The Museum of Desire: An Alex Delaware Novel(59)

“No, it self-cleans every forty-eight hours.”

“Thanks for your time, ma’am.”

“Of course. I hope you get whoever hurt Mr. Solomon.”

Milo crossed his fingers and we started for the door.

Frieda Graham said, “Can I give you guys something for the road? Just got some sandwiches made by a guy who runs the best Caribbean food truck in the city.”

Milo said, “Sounds great, but no thanks.”

“You’re sure?”

His voice and face said he was far from certain.

“Oh, c’mon.” Chuckling, Frieda Graham produced four sandwiches from under the counter and handed them to him. “It’s in my best interest. You’ll taste and want to come back. Two chickens, one crab, one ham and pineapple. All on hard-dough bread Robert bakes himself.”

Milo said, “You’re too kind.”

“So I’ve been told.”



* * *



—

I waited for a traffic lull and turned north onto Western. “Mosquito.”

Milo said, “Well equipped for drawing blood.” He punched a preset on his phone.

The call to Deputy D.A. John Nguyen produced no surprises: “Your intuitive suspicions of Okash might even be right but they’re worthless from a legal standpoint.”

“So I’m stuck, John?”

“But for my creativity you would be,” said Nguyen. “Her violent assault conviction combined with the store owner’s confirmation of her presence where Roget hung his ads is, in my opinion, just enough to justify a two-month phone subpoena. As in skin-of-the-teeth enough.”

“What about Dugong?”

“Don’t push it.” Nguyen laughed. “What a fucking stupid name.”





CHAPTER


    29


Two hours later, Milo had commandeered the same interview room and set up a whiteboard. The only other equipment: a box of muffins from a bakery in West Hollywood.

No writing on the board, no complex mesh of directional arrows. That’s for the movies where plot elements need to be explained to the audience.

This was four knowledgeable detectives and me looking at a three-by-two array of victim photos to the left and enlarged DMV shots of Medina Okash and Geoffrey Dugong to the right.

Milo summarized what we’d learned at the Caribbean market.

Bogomil said, “So we know Okash had access to Roget’s little tabs but we can’t prove she actually took any.”

“Small steps, Alicia. Speaking of which, we get to subpoena her phone. That burner Gurnsey and Roget both talked to can’t be documented but maybe she carried a cell with an account and we can GPS her locations. Anything from the homeless folk?”

“I wish, L.T. No one remembers Huralnik at all, let alone any sexual bad habits.”

Reed said, “They’re transient, someone who did know her could be anywhere by now.”

Bogomil said, “Transient and brain-damaged. I saw one woman with these festering sores on her legs. I offered to call the EMTs. She told me to fuck myself in the ass.”

Milo said, “No good deed, it’s my version of Newton’s law.”

“Which one?” said Binchy.

“All of them, Sean. Moses, anything more from New York on Okash’s assault?”

Reed said, “One of the D’s who worked it is deceased, I reached the other, he’s in corporate security. He said he remembered the case ’cause it was different, one yuppie white girl pulling out a blade and slashing another across the face. Other than that, he was fuzzy, couldn’t recall motive. If he ever knew it. I finally got the victim’s name from the Seventh Precinct. Contessa Welles. No social network presence, no employment or death records, so maybe they got the name wrong.”

Bogomil said, “Or she avoids the limelight. Someone slashed my face, I might.” Touching her own smooth cheek.

Milo said, “Knife attack. That’s no catfight.”

He turned back to the board and jabbed Dugong’s beard. “Despite his dope busts, this prince isn’t currently known to Key West PD, under his marine-mammal moniker or his real one, Jeffrey Dowd. Sergeant I spoke to said they’ve got twenty-five thousand residents and a couple million tourists each year, it’s a constant balancing act between keeping bad behavior low and not pissing off the chamber of commerce. When I told her Dugong was an artist she suggested I try some of the galleries. So far I’m zero for eight. Until six years ago, the guy’s got no employment history, which fits day labor on a boat, like his bio said. Alex did find a website for his art.”

I said, “Six years ago, he began doing macramé, then switched to photographic collages. Painting started three years ago but he hasn’t produced much so he still may be working under the table—deckhand, fisherman, landscaping, maintenance.”

Bogomil said, “Tying knots and pasting up magazine photos. Any actual talent going on there?”

I said, “Put it this way: He’s got a loose brush.”

Laughter.

Milo said, “From what we saw his salesmanship skills are lacking.”

“A failure with a bad temper,” said Reed. “That’s combustible.”