Sunset People. Herbert Kastle

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СКАЧАТЬ one across the street. A fingerprint specialist from Forensic named DiLorca got out of the other, indicating DHQ was also beginning to worry.

      “Go talk to them,” Larry told the young officer, giving his men a wave and pointing at the Mustang.

      The other officer, Matt, was back with a large, white plastic bag. It bore a department-store logo, and Larry said, “L.A. County issue, right?

      “Since Prop Thirteen, Matt said, “we even provide our own toilet paper.

      They were both joking. The police had done well, despite shrinking funds. This town, like New York, like Chicago, like any large American city, was always in a criminal state of siege, and no one was willing to cut defense funds too deeply.

      Larry reached into the bag.

      “Wait’ll you see the loaf that jigg was carrying. You can really write off robbery in this case!”

      Larry took out a bulging wallet. He handed the plastic bag to the officer and counted the bills. “Five thousand rubber-banded, and eighty loose.” He put the money back in the wallet. “Lucky you weren’t alone,” he said, smiling to show it was another joke.

      “That’s what you call lucky?”

      Larry read the driver’s license. “I certainly hope Mr. Melvin Crane lives. I’d like to meet a man who carries five grand in pocket money.”

      The woman’s wallet held considerably less cash—eight dollars. Her name was Beth-Anne Crane, indicating she was related to the black. Which blew a possibility he’d been shaping up in his mind: that she was a hooker and the man was a customer. It figured, didn’t it, she being young and white and he being older and black? At least in and around the Sunset Strip it figured, especially in light of a possible psycho hooker-killer.

      “If you’re wondering how he could make that kind of bread,” Matt was saying, “this might give you a clue.” He handed over a brown paper bag. Inside was a smaller plastic bag, and inside that a considerable quantity of marijuana. “The pocket scale shows over three ounces,” Matt said. “My nose says PCP, angel dusted.”

      “You wouldn’t happen to have personal experience smoking that dust poison, would you?”

      Matt smiled slightly. “If it was as bad as they tell us, half a million or more in L.A. rock audiences would be dead or crazy.”

      “You like rock concerts?”

      “They still legal? If so, I confess.”

      Larry handed him the dope, nodding sourly. The officer walked back to his black-and-white, and locked the plastic bag in the trunk. Young, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three, and like many of his contemporaries, in as well as out of the department, with a fine contempt for the drug laws. Always comparing them to Prohibition: always asking him if he’d have given up his beer, his Scotch. What really griped him was he didn’t have an answer. And what griped him even more was that he knew, rationally, that alcoholism was a bigger problern than drug addiction, and felt, irrationally, that drugs were filthy.

      He wondered whether Diana was into any kind of drugs.

      Marv called from the Mustang. Larry walked over. The stocky detective held up a flattened piece of metal. “Lodged in the door jamb. Twenty-two, for sure. Now we’ll look for the other slug.”

      “From what I hear, it’s in the survivor’s head, in bits and pieces.”

      “Tell the doctors to save it, if not the spook.”

      Larry gave him the mandatory chuckle, and headed for his car and the hospital.

      The moment he flashed his badge at the Emergency desk, the young and attractive black nurse showed that prejudice worked two ways. “What did he do that you had to shoot him in the head?” she asked coolly, “pass a traffic signal?”

      He smiled, and explained that Melvin Crane had been shot by an unknown assailant, and that in order to find that assailant the police had to interview Mr. Crane.

      “I’m sorry,” she said, opening a folder, “Mr. Crane won’t be allowed visitors, police included, for quite a while. We’re here to save lives, not conduct investigations.”

      He nodded slowly, saying nothing, until she finally looked up. He handed her a card with his station telephone number and said, “The moment he regains consciousness, someone is to call me. Or else you might have more Melvin Cranes for Intensive Care and the morgue.”

      Since she still didn’t seem impressed, or cooperative, he asked for the doctor on duty . . . and began repeating it all again to a young, bearded character who heard him out with one ear, while the other was tuned to the pretty black nurse’s murmured comments about Melvin Crane’s “very critical” condition. “All right, Lieutenant,” Kevin Riley, boy-doctor, said abruptly, and walked away.

      Larry stood there another moment wondering whether to call his commander at home, or to file a complaint with the Chiefs office at Parker Center.

      But official channels had never been effective for him, and he went out to his car. He would return tomorrow morning, but not to Emergency; he’d walk into Intensive Care to see Mr. Crane’s condition for himself.

      He had been about to shower when DHQ had called him on the mislabeled “double killing,” and as soon as he reached his apartment he stripped and stepped into a strong, hot stream. He completed the relaxing process with a Scotch and water, and reached for the phone, thinking to call Diana and discuss the possibility of a solution to her sister’s murder.

      But he didn’t dial her number. Nothing to say yet, really. And he wanted to give her straight dope, no bullshit, no con. Just Numbah One info, as they used to say in ’Nam.

      Instead, he called Roberta. The little blonde secretary was eager, and drove over from Studio City in twenty minutes. She was wearing a green slicker-style raincoat, which surprisd him since it hadn’t rained since June. But then she took it off and was nude underneath.

      He was surprised again, when it didn’t mean a hell of a lot.

      SEVEN: Tuesday, August 1

      Mel awoke, twitching, trying to shove that long gun aside, cursing the fat man for what he’d done to Beth-Anne.

      And the fat man was gone. The car was gone. There was a milky haze. And a heavy, deeply felt drumming sound.

      And a smell. Like his mother’s room after a customer had left and she’d been cleaning up. A medicinal douche.

      No. It was more like her room at the hospital when she’d been dying. . .

      He remembered then! He’d grabbed at the gun in the window and felt a sledgehammer blow to the head.

      He’d been shot. Like Beth-Ann.

      He moved his head, trying to see beyond the milky haze.

       Oh, God, the granddaddy of all headaches!

      He tried calling for help: “Someone, anyone, come here!” And realized that while he was thinking words, and while his vocal chords were thrumming СКАЧАТЬ