Had Gavin learned something that made him a threat to Gull?
Was the secret something to do with the Quick family? Why had Jerome Quick lied about Barry Silver being a golfing buddy? Why hadn’t he told us that he, himself, had spearheaded the referral?
Did Quick have some kind of prior relationship with Koppel or Gull? Some specific reason he wanted Gavin under the group’s care?
If so, he wasn’t saying, and now Gavin was dead.
And so was his therapist.
I turned it over a couple of times, produced nothing but a headache, broke for a cup of coffee, found the machine empty, and was loading it when Ned Biondi called.
“Doc,” he said. “Sorry for not keeping in touch, but I just moved, and the boxes aren’t even unpacked.”
“Oregon?”
“The other direction. Got myself a great little apartment on Coronado Island. Dinky little place because everything’s so expensive, but what do I need, one guy.”
I said, “It’s pretty out there.”
“Got a view of the bay, the bridge. Norma and I got divorced. To be accurate, I divorced her. Last year.”
“Sorry to hear about it.”
“Don’t be, I should’ve done it years ago. She’s a mean woman, terrible mother—you remember how she wouldn’t give you the time of day, wouldn’t participate in Anne Marie’s treatment?”
“I do.”
“Ice queen,” he spit. “As far as I’m concerned she was a big part of Anne Marie’s problem, I should’ve recognized it sooner. You probably saw it, but you couldn’t come out and say that, right? ‘Go divorce your wife, Ned.’ You’d have said that, I’d have fired you. But you’d have been right.”
“How’s Anne Marie?”
“Mostly good,” he said. “Not always great. She has her moods, but most of the time, good. That husband of hers is okay, and they just had a third kid. Career-wise, she never got it together, but she says she loves being a mom and why shouldn’t I believe her? She’s a terrific mom, the kids love her, Bob loves her. Do you know what made me realize I needed to divorce Norma?”
“What?”
“I decided to quit smoking. Finally got serious about it. So what does Norma do? Tries to talk me out of it, I’m talking a pitched battle. She didn’t want to quit because smoking was something we did together—cigarettes and coffee in the morning, reading the paper. Taking walks and puffing away like the cancer fiends we were. She actually accused me of abandoning her by wanting to quit. I stuck to my guns, and she went ballistic. So I sat back and thought, ‘Dummy, she doesn’t care if you get sick or die, she just wants what she wants, it’s all about her.’ Thirty-five years too late, but what the hell, I’m here, and she moved to New York to write a novel and I’m wearing the patch and have worked myself down to seven Winstons a day.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. So what can I do for you?”
I told him about the photo of the blond girl.
He said, “I’ll make a call, but I’m sorry to say I can’t promise you, Doc. The paper’s not about public service—if it ever was. It’s about peddling ad space, and that means going for the hook. From what you’re telling me there’s no juicy angle to this one.”
“A double killing?” I said. “Two kids up on Mulholland?”
“Unfortunately L.A.’s more of a company town than it ever was, and juice means a Hollywood tie-in. Give me a klepto starlet boosting scanties on Rodeo, and I’ll guarantee you lots of print inches. Two kids on Mulholland is tragic, but it ain’t man bites dog.”
“How about this for a hook: The police didn’t want to release the photo because it was too early in the investigation, but an anonymous source supplied it to the Times.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Maybe the editors will go for that, they’ve got a reflexive dislike of authority. Anytime they can show they’re not in lockstep with LAPD it makes them feel the muckrackers they wish they were . . . okay, I’ll try. By the way, is it true?”
“LAPD Communications didn’t want to release it because they thought it lacked a hook.”