City of the Dead (Alex Delaware, #37)(34)

He phoned the duty sergeant at the station, asked when Alicia and Sean were due back, said thanks and hung up.

“Tomorrow, as it turns out. If I get to conscript them, I’ll have them do a recanvass of the neighborhood, see if anything unsavory about ol’ Rainer comes up. And maybe miracle of miracles, Naked’s stuff will show up under a tree.”

He drove a couple of blocks, surprised me by turning onto a parallel street, pulling to the curb, and punching a preset on his phone.

“Hey, Moses. Gibbs, your grumpy old man, just I.D.’d Hoffgarden as one of Cordi’s visitors. He hasn’t seen him recently but that doesn’t mean Hoffgarden couldn’ta come over late without being noticed. Any progress locating him?”

“Unfortunately not yet, L.T. I was just over at his place. Six units with a live-in manager and she didn’t seem too in touch about anything, including the tenants.”

“Impaired, apathetic, or resisting?”

“None of the above,” said Reed. “She’s nineteen years old and doesn’t speak English well. Her parents own the building. They live in Taiwan, sent her over here to go to pharmacy school, she’s waiting for some visa stuff to come through. She was easy to deal with once I got used to her accent. Took me right to the sub-lot and pointed out Hoffgarden’s parking spot. Empty. She denied he ever caused problems, but then again she said no one did, so I’m not sure that means anything.”

He laughed. “Or maybe she lucked out and has a great bunch of tenants. How long the Mini’s been gone, she had no idea. I’m not sure she ever noticed it in the first place. She did let me ride up to Hoffgarden’s floor and knocked on a couple of doors hoping some neighbor would know something. No one home. There was mail visible through the slot in Hoffgarden’s box in the lobby but from what I could tell it looked like bulk junk and the manager doesn’t have her own key. Want me to put out a BOLO on the Mini?”

“Not yet,” said Milo. “That could come back and bite us. At some point this case is gonna get exposure because of Cordi’s internet presence. Maybe on a big scale. All we need is for Hoffgarden to get pulled over, get alerted he’s a person of interest, and burrow deep. See if you can find out what he’s doing to support himself in L.A. You’re the perfect man for the job, start by calling gyms, see if anyone hired him. If that doesn’t pan out, I can call one of my federal pals and try to get a peek at his tax returns. If he’s freelancing on a cash basis and there aren’t any, I’ll scour his social media.”

“Sounds like a plan, L.T.”

“Man plans, God laughs.”

Reed said, “I like that. Going to use it when the opportunity comes up.”

We traveled back to Wilshire and Milo turned left. “Now I am gonna take you home.”

A block later, his cell played Beethoven. Für Elise. True easy listening.

“Sturgis.”

Basia Lopatinski’s bright, Slavic-tinged voice came on. “Hello, guys—I’m guessing Alex is there but if he’s not, hello to only you.”

I said, “Good guess, Basia.”

“Probability judgment. I have some results on your double, Milo.”

“Love to hear them.”

“There’s a lot to go through. Can you manage a trip here?”

“For you, Basia, I’d walk.”

“Well,” she said, “then it’s good you have a car. I’m free tomorrow until noon but I’m working late tonight, so if you want to come before, say, eleven p.m. I’ll be available. You can bring Alex, too.”

Milo said, “Is that a suggestion or an order?”

“A recommendation. It’s a psychologically interesting mieszanina.”

“What’s that?”

“Polish for what you’d call a hodgepodge. If you prefer something romantic, mélange. See you when I see you. Bye.”

Milo clicked off and ran his hands over his face, like washing without water. “If it was me alone, I’d turn around, traffic be damned. But she recommends you be there.”

I said, “I’ll call Robin and let her know.”





CHAPTER


    17


The freeways were cruelly jammed so Milo took a seventy-eight-minute slog to East L.A. on side streets. Twenty more minutes were added by a stop at a food truck at Olympic and Alvarado where he scored a monumental burrito big enough to require a building permit.

Demolition took place in stages, during red lights.

When we arrived, my nose had saturated with the aroma of refried beans and shredded pork. He parked in the open lot behind the coroner’s, checked his face in the rearview, wiped salsa from around his lips, and said, “Here we go. Mélange.”



* * *



—

The L.A. County Medical Examiner’s office, known to those who work there as the crypt, sits on North Mission Road at the bottom edge of the USC Medical School–County Hospital complex. I’d taught a few courses at the med school but until I met Milo, I’d never ventured to the U-shaped stucco building. The color is that grayish beige that identifies generations of L.A. government structures. There’s solidity to the design, a curious blankness that fails to mask its function.