The Museum of Desire: An Alex Delaware Novel(3)

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 mouthed Sorry, 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’s he?”

“Vintage Caddy?”

“Are you the owner?”

“Sir! Sir! Do you rent out your house for parties? How much do you get? In view of this, was it worth it? He the owner, Officers? Yes? No? Aw, c’mon, the public has a right to know—if he’s not the owner, how come he gets in?”

If I’d said anything it would’ve been, “I get in because it’s bad and strange.”



* * *



—

I drove through a wrought-iron gate propped open by two bricks and began to climb. Halfway up, another cop waved me on. The road ended at a flat acre or so of brown dirt crowded with vehicles. Four white coroner’s vans, a scarlet fire department ambulance, half a dozen patrol cars, two blue-and-white Scientific Division vans, a bronze Chevy Impala I knew to be Milo’s unmarked, two black Ford LTDs, and a gray Mustang. I wondered who’d scored the sports car.

Like a lot attendant at a county fair, a fourth uniform waved me to the far-right end of the dirt. When I got out, she said, “Walk around there, Dr. Delaware,” and tried to smile but failed.

I said, “Tough scene.”

“You have no idea.”



* * *



—

The path she’d designated took me along the right side of the massive house that fronted the expanse of soil. A semicircular drive of cracked brick girded the house. What you’d expect to see at a grand English manor, which was what this pile of faux-stone was striving to be.

Strange-looking place, thirty-plus feet high, graceless and blocky with a double-width entry fronted by curvaceous gold-painted iron over glass.

But for the lack of gardens and a pair of strange turret-like projections erupting from either end of the pretend-slate roof, one of those country homes featured on genteel PBS dramas. The kind of place where plummy-voiced tweedy people gather to natter, get soused on mah-tinis, and labor to make their way through all seven deadly sins.