He led me behind the garage to where a female cop guarded Vassily Levitch’s corpse. The body lay on a narrow strip of soiled concrete backed by another high ficus hedge, sharing space with five plastic garbage cans. A battery-op LAPD floodlight turned everything bilious. Milo told the policewoman to take five. She looked grateful as she headed toward the cactus garden.
He stood back and let me take in the details.
A mean, putrid space; even the grandest of estates have them, but on this estate, you had to make your way through two acres of beauty to find it.
Best kill spot on the property. Someone who’d been here before and knew the layout?
I raised the point. Milo chewed on it but said nothing.
I got closer to the body, stepping into greenish light.
In life, Levitch had been a handsome young man—a golden-haired boy, literally. His sculpted face stared up into the night, topped by a mass of curls that caressed his shoulders. Prominent nose, chin, cheekbones, an aggressive forehead. Long-fingered hands were frozen in palms-up supplication. The tails of his cutaway coat had crumpled under him. A starched white shirt, now mostly crimson, had been ripped open, exposing a hairless chest. A seven-inch slit, the edges curling, ran vertically from umbilicus to the hollow beneath the pianist’s sternum. Something pale and wormy peeked out from the wound. A curl of bowel.
Levitch’s white pique bow tie was also blood-splotched. His eyes popped, a distended tongue flopped from one corner of his mouth, a bloody ring necklaced his gullet.
I said, “Paramedics rip the shirt?”
He nodded.
I stared at the corpse some more, moved away.
“Any thoughts?”
“Baby Boy was stabbed, Julie Kipper was strangled, and this poor guy endured both. Was the cut pre- or postmortem?”
“Coroner says probably pre because of all the blood spray. Then the wire was looped around his neck. So what are you saying? A serial with escalation?”
“Or strangulation is the killer’s goal and sometimes he needs to make concessions. Sadists and sexual psychopaths enjoy choking out their victims because it’s intimate, slow, and feeds the power lust incrementally. Julie was an easy target because she was tiny, and the cramped space of the bathroom trapped her, so the killer was able to go straight for his fun. Levitch, on the other hand, was a strong young guy, so he had to be disabled first.”
“What about Baby Boy? Far as I’ve heard, there was nothing around his neck.”
“Baby Boy was a huge man. Choking him out would’ve been a challenge. And Baby Boy’s kill spot was public—a city alley, easy for someone to walk by. Maybe the killer was being careful. Or he got spooked before he could finish.”
“Be interesting to know how Levitch’s stab wounds match up with Baby Boy. I’ll check with Petra. Till now we didn’t think our cases had anything in common.”
He stared at me, shook his head. Took another look at Levitch.
“However this shakes out, I need to do the routine, Alex. Which in this case is major-league scut: IDing audience members, canvassing the neighborhood for sightings of suspicious strangers, checking the files for recent prowler calls. Too much for one noble soldier. The guys who pulled the case initially are a couple of D-Is, green, no whodunit experience, claim they’re interested in getting their feet wet. They actually seem grateful for Uncle Milo’s council. I’ll sic ’em on the grunt work, get on the phone tomorrow with Levitch’s agent in New York and see what I can learn about him.”
“Hey, boss-man,” I said.
“That’s me,” he said. “Chairman of the Gore. Seen enough?”
“More than enough.”
We walked back to the house, and I thought about Vassily Levitch left to die in the company of garbage cans. Baby Boy, dumped in a back alley, Juliet Kipper’s life terminated in a toilet.
“Demeaning them is the thing,” I said. “Reducing art to trash.”
17
The next day Milo asked me to a meeting. Five P.M. in the back room of the same Indian restaurant.
“I’ll be there. Anything new?”
“Levitch’s agent and mother had nothing to offer. She mostly sobbed, all the agent could say was Vassily was a beautiful boy, amazing talent. The reason I want to put heads together is Petra said Levitch’s wound sounds like a perfect match to Baby Boy’s. Plus, the coroner’s telling me the ligature used on Levitch is the same gauge and consistency as the one used to choke out Julie. And guess what—your idea about Baby Boy’s killer being spooked might be right-on. Turns out there was a witness in the alley, some homeless guy. Pretty well booze-blasted, and between that and the darkness, his description didn’t amount to much. But maybe the killer sensed him and split.”