“And waiting tables. Busing and maintenance when there’s nothing else. Here I work the bar and do maintenance. Caitlin says I should go to school and study landscaping.”
“You like plants?”
“Those orchids you get at the supermarket?” said Kehoe. “I get a lot of them to rebloom. Caitlin can’t do it, she says I’ve got a knack.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a green thumb, Marty.”
Kehoe shrugged.
“So where’d you and Paul live when you were rooming together?”
“Culver City. We got a sublet near Fox Hills, some old guy whose family put him in a home and they wanted rent money. Two bedrooms, two baths.”
“Nice.”
“Not really,” said Kehoe. “Actually it was a dump but we could afford it. I still live there. Not in the apartment, near Culver City. Mar Vista, me and Caitlin have a nice place. She’s a massage therapist.”
“Sounds great,” said Milo. “So what bothered you about Paul?”
“A lot, sir. But not all at once. It was like…”
I said, “It took time to get the whole picture.”
“Exactly, yes, sir.”
“Paul could behave badly.”
“Oh yes,” said Kehoe. “Real bad…okay…it was like this…We both liked girls. We met them at the Roxy or the Viper Club, any other doors we’d work and sometimes…nothing weird, sometimes someone would like you and you got to…recreate.”
“Sure,” I said. “Makes total sense.”
“So that was it. For me. A couple of dates, one of them, a nice girl named Jacqui, we dated for like half a year. But Paul…how do I say this…Paul liked the girls too much.”
His eyes dropped to the tabletop. He’d left the rag on the bar, looked at his hand and used it to simulate wiping. Faster and faster.
I said, “Paul came on too strong?”
“Yeah. Yes, sir. You could say that.”
Milo pulled out his pad and wrote.
Kehoe said, “You need to do that?”
“I do, Marty, but don’t worry, it won’t mention you. So how did Paul come on strong?”
“It was…” said Kehoe. “Okay. Like, we’d be working a door? And after closing there’d be some girls hanging around? Mostly I’d be tired and want to go home. Not Paul, he was always looking. He’d…sometimes bring them home.”
His lips folded inward again, pumping the big chin upward. It lowered as he released his lips. Press, release, over and over, like a die-stamping machine.
I said, “Paul would bring them home and…”
Final release. Trembling lips.
Marty Kehoe said, “Sometimes they wouldn’t be awake.”
“When he brought them home?”
“Both times,” said Kehoe. “Bringing them in and bringing them out. He’d carry them out. If I saw it, I’d say what’s going on, dude, and he’d laugh and say, ‘I did her so good she fell asleep.’ ”
