Into the Fire(31)
The gang was a newer addition to L.A.’s underworld, forming in Hollywood, North Hollywood, Burbank, and Glendale during the eighties to offer immigrant students protection against the more established Latino gangs. Strength on the streets eventually meant numbers in the system, Armenian Power gaining a solid foothold within the state prisons.
As Evan scrolled through Terzian’s digital history, he noticed a transformation taking place. Terzian and his cadre began to move into more sophisticated financial crimes. Medicare and mortgage fraud. Debit-card skimming. ID theft. Bank-account-draining scams run on elderly homeowners. Rather than tattoo their flesh, they started to carve it, overlaying lines of ink with scarification. Bringing a more menacing look to softer targets meant tilting the scales even further to their advantage. Wolves roaming among sheep.
A rare conviction had ensnared Terzian two years ago. He’d beaten his girlfriend severely and then forced her to cover her head with a pillowcase when he was home so he wouldn’t have to look at her damaged face. Simple battery, a misdemeanor that carried with it a two-thousand-dollar fine and six months in L.A. County.
To Evan that seemed an exceedingly light punishment.
Since Terzian’s release, records of his activity were sparse. That was presumably when he’d graduated to richer pastures, a new money-laundering scheme that kept him off the radar and returned millions of dollars a month.
Evan was not surprised to find Lorraine Lennox’s name on the byline of several journalism pieces pecking at the edges of Terzian’s domain. Though much of her work was unrelated—a dognapping ring, a secret cabal of unidentified city leaders doing secret-cabal things, the rising risk of shark attacks in Malibu—she had deep-dived into the criminal networks gaining traction in Hollywood. She’d been sniffing around, getting familiar with the topography, which was undoubtedly why Grant had chosen her to receive the cache in the event of his demise.
As Evan closed out the open windows, he did his best not to note how much his processing speed lagged behind Joey’s. Then he clicked to the Google Earth images on the address Papazian had coughed up.
The location was a local TV station abandoned several years ago in the wake of a merger. Buried behind high fences in a run-down part of Hollywood, it was an ideal criminal headquarters. Evan zoomed in on several buildings on the lot, everything looking dusty and disused. Papazian claimed that he was due to report back to the team there after dark tonight, which was when they generally met up.
Evan would get there early to observe. And then approach.
For now his work was done. Which gave him the rest of the morning to relax.
He logged off and exited the Vault, stepping through the shower stall and heading into his bedroom.
A safe distance from his floating bed, he removed his treasonous boots. Then he sat in the middle of the mattress in a slant of morning light, closed his eyes, and focused on his breathing.
The coolness of the air at his nostrils, in his windpipe, filling the crevices of his lungs. The weight of his bones tugging him down. A heightened awareness where the air met his skin, where his skin met the bed.
He’d not yet fully descended into his meditation when an image intruded.
A grown man punching Ida Rosenbaum in the face.
Tearing free a necklace from around her neck.
Her fragile bones striking the sidewalk.
He opened his eyes. Looked at the door.
“Goddamn it,” he said.
18
The Terrible Intimacy of the Mundane
With a single knuckle, Evan tapped gently on the door to 6G. In the event Ida Rosenbaum was sleeping, he didn’t want to wake her.
He gave it a well-I-tried moment and then backed away.
Before he could get two steps, the door opened.
Mia leaned through the gap, the door and frame pinching her shoulders on either side. She wore a white blouse that looked a size too big and a brown pantsuit befitting a Baby Boomer congresswoman.
Her head cocked with puzzlement. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard what happened and wanted to check in on her.”
Mia let the door hinge open. “She’s pretty shaken up. I called a detective to handle it, a West Bureau guy I like. He just left. She wanted me with her while she gave her statement. It’s important that everything gets handled properly.”
He wasn’t sure, but it seemed Mia’s gaze was a bit loaded. She stayed in the doorway, not giving him enough room to enter.
“I’m handling this,” she said. “Don’t go near it.”
“Why would I?”
She studied him a moment longer and then stepped back.
As he crossed the threshold, he realized he’d never been inside Ida Rosenbaum’s condo. Or anyone else’s at Castle Heights, save Mia’s.
The place was dimly lit, heavy velveteen drapes drawn against the morning sun. Furniture crowded the living room, as if the Rosenbaums had kept too many pieces when they’d downsized from a house. Porcelain bric-a-brac covered most surfaces, impeccably arranged and free of dust. An array of Lladró figurines held unlikely poses of daintiness.
Spotlit on the mantel, a ballerina swooned over crossed arms, her swanlike neck bowed. Evan came up short before the figurine, wondering at the circumstances that compelled someone to put an item like that on beatific display. He supposed that if you had a mantel, you had to put something on it.