“He has two addresses, but just one car?”
“Yup.”
“He doesn’t spend on fancier wheels,” I said. “Or clothing. The place in the Marina is his prize.”
“Got to be. His crib on Franklin’s a dump. One-bedroom walk-up in an old three-story building. I drove by last night, figuring to catch a glimpse of him, maybe with Degussa. No luck. His mailbox is full. Now I know why. He prefers the sea breeze.”
*
The Explorer was black turned to gray by weeks of dirt. Bird shit speckled the top and the hood.
Bennett Hacker avoided the freeway and took side streets west: through the downtown crush to Figueroa, then south to Olympic, past Staples Center, all the way to Robertson. Then a right on Pico, to Motor, southward to Washington, where the avenue dead-ended at the Sony studio lot. Another right turn, and we were heading for the Marina.
A circuitous route; it took nearly an hour. Hacker made no attempts at shortcuts or slick maneuvers. He drove the way he walked. Slow, easy, not even a lane change unless it was essential. He smoked constantly, rolled the window down and flicked butts.
Milo stayed three cars behind him, and there was no sign Hacker noticed. At Palms, Milo phoned Sean Binchy and told him to forget about joining the tail, it wasn’t looking complicated. Binchy was mired in bureaucracy and enjoying it: airline records, the border patrol, querying the IRS for Jerome Quick’s tax records.
Milo told him, “Glad it’s fun for you, Sean.”
At Washington, just east of Palawan Way, Bennett Hacker stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought himself a Slurpee, and I took a picture of him sipping through two straws. Still drinking, he got back in the Explorer, turned onto Via Marina and drove right past his apartment. Tossed the empty cup out the window where it bounced along the median.
He continued through the Marina—past Bobby J’s and a spate of other harborside restaurants—and pulled into a strip mall on the south end.
Coin Laundromat, liquor store, window grate company, boat outfitters.
HOG TRAIL MOTORCYLE SHOP.
Fat-lettered, Day-Glo banners above the garage entrance said a big sale was going on. Big shiny bikes, many of them chopped and customized, were arranged in a tilting chorus line out in front.
“Here we go,” said Milo. “A new toy for our civil servant.”
I photographed Hacker entering the shop and kept clicking away when he came out a few moments later talking with another man.
His companion bummed a cigarette. Big, solid guy in a white T-shirt and tight blue jeans. Work boots. His hands and arms and the shirt were grease-stained.
Multiple tattoos, slicked-back dark hair. Raymond Degussa looked heavier and older than his most recent mug shot. He’d grown back his mustache, now graying, and added a soul patch that emphasized a heavy lower lip.
“Well, well,” said Milo. “Mr. Ray does have a day job. Probably another cozy cash situation, like the club. No papers filed, no tax returns.”
“Look what’s on the floor to his right,” I said.
Three rolls of black tarpaulin. Neoprene; a shred had been found at Flora Newsome’s crime scene.
Milo’s jaw set.
“I don’t want to push good fortune,” I said, “but that window grate company over there has got to keep iron bars in stock. Talk about one-stop shopping.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Milo. “How about some more pictures?”
Click click click.
Degussa found a rag and wiped his hands. Bennett Hacker talked, and both of them blew smoke that vanished in the beach air. No expression on Degussa’s long, hard face.
Then he nodded and grinned and snapped the rag and flicked it ten feet away into a white bucket just past the Neoprene rolls. Two points. This one could shoot.
He peeled off his greasy T-shirt, revealed slab pecs, a hard, protruding belly, bulky hirsute shoulders, arms, and neck, a thick waist softened by love handles. Some definition, but mostly size. Prisons had free weights for bulking up, no fancy toning machines.
Crumpling the shirt, he returned inside the bike shop, came out wearing a short-sleeved black silk shirt that hung loose over the same jeans and boots.