I heard clanging and shuffling as I scurried to photograph every corner of the collage. Sandoz came back down the dark hall wagging a book.
“The Holy Bible,” he said like a gospel preacher. “Been looking for one of these.”
He tossed the book into the pillowcase and shook it like Santa. “Locked and loaded. I’m outta here, bro. Come on—front door’s faster.”
Shaking my head, I followed him out, taking one last look at the gloomy place—a lonely man’s home, lonely no more.
I jammed the ignition as Sandoz flopped into the passenger seat. As I tore down the hill toward Sunset, he burst out laughing, his wide mouth showing off chipped meth teeth. “We did it! Nice work, cowboy.”
“Yeah, great,” I said. “We robbed a dead man—really cool.”
“This is what Devvy would’ve wanted, bro.”
Then he reached into the pillowcase and pulled out a black spiral datebook, slapped it on my lap.
“Happy birthday, amigo. Now cruise by Sixth and Arapahoe.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Not a chance. I am a licensed Lyft driver. I’m not taking you on some kind of a drug run.”
“Dude—I’m sick. I’m addicted. You do get that, right? You don’t want me to throw up all over your car, do you?”
Disgruntled, I cut down Santa Monica to Hoover—it wasn’t the first time a rider wanted me to go there. Dark figures phantomed the corner, parking garage duckers, porch hiders. I idled, tense as fuck, staring down the rearview for cops while Sandoz traded the candelabras for a silver foil ball. I had half a mind to tear off and leave him there, but no. Then he was back in the car and thumbing the shit up his nose, looking damn content.
I said, “You…need a place to crash or anything?”
“Take me to my tent, Holmes. I can’t get a good night’s sleep anywhere else.”
We made the rest of the trip in silence. I pulled up to the 405 and parked before the columns. Sandoz said, “Home sweet homeless.”
Then he got out and came around to my side of the car, leaned in and placed a weak hand on my shoulder. “I’m glad to know you, brother.”
I said, “Are you scared?”
“Far from it. The Daily Telegraph lives, man.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Well, you care. That’s what counts. And you gotta figure this shit out.”
I nodded.
He said, “You find something, come by and let me know.”
Then he walked into Tent Town with the rest of his loot, head bowed like a pilgrim.
I drove home and showered off the night, nuked a burrito and tried to watch the news. How inconsequential it seemed! The Earth was a planet with its children living in tents and empty homes and nobody understood shit. I finished my burrito and got up the courage to flip through Hawley’s datebook. It stopped cold on October 6—blank pages spelling death. I went backward page by page, slow and methodical.
Tuesday, October 3—the day I followed him, the day before the day he died—Gladstone @ Taco Miende, circled.
September 30 storyboard conference 11423 Burbank, Model 48b/16E33.
September 10 CE and then the address at the Shalom. CE—as in Charles Elkaim.
August 29 Paramount Model 517j-unmotored. Call for re-frig truck.
August 18, Gladstone to Fountain Grove. Again circled.
Other than that—a lot of deadlines, studios, addresses, model numbers. Hawley had some kind of tracking system I couldn’t make out, but it was precise.
Then: February 21—Martin Gladstone int, circled.
I flipped back and forth—from what it looked like, Hawley met or hired detective Martin Gladstone in February. On August 18, detective Gladstone went to someplace called Fountain Grove, and on October 3, I watched them argue. Maybe Gladstone dropped the case.
I looked him up—easy trace. He was a retired LAPD policeman living at the Ravencrest on Los Feliz Boulevard, Unit 2. No listed number.
Then I looked up Fountain Grove. Closest local match was a tony retirement village in Laguna—
Southern California’s premier active lifestyle community for people 55 and older. Just 10 minutes from the beautiful Laguna Beach coastline, the Village is nestled on 3.8-square miles of rolling hillsides in Orange County, California, offering a Utopian alternative to the traditional aging process highlighting advanced memory care, body rejuvenation, connections of the heart, and spiritual awakening. Come let us bring health and joy to your penultimate years in an atmosphere of sensitivity and enlightenment.
The place was sponsored by a pair of aging celebrity DJs—Stan Kipler and Roger Paulsen, aka Kip ‘n’ Rog.
18
I slept in and woke up heavy, disoriented. In dreams, Herschel had warned of blind alleys, mazes. He was worried, displeased, getting panicky—I tried to shake it off. By the time I got out, it was early afternoon. I vowed to put in a regular Lyft shift, but once I got behind the wheel it felt like every other passing cop car was giving me the evil eye. I’d stumbled over a dying body, broken into the dead man’s home, taken off with his possessions. I was an unlicensed investigator with an unreleased LP for evidence, and I wasn’t even sure what case I was trying to solve—a murder that took place forty years ago, the brutal slaying of some guy I never knew, the history of a long-lost band nobody cared about, or the sudden disappearance of the man who’d been put on the job before me.
Then there was Emil Elkaim. It was like there was a silent understanding out there among almost everyone involved that he’d been framed, and I was starting to think they were right.
And Devon Hawley Junior did know something—I was sure of that now.
