Evidence (39 page)

“Thank
you, sir.”

“Don’t
thank me, just row like a galley slave.”

Days
passed. A week. Milo resigned himself to Southwest Division.

“Used
to be a rib joint there. Meanwhile, I’m eating healthy.”

Today,
that translated to triple portions of lamb and unlimited vegetables from his
personal buffet at Moghul.

The
woman in the sari refilled iced tea as if she were paid by the pitcher.

“Guess
what,” he said. “One of the prime gunrunner suspects is the nephew of
Councilman Ortiz and Ortiz is the oily sludge in His Munificence’s tap water.”

“Politics,”
I said.

“Whatever
he claims, he’s one of them.”

The
door to the street opened. A midsized, bespectacled man in a dark green hoodie,
jeans, and sneakers stepped in, walked straight toward us without hesitation.

Late
twenties, shaved head, sharp cheekbones, rapid, purposeful stride.

Telltale bulge under the sweatshirt.

Milo’s
Glock was out before the guy got ten feet away.

The
woman in the sari screamed and dropped to the floor.

The
man’s eyes saucered behind thick lenses. “What the—Oh, shit—sorry.”

“Hands
on head, don’t move.”

“Lieutenant,
I’m Thorpe. Pacific Division?”

“Hands
on
head. Now!”

“Sure,
sure.” The man complied. “Lieutenant, I had to pack, doing a GTA sting, decoy
car’s not far from here, I figured I’d—I called your office first, sir, they
said you were here, I figured I’d just…”

Milo
reached under the sweatshirt, took the man’s gun. Another Glock. Did a
pat-down, found the badge in a jeans pocket.

Officer
Randolph E. Thorpe, Pacific Division.

Wallet
photos advertised a pretty young wife and three toddlers, Thorpe perched
proudly on a Harley-Davidson, a house with a gravel roof in the background. Two
credit cards and a certificate of membership in a Baptist church out in Simi
Valley.

Milo
said, “Okay, relax.”

Thorpe
exhaled. “I’m lucky I didn’t soil myself, sir.”

“You
sure are. What can I do for you?”

“We
talked a while back, sir. About a pay phone on Venice Boulevard? You were
looking for a tipster, a suspect named Monte? I think I might’ve found him for
you. Not Monte, your tipster.”

Milo
returned the gun. “Sit down, Officer Thorpe, and have some lunch. On me.”

“Um,
no, thanks, Lieutenant. Even if I hadn’t already eaten, my guts are kind of
knotted up.” Thorpe rubbed the offending area. “How about tea to settle them
down?”

“I’m
okay.” Thorpe looked around. “Is this place dangerous or something?”

“Someone
comes toward me, no introduction, obviously armed, I get a little
self-protective. You looked pretty intense, friend.”

“The job does that to me,” said Thorpe. “I concentrate
hard on whatever I’m doing. My wife says I turn into a robot even when I’m
watching TV. Sorry if I—”

“Let’s
chalk it up to a misunderstanding. How about some tea for Officer Thorpe,
here?”

The
woman in the sari said, “Yes, sir.” Back on her feet and looking none the
worse. Downright happy, actually. Her faith in Milo’s protective powers
validated, yet again.

“Who’s
the tipster, Officer Thorpe?”

“Randy’s
fine, sir. I can’t be sure, but there’s this old guy, I thought of him a few
days after we spoke, he’s a local. I didn’t call you right away because I had
nothing to back it up, then yesterday I spotted him approaching that same phone
booth, my last day in uniform before the GTA thing. I was on Code Seven, having
coffee across the street, he walks right up to the booth, makes like he’s going
to call, changes his mind, leaves. Returns a few minutes later, gets as far as
picking up the receiver, changes his mind again, leaves. I stuck around but he
didn’t come back. It could be nothing, but I figured.”

“Appreciate
it, Randy. Got a name?”

“All
I know is George. But he lives in one of those old-age homes nearby. Here’s the
address.”

“Excellent,”
said Milo. “Keep those eyes sharp, Randy. This works out, I’ll put in a good
word with the chief.”

“You
can do that?”

“Anytime.”

Two
Georges in residence at the mint-green apartment complex recast as Peace
Gardens Retirement Center. George Bannahyde was wheelchair-bound and never left
the building. George Kaplan, “one of our healthier ones,” resided in a
second-story room.

Too
many old-age homes are hovels designed to stuff owners’ pockets with taxpayer largesse.
This one was clean, fresh smelling, softly lit, with snacks in abundance and
well-fed, nicely groomed residents playing board games, exercising on mats,
watching movies on
wide-screen TVs. A posted schedule
listed activities every daylight hour, mealtimes excepted.

Milo
assured the desk clerk that Mr. Kaplan wasn’t in trouble, just the opposite, he
was important to LAPD.

She
said, “George?”

“Is
he in?”

“Up
in his room. I can call him down if you’d like.”

“No,
that’s fine, we’ll just drop in.”

Lots of
head-turns as Milo and I walked past the activity. We climbed the stairs to a
freshly vacuumed corridor. Bouncy brown carpeting, mock-adobe walls,
burnt-orange doors equipped with name slots.

G.
Kaplan’s
door was open. A small,
round-backed, light-skinned black man sat on a neatly tucked bed, wearing a
white shirt buttoned to the neck, knife-pressed maroon slacks, spit-polished
black-and-white wingtips. Skimpy silver hair was pomaded to iridescence.
Gray-blue eyes, not that different in hue from mine, studied us with amusement.
A box of Tam Tam crackers, a bottle of dry-roasted peanuts, and a setup for
instant coffee sat on a nightstand. The wall above the headboard bore portraits
of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson, the latter signed.

Two
chairs faced the bed. George Kaplan said, “Sit, Gemma called from downstairs,
officers, all ready for you.”

Singsong
cadence, velvety intonation; maybe one of New Orleans’s many variants. His eyes
were serene but both hands trembled and his head rocked at irregular intervals.
Parkinson’s disease or something like it.

“Thanks
for meeting with us, Mr. Kaplan.”

“Nothing
else to do.” Kaplan’s lips parted. Too-white dentures clacked. “What does law
enforcement have in mind with relation to George S. Kaplan?”

Milo
studied the photos before settling. “LBJ? Usually it’s JFK.”

“George
S. Kaplan isn’t usual. Those Kennedys were fine, if you like pretty faces.
President Johnson didn’t look like a movie star—
Lord,
those ears, he got no respect. But it was him pushed through legislation to
smooth out the races.”

“The
Great Society.”

“He
was a dreamer, same as Dr. King. I did the man’s shoes, Ambassador Hotel. The
president, not Dr. King, unfortunately. Had a stand there for forty-eight and a
half years. Was there the night RFK got shot, tried to tell the cops I’d seen
that Jordanian lunatic skulking around the hotel for days, muttering to
himself. No one cared what I have to say.”

“We
care.”

Kaplan
massaged a pearl shirt button, fought to still his hands. “Know how old I am?”

“You look
good, sir.”

“Take
a guess, Officer—’scuse me, Detective. You’re a detective, right?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“What’s
your guess? Don’t worry, I won’t be insulted.”

“Normally,
I’d say seventies, Mr. Kaplan, but if you worked at the Ambassador for
forty-eight years and it closed around—”

“It
closed in 1989. Place gave sixty-eight years of service and they let it go
stone-cold. Architectural masterpiece, designed by Mr. Myron Hunt. Know who he
was?”

“No,
sir.”

“Famous
architect. Designed the Rose Bowl. Ambassador was a palace, drew in all the
finest people. You should’ve seen the weddings, the black-tie galas, I did my
share of last-minute patent-leather touchup and that’s a lost art. City bought
the property, says it’s going to be a school. Just what we need, teenagers
making a mess. So how old am I?”

“Eighty
…”

“Ninety-three.”

“You
look great, Mr. Kaplan.”

“Then
appearances are deceiving. I’m missing a whole bunch of internal organs,
doctors keep taking things out of me. Apparently,
God
gives us extra organs that can be removed without serious consequence. As to
why, you’d have to ask Him. Which I’m figuring I’ll get a chance to do, soon.
Care for crackers?”

“No,
thanks, sir.”

“Peanuts?”

“We’re
fine, sir.”

“So
what about George S. Kaplan is of interest to the Los Angeles police?”

“Monte.”

Kaplan
looked at his knees. “I got a Jewish name, in case you didn’t notice. Kaplan
comes from Hebraic. Means chaplain. I still haven’t figured it out. Someone
said my family might’ve worked for Jewish slave owners but that’s wrong, we’ve
been freemen since the beginning. Came over
after
emancipation, from
Curaçao, that’s an island in the Caribbean, lots of Jews used to live there so
who knows? What do you think, Detective? Can the mystery be solved?”

“The
Internet has lots of genealogy websites—”

“Tried
all that. My great-grandson Michael, he’s a computer geek—that’s what he calls
himself. That’s how I learned about the Hebraic origin of my name. But it led
nowhere. Guess some mysteries don’t like being solved.”

“Some
do, sir. Monte?”

“How’d
you locate me?”

“We
traced your tip-call to the pay phone.”

“Lots
of people use that pay phone.”

“Not
as many as you’d think, Mr. Kaplan.”

“Cell
phones. Don’t want one. Have no need for one.”

“An
officer watching the booth saw you approaching it yesterday. It appeared to him
as if you were ready to make another call, changed your mind.”

Kaplan
laughed. “And here I was, being careful.”

“You
wanted to help but didn’t want to get overly involved.”

“He’s
a frightening person, Monte. I lived ninety-three years, would like a few
more.”

“There’s no need for him to know, Mr. Kaplan.”

“You
arrest him based on my word, how’s he not going to know?”

“You’ll
be listed in my notes as an ‘anonymous source.’”

“Until
some lawyer pokes around and you feel the pressure.”

“I
don’t respond well to pressure,” said Milo. “And I never break my word. I
promise your name will never appear in any case file.”

Kaplan
kept his eyes down. “Sure you don’t want a cracker?”

“It’s
not food I need right now, sir.”

“You
think Monte killed that girl.”

“I
think I need to hear what bothers you about him.”

“Huh,”
said the old man. “George S. Kaplan does his civic duty like his mother taught
him and look where it gets him.”

“If
Monte’s dangerous, sir, all the more reason to get him off the street.”

“I’ve
never seen him do anything dangerous.”

“But
he’s a scary guy.”

“I’ve
lived long enough to know a frightening person when I see one. No respect for
his elders.”

“He
was discourteous to you?”

Kaplan’s
head shifted from side to side. When it stopped moving, he said, “That girl on
the TV, the pretty one who was killed in that big house near Bel Air. She lived
with him. Him and his other girlfriend, the three of them going in and out of
that house. Normally, you’d think they were up for hanky-panky but all the
times I saw them, they didn’t look like they were having recreation.”

“Serious?”

“More
than serious, I’d called it purposeful. Sneaky eyes, like they were up to
something. I walk around the neighborhood a lot, good for the joints and the muscles,
I notice things other people don’t. There’s a woman right down the block, been
cheating on her husband with the gardener for near on six years, kisses her
husband when he comes home like she’s madly in love with the poor fool, when
he’s gone she’s with the gardener. People do crazy things, I could tell you all
sorts of stories.”

“Tell us about Monte and the girl on TV.”

“The
last time I saw her with him was maybe a week before she got killed. Monte’s
other girlfriend wasn’t there, just that girl and Monte, and they were going
into that house and I started thinking maybe Monte’s cheating on one girlfriend
with the other girlfriend, she’s certainly a better looker. But they didn’t
look up for fooling around—grim, that’s the word. Real grim. After Monte let
the girl in, he turned around, gave me the dirtiest look you’ve ever seen.
Said, ‘Got a problem, old man?’ I just kept on going, could feel him watching
me, made the small hairs stand up. Never walked near there again. A week or so
later, I’m watching the fifty-inch downstairs and the news comes on, there
she
is. A drawing, but it’s her. So I do my civic duty. What I didn’t figure on was
having to do more.”