“Did he give you any details about this white guy?” said Milo.
“No, just that. I told the exact same thing to that counselor. When he didn’t call back, I phoned the police. No one cared.”
Her lips folded inward. She shook her head back and forth.
“That boy,” she said. “That picture. He looked so young.”
CHAPTER 23
Milo and I sat in a rear booth of a coffee shop on Vermont just north of Wilshire, drinking Cokes, waiting for Ramparts Detective Philip Krug. Krug had been in his car when we reached him and he welcomed the opportunity for lunchtime company.
The locale was his choice, a big, bright, half-empty place with puce-colored vinyl booths, cloudy windows, and the outward profile of a toy rocket ship.
He was twenty minutes late and I used the time to raise the issues Allison had brought up.
Milo said, “The premeditation thing’s interesting, but I don’t see where it takes us. Rand wanting to feel less guilty by blaming Lara could be important. If he tried it on Malley. What do you think about Nestor’s bragging?”
“Sounds authentic. He knew all the details,” I said.
“I was thinking about the white guy hiring him.”
“Revenge hit. It fits.”
He looked at his Timex.
I said, “Troy bragged, too, when I interviewed him in jail. Said he had plans to be rich.”
“You’re thinking he had hit-man fantasies, too?”
“I don’t see him planning for the Ivy League. Maybe he saw Kristal as career practice.”
“Goddamn little savages. What do you do with them?”
Phil Krug was a compact man in his forties with thin red hair and a copper-wire mustache so thick it extended farther than his crushed nose. He wore a gray suit with a navy shirt and a pale blue tie. The waitress knew him and said “The usual?” before he had a chance to sit down.
Krug nodded at her and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “Nice to meet you guys. Tell Elise what you’re having.”
We ordered burgers. The waitress said, “Phil orders his with blue cheese.”
Krug said, “That’s ‘the usual.’ ”
Milo said, “Sure.”
Nonconformity seemed impolitic. I said, “Ditto.”
In between bites of cheese-slathered ground chuck on an undistinguished bun, Krug discussed the little he’d learned about Nestor Almedeira’s murder. Unknown assailant, no leads, granules of heroin on the dirt near the body.
A single head-shot, close proximity, through-and-through temple wound, coroner’s guess was a.38, no bullet recovered and no casing, so the killer had picked up or used a revolver.
I side-glanced at Milo. Expressionless.
“Lafayette Park,” he said.
Krug wiped cheese from his mustache. “Let me tell you about Lafayette Park. Coupla months ago I got called for jury duty, civil case, they hear them over at the courthouse on Commonwealth, which is right near the park. I knew I’d be disqualified but I had to show up and wait and do all that good citizen stuff. Lunch break comes and the clerk reads off this prepared statement telling all the jurors where to eat. Then she goes into this speech about never going into Lafayette Park, even during the day. We’re talking a courthouse yards away swarming with law enforcement, and they’re saying don’t step foot inside.”
“That bad,” I said.
“It sure was for our boy Nestor,” said Krug. “So what’s the connection to West L.A.?”
Milo told him about Rand Duchay and Troy Turner’s murders, but left out Lara Malley’s suicide and the similarities between the shootings.
“I remember that one, snatched little baby,” said Krug. “Depressing, glad it wasn’t mine. So maybe Nestor was the hit boy on Turner, huh?”
“He claimed he was to his sister.”
“She never mentioned that to me.”
“She told C.Y.A. right after Nestor bragged about it, got no interest, phoned Ramparts, same deal.”
“She probably talked to some clerk,” said Krug. “We don’t always get the sharpest knives in the drawer… they do that, the idiots. Brag. How many you solve that way? Plenty, right?”
“Plenty,” said Milo.
“So what are you thinking, someone went on a revenge kick and hit the other baby killer? With all those years in between? What’s it been, ten?”
“Eight,” said Milo.
“Long time,” said Krug.
“It’s a problem, Phil, but there’re no other leads.”
“I’ve been figuring Nestor as your basic dope thing. Patrol officers I.D.’d him as a bottom-feeder with a bad disposition, he was working Lafayette and MacArthur and the streets.”
“Bottom-feeder user?”
Krug pantomimed a bellpull. “Bingo. His arms and legs were full of tracks and there was dope in his blood. You know what it’s like when they get to that point. They’re just selling to stay healthy.”
Milo nodded. “How much heroin was in him?”
Krug said, “Don’t remember the numbers, but it was enough to get him high. The way I figure, being numbed out made him easier to kill. They found a knife on him but it never got out of his pocket.”
“The killer feeds him, then does him?” said Milo.
“Or Nestor fed himself and ran into bad luck. If I was out to get a guy like Nestor, that’s how I’d do it. And a guy like Nestor would have enemies.”
“Bad disposition.”
“The worst,” said Krug, “but we never picked up any specific street talk on who he pissed off.”
“Where was he living?” said Milo.
“Dump on Shatto, pay by the week. You could go there but you’d find nothing. Nestor’s total belongings fit into one box and there was nothing interesting. Maybe the coroner still has it but you know the storage problems at the crypt. My guess is it got tossed.”
“Nestor’s sister said he showed her Turner’s I.D.”
“It wasn’t in his stuff.”
“What was?”
“Clothes, needles, spoons, crappy clothing.”
“Anyone at his crib have anything to say?”
“You’re kidding, right?” said Krug. “We’re talking transients and a clerk who does the blind-dumb-deaf bit.”
Krug took a bite of his burger. “Excellent, huh? One thing the French are good for is cheese… anyway, whatever bragging Nestor might’ve done in the past, his crowing days were over.”
He reached in his pocket and brought out a postmortem shot of a hollow-cheeked visage. Matted hair, sallow complexion, death-glazed eyes bottomed by gray pouches. Patchy facial hair came across as a gray skin rash.
Like his sister, Nestor Almedeira had a round face. Bad living had wiped out any other resemblance to her.
I motioned for the picture and took a closer look. Nestor had been the baby of the family, but he looked ten years older than Anita. His head had been tilted by the morgue photographer to give a view of the entrance wound. Left temple, black-and-ruby hole sharpened by stellate skin shredding and framed by a pointillist ring of powder.
Milo said, “Was he sitting when he was shot?”
“Right on the park bench,” said Krug. “Your kiddie killer was sitting, too?”
“Maybe in a car. Anything happening on the case, Phil?”
“You’re about it,” said Krug, finishing his burger and wiping his lips. “Be sure to let me know if you learn anything. Be nice to close this one, even if no one else gives a shit.”
“No family agitation,” said Milo.
“You met the sister. She thinks Nestor was scum. Family wasn’t making any moves to claim the body, coroner had to keep bugging them. Finally, one of the brothers paid for the mortuary to pick it up.”
Krug waved and the waitress brought the check and placed it in the center of the table. He took some time cleaning his mustache, pulled a steel toothpick from his shirt pocket and worked it around his gum line.