CHAPTER
33
“Yeah, it’s true about the paraffin test, he hasn’t fired a gun in a while,” said Milo. “But he still could have hired someone to shoot Locking. Maybe someone he met through the bondage trade.”
“He’s got a point about not destroying the photos,” I said. “If he had, you’d never have thought of him. So maybe the bondage games were the reason he was evasive.”
“Why did he hold on to the photos?”
“Could be just what he said. Mementos.”
“Mental or sexual?”
“Either, both.”
“So you buy his Mr. Submissive routine? Hope was God, he worshiped at her altar?”
“It would explain their marriage,” I said. “She was so controlled as a child, she craved someone willing to subjugate his ego totally. Despite what she told Elsa Campos, being tied up and left behind had to have been terrifying. She kept trying to work it through. And Seacrest’s passivity made him a perfect mate for her. He told Paz and Fellows he’d been a confirmed bachelor for years. Maybe the reason was he’d been a moon looking for a sun.”
“Working it through,” he said. “So she gets herself tied up again? Manipulated, bruised.”
“Restaging it,” I said. “But this time, she’s calling the shots.”
“With their games, the three of them coulda gone on the talk-show circuit,” he said.
“You are starting to sound,” I said, “less like a West Hollywood legend than a bourgeois policeman with a dutiful wife and an 818 lifestyle.”
He laughed harder than I’d heard him in a long time.
“Those guns you found in Locking’s house,” I said. “Heavy artillery for a grad student.”
“Three pistols, one rifle,” he said. “All loaded but stashed up in the closet. Too cocky for his own good.”
“And all that porn he had,” I said. “Locking was from San Francisco. Big Micky’s city, Big Micky’s business. Who owns the house?”
“Don’t know yet, but a neighbor said it was a rental. Before Locking there’d been lots of other tenants.”
“Be interesting if it’s the same landlord who owns Cruvic’s place on Mulholland.”
“Cruvic pays rent to a corporation based here in L.A.—Triad or Triton, something like that, but we haven’t traced it to any individual, yet. In terms of Big Micky, what I’ve learned so far is that he used to be a sizable sex-biz honcho—theaters, peep shows, massage parlors, escort services—but retired because of serious health problems. Heart, liver, kidneys, everything’s on the fritz. Had a couple kidney transplants that failed awhile back and ended up pretty screwed-up.”
“The old guy Ted Barnaby saw in Vegas with Cruvic was yellow,” I said. “Meaning jaundiced, meaning liver problems. Any word on whether Mandy Wright had ever worked in San Francisco?”
“Not yet. But there’s another NorCal connection: Hope’s mother died up there. Stanford Medical Center, breast cancer. All bills paid by a third party, we’re trying to find out who.”
“It reeks of history,” I said.
“Ph.D.’s with gangster connections.” He scratched his jaw. “I hate this case. Too many goddamn smart people.”
He walked me out of the station. As we hit the sidewalk on Purdue, someone called out, “Detective Sturgis?”
A big blue Mercedes sedan was parked in a red zone across the street. Two cell-phone antennas on the rear deck. One of those after-market custom packages that doubles the price: wire wheels, all the chrome removed, front apron, rear spoiler. Smoke puffed out the exhaust pipes, almost daintily.
The man at the wheel was in his early sixties with a shaven head and a deep tan that was probably part sun, part bottle. Black wraparound shades, white shirt, yellow tie. Gold glint of wristwatch as he turned off the engine, got out, and jogged across the street. Six feet tall, trim and nimble, probably a few face tucks, but time had tugged at the stitches and his chin flesh shook.
“Robert Barone,” he said in a breathy voice. A tan hand shot forward. “I know you’ve been trying to reach me but I’ve been out of town.”
“San Francisco?” said Milo as he shook the lawyer’s hand.
Barone’s smile was as sudden as bad news, as warm as sherbet.
“As a matter of fact, Hawaii. Little downtime between cases.” The sunglasses angled at me. “And you are Detective . . . ?”