L is for Lawless

I moved into a lobby that was sparsely furnished and smelled of bleach. Two rows of potted fan palms were arranged on either side of a length of trampled-looking red carpet that heralded the path to the front desk. The desk clerk was not in evidence. I picked up the house phone and asked the operator to connect me with Ray Rawson's room. He answered after two rings and I identified myself. We spoke briefly and he directed me to his fourth-floor digs. "Take the stairs. The elevator takes forever," he said as he hung up.

I took the stairs two at a time just to test my lung capacity. By the second-floor landing, I was winded and had to slow down. I clung to the stair railing while I climbed the last flight. Being fit in one sport seems to have no bearing on any other. I know joggers who wouldn't last twenty minutes on a stationary bike and swimmers who couldn't jog more than a mile without collapsing.

I composed myself slightly before I knocked at 407. Ray opened the door with a buzzing portable electric shaver in his hand. He was barefoot, in chinos and a white T-shirt, his balding head still damp from the shower. The already closely clipped fringe of gray had been trimmed since yesterday. His smile was embarrassed, and the gap between his two front teeth gave him an air of innocence. He motioned me in. "You're too quick. I was trying to get this done before you got all the way up here. Be right back."

He moved into the bathroom, the buzzing sound of the shaver fading as he closed the door.

His room was spacious and plain: white walls, white bedspread, rough white cotton curtains pulled back on fat wooden rods. There were only two windows, but both were double wide, looking out onto the backside of the building across the alleyway. The carpet was gray and seemed relatively clean. The glimpse I had of the bathroom showed glossy white ceramic tile walls and a floor of one-inch black and white hexagonals. Ray returned, smelling strongly of aftershave.

"This is not bad," I said, turning halfway around.

"Fifty bucks a night. I asked about weekly rates, just until I get a place of my own. I don't suppose Bucky's said anything about the rental."

"Not to me," I said. "Did you hear they had a break-in?"

"Who did? You mean, Bucky and them? When was this?"

I gave him the Reader's Digest condensed version of the story, watching as his smile was extinguished by disbelief and then concern.

"Jeez. That's terrible," he said, and then he caught my expression. "Wait a minute. Why look at me? I hope you don't think I had anything to do with it."

"It just seems odd there wasn't any problem until you showed up. Johnny died four months ago. You blow in last week and now Chester's suddenly got problems."

"Come on. Hey. I was sitting in the bar last night, watching big-screen TV. You can ask anyone."

"Mind if I sit?"

"Sure, go ahead. Take the good one. I'll take this."

There was one hard wooden chair and one upholstered chair. Ray steered me toward the latter and took the wood chair for himself. He placed his hands on his knees, rubbing the fabric as if his palms were sweating. "I'm probably the oldest and best friend Johnny ever had. I'd never do anything to mess with his son or his grandson or anything like that. You have to believe me."

"I'm not accusing you, Ray."

"Sure sounds like that to me."

"If I thought you'd broken in, I probably wouldn't have come up here. I'd have gone to the cops and had 'em dust for prints."

"They didn't do that?"

"Chester can't be sure anything was taken, which means it wasn't even a burglary as far as the cops are concerned. The techs here only lift prints at the scene of a major crime. Felonies, not misdemeanors. Malicious mischief wouldn't qualify unless thousands of dollars' worth of damage had been done, which wasn't true in this case." What I didn't bother to say was the procedure is lengthy and the department is perpetually backed up. Three weeks is standard. In a rush situation, prints could be lifted, photographed, and traced, with the resultant tracings being faxed to CAL ID in Sacramento. The turnaround time could be a day or two. In this case, we didn't even have a suspect. Except maybe him, I thought. I watched him, acutely aware of the key in my pocket. I didn't want him to know about that just yet. He seemed like a man who had something on his mind, and I wanted to hear his tale before I told him mine. "What's in Ashland?" I asked.

There was a millisecond's pause. "I got family back there."

"Was Johnny really in the service?"