by Buck Sanders
“Killing you off would be easier,” Winship said.
“I think so too, and I think he thinks so,” Slayton admitted. “I’m poking my nose into it, and getting rid of me would constitute a peachy warning shot across the Department’s bow. I hate to say this, sir, but the government allows things a lot more corrupt than that little scenario to pass unnoticed. My ass is on the line in terms of the investigation; the hope would be that the case would die along with me. It probably would.”
“Not while I’m sitting in this chair,” said Winship, rising to the occasion.
“I hate to say this, too, sir, but if I was dead you’d most likely assign Brooks. And Brooks would not have been capable of yielding the original lead to the Starshine delivery men in the first place.” There was a picture of Anna Drake burning away in his brain, and the idea of Brooks trying to satisfy the woman was almost as funny as the picture of the trio of CIA gunsels currently in traction.
“Alright, then,” Winship said, resigned to the job one way or the other. “Tell me about the ledger.”
Slayton’s Tarzanlike progression from balcony to balcony was simplified at almost the same time his arm muscles began to complain. No amount of conditioning and exercise was ever equal to actual, in-the-field abuse.
He landed on a balcony whose windows were not curtained. The rooms within were dark and deserted, and at once Slayton saw that this particular balcony appended to an unleased residence. At the prices tenancy probably commanded, it did not seem unusual that there would be empty apartments; at the same time, this was Washington, and even the most outrageous rents were affordable in Congress terms.
He saw that he had ripped the armpits out of his leather jacket during his fight and flight, and tufts of the ski sweater he wore protruded from the ruptured stitching. Inside his left interior pocket was the stolen ledger. Inside the right was the wrap-up of lock picks and gimmicks he had used to enter the first townhouse.
The lock on the sliding glass door to the empty apartment was child’s play, and soon Slayton had left the night chill behind in favor of the warm—though dead and unventilated—air inside.
Almost habitually, he checked the rooms—all empty and unfurnished. All that remained of the previous tenant was a black, push-button telephone in the middle of the living room floor, its cord snaking off toward the far wall. It had a thick, gray cord, unlike a normal residential phone, and no quick-release catches. Perhaps the previous user had run a business of some sort out of the place. Or maybe the building was in charge of the phones. It was not significant.
What was significant was that when Slayton experimentally lifted the receiver, he got a dial tone.
In the dim light that filtered in through the glass doors, Slayton got his first close look at the ledger. It related to accounts receivable, and the amounts listed in severe, black figures tallied with the payoff Anna Drake had handed over to the occupants of the Trans-Am. It was not ironclad, but it was encouraging.
Listed in the front of the book were several phone numbers and notations, including an “emergency” number credited to someone in Washington named Rutledge. There were also several names and numbers under the heading Deliveries.
Slayton sat down, crossleggcd, by the phone, and ran down the first list. He got two no-answers, three irate sleepers wondering which relative had just died, an all-night bakery, and a porno palace across the state line that was just shutting down for the night.
He reconsidered the notations that he had assumed to be code phrases. A strange name was scribbled in the margin: Elos Califas.
He made the connection, mentally, and dialed the first number again. This time the ring was answered instantly, and Slayton found himself speaking cross-country.
“Yeah?”
“This is Rutledge in Washington,” Slayton said quickly.
“So what? You guys are okay for this month.”
“We got us a little emergency.”
“I’m listening.” The voice was straight Anglo; it could be anyone speaking.
“We have to change the shipping schedule, maybe even the routes. Couple of people have died; things are hotting up. The guy covering for us can’t pull his usual strings.”
“What guy is that?” The voice was immediately wary.
“You know who I mean; look, I don’t have any time to screw around!”
It was too late. Slayton was speaking to a dead line full of long-distance hiss.
He pinched his eyes together in the dark. “Shit, shit, shit.” He slammed the receiver into the rack only to pick it right back up again, this time punching in the complicated dialing routine that would attach him to the priority line at the Treasury Department.
“Slayton here. I need addresses, locations, and information relating to the following phone numbers. This is top-top-security. And I need it yesterday.”
“How did you know to call Los Angeles?” Winship asked.
“Chicano slang—Elos is East Los Angeles; Califas is just as obvious if you know the key. Slap California area codes onto those phone numbers in the book, and they all make sense. I doubt the addresses will do us much good—they’ve been alerted by my phony call.”
“What if they haven’t? What if they just thought it was a crank call?”
“Extremely unlikely. I used the name Rutledge; I mentioned Washington. They probably called back to verify immediately. And our man in the townhouse, or whoever he works for, has probably clued them already that the investigation is alive and well. But I’m hoping the locations will provide some further lead.”
“It’s the only direct connection you have to Los Angeles, at any rate. That’s supposed to be the source of Starshine.”
“Yes, sir. I only wish I had known about the attache and his relationship to our own Senator Franklin Reed. I’d be willing to bet that if I’d identified myself as either him or Reed, I wouldn’t have gotten hung up on. Damn it.” Slayton was piqued at having blown a ripe lead. If he had waited to find out who owned the townhouse, he might not have tipped off the men in California.
On the other hand, if Reed or someone like him were involved, they’d be alerted already.
He dropped the ledger on Winship’s desk. “I suppose we can also consider this useless as of right now, too. Certainly the numbers are different now, if nothing else.” The discipline with which he had observed the operation run in Washington had to be at least as good on the other side of the country. The Starshine people were doing better than the CIA; Slayton had to give them that.
“Accomplish what you can in L.A.,” Winship said. “From the look of things, I’m going to have my hands full running interference for the Starshine investigation itself.”
“You can handle senators, Ham, even rabid ones. You’ve done it before. And think of what we gain.”
No one needed to be reminded; governmental corruption was a sore point with both men. Winship thought that their mutual dedication—though it issued from distinctly different consciousnesses—was probably the only thing they both had truly in common. It reinforced the basic contradictory tenet of their stormy but successful relationship: Ben Slayton was a renegade, but he was right.
8
Lucius Bonnard had emphatically not gone Hollywood.
Slayton, however, was not about to let a prime opportunity to rib his friend slip past undocumented, and out of habit he opted for sarcasm: “‘Saturday Night Fever’ really changed your life, didn’t it, Lucius?”
The Treasury man got a pained expression. His dress would have attracted undue attention in Washington; in Los Angeles he was just another pedestrian. “Squat on this, old friend,” he smiled back poisonously. “I see you’re still dressing like a cross between a gay lumberjack and a devotee of the Jordache look. Come to think of it, that’s two different descriptions of the same thing, isn’t it? Heh.”
“Are you really wearing a gold disco chain around your neck?” Slayton could not contain his mirth. “Come on, you can tell me.” Befo
re Lucius had changed his “look” he had been one of the black-shoes, white-socks crowd that Slayton had written up in his brief but pungently worded account of the attire of the Department’s field men.
“Listen, I’ll make a deal with you,” he said.
“The mark of a true Hollywood type.”
“Oh, shut up—look, leave my clothes out of this and I won’t blow how you had hair implants on your chest.”
“Why, Lucius, you seem piqued.” Slayton was still grinning. He had not seen Lucius Bonnard for almost three years.
“Let’s put it this way,” Lucius said, as they collected Slayton’s single suitcase at L.A. International’s infamous baggage claim. “You managed, in one brief, brilliant move inspired by total stupidity, to bitch up a lead that my boys here have been salivating over for months. The addresses of the Starshine people. Jesus hopped-up friggin’ Christ, Ben, why couldn’t you have waited?” He lifted Slayton’s suitcase and carried it along for him as they made their attempt to walk through Religion Row—the outward-bound breezeway of the airport traditionally jammed with representatives of every crazy sect, cult, following, charity, and pseudoreligion known to the diverse madness of the West Coast. Followers scampered forward, proffering literature, lectures, scams, nuttiness, and flowers, all for some silly price or other.
Slayton, like Lucius, had long since learned the only real way to fade by such passive aggression was to think native—they never wasted their time with residents. That meant avoiding eye contact. This had an even sillier side effect—Angelenos traditionally breezed past the most provocative scenes without apparent notice or comment. The only thing to which they paid actual attention on the street would be, say, to a spontaneous gunfight.
He had also learned his lesson about the generosity of the so-called sciences and religions that had the gall to waste everyone’s patience by proselytizing at the airport. He had once accepted a thick book, a treatise on the fundamental basis of some faith, thrust below his nose by some equally anonymous Middle Eastern exchange student. As he attempted to walk away with it without further comment or any sort of gratuity, he was asked for the book back. Slayton graciously gave him a copy of the free magazine he had found inside the folding pocket of the seat before him in first class, deemed it an exchange especially adherent to the principals of the faith—the magazine was more entertaining than the book, and he, therefore, was demonstrating the principal of self-sacrifice—and continued walking away only far enough to dump the book into a trash bin whose plastic bag was mostly full of flat, undrunk Coca-Cola from a snack bar that was at least as big a scam as the religion. He turned and smiled back at his benefactor, flashed a peace sign, and was off.
Pity he could not connect Starshine up with crackpot religions. He ached to put such obvious bunko schemes into proper social perspective. That is, bust the hell out of a few of them, dig out some of the dirt he knew they had to be hiding.
Dealing with them was just a part of Slayton’s acclimation routine. He did it, in varying degrees, for every city and country he visited. He had to get himself in tune quickly with the rhythms of the diverse locations he often found himself in on behalf of his calling. It was an interior trick of his, a when-in-Rome procedure that allowed him to appear native and comfortable in almost any environment.
When in L.A., think first of wacko religions. Proceed to the slummy down-and-outness of Hollywood; once glittery, now seedy, its basic promise unchanged. Think rich ethnic mixes and the elegant sham of Beverly Hills; the strange vindication of the open-market system that was the movie industry, and the sausage factory that was television. Loud, tacky, vulgar, cheap, and exhilarating—endlessly frustrating and timelessly hypnotic. Los Angeles was the vanguard of contemporary American culture. Whatever was done, was done first in the City of the Angels.
And if Americans were to embrace any new vices, Slay-ton thought, they would most likely be vices that at least had their roots here. Starshine fit into the equation perfectly.
“You still have the reports on those addresses,” he said. It was not actually a question.
“Oh yeah,” Lucius shrugged. “All in the computer, and it won’t do you a goddam bit of good—it doesn’t even make interesting light reading.”
“Give me the short version,” Slayton said. “The car’s in the lot?”
“Yeah, it’s what you asked for—L.A. chic.”
“Oh, no,” he said, grimacing. “Spare me.”
Lucius led the way across the sea of parked automobiles. “We cross-matched the information with suspects as soon as we got it. It was going through the computers even as we were raiding the houses. Your phone call was apparently enough. We didn’t find anything except some crummy duplexes full of illegal aliens.”
“You probably would have anyway. As soon as the theft of the Washington ledger was discovered, they would have been alerted. And it doesn’t make sense to have direct phone connections to the actual target buildings, the places where the stuff is manufactured. Just another link in a chain. I’ve seen the security paranoia of the Washington end of the chain. If L.A., where it originates, is even remotely like it, then all tracks will be covered so well you won’t find them. I want to see everything on those addresses and check them out myself.”
“It’s your expense account. But don’t keep us in the dark, okay?”
“Sure, fine.”
“One more thing,” Lucius said.
Slayton shot him a cold glance, and he tossed his hands in mock surrender.
“How about we grab some Mexican food at Villa Taxco tonight?”
He rolled his eyes. “Positively. My treat.”
“That’s great,” Lucius said, “because here’s your car.”
Slayton was staring at a silver Trans-Am with an ugly black eagle on the hood. Lucius laughed long and loud at his buddy.
“Son of a bitch,” he murmured.
The addresses were all down in the East L.A. barrio, a world of poverty with the notorious Watts as its eastern border. The ruptured paving and substandard housing looked to Slayton like a war zone. The residents, mostly poor Hispanics and blacks, reminded Slayton of the penniless indigents he had seen on the run from the Viet Cong.
The contrast with the sweetly sickening waste of a week spent partying with Washington’s so-called gentry was bitter. It boiled up in the back of Slayton’s throat.
He could not have been more out of place among a tribe of Eskimos. Being white was the first strike. His clothing and the Trans-Am would have been strikes two and three if he had not taken some time to ditch them in favor of more practical local camouflage.
Dressed in worn jeans, a T-shirt, and combat boots, he piloted an old Ford van down one of many, many side streets. The dealer from which he had purchased the vehicle had done such a hard sell that Slayton was positive the thing had two, maybe three weeks of life left, at the most. It was all he needed for the job.
Slayton had not permitted his Spanish to rust away while in Washington, and this proved his greatest asset. It certainly was a plus in dealing with the tenants of the duplexes Lucius had passed over so briefly.
By spinning a yarn about the U.S. Census, and dropping enough hints relating to immigration laws to make the twelve-member family crammed into the four-room apartment jumpy and gun-shy, Slayton set them up. His punchline was a change-of-heart understanding that their cover would not be blown, which the elderly mother—the spokesperson for the clan in this case—seemed to accept graciously enough. Their conversation through the screen door* had absolutely nothing to do with the Starshine ring.
Slayton, however, had discovered quickly that the people were new tenants, and had been ushered in by the former residents, one or two of whom had become neighborhood characters during their stay in the apartment. He applied this knowledge during his visits to the follow-up addresses.
One seemed to be a borrachal, a drunk, while the others were described as batos suaves, people generally accepted in the neighborhoo
d. The ones who drank too much apparently made grand fun of sadistically bullying a man who was known in the neighborhood as “Kiko.” When Slayton visited a randomly chosen house down the block from the duplexes and asked where Kiko could be found, he was immediately suspected of being the police. But these tenants showed a sort of resigned acceptance, not fear. Kiko was a tarugo, and it was generally agreed that he was always getting into trouble with the law not through malice, but because he was un calabaza—a dumbbell.
Slayton had left the nondescript van parked some ten blocks away when he decided to quit for the night. The people to whom he spoke wanted to help, yes, but more urgently, they wanted him off their doorstep. They seemed afraid, and not of Slayton. He thought that it might be to his advantage to seek out Kiko.
As it turned out, Kiko found him.
There was little action in the barrio that night. Most of the after-dusk crowd hung out around the borders of shabby buildings advertising LICORES in peeling paint—get-togethers where everyone knew everyone else. There was little outward evidence of the Chicano gangs or the cholos in the low-riding Chevies and Pontiacs. They had split their territorio to cruise Hollywood; here their reign was secure.
Slayton wondered if the latest government welfare and social service cuts might be the impetus they needed to migrate, violence and all, to wealthier turf.
He moved along the streets with wariness and caution. And when he pulled open the driver’s door to his van, he was instantly aware that it was occupied. He tensed automatically, but he did not see an assailant. The man inside the van was not even conscious.
Slayton relaxed. The back door of the van was incapable of being locked. He had taken a little bit of cash and a small stash of dope with him—things that might have proven to have informational or bribery value. There was nothing else inside worth locking up.
The man was dressed in tatters and cast-offs, and was snoring loudly. Despite his outward wear and tear, he did not appear to be very old. He snorted and scratched himself. The odor pulsing off his clothing was breath-stoppingly fetid and stale. It almost made Slayton’s eyes water. He hesitated, not wanting to make enough noise opening the squeaking, grinding rear door to awaken the man.