The Radio Red Killer. Richard A. Lupoff

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      No point in calling him, Marvia decided. He wouldn’t want the trouble, and if she pushed him too hard he might just make another attempt to get Jamie away from her.

      She shivered.

      She was wearing a plaid button-up shirt and jeans and a bright red sweatshirt. She didn’t want to be invisible today, she wanted people to see her coming and know that they were expected to answer questions when she asked them.

      Her second husband was worse than the first, and the man she’d had between them.… She shook her head. She wanted to kick herself. He hadn’t been a great physical specimen and he wasn’t the world’s most sparkling personality and he was white, one-two-three strikes you’re out at the old ball game. But he was the best man she’d ever known, except for her father, and she’d shined him on and now he was living in a glitzy high-rise in Denver and climbing a corporate pyramid.

      He was out of California and out of her life and—brakes screamed. Marvia gasped, hit her own brakes, and swung the wheel and missed a FedEx van by a hair. She sat clutching her steering wheel and shaking. She’d gone so deep into her self-pitying reverie that she’d run the red light at Ashby, one of the busiest streets in the city. She was lucky she hadn’t been killed, or killed somebody else.

      When the light changed again she crept through the intersection and continued on to work.

      It wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning and already her day was a depressing pile of compost.

      She found a stack of paper on her desk, including a note from Dorothy Yamura. Come see me.

      She sank into her chair and rubbed her temples until her head hurt. It took her mind off other things. She leafed through the stack of paper. A few routine memos, a number of interviews and crime-scene reports from KRED. That was good, anyhow. Nothing from the lab or the coroner’s office, though. A call-back slip from Angelina Tesla at the DA’s office.

      She had to clear her mind of her personal problems. Gloria had always been a difficult mother. Since the death of Marvia’s dad, Marcus, she had become impossible. And Jamie smoking dope in his room with Hakeem—Marvia knew that marijuana itself was a mild enough drug, but it put her into an untenable position as a sworn police officer.

      Besides, if Jamie and Hakeem were starting to move with the drug crowd.… She didn’t even want to think about it, but she had to. Maybe she should talk to her brother, Tyrone. He was Jamie’s favorite uncle—his only uncle—the only positive, adult male figure in the family.

      And she did love her brother, and did enjoy his company. She’d ask him to help out.

      In the meanwhile she sent off a memo to Inspector Stillman in narcotics. She’d gone undercover once on a narco bust, with mixed results. She and her team had failed to prevent a murder, but they’d made a collar that stuck and put away not only the killer but several of his associates, including the club owner, Solomon San Remo.

      And wasn’t that an amusing coincidence: here was Solomon San Remo again, connected with the late Robert Bjorner. Except that Solly was in prison. That Marvia knew for a fact.

      Other than that one occasion, Marvia had shied away from narco work. She was old enough to retain a few of the romantic illusions of the Sixties. She knew that narco wasn’t a matter of busting school kids for trying out a little weed. If it ever was, it wasn’t anymore. It was crack and smack and crystal. It was ugly and it was violent. She wondered if she had the stomach for that kind of work. She was starting to think she might have to develop it.

      Her schoolgirl friends had argued that there were inconsistencies in the law. Gin-swilling and wine-quaffing politicians wouldn’t let kids smoke grass. They were a bunch of hypocrites. There were irrational provisions that Marvia still had trouble reconciling to the satisfaction of her own conscience.

      How different those arguments sounded when she found herself on the receiving end of them—from her own son!

      She asked Stillman for an informal briefing on Blue Beetle and Acid Alice, then tried to put the matter out of her mind. It was time for work now.

      She called Tesla first. She learned nothing useful from the assistant DA, but she hadn’t really expected to. It was important to keep that line of communication open.

      Next, she called the county coroner’s office in Oakland. She got a coroner’s tech named Gemma Silver. What a stupid name, she sounded like something out of a bad hippie flashback. She introduced herself and asked Silver if there was an autopsy report yet on Bjorner.

      Silver laughed, not the sound of silver tinkling bells.

      “I asked you a simple question,” Marvia barked.

      “Sorry, Sergeant. We’re just a little behind. As usual. Hold the phone, I’ll check the schedule.”

      Marvia let her eyes rove the room while she waited. She must have been emanating angry rays. Nobody wanted to make eye contact.

      “Two o’clock this afternoon, Sergeant. Dr. Bisonte’s going to handle it himself. You want to attend?”

      Marvia shook her head. “Not if I can help it. I know what three hundred pounds of blubber looks like. I just want to know the results ASAP.” But she knew that she would attend the autopsy. It was department policy.

      “I’ll tell you right now,” Silver offered. “He’s dead. Or if he isn’t, he will be when Dr. Bisonte finishes with him.”

      “I want to know cause of death.”

      “Right.”

      “Think I can get that today?”

      “If somebody shot him it would be easier.”

      “That’s the point, Ms. Silver.”

      “Well, I’ve peeped at the cadaver. Golly, what a whale! I’d guess a massive heart attack. Second choice, stroke.”

      “No autopsy yet and you’re giving me cause of death, Silver?”

      “I’m just giving you an educated guess, Sergeant.”

      “Yeah, sure. Listen to me, just in case Dr. Bisonte isn’t feeling too committed to his work today, would you remind him that I’d like a report on the contents of the decedent’s stomach.”

      “That’s SOP, Sergeant.”

      “Fine. Just don’t overlook it, will you? And don’t throw anything away, for God’s sake.”

      “Got it. Look, I’ve got another call, is there anything else?”

      Marvia said no and hung up. She called the forensics lab. Laura Kern took the call. That was good. She knew Kern, had worked with her before and had confidence in her. She asked if there was a report on the contents of the ashtray in Studio B, or the food containers in the wastebasket.

      Nothing yet. That was to be expected. Marvia was just getting impatient, jittery, more because of her home situation than the Bjorner case, but when one spilled over and impacted the other she knew it would lead to bad police work on her part.

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