"Tall, skinny. Every time I saw him he wore nothing but black. He had these black boots with big heels that made him even taller. And that shaved head-real Hollywood."
"Shaved head," said Milo.
"Clean as a cueball," said Itatani.
"How old?"
"Thirties, maybe forty."
"Eye color?"
"That I couldn't tell you. He always reminded me of a vulture. Big nose, little eyes-I think they were brown, but I wouldn't swear to it."
"How old was the brunette in the car?"
Itatani shrugged. "Like I said, we passed for two seconds."
"But probably older than the blonde," said Milo.
"I guess."
Milo produced Claire's County Hospital staffphoto.
Itatani studied the picture, returned it, shaking his head. "No reason it couldn 't be her, but that's as much as I can say. Who is she?"
"Possibly an associate of Orson. So you saw the brunette with Orson five, six months ago."
"Let me think… I'd say closer to five. Not long before he moved out." Itatani dabbed his face again. "All these questions, he must've done something really bad."
"Why's that, sir?"
"For you to be spending all this time. I get burglaries at some of my other properties, robberies, it's all I can do to get the police to come out and write a report. I knew that guy was wrong."
Milo pressed Itatani for more details without success; then we walked through the house. Two bedrooms, one bath, everything redolent of soap. Fresh paint; new carpeting in the hallway. The replaced floorboards were in the smaller bedroom. Milo rubbed his face. Any physical evidence of Wark's presence had long vanished.
He said, "Did Orson keep any tools here-power tools?"
"In the garage," said Itatani. "He set up a whole shop. He kept more movie stuff in there, too. Lights, cables, all kinds of things."
"What kind of tools did he have in the shop?"
"The usual," said Itatani. "Power drill, hand tools, power saws. He said he sometimes built his own sets."
The garage was flat-roofed and double-width, taking up a third of the tiny backyard. Outsized for the house. I remarked on that.
Itatani unlocked the sliding metal door and shoved it up. "I enlarged it years ago, figured it would make the place easier to rent."
Inside were walls paneled in cheap fake oak, a cement floor, an open-beam ceiling with a fluorescent fixture dangling from a header. The smell of disinfectant burned my nose.
"You've cleaned this, too," said Milo.
"First thing I cleaned," said Itatani. "The hairdresser brought cats in. Against the rules-he had a no-pets lease. Litter boxes and those scratch things all over the place. Took days to air out the stink." He sniffed. "Finally."
Milo paced the garage, examined the walls, then the floor. He stopped at the rear left-hand corner, beckoned me over. Itatani came, too.
Faint mocha-colored splotch, amoebic, eight or nine inches square.
Milo knelt and put his face close to the wall, pointed. Specks of the same hue dotted the paneling. Brown on brown, barely visible.
Itatani said, "Cat pee. I was able to scrub some of it off."
"What did it look like before you cleaned it?"
"A little darker."
Milo got up and walked along the back wall very slowly. Stopped a few feet down, wrote in his pad. Another splotch, smaller.
"What?" said Itatani.
Milo didn't answer.
"What?" Itatani repeated. "Oh-you don't- Oh, no…" For the first time, he was sweating.
Milo cell-phoned the crime-scene team, apologized to Itatani for the impending disruption, and asked him to stay clear of the garage. Then he got some yellow tape from the unmarked and stretched it across the driveway.
Itatani said, "Still looks like cat dirt to me," and went to sit in his Oldsmobile.
Milo and I walked over to the south-side neighbor. Another Spanish house, bright white. The mat in front of the door said
GO AWAY. Very loud classical music pounded through the walls. No response to the doorbell. Several hard knocks finally opened the door two inches, revealing one bright blue eye, a slice of white skin, a smudge of red mouth.
"What?" a cracked voice screeched.
Milo shouted back, "Police, ma'am!"
"Show me some I.D."
Milo held out the badge. The blue eye moved closer, pupil contracting as it confronted daylight.
"Closer," the voice demanded.
Milo put the badge right up against the crack. The blue eye blinked. Several seconds passed. The door opened.
The woman was short, skinny, at least eighty, with hair dyed crow-feather black and curled in Marie Antoinette ringlets that reminded me of blood sausages. A face powdered chalky added to the aging-courtesan look. She wore a black silk dressing gown spattered with gold stars, three strings of heavy amber beads around her neck, giant pearl drop earrings. The music in the background was assertive and heavy-Wagner or Bruckner or someone else a goose-stepper would've enjoyed. Cymbals crashed. The woman glared. Behind her was a huge white grand piano piled high with books.
"What do you want?" she screamed over a crescendo. Her voice was as pleasing as grit on glass.
"George Orson," said Milo. "Is it possible to turn the music down?"
Cursing under her breath, the woman slammed the door, opened it a minute later. The music was several notches lower, but still loud.
"Orson," she said. "Scumbag. What'd he do, kill someone?" Glancing to the left. Itatani had come out of his car and was standing on the lawn of the green house.
"Goddamn absentee landlords. Don't care who they rent to. So what'd that scumbag do?"
"That's what we're trying to find out, ma'am."
"That's a load of double-talk crap. What'd he doT' She slapped her hands against her hips. Silk whistled and the dressing gown parted at her neckline, revealing powdered wattle, a few inches of scrawny white chest, shiny sternal knobs protruding like ivory handles. Her lipstick was the color of arterial blood. "You want info from me, don't hand me any crap."
"Mr. Orson's suspected in some drug thefts, Mrs.-"
"Ms.," she said. "Sinclair. Ms. Marie Sinclair. Drugs. Big boo-hoo surprise. It's about time you guys caught on. The whole time that lowlife was here there'd be cars in and out, in and out, all hours of the night."
"Did you ever call the police?"
Marie Sinclair looked ready to hit him. "Jesus Almighty- only six times. Your so-called officers said they'd drive by. If they did, lot of good it accomplished."
Milo wrote. "What else did Orson do to disturb you, Ms. Sinclair?"
"Cars in and out, in and out wasn't enough. I'm trying to practice, and the headlights keep shining through the drapes. Right there." She pointed to her front window, covered with lace.
"Practice what, ma'am?" said Milo.
"Piano. I teach, give recitals." She flexed ten spidery white fingers. The nails were a matching red, but clipped short.
"I used to do radio work," she said. "Live radio-the old RKO studios. I knew Oscar Levant, what a lunatic-another dope fiend, but a genius. I was the first girl pianist for the Co-coanut Grove, played the Mocambo, did a party at Ira Gershwin's up on Roxbury Drive. Talk about stage fright- George and Ira listening. There were giants back then; now it's only mental midgets and-"
"Orson told Mr. Itatani he was a film director."
"Mr. Itawhosis"-she sneered-"doesn't give a damn who he rents to. After the scumbag moved out, I got stuck with two sloppy kids-real pigs-then a fag cosmetologist. Back when I bought this house-"
"When Orson lived here, did you ever see any filming next door?" said Milo.
"Yeah, he was Cecil B. DeMille-no, never. Just cars, in and out. I'm trying to practice and the damn headlights are glaring through like some kind of-"