“She hang with any other crazies?”
“You gonna arrest me?”
“Not if you cooperate.”
“You gonna take these off?” Shifting his arms. “It hurts.”
His wrists were tiny, and she’d ratcheted the cuffs tight. But no way was he in pain. She’d been careful, she always was. Everyone an actor . . .
“They come off when we’re finished.”
“Ain’t this illegal?”
“Duncan.”
“Sorry, sorry—okay okay okay what I know . . . what was the question?”
“Did she hang with other crazies.”
“Not any I saw. It’s not like she was there all the time, like a part of the scene. She’d be there, then she wouldn’t. Know what I mean? I never talked to her, no one talked to her, she didn’t talk to no one. She was crazy.”
“Do you know for a fact that she was hooking?”
Strobe’s fuzzy tongue traveled along the meager, parched strip of grayish tissue that passed for his lower lip. “No. I can’t say that. I just assumed. Cause she got in the car.”
“What kind of car?”
“Just a car,” he said. “Nothing fancy—no Beemer or Porsche.”
“Color?”
“Light.”
“Big or small?”
“Small, I guess.”
Kevin Drummond drove a white Honda. Milo’s call about the car turning up near the airport firmed Kevin up further as their guy. The plan was to wait until the vehicle was processed, then she’d be bracing Kevin’s parents, again.
Strobe’s story kicked things up several notches. Time and place, a perfect fit.
Kevin decides Erna’s expendable, picks her up, drives her a few blocks away, plies her with booze, does the deed, ditches the car in Inglewood, makes the short hike to LAX and is heavenward.
Milo had called her early this morning, before she left. No sightings of Kevin at the airport, yet.
“The car,” she said. “Give me a brand, Duncan.”
“I dunno, ‘Tective Connor.”
“Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Chevy, Ford?”
“I dunno,” Strobe insisted. “That’s the truth, I don’t wanna give you some bullshit and then you find out different and you think I’m lyin’ and you come back for me—could you please take these off, I can’t stand being tied up.”
Something in the kid’s tone—a genuine plaintiveness that spoke of past indignities—tugged at her heart. Runaways came to Hollywood for a reason. For a horrible moment, Petra visualized a younger, rosy-cheeked Duncan Beemish tied up at home by some pervert.
As if sensing her unease, Strobe broke down and cried even louder.
Petra cut him off mentally. “Not a van? Definitely a car?”
“A car.”
“Not an SUV?”
“A car.”
“Color?”
“Light.”
“White, gray?”
“I dunno, I ain’t lying to you—”
“Why’d you assume she was hooking, Duncan?”
“Because she was on the street and the car pulled up and she got in.”
“How many people in the car?”
“Dunno.”
“What did the driver look like?”
“Didn’t see him.”
“How far were you from the car?”
“Um um um, maybe half a block.”
“This happened right on the boulevard?”
“No, a side street.”
“Which one?”
“Um . . . Ridgeway, yeah I think it was Ridgeway, yeah yeah Ridgeway. It’s real dark there, go there and check, all these broken streetlights.”
Ridgeway was a block from where the surgeon had been busted. The city had probably fixed the lights, only to have them vandalized by the freelance pharmacists.
Petra said, “Before she got in the car, did she talk to the driver?”
“No, she just got in.”
“No negotiating? No scoping out for a U.C. cop? That doesn’t sound like a hooker, Duncan.”
Strobe’s eyes widened. Speedfreak insight. “Yeah, you’re right!” He squirmed some more. “Can you take these off? Please?”
She pumped him a while longer, got nothing, left the car, returned to Mr. Gold Tooth and ordered a jumbo kabob combo with double hot peppers and an XL cola. Once again, he tried to freebie her, once again she insisted on paying in full, and Tooth’s dark eyes clouded.
Some ethnic insult, no doubt. “I give you extra bebbers.”
Returning to the Honda, she placed the food on the trunk, pulled Strobe out, uncuffed him, had him sit on the curb, a few feet away. He complied readily and she brought him the food and another twenty-dollar bill.