“Work that actually pays.”
Chapter
14
Thursday at eight fifty a.m., I met Milo on Sunset Boulevard just east of San Vicente in the heart of the Strip.
Like any district that feeds on nightlife, the Strip turns tawdry in daylight. I’ve always imagined that as the street’s empathy with the clubs, bars, and comedy stores that sadden when the sun threatens.
L.A. was streaming another episode of blue skies and crisp air and that helped a bit. But when we entered the Tidy Tavern things got predictably dingy.
The place was narrow, dim, devoid of customers. Tables and chairs were scattered randomly, as if pushed aside in haste. The blue vinyl floor was speckled with trash. A broom and dustpan leaned against a wall painted a repellent, lumpy red-brown.
Before we’d stepped in, Milo had shown me a photo of the man we were meeting. That turned out to be unnecessary. He was the only one in the room, standing behind the bar wiping the cloudy top sluggishly.
He heard us, then saw us. His mouth opened and formed a cartoonish oval. The rag in his hand began making frantic circles.
His name was Martin Kehoe and he’d changed his mind about talking to the police, phoning Milo at six thirty a.m. to say so.
Milo had ignored the message.
“Mr. Kehoe? Lieutenant Sturgis.”
Kehoe said, “Oh no.”
We took stools at the bar. Mine was rickety. Milo’s seemed secure. Or maybe burdened into immobility. He’d bellied up, doing his best to enter Martin Kehoe’s personal space.
“Oh no, what, sir?”
“I don’t want to do this. I called.”
“When was that, sir?”
“Early,” said Martin Kehoe. “Like six thirty.”
Milo said, “By then I was out in the field. Sorry for the inconvenience but as long as we made the trip, why don’t you tell us what’s on your mind.”
“Nothing,” said Kehoe. Even a bass voice can sound small when tremoloed by anxiety.
We gave him time to think. He used the opportunity to grip the rag tighter, creating white knuckles the size of brussels sprouts.
Big, broad man, with the same kind of bulk as Paul O’Brien. Unlike O’Brien he made no effort to show it off. Just the opposite; he wore a baggy white button-down shirt with the sleeves buttoned at the wrists.
The same diffidence applied to his cranium. When men lose their hair young they often shave their heads rather than emphasize pattern baldness. I’d scanned Kehoe’s license and knew him to be thirty-eight. His dome was bare except where it was girdled by gray-flecked brown fuzz. What some of my patients call the Dad Look.
Kehoe’s rough-hewn face was shelved by a huge chin and fronted by a beak that supported steel-framed eyeglasses. Wrinkles had set long enough ago to deepen.
Not yet forty but aging quickly. Our drop-by wasn’t helping matters.
He shrank back as Milo leaned in further. “Really, sir. It’s a mistake.”
“Hmm. I’m confused, Mr. Kehoe. You phoned and said you had important information about Paul O’Brien.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
Kehoe transferred the bar rag to his other hand, half turned, and pretended to study a mirrored wall full of bottles.
