“Yeah, she’s a little hyper, isn’t she? But at least someone’s cooperating…. So, what do you think about Peake’s latest soliloquy?”
“If there’s some deep psychological meaning, it’s eluding me.”
” ‘Choo choo bang bang.’ ” He laughed. “Talk about loco motives.”
We returned to the Robbery-Homicide room. A Dunkin’ Donuts takeout box dominated
Mile’s desk. He said, “Shouldn’t you be getting home to Robin?”
“I told her it might take a while.”
He studied the notes he’d scrawled in the interrogation room. “Heidi,” he said. “Our little mountain girl. Too bad everything she’s come up with is probably worth a warm bucket of spit…. ‘Choo choo bang bang.’ What’s next? Peake reads selections from
Dr. Seuss?”
He rubbed his eyes, stacked some papers, squared the corners with his thumbs.
“You think it was poor judgment?” he said. “Asking her to check on Pelley?”
“Not if she’s discreet.”
“Worse comes to worst, Swig finds out, gets all huffy. He can’t afford to make too big a deal of it-bad publicity.”
“Anything new on Pelley’s whereabouts?” I said.
“Zilch. Ramparts was notified by the P.O., so there’s something positive. Other than that, the P.O. wasn’t very helpful. Caseload in the hundreds; to him, Pelley was just another number. I doubt he could point him out in a crowd.”
He pulled a folded sheet out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. LAPD Suspect
Alert. Pelley’s vital statistics and a photo so dark and blurry I couldn’t see it being useful for anything. All I could make out was a round, clean-shaven Caucasian face smudged with indeterminate features. Thin, light-colored hair. Serious mouth.
The crime was failure to report.
“This is what they’re using?” I said, placing the paper on the desk.
“Yeah, I know-not exactly Cartier-Bresson. But at least they’re looking. I did some looking, too. Driving around the neighborhood, checking out MacArthur Park,
Lafayette Park, alleys, con bars, some other bad-guy spots I know. Visited the halfway house, too. Old apartment building, cons out in front, some Korean guy running the place-sincere enough, told me he’d been a social worker in Seoul. But he barely speaks English, and basically all he does is warehouse the residents, do random drug tests maybe four times a year. Counseling consists of asking the cons how they’re doing. The ones I saw hanging around didn’t look at all insightful. As for Pelley, all the Korean could say was that he’d been quiet, hadn’t caused problems. None of the cons remembered a damn thing about him. Of course.”
He reached for a piece of stale cinnamon roll. “He could be a thousand miles away by now. I didn’t do much better with Stargill’s investment records. The Newport money managers wouldn’t talk to me, and they informed him I’d been asking around. He calls me, all irate. I tell him I’m just trying to clear him, how about he voluntarily gives me a look at his stock portfolio. If everything checks out, we call it a day.
He says he’ll think about it, but I could tell he won’t.”
“Hiding something?” I said.
“Or just guarding his privacy-everyone gets privacy, right? Even guys who cook and eat babies. Everyone except citizens who get laid out on steel tables, some white-coat peeling off their face, doing the Y-cut, playing peekaboo with their internal organs. No privacy there.”
20.
ROBIN DIDN’T STIR when I slipped into bed beside her at one A.M. Visions of Peake’s crimes and the knowledge that I hadn’t helped Milo much kept me up for a while, heart beating too fast, muscles tight. Deep-breathing myself into an uneasy torpor,
I finally slipped off. If dreams intruded, I had no memory of them in the morning, but my legs ached, as if I’d been running from something.
By nine A.M., I was drinking coffee and catching what passes for TV news in L.A.: capped-toothed jesters hawking showbiz gossip, the latest bumblings of the moronic city council, the current health scare. Today, it was strawberries from Mexico: everyone was going to die from an intestinal scourge. Back when I’d treated children, the news had frightened more kids than any horror flick.
I was about to switch off the set when the grinning blonde gushed, “And now more on that train accident.”