Something developed. Because they had two common interests: the movies and Ardis
Peake. When Claire told Crimmins she’d picked Peake as a project, he decided to find out more. When Crimmins learned Claire was uncovering information potentially threatening to him, he decided to cast hex in Blood Walk.”
“Kills her, films her, dumps her,” he said. “It holds together logically; now all I have to do is prove it. I canvassed the shopping center, showed her picture to every
clerk who’d been working the day she was killed. No one remembered seeing her, alone or with anyone else. That doesn’t mean much, it’s a huge place, and if I can get a picture of Crimmins, I’ll go back. But maybe we can get a look at him in person.”
He waved the address slip. “This helps big-time. First let’s see if he registered his ‘Vette.”
The call to DMV left him shaking his head. “No G. W. Orson cars anywhere in the state.”
“Lives in L. A., but no legal car,” I said. “That alone tells us he’s dirty. Try another scrambled director’s name.”
“Later,” he said, pocketing the address. “This is something real. Let’s go for it.”
The block was quiet, intermittently treed, filled with plain-wrap, single-story houses set on vest-pocket lots that ranged from compulsively tended to ragged. Birds chirped, dogs barked. A man in an undershirt pushed a lawn mower in slo-mo. A dark-skinned woman strolling a baby looked up as we passed. Apprehension, then relief; the unmarked was anything but inconspicuous.
Years ago, the neighborhood had been ravaged by crime and white flight. Rising real estate prices had reversed some of that, and the result was a mixed-race district that resonated with tense, tentative pride.
The place G. W. Orson had called home twenty-two months ago was a pale green Spanish bungalow with a neatly edged lawn and no other landscaping. A FOR LEASE sign was staked dead center in the grass. In the driveway was a late-model Oldsmobile
Cutlass. Milo drove halfway down the block and ran the plates. “TBL Properties, address on Wilshire near La Brea.”
He U-turned, parked in front of the green house. A stunted old magnolia tree planted in the parkway next door cast some shade upon the Olds. Nailed to the trunk was a poster. Cloudy picture of a dog with some Rottweiler in it. Eager canine grin. “Have
You Seen Buddy?” over a phone number and a typed message: Buddy had been missing for a week and needed daily thyroid medication. Finding him would bring a hundred-dollar reward. For no reason I could think of, Buddy looked strangely familiar. Everything was starting to remind me of something.
We walked to the front of the green house, stepping around a low, chipped stucco wall that created a small patio. The front door was glossy and sharp-smelling-fresh varnish. White curtains blocked the front window. Shiny brass door knocker. Milo lifted it and let it drop.
Footsteps. An Asian man opened the door. Sixties, angular, and tanned, he wore a beige work shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, matching cotton pants, white sneakers. Creepily close to Starkweather inmate duds. I felt my hands ball and forced them to loosen.
“Yes?” His hair was sparse and white, his eyes a pair of surgical incisions. In one hand was a crumpled gray rag.
Milo flashed the badge. “We’re here about George Orson.”
“Him.” Weary smile. “No surprise. Come on in.”
We followed him into a small, empty living room. Next door was a kitchen, also empty, except for a six-pack of paper towel rolls on the brown tile counter. A mop and a broom were propped in a corner, looking like exhausted marathon dancers. The house echoed of vacancy, but stale odors- cooked meat, must, tobacco-lingered, battling for domir nance with soap, ammonia, varnish from the door.
Vacant, but more lived-in than Claire’s place.
The man held out his hand. “Len Itatani.”
“You work for the owner, sir?” said Milo.
Itatani smiled. “I am the owner.” He produced a couple of business cards.
TBL Properties, Inc. LEONARD J. ITATANI, PRES.
“Named it after my kids. Tom, Beverly, Linda. So what did Orson do?”
“Sounds like you had problems with him, sir,” said Milo.