talk-and when Peake ran amok, they were frightened, initially. Then amazed. Then pleased.” He knuckled his eyes. “What happened during your childhood to make you think this way?”
“Too much spare time.” Alcoholic father, depressed mother, dark hours alone in the basement fighting to escape the noise upstairs, struggling to create my own world…
“My, my, my.”
“At the very least,” I said, “wouldn’t it be good to find out where Derrick lives, what his financial situation is, does he have some sort of police record?” “Fine,” he said. “Fine.”
Back in Robbery-Homicide, he played with the computer. No wants or warrants out on
Derrick Crimmins, no listings on the sex offender rosters or the FBI’s VICAP file, and as far as we could tell, he wasn’t occupying space in any California jail.
A call to the Department of Motor Vehicles police info line revealed zero current registrations under that name.
Same for Griffith D. Wark. Find-A-Person yielded several D. Crimminses but no
Derricks. No G. D. Wark.
Milo said, “I’ll follow up with Social Security tomorrow. I’ll even check out the death certificates for the Crimmins family, just to show you I care. Where exactly did the boat thing go down?”
“All I know is, out on the water off the coast of south Florida,” I said. “Brother
Cliff crashed on a motocross run in Pimm, Nevada.”
He scribbled, closed his pad, got up heavily. “Whoever this Wark is, how’s he contacting Peake?”
“Maybe with ease,” I said. “Maybe he works at Starkweather.”
He grimaced. “Meaning I need to get a look at personnel records. My old pal Mr. Swig
… If this Blood Walk is a mega-snuff, you think Wark’s actually hoping to sell it?”
“Or he just wants to keep it around for his own amusement. If he’s Derrick and he inherited a bundle and doesn’t need money, it could be one big, sick diversion.”
“A game.”
“I always thought the murders had a gamelike quality to them.”
“If only,” he said, “you were a stupid guy and I could kiss off your fantasies….
Okay, back to Planet Earth. The Oak Barrel.”
“I’ll come with, if you want.”
He checked his Timex. “What about hearth and home?”
“Too hot to light a fire in the hearth, and the home’s empty for a couple more hours.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “You drive.”
Toluca Lake’s a pretty secret sandwiched between North Hollywood and Burbank. The main drag is a curving eastern stretch of Riverside Drive lined with low-profile shops, many with their original forties and fifties facades. The housing ranges from garden apartments to major estates. Bob Hope used to live there. Other stars still do, mostly those leaning toward the GOP. Lots of the great Western flicks were shot nearby, at Burbank Studios and up in the surrounding foothills. The Equestrian
Complex is just a short drive away, as is NBC headquarters.
A quick turn on either side of Riverside takes you onto quiet streets emptied at night by permit-only parking and an attentive police force. Toluca Lake restaurants tend to be dim and spacious, leaning toward that unclassifiable fare known as continental cuisine, once an L.A. staple, now nearly extinct west of Laurel Canyon.
White hair doesn’t elicit sneers from the wait staff, martinis aren’t the retro craze of the minute, piano bars endure.
From time to time I testify in a Burbank court and find myself down here, thinking about the perfect suburbia of black-and-white TV shows: moderne furniture, fat sedans, dark lipstick. Jack Webb tippling steely-eyed at a vinyl-padded bumper, winding down after a long day on the set. Nearby might be the guy who played Ward
Cleaver, whatever his name was.
I’d been to a few of the Riverside Drive restaurants, but not the Oak Barrel. It turned out to be a modest stack of bricks and stucco squatting on a southeastern corner, half-lit by streetlamps, the cask-and-tankard logo discreetly outlined in green neon above the porte cochere. A parking lot twice the size of the restaurant put the construction date at late forties, early fifties. No valet, just a well-lit asphalt skillet with scores of spaces, a quarter of them occupied. Lincolns,
Cadillacs, Buicks, more Lincolns.