by Robert Crais
“I’ll bet you can’t get it up, can you, O’Bannon?”
He tried to give me the sort of glare he’d seen fighters give on TV. Then he walked out.
The big redheaded secretary was talking to Griggs down by the rec room door. She watched O’Bannon pass and shook her head. I didn’t move for a very long time and neither did Poitras. Then I got up, carefully shut Poitras’ door, and went back to my chair. “Who shut it off, Lou?” I said, softly.
“It ain’t been shut off. Other people are handling it, that’s all.”
“Bullshit.”
Poitras’ eyes were small and hard. Kielbasa fingers worked against each other with no purpose. Someone knocked at the door. Poitras went red. He yelled, “Beat it!”
The door opened anyway and Griggs came in. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, arms crossed. Only a couple of hours into the morning and he already looked rumpled and tired.
I said, “It’s still kidnapping, Lou. You can pass it to the feds.”
Griggs said quietly, “You know the rules, bo. You pass it up the line, up the line has to refer it.”
“Did Baishe bring them in?”
“Goddamn it, it wasn’t Baishe,” Lou said. “You got Baishe on the brain. Forget him. He was for it.”
“What do I tell Ellen Lang?”
“Tell her it’s a Special Operations bust. Tell her someone from Special Operations might come talk to her.”
“Later.”
“Yeah. Later.”
“Is that what I tell Duran when he calls?”
“You’re off Duran. That’s the word. You go around Duran, O’Bannon will use those two bodies up Beachwood to grind you up.”
“They grow’m hard up at Stanford Law,” Griggs said. “Only a hard guy could wear a tie with little white camels like that, right, Lou?”
Lou didn’t say anything.
I said, “This smells like buy-off, Lou. Like Duran picked up the phone.”
Poitras leaned back in his chair and swiveled to look at the file cabinet. Or maybe he was looking at the pictures of his kids. “Get the hell out of here, Elvis.”
I got up and went to the door. Griggs gave me sleepy eyes, then peeled himself away from the door and opened it.
I looked back at Lou. “The cops up in Lancaster happen to find a Walther .32 automatic in Lang’s car?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“He had one.”
“Good-bye.”
I walked out. The door closed behind me, and I heard something heavy hit something hard. I kept walking.
The redhead was gone. I walked out past the rec room and the holding cell and into the stairwell. I met Baishe coming up. His face looked softer and older. He stopped me on the stairs. “I got a prowlcar making extra passes at Duran’s place. That’s the best I can do.”
We nodded at each other, then he went up to the squad room and I went down and out to my car.
25
It was already hot out in the parking lot. I pushed down the top on the Corvette, climbed in, and sat thinking about Perry Lang and his mother and how O’Bannon might want to talk to her. Later. That was probably okay with Perry. He was probably having a good time. The Eskimo was probably showing him how to eat seal fat and Manolo was probably giving him piggyback rides and Duran was probably teaching him the correct technique for a verónica, with temple. Of course, when Duran called and I told him he was now a Spec Op, he’d probably get pissed and stop the lessons. Then it wouldn’t be very much fun at all. I took out my wallet, looked at my license for a long time, then folded the wallet again and put it back in my pocket. Screw you, O’Bannon.
I peeled out of the parking lot and laid a strip of Goodyear rubber halfway down the street.
Ten minutes later I was parked across from the Burbank Studios and walking back toward Garrett Rice’s office. The backhoe and the bulldozer were tearing up the little parking lot and kicking up a lot of dust that I had to walk through to get to the stairs. Rice’s door was closed and locked. I knocked and looked through the glass panel next to the door. The outer office was dark, Rice’s inner office darker still. I went to the next office.
The door was propped open, and an almost-pretty blonde in a green LaCoste shirt was fanning herself with a Daily Variety behind the desk. She raised her eyebrows at me, something my mother had done quite a bit. I said, “Has Mr. Rice been in?”
“I don’t think so, today. Sheila left about a half hour ago.”
“Sheila the secretary?”
“Unh-huh. You an actor?”
“Look sorta like John Cassavetes, right?”
She stuck her lips out and shook her head. “No, you just have the look, that’s all. I know the look. Hungry.”
“A man is defined by his appetites.”
Her eyes smiled. “Unh-huh.”
I gave her one of my better smiles and walked loudly back to the stairs, waited a few seconds to see if she’d stir, then eased back to Rice’s door, picked the lock, and let myself in.
Nothing much had changed since the last time I was there. The furnishings were still cheap, the dead mouse stain still marked the couch, the plants still clung to life. There were crumbs beneath the couch cushions, along with three pennies, a nickel, two dimes, and a Winston cigarette. The top three drawers of the file cabinet held yellowing scripts and news clippings, and articles and short stories that had been snipped from magazines. The bottom drawer was actors’ résumés and correspondence and interoffice memos. More than one of the memos warned Rice against any further evidence of copyright infringement.
Behind the memos there was a mason jar of marijuana, two packs of Zig Zag papers, and three porno magazines. One titled Lesbian Delight, another Women in Pain, and the last Little Lovers. Little Lovers was kids.
I took a deep breath and stood up and felt tired. You feel tired a lot in this business.
I shredded Little Lovers into a metal waste can and brought the can over to the window looking out at the water tower. There was a book of matches in the top drawer of the desk. I put the can beneath the window and burned away the images of the children and what some animal had made those children do. If Rice walked in, maybe I’d burn him, too.
When I finished with that I went through the rest of the desk. There was no cocaine. No clues to Garrett Rice’s whereabouts. No unexpected or surprising evidence. In the middle drawer on the right side of his desk there was a small yellowed envelope postmarked June 1958. It was a handwritten note from Jane Fonda, saying how much she had enjoyed working with Garrett during a recent summer stock production and that Garrett was one of the most professional stage managers it had been her pleasure to meet. It was signed, Love, Jane. The edges of the note and the envelope were smudged and gray, as if Rice took it out and read it often.
I went out to the secretary’s office and checked her calendar. There weren’t any special notes or appointments scheduled for Mr. Rice. There weren’t even any unspecial ones. I looked up Garrett Rice in her rolodex and pulled the card. It had his home phone, which I already had, but it also had his home address, which I didn’t. I gave him a call, let it ring twenty-two times, then hung up. Maybe he was taking an early lunch.
I called my office and had the answer machine play back the messages. There weren’t any. I didn’t like that. After last night, the Eskimo should’ve called. I punched another line and dialed my house.
One ring. “Pike.”
“There’s an address book upstairs on the left side of the phone. I need Cleon Tyner’s home number.”
“Wait.”
In a few moments the upstairs extension lifted and Pike gave me the number.
“Ellen okay?” I said.
“She likes to wait on people.”
“It’s all she knows how to do.”
“She’s cleaning the house. If you came back now, she’d probably wash your car.”
“Have her check the Cherokee. It looked a little dirty on my way out
this morning.”
Pike gave me Hard Silence. Then: “How’d it go with the cops?”
I told him.
“Special Operations,” he said. “That’s shit.”
“Close enough to smell bad.”
“Poitras is good. Poitras won’t shit you.”
“Poitras doesn’t like it any more than me. Someone up the line yanks the deal from Poitras, this asshole O’Bannon tells me to back away. Nobody knows anything. If it’s a buy-out then they’re selling the kid to let Duran handle us himself.”
“What’s Cleon got to do with this?”
“He was working for Garrett Rice. Only I can’t see Cleon on the other side. I can’t see him selling muscle to take down a dope deal. You know Cleon.”
“People change.”
“You haven’t changed since 1975.”
“Other people.”
I hung up, then dialed Cleon Tyner. A woman with a hoarse bar singers voice answered.
I said, “I was trying to get Eartha Kitt for the Sands, but everybody says Betty Tyner is sexier.”
She laughed. “Oh? And how would everybody know?”
“Her walk, her talk—”
“The way she crawls on her belly like a reptile?”
I said, “Now you’re embarrassing me.”
She laughed louder, the strong healthy laugh of a woman at ease with herself. We spent a few minutes bringing each other up to date and trading friendly insults before she said, “Well, since you ain’t asked me to marry you yet, I’ll bet you’re calling for that shiftless brother of mine.”
“Amazing. The woman not only is fantastic in bed, but she mind-reads, too.”
“How you think I got to be so fantastic?”
“Practice?”
She suggested an anatomical impossibility. “Cleon’s working. He ain’t been here for a couple of days.”
“He go out of town?”
“I don’t know, babe. He just said something about staying with the client. Said the man was walking sideways he was so scared.”
We shot the breeze another few minutes, with me promising to give a call soon, and her saying I’d better, then we hung up. The door in the next office closed, and the blonde secretary walked by, carrying a large blue purse. She didn’t glance in and she didn’t see me sitting in the dark at Sheila’s desk, staring at Garrett Rice’s address.
I opened the door enough to see that no one was on the walk, then let myself out and drove to Garrett Rice’s house in the hills above the Sunset Strip.
Rice lived in a low-slung white stucco modern on a little cul-de-sac off Sunset Plaza Drive. It was the sort of place that went for half a million plus today, but if you were lucky enough to be working in the sixties it didn’t cost you more than eighty or ninety thou. I drove into the cul-de-sac, circled, then parked at the curb in front of Rice’s house. Each house was set back enough to have some sort of gate and some sort of motor court and some sort of lush greenery, mostly ivy and banana trees and giant ferns. There were walls between each house and tall skinny cyprus so you wouldn’t have to see the next guy’s roofline, and none of the houses had very much in the way of windows looking out toward the street. Easier to forget the world if you didn’t have to see it. They probably gave great block parties, though.
I walked up through the little motor court to Garrett Rice’s door. There was a little white form envelope from the LAPD thumbtacked to the jamb. Inside there would be a little white form note informing (Mr. Garrett Rice) that (officer’s name written in) wished to speak with him and requesting that (Mr. Garrett Rice) call (officer’s phone number) at his earliest opportunity. I had seen these notes before. I wondered if Elliot Ness ever saw them. Probably what killed him.
I rang the bell. No answer. I knocked. Still no answer. Across the street a woman in pink frou frou slippers and a pretentious silver housecoat watched me from her drive as a Yorkie sniffed at the thick ivy in front of their house. I nodded at the woman and smiled. She nodded back but didn’t smile. Probably too early to smile. Can’t smile when you’re still in the housecoat.
There was no car in the motor court, no way to see into the garage, and nothing parked on the street but my Vette. Cleon drove a black ’83 Trans Am. I didn’t know what Garrett Rice drove. I went back to my car, climbed in, and thought about it.
Poitras said the cops had tried to see Rice two days ago. That meant the little call-back note had been posted for two days and Rice hadn’t seen it. Or maybe he had, but wanted the cops to think he hadn’t, and left it there.
Or maybe Garrett Rice, who was so scared he asked Cleon Tyner, not the most social of people, to move in with him, had blown town. That made sense if he had had the dope, and then moved it. Cashed in and ran from Duran. He’d still be scared enough to want a muscle like Cleon along so he could sleep at night. He’d sport for the plane fare and head for parts unknown. Sure. That made sense. But Cleon being part of it, that didn’t. Betty had once chased the dragon with a lounge owner from Riverside. Cleon found out when she ended the chase in the Riverside ER. The lounge mysteriously burned. The lounge owner’s Caddie mysteriously blew up. The lounge owner himself mysteriously disappeared. Cleon Tyner suffered neither dope nor dopers. So. Dilemma, dilemma.
The woman in the silver lamé housecoat came out into the street and stared at me with her hands on her hips, then pointed at a little sign planted in the ivy by her drive. Every house on the street had one, a little red sign that said Bel Air Patrol—Armed Response. I stuck my tongue out at her and crossed my eyes. She gave me the finger and went back into her compound. Another close brush with dangerous, affluent-class life-forms.
I took a deep breath, let it out, and started my car. I was tired of sitting and thinking and getting nowhere. I also didn’t want to lose time hassling with a Rent-a-Cop with the kid still out there. I blew the horn as I swung around the cul-de-sac—twice—then drove away.
Scared hell out that Yorkie.
26
At the bottom of Sunset Plaza I parked behind a gelato place and used the pay phone to call Pat Kyle at General Entertainment and ask her if she’d heard anything more about Mort or Garrett. She asked if she could call me right back. I gave her the number on the pay phone, then hung up, bought a cup of double chocolate banana, and enjoyed the extra butterfat.
The minutes ticked by, slow and heavy. I took small bites of the gelato and thought about the girl behind the counter to keep from thinking about Perry Lang and Ellen Lang and Domingo Duran and a guy named O’Bannon. She caught me staring and stared back. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, pretty despite yellow and black eyeshadow, yellow lip gloss, and yellow and black paint in her hair. The hair was spiked and stood out straight from her head like thick fuzz. The bumblebee look. She had a nice even tan and large breasts and probably two parents who wouldn’t think kindly of a thirty-five-year-old man wondering what their baby looked like without clothes.
I said, “I’m John Cassavetes.”
“Who?”
I said, “Tell me the truth, do I look more like John Cassavetes or Tony Dow?”
She cocked her head. “I think you look like Andy Summers, only bigger and more athletic-looking.”
“Nah, I don’t look like Andy Summers.”
“I bet you don’t even know who Andy Summers is.”
“Useta play lead for The Police.”
She grinned. Her teeth were even and white. “Yeah,” she said, “You look like him. Thoughtful and smart and sensitive.”
Maybe if everyone wore yellow and black makeup the world would be a better place. I sat up straighter and was considering marriage when the phone rang. Pat said. “Sorry. I had someone in the office.”
“It’s okay. I fell in love during the wait.”
She made her voice cool. “Perhaps I should call back later. Give you time to consummate the relationship.”
“It’s as consummated as it’s going to get. What’s the word?”
“I didn�
��t hear anything new about Mort, but I did confirm those rumors about Garrett Rice. He’s a glad-hander with the weasel dust. He gets invited to parties because he always brings along a little something and he’s willing to share it.”
“Gosh, you mean what I hear about those Hollywood parties is true?”
“No. I mean what you hear about some of those Hollywood parties is true.”
“How’d you confirm it?”
“Friend of a friend at another studio. Someone who is very much involved in that world and who knew firsthand.”
I said, “Patricia, if I had two kilograms of pure cocaine that I wanted to sell and I was around the studios like Garrett Rice, who would I call?”
She laughed. “You’re talking to the wrong person, Elvis. I’m into health and the perfect body.”
“Would your friend of a friend know?”
“I can’t tell you her name.”
“Would you ask for me?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. She might be scared.”
“It’s important, kid.”
She said okay, then hung up. I went back to my seat at the table and looked at the counter girl some more. She said, “What’s going on?”
I said, “Can you keep a secret?”
“Sure.”
“A mobster from Mexico is holding a little kid ransom for two keys of cocaine. I’m trying to get the cocaine back so I can trade it for the kid and maybe nail the mobster at the same time.”
She laughed. “What bullshit,” she said.
“No bullshit. I’m a private detective.”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna see my gun?”
She put her hands behind her and gave me a look. “I know what you want to show me.”
Such cynicism. Two women who were probably Persian walked in and the counter girl went over to them. The phone rang and I picked it up. Pat said, “My reputation may be ruined. I was just invited to a freebasing party.”
“You get a name?”
“Barry Fein. He’s probably the guy Garrett dealt with.”