Blood Test

“Look, Alex, if what happened tonight has anything to do with the Swopes, that’s all the more reason for you to stay out of it. I’m not saying cut off your feelings, just cover your ass.”

He touched my bad jaw gently. “Last time you were lucky. Don’t push it.”

I packed an overnight bag and drove around awhile before deciding on the Bel-Air Hotel as a good place to recuperate. And hide. It was just minutes away, quiet and secluded behind high stucco walls and towering subtropical shrubbery. The ambience — pink exterior, forest green interiors, swaying coconut palms, and a pond in which flamingos floated — had always reminded me of the old mythical Hollywood — romance, sweet fantasy, and happy endings. All of which seemed in short supply.

I headed west on Sunset, turned north at Stone Canyon Road, and drove past immense gated estates until coming to the hotel’s entrance. No one was parking cars at one forty in the morning; I slipped the Seville between a Lamborghini and a Maserati and left it looking like a dowager escorted by two gigolos.

The night clerk was a brooding Swede who didn’t look up when I paid in advance with cash and registered as Carl Jung. Then I noticed he’d recorded it as Karl Young.

A tired-looking bellman took me to a bungalow overlooking a pool, which was lit up like an aquamarine. The room was understated and comfortable, with a big soft bed and heavy dark forties furniture.

I slid my body between cool sheets and remembered the last time I’d been there: the previous July, on Robin’s twenty-eighth birthday. We’d heard the philharmonic do Mozart at the Music Center and followed the concert with a late supper at the Bel-Air.

The dining room had been dark and quiet, our booth private and next to a picture window. Between the oysters and the veal a stately older woman in a formal gown had glided regally across the palm court.

“Alex,” Robin had whispered, “look — no it couldn’t be...”

But it was. Bette Davis. We couldn’t have custom-ordered it.

Thinking of that perfect night helped keep the ghastliness of this quite imperfect one at bay.

I slept until eleven, dialed room service and ordered fresh raspberries, an herb omelette, bran muffins, and coffee. The food came on china and silver and was superb. I chased images of death from my mind and ate heartily. Soon, I started to feel like a human being again.

I slept some more, woke, and called West L.A. Division at two. Milo had flown to Washington so I checked in with Del Hardy. He informed me that Conley was out as a suspect. While Moody was being blown apart, he’d been on location in Saugus for a night shoot on a new TV series. I took the news with equanimity, never having seen him as a calculating killer. Besides, I’d already convinced myself I was the sniper’s intended victim. Accepting the role didn’t make for tranquillity but at least I’d be vigilant.

I went for a swim at four, more for exercise than pleasure, returned to my room, and called for the evening paper and a Grolsch. The flu seemed to have surrendered. I sank into an armchair to read and drink.

The news of Valcroix’s death was a two-inch filler piece on page twenty-eight entitled DOCTOR LOSES LIFE IN AUTO CRASH. From it I learned the genre, if not the make, of the car the Canadian had driven (“foreign compact”) before crashing it into an abutment near the Wilmington harbor. He’d been pronounced dead at the scene and relatives in Montreal had been notified.

Wilmington is midway between L.A. and San Diego if you take the coastal route, a drab section of warehouses and shipyards. I wondered what he’d been doing there and which direction he’d been headed before the collision. He’d visited La Vista before. Was he returning from there when he crashed?

I thought of his boasts to Beverly about having an ace up his sleeve with regard to the Swopes. More questions reverberated relentlessly: was the crash an accident, the result of drug-numbed reflexes, or had he tried to play that ace and lost his life in the process? And what was the secret he’d considered his salvation? Could it solve the murder of the Swopes? Or help locate their children?

I turned it over, again and again, until my head hurt, sitting tensely on the edge of the chair, groping haphazardly like a blind man in a maze.

It wasn’t until I realized what was missing that I was able to focus on what had to be done. Had I looked at it clinically, as a psychologist, clarity of purpose might have come sooner.

I’d been trained in the art of psychotherapy, the excavation of the past as a means of untangling the present and rendering it livable. It’s detective work of sorts, crouching stealthily in the blind alleys of the unconscious. And it begins with the taking of a careful and detailed history.

Four people had perished unnaturally. If their deaths seemed a jumble of unrelated horrors, I knew it was because such a history was missing. Because insufficient respect had been paid to the past.