Serpentine
- Автор: Келлерман Джонатан
- Серия: Alex Delaware #36
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Random House Publishing Group/Ballantine Books
- ISBN: 978-0-525-61855-3
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «Serpentine». Краткое содержание книги:
This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo’s independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases — the decades-old death of the mother she never knew.
The facts describe a likely loser: a mysterious woman found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the case and failed. But as Delaware and Sturgis begin digging, the mist begins to lift. Too many coincidences. Facts turn out to be anything but. And as they soon discover, very real threats lurking in the present.
This is Delaware/Sturgis at their best: traversing the beautiful but forbidding place known as Los Angeles and exhuming the past in order to bring a vicious killer to justice.
“Aw c’mon.”
“Nope.”
“At least let me do the tip.” He began to reach for his wallet.
Robin placed her hand on his. “We’re your support group. Accept the love.”
The following morning at ten, I got a text from Maxine Driver.
Found something but probably not useful.
Open to anything. Can you send?
Not great condition, might be better to hand over in person.
Name the time and place.
An hour, the pizza place?
Perfect. Thanks, Maxine.
You’ll find a way to pay me back.
The “pizza place” was Gipetto’s, a student hangout on Westwood Boulevard, two blocks south of campus. Questionable beer by the pitcher was the star, everything else, the supporting cast.
I’d have sprung for somewhere nicer but Maxine has a thing for pizza. The basic American pie, nothing designer. Her Korean-immigrant parents forbade it when she was small.
I’d asked what they were worried about.
“Anything new.”
I arrived first. At eleven in the morning the place was nearly empty, a few groggy-looking sophomores praying to their phones.
A waitress who was probably their peer came over. “Oven just got to the right temp, orders won’t be ready for fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”
“No problem. Large mushroom whenever.”
“Cool attitude,” she said. “Are you a prof? I’m looking for a comfortable elective.”
“At the med school across town.”
Shrug. “That doesn’t help me.”
At ten after, Maxine strode in carrying an oversized tan leather bag and wearing a black wrap dress swirled with purple and a string of pearls too large to be real.
She’s a tall, slim woman just turned forty but looking younger, pretty without the self-consciousness of someone who’s traded on her looks. She wears her hair in a flapper-type bob that fits her fascination with the past.
L.A.’s criminal past, in particular, a topic that stymied the History Department because she refused to infuse her conclusions with “analyses of contemporary hot-button topics.” Instead, she plugged away like a true scholar, piling up more awards and peer-review publications than could be ignored, making tenure unavoidable.
Her life’s work also baffled her parents. (“Bad people should be forgotten.”) Another insult added to the familial injury Maxine had inflicted by forsaking premed. Marrying a physician had blunted the issue but hadn’t erased it. (“I’m sure they’re convinced David will leave me for someone younger and appropriately obedient, I’ll be poor and be unable to take care of them.”)
She waved as she approached. “Did you order?”
“The usual.”
“Excellent.” We shook hands and she sat. “How’s it going on the case?”
“It’s not.”
“Sorry. Like I said, this is unlikely to change that.”
Out of the bag came a brown, marbleized folder. Out of the folder came a page-sized color photo that she slid across the table.
Back in the pre-digital days, photographs could be stunningly sharp when developed by pros in darkrooms, clouded and blurry when amateurs clicked their Brownies and Polaroids or pretended to comprehend their Nikons. Acid-laced paper, ultraviolet rays, and the passage of time didn’t help.
This was clearly an amateur effort, deteriorating to white space at the edges and blunted further by enlargement. A few pinpoints of missing pigment freckled sections of the subjects.
Four subjects, seated at a bright-red table loaded with massive cocktails in tulip glasses, the liquids within garishly tinted. The wall behind the quartet was silver foil patterned with flowers. Crude, unidentifiable, blue and mustard-colored blossoms.
Older man, one younger woman to his right, two others to his left.
His face was the least damaged. Ironic because time had done just fine on its own.
Hatchet face covered by coarse, slack, too-tan skin. Marsupial pouches tugged at bleary, heavily lidded eyes. Thinning hair was brushed back Dracula-style and tinted the same unlikely matte black as a pointy goatee. A chunky gold link chain hung across the hairless triangle created by three undone buttons of a pink-and-orange paisley shirt.
Huge change from Dr. Anton Des Barres’s corporate photo.
Maxine said, “Your guy.” A statement, not a question.
I nodded. “Where’d you find this?”
“A book on L.A. called Be-Inns. Two n’s, as in hostelries. Self-published deal on SoCal nightlife during the period you’re interested in. I’d exhausted all the criminal leads on Des Barres. As far as I can tell, he never hung out with hoods, nor was he implicated in high crimes and misdemeanors. So I did what I always do: fan out and try subsidiary sources. Starting with acquainting myself with the company headshot you sent me, memorizing the layout of his features and seeing if I could spot it somewhere else. Usually it leads nowhere, this time it didn’t. The book was in pretty bad shape, self-published, cheaply made, literally falling apart. I tried phone-shooting this image, wasn’t happy with the result, and did a few runs on the department Xerox machine. This is the best I came up with.”
“Appreciate the effort, Maxine. Who’s the author?”
“Alastair Stash, obviously a pseudonym. I wouldn’t bother looking for another copy, Alex. I tried and it’s not on the Web, any academic library or vintage dealer. I got my copy years ago when Acres of Books went out of business and I drove down to Long Beach and scrounged through their discount pile. Marginal junk that I boxed up and stored in my garage. I kept telling myself I’d go through it but never did.”
“Amazing.”
“What is?”
“That you connected the headshot to this.”
“Really? To me it was kind of obvious. Cosmetics change but basic dimensions stay the same. I’m flipping through pages and he jumped out at me. He looks sauced, no? Deliciously dissolute. What’s his story?”
“Probably a midlife crisis fueled by big bucks.”
The pizza arrived. Maxine nibbled. “So you can’t tell me anything, yet?”
I said, “There’s not much to tell you beyond a possible location. B.H. club called The Azalea.”
She lifted the photo and showed me the back.
Single line in black marker, Maxine’s assertive block lettering:
PROB. AZALEA CLUB, RODEO DRIVE 35–40 YRS AGO.
“How’d you figure it out?”
“The book identified it as being on Rodeo and the only place that fit was The Azalea. Just to make sure, I looked at some shots from an old design mag in the research library. Same wallpaper in what they called The Chic Room. Subtle, huh? Unfortunately I haven’t turned up any serious criminal activity at the place. Just a reputation for cheesy disco music, major-league boozing, and minor-league doping. The clientele was rich guys hanging with younger chickadees. Which fits your guy.”
I flipped the photo and studied the three women with Des Barres. Trio of blurry faces under long, straight platinum-blond hair. Strapless dresses: black, red, yellow.
Poor resolution wasn’t enough to hide the truth.
I’d never seen the two faces to Des Barres’s left but Black Dress to the right was Dorothy Swoboda.
I squinted and searched for nuance through the freckling.
The other two women beamed drunkenly but Dorothy’s expression was the same borderline grim as in the forest shot with Stanley Barker.
I’d assumed that was due to tension between her and Barker. Maybe it was just her emotional default.
At first glance, not a fun gal — the contrast to the smiling duo was stark. That hadn’t stopped Anton Des Barres from recruiting her to his harem. Puzzling, because what older men usually like in younger women is nonstop cheer and worship, genuine or not.