When the Bough Breaks (38 page)

“That’s great. Speedy recovery to your aunt. I love you.”

“Love you too. Take care.”

26

S
OMETHING BOTHERED ME
the next morning. The troubled feeling persisted during the ride to Sea-Tac and up the ramp to the plane. I couldn’t get a handle on what it was that lurked in a bottom drawer of my mind, that lingered through the serving of the plastic food, the forced smiles of the flight attendants, the copilot’s bad jokes. The harder I tried to bring it to the forefront of my consciousness the further back it sank. I felt the impatience and frustration of a child encountering a Chinese finger puzzle for the first time. So I decided to just ride with it, sit back and wait and see if it came to me on its own.

It wasn’t until shortly before landing that it did. What had stuck in my head was last night’s conversation with Robin. She’d asked me about the dangers of hypnosis and I’d given her a speech about it being harmless unless the experience stirred up latent conflicts.
Dredged up primal memories
had been my exact words. Dredge up primal memories and the reaction is often terror …

I was stuffed with tension as the landing wheels touched down. Once free, I jogged through and out of the airport, picked up the Seville in the overnight lot, paid a considerable ransom to get it out the gate and headed east on Century Boulevard. Caltrans, in its infinite wisdom, had chosen to set up construction in the middle of the road during the morning rush in and out of LAX and, caught in a jam, I cooked in the Cadillac for the mile to the San Diego Freeway on-ramp. I took the freeway north, connected to Santa Monica West, and exited just before Pacific Coast Highway. A drive down Ocean and a few turns brought me to the Palisades and the place where Morton Handler and Elena Gutierrez had lost their lives.

The door to Bonita Quinn’s apartment was open. I heard cursing from within and entered. A man was standing in the front room kicking
the floral sofa and muttering under his breath. He was in his forties, curly-haired, flabby and putty-colored with discouraged eyes and a steel-wool goatee separating his first chin from his second. He wore black slacks and a light blue nylon shirt that clung to every tuck and roll of his gelatinous torso. One hand held a cigarette and flicked ashes onto the carpet. The other groped for treasure behind a meaty ear. He kicked the couch again, looked up, saw me and waved the smoking hand around the tiny room.

“Okay, you can get to work.”

“Doing what?”

“Loading this shit outta here—aren’t you the mover—” he looked at me again, this time with sharpened eyes. “No, you don’t look like a mover. Excuse me.” He threw back his shoulders. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Bonita Quinn and her daughter.”

“You and me both.”

“She’s gone?”

“Three friggin’ days. With who know how many rent checks. I’ve got tenants complaining their calls weren’t answered, repairs that haven’t been done. I call her, no answer. So I come down here myself and find she’s been gone for three days, left all this junk, hightailed it. I never had a good feeling about her. You do someone a favor, you get shafted. Happens every time.”

He inhaled his cigarette, coughed and sucked again. There was yellow around the irises of his eyes; gray, unhealthy flesh pouched the wary orbs. He looked like a man recuperating from a coronary or just about to have one.

“What are you, collection agency?”

“I’m one of her daughter’s doctors.”

“Oh yeah? Don’t tell me about doctors. It’s one of you that got me into this in the first place.”

“Towle?”

His eyebrows rose. “Yeah? You from his office? Cause if you are, I got plenty—”

“No. I just know him.”

“Then you know he’s a nag. Gets into stuff he has no business getting into. My wife hears me say this, she’ll kill me. She loves the guy. Says he’s terrific with the kids, so who am I to argue, right? What kind of doctor are you, anyway?”

“Psychologist.”

“The kid had problems, huh? Wouldn’t surprise me. She looked a little iffy, if you know what I mean.” He held out his hand, tilted it like the wing of a glider.

“You said Dr. Towle got you into the mess with Bonita Quinn?”

“That’s right. I met the guy once or twice, maybe. I don’t know him from Adam. One day he calls me out of the clear blue and asks me if I could give a job to a patient of his. He heard there was an opening for a manager in this place, and could I help this lady out. I say does this person have experience—we’re talking multiple units here, not some duplex. He says no, but she can learn, she’s got a kid, needs the money. I say, listen, Doc, this particular building is singles-oriented, the job’s not right for someone with a kid. The manager’s place is too small.” He looked at me scowling. “Would you stick a kid in a hole like this?”

“No.”

“Me neither. You don’t have to be a doctor to see it’s not fit. I tell Towle this. I explain it to him. I say, Doc, this job is meant for a single person. Usually I get a student from UCLA to do it—they don’t need a lot of space. I’ve got other buildings, I tell him. In Van Nuys, a couple in Canoga Park, more family-oriented. Let me call my man in the Valley, have him check it out, I’ll see if I can help this person.

“Towle says, no, it has to be this building. The kid’s already enrolled in school in this neighborhood, to move her would be traumatic, he’s a doctor, he knows this to be a fact. I say, but Doc, you can’t have kids making noise in a place like this. The tenants are mostly singles, some like to sleep late. He says I guarantee you this kid is well-behaved, she makes no noise. I think to myself this kid makes no noise, there’s gotta be something wrong with her—now
you
show up and it makes sense.

“I try to put him off, but he presses me. He’s a nag. My wife loves him, she’ll kill me if I get him pissed off, so I say okay. He makes an appointment for me to meet this lady, shows up with the Quinn broad and the kid. I was surprised. I gave it a little thought the night before, figured he was humping this broad, that’s why the Albert Schweitzer routine. I expected something classy, with curves. One of those aspiring actress types, you know what I mean? He’s older, but he’s a classy-looking guy, right? So in he walks with her and the kid and they look like a pair outta the Dust Bowl, real hicks. The mother is scared outta her skull, she’s smoking more than me, which is a feat—the kid’s, like I told you, a little iffy, just stares into space, though I’ll grant you she’s quiet. Didn’t make a sound. I had my doubts she could handle the job, but what could I do, I already committed myself. I hired her. She did okay. She was a hard worker, but she learned very slowly. No complaints about the kid, though. Anyway, she stays for a few months, then she flies the coop leaving me with this junk and she’s probably got five grand worth of rent checks, I have to go back and trace ’em and have the tenants put stops on ’em and write new ones. I gotta
clean this place, hire someone new. Let me tell you, no more Mister Nice Guy for Marty. For doctors or anyone else.”

He folded his arms over his chest.

“You have no idea where she went?” I asked.

“I did, would I be standing here jawing with you?”

He went into the bedroom. It was as bleak as I remembered it.

“Look at this. How can people raise kids like this? I got three, each has his own room, they got TV’s, bookshelves, Pac Mans, all that stuff. How can a kid’s mind grow in a place like this?”

“If you hear from her or find out where she is, would you please call me?” I took out an old business card, crossed out the number and wrote my home phone number on it.

He glanced at it, and put it in his pocket. Running one finger along the top of the dresser he came up with a digit cloaked with dust kittys. He flung the dust away. “Yecch. I hate dirt. I like things to be clean, know what I mean? My apartments are always clean—I pay extra for the best cleaning service. It’s important tenants should feel healthy in a place.”

“You’ll call me?”

“Sure, sure. You do the same for me, too, okay? I wouldn’t mind finding Miss Bonita, get my checks back, give her a piece of my mind.” He fished in his pocket, pulled out an alligator billfold and from it produced a pearl-gray business card that said M and M Properties, Commercial and Residential, Marduk I. Minassian, President, followed by a Century City address.

“Thanks, Mr. Minassian.”

“Marty.”

He continued probing and inspecting, opening drawers and shaking his head, bending to look under the bed Bonita Quinn had shared with her daughter. He found something under there, stood up, looked at it and tossed it in a metal wastebasket where it landed with a clang.

“What a mess.”

I looked in the basket, saw what he had discarded, and pulled it out.

It was the shrunken head Melody had shown me the day we’d spent together at the beach. I held it in my palm and the rhinestone eyes glared back, glossy and evil. Most of the synthetic hair had come loose but a few black strands stuck out of the top of the snarling face.

“That’s junk,” said Minassian. “It’s dirty. Throw it away.”

I closed my hand over the child’s keepsake, more sure than ever that the hypothesis I’d developed on the plane was right. And that I had to move fast. I put the shrunken head in my pocket, smiled at Minassian, and left.

“Hey!” he called after me. And then he muttered something that sounded like “Crazy doctors!”

I retraced my route, got back on the freeway and headed East, driving like a demon and hoping the Highway Patrol wouldn’t spot me. I had my L.A.P.D. consultant badge in my pocket but I doubted it would help. Even police consultants aren’t supposed to weave in and out of traffic going eighty miles an hour.

I was lucky. Traffic was light, the guardians of the asphalt were nowhere to be seen, and I made it to the Silver Lake exit just before one. Five minutes later I was walking up the steps to the Gutierrez home. The orange and yellow poppies drooped, thirsty. The porch was empty. It creaked as I stepped onto it.

I knocked on the door. Cruz Gutierrez answered, knitting needles and bright pink yarn in her hands. She didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“St, señor?”

“I need your help, señora.”

“No hablo inglés.

“Please. I know you understand enough to help.”

The dark, round face was impassive.

“Señora, the life of a child is at stake.” That was optimism speaking. “
Una niña
. Seven years old—
siete años
. She’s in danger. She could be killed.
Muerta
—like Elena.”

I let that sink in. Liver spotted hands tightened around the blue needles. She looked away.

“Like the other child—the Nemeth boy. Elena’s student. He didn’t die in an accident, did he? Elena knew that. She died because of that knowledge.”

She put her hand on the door and started to close it. I blocked it with the heel of my palm.

“I feel for your loss, señora, but if Elena’s death is to take on meaning, it can be through preventing more killing. Through stopping the deaths of others. Please.”

Her hands started shaking. The needles rattled like chopsticks in the grasp of a spastic. She dropped them and the ball of yarn. I bent and retrieved them.

“Here.”

She took them, held them to her bosom.

“Come in, please,” she said, in English that was barely accented.

I was too edgy to want to sit but when she motioned me to the green velvet sofa I settled in it. She sat across from me as if awaiting sentence.

“First,” I said, “you must understand that darkening Elena’s memory
is the last thing I want to do. If other lives were not at stake I wouldn’t be here at all.”

“I understand,” she said.

“The money—is it here?”

She nodded, got up, left the room and came back minutes later with a cigar box.

“Take.” She gave me the box as if it held something alive and dangerous.

The bills were in large denominations—twenties, fifties, hundreds—neatly rolled and held together by thick rubber bands. I made a cursory count. There was at least fifty thousand dollars in the box, probably a good deal more.

“Take it,” I said.

“No, no. I don’t want. Black money.”

“Just keep it here, until I come back for it. Does anyone else know about it—either of your sons?”

“No.” She shook her head adamantly. “Rafael know he take it and buy the dope. No. Only me.”

“How long have you had it here?”

“Elena, she bring it over the day before she was killed.” The mother’s eyes filled with tears. “I say, what is this, where you get this. She say, can’t tell you, Mama. Jus’ keep it for me. I come back for it. She never come back.” She pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from up her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes.

“Please. Take it back. Hide it again.”

“Only a little while, señor, okay? Black money. Bad eye.
Mal ojo.”

“I’ll come back for it if that’s what you want.”

She took the box, disappeared again, and returned shortly.

“You’re sure Rafael didn’t know?”

“I sure. He know, it would all be gone.”

That made sense. Junkies weren’t known for being able to hold on to their nickels and dimes, let alone a small fortune.

“Another question, señora. Raquel told me that Elena had in her possession certain tapes—recorded tapes. Of music, and of relaxation exercises given to her by Dr. Handler. When I went through her things I found no such tapes. Do you know anything about that?”

“I don’ know. This is the truth.”

“Has anyone been through those boxes before I got here?”

“No. Only Rafael an’ Antonio, they look for books, things to read. The
policía
take boxes first. Nothin’ else.”

“Where are your sons, now?”

She stood up, suddenly agitated.

“Don’ hurt. They good boys. They don’ know nothin’.”

“I won’t. I just want to talk to them.”

She looked to one side, at the wall covered with family portraits. At her three children, young, innocent and smiling; the boys with short hair, slicked and parted, and open-necked white shirts; the girl in a frilly blouse between them. At the graduation picture: Elena in mortarboard and gown, wearing a look of eagerness and confidence, ready to take on the world with her brains and her charm and her looks. At the somber-tinted photo of her long-dead husband, stiff and solemn in starched collar and gray serge suit, a workingman unaccustomed to the fuss and fiddling that went with having one’s countenance recorded for posterity.