Bloodthirsty Read online

  “Especially the ones that kvetch,” he told me. “And when you’re a rabbi, that’s all you get. Complainers.”

  So he went to med school. Not to learn to administer to the sick, but to work with the dead. Less complainers. He’s rumored to be seventy-five years old, but he could pass for fifty. He’s five-three, athletic, sinewy, and looks like he’d be right at home coming around the far turn at Santa Anita. A geriatric Jewish jockey.

  I’m not a big fan of autopsies, but if you have to spend three hours watching someone cut up a dead body, Eli is the best person to do it with. He keeps it light and breezy, and he likes trading zingers with Terry. He’s also the most respected doc in the building, so I’m sure it was no accident that the coroner assigned him to work on their most famous dead guy.

  Terry and I went to the supply room for basic autopsy protection gear: face masks, rubber gloves, head and shoe covers. Then we walked down the hall to the autopsy room. Dr. Hand was already there.

  “Ah, good,” he said. “We have a minyan. We can start.”

  Eli loves his heritage and peppers the conversation with Yiddish words. And because Diana Trantanella, my Italian-sounding girlfriend, is actually Jewish, I get to use a few of them at home.

  Eli starts every procedure the same way; today was no different.

  “Barrala,” he said, addressing the naked man on the table in front of him. “My name is Eli and I’m going to cut you apart. The good news is that I will do everything in my power to determine exactly what foul deed has befallen you, so that these two gentlemen can find your killer and bring him to justice. The bad news, kiddo…I’m afraid this is going to be your last Hand job.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “He’s the whitest white man I’ve ever seen,” Terry said. “He’s like an albino.”

  “Not quite,” Hand said. “An albino’s lips and nails would be pink. This fellow is completely absent of color.”

  “Loss of blood was Jessica’s take on it,” I said.

  “Yes, I read CSI Keating’s field notes,” Hand said. “Extreme pallor, waxy, no visible wounds, but victim shows signs of massive blood loss. Good call. Where is Keating anyway? Doesn’t she enjoy my autopsies anymore?”

  “She’s pregnant,” I said. “Her doc said she could only visit the morgue if she promises not to inhale.”

  “Bullshit,” Hand said. “You think the air down here is any worse than the rest of Los Angeles? Tell her I’ve been breathing it most of my life, and I’m healthier than ninety-five percent of the people out there on those gurneys.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear it,” I said.

  “Also tell her that considering the fact that Mr. Gerber was folded up like a concertina, she made a very keen observation. This man appears to have lost a lot of blood. I wouldn’t be surprised if we open him up and find he’s five pints low. And yet, there are no obvious wounds to account for such dramatic blood loss.”

  “But there are obvious ligature marks,” Terry said.

  Hand cleared his throat and slipped into his authoritative pathologist voice for the audiotape, “The decedent appears to have been restrained. There are marks on the tops of his wrists and his ankles and across his chest. But no such marks on the underside of his extremities or on his back. This would indicate that he was strapped to a bed, a table, or some flat surface. And I say ‘strapped,’ because these are not rope burns. They’re more like belt marks.”

  “If somebody tried to strap me down like that,” Terry said, “I’d put up a fight. It doesn’t look like he did.”

  “He could have been held at gunpoint,” I said.

  “Or drugged,” Hand said. “We’ll take tissue samples and see what we can find.”

  “The man had a kinky side,” Terry said. “He could have paid extra for the bondage.”

  “The ligature marks are not the cause of death. I’m more interested in the blood loss,” Hand said. “I was speaking with the decedent before you got here, and I said, Barry, why do I find no evidence of a wound?”

  “Did he answer?” Terry said.

  “Of course not, you idiot. He’s dead. I’m the one who has to figure it out.” Hand loves nailing Terry, and his mask could not hide the grin on his face. “But I do have a hypothesis. Give me more light down here by the pubic area.”

  Victor adjusted the lights, and the doc pointed at Barry’s shriveled genitalia. “You see that little wrinkled bit of skin on the right side of his groin?”

  I stared at the folds and creases around Gerber’s ball sac. “Doc, it’s all wrinkled,” I said.

  “Look closely at this one,” he said, holding up a magnifier. “It looks like a paper cut. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t notice unless I were looking for where the blood came from. But since it’s in the neighborhood of his femoral vein, I’m curious if it could be a tiny incision.”

  He took a probe, touched it to the wrinkle. It parted. He spoke up for the audio, “It’s a slit in the skin, approximately three millimeters.” He pushed the probe in. “I’ve inserted a probe about seven millimeters into the opening. We’ll leave it there and see what we can see from the inside.”

  Eli cut into Barry’s chest, chatting as he worked. “Terry, did I mention that I was a guest lecturer at the Keck School of Medicine at USC last week? Victor made an audio montage of some of my more interesting autopsies and I played it for my students. They want to meet you.”

  “Great,” Terry said. “More people who want to cut my heart out.”

  “I played the tape of that homeless woman who was chopped up and left in separate dumpsters.”

  “Backstreet Betsy,” Terry said.

  “Yes,” Eli said. “The students got a big laugh out of your comments.”

  Terry shrugged. “Refresh my memory. I don’t remember half the things I say under the influence of formaldehyde.”

  “Well, I said she may have been a bag lady, but by the time the funeral home gets her maquillaged and coiffed, she’ll look like the Queen of England. And you said it couldn’t hurt if they sewed her head back on. It’ll cut down the odds of her tiara rolling off.”

  Eli removed Barry Gerber’s heart from his chest and put it on the scale.

  “Well, that solves one mystery,” Terry said.

  “What’s that, Detective?”

  “Producers do have hearts.”

  And so it went for three hours. Death and comedy. Finally, we got what we came for. “I think I know how Mr. Gerber died,” Eli said.

  He was working deep inside Barry’s gut. “Here’s the probe I inserted into the incision earlier, and it’s clear from this angle that it leads directly into the femoral vein. I’d say he was cannulated by some type of vascular access device and then systematically exsanguinated.”

  “‘Cannulated’ and ‘exsanguinated’?” Terry said. “I’m still working on ‘maquillaged’ and ‘coiffed.’ Can you give me the Autopsies for Dummies version?”

  “You know how a phlebotomist draws your blood?” Hand said.

  “Yeah. She takes a needle and taps a vein.”

  “This is similar. Only this time she didn’t turn off the tap. My best guess is that somebody shoved a sixteen or an eighteen-gauge vascular access catheter into Barry Gerber’s vein and drained the blood from his body.”

  “Exsanguination.” It was Victor. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Victor, to tell you the truth, I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it myself. I’ve seen every imaginable wound that causes people to bleed to death, but this man was bled out. And it’s venous bleeding, not arterial, so it would have been a slow death.”

  “Define slow,” I said.

  “When you donate blood, how long does it take you to give a pint? Forty-five minutes? This man gave pint after pint after pint. And I doubt if he passed out. He’d be lightheaded from the blood loss, but he’d be conscious.”

  “I just want to make sure I have this right,” T
erry said. “This guy was strapped to a table and had to watch the blood being drained from his body.”

  “We’ll run tissue samples through toxicology, but based on the physical evidence, I’m going to say the cause of death was exsanguination. And very professionally done, I might add.”

  “So it would take a doctor or a nurse to do this,” I said.

  “Doctor, nurse, paramedic, a good barber, an Eagle Scout. It’s not brain surgery. Anyone with the right equipment and the right training could do it.”

  “How hard would it be to learn?” I asked.

  “Relatively easy. You could learn in an hour,” he said.

  “Relatively easy,” I repeated. “So a good trauma surgeon could teach me how to do it?”

  “Oh yes,” Hand said. “A good surgeon could teach a monkey to do it.”

  I looked over at Terry. He nodded at me. It was not the most subtle of cop communications. To our credit, we didn’t jump up and down and yell, hey, that’s a clue. Victor was oblivious, but the wise old doc took it all in.

  “Thank you, Eli,” I said. “As usual, you have inspired us.”

  “I thought I saw a light bulb go off,” Hand said. “You think you boys might know who did it?”

  “Not yet. But we definitely know which monkey we’re talking to first.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Barry Gerber’s Land Cruiser had been parked two miles from his house, in a faculty-only zone on the North Campus of UCLA. The campus cops swung by every few hours and gave it another ticket. Finally, they had it towed.

  It had been logged into LAPD’s database about twelve hours before we got around to asking Ganek and Kanarick to help us look for it. A minor screw-up on our part. I was hoping that Kilcullen would be too busy to do the math.

  Keating and her team were going over the car when Terry and I got there.

  “Kudos from Dr. Hand,” I said. “You were right about the blood loss.”

  “Well, he didn’t lose it in the car,” she said. “Not a drop. His briefcase and cell phone were on the floor. The keys were still in the ignition.”

  “We’ll run his calls,” I said. “Any prints?”

  “Plenty. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Whoever did this doesn’t strike me as the type to make it that easy-breezy on us.” She held up an evidence bag. “This might help. It was on the neck rest of the front seat, passenger side. One gray hair.”

  “We’d be happier if you said plata,” Terry said. “A white woman with silver hair paid Gerber’s maid for all the garbage in his waste basket.”

  “It looks female. I’ll do a gender and race ID in the lab.”

  “That’s all you got for us?” Terry said. “One lousy hair?”

  “The killer left a note with an address and phone number for you, but I seem to have misplaced it,” she said. “Go back over the part where I was getting kudos from Dr. Hand and tell me what he put down for cause of death.”

  We told her.

  “Holy shit.” Her eyes lit up. “Exsanguination. How cool is that?”

  “Yeah, it’s really a cool way to die,” Terry said. “We’re all thrilled about it. With the possible exception of Barry, but hey, you can’t please everyone.”

  “They cannulated the femoral vein and drained him dry,” she said. “Your average person can’t do that.”

  “Hand said with a little bit of training an Eagle Scout could do it,” I said.

  “When I was a Scout I got my badge in canoeing and bugling,” Terry said. “Who knew you could go for exsanguination?”

  “He’s full of shit,” I said to Keating. “He wasn’t a Scout. He grew up in the Bronx. He ran numbers when he was ten years old.”

  “So I ran numbers,” Terry said. “A lot of old ladies counted on me to get those numbers to their bookies. I was helpful, courteous, friendly, cheerful, and kind. And if they hit the number, I got a piece of the action.”

  Terry’s cell phone rang.

  “Damn,” he said as he checked the caller ID. “And we were having such a fun time.” He flipped it open. “Yes, Lieutenant. Yes, sir, we’re going over the car now with the crime lab people. Cause of death was exsanguination. That’s E-X-S-A-N-G—sorry, sir, just trying to help. Not yet, sir. I’ll ask my partner.”

  He held the phone toward me. “When are we talking to Damian Hedge?”

  Hedge was shooting on location. We’d been so busy I hadn’t called Dennis yet to find out where. I certainly didn’t know when. I shrugged.

  Terry put the phone back to his face. “Mike says we’ve set up an interview for 5:30. Yes, sir, if anything breaks I’ll call you immediately.”

  He hung up the phone. “Sure I’ll call him,” Terry said. “Right after I call my movie agent.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I never worked with Dennis Hoag when he was on the job, but people who did say he was a damn good cop. He could have found a much more challenging retirement job than driving for my father, but like Rich Agins, who was raising and lowering gates at Raleigh Studios, Dennis wanted the second half of his life to be less stressful than the first. Driving celebrities around in a big-ass car fits that bill.

  I called him at the cell number Big Jim gave me.

  “Hey Mike,” he said. “Your father said you’d be calling. He said you told him you have a security gig for me.”

  “I lied.”

  “Yeah, he told me that too. He said the real reason you called was because I’m driving around with a murder suspect, and I shouldn’t turn my back on him. Is that dumb, or what? I’m driving the guy. I have my back to him the whole time.”

  “Terry and I want to talk to Hedge as soon as possible, and we have a lieutenant who wants us to talk to him sooner than that.”

  “Typical brass,” Dennis said. “Busting balls. Did I ever tell you about the captain I worked with down in—”

  “Dennis, I love war stories as much as the next cop, but where the hell are you, and is Damian Hedge still with you?”

  “We’re on Main Street just off Pico in Santa Monica,” Dennis said. “They’re just setting up the last shot of the day. How long till you get here?”

  “It’s rush hour,” I said. “Thirty, forty minutes.”

  “And I’m guessing you don’t want me to give Damian a heads-up that you’re coming.”

  “Good call,” I said. “We’d like it to be a surprise. Make sure he doesn’t leave till we get there.”

  “Don’t worry about it. This last shot is a biggie. They only get one take, and they’ve got like eight cameras covering it. They won’t roll for at least a half hour. I’ll see you when I see you.”

  “Hey, Dennis,” I said. “I need one more favor.”

  “You name it,” he said. “You need a limo ride with the girlfriend? What can your friendly neighborhood chauffeur do for you?”

  “It’s not a personal favor,” I said. “It’s more cop-to-cop.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, losing the happy-go-lucky limo driver persona. “I’m listening.”

  “My father loves to stick his nose in my business,” I said. “So I’m betting he told you to call him and tell him when I’m coming.”

  “Aw, come on, Mike. Don’t put me in the middle of family shit.”

  “Am I right?”

  Silence.

  “Dennis, did Big Jim ask you to let him know when I’m coming to the location to interview Hedge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t.”

  I waited.

  “Word,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I’ve been around movie-making my whole life. My mother was a stuntwoman. My teamster father has worked for every studio in town. So when someone asks how could anyone spend a hundred million dollars on a piece of shit movie like that, I know the answer.

  Film budgets are like dicks. Big is good. Bigger is better. Granted, like dicks, movies have been known to flop. But, hey, they’re still big. And in Hollywood, size matters.

/>   Judging by the number of trucks, people, and equipment choking the streets of Santa Monica, Damian’s movie had Big Dick written all over it. Six blocks before we got to Main, the street was closed and a motorcycle cop was detouring traffic.

  I was about to put the Kojak light on the roof so we could get through, when Terry stopped me. “I know that guy,” he said. “Let’s have some fun.”

  Who am I to deny Terry his fun during a homicide investigation? I nodded, and he leaned on the car horn.

  The biker cop pointed to his right. “That way, asshole.”

  Terry rolled down his window. “I’m a taxpayer,” he yelled. “You can’t close these streets for some dipshit movie. Move the barricade, dickwad.” He rolled the window back up and honked the horn again.

  At first the cop stared at us in disbelief. Then the look turned to resolve, almost joy. He began walking toward us. Swaggering actually.

  “I just made his day,” Terry said. “He’s ready to whoop my ass.”

  “Just remember to flash your badge before he goes for his gun,” I said.

  The cop rapped on the window. Terry rolled it down and stuck his head out. “You don’t scare me, copper.”

  “Biggs from Da Bronx,” the cop said. “I shoulda known.”

  “How ya doin’, Pags,” Terry said. “Mike, you remember Paul Pagnozzi? He used to drive around in a squad car, but he decided he needed to get in touch with his inner Steve McQueen.”

  “And I love it,” Pagnozzi said. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We’re with the Damian Hedge fan club and we need a police escort to his trailer.”

  We followed Pagnozzi through a four-block-long corridor of camera trucks, wardrobe trailers, hair and makeup trailers, monster generators on flatbeds, motor homes, catering trucks, rolling bathroom facilities called honeywagons, a jimmy jib, and a technocrane for overheads.

  “Looks pricey,” Terry said. “Hard to believe they only charge ten bucks to show you the movie.”

  Finally, we got to Damian’s trailers. Two of them. Both rented from my father. I had to smile when I saw his logo on the front panel. My mom had come up with the name. Star Truckers. Damian’s second trailer was filled with exercise equipment. As soon as the high-priced talent found out that the studios were paying for Schwarzenegger and Stallone to have rolling workout centers, they all demanded one. Naming it was easy. Big Jim’s Big Gym.