The Murder Book by Jonathan Kellerman Page A

something.
    “Is the source reliable?”
    “Usually.”
    “Who?”
    Schwinn’s headshake was peevish. “Let’s concentrate on the main thing: We got a girl who fits our vic’s stats.”
    “Sixteen,” said Milo, bothered.
    Schwinn shrugged. “From what I’ve read — psychology articles — the human rope gets kinked up pretty early.” He leaned back and took another big bite of burrito, wiped salsa verde from his mouth with the back of his hand, then gave the hand a lick. “You think that’s true, boy-o? Think maybe she didn’t report it cause she liked it?”
    Milo covered his anger with a shrug of his own. “So what’s next? Talk to the father?”
    Schwinn righted his chair, swabbed his chin, this time with a paper napkin, stood abruptly, and walked out of the room, leaving Milo to follow.
    Partners.
    Outside, near the unmarked, Schwinn turned to him, smiling. “So tell me, how’d you sleep last night?”
     
     
    Schwinn recited the address on Edgemont, and Milo started up the car.
    “Hollywood, boy-o. A real-life Hollywood girl.”
    Over the course of the twenty-minute ride, he laid out a few more details for Milo: The girl’s name was Janie Ingalls. A sophomore at Hollywood High, living with her father in a third-floor walk-up in a long-faded neighborhood, just north of Santa Monica Boulevard. Bowie Ingalls was a drunk who might or might not be home. Society was going to hell in a handbasket; even white folk were living like pigs.
    The building was a clumsy pink thing with undersized windows and lumpy stucco. Twelve units was Milo’s guess: four flats to a floor, probably divided by a narrow central corridor.
    He parked, but Schwinn made no attempt to get out, so the two of them just sat there, the engine running.
    “Turn it off,” said Schwinn.
    Milo twisted the key and listened to street sounds. Distant traffic from Santa Monica, a few bird trills, someone unseen playing a power mower. The street was poorly kept, litter sludging the gutters. He said, “Besides being a juicehead, how’s the father marginal?”
    “One of those walking-around guys,” said Schwinn. “Name of Bowie Ingalls, does a little of this, little of that. Rumor has it he ran slips for a nigger bookie downtown — how’s that for a white man’s career? A few years ago, he was working as a messenger at Paramount Studios, telling people he was in the movie biz. He plays the horses, has a chicken-shit sheet, mostly drunk and disorderly, unpaid traffic tickets. Two years ago he got pulled in for receiving stolen property but never got charged. Small-time, all around.”
    Details. Schwinn had found the time to pull Bowie Ingalls’s record.
    “Guy like that, and he’s raising a kid,” said Milo.
    “Yeah, it’s a cruel world, isn’t it? Janie’s mother was a stripper and a hype, ran off with some hippie musician when the kid was a baby, overdosed in Frisco.”
    “Sounds like you’ve learned a lot.”
    “That what you think?” Schwinn’s voice got flinty, and his eyes were hard, again. Figuring Milo was being sarcastic? Milo wasn’t sure he hadn’t
meant
to be sarcastic.
    “I’ve got a lot to learn,” he said. “Wasting my time with those MP clowns. Meanwhile you’re getting all this—”
    “Don’t lick my ass, son,” said Schwinn, and suddenly the hatchet face was inches from Milo’s and Milo could smell the Aqua Velva and the salsa verde. “I didn’t
do
dick, and I don’t
know
dick. And you did way
less
than dick.”
    “Hey, sorry if—”
    “
Fuck
sorry, pal. You think this is some
game
? Like getting a master’s degree, hand in your homework, and lick the teacher’s ass and get your little ass-licking
grade
? You think
that’s
what this is about?”
    Talking way too fast for normal. What the hell had set him off?
    Milo kept silent. Schwinn laughed bitterly, moved away, sat back so heavily against the seat that Milo’s heavy body rocked. “Let me tell you, boy-o, that other shit we’ve been