When it comes to murder, nighttime’s the right time. So when Milo calls me, I often find myself driving to crime scenes on dark L.A. streets.
This time, the phone rang just after nine a.m. Lovely Sunday in May. Robin and I and Blanche, our little French bulldog, had taken a leisurely two-mile walk followed by a pancake breakfast.
Robin was washing, I was drying, Blanche’s sausage body was prone on the kitchen floor as she snored and let out periodic dream squeaks. My phone, on vibrate, bounced on the kitchen counter. Milo’s number on the screen.
I said, “What’s up, Big Guy?”
Detective II Moses Reed said, “Actually it’s me, Doc. He asked me to phone you.”
“Busy, huh?”
“We’re all busy. This is utterly horrible.”
Reed’s a terse young man; it takes a lot to get him using adverbs.
I sat down and listened as he explained, images tumbling into my brain. Robin turned from the sink, pretty eyebrows arching. I shook my head and mouthedSorry,and said, “Where, Moe?”
“Private road called Ascot Lane, off Benedict Canyon. Easy to miss, kind of like your street, but this one’s more like a big driveway, only goes to one house.”
He sighed. “Half mile north of the Beverly Hills border.”
But for a couple thousand feet, someone else’s problem.
I said, “Give me half an hour.”
“Whenever you get here, Doc. No one’s leaving for a while.”
—
In the movies when detectives encounter terrible things they frequently banter and tell tasteless jokes. That may be because screenwriters or the people who pay them are emotionally shallow. Or the scribes haven’t taken the time to hang out with real detectives.
I’ve found that the men and women who work homicide tend to be thoughtful, analytic, and sensitive. Despite a certain gruffness, that certainly applies to Milo.
My best friend has closed over three hundred fifty murders and he’s never lost his empathy or his sense of outrage. Notifying families still rips at him. He eats too much, sleeps poorly, and often neglects himself while working two, three days in a row.
Once you stop caring, you’re useless.
Milo leads by example so the same approach is taken by the three younger D’s who work with him when he can pry them away from other assignments.
When he can’t, it’s just him. And sometimes me. Rules are often bent. Milo was a gay soldier when gay soldiers didn’t exist, a gay cop when LAPD was still raiding gay bars. Things have changed but he continues to disdain stupid regulations and often overlooks social niceties in a paramilitary organization that prizes conformity.
Murder solve rates have dropped but his rate remains the highest in the department so the brass looks the other way.
This morning the sense of anxious gloom I’ve seen so many times at murders—stiff posture, tight faces, sharp but defeated eyes—extended to the two halfback-sized uniformed officers blocking the entrance to Ascot Lane from Benedict Canyon.
They’d been given my personal info and the Seville’s tags but checked my I.D. anyway, before the bigger one said, “Go on in, Doctor,” in a defeated voice.
To get to them, I’d nosed past half a dozen journalists stationed on Benedict as they tried to rush the Seville before being shooed by another pair of cops.
Different emotional climate for members of the press: a heightened energy bordering on ebullience. Misfortune is the mother’s milk of journalism but with the exception of war correspondents, those who suckle the teats of tragedy are rarely forced to confront evil directly.
I’d kept the Seville’s windows open and as I climbed the road, a bee-swarm of words followed me.
“Who’she?”
“VintageCaddy?”
“Are you theowner?”
