Last guy in L.A. with no cell phone. It had taken me years to buy a VCR, a good deal longer to get cable hookup. I’d stalled at getting a computer even after the libraries at the U. abandoned their card catalogs. Then my electric typewriter broke and I couldn’t find replacement parts.
My father had been a machinist. I stayed away from machines. Lived with a woman who loved them. No sense introspecting.
The operator said, “Only one, it just came in. A Detective Connor. That’s not the one who usually calls you, is it?”
“No,” I said. “What did she want?”
“No message, just to call.”
Petra had left her number at Hollywood Division. Another detective answered and said, “She’s out, want her mobile?”
I got through. Petra said, “Milo asked me to let you know that we found Eldon Salcido. He thought you might want to take a look at him.”
Milo sending a message through her, rather than calling himself. Knowing he and I were firmly planted on opposite sides of the Doss investigation.
Had Safer warned him off, or was he opting for discretion on his own? Either way, it felt weird.
“Did he say why I should take a look?”
“No,” she said. “I assumed you’d know. It was a short conversation. Milo sounded pretty hassled, still fighting to get warrants on that fat cat.”
“Where’d Salcido show up?”
“On the street. Literally. Messed up—beat up. Looks like he ran into the wrong bunch of butt-kickers. A resident coming out to collect the morning paper found him. Salcido was lying in the gutter. His pockets were empty, but that doesn’t mean he was robbed, he might not have carried a wallet. One of our cars got the call, recognized him from a picture I hung up in the squad room. He’s at Hollywood Mercy.”
“Conscious?” I said.
“Yes, but uncooperative. I left your name with the nurses.” She gave me a room number.
“Thanks,” I said.
“If you have any problems, call me. If you learn anything interesting from Salcido, you can call me, too.”
“Because Milo’s busy.”
“Seems to be. Isn’t everyone?”
“Better than the alternative,” I said.
“You said it. By the way, I’m seeing Billy tomorrow. We’re going over to see the new science center at Exposition Park. Anything you want to pass along?”
“Best regards and continue doing what he’s doing. And keep busy. Not that he needs me to tell him that.”
She laughed. “Yes, he’s a wonder, isn’t he?”
CHAPTER 30
IT TOOK FORTY minutes on the 10 East and surface streets to get to the shabby section of East Hollywood where Beverly meets Temple.
Second hospital of the day.
Hollywood Mercy was five stories of earthquake-stressed, putty-colored stucco teetering atop a scrubby knoll that overlooked downtown. The building had an inadequate parking lot, a cracked tile roof, some nice ornate moldings from the days when labor was cheap, most with chunks missing. City ambulances ringed the entry. The front vestibule was crowded with long lines of sad-looking people waiting for approval from clerks in glass cages. CAT scans, PET scans, MRIs; the same high-tech alphabet I’d seen at St. Michael’s, but this place looked like something out of a black-and-white movie and it smelled like an old man’s bedroom.
Mate’s bedroom.
His son was recuperating on the fourth floor, in something called the Special Care Unit. An unarmed security guard was posted at the swinging doors that led to the ward, and my I.D. badge got me waved through. On the other side was a chunky corridor five doors long with a nurses’ station at the end. A black man with a shaved head sat near a stack of charts, writing, and a lantern-jawed, straw-haired woman in her sixties tapped her finger to soft reggae thumping from an unseen radio. I announced myself.
“In there,” said the female nurse.
“How’s he doing?”
“He’ll survive.” She pulled out a chart. A lot thinner than Joanne Doss’s encyclopedia of confusion. A Hollywood Division police report was stapled to the inside front cover.
Eldon Salcido had been found beaten and semiconscious at 6:12 A.M. in the gutter of a residential block of Poinsettia Place, north of Sunset.