"Nobody brought any paintings in yesterday or today," Ruth said.
"Oh," Raleigh said, feeling that maybe he had it wrong after all. "Didn't someone come and ask to see Nigel privately?"
"Not a gentleman," Ruth said. "Only a young lady yesterday. I don't know if she was from the estate or not."
"I see," Raleigh said, and now he was sure it was hopeless. Nigel would be furious when he found out that he was pumping this employee for information. He made a last feeble attempt and said apologetically, "I guess it wasn't my client, unless the young lady happened to bring some paintings here with her."
Ruth laughed and said, "Dear me, no. The poor little thing was lucky she could carry her purse let alone any paintings. She was so frail."
Raleigh looked away quickly and felt that sensation again, the blood rushing to his head and ice cubes in the gut. He said, "Was she a very young woman with dark hair?"
"Yes, she was so adorable in her little candy-striped dress," Ruth said. "I guess she's also working with you on this estate sale?"
After a long pause Raleigh said, "Yes, she's the granddaughter of my aunt. Everybody's trying to get in on the money from the family art collection."
"I know what you mean," Ruth said.
"I'll give Nigel a call after I get home," Raleigh said. "Thanks."
Raleigh genuinely feared he might go the way of Marty Brueger as he drove up into the Hollywood Hills. He was almost hyperventilating as he neared home and had to practice normal breathing and tell himself to stay calm. At last he understood all of it. The theft of the van was not a random act at all! It was part of the carefully planned scheme of Nigel Wickland. Valerie, or whatever her name was, and her companion thief were part of Nigel's conspiracy from the beginning. Nigel had induced Raleigh to allow the theft and reproduction of the million-dollar paintings. But for all Raleigh knew, they might be worth $2 million. Or $3 million! And then Nigel had hired a pair of young criminals to help him remove Raleigh from the conspiracy.
Nigel would eventually tell Raleigh that it's a terrible tragedy but the thieves apparently did not intend to ever call him again. It was such a simple but brilliant scheme, and he, Raleigh Dibble, was the dupe. The fall guy. The patsy. The fool. The thing that made it so diabolical was the trick with the van keys. Nigel had banked on Raleigh not looking for the keys, which Nigel said he left in the van. Nigel knew that Raleigh would not search for the keys, not inside a gate-guarded estate. And it had worked beautifully by allowing Nigel to shift the fault for the van theft to Raleigh.
What would Nigel have done if Raleigh had found the keys and brought them into the house? Well, that, too, was explainable. In that eventuality, Nigel's young crime partners probably had a spare key, and Nigel would have covered their escape by claiming that they must've hot-wired the van. But that wouldn't have been quite as neat. That might have thrown up a red flag for Raleigh. No, it had all worked perfectly, just the way Nigel had planned it.
Raleigh wondered where Nigel had found frail little Valerie. So vulnerable, so delicate, so young, so ruthless! Raleigh remembered how she'd kissed his cheek before she'd departed and asked if he'd like to meet at a bistro, and how that gesture had touched his heart. When Raleigh pulled into the Bruegers' five-car garage, tears were streaming down his cheeks.
Raleigh let himself into the foyer, turned off the burglar alarm, and recalled that Leona Brueger had informed him that because of the burglaries in the Hollywood Hills, she now kept a handgun in her bedroom. He was going to find that gun. He was going to visit Nigel Wickland tomorrow, and the backstabbing sissy was going to bring those paintings back. Those paintings were returning home where they belonged, one way or the other.
Raleigh searched the master bedroom for more than an hour before he found the gun in a hatbox in the closet. It was a nickel-plated, snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver, and it was loaded.
Nigel returned to the Wickland Gallery at closing time, and Ruth said, "Oh, Nigel, you're back. I thought you had left for the day. There was a Mr. Dibble here insisting to see you. When I tried to find out what it was all about, he was vague and said something about an estate sale you're working on."
Nigel scratched his chin, trying to stay composed, and said, "Dibble? Would it be Raleigh Dibble?"
"Yes, that's him," Ruth said.
"He's a fool," Nigel said. "He completely overestimates the value of everything. Did he say if he was coming back?"
"No," Ruth said, "but he seemed eager to know if anyone had come here in the last few days with some paintings for you. Of course I told him no."
So that was it! Raleigh suspected that the thief had brought the paintings and been paid, and that he was being double-crossed! Nigel said casually to Ruth, "Yes, the estate sale. I didn't mention it to you because it's all part of his inflated personal appraisal of art that he knows nothing about. He's not worth a moment of my time."
"He claimed he was a personal friend," Ruth said. "He knew your cell number."
This was getting uncomfortable and Nigel wanted to end it. "He asked for my mobile number when we spoke, and in a weak moment I gave it to him. A personal friend? Never."
With that, Nigel entered his office and debated whether or not to phone and chastise Raleigh for coming and grilling Ruth because of his own uncontrollable paranoia. But he decided to let it be. Raleigh would eventually have to accept that the thieves must have disposed of the paintings themselves. What else could he think?
Because her employer had ended the discussion abruptly, Ruth hadn't bothered to mention all of her conversation with Raleigh Dibble. She thought about telling him of Raleigh Dibble's peculiar interest when she'd casually mentioned the only visitor who had insisted on seeing Nigel yesterday --the girl in the candy-striped dress. She decided to forget about it. After all, Nigel said the man and his estate sale was of no interest to him.
It was not a night of a Hollywood moon, but if it had been, the pizza might have gone to 6-X-46. During the first hour of their watch, Della Ravelle and Britney Small got a call to a popular bar and grill on north Vermont Avenue, where a drunk was causing a disturbance.
It was one of the older chop houses with the red imitation leather and walnut paneling that previous generations loved so much. A sixty-something hostess with a retro bouffant hairdo, wearing an inappropriate sheath dress with spaghetti straps, was standing at a tall table in the foyer taking reservations.
She put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone when the cops entered, and said, "In the bar."
Britney started in until Della grabbed her arm and said, "Wait a minute. Let's first find out what we're walking into."
When the hostess finished taking the dinner reservation, Della said, "What's the disturbance all about?"
The hostess said, "There's a crazy man in there, buying two drinks at a time and pouring every other one into a vase."
"That's it?" Della said. "That's the disturbance?"
"He's frightening customers," the hostess said. "Several people left the bar because of him. And he's disturbing the bartender."
"Is he ranting and raving and talking gibberish or something like that?" Della asked.
"No," the hostess said. "But he seems to be talking to himself." "Quietly?" Della asked. "There's no law against that."
"Maybe not, but it's scary," the hostess said.
"Okay," Della said. "Let's have a look, partner." When they were walking to the bar, Della whispered to Britney, "Remember, we don't hassle loony tunes if they're peaceful. This is fucking Hollywood."
Their eyes had to adjust when they got inside the barroom. It was one of those very dark, formerly elegant barrooms, where after a martini or two, the aging patrons could appear to each other the way they used to be and not the. Way they currently were. They saw that the hostess was right. He'd scared everyone away. He was seated on a stool at the far end of an old mahogany bar complete with a dented but shiny brass rail several inches from the floor.
The bartender looke
d at the cops and moved his eyes toward the lone customer, who had two bucket glasses in front of him. He was not old, but he was older than Della. She figured him for about fifty. He was losing his hair but it was mostly dark with only sprinkles of gray. He was getting a soft roll around his middle that his yellow golf shirt didn't hide, but Della thought he wasn't a bad-looking guy. In fact, he reminded her in some ways of her second husband, even to the arching heavy eyebrows. He looked to be talking softly to himself and he appeared boozy enough that he should not drive home.
Della said sotto to Britney. "You're contact, I'm cover. Go for it." Britney walked up behind the man and said, "Evening, sir."
He didn't turn around, but said, "Evening."
"What're you doing, sir?" Britney asked.
"Having a drink," he said.
It was so dark in the bar that she couldn't clearly see the object on his lap, so she said, "Why don't you put that vase up on the bar. It makes police officers nervous when people have strange items in their hands. You can understand that, can't you?"
He picked it up carefully with both hands and put it on the bar, saying, "It isn't a vase. It's an urn."
"An urn?"
"Yes," he said, and for the first time turned on the stool and looked at Britney.
"Have you been pouring drinks into it?" she asked.
"Yes, a few. I don't think it's against the law, is it?"
Britney turned to look at Della and said, "Not that I know of, sir, but it's scaring the customers because it's so ... unusual. Would you please tell me why you're pouring drinks into the urn and talking to yourself?"
"I'm not talking to myself," he said. "I'm talking to my dad. He's in there."
"I see," Britney said. "That urn contains your dad's ashes?"
"Yes," he said. "Digby G. Randolph was a great father and a wonderful man. This was just about his favorite restaurant. He asked me to come here from time to time and have a drink for him."
"But you had the idea to give a drink to him, is that what you're saying?"
"Exactly. I'm buying a few drinks for my dad."
"And when you're talking, you're not talking to yourself?" "I'm talking to my dad. I know he can hear me."
Britney turned toward Della and then back to the son of Digby G. Randolph and said, "Are you driving tonight?"
"No," he said, "I came by taxi. I live in a condo at Sunset and Genesee."
"Okay, Mr. Randolph," Britney said. "I think you've had enough to drink tonight. The bartender thinks so, too. I'm going to ask the hostess to call you a cab, and then you and your dad can finish that last drink and go home, okay? And the next time you come here, I'd like you and your dad to take the dark corner table. Just put him on the chair beside you and whisper softly, and I don't think anyone will bother you. Do not belly-up to the bar with your dad anymore, okay?"
"I'll do what you say, Officer," the son of Digby G. Randolph said, "but Dad so liked to stand at the bar with his foot on the rail."
"I understand that, sir," Britney said. "But he had feet then. I'd like you to do it my way from now on."
"I will accede to your request, Officer," said the son of Digby G. Randolph, opening the lid of the urn and giving the last of the Jack Daniel's to his dad.
There was a reunion that night in unit 6-X-66. Hollywood Nate got Snuffy Salcedo back, complete with a bandage across his nose and a plastic noseguard. It made him look to Nate the movie buff like Lee Marvin with his false nose in Cat Ballou.
"Glad to be back?" Nate asked.
Snuffy said, "Yeah, my mother gets to kicking my ass after I been laying around the house too long, wounded warrior or not. She thinks idleness invites the devil."
Hollywood Nate was being extra solicitous and was doing the driving. "Let's not do anything heroic tonight," Snuffy said. "I'd like to just sit back and be the scribe. I don't wanna bump the beak before it's healed."
"Is it gonna look better when the bandage comes off?" Nate asked.
"It can't look worse than it's looked all my life," Snuffy said.
***
"Dude, I didn't think you were ever coming back," Flotsam said to Jetsam, on duty together in unit 6-X-32 for the first time since the battle at Goth House.
"Bro, I learned a few things about neck injuries," Jetsam said. "I learned you don't wanna have one. They hurt."
Flotsam had insisted on driving so that Jetsam didn't have to do too much craning at intersections. In fact, he was so solicitous that Jetsam finally said, "Bro, I ain't an invalid."
"I missed my li'l pard," Flotsam said. "Of course, Hollywood Nate's a cool dude, but he don't know shit about the beach and briny. After a while I couldn't think of what to talk about."
The surfer cops had taken a crime report just after dark from a Gallup, New Mexico, tourist who had had her purse picked while she was taking photos of the marble-and-brass stars on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. They drove to the station to get a DR number on the report as required, and to have it signed by a supervisor, but they didn't find Sergeant Murillo in the sergeant's room. The troops, especially the surfer cops, always tried to avoid the nitpicking watch commander.
Jetsam said to Flotsam, "I hate taking our report to the kinda guy that would wear a ring on his index finger and make us call him 'His Excellency' if he had his way."
Flotsam said, "If he's in there, let's hold the report till later and get Murillo to sign it."
But at that moment Lieutenant O'Reilly wasn't in his office and Sergeant Murillo was, so Flotsam and Jetsam thought it was safe to enter.
"What's the air like?" Sergeant Murillo asked, meaning the airwaves.
"Quiet," Jetsam said. "A few calls going out to south-end units, and a prowler call in the Hollywood Hills that turned out to be a raccoon."
Much to the surfer cops' consternation, the watch commander swept into the room just then, but not with his usual look of intensity and purpose. He was actually smiling. In fact, he was unable to contain his excitement.
He said to Sergeant Murillo, "The captain's finished with the citizens meeting at the Community Relations Office and he wants me to join him for code seven at El Cholo."
"I'm surprised he still has an appetite," Sergeant Murillo said, trying to concentrate on the report that the surfer cops had handed to him.
"Yeah," Flotsam agreed. "There ain't been a rational citizen walk into the Hollywood Crows Office since Hitler was still hanging wallpaper."
Ignoring both surfer cops, Lieutenant O'Reilly said to Sergeant Murillo, "The captain said he loves the green corn tamales at El Cholo. Tell me, are green tamales different from regular tamales?"
Sergeant Murillo looked up from the report and said, deadpan, "How would I know, Lieutenant?"
The young watch commander, who was nothing if not politically correct, was disconcerted by the sergeant's unexpected reply and said, "I just ... well, I assumed ..."
"That I'm Mexican?" Sergeant Murillo said.
"Well, your name and you ... you look Hispanic, sort of, and I thought you would know Hispanic food."
"What's a Hispanic look like? And what in the world is Hispanic food?" Sergeant Murillo said, and now the surfer cops were grinning like hyenas, watching the lieutenant squirm and sputter.
"Damn, Murillo, you know what I mean," the watch commander said, genuinely angry that his sergeant was showing him up like this in front of two officers, especially these two.
Jetsam only made things worse when he said artlessly to the watch commander, "The sarge is just hacking on you, sir. He does that to us all the time. One time he pretended he was giving us serious roll call training and he goes, 'Listen up. Orders from the bureau commander. Officers are forbidden to wear any off-duty clothing that reveals body ink portraying one of our female senators doing fellatio on the president of the United States.' " Jetsam chuckled and said, "He keeps our morale up with funny stuff like that."
Lieutenant O'Reilly stared icily at Jetsam for a long moment and said, "Yes, I'm cer
tain you would find something like that amusing."
Sergeant Murillo winked at the surfer cops and said to the watch commander, "Okay, Lieutenant, I confess, I'm Mexican. Or at least my grandparents are. And I can promise you that El Cholo's green tamales will make the captain as happy as a drunken mariachi on Cinco de Mayo. You can order yourself a margarita manque, and by the end of the meal you two will be real compadres."
Lieutenant O'Reilly noticed that the surfer cops were smiling fondly at their smart-ass sergeant, and it made the lieutenant angrier. He redirected his pique toward Flotsam, saying, "Don't any of the sergeants around this station ever tell you people that gelled-up surfer hairstyles are unfit for police officers?"
Flotsam looked down at the watch commander, whose nose almost touched the tall cop's badge number, and he stopped smiling.
Jetsam again tried a show of goodwill and said, "Actually, sir, only the barneys wear gel or hairspray on the beach. The real kahunas go au naturel, so to speak."
That made the lieutenant turn on Jetsam and say, "I also think the so-called sun streaks in your hair look like highlighting. It's vaguely effeminate for male police officers to highlight their hair. Didn't Sergeant Murillo ever mention that to you?"
Neither surfer cop was smiling now, and both were shooting hate beams at the watch commander, when Sergeant Murillo stood up and said to them, "Okay, we're through here. You can go back to work."
Flotsam and Jetsam were grim and silent when they strode across the parking lot to their shop. After they were in the car, Flotsam said, "Dude, I think we should drop by Yerevan Tow Service. I got an idea."
Jetsam, who was angrily alliterative, said, "I hope it's a real brain bleacher, bro, cuz I got, like, the image of that slithering snarky slime-sucker stuck in my cerebrum. Feel me?"
"I feel ya, dude," Flotsam said.
Yerevan Tow Service was known to many of the cops at Hollywood Station as a kind of outlaw one-man tow service that picked up scraps that LAPD's official tow garages left behind or couldn't handle. Sarkis, the owner, was a happy-go-lucky Armenian, always eager to impound any vehicles at the scene of traffic collisions or radio calls, which he picked up on his police scanner.
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