I pointed to a little patio with a sliding glass door across from the kitchen. “Go out there,” I said to Granger, “and wait until I’m through talking to him.”
“In my own apartment I’m entitled-”
“Go!”
“But-”
“Now!”
She flipped Abazeda off and trudged off to the patio.
I pulled up a chair next to him. “What’re you doing here?”
He gingerly tapped his eyebrow with a pinkie. “I just came here to ask the bitch why she sent you after me.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“Who else?”
“I’ve talked to a lot of people connected to this case.”
“Why’re you wasting your time talking to me when-”
“I’m asking the questions here.”
“I’m not sure I want to answer them.”
“You can answer them here or at the station.”
He lightly touched the bruise over his eyebrow with a fingertip and grimaced. “Go ahead.”
“You told me you spent last Thursday night-the night Pete Relovich was killed-playing Texas Hold’em at the Kismet Casino’s high-limit table.”
“That’s right.”
“You’re a lying sack of shit. I just talked to the head of security there. He studied every player at the high- limit table, and he didn’t see you.”
He started at me with that disquieting popeyed expressed for a moment. Then he laughed. “You probably gave this security fellow my picture and he tried to identify me, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Have him try again.”
“Give me a reason.”
“I’m a damn good poker player. Sometimes too good. People at the L.A. card clubs are big gabbers. A few have spread the word and told some marks, ‘If you see a bald guy who looks kind of like a towel head, don’t play with him.’ So I pull a little switch. At all the other clubs, I play like this,” he said, rubbing his shiny pate. “But occasionally I play at the Kismet Casino, and when I do, I always wear a black toupee. That’s why some of the insiders, the money players, call me ‘Toupee Ray.’ A few of the marks figure it out; but a lot don’t. So tell your security guy to check the tape again and look for me-but with hair. I think he’ll spot me.”
I hoped he was bullshitting me, because he was the best suspect I had. “You better be right. Because if you’re not, I’m coming over to your place and hooking you up.”
“Am I free to leave?”
“Yeah. Get out of here. But I’m putting you on notice that there’s now a record of you busting in here. If anything should happen to her, you’ll be my number one suspect. So stay away from this place.”
When he left, I motioned for Granger, who was staring at me through the sliding glass door, to come in. She quickly crossed the room and threw her arms around me. “Thanks for coming right over. I’m very afraid of that man.”
As she ran a fingernail down my back, I felt a stir of interest. My hands lingered around her waist for a moment, then I pushed her away. Am I out of my mind? What the fuck am I doing?
“When you called me, you claimed he was slapping you around.”
“He was.”
I tapped her cheeks with my index fingers. “There’s not a single mark on your face.”
She gave me a half-smile. “I heal fast.”
“I can see that,” I said skeptically.
“Let me think of a way to thank you for coming all the way over here. While I’m thinking, how about a drink?”
I shook my head.
She took a step toward me.
Holding up my palms, I took a quick step back, hurried out the door and to my car.
When I returned to my loft, I called Dickie Jenkins at the Kismet Casino and asked him if he would view the video of the high-limit table again. But this time instead of searching for my guy with a bald head, I asked him to find the same guy-but with a hairpiece.
Jenkins didn’t sound too happy about it, but he agreed to do a quick search.
An hour later he called back.
“I found this character with the beaver pelt. Actually it’s a damn good piece. I never would have known it was a piece if you hadn’t tipped me off. He arrived shortly before eight and I fast-forwarded and he didn’t split until about two in the morning.”
“I wish you’d have told me that before. Would’ve saved me a lot of time.”
At my desk on Saturday morning, I realized that I was stumped. When I’m at a dead end, I often like to review a case away from the squad room, a conventional place that fosters conventional thinking. Sometimes I like to ponder the whys and wherefores of a homicide in a setting where I can let my mind wander.
I walked out of the PAB, down First Street and entered the Kyoto Grand Hotel, a drab white tower in the heart of Little Tokyo. Crossing the lobby filled with Japanese businessmen and tourists, I took the elevator to the third floor. Above the bustle of downtown, with Bunker Hill’s skyscrapers looming in the distance, the hotel featured a traditional half-acre Japanese strolling garden. In the center was a six-foot waterfall flowing into a reflecting pool filled with darting koi, surrounded by blooming red and white azaleas, pink hydrangeas, and trellises laced with bugle vines. The hotel called the spot “the garden in the sky” and claimed it was designed to incorporate seven principals of Zen: spirituality, asymmetry, austerity, subtlety, simplicity, naturalness, and calmness. When I first began visiting the spot to get a respite from the squad room, I’d decided that the best way to solve a homicide was to clear my mind and incorporate those seven principals.
After wandering through the deserted garden for a few minutes, I grabbed a chair and set it down at the edge of the pond, beside a patch of grass that was as satiny as a putting green. Listening to the splash of the waterfall and the wind rustling the leaves of a sycamore, I felt a world away from downtown.
I spread the murder book on my lap and studied the crime scene photographs and diagram, the statements from neighbors, my autopsy notes, and the preliminary investigation report written by the Harbor Division officers. But after an hour of sifting through the murder book, I realized I was no closer to finding Pete Relovich’s killer than when I had picked up the case the week before.
On Sunday, I returned to San Pedro, walked through Relovich’s house again, traversed the backyard, and wandered down the hill and back up again. By Sunday night, I was afraid that I had picked up the case too late. I wished Duffy had contacted me the night of the murder, not twenty-four hours later.
When I walked to work on Monday, it was warm and clear, a late May morning with a warm breeze from the east and a hint of summer in the air. I could smell the oil stains on the street baking in the sun.
As I entered the squad room door, Ortiz, who liked to parrot the stock Hollywood detective cliches, called out, “Who’s the perp? Is an arrest imminent?”
I ignored him, and as I sat down at my desk, my phone rang.
“Detective Levine, it’s Walt Jenkins from SID serology.”
“What do you have for me?”
“We got a hit,” Jenkins said.
“Don’t leave me hanging.”
“The DNA results just came back. You got the hit on the Kleenex.”
“From the bathroom wastebasket?”
“Yeah. The snot gave us the sample. We got a match in the database. His name is Terrell Fuqua.”
