“Didn’t know squat about what he was buying,” said the kid. “Took nuggets when most people like blocks and we even trim to size.”
“How many bags of nuggets are we talking about?”
“Three ten-pounders. Dude really killed someone with D.I.? What, like froze someone to death? Or burned ’em? You gotta be careful with it, it touches you, it burns bad.”
“How else could you hurt someone with it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there anything besides freezing or burning that makes it dangerous?”
“Well,” said the kid, “I use it to kill ants. You get something in a closed-off space, you put a piece of D.I. in and they get so cold their bodies stop working and also they breathe in the sublimation and die. It’s carbon dioxide, that’s the global warming gas.”
“Plants breathe carbon dioxide,” said Milo.
“They do? Well, ants ain’t plants.” Laughter. “My sister had an ant problem in her basement and I stuck in a piece of D.I. block, taped off everywhere, couple days later millions of dead ants all over, she had to vacuum them, it was gross. So what did the dude do?”
“We’re not sure. Do you still have the bills he paid you with?”
“Nope. Armored car came yesterday, collected everything from the register and the safe.”
“Can you describe this guy a little more?”
“Mexican, like I said. Like thirty, forty. Little guy.”
“Facial hair?”
“Like a beard? Nope, clean.”
“What makes you think he was one of the day laborers?”
“He was wearing those white painter’s pants.” Nodding in appreciation of his own insight. The eyebrow rings jangled.
“Remember his shirt?”
“Um, let’s see… T-shirt, like too big for him… um—oh, yeah, white, from a college, UC something… had a weird-looking animal on it, like a big rat with a long tongue.”
“Oversized,” said Milo. “Like a gangbanger might wear?”
“Dude was no gangbanger. No tats, no attitude, just a confused little dude in painter’s pants. I figured he wanted the D.I. for a job. Killing ants or something.”
“Wearing a college shirt but not a college guy.”
The kid laughed. “Dude’s waiting for day labor he probably didn’t even get a GED.”
As we left, I said, “The UC Irvine mascot is an anteater.”
“And here I was thinking skunks were finally getting some respect.”
We walked the two blocks to the paint store. Lots of boarded-up businesses punctuated the journey, with others on the brink. Five day laborers idled by the curb, looking bored and defeated. When times are bad, the trickle-down switches to misery.
All five men wore baggy white painter’s pants, two had on white tees. One shirt was printed with the Disneyland logo, the other was paint-specked but blank. The first man who spotted us tried to walk away. Milo bellowed: “Stop.”
When that didn’t work: “Policia, no La Migra.”
He talked to each worker, using LAPD Spanish and a relatively soft, detached approach. No one admitted to buying dry ice. Most of the men claimed not to know what it was.
One guy’s eyes moved a lot and Milo asked for his I.D. first. Close to fifty, tall, thin, balding, droopy mustache. A California driver’s license was handed over with shaking hands. Milo’s request for backup paper brought a shrug. Handing the man his business card, he said, “Amigo, you help me, I help you.”
Downcast eyes.
“Anything you wanna tell me now about a guy wears a UC Irvine shirt?”
“No, boss.”
Milo pointed to the card. “See that? Lieutenant. That means big boss—gran patrón. Muy importante.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“You gran patrón.”
Elise Freeman’s DMV picture elicited a blank stare. Same for the other men. Milo handed out five cards, told the men cooperating would bring good luck. Five blank faces stared back.
Heading back to the car, Milo re-read the jumpy guy’s stats. “Hector Ruiz, lives in Beverly Hills north of the boulevard where the estates are. Some forger’s got a sense of humor.”
“Maybe he was a live-in employee.”
“Oh, sure, they dress him in livery and call him Jeeves. So… you see any obvious reason for a day laborer to need thirty pounds of ice? And the quantity’s damn close to the techies’ estimate.”
“Unless Anteater picked his shirt with significance, my bet’s on a paid buy to muddy the trail.”
“Or nervous little dude’s our killer.” Laughing. “Like I believe that.”
His cell played Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” Dark joke? No sense asking.
A twenty-second conversation ensued. Milo’s part consisted of several “yessirs.” Each one lowered his posture.
He pocketed the phone. “Summoned to the mount, A-sap.”
“Have fun.”
“We, not me.”
“I’m invited?”
“You’re demanded.”
CHAPTER
4
In dream traffic, the police chief’s office at Parker Center is a twenty-minute eastbound glide from Van Nuys.
Change of venue and bad traffic turned the drive into a seventy-minute, westbound stop-and-fume.
The Stagecoach Bistro abutted the ninth hole of a Calabasas country club built to look exclusive but open to anyone who could come up with the monthly.
As we drove toward the restaurant’s gravel lot, perfect lawns and barbered pepper trees ill suited for the climate gave way to dust and rustic fencing. The sprinkle of cars out front included a navy Lincoln Town Car that Milo identified as the chief’s civilian ride. No bodyguard, no auxiliary vehicle in sight.
The building was logs and shingles. A posted menu listed a French chef and described the fare as “nouveau-Tex-Mex-Thai comfort cuisine.”
A perky ponytailed hostess guided us to a redwood picnic table tucked in a corner of a patio shaded by vegetation that fit: ancient California oaks, twisted by centuries of Santa Ana winds. The chief had concealed himself behind the rhino-thick trunk of the granddaddy tree.
He continued chopsticking as we sat, pointed to two menus.
Comfort cuisine translated to heroic portions and headache-inducing prose.
The chief’s rectangular platter was two feet wide.
“What’re you having, sir?”
“Number Six.”
Thirty-two spicy Mekong shrimp swimming in asparagus coulis and tinctured by a lemongrass-oregano reduction nestled in a terroir of goat-cheese livened by refried black beans and guarded by palace walls of home-cured porkbelly.
The chief said, “Seeing as you’re a gourmet, Sturgis.”
“Appreciate that, sir.”
The chief lowered the brim of a gray suede baseball cap. Instead of the usual black suit and five-hundred-dollar tie, he wore jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket. The hat and mirrored aviator shades obscured a healthy portion of his mercilessly pitted, oddly triangular face. Additional tortured flesh was shielded by a bushy white mustache.
He’s one of the few people who make Milo looked unscathed.
Another ponytailed girl came over, lofting a handheld computer. “What’re you guys having today?”
Milo said, “Number Six.”
I scanned the menu and ordered an elk burger with bison bacon.
The chief said, “Watching your cholesterol, Dr. Delaware?”
“I like bison.”
“You and Buffalo Bill. And the Plains Indians. You have Native American in your background, right?”
“Along with a lot of other stuff.”
“Mongrel, just like me.”
I’d never heard he was anything but Irish.
He said, “Got some Seneca in there. Or so my paternal grandmother claimed. Can’t be sure of that, though. Woman was a serious drinker.” Twirling his chopstick. “Just like your father.”