The god keepers, p.1
The God Keepers, page 1
They found her naked body behind the rocks on the beach in the Plaza del Rey section of Los Angeles. At first the cops wanted to call it suicide, but it's hard to drown yourself in less than two feet of water, especially when you had a whole ocean beyond those rocks. Then an LAPD detective recognized her as the estranged wife of Max Sands, once on the force, now on the bottle. The coroner recognized the method of death-murder, and the means-someone had given Jackie Sands a mainline of cyanide. Average, rational people didn't get themselves killed like that. You had to be a junkie to begin with.
Max was an ex-cop and he knew how few junkie-type homicides were solved by the police, but he also knew that Jackie's was one homicide he was going to solve.
Max knew what to do. He had to travel undercover. The only sure way was to be accepted as an addict-pusher while he hunted. Nobody would smell cop if he was actually pumping a tube on a heavy habit. No one could say that they had ever met a cop, or ex-cop for that matter, who had gone on the needle for the sake of justice. No one. Not until now.
From Kirkus Reviews
This is a hard-nosed account of the great white God, heroin, and its enslavement which is first responsible for the nude, unmarked white body found on a California beach. She's Jackie Sands, and her husband Max, a busted policeman, "crawled into the nearest bottle" after she left him. Now he takes on another habit in order to establish the connection to her killer-supplier in a story which is more needles than pins (it's not his best) although it's a good and explicit fix on the whole dirty scene.
This book is for Pat, who has the faith for dreams
1
The beach along Pershing Boulevard on the edge of the Playa del Rey section of the city of Los Angeles is an admirable one on any warm, clear morning when there is no smog to blow out over the Pacific from the city and a sea breeze keeps the sandy playground fresh with the smell of salt air.
The beach is admirable too under the jackstraw blanket of suntanned bodies that the morning sun draws there and packs in invasion-size bunches over the narrow strip of white, which is soon littered with discarded bottles of booze and suntan lotion. All of which serves to make the beach interesting, if not restful to the eyes.
But between the hours of 5 and 6 a.m., on one of the days that are not warm or clear in the advertised California style, when the morning sea breeze is accompanied by cold fingers of mist creeping in under a sky full of gray clouds that drop occasional showers to whip along the white sand in the wind-then the Playa del Rey beach isn't admirable at all. It is instead like all beaches in a cold, misty rain: a sad, sorry place, a badly mauled graveyard of prior festivities, with empty candy wrappers and cast-aside bottles serving as miniature tombstones.
A beach shows its age on such a morning. It is then a worn ribbon of gray-white sand that only the sea gulls show interest in as they search the debris for some choice bits of garbage, squawking in disappointment at the deceptive edibility of the eye-catching white rubbers bobbing in the surf.
No one is interested in a beach during cold, misty mornings, not even someone like Wilbur Seagrave, who was paid to be interested in a beach. At least he was paid to be interested in the section of beach owned by the Ocean View Hotel on Pershing Boulevard, whose guests could view the tired sand and sea from their bedroom windows. In particular, Wilbur's instructions were to be interested enough in that one section of beach to patrol it once or twice a night, at a time he chose, and without fail to patrol it just at dawn so that none of the hotel's early risers was treated to a view of more than sun and sand when he peered from his window at a new day.
Guests had once been treated to the early-morning view of a hippie love-in, Wilbur knew. Or, as one of the hotel's guests had put it as he checked out to return to Flat Rock, Idaho, "They were fornicating all over the beach."
As a result, Wilbur had begun to be paid to be interested in the beach along with his other duties as night watchman for the hotel grounds. Actually, Wilbur considered his seaside patrol for the hotel grounds as simple assurance that there would be no more screwing going on in the sand after the sun came up.
He might have saved himself the trip this morning, he decided. If there was one thing that was never going to become a fad, it was making love on a cold, empty beach. That rain whipping in suddenly, as it was doing this morning, just had to take something out of it. By California standards it was equivalent to trying to get a little in a Montana snowbank.
Wilbur was in a depressed mood as he trudged along just at the wet lip of the surfs reach. You really could never tell though, he decided. He'd seen a real collection of nuts pass down the pike in his day. And like he told his friends at the rooming house, though he'd been through a world war, a depression, and a second-rate gold rush, he couldn't truly say he'd seen such a collection of weird sights as he'd come across since starting his job as night watchman.
He paused in his walk and viewed the sand and surf ahead, unconsciously wrinkling his nose at the fishy odor that always seemed to hang over the beach in damp weather. He pulled his rain cape up against his neck as he glanced irritably down at his wet shoes.
He wondered if he shouldn't just cut across to the hotel right there and forget the rest of his beach check. There was nobody on the beach as far as he could see.
Wilbur sighed as the wind whipped a spray of salty water in off the breakers and against his face. He would just go ahead and forget the rest of the check if it weren't for the reef, he decided. But sure as hell, if he didn't walk down and look behind the rocks, where there was some privacy, that's where someone would be doing it. And from the upper-floor windows of the hotel the view of that protected little spot was just dandy.
As he continued on toward the dark circle of rocks that were half on the beach and half in the surf, he kept wishing that there wasn't the chance of some idiot being in there with his pants down. It wasn't bad enough that the reef provided the hotel with a good number of swimming injuries each year, but it had to be shaped as if nature itself had conspired to form a private piece of seclusion.
It was just too bad that the reef wasn't down the beach a few miles or so. Or even down the beach a few hundred yards, so it would be off hotel property. One thing was sure, Wilbur thought. If he had his way about it, there wouldn't be any cozy little circle of rocks around Ocean View's beach. He'd get those rocks out of there somehow and have an open beach from one end to the other.
He walked on with the wind slapping at his slicker, looking for all the world like a wet Ichabod Crane, or at least a resurrected Jonah.
With those rocks gone he could have seen the entire beach from one spot, he thought sourly, and he'd be finished with the whole patrol nonsense by now. Then he could be back in the hotel kitchen having some coffee. He checked his watch as he walked. It was exactly five-thirty, which made him a half hour late for his coffee already.
Six to six was a long shift to put in on any job, without adding more work to it, like beach snooping. It was a good thing that the work was interesting, at least up until two in the morning. Wilbur grinned to himself. He'd really seen some sights during his checks of the grounds.
He supposed that if it wasn't for that, he'd have turned in his cap and flashlight long ago and found some work that didn't include walking along wet beaches.
A few more mornings like this one and he might do just that, he decided as he passed the first broken teeth of the reef and listened to the louder pound of the surf.
The beach inside the circle was deserted, with only the decoration of discarded beer cans and the shapeless marks of yesterday's bathers in the sand. Wilbur shrugged in resignation. Then he looked at the sea inside the circle of rocks and saw the girl. She seemed almost to be dancing a water ballet to the rhythm of the surf.
And if you wanted to view it like that, she was dancing with the surf among the rocks. But the rhythm and choreography of the dance were set by the tide and not by her impulses.
To Wilbur, who was not a dance fan, she looked very dead as she rolled and twisted with a doll-like stiffness, and only the shift of her long dark hair broke the watery paleness of her body among the rocks.
And for all the sights Wilbur had seen in his life, he had never seen a floater in the rocks. He did not want to see any more of this one, he decided, and departed hurriedly in the direction of the hotel with his rain cape flapping around him like shedding skin. The one thought he had in his mind was to call a cop.
* * *
Detective Sergeant Ross Hogan received a lot of calls like Wilbur's. During twenty-two years on the Los Angeles police force, he had had a good deal of exposure to floaters and the various forms they came in, such as homicides, suicides, and accidental drownings. Hogan viewed all floaters as one thing-a dead body. And dead bodies just naturally were considerable trouble to cops, for each one was looked on as a possible homicide and treated accordingly. Hogan, in fact, had a suspicious mind where the words suicide and accidental drowning were concerned. He did not like tags attached to bodies until he was sure. A floater meant that he had one cold body, and after all the reports were in, and the speculating done, that was the time to decide what had made it dead.
When Hogan left his car in the parking lot at the Ocean View Hotel and trudged across the wet sand toward the vulturelike half circle of patrolmen and other spectators around the reef end of the beach, he wondered why people should find a body so interesting that they would dress hurriedly at daylight to stand on a wet beach in the rain while patrolmen kept them from seeing anything at all. Ac tually, he supposed, that was really what they wanted to see in the first place, since they stood around in guilty-looking groups and gave the police no trouble.
Once, just once, Hogan mused as he walked and glanced at the pinched, curious faces, he would love to haul one seemingly curious, upstanding citizen out of the crowd and show him something. Like a body. Show him a good, close look at the unpretty dead.
He shoved his hands deeper into his raincoat pockets as he walked. Or maybe he should offer a guided tour and a detailed description of a few of the dead ones he'd seen. There were two things he could tell them that bodies had in common. One was that they were never nice to look at, no matter how many you'd seen. And the other thing was that they were all permanently dead with no second shot at it. There really wasn't one damned thing about a body that should make people curious. Unless it maybe made them wonder about their own chances of becoming one.
Hogan never thought too much about such chances. It wasn't exactly the right frame of mind to be in and be a cop. And there was nothing that he would rather be than a cop. He might bitch some about his profession, and swear to the boys back in the squad room that if he had it to do over he'd be a milkman. But Ross Hogan had decided to be a cop at age twelve and he was now a detective-type cop at age forty-two, and what's more, he expected to be a cop for a good many years yet. Bitching about it was a part of being one.
In all truth, Hogan didn't get much bitching done. He really looked as if he couldn't find time to do any. He was a medium-size man with a thick chest, built like a concrete block, so that he appeared huge from any angle of view, and always larger than the five feet eleven inches he was. And walking as he did with his head down and hands shoved into his pockets, he had a determined, hurried appearance that made people step out of his way.
When he reached the rocks at the reefs end, he nodded briefly at the patrolmen as he passed, and approached the two detectives who were crouched near the water's edge, watching the group of medical examiners and lab technicians work over and around the body.
Hogan studied the squatting men dolefully and rubbed the side of his once broken nose with a sausage-size finger before saying, "This looks like a fireside gathering of Ethiopian man. Nice to see that Homicide West is on the job this morning."
Slater and Wolfe, the central homicide team who were making a necessary appearance, exchanged glances and Wolfe sucked at the toothpick in his mouth before saying, "We don't have the flash and fire of the Del Rey Cowboys, but we manage to arrive."
Slater wagged his head and extended his notebook. "There's thousands of laughmakers starving to death on the Great White Way and the LAPD has to have two city-paid funny men." He paused a moment as Hogan took the notebook from his hand. "The basics on this one are there, Ross. You can talk to the night watchman who found the body. He's up at the hotel. All I got from him is that he found her. Could be a slim one for you boys."
Hogan copied the notes for a moment before nodding toward the men around the body. "Anything from them?"
"Who knows?" Wolfe shrugged. "The ghouls make like they're keeping defense plans until they're done. Photographers have been and gone already. Some real classy shots of her out in the rocks-not a stitch on. The ID people will love them."
"Order a set for your own collection," Hogan said, and put his notebook away. "It should give you something to do in your dull moments downtown. Any idea who she is?"
"We had the watchman look at her. He's sure she isn't a guest at the hotel, but they're running a check for us." Wolfe waved a hand at the beach. "Hell, chances are she just headed for the ocean when she decided to bunch it and burn it. This just happened to be close to the highway, and the reef was handy."
Hogan studied the reef with an overly intent look that Wolfe missed. "I suppose that's it then," he said. "Homicide West has cracked another five-minute case of obvious suicide. I think I'll pick up my marbles and go home."
Wolfe watched him, then said, "There's not a mark on her, Hogan. No cuts, bruises, bullet holes, not even a deep scratch that can't be figured as coming from the reef. Looks like she maybe had a fight with her boyfriend or some crap and gave herself a whore's hello off the rocks. Who knows about these nuts?"
"Got it all figured out, huh?"
"Well, we ain't slapping any closed jacket on it until the reports come in," Wolfe said. "But we been around a bit ourselves and seen a few floaters too. This one's got the suicide look."
"Fine," Hogan said. "Anybody check the highway or parking lot for her car then?"
"What car?" Wolfe wanted to know. "How do you figure she's got a car around here?"
Hogan walked to the water's edge and scrambled up on a rock for a better view of the reef. He was shaking his head slowly as he returned to stare at Wolfe. "I'll tell you what car," he said. "According to your theory she had to just pick this place at random to take a swim, right? Now being nude like this, I'd say she must have driven her car down onto the beach or to some spot on the highway where nobody would see her trot out here in her birthday suit. Modesty, you know? And there isn't anyplace like that in this stretch of road."
Wolfe stared at him.
"Her clothes," Hogan said patiently. "They're not on the reef, are they? And they're not on the beach, are they?"
"Well, no, I guess not," Wolfe said uneasily.
"That might blow the hell out of a suicide theory," Hogan said. He was staring directly into Wolfe's eyes. "What you need is a parked car in a secluded spot where she undressed and left her clothes. Where's the secluded spot and car?"
"Maybe she lives close to here," Wolfe said warily. "I was only saying that it looks like a suicide."
"So where are her clothes?" Hogan asked with an unconcealed edge of sarcasm creeping into his tone. "I know that this is the land of free nuts and liberal views and that bathing suits are now practically a bottle of suntan oil and a zipper." He paused a moment. "But-and that is a juicy but-I still want to know how she got to where she was found nude. Now how about that, smart ass?"
Wolfe rose and glanced apprehensively at the reef, then at the beach, then back at Slater, who played it deadpan and offered no help at all. Finally he said, "All right, don't crawl all over me, Hogan. Maybe she came off a boat."
"Sure," Hogan said. "She could have fallen from a blimp too." He nodded at Slater. "How about that, Mel? Want to tell your partner here why she is not very likely to have come off a boat? Or should I continue his education?"
Wolfe blinked. "Who in hell are you educating?"
"Look at the reef, hot shot," Hogan said. "And tell me how she can get inside that circle of rocks from the ocean. And an expert like you can surely see that she couldn't very well have drowned herself on this side in the shallow water."
"How in hell did she get in there then?"
"That's a very good question." Hogan smiled. "I'll bet you'll have some more like that. How many suicides have you seen that are about as easy to swallow as an adult drowning in a wading pool?" He paused and nodded to the reef. "That's what this setup amounts to with any suicide tag right now."
"You think she was thrown in there," Wolfe said in a sudden rise of intelligence. "Someone carried her down here and dumped her?"
"I don't think she killed herself in two feet of water when there's an entire ocean out there past the reef. That's what I don't think, smart ass."
Wolfe searched his mind for some witty crack, then said, "Suppose you tell me how you explain no visible violence on the corpse."
"I would guess that she died in a nonviolent way," Hogan said, grinning, and nodded toward the corpse. "When we get some reports, I'll make sure that you get a copy."
"What in hell are you trying to prove, Hogan?"
"Only that there are lots of ways to get killed that don't leave a lot of blood and such-and that maybe it's a good idea to treat a floater like a homicide until we know different."
"Not we," Slater said. "You. We are here for the show, Ross. So let's get on with this so we can get to hell out of here and tell them downtown that it's assigned."
"To the Del Rey Cowboys," Wolfe said, miffed.
A corpse obviously has no choice in the matter of who will be assigned to do the necessary investigating that develops because of it. A corpse simply lies there, or sits there, or maybe hangs there, and sometimes it just unconcernedly bleeds all over the place, depending on the type of squeal it is. But a corpse definitely does not make choices of any sort. It causes problems silently. It is possible that it doesn't matter a hell of a lot to a corpse who does the investigating anyway.
