Flipping Out (8 page)

'Tony, relax,'
Kilcullen said. 'They're just doing their—'

Terry isn't the
type to let the boss fight his battles. 'So we interviewed Marisol,' he said to
Tony. 'It's not like we cuffed her and carted her off. It's called police
work.'

'Yeah, well the next
time you got police work with my family, let me know ahead of time.'

'Yeah, I'll send
you a registered letter,' Terry said. He turned to Charlie. 'How about you? You
got the same beef?'

Charlie just
shook his head. 'Hey, man, my buddy's wife was murdered...whatever it takes.'

'Thanks,' Terry
said. 'And now, if it's OK with Detective Dominguez, I'm gonna take a piss.'

Tony shot him
the finger.

'All right,
knock it off,' Kilcullen said. 'Get back to work.'

'Yeah,' Terry
said. 'And one more thing about your dumb scenario. I was wondering what cop
would take a few hundred bucks from a pimp, and then cover up the crime by
killing another cop's wife. I was thinking, how stupid can one cop be? But
you're right. I gotta start thinking outside the box.'

Terry stormed
out and Kilcullen stood up. 'Dammit, Dominguez, the victim was in business with
your wife. Of course she gets questioned.'

'Marisol said he
was a total wiseass,' Tony said.

'It's part of
his charm,' Kilcullen said. 'Get over it. And rein in that Latin temper. I got
enough crap to deal with.'

Tony threw both
hands up and left the room. Charlie gave me a smile and followed.

'And Lomax,'
Kilcullen said. 'Get your partner to start acting civil, or you're both...
Never mind. I don't care who you piss off. Just solve it.'

It probably
would have been a good time to go home and let Terry cool down. But when I got
back to my desk there was a message from the coroner's office. The autopsy was
complete, and they had released Jo Drabyak's body. She was Jewish, and it's a
tradition to bury the dead as soon as possible, so the funeral was scheduled
for the next morning.

'You realise
we're not going to get much work done tomorrow,' I said. 'You want to order a
pizza and put in a couple of hours tonight?'

Terry, still
seething from his head-to-head with Tony, grumbled something that sounded like
yes. Two slices into a large pie, he was his old self again.

As promised,
Nora Bannister faxed us a list of people she thought might have wanted to hurt
her by murdering Jo. They included two reviewers, half a dozen authors, a
Hollywood producer, a fan who she informed us 'couldn't get close enough to
kill me, because I have a restraining order against him,' and her former
publisher, who Nora informed us was the only one on the list she wanted to kill
herself.

'It's hard to
believe she writes murder mysteries,' Terry said. 'Three of the authors live in
New York, the reviewers are from Boston and Atlanta, and except for the
producer and the fan, nobody else lives in LA. Most of these people probably
have the same alibi - sorry, officer, but my ass wasn't even in California when
the murder occurred.'

'She's not
stupid,' I said. 'The note on the cover page says, "Don't be fooled by the
geography. Just because they don't live here doesn't mean they couldn't have
hired a hit man. And before you judge me, remember - even paranoids have
enemies".'

'Put it on the
bottom of our Help-We-Can-Do-Without pile,' Terry said. 'Unless she signed it,
in which case we can sell it on eBay.'

We recruited
Muller, our superstar computer tech, to stick around and help us wade through
all of Reggie's vice arrests over the past three years.

There were
hundreds of files. The hookers and pimps were the usual bottom feeders you meet
when you work vice, but the johns were a whole different socioeconomic
demographic.

'So far I've got
a high school principal, a banker, and an ad exec,' Muller said.

'I'll trade
you,' Terry said. 'I'll give you a lawyer, a neurosurgeon, a left-handed
pitcher, and a first-round draft choice to be named next spring.'

I didn't join in
the banter. I understood all too well why some guys wind up paying for sex. My
wife, Joanie, was only thirty-five when she was diagnosed with cancer. She put up
a brave fight and hung on for almost three years. As the clock ticked and the
chemo dripped, our sex life became as terminal as she was.

It was during
one of those long dry spells that I met Coral C. Jones. Her brother Tyrell had
been accused of robbing and killing a 7-Eleven clerk. At least, that's what it
looked like on the surveillance video. But Coral C. swore he was innocent, and
I agreed to take one more long hard look at the evidence. She was right. Two
days later I arrested the real killer.

Coral C. offered
to pay me back with the oldest currency known to man. She was a hooker - big,
brown, beautiful - and the very thought of losing myself in that exotic beauty
for one night turned me on. But I turned her down. I didn't cheat. For better,
for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, I was married.

Two years later,
when Joanie died, I called Coral C. and took her up on her offer. With one
exception. I insisted on paying for the sex.

I was drunk, but
I don't blame the booze. I make no apologies, and I have no regrets. I just
don't share it with anyone. Not even Terry, although he'd be the least
judgmental of anyone I could ever tell.

Joanie had left
me a series of letters, along with instructions to read one each month after
she died. The letters were painful, heartbreaking, and one night a month for
the next six months I turned to Coral C. for release. It was strictly
professional. And then I met Diana, and a life I never thought I could have
again began to open up to me.

Reggie Drabyak's
cases had hundreds of names of men who got caught paying for sex, and the more
prominent they were, the more Terry seemed to enjoy their fall from grace.

'Look at this
one, Mike,' he said. 'A minister.'

I looked at the
file and didn't say a word.

Who am I to
judge?

The funeral
chapel was packed. The mayor and the chief of police sat in the front row
between Reggie and Jo's parents. Behind them, friends, family, politicians, and
cops. Lots of cops. Many with their wives.

Barb Brown, Jo's
lifelong friend, who had flown in from New Jersey, gave a moving fifteen-minute
eulogy that painted a picture of Jo from the day they met in grade school to
their very last e-mail exchange.

Four other
people spoke. Nora Bannister was not one of them, but her daughter, Julia, read
a poem. Finally, Reggie. It was a sweet, awkward, poignant tribute. He closed
by inviting everyone to the house after the funeral to eat, drink, and
celebrate Jo's life. 'I apologise in advance for the food,' he said. 'It would
be a much nicer buffet if Jo were around to plan it.'

And then he
introduced Helen Ryan, to sing 'Sail On, Little Girl, Sail On,' Reggie and Jo's
favourite song.

'She's blind,'
Marilyn whispered. It was impossible to tell. The woman walked slowly but
confidently to the podium, without the help of a cane, a dog, or an escort.

Ryan was about
forty, with short sandy blonde hair and a totally unassuming air. She was no
more than five-foot- two, but she had a powerful, bluesy voice that reminded me
of Joplin. She poured her soul into the song, wrenching new meaning from lyrics
that were once full of promise for Reggie and Jo. If it had been a concert
instead of a funeral, the crowd probably would have leapt to its feet and
yelled for more.

Killers often
can't resist showing up for their victim's funeral, so despite the fact that we
were there as friends, Terry and I were working. Nothing caught our radar at
the chapel or the cemetery.

When we got to
the house, the emotional focus shifted from Jo to Reggie. A number of women
swarmed around him, bringing him food and refilling his glass. One even stood
behind him and massaged his neck. I stared at Reggie as long as I could, then I
closed my eyes and let the memories of Joanie's funeral flood over me.

I felt Terry's
hand on my shoulder. 'This isn't easy for you, is it?' he said.

'What?' I said,
opening my eyes. 'A funeral for a cop's wife? It's easier than the last one I
went to.'

'Yeah, I
remember what you looked like that day. Reggie doesn't look quite as devastated.'

'He's better
than I am at hiding his feelings,' I said.

'Plus he's got
all these touchy-feely women without wedding rings to help him get through his
grief.'

'Once a cop, always
a cop, eh, Biggs? Look, he swore to us he wasn't involved with anyone,' I said.
'He even offered to take a poly.'

'Right. Of
course, we never did take him up on his offer.'

The crowd at the
buffet table had thinned out, so Terry and I stepped up to grab some food. The
blind woman who sang at the funeral was standing there with an empty plate in
her hand.

'Need any help?'
I asked.

'You're either
trying to pick me up, or somebody told you I was blind,' she said. 'Either way,
you're out of luck. I'm married, and I'm not totally blind, just legally. It's
called optic atrophy. My vision is degenerating, but I can still tell the
difference between a tray of lasagne and a bowl of chicken salad.'

'Is that chicken
salad?' I said. 'I thought it was tuna.'

'Trust me, it's
chicken,' she said, tapping her nose. 'I'm Helen Ryan.'

'Mike Lomax. And
this is my partner, Terry Biggs.'

'Nice to meet
you,' she said. 'How long have you two been a couple?'

'He's not that
kind of a partner,' I said. 'We work together.'

'Open mouth,
insert foot,' she said. 'Sorry, what kind of work do you do?'

'We're
hairdressers,' Terry said.

She giggled.
'He's funny.'

'We're homicide
detectives,' I said. 'I'm the one who's not funny.'

'Are you
investigating Jo's death?' she asked.

'We are,' I
said. 'How long did you know her?'

'Just about a
year. I live next door to the house Nora and the girls are renovating on
Cherokee. They've done such a beautiful job. I keep telling them they're doing
more to drive up my property values than my husband and I have done since we
bought the place.'

'Is your husband
here?' I said.

'He's at sea,'
she said. 'He's a merchant marine. He left on Monday. He won't be back for a
month.'

We made small
talk with Helen for another ten minutes. Then we stepped out into the backyard
where people were still having lunch. Julia, Nora, and Marisol were sitting
together at a table. My father, Big Jim Lomax, was towering over them, a beer
in one hand. There were several available folding chairs, but Jim wisely didn't
trust them to support a six-foot-four, three-hundred-pound teamster.

Nora waved, and
we walked over. 'How's it going?' she asked.

I knew what she
meant by 'it,' but I avoided the issue. 'Reggie's eulogy was touching,' I said.
'And Julia, I know Jo would have loved your poem.'

'I think it
could still use some work,' Nora said, before Julia could respond. 'But at
least she was better than that rent-a-rabbi. It was so obvious that he didn't
know Jo.

All that generic
crap about the fragility of life and the mysterious ways of the Lord. Plus he
kept looking down at his cheat sheet every time he said her name, and even then
he still pronounced Drabyak wrong.'

'Well, I really
enjoyed Julia's poem,' I said.

'Thanks,' Julia
said. It was all she could get out before Nora grabbed the spotlight again.

'My book launch
party is tomorrow at seven. I expect to see you boys there. You were such a
huge help when I was doing research.'

'I'm looking
forward to it,' I said, throwing in a plastic smile to go along with the phoney
sentiment.