"Kellerman, Jonathan - Alex Delaware 13 - Monster 1.0b" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kellerman Jonathan)

As a personal sin, too; one of the last things he'd said before filing the murder book was "This one deserves more. Some felonious cretin getting bashed with a pool cue is one thing, but this ... The way the kid was slicedЧthe spine was sheared straight through, Alex. Coroner says probably a band saw. Someone cut him, neat and clean, the way they section meat."

"Any other forensic evidence?" I said. "Nope. No foreign hairs, no fluid exchange.... As far as I've been able to tell, Dada wasn't in any kind of trouble, no drug connections, bad friends, criminal history. Just one of those stupid kids who wanted to be rich and famous. Days and weekends he worked at a kiddie gym. Nights he did guess what."

"Waited tables."

His index finger scored imaginary chalk marks. "Bar and grill in Toluca Lake. Closest he got to delivering lines was probably 'What kind of dressing would you like with that?' " We were in a bar, ourselves. A nice one at the rear of the Luxe Hotel on the west end of Beverly Hills. No pool cues, and any felons were wearing Italian suits. Chandeliers dimmed to orange flicker, spongy carpets, club chairs warm as wombs. On our marble-topped drink stand were two leaden tumblers of Chivas Gold and a crystal pitcher of iced spring water. Milo's cheap panatela asserted itself rudely with the Cohibas and Churchills being sucked in corner booths. A few months later, the city said no smoking in bars, but back then, nicotine fog was an evening ritual.

All the trim notwithstanding, the reason for being there was to ingest alcohol, and Milo was doing a good job of that. I nursed my first scotch as he finished his third and chased it with a glassful of water. "I got the case because the Lieutenant assumed Dada was gay. The mutilation when homosexuals freak, they go all the way blah blah blah. But Dada had absolutely no links to the gay community, and his folks say he had three girlfriends back home."

"Any girlfriends out here?"

"None that I've found. He lived alone in a little studio place near La Brea and Sunset. Tiny, but he kept it neat."

"That can be a dicey neighborhood," I said.

"Yeah, but the building had a key-card parking lot and a security entrance; the landlady lives on the premises and tries to keep a good clientele. She said Dada was a quiet kid, she never saw him entertain visitors. And no signs of a break-in or any burglary. We haven't recovered his wallet, but no charges have been run up on the one credit card he owned a Discover with a four hundred dollar limit. The apartment was clean of dope. If Dada did use, he or someone cleaned up every speck."

"The killer?" I said. "That fits with the clean cut and the planning."

"Possibly, but like I said, Dada lived neat. His rent was seven hundred, he took home twice that a month from both jobs, sent most of his money back home to a savings account." His big shoulders dropped. "Maybe he just ran into the wrong psychopath."

"The FBI says eye mutilation implies more than a casual relationship."

"Sent the FBI the crime-scene data questionnaire, got back double-talk and a recommendation to look for known associates. Problem is, I can't locate any friends Dada had. He'd only been out in California for nine months. Maybe working two jobs prevented a social life."

"Or he had a life he hid."

"What, he was gay? I think I would've unearthed that, Alex."

"Not necessarily gay," I said. "Any kind of secret life."

"What makes you say that?"

"Model tenants just don't walk out on the street and get sawed in half."

He growled. We drank. The waitresses were all gorgeous blondes wearing white peasant blouses and long skirts. Ours had an accent. Czechoslovakia, she'd told Milo when he asked; then she'd offered to clip his cigar, but he'd already bitten off the tip. It was the middle of the summer, but a gas fire was raging under a limestone mantel. Air-conditioning kept the room icy. A couple of other beauties at the bar had to be hookers. The men with them looked edgy.

"Toluca Lake is a drive from Hollywood," I said. "It's also near the Burbank studios. So maybe Dada was trying to make acting connections."

"That's what I figured. But if he got a job it wasn't at a studio. I found a want ad from the Weekly in the pocket of one of his jackets. Tiny print thing, open casting call for some flick called Blood Walk. The date was one month before he was killed. I tried to trace the company that placed the ad. The number was disconnected, but it had belonged at that time to some outfit called Thin Line Productions. That traced to a listing with an answering service, which no longer serviced Thin Line. The address they had was a FOB in Venice, long gone, no forwarding. No one in Hollywood's heard of Thin Line, the script's never been registered with any of the guilds, no evidence a movie ever got made. I talked to Petra Connor over in Hollywood. She says par for the course, the industry's full of fly-by-nights, most casting calls go nowhere." "Blood Walk," I said.

"Yeah, I know. But it was a full month before, and I can't take it any further."

"What about Richard's other job? Where's the kiddie gym?"

"Pico and Doheny."

"What'd he do there?"