Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [35]
The attendant was staring at me, slack-jawed and awe-inspired.
“What’s Omar’s address?” I asked.
He consulted the Rolodex again. “It’s 1983 Vendome. That’s in Silverlake. Tacoland.”
I gave the kid one of my business cards. It had my home number as well as the office one on it. “If Omar shows up, you tell him to call me. Tell him it’s very important. Tell him I know who killed his brother.” I patted him on the shoulder and winked at him. He gave me a smile that tried hard to be conspiratorial. I got in my car and jammed for Silverlake.
Silverlake is a beautiful hilly enclave of middle and lower middle-class dwellings east of Hollywood. The hills are steep and the roads circuitous. Houses and apartment buildings are set back from the street and often hung with heavy shrubbery, so it’s easy to get lost.
I turned off Sunset onto Silverlake Boulevard and went under the bridge that marks the informal border of the area. I expected it to take a while to find Vendome, but I blundered onto it, about half-a-mile north of Sunset. 1983 was a court of small bungalows separated by knee-high white picket fences. I parked half a block away and walked breezily into the courtyard. There was a bank of locked metal mailboxes next to the first bungalow on the left, where I learned that Omar Gonzalez lived in number 12. His box was crammed full of mail, so it was fair to assume Omar hadn’t been around for awhile.
Bungalow 12 was at the back end of the court, on the right. Like all the others, it was white clapboard, weather-beaten and musty. I rang the bell and got no answer, then tried the flimsy wooden door. It was locked. I walked around to the side of the bungalow and tried the windows. They were locked, and dust-covered Venetian blinds kept me from peering in.
I went looking for the manager. The mailbox directed me to number 3. I rang the bell and an aging slattern in a housecoat opened the door suspiciously, keeping the screen door shut. When I told her I had a telegram for Omar Gonzalez in number 12, she jumped back as if buzzed by a swarm of bees. “Is something wrong, ma’am?” I asked.
“Omar ain’t been around for weeks,” she said, opening the door a crack and reaching for the nonexistent piece of paper with one hand.
“I can’t do that, I have to give it to the addressee himself. Thank you, ma’am.”
She gave me a frightened look and slammed the door. Something was wrong.
I walked to a liquor store at the end of the block and bought a ginger ale. Drinking it and eyeballing the pretty Chicanas passing by consumed twenty minutes. That seemed like a safe interval.
I walked back to the court. No one was around and the manager’s door was closed and all the shutters drawn. On the porch of number 12, I gave a quick look in both directions, drew my gun and kicked the door open. Crouching in the combat stance, I went into the dark apartment, gently closing the door behind me.
It was dead quiet and I stood there a long moment until my eyes became accustomed to the dark. Gradually the outlines of a turned-over sofa, an upended bookshelf, and mound of books became visible. Several potted plants had been knocked off a win-dowsill, spreading broken plaster and dirt on the floor, and a large carpet had been pulled up and wadded ceiling-high into a comer. I moved cautiously, gun first, into the other rooms. The small kitchen off to the right was similarly devastated: the cupboards had been ransacked, dishes lay in heaps on the floor, and the refrigerator had been knocked over, its rancid contents fouling the air. The bathroom was a shambles, but the bedroom had been hit the worst: broken glass