Sonny Koppel said, “Can I offer you guys something to drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Koppel’s soft, bulky shoulders rose and fell. He sighed, sank into a green tweed La-Z-Boy recliner, kept the chair upright.
Milo and I took the plaid sofa.
“So,” said Koppel, “what can I do for you?”
“First off,” said Milo, “is there anything you can tell us about your ex-wife that could help us solve her murder?”
“I wish there was. Mary was a remarkable person—attractive, really smart.” Koppel ran a hand over his scalp. Instead of settling, his hair picked up static and coiled as if alive. The room was dim and he was backlit with fluorescence from the kitchen and the hair became a halo. Sad-looking, pajama-bottomed guy with an aura.
“You’re thinking,” he said, “how did someone like her ever hook up with someone like me.”
His lips curled like miniature beef roulades, approximating amusement. “When Mary and I met I didn’t look like this. Back then I was more shortstop than sumo. Actually, I was a pretty decent jock, got a baseball scholarship to the U., had Major League fantasies.”
He paused, as if inviting comment. When none followed, he said, “Then I ripped a hamstring and found out I had to actually study to get out of there.”
One hand dipped into the popcorn bowl. Koppel gathered a full scoop and transferred the kernels to his mouth.
Milo said, “You met Dr. Koppel when you were in law school?”
“I was in law school, and she was in grad school. We met at the rec center, she was swimming, and I was reading. I tried to pick her up, but she blew me off.” He touched his abdomen as if it ached. “The second time I tried, she agreed to go out for coffee, and we hit it off great. We got married a year later and divorced two years after that.”
“Problems?” said Milo.
“Everyone’s got them,” said Koppel. “What’s the cliché—we grew apart? Part of the problem was time. Between her dissertation and my classes, we never saw each other. The main problem was I screwed up. Had an affair with a woman in my class. To make it worse, a married woman, so two families got messed up. Mary let me down easy, she just wanted a clean break. Stupidest thing I ever did.”
“Cheating on her?”
“Letting her go. Then again, she probably would have broken it off, even if I had been faithful.”
“Why’s that?”
“I was kind of at loose ends back then,” said Koppel. “No goals. Only reason I went to law school was because I didn’t know what else to do. Mary was just the opposite: focused, put-together. She has”—He winced—“had a powerful persona. Charisma. I couldn’t have kept up.”
“Sounds like you’re selling yourself short,” said Milo.
Koppel looked genuinely surprised. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ve done some background on you, sir, and you’re one of the biggest landlords in Southern California.”
Koppel waved a thick hand. “That’s just playing Monopoly.”
“You’ve played well.”
“I’ve been lucky.” Koppel smiled. “I was lucky to be a loser.”
“A loser?”
“I nearly flunked out of law school, then I chickened out of taking the bar. Started experiencing anxiety attacks about taking it that put me in the ER a couple of times. One of those pseudo–heart attack things? By then Mary and I were having our problems, but she helped me through it. Deep-breathing exercises, having me imagine relaxing scenes. It worked and the attacks stopped and Mary expected me to take the bar. I showed up early, looked around the room, walked out, and that was it. That bothered Mary more than my cheating on her. Soon after, she filed.”
Koppel’s hand waved again, this time limply. “Couple months after that, my mother died and left me an apartment building in the Valley, so all of a sudden I was a landlord. A year later, I sold that property, used the profit and a bank loan to invest in a bigger building. I did that for a few years—flipping and trading up. Real estate was booming, and I made out okay.”