Shearing winked at her. "I didn't say it was. It's still a pity we can't identify the elusive Mister Packs, but we'll take care of that in time. Who's left?"
"None that I know in the Los Angeles area. There are the Hedder brothers, Joe and John, up in Seattle. It was through Joe Hedder that I got to Vallery. They're runners, they watched Paul's house, things like that."
"Surely there must be more involved than that," de la Torres insisted. "There must be someone in Los Angeles beside the girl Sharon."
Janie nodded. "I agree, but I haven't met anyone else."
"Which one has the contact with the Chinese?" de la Torres asked. "That is the one we must watch, and I have very few men."
"Jim Vallery," Janie said. "I'm not sure anyone else knows a thing about the contact. Sometimes I get the impression that they're all waiting for Vallery to let them know who the buyers are so they can take over themselves, but I haven't any reason for it. Anyway Vallery's smart enough to know that his contact with the buyers is the only thing he's really got, and he's careful."
"It is not much to work with," de la Torres said. He spread his hands, then gave a broad smile. "Of course I have often had to work with less, but it would be pleasant to have something definite for a change. Ah, well, we still do the best we can."
Shearing nodded. "I haven't seen anything to make us change the original plan. We get Janie to the Hollywood Roosevelt and wait for them to make contact. She puts them in touch with Paul and she's out of the picture for a while. We won't let them know where Paul is, just arrange a meeting so that he can be satisfied that the deal's safe, and we keep Steen out of sight until he's got it set up." Shearing ran his fingers across the dinette top. A chart of the coast from Concepcion to San Diego was laminated in plastic on the table, and he traced various courses through the islands, ending with the Catalina-to-L.A. run. "You're going to be hard to satisfy, Paul. You've been shot at, turned in to the FBI, scared half to death, and you're mad as hell. That shouldn't be hard for you to put on. You want to see money, and nothing moves until you see it in large quantities. They'll have to drag out their buyer to save the deal." He stared at the chart for a second, then turned to de la Torres.
"Sam, you cover Paul, but don't risk being seen. He should be safe enough until he's got Dr. Hoorne out in the open. And stay away from Vallery, but I want every local agent we can shake loose to stand by for the shadow job when the meet finally is set up. Along those lines, I've got a few suggestions that ought to interest you . . . Is there any more coffee on this tub? This could take the rest of the night."
It didn't, but it was midnight before Shearing took Steen away on the power boat, leaving Janie and me alone together for the first time since Seattle. We sat on deck watching the cruiser vanish into the dark. Behind us was a deserted beach, the nearest boat in the anchorage a big ninety foot schooner a hundred yards away. After the Chris-Craft was gone there was nothing but bright stars and a glow to the northeast, the lights of Los Angeles twenty miles away, nearly invisible in the thin mist and smog over that way. The sky above us was clear, showing every star and constellation, and we tried to see the patterns the ancients had seen, the bears and dogs and the rest of them.
"They had better imaginations than I do," Janie said. "Hercules doesn't look like a man, just a lot of stars." I pointed out the Scorpion way to the south, but she had trouble making it out.
"They didn't have much else to do but watch stars, I guess," I told her. "I can't figure out most of them, but I've had to learn to recognize constellations to find stars for navigation." I stood and yawned elaborately, my insides a tight ball of anticipation which I was trying to hide. "It's getting wet out here, girl, we better get below."
"I suppose. I could use some coffee, anyway." She stood with me in the little cockpit, then moved against me, her arm lightly around my waist. The boat rocked gently in the tide, and we stood like that. "We have to leave this and get to work in the morning," she sighed. "I wish we didn't. It's very peaceful out here."
I held her to me, thinking about what she'd said. "There's nothing making us go in tomorrow. Except we said we'd do it."
"That's enough, isn't it? You don't like this work, Paul. Why?"
"I don't know. Come on, let's get below before we drown." The dew was forming fast, as it always does on cool nights after warm days on the water. It seemed thicker than usual, and a little strange, dew dripping off the furled sails in a clear night. Below it was snug and warm, the little kerosene lights giving a cheery yellow glow that electricity can't ever match on a boat.
"It's got to be done," she insisted. "And aren't you interested in fighting back? They would have killed you if they could."
"Sure, Janie." I started to fuss with the stove. She reminded me of warrior women, and remembering the girls in the picket lines on both sides of our youthful rebellions, I wondered if most of our male fighting spirit had been killed off in the wars, leaving us only our women. I lit the stove and turned to her. "Look, I'm no soft-hearted idiot. I know it's got to be done. And it isn't that I'm too scared to do it, although I admit I get just as scared as the next guy. I just wish we could do it some other way." She started to say something, but I cut her off. "And don't tell me how impossible that is, I know it already. Look, Janie, I'm the sort of guy who likes to play things by the rules. Now the other side doesn't admit there are any rules, and we have to toss out our rulebook or lose. OK. So we do it. And it looks like I'm in the fight, and I better learn there's no umpire and get with the dirty tricks. So I'm learning, and I didn't say I'd get out of the game, but I don't have to like it."
She sat on one of the bunks, lay back against the cushions, her hair tangled from the wind and mist outside, lipstick long since chewed off in the conference with Shearing. She didn't look anything like the immaculate creature I'd taken to the dance at the Casino two nights before. Her very practical and very baggy sailing slacks were rumpled, her deck shoes stained with salt water, the scarf she'd put over her hair didn't do a thing for her, and she was a hell of a lot lovelier than she'd been the first day I saw her in her bank executive outfit. I reached for the coffeepot, and she said, "I don't really want any coffee, Paul. We have to get an early start in the morning, and after we get to Los Angeles we're back in that game you don't like . . . . Does your rule book say anything about what the players do the night before another inning?"
I started to answer, but it was easier to show her. About an hour later we realized that I'd left the damn stove burning, and I had to get up to shut it off.
Chapter Nine
They'd put me in the Royal Inn in Santa Monica. I understand there are more Royal Inns around the country, all just like this one, which is a frightening thought. My Royal Inn was a steel-and-glass tower _ built like an office building, with non-load-bearing walls between rooms, a false Cellotex ceiling hanging on metal straps, and the rest of the low-cost tricks designers are using nowadays. Outside was the usual postage-stamp-sized swimming pool, and beyond that was a parking lot bigger than the hotel. They hadn't screened off the pool from the parking lot so that the bathers had to lie around in the sun with the headlights of civilization's real masters staring at them. Some of the modern cars at least had the decency to close their eyes.
The place had a bar called the Lost Knight, which they'd tried to give some character with the decorations, but the efficiency experts had got there before the bartender. When I went in for a beer in the middle of the afternoon the stereo was pouring out some fertility rite beat at a decibel level that made it impossible to sit there, chasing me back out but they wouldn't let me take my beer. The lobby doubled as a communications hall from the front to the back of the place, with a little registration desk stuck off to one side and no space for anyone to sit. I suppose all hotels will eventually be like this one, and there are probably people who'll insist that this is a perfectly valid style for our modern age; the frightening thought is they may be right. They'll point out how convenient it is to hav
e ice and coke machines on each floor so the guests don't have to call room service, and they'll be partly right, although with so many people unemployed it's a little strange to believe that personal services are priced out of the market. They'll tell you how convenient self-service elevators are. They'll tell you that cornice pieces and elaborate trim spoil the lines of our clean true and good architecture, and maybe they'll be right. But what they won't want to admit is that we don't have any choice anymore. Our age is the age of the cheap and shoddy because we haven't the money, the time, or the skilled workmen to make anything else.
My room was decent-sized, which should have made me grateful. A lot of the really colorful old hotels have rooms you could put handles on and use for coffins. I was on the second floor. My outside wall was all glass, sliding panels with a balcony fully a foot wide extending beyond them so I could step more or less outside and enjoy a view of the muscle crowd on the beach a block away. Since my balcony was about two feet higher than the white-gravel-covered flat roof of the lower floor box extending out from under the tower construction of the hotel, the iron railing they'd given me to keep me from falling to my death was a little superfluous, but all the other stories had iron rails on their balconies so we second-story people got them too. Looking south I couldn't see the marina where we'd put Witch of Endor, but she was there, all her gear stowed below and locked away because Los Angeles isn't a safe place to leave a boat unlocked. In my old moorage near the houseboats in Seattle I'd never locked up.
I'd unpacked my junk and was about to go out for some beer I could drink in quiet when the phone rang. "There is a message waiting for you when you get to the Hollywood Roosevelt," Janie told me after we'd gone through the identification routines and we were both sure nobody was holding a gun on either one of us. Shearing had worked out some clever contingency codes to use for various situations, and I hoped I could remember them all.
"What's the skinny?" I asked her.
"They want a meeting as soon as possible. Tonight."
"Aw, there goes dinner. I noticed an Indonesian place about a block from here, I was planning to feed you an eighteen-course rijsttafel tonight."
"It will have to wait, but that's sweet of you to think of it . . . what's 'rize staffel,' anyway?"
"It means rice table. You start with rice and add on various things. Curried oranges, chicken, beef, sweet and sour vegetables, fried bananas . . . you name it, they've thought of it. This place seems pretty genuine. Well, we have a chance some other time. Can you arrange the deal for tonight?"
"Yes. They seemed anxious, so I already did, subject to confirmation with you. At eight tonight you're to get to the Santa Monica Mall at Wilshire, walk along the Mall until you come to Broadway and go down Broadway to the beach. Go south on the beach until somebody meets you."
"That sounds pretty cagey . . . they scared of something?"
"I think so. And all they'll do tonight is make contact. Look, the way they've got this set up, de la Torres can't cover you very closely. They obviously picked this method so that they can see if anyone is following you."
"I'll manage. Will Sam's boys be somewhere around?"
"He'll try to be there, but he says you can't count on him to move in very fast if anything happens. As long as Dr. Hoorne's still hidden nobody thinks you're in danger, but be careful, darling."
"I'll just do that . . . well, I'll see you later. Wait a second, remembered something. I've got half your chemistry laboratory here. You left it in my bag."
"Now you know all my girlish secrets. I'll get it later. Bye, Paul."
"Goodbye, sweetheart." I hung up the phone and contemplated the junk I'd been talking about. It was a little disillusioning. I mean, if a girl had to take that many bottles and spray cans to a weekend on Catalina, what did she usually have with her, and how much of what you see is girl and how much was bought in the drug store? But then I had good reason to know she looked all right without external aids. When we'd gone dancing on the Island she'd put on the whole bit, pancake goop and the rest of it, but she looked better on the boat the last night.
I stacked the junk in one corner of the big bureau and the hell with what the chambermaid thought, although that might be interesting . . . . Nowadays when the hotel staff sees girl makeup in a man's room, do they assume he has a girlfriend or that he uses it himself? One can was hairspray and from the label it ought to be handled like an atom bomb. It cautioned me that the junk was flammable under high pressure, and under no circumstances should I puncture the can, incinerate it, or otherwise dispose of it carelessly, leaving me to wonder just what you were supposed to do with it after you were through. Eventually I got unpacked and went out on an unsuccessful search for a quiet place to have a beer.
The Santa Monica Mall is a nice development, and proof that men can sometimes triumph over the automobile. They've closed off a street, bricked it over, and put in potted trees and things like that so that people can walk without having to worry about being run over. However, you still have to cross streets at each block, showing that the AAA had influence in the city council.
I walked along, looking at shops and trying to keep from turning around to spot a familiar face. I wasn't supposed to be watching for Information Associates, or for Sam de la Torres either. I wondered if he'd be there. His main job was protecting Steen, who was stashed away in a miserable frame house in Venice, one of those old places built in the twenties or before when Venice had canals. Now it was surrounded by similar houses cut up into ten apartments each and inhabited by bearded beach boys and the shapeless girls with stringy hair who seem to congregate down there.
Santa Monica is only a couple of miles north of Venice, but the atmosphere is entirely different. In Santa Monica the beach crowd looks more like Jones Beach. I suppose the police make life difficult for the hairy people with rope-soled shoes. Still, Santa Monica is a strange place. The people resent being part of Los Angeles and blame all their weirdies on Angelinos creeping in to use their beaches, but they've got some of their own. For example, the gentleman on the bicycle. Now bicycles are a great means of transportation and good exercise, and Eisenhower's heart specialist had a big campaign on a few years back to get us all out pedaling madly around the countryside, but this chap would stand out in a crowd of bicyclers. He was about fifty, a fat man with a round English face, wearing a spotless white turtleneck, white gloves, and black bowler hat. He'd been riding hard, but there was no sweat dripping down his ruddy cheeks; it wouldn't dare. His machine was high and boxy, one of the old-time bikes you see in circuses. He kept his head up so high he couldn't see the streets, pedaling along like a proper gentleman ignoring the peasants to either side.
He rolled down Broadway past me, stopping for a red light, not in obedience to the mechanical signal but because he wanted to stop just there and then. At the light there was another character. This one was flabby and bronze-faced in jeans and red-checkered shirt, green suspenders, a kid's shiny silver marshal's badge pinned on a filthy brown vest so much too small for him that his shirt and braces showed under it. He mopped his face with a red bandana, and with his other hand he was holding a long hunting horn made out of a Texas steerhorn with a bugle mouthpiece stuck in the small end. He stood on an accommodation bench at the bus stop with the horn jammed in his mouth. The bench was placed there courtesy of the Zimmelmeyer One-Stop Funeral Home, shaded by a big palm tree.
Every now and then this guy would stick the horn to his lips and give a long mournful toot for no reason I could see unless he was Zimmelmeyer and this was a special service. He practically put the thing in the high-minded cyclist's ear and blew his head off, causing the gentleman bikeman to pedal madly down the street, still looking neither to the right nor to the left.
Those were typical samples of the sights around my part of Santa Monica. Walking south, the expensive hotels and new crackerboxes like the Royal Inn gave way to a mixture with run-down old beach houses thrown in, but there were still plenty of the modern e
fficiency hotels like the Royal, where every square inch of space was scientifically used—the designers would say utilized—giving it the atmosphere of an aerospace think tank. Maybe that was deliberate; Rand Corporation, the original think tank where we keep the tame geniuses who are going to save us from both war and pollution was only about a block away from the Royal Inn.
It was early evening, and couples strolled along the walk by the water in the twilight. Fifty to a hundred yards of littered sand separated us from the surf, which was making spectacular breakers against the shore. I walked south until I'd left just everybody behind, strolling along the deserted promenade and feeling a hell of a temptation to look over my shoulder, stop and tie my shoes, anything to try to see if anybody was interested in me, but I fought it down.
About a mile south of the Mall, a girl came out of the shadows and fell in beside me. "Hello, Paul," she said as if we'd known each other for years.
"Hello, Bev. You the one I'm supposed to meet?"
"No. Ji—I mean, Dick will be along. He's watching us to see you weren't followed."
"You look great," I told her.
"Why thank you." She took my hand, which was a surprise, although it did make us less noticeable. "But I didn't really try, you know."
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