CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

It didn’t take me long to get the warrant for Smooch’s home address. The Captain knew a judge who owed him a favor.

Cyril “Smooch” Sinclair had a loft in Koreatown. The top floor of a four-story building. One big open space, about sixty by one hundred feet. The manager of the building ran the flower shop on the ground floor. He used his spare key to let me in.

It was a great space for a photographer. The ceiling had to have been eighteen feet high at least, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on the north and south walls to let in plenty of natural light. One of those big rolls of white backdrop paper hung from a rod in front of the east wall, with black, red, and blue rolls stacked on the floor behind it. Someone had created an interior room by using cedar planks to wall off a ten-by-ten-foot space in the southwest corner. The cedar gave off a great smell. A naked red lightbulb jutted out from a fixture attached to the door. Smooch had his own darkroom.

The rest of the space had minimal, modern furniture. A queen-size mattress on a frame, no box springs, no headboard, covered in a white duvet with a wide black stripe across the center. Black shams on the pillows. A freestanding claw-foot tub—I thought that was sort of sexy—a black vanity under the sink, and a tall white Pottery Barn cupboard next to it. One of those rolling clothes racks held Smooch’s wardrobe, and behind it, a black-and-red shoji screen blocked the toilet from view. A black leather and chrome sofa, a small flat-screen TV on a glass coffee table in front of it. The kitchen took up the northeast corner. Smooch must have liked to cook; he had some pretty fancy gear on the counters—copper pots, a wok, an indoor grill. The table was only big enough for two.

Photography equipment was scattered all over the place, but the only other furniture was one long, freestanding bookshelf made out of the same cedar as the darkroom. It took me a minute to realize Smooch had all his books alphabetized and categorized: biography, history, photography, and . . . wolves.

Lots of books about wolves. The guy definitely had a fetish. I Danced with a Werewolf; Werewolves Wear Heels; What You Always Wanted to Know About Werewolves and Couldn’t Find Anyone to Ask. Maybe I should borrow that one. The Complete Unabridged and Unadulterated Encyclopedic Compendium of Werewolves. That could come in handy, too. The Werewolves’ Wine Companion. Confessions of a Recovering Werewolf. Werewolves on the Wagon. Cyril Sinclair had more than a fetish; he had a problem. He even had books about Hitler’s werewolves, the guerrilla force Himmler organized to assassinate German collaborators. And the Wolfenstein video games. Those he kept in the history section.

I could see already how he was going to make my story for the Captain believable. Recovering alcoholic, addicted to gaming, decides he’s a werewolf and attacks Ovsanna in a delirious rage.

There were photos of wolves on the walls. And photos of him with a woman. His girlfriend, from the looks of the poses. She had on jeans and a fur coat. Looked like rabbit. They were cuddling in the woods.

The phone rang. It was an old handheld with an answering machine in the base and no caller ID. I heard Cyril’s recorded voice telling the caller to leave a number if he wanted his call returned, and then a woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Hey, sweetie, did you have a good time last night? I’ll bet you did.” Her voice was rough and gravelly. If this was the woman in the pictures, she sure didn’t sound like she looked. The woman in the pictures was a good-looking blond, all-American cheerleader type, twenty years past her prime. The woman on the phone sounded like Kathleen Turner with a sinus infection. “Did you do what I told you? Maybe you don’t remember. Well . . . I haven’t seen anything in the papers yet, so . . . I want to see you, find out what happened. Meet me at the lair at nine thirty. Call me back if you can’t.”

Shit. It would have been so easy if she’d just left her number on the machine. Now I was going to have to spend time getting another warrant to dump his phone. If this chick wanted to meet him at their lair, it sounds like she’s another one who’s using magic to change into one of those—what had Ovsanna called them?—boxenwolves? Fuck me a duck.

And how in hell do I find their lair?

I called Del at the office to get him started working on an AMA dump of Smooch’s phone. I needed the list of all incoming calls. Hopefully, Ms. All-American Wolf Girl had called him from her cell. Once I had her number, I ought to be able to track her. Then I called Ovsanna to tell her what I’d found at the boxenwolf’s loft. She told me she’d found something in Thomas DeWitte’s office I could use to tie him to Smooch. A sterling silver cock ring. The evidence techs will love it.

“I’ve got to go back to Steady Eddie,” I said, “find out if he knows where this lair is that this woman is talking about. He may not remember tracking you, but maybe he remembers where his pack hangs out.”

“Wait a minute. What were her exact words? Did she say I’ll meet you at The Lair?”

“Yeah. Nine thirty. I suppose they wait until dark to do their changing.”

“I know The Lair, Peter. It’s not a wolves’ den, it’s a bar. Down on Rowena in Silver Lake. It’s where the paparazzi hang out. She was telling Smooch to meet her at the bar.”

“You’re amazing. And you don’t even drink.”

“Well, not anything they serve by the glass at The Lair. Would you like me to show you where it is tonight? If this woman shows up and I can get close enough to her, I can at least tell you if she’s human or not.”

“You can? How?”

“Oh, Peter . . . don’t you know you all smell alike?”