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Be-kind-to-Alex time. Early retirement six months before my thirty-third birthday. It was fun while it lasted. It had been built into a hillside and designed to give a honeycomb effect: a loosely connected chain of individual units linked by corridors that had been placed at seemingly random locations, the apartments staggered to give each one a full view of the ocean.
The Goddess of Fried Okra. Lawrence Block. Book 8. The Sea By: Largent, R. Great Story Sliver is a novel about ultimate power, and the temptations the use of that power brings. John Sandford.
The motif was bastard Spanish: blindingly white textured stucco walls, red tile roofs, window accents of black wrought iron. Plantings of azalea and hibiscus filled in occasional patches of earth. There were lots of potted plants sunk in large terra-cotta containers: coconut palms, rubber plants, sun ferns, temporary-looking, as if someone planned on moving them all out in the middle of the night.
Handler's unit was on an intermediate level. The front door was sealed, with an LAPD. Lots of footprints dirtied the terrazzo walkway near the entrance. Milo led me across a terrace filled with polished stones and succulents to a unit eater-cornered from the murder scene.
Bad jokes about Baby Jesus flashed through my mind. Milo knocked. I realized then that the place was amazingly silent. There must have been at least fifty units but there wasn't a soul in sight. No evidence of human habitation. We waited a few minutes. He raised his fist to knock again just before the door opened. I was washin' my hair. She had pale skin with the kind of texture that looked as if a pinch would crumble it. Large brown eyes topped by plucked brows.
Thin lips. A slight under bite Her hair was wrapped in an orange towel and the little that peeked out was medium brown. She wore a faded cotton shirt of ochre-and orange print over rust-colored stretch pants.
Dark blue tennis shoes on her feet. Her eyes darted from Milo to me. She looked like someone who'd been knocked around plenty and refused to believe that it wasn't going to happen again at any moment. This is Dr.
Alex Delaware. He's the psychologist I told you about. Out of school, with all that's been goin' on. I let her watch to keep her mind off it. Apartment was a charitable word. What it was, really, was a couple of oversized closets stuck together. An architect's postscript. Hey, Ed, we've got an extra four hundred square feet of corner in back of terrace number Why don't we throw a roof over it, nail up some drywall and call it a manager's unit?
Get some poor soul to do scutwork for the privilege of living in Pacific Palisades The living room was filled with one floral sofa, a masonite end table and a television. A framed painting of Mount Rainier that looked as if it came from a Savings and Loan calendar and a few yellowed photographs hung on the wall.
The photos were of hardened, unhappy-looking people and appeared to date from the Gold Rush. A cubicle of a kitchen was visible and from it came the smell of frying bacon. A large bag of sour cream-and-onion-flavored potato chips and a six pack of Dr. Pepper sat on the counter. From Oklahoma. There was an unfinished wooden door and from behind it came the sound of sudden laughter and applause, bells and buzzers. A game show. We'll let her be until we're ready for her. So she's watchin' 'em now. She brought in an ashtray and set it down on the end table.
Milo and I sat on the sofa and she dragged in a tubular aluminum-and-Naugahyde chair from the kitchen for herself. Despite the fact that she was thin her haunches settled and spread. She took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one up and sucked in the smoke until her cheeks hollowed. Milo spoke. Call me Bonita. Melody's the girl.
She's just seven this past month. She inhaled greedily on her cigarette and blew little smoke out. Her free hand clenched and unclenched in rapid cadence. I knew what he was thinking. Quinn, that no one will find out. Delaware has served as a special consultant to the police many times. Besides--" he reached over to pat her shoulder reassuringly. I thought she'd go through the ceiling "--all psychologists demand confidentiality when working with their patients. Isn't that so, Dr.
Bonita Quinn made a strange, squeaking noise that was impossible to interpret.
The closest thing to it that I could remember was the noise laboratory frogs used to make in Physiological Psych right before we pithed them by plunging a needle down into the tops of their skulls. I explained to her that hypnosis wasn't magic, simply a combination of focused concentration and deep relaxation, that people tended to remember things more clearly when they were relaxed and that was why the police used it for witnesses. That children were better at going into hypnosis than were adults because they were less inhibited and enjoyed fantasy. That it didn't hurt, and was actually pleasant for most youngsters and that you couldn't get stuck in it or do anything against your will while hypnotized.
My role is simply to help your daughter do something that comes natural to her. She daydreams all the time. Hypnosis is like that. I go in by eleven-thirty and I got up once for a cigarette at twenty after twelve. She was asleep then and I didn't hear her for the while it took me to fall off. I'd 'a' heard her. We share the room.
And she saw two men--here it says "I saw big men. Only dark. Could mean anything to a seven-year-old," I said. But she don't always tell the truth. I don't know why you want to depend on her. When she don't want me to paddle her and I know something's broken, it's got to be her. She tells me no, mama, not me. And I paddle her double.
Only the daydreams, and the concentration problems. No doubt the apartments were Adults Only and Melody Quinn was required to keep a low profile. There's a large segment of the population of Southern California that views the sight of anyone too young or too old as offensive. It's as if nobody wants to be reminded from whence they came or to where they will certainly go.
That kind of denial, coupled with face lifts and hair transplants and makeup, creates a comfortable little delusion of immortality. For a short while. I was willing to bet that Melody Quinn spent most of her time indoors despite the fact that the complex boasted three swimming pools and a totally equipped gym. Not to mention the ocean a half-mile away. Those playthings were meant for the grownups. He said she was overactive.
Somethin' in the brain. Wouldn't surprise me.
Her dad wasn't altogether right up there.