Lloyd laughed. "Nice pad, Linda. Out of the low-rent district."
Linda feigned a return laugh. "Don't be formal, call me suspect."
Lloyd stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out snapshots of Thomas Goff and Jungle Jack Herzog. He handed them to Linda and said, "Okay, suspect, have you seen either of these men before?"
Linda looked the photos over and returned them to Lloyd. There was not the slightest flicker of recognition in her eyes or her hands-on-hips pose. "No. What's this about Stan Rudolph? Are you with Vice?"
Lloyd sat down in the easy chair and stretched his legs. "That's right. What's the basis of your relationship with Rudolph?"
Linda's eyes went cold. Her voice followed. "I think you know. Will you state your purpose, ask your questions, and get out?"
Lloyd shook his head. "What do you know?"
"That you're no fucking Vice cop!" Linda shouted. "You got a snappy comeback for that one?"
Lloyd's voice was his softest; the voice he saved for his daughters. "Yeah. You're no hooker."
Linda sat down across from him. "Everything in this apartment calls you a liar."
"I've been called worse than that," Lloyd said.
"Such as?"
"Some of the choicer shots have included 'urban barracuda,' 'male chauvinist porker,' 'fascist cocksucker,' 'wasp running dog,' and 'pussy hound scumbag.' I appreciate articulate invective. 'Motherfucker' and 'pig' get to be boring."
Linda Wilhite laughed and poked a finger at Lloyd's wedding ring. "You're married. What does your wife call you?"
"Long distance."
"What?"
"We're separated."
"Serious splitsville?"
"I'm not sure. It's been a year and she's got a lover, but I intend to outlast the bastard."
Linda stretched out her legs, matching Lloyd's pose, but in the opposite direction. "Do you always discuss intimate family matters with total strangers?"
Lloyd laughed and stilled an urge to reach over and touch her knee. "Sometimes. It's good therapy."
"I'm in therapy," Linda said.
"Why?" Lloyd asked.
"That's your first dumb question," Linda said. "Everyone has problems, and people who have money and want to get rid of them go to shrinks. Comprende?"
Lloyd shook his head. "Most troubled people are swamped by petty neuroses, stuff that they haven't got the slightest handle on. Offhand, I'd say that you're not that kind of person. Offhand, I'd say that some sort of catalyst led you to the couch."
"My shrink doesn't have a couch. He's too hip."
"That's a strange thing to call a psychiatrist."
"All right. Hip translates to brilliant, concerned, dedicated, and brutally honest."
"Are you in love with him?"
"No. He's not my type. Look, this conversation is getting a little weird and a bit far afield. You are a cop, aren't you? That wasn't a dime-store badge you showed me, or anything like that, was it?"
Lloyd saw a large stack of newspapers lying on top of a coffee table an arm's length away. He pointed to them and said, "If you've got Tuesday's Times, look at the second page. 'Shootout at Beverly Hills Nightclub.' "
Linda went to the table and leafed through the papers, then read the article standing up. When she turned around to face Lloyd, he had his badge and I.D. card extended. Linda took the leatherette holder and examined it, then smiled from ear to ear. "So you're Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins and one of those pictures is the unidentified homicide suspect you shot it out with. Very impressive. But what do Stan Rudolph and I have to do with it?"
Lloyd mulled the question over as Linda sat back down without relinquishing the I.D. holder. Deciding on an abridged version of the truth, he said, "An informant told me that Thomas Goff, my previously 'unidentified homicide suspect,' sold Stanley Rudolph some art objects, aided by a still unidentified partner. I came across Rudolph's address book and noticed the names of several call girls I'd busted years ago. I also noticed your name, and concluded that since the only other women in the book were in the Life, you had to be also. I needed an outside lever to pry some information out of Rudolph, and since the other women probably still hate me for busting them, I decided on you."
Linda handed the I.D. holder back. "Are you that fucking brash?"
Lloyd smiled. "Yes," he said.
"Why don't you just question Stan baby yourself?"
"Because he'd probably want an attorney present. Because any admission of knowing Goff is an implicit admission of receiving stolen goods, accessory to first degree burglary and criminal conspiracy. What kind of man is Rudolph?"
"A pathetic little nerd who gets his rocks off taking nude pictures. A loud-mouthed buffoon. What specifically did this guy Goff do?"
"He's murdered at least three people."
Linda went pale. "Jesus. And you want me to pry information about him out of Stan baby?"
"Yes. And about his partner, who I'm certain is left-handed. Does Rudolph ever talk about his art collection and how he acquired it?"
Linda tapped Lloyd's arm and said, "Yes. His art collection is his favorite topic of conversation. It's all tied in to his sex M.O. He's told me a dozen times that he buys his stuff from rip-off guys. That's as specific as he gets. He used to have nude photographs of me on his bedroom walls, but he took them down because he was expecting some more Colombian statues. I haven't tricked with him in six weeks or so, so maybe he and Goff got together recently."
Lloyd thought of the rectangular patches on Rudolph's bedroom wall, imagining the nude Linda he could have seen had he pulled his B amp;E a few months before. "Linda, do you think you-"
Linda Wilhite silenced him with a breathtaking coconspirator's smile. "Yes. I'll call Stan baby and set up a date, hopefully for tonight. Call me around one A.M., and don't worry, I'll be very cool."
Lloyd's conspiratorial smile felt like a blush. "Thank you."
"My pleasure. You were right, you know. I did enter therapy for a reason."
"What was it?"
"I want to quit the Life."
"Then I was right on two counts."
"What do you mean?"
"I told you you were no hooker."
Lloyd got up and walked out of the apartment, letting his exit line linger.***
With the Stanley Rudolph angle covered, Lloyd remembered an investigatory approach so rudimentary that he knew its very simplicity was the reason he had forgotten to explore it. Cursing himself for his oversight, he drove to a pay phone and called Dutch Peltz at the Hollywood Station, asking him to go across the street to the Hollywood Municipal Court and secure a subpoena for Jack Herzog's bank records. Dutch agreed to the errand, on the proviso that Lloyd fill him in at length on the case when he came by the station to pick up the paperwork. Lloyd agreed in return and drove to Herzog's apartment house in the Valley, thinking of Linda Wilhite all the way.
At Herzog's building, Lloyd went straight to the manager's apartment, flashed his badge, and asked him what bank the missing officer's rent checks were drawn on. Without hesitation, the frail old man said, "SecurityPacific, Encino branch," then launched into a spiel on how other officers had been by the previous day and had sealed the nice Mr. Herzog's nice apartment.
After thanking the manager, Lloyd drove back over the Cahuenga Pass to the Hollywood Station. He found Dutch Peltz in his office, muttering, "Yes, yes," into the telephone. Dutch looked up, drew a finger across his throat and whispered, "I.A.D." Lloyd took a chair across from him and put his feet up on the desk. Dutch muttered, "Yes, Fred, I'll tell him," and hung up. He turned to Lloyd and said, "Good news and bad news. Which would you prefer first?"
"Take your pick," Lloyd said.
Dutch smiled and poked Lloyd's crossed ankles with a pencil. "The good news is that Judge Bitowf issued your subpoena with no questions asked. Wasn't that nice of him?"
Lloyd took in Dutch's grin and raised his feet as if to kick his precious quartz bookend off the desk. "Tell me what Fred Gaffaney had to say. Omit nothing."