After a drink and a long pause, I said, “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because Charles Elkaim isn’t going to be around that much longer. And he hired me to find out what Hawley knew.”
Fry considered. “Okay,” he said, “but that’s a long shot now—”
“Yeah, I know that, but I’ve got to try.”
“Okay, okay—but at this late date, why is it so important?”
“It’s important,” I said, a little too vehemently. “It’s important. Because…he was my uncle’s only friend, ya know?” I made a hand gesture like stabbing my own heart.
“All right, fair enough—but can you do that without poking your nose into another crime scene?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Know so. You stay away from the workshop, Hawley’s home, his current associates, any of that. You’re investigating the band, and Emil Elkaim, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just stay off of tonight’s business.”
“I gotcha.” Howard the cat hopped into my lap—a vote of confidence.
“What about the rest of the group?” Fry said. “Anybody you can talk to?”
“Well…the bassist is a guy named Jeff Grunes, he works for the school district. That should be easy enough. But the singer is a guy named Mick or Mickey Sandoz, and he’s incarcerated, up at Banning.”
“What for?”
“Meth—selling, I think. Getting an actual sit-down with him might not be that easy.”
“I can look into it,” Fry said, “but that ain’t his real name.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“ ’Cause—Daily Telegraph, lead singer—he’s a psychedelic rock guy. Sandoz was the lab Hoffman worked for.”
“Who?”
“Albert Hoffman, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD. Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Before it became illegal, they pumped out a million vials of the stuff under the name Delysid.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, “the LP they never put out is called Del Cyd.”
“Told ya.”
“Fry—how come you know everything?”
He sang it: “They call me mellow yellow.”
I said, “Quite rightly,” but he was already reaching for the beat-up laptop, pulling down his reading glasses, frantically clicking away.
“Oh shit,” he said. “Oh boy.”
“What?”
“Holy moly.”
“What?”
“Aye caramba.”
“Come on, dude, it’s late.”
“Real name’s Michael Sanderson, age fifty-nine.”
“How’d you—”
“Banning database,” Fry said, scrolling the page. “This mofo is a serious drifter. Drug busts, psychiatric treatment, six counts of larceny, two convictions, two violent assaults. Before lockup, he also had a restraining order.”
“From who?”
“His wife?”
“Where’s she?”
“Weird address—two numbers and no street name. It’s some kind of annex to his father’s ranch up in Coulterville.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“Mariposa County, up past Fresno. Apparently, when he wasn’t slugging her, Sanderson and the wife liked to deal a little heroin together.”
“How romantic.”
“They were apprehended in a joint investigation of illegal narcotics activity by the Mariposa County Sheriff’s office back in 2016. Didn’t stick, but the California State Bureau of Investigation charged the lovely couple with felony possession with intent to sell a Schedule I controlled substance—also in possession of drug paraphernalia.”
“Gotta have paraphernalia,” I said, “otherwise, what’s the point.”
“Right? This database also says Sanderson’s got four Crime Stoppers’ reports.”
“You mean like…finks?”
“I’m thinking maybe…call-in tips from junkies he burned.”
“Wow,” I said, “the Lazerbeam dude I talked to called it lead singer complex. But this guy sounds like a serious asshole.”
“Sure does. But…if he’s doing hard time at Banning, it’s hard to say how helpful he’ll be anyway. We’ll have to ring up a visitation officer, and there’ll probably be a ninety-day wait.” Then, he closed his laptop and said, “This band was cursed.”
“And I’m beat. Blankets in the trunk?”
Fry killed his port and started digging through the trunk. “Blankets, pillows—I’m Conrad Hilton of the marina.” He was a goof, my old friend, a lawyer without a firm who made his living as a paparazzi, but I was damn grateful for him at this moment. There was something comforting in Fry’s big Cossack face, his black eyes, and mouth of crooked teeth, half-smiling as if about to share a bad pun. Funny thing is, it was a tragic-looking face—in another epoch he could have been some snow-blinded pogrom survivor—but here on the boat, shaking a fresh blue sheet across the cot in his Bermuda swim trunks and flip-flops with early fog creeping up over the horizon, he was just California mellow.
