Breakdown, p.24
Breakdown, page 24
I phoned BrightMornings, Hollywood. She said, “Hi, Dr. Delaware. Chet Brett is here right now, and he says he’ll talk to you about Zelda Chase. But you know how it is, that could change any second. Are you close?”
“Forty minutes away. I’m leaving now.”
“Ooh,” she said. “I’ll try to keep him here—he’s always hungry, maybe snacks will help.”
—
I made it in thirty-four. Judy was behind the desk, working on her laptop. A couple of empty-eyed men sat in armchairs at the rear of the lobby, neither of them five-foot-tall Norwegians.
She said, “Sorry, he wouldn’t stay inside, went back to his car. Five minutes ago, he was still there, parked up that way.” Pointing east. “Approach him slowly and try not to alarm him. He may not remember your name.”
I hurried outside. The car had been in full sight but I’d walked right by. Pea-green Plymouth Valiant as old as my Seville but far less pampered. The rear compartment was piled to the roof with folded clothing and slices of cardboard. A man sat in the driver’s seat. I edged forward slowly. He was holding half of an Oreo in each hand and licking crème from the good side.
Warm day, but the windows were shut. I walked up to the front passenger window, waited to see if he’d turn. When he didn’t, I rapped softly. He curled his tongue back in his mouth and gave another lick. I waved to get his attention. Rapped again before he turned and studied me.
Homeless-ageless, anywhere from fifties to eighties, with a tiny, withered face under hair that looked like cotton wool. Yellow perforated Lakers jersey far too large for him. Magenta sweatpants.
I’d been told he was a small man but he sat in the driver’s seat as high as I did.
He kept staring at me while tonguing the cookie. I said, “Alex Delaware,” just loud enough for him to hear.
He pointed to the passenger door and mouthed a word. Open.
The car was hot, humid, ripe as a dumpster full of old produce. As I settled, another wave of aromas hit me. Vintage laundry basket, Lysol, a touch of fermenting cantaloupe. His legs proportional to the rest of his body, everything in miniature. Two cushions under his butt propped him. The pedals near his sneakers had been mechanically extended, a surprising touch of high-tech.
In his lap were packets of cheese crackers, licorice sticks, another set of Oreos.
“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Brett.”
“The full name is Carlsson Mathiass Brekken, two pairs of S’s, one pair of K’s. Double letters are good luck to the Chinese.” High-pitched voice, suggesting prepubescence.
“Thanks, Mr. Brek—”
“Eh eh eh eh eh eh, don’t get formal. To the world I’m the esteemed Chetley Bretley, aka Chet Brett aka me.” Deeply puckered lips spread, revealing a toothless maw. “I’m telling you to educate you. Don’t want to be Brekken anyone’s heart.”
My laugh was genuine.
He said, “That’s me, still crazy after all these years. You’re a doctor. You know Zelda.”
No sense complicating things with past tense. “I do.”
He began singing softly, in a surprisingly good alto. “If you knew Zelda, like I knew Zelda, oh, oh, oh, what a gal…so what’s going on with her?”
I hesitated for an instant but that was enough.
“Something bad,” he said. “No one comes to me with good news. Even the Chinese.”
“The worst, I’m afraid.”
“Really?” he said. “Really? That’s not good. When?”
“Couple of weeks ago.”
“Really? How?”
“She ate something poisonous.”
“That makes no sense,” said Brett. “She was a slim girl, had no appetite for food, let alone poison.”
He nibbled the frosted Oreo half, chipping off bits with his gums until it was gone.
“Actresses,” he said. “Always watching their weight. I was a film director back in Oslo, made art movies. Made Citizen Kane but that didn’t work out so I switched to documentary movies on symptoms of depression among the palace royalty. I needed serious money so I resoled shoes in Gottenborg, that’s Sweden. After that, I worked in Copenhagen—you know that Little Mermaid sculpture by the harbor? I made it.”
Not a trace of Nordic accent.
I said, “Wow.”
“I’ve been known to wow.” He studied the remaining half cookie. Rotated it and said, “This could be the sun on an alien planet. I used to be an astronomer. Then I switched to engineering.” Tapping his right foot on the extended gas pedal. “Made these in Cal Tech, everyone wants one but I keep the formula to myself.”
I sat there as he worked on the other cookie half. Focused, meticulous, not a single falling crumb.
When he finished, I said, “So you and Zelda were friends.”
“Acquaintances,” said Brett. “Two ships passing on the street. How’s her boy? Judith said you knew the boy, your interest is the boy.”
“I saw him five years ago, would love to know he’s okay.”
“She felt bad about giving him up but I told her it was the right thing to do. Why wouldn’t he be okay?”
“With Zelda living on the street and now, deceased—”
“No problem,” said Chet Brett. “She gave him up before she hit the street.”
“Really.”
“Really really really really really. I met her soon after she hit the street. He wasn’t with her, I never saw him.”
“Where was he?”
“All she said was she missed him, was thinking of getting him so she could be with him. I told her not to, it wouldn’t work out, kids need TV and she had nowhere to plug in.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Time,” he said. “That’s also a magazine. It was…when she was out on the street. Near a flop on Fourth and L.A., I was eating beans out of a can, cut my finger opening it, blood was getting into the beans, everyone thought it was ketchup.”
“Near a flop.”
“Not inside,” said Chet Brett. “You could get a room with bugs if you saved up. I did. Zelda never did but I was outside anyway, eating red red beans. She showed up looking like a slim actress and put a blanket down next to my sleeping bag. Wrong thing for her to do, she was too young and clean for the adventurous life. When I found out she was an actress, I told her to go on auditions. You never know. Maybe she did. She’d be gone for days, come back looking like she’d lost something.”
“You have no idea when—”
“Let’s estimate. That’s how I built these.” Tapping the pedal. “Sometime between the world wars. Up in Scandinavia, all those northern lights, we use a different system of calendar computing. Not Gregorian, not Julian, we use Olafian. It makes predictions more difficult but also more relaxed.”
“Ah.”
“Ah so,” said Brett. “That’s Chinese for ‘there you go, Shogun. Give me a double letter.’ ”
He reached for a packet of cheese crackers, opened it carefully.
“So you never met Zelda’s son.”
“Never. But he’s okay. I feel it right here.” Patting the empty Oreo packet. “Way the cookie crumbles.”
“Did Zelda ever talk about Ovid?”
“That was his name?” said Chet Brett. “She just called him ‘my son.’ What else does a mother need to know? Sometimes she’d cry. Then she’d cry some more. One time I told her she needed to tell me what was bothering her so she could relax. She said she’d given him up because she had no money to take care of him but she wanted him back. I told her she did the right thing, why make a child starve? It didn’t make her feel better. But she listened.”
He scratched his head for a long time, reached down and crinkled the snacks in his lap. “Usually I can make people feel better. Next year, I’m going to be a psychiatrist. Maybe that’ll help.”
He began work on a cracker.
“Did Zelda ever talk about her mother?”
“She had one? No.”
“A sister?”
“Nope.”
“Did she mention anyone in her family—”
“She wasn’t into mentioning. Just lots of crying. Maybe she wore herself out. Emotionally. You can’t lubricate for that.”
“True. Anything else you want to tell me?”
“I like your shirt. Goes with your complexion.”
“Thanks.”
“That’ll be twenty bucks.”
I reached for my wallet.
Chet Brett said, “Just kidding, I can’t take payment. Not until I pass my boards. Next year, it’s going to cost you.”
—
I drove away wanting to feel reassured but knowing what I’d just heard was as reliable as a campaign promise.
Time to try Earl Cohen.
“Crazy man, probable dead man. What’s next.”
I realized I’d thought out loud. Talking to myself. As long as you didn’t move your lips—or held a cellphone to your mouth—you were fine.
—
At the next red light, I punched numbers.
“Earl Cohen’s office.”
“Dr. Alex Delaware calling for Mr. Cohen.”
“He’s in a meeting. Would you like his voicemail?”
“Please. So he’s okay?”
“Pardon—oh, that.” She laughed. “He’s fine.”
Cohen’s recorded voice, stronger than a year ago, declared: “This is Earl. Speak.”
I spoke.
CHAPTER
34
My private line rang moments after I stepped into the house.
Earl Cohen said, “Hopefully you’re not in need of my services.”
“Not married.”
“Your gain is my loss.”
“You sound good, Mr. Cohen.”
“Meaning why am I not dead? What can I tell you? Nothing a few spare parts didn’t take care of. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m looking for information on some people who were around thirty years ago—”
“Thirty years ago? Gee whiz, we wrote on stone tablets back then. So you reach out to Methuselah? Who are these cave people?”
“Enid and Averell DePauw.”
“I see.” Cohen’s tone had changed. Guarded. “Never represented any of them.”
“But you know them.”
“I’d like to know why you’re interested.”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“I’m able to deal with complications.”
“Could we meet? Drinks or dinner, on me.”
“I don’t drink, nor am I currently hungry. Are you conducting this inquiry for yourself or for that heavyset police fellow—Sturgis?”
“It’s related to police work.”
“Is anyone else involved?”
Strange question.
I said, “No.”
“What I’m getting at, Doctor, is my own brand of complications. An official inquiry, I talk to you and suddenly I’m getting calls from civil servants.”
“No, nothing like that. Sturgis doesn’t even know I’m calling.”
“And I’m not having this conversation with Sturgis because…”
“I’m doing my own research. No sense drawing him in if there’s nothing to learn.”
“You’re seeing if I have anything to offer first, in order to conserve his energy? From the looks of him, he conserves quite a lot of energy. All right, remember where I talked to the two of you, last year? I don’t mean my office, our alfresco meeting.”
I said, “The park at Doheny and Santa Monica. Walking distance to your house.”
“You remember—and you’re older than thirty! I can be there in an hour or so. I assume you look the same. I don’t.”
—
He appeared five minutes after I got to the park, walking from the west as he had the last time. True to his word, he’d changed. So much so that I might not have recognized him.
Meager white hair was dyed an uneasy meld of brunette and copper, accentuating the spots where it thinned to the scalp. He’d put on considerable weight, inflating from gaunt to average build, his skeletal face round and padded.
Last year, he’d worn an overcoat on a warm afternoon. Today was cool and he had on apricot-colored linen pants secured by a brown knit belt, a corn-yellow dress shirt, maroon slip-ons. Every plodding step exposed pale ankles.
At times he seemed to falter but when he reached me and proclaimed, “Doctor!” he shook my hand with vigor.
I said, “Spare parts seem to be working well.”
“Medical science proclaims me a miracle man. A few bypassed arteries, a couple of tumors sent packing, a reconstituted disk in my neck, and thyroid hormone to keep me metabolizing. Been feeling so hale, I’m pondering Viagra. My wife’s worried I’ll go blind and grope another woman.”
The only other people in the park were two gorgeous women in yoga clothes perched on the rim of a dry fountain, luxuriating in perfect posture as their dogs socialized. Cohen admired them for a moment, before veering to the northern periphery of the lawn and walking.
Bionic man on fuel-saving mode. I slowed down to keep pace.
He said, “So you’re Sherlocking full-time? No more listening to people’s problems?”
“No, I still do that.”
“Mixing it up,” he said. “Keeps life interesting. Fine, tell me a complicated story.”
I kept Alicia, Imelda, Rod Salton, and Loach out of the narrative, described Zelda, without naming her, as a homeless trespasser who’d died in Enid DePauw’s garden, cause of death still “undetermined.”
“But you’d like to determine.” Unmoved, unimpressed. A guy who’d heard it all.
I thought of the odd question he’d posed. Is anyone else involved?
“Resolution’s always better, Mr. Cohen.”
“You’re saying it could be foul play? On the part of Enid?”
Not shocked by the question. I shrugged.
The look Cohen gave me was one I knew well. Sitting on the stand as an expert witness, as a lawyer prepared to attack.
Then he shrugged, too. “Enid I was aware of because she was married to Av and Av I knew well. There was a time you’d term us chums. Bright boy, he had a law degree but never practiced, found it more profitable to move money around. We met forty-plus years ago when he sent business to the firm I worked for before I went out on my own. They assigned me to his company and we hit it off.”
“Were you doing family law at the time?”
“That’s all I’ve ever done, Doctor.”
“The business he sent was rich people divorcing.”
“As you know, rich people create difficult situations when they get emotional. Too much incentive for mischief. What I did for Av’s clients was what today you’d call forensic accounting. My father was a bookkeeper, I knew how to add and subtract.”
I said, “Finding hidden assets.”
Cohen smiled. “You’re not the only one who likes to detect.”
“What kind of person was Av?”
“Friendly, outgoing. As I said, smart, though clever would be more accurate. Knowing what he had to know but not bothering to delve further.”
“Surface intelligence.”
“Mile wide, inch deep, like every politician I’ve met,” said Cohen. “His talent was conversation. He could talk about anything and if you got too specific for him, he’d switch to listening. Or pretending to. I liked him, terrific company, always a positive attitude. We were around the same age, played tennis whenever we could at Roxbury Park. Not golf, golf was a country-club thing and he, being of the Gentile persuasion, played at Wilshire, I at Hillcrest. Good backhand, Averell. We’d also meet on business matters, usually over dinner and too many cocktails. Back then, young Beverly Hills bucks frequented the same locales.”
He held up a finger. “I can tell you what he drank. Moscow Mules, those little copper cups. He liked his ginger beer sharp.”
One of the beauties rose from the fountain rim, bent liquidly, and leashed her dog. Cohen watched her and sighed. “It goes by fast, my friend…where was I—the watering holes. The Polo Lounge, Chasen’s, Scandia, they all closed down in the eighties and nineties. If we were feeling a little less buttoned down and didn’t mind umbrellas in our drinks, Trader Vic’s—still there, but different. Or the Luau on Rodeo—that one was owned by Lana Turner’s husband, went under even earlier. Averell was a generous tipper, took the time to schmooze with waiters and busboys. When you were with him, you got great service…what else…good-looking fellow in that Bob Cummings way.”
“What was his background?”
“Perfect for managing rich people’s money. East Coast prep school, Amherst, law at Virginia. I’m Harvard all the way through, used to kid him about being bush league. He’d make a crack about laboring under the weight of a massive foreskin.”
Cohen turned toward the remaining yoga princess. “Such perfection they achieve today. Anyway, that’s Averell. Enid came later, he married her when he was well into his forties, she must have been midthirties at least.”
“I’ve learned he had studio connections.”
“You learned?”
“He bought his house from MGM in a private sale. Did he do a lot of industry work?”
“Anyone worth their salt in Beverly Hills wanted industry work,” said Cohen. “Was Av a unique whiz with investments? Naw, just a competent stocks and bonds man, cautious strategies, conservation of wealth. If he had any corporate clients, I never heard about them. Don’t read too much into a private sale, Doctor. People had their ears to the ground because the studios were always hustling to raise quick bucks by unloading real estate they’d picked up on the cheap. Not just in the Golden Triangle, we’re talking huge acreage in Burbank they didn’t need anymore for shooting westerns, Thousand Oaks, the Antelope Valley. Private sales worked out for everyone: A seller could discount up to the amount of the brokerage fee they avoided, and if the documents were fudged to reduce property tax and put some extra cash into someone’s pocket, who’d know?”
“Still,” I said, “that’s an impressive place on St. Denis.”
“You’re showing your age, Doctor. Or rather the lack of. By today’s standards, it’s Xanadu. I’m not saying it was ever cheap but back then, if you had money—I don’t mean Buffett–Gates money, a solid six-figure income—you could acquire some serious soil because real estate didn’t take off until the midseventies. My daughter works with me so I know what she earns. She had to take a big mortgage to buy a nice but not fancy house on a south-of-Wilshire seven-thousand-foot lot. For three million dollars. I have a twenty-thousand-square-foot lot on Sierra and paid a hundred grand in 1968.”
“Forty minutes away. I’m leaving now.”
“Ooh,” she said. “I’ll try to keep him here—he’s always hungry, maybe snacks will help.”
—
I made it in thirty-four. Judy was behind the desk, working on her laptop. A couple of empty-eyed men sat in armchairs at the rear of the lobby, neither of them five-foot-tall Norwegians.
She said, “Sorry, he wouldn’t stay inside, went back to his car. Five minutes ago, he was still there, parked up that way.” Pointing east. “Approach him slowly and try not to alarm him. He may not remember your name.”
I hurried outside. The car had been in full sight but I’d walked right by. Pea-green Plymouth Valiant as old as my Seville but far less pampered. The rear compartment was piled to the roof with folded clothing and slices of cardboard. A man sat in the driver’s seat. I edged forward slowly. He was holding half of an Oreo in each hand and licking crème from the good side.
Warm day, but the windows were shut. I walked up to the front passenger window, waited to see if he’d turn. When he didn’t, I rapped softly. He curled his tongue back in his mouth and gave another lick. I waved to get his attention. Rapped again before he turned and studied me.
Homeless-ageless, anywhere from fifties to eighties, with a tiny, withered face under hair that looked like cotton wool. Yellow perforated Lakers jersey far too large for him. Magenta sweatpants.
I’d been told he was a small man but he sat in the driver’s seat as high as I did.
He kept staring at me while tonguing the cookie. I said, “Alex Delaware,” just loud enough for him to hear.
He pointed to the passenger door and mouthed a word. Open.
The car was hot, humid, ripe as a dumpster full of old produce. As I settled, another wave of aromas hit me. Vintage laundry basket, Lysol, a touch of fermenting cantaloupe. His legs proportional to the rest of his body, everything in miniature. Two cushions under his butt propped him. The pedals near his sneakers had been mechanically extended, a surprising touch of high-tech.
In his lap were packets of cheese crackers, licorice sticks, another set of Oreos.
“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Brett.”
“The full name is Carlsson Mathiass Brekken, two pairs of S’s, one pair of K’s. Double letters are good luck to the Chinese.” High-pitched voice, suggesting prepubescence.
“Thanks, Mr. Brek—”
“Eh eh eh eh eh eh, don’t get formal. To the world I’m the esteemed Chetley Bretley, aka Chet Brett aka me.” Deeply puckered lips spread, revealing a toothless maw. “I’m telling you to educate you. Don’t want to be Brekken anyone’s heart.”
My laugh was genuine.
He said, “That’s me, still crazy after all these years. You’re a doctor. You know Zelda.”
No sense complicating things with past tense. “I do.”
He began singing softly, in a surprisingly good alto. “If you knew Zelda, like I knew Zelda, oh, oh, oh, what a gal…so what’s going on with her?”
I hesitated for an instant but that was enough.
“Something bad,” he said. “No one comes to me with good news. Even the Chinese.”
“The worst, I’m afraid.”
“Really?” he said. “Really? That’s not good. When?”
“Couple of weeks ago.”
“Really? How?”
“She ate something poisonous.”
“That makes no sense,” said Brett. “She was a slim girl, had no appetite for food, let alone poison.”
He nibbled the frosted Oreo half, chipping off bits with his gums until it was gone.
“Actresses,” he said. “Always watching their weight. I was a film director back in Oslo, made art movies. Made Citizen Kane but that didn’t work out so I switched to documentary movies on symptoms of depression among the palace royalty. I needed serious money so I resoled shoes in Gottenborg, that’s Sweden. After that, I worked in Copenhagen—you know that Little Mermaid sculpture by the harbor? I made it.”
Not a trace of Nordic accent.
I said, “Wow.”
“I’ve been known to wow.” He studied the remaining half cookie. Rotated it and said, “This could be the sun on an alien planet. I used to be an astronomer. Then I switched to engineering.” Tapping his right foot on the extended gas pedal. “Made these in Cal Tech, everyone wants one but I keep the formula to myself.”
I sat there as he worked on the other cookie half. Focused, meticulous, not a single falling crumb.
When he finished, I said, “So you and Zelda were friends.”
“Acquaintances,” said Brett. “Two ships passing on the street. How’s her boy? Judith said you knew the boy, your interest is the boy.”
“I saw him five years ago, would love to know he’s okay.”
“She felt bad about giving him up but I told her it was the right thing to do. Why wouldn’t he be okay?”
“With Zelda living on the street and now, deceased—”
“No problem,” said Chet Brett. “She gave him up before she hit the street.”
“Really.”
“Really really really really really. I met her soon after she hit the street. He wasn’t with her, I never saw him.”
“Where was he?”
“All she said was she missed him, was thinking of getting him so she could be with him. I told her not to, it wouldn’t work out, kids need TV and she had nowhere to plug in.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Time,” he said. “That’s also a magazine. It was…when she was out on the street. Near a flop on Fourth and L.A., I was eating beans out of a can, cut my finger opening it, blood was getting into the beans, everyone thought it was ketchup.”
“Near a flop.”
“Not inside,” said Chet Brett. “You could get a room with bugs if you saved up. I did. Zelda never did but I was outside anyway, eating red red beans. She showed up looking like a slim actress and put a blanket down next to my sleeping bag. Wrong thing for her to do, she was too young and clean for the adventurous life. When I found out she was an actress, I told her to go on auditions. You never know. Maybe she did. She’d be gone for days, come back looking like she’d lost something.”
“You have no idea when—”
“Let’s estimate. That’s how I built these.” Tapping the pedal. “Sometime between the world wars. Up in Scandinavia, all those northern lights, we use a different system of calendar computing. Not Gregorian, not Julian, we use Olafian. It makes predictions more difficult but also more relaxed.”
“Ah.”
“Ah so,” said Brett. “That’s Chinese for ‘there you go, Shogun. Give me a double letter.’ ”
He reached for a packet of cheese crackers, opened it carefully.
“So you never met Zelda’s son.”
“Never. But he’s okay. I feel it right here.” Patting the empty Oreo packet. “Way the cookie crumbles.”
“Did Zelda ever talk about Ovid?”
“That was his name?” said Chet Brett. “She just called him ‘my son.’ What else does a mother need to know? Sometimes she’d cry. Then she’d cry some more. One time I told her she needed to tell me what was bothering her so she could relax. She said she’d given him up because she had no money to take care of him but she wanted him back. I told her she did the right thing, why make a child starve? It didn’t make her feel better. But she listened.”
He scratched his head for a long time, reached down and crinkled the snacks in his lap. “Usually I can make people feel better. Next year, I’m going to be a psychiatrist. Maybe that’ll help.”
He began work on a cracker.
“Did Zelda ever talk about her mother?”
“She had one? No.”
“A sister?”
“Nope.”
“Did she mention anyone in her family—”
“She wasn’t into mentioning. Just lots of crying. Maybe she wore herself out. Emotionally. You can’t lubricate for that.”
“True. Anything else you want to tell me?”
“I like your shirt. Goes with your complexion.”
“Thanks.”
“That’ll be twenty bucks.”
I reached for my wallet.
Chet Brett said, “Just kidding, I can’t take payment. Not until I pass my boards. Next year, it’s going to cost you.”
—
I drove away wanting to feel reassured but knowing what I’d just heard was as reliable as a campaign promise.
Time to try Earl Cohen.
“Crazy man, probable dead man. What’s next.”
I realized I’d thought out loud. Talking to myself. As long as you didn’t move your lips—or held a cellphone to your mouth—you were fine.
—
At the next red light, I punched numbers.
“Earl Cohen’s office.”
“Dr. Alex Delaware calling for Mr. Cohen.”
“He’s in a meeting. Would you like his voicemail?”
“Please. So he’s okay?”
“Pardon—oh, that.” She laughed. “He’s fine.”
Cohen’s recorded voice, stronger than a year ago, declared: “This is Earl. Speak.”
I spoke.
CHAPTER
34
My private line rang moments after I stepped into the house.
Earl Cohen said, “Hopefully you’re not in need of my services.”
“Not married.”
“Your gain is my loss.”
“You sound good, Mr. Cohen.”
“Meaning why am I not dead? What can I tell you? Nothing a few spare parts didn’t take care of. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m looking for information on some people who were around thirty years ago—”
“Thirty years ago? Gee whiz, we wrote on stone tablets back then. So you reach out to Methuselah? Who are these cave people?”
“Enid and Averell DePauw.”
“I see.” Cohen’s tone had changed. Guarded. “Never represented any of them.”
“But you know them.”
“I’d like to know why you’re interested.”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“I’m able to deal with complications.”
“Could we meet? Drinks or dinner, on me.”
“I don’t drink, nor am I currently hungry. Are you conducting this inquiry for yourself or for that heavyset police fellow—Sturgis?”
“It’s related to police work.”
“Is anyone else involved?”
Strange question.
I said, “No.”
“What I’m getting at, Doctor, is my own brand of complications. An official inquiry, I talk to you and suddenly I’m getting calls from civil servants.”
“No, nothing like that. Sturgis doesn’t even know I’m calling.”
“And I’m not having this conversation with Sturgis because…”
“I’m doing my own research. No sense drawing him in if there’s nothing to learn.”
“You’re seeing if I have anything to offer first, in order to conserve his energy? From the looks of him, he conserves quite a lot of energy. All right, remember where I talked to the two of you, last year? I don’t mean my office, our alfresco meeting.”
I said, “The park at Doheny and Santa Monica. Walking distance to your house.”
“You remember—and you’re older than thirty! I can be there in an hour or so. I assume you look the same. I don’t.”
—
He appeared five minutes after I got to the park, walking from the west as he had the last time. True to his word, he’d changed. So much so that I might not have recognized him.
Meager white hair was dyed an uneasy meld of brunette and copper, accentuating the spots where it thinned to the scalp. He’d put on considerable weight, inflating from gaunt to average build, his skeletal face round and padded.
Last year, he’d worn an overcoat on a warm afternoon. Today was cool and he had on apricot-colored linen pants secured by a brown knit belt, a corn-yellow dress shirt, maroon slip-ons. Every plodding step exposed pale ankles.
At times he seemed to falter but when he reached me and proclaimed, “Doctor!” he shook my hand with vigor.
I said, “Spare parts seem to be working well.”
“Medical science proclaims me a miracle man. A few bypassed arteries, a couple of tumors sent packing, a reconstituted disk in my neck, and thyroid hormone to keep me metabolizing. Been feeling so hale, I’m pondering Viagra. My wife’s worried I’ll go blind and grope another woman.”
The only other people in the park were two gorgeous women in yoga clothes perched on the rim of a dry fountain, luxuriating in perfect posture as their dogs socialized. Cohen admired them for a moment, before veering to the northern periphery of the lawn and walking.
Bionic man on fuel-saving mode. I slowed down to keep pace.
He said, “So you’re Sherlocking full-time? No more listening to people’s problems?”
“No, I still do that.”
“Mixing it up,” he said. “Keeps life interesting. Fine, tell me a complicated story.”
I kept Alicia, Imelda, Rod Salton, and Loach out of the narrative, described Zelda, without naming her, as a homeless trespasser who’d died in Enid DePauw’s garden, cause of death still “undetermined.”
“But you’d like to determine.” Unmoved, unimpressed. A guy who’d heard it all.
I thought of the odd question he’d posed. Is anyone else involved?
“Resolution’s always better, Mr. Cohen.”
“You’re saying it could be foul play? On the part of Enid?”
Not shocked by the question. I shrugged.
The look Cohen gave me was one I knew well. Sitting on the stand as an expert witness, as a lawyer prepared to attack.
Then he shrugged, too. “Enid I was aware of because she was married to Av and Av I knew well. There was a time you’d term us chums. Bright boy, he had a law degree but never practiced, found it more profitable to move money around. We met forty-plus years ago when he sent business to the firm I worked for before I went out on my own. They assigned me to his company and we hit it off.”
“Were you doing family law at the time?”
“That’s all I’ve ever done, Doctor.”
“The business he sent was rich people divorcing.”
“As you know, rich people create difficult situations when they get emotional. Too much incentive for mischief. What I did for Av’s clients was what today you’d call forensic accounting. My father was a bookkeeper, I knew how to add and subtract.”
I said, “Finding hidden assets.”
Cohen smiled. “You’re not the only one who likes to detect.”
“What kind of person was Av?”
“Friendly, outgoing. As I said, smart, though clever would be more accurate. Knowing what he had to know but not bothering to delve further.”
“Surface intelligence.”
“Mile wide, inch deep, like every politician I’ve met,” said Cohen. “His talent was conversation. He could talk about anything and if you got too specific for him, he’d switch to listening. Or pretending to. I liked him, terrific company, always a positive attitude. We were around the same age, played tennis whenever we could at Roxbury Park. Not golf, golf was a country-club thing and he, being of the Gentile persuasion, played at Wilshire, I at Hillcrest. Good backhand, Averell. We’d also meet on business matters, usually over dinner and too many cocktails. Back then, young Beverly Hills bucks frequented the same locales.”
He held up a finger. “I can tell you what he drank. Moscow Mules, those little copper cups. He liked his ginger beer sharp.”
One of the beauties rose from the fountain rim, bent liquidly, and leashed her dog. Cohen watched her and sighed. “It goes by fast, my friend…where was I—the watering holes. The Polo Lounge, Chasen’s, Scandia, they all closed down in the eighties and nineties. If we were feeling a little less buttoned down and didn’t mind umbrellas in our drinks, Trader Vic’s—still there, but different. Or the Luau on Rodeo—that one was owned by Lana Turner’s husband, went under even earlier. Averell was a generous tipper, took the time to schmooze with waiters and busboys. When you were with him, you got great service…what else…good-looking fellow in that Bob Cummings way.”
“What was his background?”
“Perfect for managing rich people’s money. East Coast prep school, Amherst, law at Virginia. I’m Harvard all the way through, used to kid him about being bush league. He’d make a crack about laboring under the weight of a massive foreskin.”
Cohen turned toward the remaining yoga princess. “Such perfection they achieve today. Anyway, that’s Averell. Enid came later, he married her when he was well into his forties, she must have been midthirties at least.”
“I’ve learned he had studio connections.”
“You learned?”
“He bought his house from MGM in a private sale. Did he do a lot of industry work?”
“Anyone worth their salt in Beverly Hills wanted industry work,” said Cohen. “Was Av a unique whiz with investments? Naw, just a competent stocks and bonds man, cautious strategies, conservation of wealth. If he had any corporate clients, I never heard about them. Don’t read too much into a private sale, Doctor. People had their ears to the ground because the studios were always hustling to raise quick bucks by unloading real estate they’d picked up on the cheap. Not just in the Golden Triangle, we’re talking huge acreage in Burbank they didn’t need anymore for shooting westerns, Thousand Oaks, the Antelope Valley. Private sales worked out for everyone: A seller could discount up to the amount of the brokerage fee they avoided, and if the documents were fudged to reduce property tax and put some extra cash into someone’s pocket, who’d know?”
“Still,” I said, “that’s an impressive place on St. Denis.”
“You’re showing your age, Doctor. Or rather the lack of. By today’s standards, it’s Xanadu. I’m not saying it was ever cheap but back then, if you had money—I don’t mean Buffett–Gates money, a solid six-figure income—you could acquire some serious soil because real estate didn’t take off until the midseventies. My daughter works with me so I know what she earns. She had to take a big mortgage to buy a nice but not fancy house on a south-of-Wilshire seven-thousand-foot lot. For three million dollars. I have a twenty-thousand-square-foot lot on Sierra and paid a hundred grand in 1968.”
