Broken Windows

  BROKEN WINDOWS

  A Duke Rogers PI Thriller

  Paul D. Marks

  PRAISE FOR BROKEN WINDOWS

  “Fans of downbeat PI fiction will be satisfied…with Shamus Award winner Marks’s solid sequel to 2012’s White Heat.” —Publishers Weekly

  Copyright © 2018 by Paul D. Marks

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover design by Zach McCain

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Broken Windows

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by the Author

  Preview from A Taste of Shotgun by Chris Orlet

  Preview from Boise Longpig Hunting Club by Nick Kolakowski

  Preview from American History by J.L. Abramo

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Some of the language and attitudes in the novel may be offensive. But please consider them in the context of the time, place, and characters.

  The world is a dangerous place to live, not

  because of the people who are evil, but because

  of the people who don’t do anything about it.

  —Albert Einstein

  In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti,

  public disorder, and aggressive panhandling,

  [James Q. Wilson and George Kelling write],

  are all the equivalent of broken windows,

  invitations to more serious crimes.

  —Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point—How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

  1994

  April is [still] the cruelest month.

  —TS Eliot, “The Wasteland”

  And November is the second cruelest month.

  PROLOGUE

  The Hollywood Sign beckoned her like a magnet—or like a moth to a flame. The sign glowed golden in the magic hour sun—that time of day around sunrise and sunset when the light falls soft and warm and cinematographers love to shoot. Like so many others, Susan Karubian had come here seeking fame and fortune, hoping to make her mark on the world. Oh hell, she had come to be a star like all the others. And she would do it, just not quite in the heady way she’d anticipated.

  She had spent hours deciding what to wear. After all, this wasn’t exactly in the etiquette books. Probably not the kind of thing you’d find in Ask Amy column. She finally decided on a tasteful dress with high-heeled sandals.

  The young woman drove her Passat down Hollywood Boulevard, turning up Franklin, passing the Magic Castle. She turned slowly up Beachwood Canyon, past the low-rent area north of Franklin, up through the towering stone gates with their “Welcome to Beachwood Canyon” signs. Past the movie star homes in the hills—past where she thought she’d be living by now. She drove in circles, past piles of rubble from the earthquake several months ago, figuring that sooner or later she’d hit the right combination of roads and end up where she wanted to be.

  The Passat crested the top of the mountain—mountain or hill? What was the difference anyway? A small concrete building with an antenna sat just below the road. No cars. No one around. As quiet as the Sherman Oaks Galleria on a Monday morning. She parked on Mt. Lee Drive.

  She rolled up the windows, locked the car, set her purse on the floor by the gas pedal. The note she’d written in a steady hand tucked into her pocket. She hoped someone would find it quickly. Standing beside the car, she realized she’d have to hike down to get to the sign. She had thought it would be at the top of the mountain. She was buggin’, as she treaded toward the edge of the road.

  The nonstop rain of the last couple weeks had broken. The view from up here was incredible. You could almost see Mexico to the south and the Pacific glittering in the west. The city below, shiny and bright. Pretty and clean from up here. A million doll houses that reminded her of childhood, playing with dolls and making everything come out the way she wanted it to. Little toy cars down below, scooting back and forth. Swarms of ants scurrying this way and that on important business. Oh yeah, everyone here had important business all day and all night. Everyone but her. She gazed down at Los Angeles on the cusp of the millennium. The place to be. Center of the universe. Totally.

  She hesitated at the edge of the road, her toe kicking some gravel down the hill. It clattered down, somehow reminding her of the industrial music in the clubs where she liked to hang.

  Should she try to talk to him? What would be the point now? She was talked out. And he wouldn’t forgive her. Why should he? She had hurt him. No, it was beyond hurt. There was no way to rationalize it.

  She tentatively stepped off the road, pressing her heel in, testing its firmness. More loose gravel tumbled down the hill. Kicking off her Steven Madden heels, grabbing them by the straps in one hand, she made her way down. She walked and slid and finally made it to the landing—she didn’t know what else to call it—where the sign rested. The city glowed, shimmering with hope and desire and people wanting to make their dreams come true. She knew this, because she was one of those people.

  She had come here for the same reason. The Hollywood Dream. The American Dream. She had wanted to be in front of the cameras from the time her parents took her to her first movie-theater movie, The Black Stallion, in 1979 when she was five. After seeing the movie she had wanted a horse, but more than that she wanted to be in a movie. She hadn’t yet heard of Hollywood, but by the time she was thirteen she was making plans to come here. And nothing could have stopped her. Her mom and dad told her how hard a career in the movies was, how few made it. But she had faith in herself. She was attractive, more than. Oh hell, she was fine, though she didn’t want to come off conceited. And she had talent. She had been acting in school plays for years. She was the star, Juliet to popular Paul Bonnefield’s Romeo, in middle school. Rave reviews. Fake gold acting awards. What did that mean in the big picture? She had come here gushing with hope and optimism. She still thought she could make it if she met the right people—what was the point now?

  People looked up this way all the time, up to the sign. How many were looking at her now, as she climbed the scaffolding?

  Higher and higher.

  Her heart pounded through her chest. Her head throbbed.

  Was she doing the right thing?

  She reached one hand over the other, gripping the steel scaffolding. She held her shoes in one hand and the hard metal bit into her stockinged feet and palm. The pain felt good, like penance.

  Would anyone notice? Would anyone give a damn that she was no longer here?

  She gripped the scaffolding with all her strength and pulled herself up another rung.

  “Don’t look down.” Her breath came in short bursts. She climbed higher. Warm blood trickled down her right palm.

  She worried that the 6.7 quake last January had loosened the sign’s footing. Would she fall before she even made it to the top?

  Reaching the summit of the H, she pulled herself up and sat on top, balancing as best she could. The wind slammed her. She clutched a piece of scaffolding—warm to the touch—maintaining a preca
rious balance. A gust of wind hammered her. She began to topple, gripping the scaffolding with all her strength. She couldn’t just fall off. It wasn’t deliberate enough, didn’t send the right message.

  Her stockings ran. She thought this might happen, hoped it wouldn’t.

  She looked out again—the golden city. Los Angeles. Hollywood. Was that the ocean dancing in the distance?

  She balanced on top of the H, a light breeze blowing her night-dark hair. She flicked it out of her eyes, put on her shoes, and talked to God. He didn’t respond. If He did, she didn’t hear it.

  What had she done wrong? Was she in the wrong place at the wrong time? No, she had chosen her life.

  The note she’d written was burning a hole in her pocket. She took it out for one last read. The wind blew up, snatching it away.

  “Damn!” There was no time to write a new note and nothing to write it with.

  She forced herself into a standing position. Unsteady in the breeze, she billowed in the wind like a sail. Her dress snagged on the scaffolding.

  Scared to death, literally. That wouldn’t last long. She held her breath until her head throbbed—pushed off as hard as she could. Shrieking. One shoe flew off as she plummeted downward. She waited for her life to pass by like everyone said. It didn’t. The only thing whizzing by was the city below—the City of Angels. And devils. That was her life, so maybe they were right after all.

  If she couldn’t be famous in life, she would be famous in death. But she’d make her mark one way or another. She hoped her fall from grace would be graceful, even if her life hadn’t been.

  CHAPTER 1

  I was famous.

  Dateline. 20/20. Primetime. Good Morning America-famous. I didn’t want to go on those shows, but I didn’t have a choice. If I avoided them they’d have said what they wanted about me and I’d have had no way to set the record straight.

  So now people knew my face. Knew my name. Stopped me on the streets. Some even asked for autographs. I hated every damn minute of it. I never wanted to be famous, just good at what I did.

  But I was famous—for being a fuck-up, only most of the rest of the world didn’t know it. They knew me as the private detective who had found promising starlet Teddie Matson’s executioner. They didn’t know I had inadvertently helped him find her to kill her.

  Rita knew. Rita was Teddie’s sister. We’d had a brief fling, for lack of a better word. It’d been two years and I was still waiting for the phone to ring. I would have called her but I didn’t have the guts. You need someone to go down a dark alley with you, I’m your man. But the truth is, I was afraid to call her. Afraid she would reject me. Afraid she would hate me. Afraid she would see me for the fuck-up my father always said I was.

  Sitting in my tiny den on the north side of the house, I tapped keys on my IBM 486 clone computer. I had only recently gotten rid of my Leading Edge 8088 computer with two floppy drives and no hard disk—true Stone Age technology—and already my 486 with its one hundred twenty-eight kilobytes of memory and twenty-megabyte hard drive, running Windows 3.1, was out of date. I was making decent money for a change, but why buy one of those new Pentium computers when it would be obsolete by the time I got it home from the store?

  It had been two years since my dog Baron had been killed and I was finally ready to get another. I thought I might find one on the Net. Of course, no dog could replace Baron—that’s why I waited so long—but I felt the need for the companionship only a dog could give.

  Loyalty was something else. For that I’d have the dog and my bud Jack. We’d been to hell and back together. He had my back and I had his. But I couldn’t curl up with him at two in the morning with an old black-and-white movie on Turner Classics.

  The afternoon sun—the first sun I’d seen in three days, an eternity in Los Angeles—streaked through the window, through the old-fashioned, wide-slatted Venetian blinds, leftovers from when my parents lived in this house. They cast film noir shadows across the keyboard, a lineup of bars holding my fingers hostage. For a private detective I’m a pretty good typist. Took it in high school and it all came back when I needed it. Maybe the only thing I learned in high school that was really useful. Sure, I always loved history, but most of that I learned on my own.

  What kind of dog should I get? Something big. Shepherd, like Baron. Rottie. Malamute. Dobie. Akita.

  The radio droned in the background. A speech supporting Proposition 187 by one of our local SoCal congressmen. “…Proposition 187 is the answer to California’s needs,” Congressman Dan Wilkman declared, “It will stop the flood tide of illegal immigration into our state. A flood that is draining the resources for our schools, emergency rooms and other valuable services. If you don’t want California to morph into Mexifornia, vote for Proposition 187—”

  The bill was the latest firestorm to hit California. It was everywhere these days. On billboards, the television, radio, newspapers. You were either fer it or agin it. No middle ground. The vote was coming up in a few weeks. But I’d heard it all before. I hit play on the CD player. The radio switched off. Portishead’s song “Sour Times” from their Dummy album came on. A little spacey but I liked it. I turned to the computer, dialed up the modem, tapped a bunch of keys, hoping to find a computer bulletin board system or newsgroup that might have dogs in need of a home. But it taxed my brain too much at this early hour. I picked up the paper and looked in the classifieds.

  Thump. A noise on the south side of the house—the driveway side. I don’t scare easily, but I don’t like unexpected noises either, day or night. I grabbed the kit bag that held my Firestar 9mm that I carried from room to room—am I paranoid, maybe. In my line of business, you have to be paranoid. Headed for the back door. Wished Baron was heading there with me. I lived in a reasonably good neighborhood, the one I had grown up in. But both it and the city had changed. Besides, the bad guys were mobile. And they liked nicer neighborhoods.

  Now it sounded like a tank pulling down the driveway. The only one who felt comfortable enough to come down my driveway was Jack. But he always rode his Harley and I knew its sound. I opened the door to see a desert camouflage Humvee there. What the hell?

  The driver’s door opened. I had my finger on the Firestar’s trigger guard. Then Jack appeared standing above the car’s roof. His ever-present wraparound shades hid his sniper’s eyes and thousand-yard stare. He should never have left the service. He was a politically incorrect man in a politically correct time. And while he didn’t always think or say the right thing, he mostly did it. He knew he was tough but he took no false pride in it.

  We were opposites in many ways. He was six-two, built like the Rock of Gibraltar. I was five-seven, but tight and stocky like a mortar round. He wore his hair in a brush cut. Mine looked like I’d just gotten out of bed, no matter what I did to it. He was my friend. I could count on him, without ever having to think about it. How many people could you say that about?

  “Like it?” he said.

  “Sure, if you’re going to war.”

  “I’m always at war.”

  That was for sure.

  “Hummer. Military model?” I said.

  “It’s a Gulf War refugee. Makes your Cherokee look like the runt of the litter.”

  “Well, this model’s not exactly street legal.”

  “Not exactly.”

  A yapping sound came from the car, though I use that term loosely. “Where are the .50 cals?”

  “I wish,” Jack said, opening the passenger door. A large rat scooted out the door, running in circles.

  “What the—”

  “For you. I found her in the wash, swimming her heart out.”

  This was one of the wettest years L.A.’d had in a long time. Rain every day, or so it seemed. Film noir weather. Perfect for Raymond Chandler’s mean streets. Hell, if he thought they were mean back then, he should see them now. The wash, as Jack called the Los Angeles River, was normally a dry, cement bed, great for m
ovie car chases and atomically radiated motion picture critters to come barreling down. But in these rains it was a raging river. If Jack found the pup in the wash she was lucky he’d come along or she might have been washed out to sea by now. At that I didn’t know how he could have saved her. Half the time even the fire and rescue crews can’t save people in the violent current.

  “I think you should call her Molly.”

  “Molly?” I said, setting my kit bag, with the pistol in it, down on the stairs leading up to the back door.

  “After the Unsinkable Molly Brown.”

  “C’mere, girl.” The dog paid me no mind. She rolled on her back so Jack could pet her stomach. “Maybe you should keep her. She likes you.”

  “You’ll grow on her. ’Sides, I can’t keep dogs in my apartment. Got plenty of illegals though. Crammed in like sardines, otherwise how could they afford my neighborhood. Pretty soon we’ll be living in Mexico norte. Gotta say I’m ready to move.”

  “You’re over the top, Jack. And you’re always ready to move. One-a these days you’re gonna run out of places to move to.”

  Jack’s hand glided across Molly’s tummy. “Let’s get her settled.”

  “What kind of dog is she?” Her fur was yellow-gold, with a black muzzle. Dark brown, inquisitive eyes and floppy ears.

  “Don’t know. Looks like she might have some Shepherd. Maybe when you take her to the vet you can ask.”

  When I take her to the vet. Well, I did want a dog and sometimes it works out better when things fall into your lap than when you go looking for them.

  “Bring her in.”

  The first thing Molly did, of course, was pee on the kitchen floor. Luckily it was linoleum and easy to clean. I was going to let Jack do the honors when he said, “No, man, your dog, you gotta get used to it. Train her. I know she’ll never replace Baron, but I got a good vibe on her.”