Adolescence 101.
I sat back and thought about Kiki’s devotion. Worship can lead to more than prayer. A mama lion springing when her cub was threatened.
Logging off, I returned to the bedroom and managed to get back in bed without evoking more than a sweet purr from Robin.
I kissed her hair and fell back asleep quickly.
The following morning was taken up by patients. It was twelve thirty when I checked for messages. Milo had called me at eleven.
He answered his office phone. “Nothing iffy in Mrs. Boykins’s past.”
I said, “On the surface.”
“What does that mean?”
I described Kiki Boykins’s posts.
He said, “She loves her kid. So what?”
“Her only child with a high IQ, suffering from some sort of illness that keeps her home? It was serious enough for her to offer a prayer note when she was in Israel. Maybe that’s why she went in the first place. We’re talking a vulnerable young girl who Parmenter threatened not very subtly. The other thing is, Kiki travels a lot, which could expand her opportunity to find a skilled shooter.”
Silence.
I said, “You think I’m making too much of it.”
“I’m thinking what Nguyen would say if I asked for a warrant based on someone being a good parent. Where else does Kiki do all this travel?”
I recited a few locales.
He said, “Globe-trotting like a proper rich woman. Nice spas and boutiques and she works in a meeting with some International Man of Intrigue? Forget the local hypothesis?”
“Fine,” I said, “forget double-oh seven but the threat posed by Parmenter to Keisha was still real.”
“Only child... so maybe Mama — or she and Daddy — are into crime prevention. Which is what I’ve been saying from the beginning. Have to tell you, can’t say I’d blame them, those lyrics were ugly. But it still doesn’t change the warrant situation, Alex. It was all I could do to get an okay on Boykins’s money paper and that was mostly based on his criminal record. And it’s still not yielding anything. So where the hell do I take it?”
I had no answer for that and kept silent.
He said, “I was afraid you’d say that.”
Chapter 27
Robin was busy in her shop but my workday had ended. Nothing like free time to make you antsy.
I tried to tolerate the quiet, failed, left the house and got into the Seville.
The drive from the Glen into the flats of Beverly Hills was smooth and pretty. At North Bedford Drive, I hooked a right off Sunset and cruised two and a half blocks to Gerald and Kiki Boykins’s impeccable Tudor.
As before, the gates were closed. Unlike before, Walt Swanson’s orange Camaro was gone, replaced by a black Mustang GT. And a different guard.
Swanson had preferred sitting in his car. This guy had positioned himself in front of the house’s main door, face impassive, arms folded across his chest. Pink face but everything else black. Black suit, black shirt, black shoes, black crew cut, clipped black beard, black sunglasses.
Bigger than Swanson. Arms as thick as thighs. A defensive-tackle-sized column of muscle, bone, and hard suet. If he cared about my slow drive-by, he didn’t show it.
Our easy entry to the house the first time had angered Boykins. Time for an upgrade.
The Swede’s useless, give me someone scary.
I continued a block, reversed, and returned, wondering if that would capture the new guard’s attention. Thought I caught the merest movement of a face, florid and compressed as a canned ham.
By the time I risked a third pass, the guard had moved and stood facing the house’s open door talking to someone.
Voluptuous, good-looking blond woman in black velvet sweats, standing just outside the doorway.
As Kiki Boykins spoke, Ham listened attentively. Short conversation, business-like, no evidence of emotion or urgency. Neither of them noticed me and as she walked back inside, he began to turn back to the gate and I drove off.
I kept going to Lomitas Avenue, drove to Whittier Drive, the westernmost street in the flats, and hooked north. Caught a red light at Sunset and used the time to wonder.
Had there been a reason other than a client complaint for Walt Swanson’s departure?
What if Swanson had taken on an after-hours assignment and once Milo and I showed up asking questions, needed to disconnect from his client?
No need to travel to find help for a certain type of problem. Not with an ex-cop attached to your household.
Back to keeping it local.
The longer I contemplated, the more what-ifs piled up.
Kiki Boykins — or her husband, or the two of them in concert — paying Walt Swanson to deal with the problem Jamarcus Parmenter had become.
That job accomplished cleanly, no problems for nearly two years, use the same guy for Paul O’Brien.
For the same reason as Parmenter: protecting Keisha.
I’d resisted Milo’s assumption that Boykins had contracted O’Brien’s death but now I wondered. There was no indication O’Brien had ever gotten on Gerald Boykins’s bad side. Yet. But O’Brien had worked for Boykins and he had a penchant for poor impulse control when it came to women. Meaning ample opportunity for Boykins to bristle at something O’Brien had done. After that, sniffing out O’Brien’s predatory nature and realizing he’d hired the wrong guy to guard the door — especially with Keisha around — he’d taken action.
My original thoughts about the girl returned: a bright only child with some sort of health issue could easily kick up the protectiveness level, meaning no need for O’Brien to have actually made a move on the teenager. An errant glance, a smart remark, the wrong kind of wink might’ve been enough.
Or just Keisha complaining about the creepy security dude.
Time to take action: Got a second, Walt?
The light turned green, I turned left on Sunset and thought about the scenario most of the way home. Nothing illogical about it and an ex-cop hit man could explain the professionalism of the kills. But there wasn’t a single fact to back any of it up and I needed to be careful not to jump on it out of self-interest.
And maybe I was over-eager because the Boykinses contracting a hit on O’Brien eliminated a link to Vicki Saucedo and conveniently got me off the hook for holding back info.
Then my thoughts shifted to a young woman and a toddler in a boat. To Jay Sterling somehow linking up with Walt Swanson and hiring him to clean up his custody mess so he could take Jarrod to New York.
Sterling had come across likable and horrified by Whitney’s death, but he was a salesman, expert at promoting himself. So maybe I’d been snowed.
But there was a problem with that. A possessive father allowing his son to witness the murder of his mother then drift in a rowboat seemed unlikely.
A whole different level of cold than the elimination of Parmenter and O’Brien. Was Walter Swanson cruel enough to pick off a mother in front of her child?
Time to learn more about the man in the orange Camaro.
Back at my desk I drank coffee and ran a search. Futile; Swanson had no online presence.
That could be explained by a middle-aged guy not enamored of the cyber-world. Or did Swanson have a good reason to maintain a non-profile?
Over the years, I’d learned about several sites on the alleged dark web and tried them.
Lots of ominous logos and sinister allusions but a big zero. Everything boiled down to blather and cons and piling up clicks.
The amateur route wouldn’t work. I called the pro.
Milo listened and said, “Him. Why?”
“Cops have been known to use .308s.”