JONATHAN KELLERMAN. THE CLINIC

Dialing the Psych department, I filled my voice with annoyed authority and told the secretary, “This is Dr. Delaware. I need to locate a grad student on a research matter. Casey Locking. Your file on him’s missing and you gave me his number but I need an address.”

“One second, Doctor.” Click out, click in. “I have an address for him on 1391 Londonderry Place.”

After she read it off, I said, “What about his lab? Is there an extension there?”

“Hold on. . . . No, there’s nothing here.”

“Thanks. Is there a zip code for Londonderry Place?”

“L.A. 90069.”

Hollywood Hills, north of Sunset Strip. Nice address for a grad student. Thanking her again, I got dressed.

I drove Sunset through Beverly Hills and into West Hollywood, cruising by talent agencies, high-ticket defense attorneys, glass boxes filled with used Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Past the Roxy, the House of Blues, the Snake Pit, what used to be Gazzarri’s before it burned to the ground. At Holloway I spied a magenta-and-brass thing that said CLUB NONE over a neon highball glass and stirrer.

So Locking lived close to the place where Mandy had plied her trade, maybe with the ultimate bad john.

Next came Sunset Plaza with its Oscar-party fashion boutiques and sidewalk cafes crowded with would-be actresses and the poorly shaved vultures who wait for them to get rich or die. If any of the women found screen work, chances are it would be with their clothes off. One way or another the men would be watching.

Londonderry Place was a block beyond the last cafe, just past Ben Franks’s twenty-four-hour coffee shop, a steep, skinny, aerobic hike above the traffic. High, canted lawns, good-sized houses, most with less architecture than a bus stop.

Locking’s was two blocks up, one story, white, unmodified since its fifties birthdate. This high up there was bound to be a city view but the house had low, slatted windows. Arrow plants and yuccas and gazania crowned the sloping frontage. Concrete steps led to the front door and an alarm-company sign was staked at the top.

I walked up a very long driveway that continued past the house. Space for half a dozen vehicles but only one was parked there: black BMW 530i. Through an open wooden gate I saw a blue pool and concrete decking, an outdoor lounge chair. Thick, low-hanging ficus trees cast black shade.

Nothing luxurious but, still, the rent had to be two thousand a month.

I climbed the steps to the door. No mail piled up but it was too early for today’s delivery. The car said Locking might be home.

I rang the bell and waited. Music or something like it came through the door. Loud, pounding music. Screaming vocals.

Thrash metal. Locking’s choice of background as he tormented the rat.

I knocked louder, rang again, still no response. Descending to the driveway, I looked back at the street. No neighbors out. In L.A., they rarely are.

I slid past the BMW, and walked along the side of the house. More slatted windows.

The pool was fifties-big, an oval that took up ninety percent of the backyard. The rest was a hill of ivy disappearing under the gloom of the ficus trees—two of them, sixty feet tall and nearly as wide, with thick roots that had worked their way under the pool decking, cracking it, lifting it up. The lounge chair was rusted, as were two others just like it. Not far away were a gas barbecue and an unfurled garden hose, kinked so badly it was useless.

The music much louder from back here.

A fiberglass roof darkened sliding-glass doors left an inch ajar.

I went over and looked in. The room looked to be a den. Well-stocked wet bar, pub mirrors with ale trademarks, hanging glasses, big plastic ashtrays. Lights out except for green numbers dancing on a black face. Six-foot stereo stack. The CD player going. The music at steam-drill level.

Trying to ignore it, I put my hand against the glass and squinted. Alarm panel in a corner. Another green light: unarmed.

The gray carpeting was grubby. Black leather couches, black-lacquer tables, Lucite sculpture of a nude woman bending submissively. One wall was taken up by a huge chrome-framed litho of a melon-breasted, rouged woman in leather tights. Motorcycle cap pulled down over one of her eyes. The other winked. Opposite stood a free-form gray-granite fireplace with ragged edges. No logs. Black beanbag chairs. A single CD case on one.

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