L.A. Requiem - Hardcover

Crais, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385495838 ISBN 13: 9780385495837

Publisher: Doubleday, 1999

Synopsis

Los Angeles is a city of perpetual reinvention. Inviting, with a promise of infinite hope, it can also be a glittering landscape of debilitating isolation. The city's lost souls take comfort in its promise--the notion that tomorrow could be the day to start all over again, to transform oneself into someone else. Someone more powerful, more beautiful, more daring.

At the core of L.A. Requiem is Joe Pike, a former cop with a past as dark and foreboding as his demeanor. His only stable relationship is with his partner of twelve years, Elvis Cole, a talented and quick-witted PI with skeletons in his own past.

When Pike's former lover is found dead at a reservoir in the Hollywood Hills, the duo is brought in by the woman's father to monitor the police investigation. But Pike's no stranger to the men and women in the LAPD's elite Robbery-Homicide Division, at least one of whom has been harboring a long-buried desire for revenge.

With a rich cast of characters reminiscent of Raymond Chandler's classic The Long Goodbye, L.A. Requiem is the apotheosis of Crais's writing career--a gripping novel that envelops Cole and Pike in an ever-tightening web of conspiracies, secrets, and mortal passions that threatens to destroy their friendship, and leave one, or both, dead.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Crais has written for such award-winning television shows as L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues. His novels Free Fall and The Monkey's Raincoat were nominated for the Edgar Award. He lives in Los Angeles.

From the Inside Flap

is a city of perpetual reinvention. Inviting, with a promise of infinite hope, it can also be a glittering landscape of debilitating isolation. The city's lost souls take comfort in its promise--the notion that tomorrow could be the day to start all over again, to transform oneself into someone else. Someone more powerful, more beautiful, more daring.

At the core of L.A. Requiem is Joe Pike, a former cop with a past as dark and foreboding as his demeanor. His only stable relationship is with his partner of twelve years, Elvis Cole, a talented and quick-witted PI with skeletons in his own past.

When Pike's former lover is found dead at a reservoir in the Hollywood Hills, the duo is brought in by the woman's father to monitor the police investigation. But Pike's no stranger to the men and women in the LAPD's elite Robbery-Homicide Division, at least one of whom has been harboring a long-buried desire for revenge.

With a rich cast of characters reminisc

Reviews

In his eighth book about wise-cracking Los Angeles private detective Elvis Cole, Crais has expanded his narrative reach and broadened his characters' horizons to produce a mature work that deserves to move him up a notch or twoAinto Parker or Connelly country. He's done this by focusing on Joe Pike, Cole's tough and hitherto totally enigmatic partner. It's Pike who breaks in on Cole's reunion with Lucy Chenier, his lawyer/broadcaster lover who has just moved from New Orleans, to ask for Elvis's help in tracking down the missing daughter of a rich and powerful Hispanic businessman. When the girl turns up murdered in Griffith Park, it's Pike who gives a nerdy medical examiner valuable assistance; and when it turns out that the girl's death is linked to several other murders, it's Pike who is charged with killing the chief suspect. Through flashbacks to Joe's past life as an abused child, a highly motivated teenage soldier and an L.A. cop fighting to keep a corrupt partner from destroying his family, we learn more about Pike than we did in the seven previous Cole books. This new focus also allows Crais to keep Elvis's often annoying throwaway lines to a minimumAalthough more pruning could have been done with no loss of flavor. The book's scope is wide enough to include many other memorable characters, especially a rough-edged, vulnerable police officer named Samantha Dolan, plus a choice of plausible villains. There may be one too many metaphoric descriptions attempting to link aspects of the L.A. landscape with the moods and deeds of its inhabitants, but overall Crais seems to have successfully stretched himself the way another Southern California writerARoss MacdonaldAalways tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Crais bids to break out of his successful Elvis Cole formulastreamlined plotting, smiling charm, slick action, happy endingswith Elvis's ambitious seventh case. This one begins as quiet as you please, with Elvis's unofficial partner Joe Pike asking him to help find the missing daughter of Joe's friend, tortilla king Frank Garcia. Not even the news that Karen Garcia has been shot dead sets it apart. What's new are Crais's persistent glimpses into closemouthed Joe's violent past as an abused child, a Marine on reconnaissance, and an LAPD officer who left plenty of enemies behind when he left the force. Now that powerful Frank Garcia wants Joe and Elvis given permission to tag along with the cops and report back to him on the case, all the bad blood between Joe and his ex-colleagues boils over. And when a second killing seems to have Joe's name on it, L.A.'s finest are only too eager to haul him in. Meantime, things have gotten complicated for Elvis too: Samantha Dolan, the tough Robbery-Homicide cop assigned to babysit him, wants to follow him all the way home, a plan that doesn't sit well with Lucy Chenier, the Baton Rouge attorney who switched homes and jobs to be with Elvis. As the tension ratchets up, even Elvis (Indigo Slam, 1997, etc.) seems to notice that his trademark unvoiced wisecracks are out of key, and he shuts them down long enough to go after the real killer before Joe can get packed off to the big house where all the inmates are who'll just love to greet him. The killer, by design, is a nonentityone of the few letdowns in a taut, suspenseful case that opens up scars that easygoing Elvis never looked into before. (Book-of-the-Month fetured selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Detective" and professional Angeleno, Elvis Cole (seen in Sunset Express, LJ 3/1/96) must choose between his longtime love, Lucy, and his best buddy, agency co-owner Joe Pike, during a serial murder investigation. When Pike's former girlfriend Karen disappears, Karen's father turns to Pike and Cole for help. But Pike, an ex-cop, still faces the grudge of his former LAPD co-workers, who hold him responsible for the death of his partner. As Cole soon finds, working with the cops may be the most difficult detective work he faces. When the man who discovered Karen's body is shot to death, a witness places Pike at the victim's home. Now it's up to Cole to solve both crimesAand help his friend avoid the death penalty. Elvis Cole fans will love this latest page-turner featuring the fast-talking private eye and his taciturn tattooed partner. Recommended for all public libraries.AChristine Perkins, Jackson Cty. Lib. Svcs., Medford, OR
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Karen Garcia is shot in the head while jogging in an L.A. preserve. It would have been written off as just another violent death, but her father, Frank, is the most powerful Hispanic politician in L.A. Frank Garcia's Hispanic background tells him not to trust the cops, so he asks Joe Pike, an ex-cop, to observe the investigation. Many on the force still believe Pike killed his partner 12 years earlier. Pike is also one of Karen Garcia's former lovers. Pike's partner, Elvis Cole, serves as our guide through an investigation sullied by politics, personal ambition, and a growing media spotlight. Cole finds his own life thrown into chaos when Pike becomes a suspect, the lead female detective on the case takes an interest in him, and it appears that the killer may be connected to the death of Pike's old partner. The eighth Elvis Cole^-Joe Pike novel is easily the most ambitious in an outstanding series. Readers will learn what drives Pike; how he uses his taciturn demeanor as a shield; and why the toughest thing he ever did involved neither guns nor physical bravery. This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience. Wes Lukowsky

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

That Sunday, the sun floated bright and hot over the Los Angeles basin, pushing people to the beaches and the parks and into backyard pools to escape the heat. The air buzzed with the nervous palsy it gets when the wind freight-trains in from the deserts, dry as bone, and cooking the hillsides into tar-filled kindling that can snap into flames hot enough to melt an auto body.

The Verdugo Mountains above Glendale were burning. A column of brown smoke rose off the ridgeline there where it was caught by the Santa Anas and spread south across the city, painting the sky with the color of dried blood. If you were in Burbank, say, or up along the Mulholland Snake over the Sunset Strip, you could see the big multiengine fire bombers diving in with their cargoes of bright red fire retardant as news choppers crisscrossed the scene. Or you could just watch the whole thing on television. In L.A., next to riots and earthquakes, fires are our largest spectator sport.

We couldn't see the smoke column from Lucy Chenier's second-floor apartment in Beverly Hills, but the sky had an orange tint that made Lucy stop in her door long enough to frown. We were bringing cardboard moving boxes up from her car.

"Is that the fire?"

"The Santa Anas are bringing the smoke south. Couple of hours, the ash will begin to fall. It'll look like gray snow." The fire was forty miles away. We were in no danger.

Lucy shifted the frown to her Lexus, parked below us at the curb. "Will it hurt the paint?"

"By the time it settles it'll be cool, just like powder. We'll wash it off with the hose." Elvis Cole, Professional Angeleno, educating the recent transplant, who also happens to be his girlfriend. Wait'll we get a big temblor.

Lucy didn't seem convinced, but then she stepped inside, and called her son. "Ben!"

Less than a week before, Lucille Chenier and her nine-year-old son had left Louisiana and settled into the apartment that they had taken in Beverly Hills, just south of Wilshire Boulevard. Lucy had been a practicing attorney in Baton Rouge, but was beginning a new career as a legal analyst for a local television station (a nouveau occupational fruit growing from the ugly tree that was the Simpson trial). Trading Baton Rouge for Los Angeles, she gained a larger salary, more free time to spend with her son, and closer proximity to moi. I had spent all of Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday morning arranging and rearranging the living room. That's love for you.

The television was tuned to the station she now worked for, KROK-8 ("Real News for Real People!"), which, like every other station in town, had interrupted regular programming with live coverage of the fire. Twenty-eight homes were threatened and had been evacuated.

Lucy handed Ben the box. "Too heavy?"

"No way."

"Your room. Your closet. Neatly."

When he was gone I slipped my hand around her waist, and whispered, "Your room. Your bed. Messy."

She stepped away and considered the couch. "First we have to get this house in order. Would you please move the couch again?"

I stared at the couch. I had moved it maybe eight hundred times in the last two days.

"Which wall?"

She chewed at her thumb, thinking. "Over there."

"That's where it was two moves ago." It was a big couch. It probably weighed three thousand pounds.

"Yes, but that was when the entertainment center was by the fireplace. Now that we've put the entertainment center by the entry, the look will be completely different."

"We?"

"Yes. We."

I bent into the couch and dragged it to the opposite wall. Four thousand pounds.

I was squaring the couch when the phone rang. Lucy spoke for a minute, then held out the phone.

"Joe."

Joe Pike and I are partners in the detective agency that bears my name. He could have his name on it if he wanted, but he doesn't. He's like that.

I took the phone. "Hernias R Us." Lucy rolled her eyes and turned away, already contemplating new sofa arrangements.

Pike said, "How's the move going?"

I walked the phone out onto the balcony. "It's a big change. I think she's finally realizing how big. What's up?"

"You heard of Frank Garcia?"

"The tortilla guy. Regular, large, and Monsterito sizes. I prefer the Monsterito myself." You could walk into any food store in Los Angeles and see Frank Garcia smiling at you from the packages of his tortillas, eyes bright, bushy black mustache, big smile.

Pike said, "Frank's a friend of mine and he's got a problem. I'm on my way there now. Can you meet me?"

Pike and I have owned a detective agency for twelve years, and I have known him even longer since his days as a Los Angeles police officer. He had never once asked a favor, or asked for my help on a personal problem in all of that time.

"I'm helping Lucy set up her house. I'm wearing shorts, and I've spent the morning wrestling a ten-thousand-pound couch."

Pike didn't answer.

"Joe?"

"Frank's daughter is missing, Elvis. She's a friend of mine, too. I hope you can make it." He gave an address in Hancock Park, then hung up without another word. Pike is like that, too.Uniformed LAPD Officer Joe Pike could hear the banda music even with the engine idling, the a.c. jacked to meat locker, and the two-way crackling callout codes to other units.

The covey of Latina street kids clumped outside the arcade giggled at him, whispering things to each other that made them flush. Squat brown men come up through the fence from Zacatecas milled on the sidewalk, shielding their eyes from the sun as veteranos told them about Sawtelle over on the Westside where they could find day labor jobs, thirty dollars cash, no papers required. Here in Rampart Division south of Sunset, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans simmered with Salvadorans and Mexican nationals in a sidewalk machaca that left the air flavored with epizote, even here within the sour cage of the radio car.

Pike watched the street kids part like water when his partner hurried out of the arcade. Abel Wozniak was a thick man with a square head and cloudy, slate eyes. Wozniak was twenty years older than Pike and had been on the street twenty years longer. Once the best cop that Pike had then met,Wozniak's eyes were now strained. They'd been riding together for two years, and the eyes hadn't always been that way. Pike regretted that, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

Especially now when they were looking for Ramona Ann Escobar.

Wozniak lurched in behind the wheel, adjusting his gun for the seat, anxious to roll even with the tension between them as thick as clotted blood. His informant had come through.

"DeVille's staying at the Islander Palms Motel."

"Does DeVille have the girl?"

"My guy eyeballed a little girl, but he can't say if she's still with him."

Wozniak snapped the car into gear and rocked away from the curb. They didn't roll Code Three. No lights, no siren. The Islander Palms was less than five blocks away, here on Alvarado Boulevard just south of Sunset. Why send an announcement?

"Woz? Would DeVille hurt her?"

"I told you, a fuckin' perv like this would be better off with a bullet in his head."

It was eleven-forty on a Tuesday morning. At nine-twenty, a five-year-old girl named Ramona Ann Escobar had been playing near the paddleboatconcession in Echo Park when her mother, a legal emigre from Guatemala, had turned away to chat with friends. Witnesses last saw Ramona in the company of a man believed to be one Leonard DeVille, a known pedophilewho'd been sighted working both Echo and MacArthur parks for the past three months. When the dispatch call had come about the missing girl, Wozniak had begun working his street informants. Wozniak, having beenon the street forever, knew everyone and how to find them. He wasatreasure trove of information that Pike valued and respected, anddidn'twant to lose. But Pike couldn't do anything about that,either.

Pike stared at Wozniak until Wozniak couldn't handle the weight any longer and glanced over. They were forty seconds away from the Islander Palms. "Oh, for Christ's sake, what?"

"It isn't too late, Woz."

Wozniak's eyes went back to the street, and his face tightened. "I'm telling you, Joe. Back off with this. I'm not going to talk about it anymore."

"I meant what I said."

Wozniak wet his lips.

"You've got Paulette and Evelyn to think about."

Wozniak's wife and daughter.

The cloudy eyes flicked to Pike, as bottomless and as dangerous as a thunderhead.

"I've been thinking about them, Pike. You bet your ass."

For just an instant, Pike thought Wozniak's eyes filled. Then Wozniak gave a shudder as if he were shaking out his feelings, and pointed.

"There it is. Now shut the fuck up and play like a cop."

The Islander Palms was a white stucco dump: two stories of frayed carpets, stained beds, and neon palms that looked tacky even in Los Angeles, all of it shaped into an L around a narrow parking lot. The typical customers were whores renting by the hour, wannabe pornographers shooting "amateur" videos, and rent jumpers needing a place to stay while they found a new landlord to stiff.

Pike followed Wozniak into the manager's office, a skinny Hindu with watery eyes. First thing he said was, "I do not wan' trouble, please."

Wozniak had the lead.

"We're looking for a man with a little girl. His name is Leonard DeVille, but he might've used another name."

The Hindu didn't know the name, or about a little girl, but he tol...

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385495838
• ISBN 13: 9780385495837
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400