the Baggie of marijuana down into the disposal.
'Don't worry about it,' I said.
Cal didn't talk to me as we walked back down the stairs to the car. Before leaving he'd gotten the Home Depot manager on the phone and confirmed Collins's hours the night of January twenty-second. I'd taken away one piece of information, but it came loaded with so many variables as to be nearly useless. If the wrapping had come from the killer's electrical tape, then he'd bought it at the Home Depot in Van Nuys. If he'd shopped close to home, that would make him a Valley boy. Two ifs weren't going to advance the home team's cause significantly.
We climbed into the car. I expected Cal to yell, but he just looked over and smirked. 'Don't quit your day job.'
Lloyd called me on my cell phone as I was driving home from Cal's. 'How'd it go?'
I told him.
'Ouch,' he said. 'Sorry to pile on, but the DNA tests came back from Broach's body and the drop cloth we found in your trash. It's yours. Not that it undermines your alibi, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up.'
I thanked him and hung up. Heading home reminded me of my damaged front door and Preston's note about the dangers it might leave me vulnerable to. I called information and got one of the alarm companies I'd seen advertised on metal posts shoved into neighborhood flower beds.
'Sorry, pal. Can't get someone in to wire you until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.'
'You sure you don't work for the phone company?'
'Sorry?'
'Never mind.'
I gave him my address and made an appointment. Then I called Home Depot, figuring they owed me one or I them, beeped my way through an elaborate menu, and left a message for the door department that of course stood no chance of being returned but left me feeling as if I'd fulfilled due diligence in addressing my editor's notes.
Richard Collins. Professional electrical-tape handler. Don't quit your day job indeed.
I decided I'd give myself the rest of the drive home to feel discouraged. But I blew my deadline. I was too worn down for a cigar on the deck, so I plopped into my reading chair, mulling over my missteps. After a while I tired of myself and clicked on the TV.
Humidity was low, terrorist chatter was high. Another day in America. Guess what was reairing on TNT? Hunter Pray. Sure enough, there was Johnny Ordean, wearing an ill-fitting priest's collar and holding a scumbag's dripping head above a rank toilet bowl. 'Cough it up or we go another round on the baptism.'
Good God.
The resultant gurgling spurred my thumb to action. A seductively named hurricane was ravaging the Georgia coast. Newscasters were emboldening the terrorists. A teen singer had been in a fender bender at Fairfax and Le Brea, and a news unit was there to capture each cracked taillight and curse word.
While I'd been occupied, public attention had moved on.
I punched the button and sat in the relative darkness. There is no silence quite as plaintive as that of an empty house when the television turns off. Now that the media were no longer mistreating me, I felt left out.
The back cushions on the couch, strewn by Preston, jarred loose a recollection of Genevieve. Before we'd watch a movie or an opera on PBS, she'd pull apart the whole damn couch like a kid building a fort, and rearrange it to her liking, which usually entailed transforming it into a faux-suede nest, elevating her like Cleopatra on the barge. From her regal perch, she studied me now with those imploring French eyes.
'I'm working on it,' I said. 'Everyone has setbacks. Remember Waterloo?'
She vanished at the ring of my cell phone.
'Who's the mack daddy?'
'Barry Bonds?' I guessed.
A sound of disgust. 'Chic Bales, that's who.'
I told him about Richard Collins, the innocent, pot-smoking Home Depot felon.
'Don't despair, Chicken Little. I got us a spray artist. We ride at first light.'
After the call I stared at the couch, but Genevieve wouldn't reappear. I didn't blame her. I was lousy company, and I might have shoved a boning knife through her rib cage.
Upstairs I dozed sporadically, finding myself wide awake at 1:00 a.m. The Genevieve hour. Each whistle of the wind was a screen being slit, every creak in the house a foot set cautiously down. Turning on the lights before me, I retrieved spare cuts of plywood from the garage and hammered them across the broken windows in my front door.
Back in my bedroom, I lay in the darkness, surrounded by familiar shadows.
You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
I'd looked stupid. It wasn't a first. I'd spent the evening spinning my tires. Not like I had anything better to do. I'd played a card with Cal I could've saved for later. So what? I had more up my sleeve. Tomorrow could bring a graffiti-artist eyewitness, another body, a rise in the ocean that left us all breathing through snorkels.
For Genevieve, for Kasey Broach, for myself, I was committed. I was in the plot. After blood, sweat, and tears would come an ending, favorable or not.
For the first time since I'd awakened in that hospital bed, I slept soundly.
Chapter 18
I met Chic in a part of Compton that had been revitalized, meaning the crackheads looked better fed.
He leaned over my window and said, 'Genevieve's father invested in a company that owned a boutique that Kasey Broach once bought soap at. They bought car tires from the same wholesaler, Broach in person, Genevieve through her mechanic at Lexus.'
'What's that give us?'
'Nuthin' worth marking on the scorecard.' He grinned. 'Database guy is good at digging stuff up, not necessarily good stuff. We'll see what else he comes up with. I don't think there's gonna be much between the two of them it's a connection between Broach and you that would smell like pay dirt to me. If it links Genevieve, too, trifecta.' As we crossed the street, Chic flicked his chin at the warehouse up ahead. 'That's our boy's art studio there.'
'Art studio?'
'That's right. And don't go embarrassin' me and callin' it graffiti.'
'What do I call it?'
'Aerosol art.'
'Naturally.'
We entered to find a large woman behind a reception desk, blowing on a set of fingernails that doubled the length of her hand. She looked up, eyebrows raised as if we'd shoved in on her in a changing room.
'Engelbert Humperdinck here's lookin' for Bishop,' Chic said, jerking his head in my direction, 'but he didn't want to come down alone because he's afraid you all might put him in a cannibal pot.'
'One o' them black ones?'
'Uh-huh.'
'Lemme go get it.' She pushed back from the desk and disappeared through a metal door. Her voice came amplified through the walls. 'Bish! Folks here to see you!' We couldn't make out the response, but we heard her say, 'Then sit reception you own damn self.'
She reappeared, holding the heavy door for us to pass through. She eyed me as I passed. 'He a cop or a buyer?'
'He a writer,' Chic said.
She snorted. 'Which restaurant?'
We entered the warehouse proper. Aside from a desk in the far corner, several cardboard boxes, and a rotund naked black man, the room was empty. The man was giving us his generous backside, facing an enormous
