No parking spots. Milo told me to pull into a red zone near the corner, he’d pay for the ticket.
The twin gates meant two groups of mail slots. A. Paul’s button was on the north end of the building. Apt 43. No answer. No manager’s unit listed. Back to the southern gate.
Apt 1, no name, just Mgr.
It was 11:40 P.M. Milo jabbed the button.
I said, “Let’s hope for a night owl.”
“What’s a little sleep deprivation in the service of justice?”
*
A male voice said, “Yes?”
“Police.”
“Hold on.”
I said, “He doesn’t sound surprised. Maybe the tenants are interesting.”
A buzzer sounded, and we pushed through the gate.
The fifty units were arranged in two tiers that looked down on a long, rectangular courtyard that should have held a pool. Instead there was sketchy grass and lawn chairs and a collapsed umbrella. A couple of utility doors on the ground floor were marked TO PARKING LOT. Three satellite dishes rimmed the flat roof. TV sounds washed across the courtyard. Then: music, a smudge of human voice, breaking glass.
The manager’s unit was just to the right, and a man stood in the open doorway. Young, short, maybe thirty, with a head shaved clean and a little frizzle of chin beard. He wore gym shorts, a baggy white T-shirt that read WOLF TRAP 2001, and rubber flip-flops.
When we reached him, he said, “I was expecting uniforms.”
“You get a lot of uniforms?”
“You know, noise calls and such.”
Milo flashed his ID.
“Lieutenant? Is this serious or something?”
“Not yet, Mr . . .”
“Chad Ballou.” He extended his hand for a soul-shake, thought better of it, and rotated into the conventional position.
Milo said, “Lots of noise calls?”
Ballou’s eyes traced the tiers. “Not more than you’d expect with all these people. I tell the tenants to let me know first if there’s a problem, but sometimes they don’t. Which is fine, I don’t really want to deal with their stuff.”
“You manage the units full-time?” said Milo.
Chad Ballou said, “Relatively full-time. My parents own the place. I’m at CSUN, studying classical guitar. They think I should study computers. The deal is I do this instead of their just giving me money.” He smiled cheerfully. “So what’s up?”
“We’re looking for Angela Paul.”
Ballou touched his chin growth with his right hand. His nails were longish and glossed. Those on his left hand were clipped short. “Paul . . . Forty-three?”
“That’s the one.”
“The stripper.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“She put it on her lease application,” said Ballou. “Brought in pay stubs from a club to prove it. My folks wouldn’t have approved, but I said, hey, why not? Her income’s better than a lot of the losers who try to get in.” Ballou grinned. “They put me in charge, I figure it’s up to me to decide. Anyway, she’s been no problem, pays her rent. What’s the deal?”
“We want to question her about an ongoing investigation.”
“Have you tried her unit?”
“No answer.”
“Guess she’s out.”
“She out a lot?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Ballou.
“You have a pretty good view from your place,” said Milo.
“When I’m here, I’m mostly practicing or studying. Unless there’s a complaint. And she never complained about anything.”
“She have visitors?”
“I couldn’t tell you that, either. I haven’t really seen her much. Forty-three’s all the way on the north end, upstairs. She can take the corner staircase down to the parking lot door, go in and out without being noticed.”
“So you’ve never seen her with anyone else?”
“Nothing registers.”
Milo showed him the shot of the blond girl.
Ballou’s eyes widened. “She looks dead.”
“She is.”
“Wow—so this is really serious. Is she going to be in trouble—the stripper? All I need is for some big mess that freaks out my parents.”
Milo waved the photo. “Never seen her?”
“Never. What happened to her?”
“Someone made her dead.”
“Jesus . . . you’re not going to tell me if I have something to worry about?”
“If Angie Paul’s body is lying moldering in her unit, you might.”
Chad Ballou blanched. “Shit—you’re serious?”