"Certainly," Ito said.
We stood. He shook hands with me.
I said, "Thank you, Doctor."
"Will her husband recover?" Dr. Ito said.
"From being shot, they think so."
"It is possible," Ito said, "that she is drinking again, and it is related to her disappearance. That sort of thing happens."
"I know it does," I said. "And I hope it's not the explanation."
"What explanation do you hope for?" Ito said.
"I'm goddamned if I know, Doctor."
"Yes," he said. "That makes it difficult."
Chapter 19
The Venice address was now a motorcycle repair shop, and probably not even that for long. The building smelled of decay and dampness. The paint had weathered off, and the framing around the doors and windows was sagging badly.
I talked to the proprietor, a tall bony guy in a Harley logo tank top and black jeans. He had a gold tooth and a three-week beard and the name Lenny tattooed crudely along both forearms. He was smoking a joint when I arrived, but it didn't seem to have made him mellow. He looked at me like I might be a field rep from the Moral Majority. I smiled heartily.
"Lenny around?" I said.
"I'm Lenny."
"Honest to God?" I said. "Talk about coincidences."
"Whaddya want?" Lenny said.
"I'm looking for a woman used to live here," I said. "Angela Richard."
"Never heard of her."
"How about Lisa St. Claire?"
"Never heard of her."
"Someone named Vaughn?"
"Never heard of him."
"Anita Bryant?"
"Never heard of her."
"Sic transit gloria," I said.
"Huh?"
"How long this place been a bike shop?" I said.
"Whadda ya mean?"
I sighed. "Are these too hard for you, Lenny? You want to warm up with something easier?"
"Hey, Duke. Don't get bright with me. I'll run your ass right out of here."
"Not unless you're better than you look," I said.
Lenny reached over and picked up a ball peen hammer.
"How good's this look?" he said.
I opened my coat and showed him the gun. And gave him a big charming smile.
"You a cop?" Lenny said.
"How long since this place was a house?" I said.
Lenny shrugged. He kept the hammer in his hand, letting it rest against his right thigh.
"I took the place over last year. Guy owed me dough. It was a bike shop then."
"You around here in 1985?" I said.
"No."
"Where were you in '85?''
"I was outta LA."
"How far out? Chino, maybe? Getting tattooed?"
"I done a little time at Chino," he said.
"And you're probably a better man for it," I said. "Who around here was here in '85?"
"I don't know nobody around here. People come and go, you know?"
"I've heard that," I said and left Lenny to ponder his ball peen hammer. Nobody else in the neighborhood knew anywhere near as much as Lenny and several of them weren't as nice. After a couple of hours I gave up and cruised back along Venice Boulevard. I went under the 405 and, as a gesture of defiance, drove back to Westwood on Sepulveda. It took longer, but an easy gesture is hardly a gesture at all.
Chapter 20
I met Madeleine St. Claire for lunch at The Grill on Dayton Way. The place was so in that the entrance was hard to find, around the corner, off Camden Drive. It was an oak-paneled place which claimed to be famous for its Cobb salad. I'd been there before and on principle had never ordered the Cobb salad. The room was full of people, mostly men, dressed in expensive casual, and talking about movie deals. A couple of them were recognizable television performers. Some of them were doubtless agents, being as we were right down the street from CAA. And some of them were probably real estate brokers from Ventura. I didn't see anyone else who looked like a gumshoe.
She had arrived before me, which was one way to tell she wasn't a producer, and was already seated at a woman with delicate bones and short hair the color of polished pewter. She had on a very expensive fawncolored suit and big round glasses with deep blue rims. Her pearls were probably real, and she wore a very impressive engagement/wedding set on her left hand. Her complexion looked like she spent a lot of time out of doors. Her handshake was strong when I introduced myself.
"Please have a drink if you'd like," she said when I was seated. "I have patients this afternoon, so I must drink tea."
"Thanks," I said. "But if I have a drink with lunch a nap sets in almost immediately."
"Pity," she said. "How may I help you with Angela Richard?"
"I don't know, really," I said. "As I told you, she's missing."
"Do you fear foul play?"
"No reason to fear it or not fear it, except that her husband was shot from ambush and badly wounded a few days after she vanished."
"Do you have any reason to think she shot him?"
"I have no reason to think anything," I said. "That's my problem. I don't even have some nice hypothesis to work on. I thought maybe you could give me one."
"I doubt it," she said. "It has been a number of years. And, of course, the therapeutic exchange is confidential."
"I understand," I said. "Are you aware that she took your last name? Calls herself Lisa St. Claire."
Dr. St. Claire nodded a shrink nod that acknowledged what I'd said without indicating a reaction. I had an impulse to lie on the table and recall my childhood.
"You found. her at the Pomona Detox Hospital."
"Yes. I work there once a week."
"Is she an alcoholic?"
"No. She was drinking far too much and living self-destructively. But she was not addicted to alcohol. She was able to control her drinking."
"So she could have a drink, when you knew her, without having six more."
"When she left me she was able to use alcohol in moderation," Dr. St. Claire said.
"Given your knowledge of her, Doctor, is she likely to have shot her husband?"
"From ambush, you say?"
"Yes."
"No. I do not believe she would have shot him from ambush."
"But she could have shot him under other circumstances?"
"I don't know could or couldn't. I will say that Angela lived a very harsh life, in very difficult circumstances. She had fewer restraint mechanisms perhaps than some women might have, and she harbored a lot of rage."
"At whom?"
"At her father, at her boyfriend, at men in general."
"Lot of whores hate men," I said.
"And have reason to," Dr. St. Claire said with a smile.
The waiter arrived. Dr. St. Claire ordered the Cobb salad. I did not.
"Would she have left her husband without a word?" I said.
"I don't know. She is not the same woman she was when she was with me. She became almost totally caught up in her own rehabilitation. She never missed an appointment with me. She read every book she could about self-destructive behavior, alcohol dependency, sexual relationships. She was fairly indiscriminate about it, and I used to urge her to be selective. I'm not sure all that reading helped her."
Dr. St. Claire smiled.
"An odd side effect was that while she was uneducated in general, because of all her reading she developed a highly sophisticated vocabulary, so that at one moment she talks as if she were a drill instructor, and the next she is discussing problems of identity and cathexis, or using words like `adroit' or `manipulative.' "
"True of a lot of self-educated people," I said.
Dr. St. Claire nodded.
"Whether this is still the case, I don't know," Dr. St. Claire said. "Time passes, people grow."
"Or dwindle," I said.
"That too," she said. "But in truth I wouldn't really be able to answer your question if I had just finished with her this morning. Humans behave unpredictably."
"There's some evidence of a former boyfriend on the scene. Guy named Luis Deleon," I said.
Dr. St. Claire shook her head.