Milo paced the garage, examined the walls, then the floor. He stopped at the rear left-hand corner, beckoned me over. Itatani came, too.
Faint mocha-colored splotch, amoebic, eight or nine inches square.
Milo knelt and put his face close to the wall, pointed. Specks of the same hue dotted the paneling. Brown on brown, barely visible.
Itatani said, “Cat pee. I was able to scrub some of it off.”
“What did it look like before you cleaned it?”
“A little darker.”
Milo got up and walked along the back wall very slowly. Stopped a few feet down, wrote in his pad. Another splotch, smaller.
“What?” said Itatani.
Milo didn’t answer.
“What?” Itatani repeated. “Oh-you don’t- Oh, no…” For the first time, he was sweating.
Milo cell-phoned the crime-scene team, apologized to Itatani for the impending disruption, and asked him to stay clear of the garage. Then he got some yellow tape from the unmarked and stretched it across the driveway.
Itatani said, “Still looks like cat dirt to me,” and went to sit in his Oldsmobile.
Milo and I walked over to the south-side neighbor. Another Spanish house, bright white. The mat in front of the door said
GO AWAY. Very loud classical music pounded through the walls. No response to the doorbell. Several hard knocks finally opened the door two inches, revealing one bright blue eye, a slice of white skin, a smudge of red mouth.
“What?” a cracked voice screeched.
Milo shouted back, “Police, ma’am!”
“Show me some I.D.”
Milo held out the badge. The blue eye moved closer, pupil contracting as it confronted daylight.
“Closer,” the voice demanded.
Milo put the badge right up against the crack. The blue eye blinked. Several seconds passed. The door opened.
The woman was short, skinny, at least eighty, with hair dyed crow-feather black and curled in Marie Antoinette ringlets that reminded me of blood sausages. A face powdered chalky added to the aging-courtesan look. She wore a black silk dressing gown spattered with gold stars, three strings of heavy amber beads around her neck, giant pearl drop earrings. The music in the background was assertive and heavy-Wagner or Bruckner or someone else a goose-stepper would’ve enjoyed. Cymbals
crashed. The woman glared. Behind her was a huge white grand piano piled high with books.
“What do you want?” she screamed over a crescendo. Her voice was as pleasing as grit on glass.
“George Orson,” said Milo. “Is it possible to turn the music down?”
Cursing under her breath, the woman slammed the door, opened it a minute later. The music was several notches lower, but still loud.
“Orson,” she said. “Scumbag. What’d he do, kill someone?” Glancing to the left.
Itatani had come out of his car and was standing on the lawn of the green house.
“Goddamn absentee landlords. Don’t care who they rent to. So what’d that scumbag do?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, ma’am.”
“That’s a load of double-talk crap. What’d he doT’ She slapped her hands against her hips. Silk whistled and the dressing gown parted at her neckline, revealing powdered wattle, a few inches of scrawny white chest, shiny sternal knobs protruding like ivory handles. Her lipstick was the color of arterial blood. “You want info from me, don’t hand me any crap.”
“Mr. Orson’s suspected in some drug thefts, Mrs.-”
“Ms.,” she said. “Sinclair. Ms. Marie Sinclair. Drugs. Big boo-hoo surprise. It’s about time you guys caught on. The whole time that lowlife was here there’d be cars in and out, in and out, all hours of the night.”
“Did you ever call the police?”
Marie Sinclair looked ready to hit him. “Jesus Almighty- only six times. Your so-called officers said they’d drive by. If they did, lot of good it accomplished.”
Milo wrote. “What else did Orson do to disturb you, Ms. Sinclair?”
“Cars in and out, in and out wasn’t enough. I’m trying to practice, and the headlights keep shining through the drapes. Right there.” She pointed to her front window, covered with lace.
“Practice what, ma’am?” said Milo.
“Piano. I teach, give recitals.” She flexed ten spidery white fingers. The nails were a matching red, but clipped short.
“I used to do radio work,” she said. “Live radio-the old RKO studios. I knew Oscar