BECAUSE THE NIGHT

351

“One—yes, it’s a gunshot homicide. Christie was shot over by that broken piece of railing, and was blown down to the beach by the impact. I saw the body. It landed on some rocks up from the tide, so it stayed dry. I saw powder burns on his shirtfront, so the shots were obviously fired pointblank. Two—Christie was decapitated, but the biggest piece of his head the technicians have been able to find so far is a skull fragment about the size of a half dollar. You know why? He was almost certainly killed with his own gun. It wasn’t found on his body or anywhere around here. His badge was stolen, too. I talked to one of the top dogs at Rampart, and he told me that Christie packed a three-fifty-seven Python on and off duty, and that he kept it loaded with Teflon-tipped dum-dum’s.” Gaffaney reached into his pants pocket and handed Lloyd a copper-jacketed slug. “Feel the weight of that monster, Hopkins. I took it off of Christie’s gunbelt while the medics weren’t looking. The expended rounds and Christie’s head are probably halfway to Catalina by now.”

Lloyd gouged the slug’s teflon head with his fingernail. “Shit. Those Sheriff’s dicks are probably right; this is a much heavier load than a fortyone. What else? Anything from Avonoco? Christie’s vehicle? Other vehicles? Witnesses? Blood tracks on the pavement?”

The Captain put a restraining hand on Lloyd’s chest. “Slow down, you’re making me nervous. There’s nothing on any of that yet, except a trail of blood leading from the railing across the parking lot and through the underpass to the other side of P.C.H. The trail got fainter as it went along, which indicates that the killer himself wasn’t wounded, he was just soaked with Christie’s blood. The techs are doing their comparison tests now; we’ll know for sure soon. What’s your next move?”

“Pump Nate Steiner for some legal advice. Hassle the shrink. You?”

Captain Fred Gaffaney grinned. “Interrogate the other security chiefs, go over their records, rattle skeletons. The feds are at Avonoco now. Christie’s security rating makes him a quasi federal employee, so this is a collateral F.B.I. beef. Stay in touch, Hopkins. If you want transcripts of the I.A.D. interrogations, call Dutch Peltz.”

Lloyd walked back to his car, oblivious to the ghouls lining P.C.H., drinking beer and standing on their tiptoes to get a glimpse of the drama. He had his hand on the door when the young man from the Big Orange Insider drove by and flipped him the finger.

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352

L.A. NOIR

Nathan Steiner was a Beverly Hills attorney who specialized in defending drug dealers. His forte was “obstructionist” tactics—filing writs and court orders, suits and countersuits, and motions requesting information on prospective jurors, potential witnesses, and courtroom functionaries; all strategies aimed at securing dismissals on the grounds of prejudiced testimony or “courtroom bias.” These strategies often worked, but more often

“Nate the Great” won his cases by outlasting judges and prosecutors and by harassing them into foolish blunders with his paperwork onslaughts. It was well known that many judges granted his minor petitioning requests automatically, in the hope that it would keep his clients out of their courtrooms and thus save them the pain of a protracted Steiner performance; it was not well known that “Nate the Great” felt deep guilt over the scores of dope vultures cut loose from jail as the result of his machinations and that despite his loud advocacy of civil liberties, he atoned for that guilt by advising L.A.P.D. officers on ways to circumvent laws regarding probable cause and search and seizure.

Thus, when Lloyd barged through his office door unannounced, he was ready to listen. Taking a seat uninvited, Lloyd outlined a hypothetical case involving a doctor’s legal right not to divulge professionally secured information, stressing that all of the doctor’s records would have to be seized, because at this point the name of the patient was unknown. Concluding his case, Lloyd sat back and waited for an answer. When Steiner grunted and said, “Give me three or four days to look at some statutes and think about it,” Lloyd got to his feet and smiled. Steiner asked him what the smile meant.

“It means that I’m an obstructionist, too,” Lloyd said.

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After stopping at a taco stand and wolfing a burrito plate, Lloyd drove home and changed clothes, outfitting himself in soiled khaki pants and shirt, work boots, and a baseball cap advertising Miller High Life. Satisfied with his workingman’s garb and one-day stubble, he rummaged through his garage and came up with a set of burglar’s tools he had scavenged from a Central Division evidence locker ten years before: battery-powered hand drill with cadmium steel bits; assorted hook-edged chisels, and a skinnyhead crowbar and mallet. Packing them inside a tool kit, he drove to Century City and the commission of a Class B felony. The reconnoitering took three hours.

Parking on a residential side street a half mile from Century City proper,