Harsh buzzer, intermittent. A female voice said, “Finally,” and the door spread open slowly, pulled back by the crook of a blue aluminum cane. The fine-boned hand on the other end of the stick belonged to a luxuriantly coiffed, dark-haired woman in her forties sitting in a manual wheelchair.
Pretty but pallid face. Huge black eyes topped by widely arched tattooed eyebrows. The ink created a look of perpetual surprise. The body below the face was spare and swaddled by a pink sateen housedress.
As Milo showed her his badge, she wheeled away from us. “I thought you were the meal service.”
“Are you Mrs. Braun?”
“Ms.,” she said. “Missus is for old ladies.” She looked out at the street. “They’re late. A lot of time they are.”
“Meals on wheels?”
“Like that but from the church, even though I don’t go. Not delicious but twice a week I don’t have to cook. The stove went out last month, it’s been hot outside, no big deal. But sometimes you don’t want cold food.” She glanced past us, again. “They said any minute. So what do the police want? Another break-in?”
Milo said, “If you’re Maria Josefina Braun, we’re here about your husband.”
“I’m EmJay,” she said. “What about Hal?”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Like... ten, eleven days ago? He packed out for one of his adventures. Why, what happened?”
“May we come in?”
“Hal got in trouble?” Resigned more than anxious.
Milo said, “It’s best that we talk inside.”
She remained in place, blocking our entry. A third distant look. “Sure, why not?” Patting the cane, she placed it in her lap and wheeled free of the doorway.
The front of the house was a twelve-by-twelve living room painted sea green and a kitchen half that size. The counters on the right side of the kitchen were conventional height; those on the left were low. So was the refrigerator. Afghans lay across two old tweed chairs and a black leather sofa. The floor was worn pine.
No tables. The center of the room was an open swath to an archway that led to a hallway. A second broad path led to the kitchen.
EmJay Braun stopped her chair. “Go sit,” she said. Just as we began to comply, the door-buzzer sounded. From inside, an angry-bee rasp.
She said, “Finally.” Then: “No, I’ll get it,” as I started for the front door.
She rolled, hooked the cane around a pull-handle. A young woman wearing a black baseball cap stood outside, smiling and holding a plastic shopping bag. A few words passed between her and EmJay Braun before the bag was handed over. EmJay Braun pushed the door closed and raced to the kitchen where she unloaded on the low counter, placed a few things in the fridge.
“They like you to say something religious when they give you food, like thanks for the grub, God.” She returned and faced us. “I know he didn’t pay his fine but does it look like we’re millionaires?”
Milo said, “What fine?”
“Ninety bucks for when he planted that tree near the harbor without permission, that’s why you’re here, right? They also wanted him to dig it up but when they saw his leg, they let that go.”
“Ms. Braun, we’re from L.A. There’s no easy way to tell you but a body was found several days ago. We’re not certain but indications are it might be your husband.”
“Might be? What does that mean?” No shock, just indignation.
“There was some disfigurement so we can’t make a definite I.D. A pattern of old injuries matches that of Mr. Braun.”
“Who told you about his injuries?”
“His former wife.”
“The lazy one,” she said.
“You know her?”
“Hal told me about her, she never lifted her butt to do anything. Why’d she stick her nose into it?”
“We released information to the media and she phoned in. She felt the description might match Mr. Braun.”
“Description of what?”
Milo told her.
Her mouth twitched. “So what? Lots of people get hurt.”
“The injuries match your—”
“So what,” she repeated.
Then she fell apart.
Gasping and bending nearly double, she dropped her head, grabbed at her abundant hair with both hands, chuffed a few times and continued to breathe rapidly. A hand trembled. The cane tumbled to the floor. I picked it up and held on to it.
She said, “No, no, no, no, no, stupid, stupid, stupid!” Her right hand flew from her hair and began pummeling a wheel of her chair. She’d pulled out some black strands and they frizzed her fingers. She kept hitting rubber and the heel of her hand turned gray.
It took a while for her to go silent. She kept her head down.
Milo said, “Ms. Braun, if it is Mr. Braun, we’re so sorry for your loss. But we need to know for sure.”
“Of course it’s him. Why wouldn’t it be him? He was supposed to call a week ago, didn’t but so what, that’s Hal, he does crazy crap like that.”
She sobbed. I got her a tissue from the kitchen. She snatched it, ground soft paper into both eyes. “He’s so stupid!”
Milo said, “Ma’am, I hate to ask this, but a DNA match will tell us definitely if it’s—”
She looked up. “When he left he wouldn’t tell me what, just that it was his grand adventure. I told him he was being stupid, going off on one of his — the dumb jackass fool.”
She let the tissue drop to her lap. “You’re thinking I should’ve reported him missing when he didn’t call. But that wasn’t how it worked. The deal was, I shut up and waited and he’d come back with a story. Everything all CIA.”
“He told you he was in the CIA?”
“No! That’s not what I mean!” Deep breath. Balloon cheeks as she held on to air, finally let it out. “I said he got all CIA — like it was a secret mission. I knew it wasn’t, just one of his stupid, stupid, stupid adventures. I figured he needed to get it out of his system. Like a steam pipe, you know? Blow it off. Sometimes he needed to do that.”
I said, “He went on other adventures.”
“He’d be okay for a while then he’d get restless and do stupid things,” she said. “Like the tree. He decided the harbor needed a blue eucalyptus because the color brought out the ocean. So he bought one and snuck out there at night and planted it and harbor security drove by and caught him. Turns out eucalyptus have small roots, it could’ve fallen down in a big wind. What did Hal care? He was speaking for the trees. A few years before that, he did the same thing with flowers near a gas station. No one complained about that, what did they care, they got free flowers. But the owners laughed at him and the flowers were dead in a month because no one watered them. Hal goes in for gas, starts complaining they don’t care about nature, they kick him out, say don’t come back. So now we got to drive farther for gas.”
“For his Jeep.”
“Piece of junk — he’s not a bad guy, just does stupid things — like walking at night in bad neighborhoods, where the gangs hang out. Like... a dare, you know? Except no one’s daring him. He’d get in people’s business, that almost got him beat up.”
“By who?” said Milo.
“This was a few years ago, he drove by a McDonald’s, a guy was yelling at a woman. Hal stops, goes up, says that’s no way to treat a lady. Guy’s twice his size, grabs him and lifts him off the ground and throws him away like he’s a piece of dust.”
“You saw this?”
“No, he told me. Like it was funny. Like he was proud of himself. I begged him to stop doing it, he’d give me this pat on the head, say EmJay, it’s keeping the code. I’m like what code? He’s like back when honor mattered — knights and dragons and all that. He used to read books about knights. Then he switched to CIA books, Tom Clancy, whatever. He’d talk about how great it would be, going co-vert, no one knowing who you really are.”