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The building was surfaced with thin, horizontal slats of oiled cedar. Miniature bamboo sprouted from gray stone planters. A tiny black camera perched just above the foliage on the left side researched the street.
Twice as wide as any of the neighboring high-end clothing stores, cafés, restaurants, and designer coffee outlets.
Elegant street, nearly all the foot traffic female, lithe and leisurely.
Santa Monica, good intentions gone awry, has long offered services that have turned it into a magnet for the homeless. But this part of Santa Monica had somehow avoided tents, overflowing shopping carts, manic rants, human excrement turning sidewalks into fetid obstacle courses, and any other symptom of no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.
Milo said, “Maybe they bribe them to go to Pico,” and tried to nudge the door open. Then he noticed a tiny black button to the right, just above bamboo fronds.
If you need to ask…
Five stabs were met with silence.After the sixth, a male voice said, “Yes?”
False curiosity; the camera had swiveled toward us and Milo had offered it a clear view of his badge.
“Police. Could we please come in?”
A beat. “May I ask about what?”
“A client.”
A beat. “May I ask who?”
“Better to talk inside, sir.”
Two beats. “Hold on.”
No click to signal entry. Instead the door swung open and a man stepped out and used his body to prop it ajar.
Bald, stocky, fiftyish, spray-tanned, he wore a black collarless shirt over cream linen pants and sandals.
Black name tag, white lettering.Mikel.
Milo introduced us.
Mikel seemed perplexed as he evaluated the information. Like an antiquated computer straining under the weight of a data storm.
“Okay,” he finally said. “So who are we talking about?”
“Meagin March and Gio Aggiunta.”
“Both of them? You said a client.”
Milo said, “Amend that to clients.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The two of them are dead, sir. Murdered.”
Mikel’s mouth dropped open, revealing small white teeth and a large red tongue. His eyes popped and pigment began squirming beneath the spray tan, creating odd swirls of pallor and flush. As if he’d been dipped in raspberry swirl ice cream.
“How’s that possible?”
“Unfortunately it happened, Mr….”
“Dally. Mikel Dally. I’m the manager. You’re serious—yes, of course you are. Insane. This is such a shock. How did it happen?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
