drove down the hill to where she lived, a generic 1960s-style, two-story complex with the small apartments encircling a kidney-shaped pool.
I walked up the stairs to her apartment and rang the bell. She looked through the keyhole and opened the door a few inches.
“Yes,” she said suspiciously.
“I’m detective-”
“I remember you.”
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“When we last talked, I thought you might have seen something that night that might help me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Look, I’m a homicide detective. I’m investigating the murder of a retired cop. I’m hoping you might be able to tell me something that could help my investigation, something that-”
“Well, I can’t,” she said, slamming the door.
“If you do think of something, call me.”
I pulled a card out of my wallet and slid it under the door.
I had a few hours to kill until I figured Abazeda would be home. So rather than risk the freeway during the crush of the evening commute, I stopped by Ante’s, a landmark Croatian restaurant two blocks from the harbor. A few years ago I had investigated the murder of a harbor commissioner who was carjacked and shot a block away. It took me six days to clear the case, and I had lunched at Ante’s each day.
“Welcome back, Detective Levine,” the hostess said when she saw me. “I’ve got a nice quiet booth in the corner for you.”
The dining room was homey, with high-backed red leather booths, a wood beam ceiling, Croatian handicrafts on one wall, and a colorful mural of the Adriatic coastline on another. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and I was ravenous. I started with a salad of iceberg lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, and octopus and a side dish of fried smelt, and then polished off a plate of Sarma — seasoned meat and rice rolled in cabbage leaves-served with mostaccioli.
I was about to ask for the check, when the hostess, carrying a tray, stopped by and said, “A little something for you-on the house.” She brought me a piece of sweet, flaky strudel and a glass of Croatian plum brandy, the same kind of brandy, I realized, Goran Relovich had been drinking on his fishing boat.
After I finished the strudel, I sipped the brandy and I recalled the photographs that Lindsey Relovich had taken during her birthday at her father’s house.
From a flap in the back of the murder book, I removed the photographs. I sifted through the packet, spread the pictures out on the table, and divided them into piles-each pile representing a different room of the house. Apparently, Lindsey had followed her father through the house that day and snapped pictures while he mugged for the camera. There were a few pictures of Relovich posing behind his daughter, towering over her. I knew Relovich’s life during the past few years had been troubled, but he looked truly happy in the pictures with his daughter.
After studying the photographs, I finished the brandy in a swallow. Then I tried to recall how each room looked when Duffy and I had inspected the house. I would visit the place again for a more thorough inspection, but I wanted to see if any of the photographs provided me with some insight.
One did.
The little girl had photographed her father in the spare bedroom, pulling her birthday present out of a closet. I remembered the desk and figured that Relovich used the room as an office. In the photo, a laptop computer sat on a corner of the desk.
I closed my eyes and recalled the desk with the coffee cup filled with pens and pencils. Riffling through the murder book, I located the property report compiled by the Harbor Division detectives. Now I was certain. Whoever killed Relovich had pinched his laptop. Because when I had searched the house, it wasn’t there.
If Abazeda had killed Relovich, that would make sense. He was worried that Relovich was stealing his girls and his clients. The laptop might contain that information.
CHAPTER 9
Abazeda lived in West L.A., a few blocks south of Pico and west of Robertson. While many houses on the street were classic one-story Spanish-style cottages, Abazeda’s place was a monstrosity, a three-story stucco palace with a flat roof, three balconies festooned with gold ironwork, and four giant concrete columns flanking the front door. The lot was modest-sized, but the house was so enormous there was no room for landscaping. Instead of a front lawn, there was just a cement parking slab. There were no cars in front, and the house was dark. I parked across the street and decided to wait.
It was a warm evening, and as I rolled down my window, the breeze kicked up dust along the gutter. The gritty smell of the dust cut with the faint scent of orange blossoms suggested something that I couldn’t quite recall, an event hovering at the fringe of my memory. I closed my eyes for a moment.
Summer. A West Bank checkpoint at the edge of an orange grove. I was about to relieve a young South African immigrant named Danny, when I saw a Palestinian teenager approach the checkpoint. He walked robotically, stopped, and looked through Danny and the other soldiers. The Palestinian was curly haired, his skin was dark-the color of mahogany-but his eyes were an arresting pale green. Crusader eyes, the Palestinians called them. There was something about those sea green eyes that alarmed me: a curious unfocused lifeless look.
“Jible hawiye,” Danny ordered-the two Arabic words every Israeli soldier learns: Give me your identity card.
The Palestinian stepped forward, reached into his back pocket-a movement so casual he might have been reaching for a handkerchief-and removed a shiny aluminum RGN Russian hand grenade. He pulled the pin, blowing himself up, along with Danny, blasting the branches of the olive tree high behind them with bloody strips of clothing that flapped in the breeze like flags.
As I instinctively flexed my calf, where slivers of shrapnel were still embedded, I saw a man park a Lexus SUV in front of the house. I flipped open my murder book and checked Abazeda’s DMV picture. It was him.
I walked over and said, “Mr. Abazeda, I’m an LAPD homicide detective. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Detective Levine. Ann Licata told me that she has spoken with you.”
Abazeda was a solidly built man with sharp features. Bald, with just a horseshoe-shaped fringe of black hair, he stared at me with a slightly popeyed expression. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or he had some kind of optical condition. He wore a pale blue silk shirt, black linen slacks, and tan loafers with no socks.
“Why don’t we go inside,” I said. “It’ll be easier to talk.”
“No problem,” he said, opening the door with a key and punching a code into the alarm panel.
I followed him into an entryway with pale blue marble floors and a massive skylight veined with gold. He opened the door to an office off the entryway with white shag carpeting and a desk that was half the size of the room. Four video screens in the corner of the office offered exterior views of the house from rotating surveillance cameras. Abazeda sat in an overstuffed leather chair behind the desk. I pulled up a chair opposite him.
“Ann Licata told me you and she have an arrangement,” he said in a slight accent that sounded vaguely Middle Eastern.
“Where are you from, originally?” I asked.
“Is that really important?”
“Not really.”
“As I was saying, Ann told me that she cooperated with you and you agreed to leave her business alone.”
“From what I understand, it’s your business.”
“Your understanding is incorrect. She’s inexperienced in the ways of finance. I’m an advisor. That’s all.”
“At this point, as I told Ms. Licata, I’m not interested in the business-whoever owns it. I’m only interested in the murder of Pete Relovich.”
