“No sweat. I was gonna call you anyway. Fordebrand went out to the Bedabye to breathe on Moody but when he got there the asshole was gone. Left behind a room full of b.o. — it would have been a battle of the stinkers — and candy wrappers. Foothill will keep an eye out for him and I’ll have the boys here do the same, but be careful. Also, I got a call back from that Carmichael character — the one who messengered with the Swope girl. Normally I might have just talked to him on the phone but this guy sounded
“I’ll go with you to Carmichael’s and tell you in the car.”
He absorbed the information on Valcroix while speeding along the Santa Monica Freeway.
“What is he, some kind of stud?”
“Far from it. An old, ersatz hippie. Saggy face, flabby body, kind of a slob really.”
“No accounting for taste. Maybe he’s hung like a horse.”
“I doubt the appeal’s strictly physical. He’s a scavenger, Milo. Moves in on women when they’re under stress, plays Mr. Sensitive, gives them what passes for love and understanding.”
He put a finger to his nose and sniffed.
“And a little blow, too?”
“Could be.”
“I’ll tell you what, after we’re finished with Carmichael we’ll head out to the hospital and interview him. I’ve got a little slack because the gang thing resolved nicely — confessions all around. The shooters were fourteen years old. They’ll end up at the Youth Authority. The liquor store cutting’s due to close any day — Del Hardy’s interviewing a snitch who looks promising. The main thing pending is the stomach-shitter. We’re praying to the computer on that.”
He exited at Fourth Avenue, headed south to Pico, took Pico to Pacific, and continued southward into Venice. We passed Robin’s studio, an unmarked storefront with the windows painted opaque white, but neither of us mentioned it. The neighborhood changed from sleazy to slick as we approached the Marina.
Doug Carmichael’s house was on a walk-street west of Pacific, half a block from the beach. It resembled a landlocked cabin cruiser, all peaks and portholes, narrow and high, and wedged into a lot no wider than thirty feet. The exterior was teal blue wood siding and white trim. Fish-scale shingles graced the gablelike peak above the door. A planter brimming with nail-polish pink geraniums hung from the sill of the front window. A white picket fence ringed the dwarf lawn. The door was inlaid with a stained-glass window. Everything looked clean and well tended.
This close to the beach the place had to cost a pretty piece of change.
“Fulfilling fantasies must be paying well,” I said.
“Hasn’t it always?”
Milo rang the doorbell. It opened quickly and a tall muscular man in a red-and-black plaid shirt, faded jeans, and topsiders flashed us a smile saturated with fear, introduced himself (“Hi, I’m Doug”), and asked us in.
He was about my age. I’d been expecting someone younger and was surprised. He had thick blond hair, layered and blow-dried to look dashingly mussed, a full but neatly trimmed reddish-blond beard, sky blue eyes, artist’s model features, and poreless golden skin. An aging beachboy who’d preserved well.
The interior walls of the house had been torn down to create a thousand square feet of skylit living space. The furniture was bleached wood, the walls oyster white. The scent of lemon oil was in the air. There were maritime lithographs, a salt-water aquarium, a small but well-stocked kitchen, a partially folded futon bed. Everything in its place, neat as a pin.
In the center of the room was a sunken area half-filled by a bottle green velvet modular couch. We stepped down and sat. He offered us coffee from a pot that had already been set out on the table.
He poured three cups and sat across from us, still smiling, still scared.
“Detective Sturgis—” he looked from me to Milo who identified himself with a nod — “over the phone you said this had to do with Nona Swope.”
“That’s correct, Mr. Carmichael.”
“I have to tell you at the outset, I’m afraid I won’t be of much help. I barely know her—”
“You messengered with her several times.” Milo pulled out his pencil and pad.
Carmichael laughed nervously. “Three, maybe four times. She didn’t stick around very long.”
“Uh huh.”
Carmichael drank coffee, put the cup down, and cracked his knuckles. He had iron-pumper’s arms, each muscle defined in bas relief and roped with veins.
“I don’t know where she is,” he said.
“No one said she was missing, Mr. Carmichael.”
“Jan Rambo called and told me what it was all about. She said you took my file.”
“Does that bother you, Mr. Carmichael?”
“Yes, it does. It’s private and I don’t see what it has to do with anything.” He was trying to assert himself but despite the muscles there was something preternaturally meek and childish about him.
