"Hey, Cleary, you tryin' to put the moves on my girl?" The voice of D'Rosa interrupted her explanation. He was standing in the door, smiling, an apron over his swimming suit. In his hand he held a wooden spoon stained with a dark Italian goo.
"Who wouldn't?" Cleary shouted back.
D'Rosa laughed. "Lunch will be ready in a minute. You gotta stick around. Me and Avon's making my mother's secret manicotti sauce. You'll love it." He vanished back into the house.
Cleary slipped the envelope back in his pocket. "I gotta admit, Rita. He's likable. Not your usual mobster."
She was quickly wiping away the tears. "He's a nice guy, Jack. He really is."
"I hope you're right, Rita—for your sake."
"Here's what you need." Cleary dumped the contents of the bag on the desk in his office. They were silver and very small, a half-inch long and no more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, each with two electrical leads.
"Now I know why they call the little suckers bugs," Betts said, picking up one of them. "Jeez, they're small."
"They're supposed to be, Johnny."
"Where'd you get 'em?" Betts was turning the small electronic implant over in his hand.
"A friend."
Johnny eyed the bug, then looked up at Cleary. "I don't know diddly about this kinda stuff."
"I thought you were into electronics, amplified guitars, and speakers—"
"Yeah, but this ain't the same thing by a long shot. I got no idea what to—"
Cleary's laughter interrupted him. "Don't worry. My friend's gonna plant 'em. I just want you to give him some back up."
"I'm the muscle, huh?"
"Very loosely speaking." Cleary was gathering the bugs back into the bag. "I want one in every room of D'Rosa's beach house. First, though, I want you to pay a visit to Rita Marlo's house. She'll have everyone cleared out. I want all the rooms there bugged—even their cars."
"Christ, boss, that's gonna be tough."
Cleary looked at his watch and handed Johnny a small slip of paper. "You meet my friend in twenty minutes at this address. Once you have the things in place, I want you to stay on D'Rosa. He's all yours for right now. I got something else to take care of."
"What are you gonna do?"
"None of your business. Send Dottie in as you leave."
"But I gotta date tonight!"
"Cancel it."
Johnny Betts left Cleary's office cursing under his breath. Cleary settled down to relax. His body still ached. On top of that, he was developing the first signs of a headache.
Dottie Dworski bubbled into the office. That was the word that Cleary used to describe her. She bubbled. All the time. She wore tight, bright green pedal pushers and a striped sweater that accentuated her ample figure. Her mouth moved constantly. Even when she was talking, she was working on bubble gum. Her dark hair, too, reminded Cleary of' bubbles, piled high atop her head in what looked like... bubbles—even if they did call it a beehive. A pencil was jammed down in the pile of curly hair.
"What did you find out, Bubbles?"
"Don't call me that!"
"Sorry, Dottie. What'd you find out, Dottie?"
She pranced in front of his desk as she delivered the briefing. "Well, boss, I talked to my contacts at the Screen Actors Guild. Eva Miles joined SAG a little over a year ago. Her career has been—you might say, spotty. Then it went from spotty to—you might say, worse."
Cleary sighed. "Spare me the analysis, Dottie. Just give me the facts."
"Okay... okay. She worked as an extra in a couple of movies. She had one speaking part in a real piece of fluff called Coed Summer. Then—get this—she went into blue movies."
Cleary sat up in his chair. "Dirty movies?"
"You got it, boss. I got that from—"
"Never mind where you got it. How long's she been in that racket?"
"Long enough to earn a reputation."
"Who did she work for?"
Dottie popped the gum. "Who knows? Everyone uses aliases in the porn biz. They shoot 'em quick and move out in a hurry. The word is, though, that whoever was producing Eva's films had some real juice behind them. They really got the flicks marketed, and managed to get pretty good distribution in some of the erotic moviehouses. And they stayed several steps ahead of the vice guys."
"That's not hard to do. Vice guys don't tend to be too smart. Any leads on an address?"
Dottie plopped down in the chair in front of Cleary. "Yeah, get this. According to the business scuttlebutt, she was staying out at Lou Kaplan's place in Bel-Air."
"Lou Kaplan? The producer?"
"The one and the same, but he's not really a producer. He's the head of Diamond Studios."
"What's the difference, Dworski?"
Dottie was shocked by his ignorance. "Jeez, Jack, there's a big difference."
"So, Eva Miles gets around." Cleary remembered the animated conversation he had seen taking place between Tom McNeil and Kaplan the night before. Why hadn't McNeil mentioned anything about Kaplan that morning?
"But she left Kaplan... several weeks ago actually. Rumor has it that she was staying in a hotel on Sunset. I called and pretended I was working for her agent. I figured she must have one—or must pretend that she does."
Cleary smiled. "You'd know about that, I guess."
"Jack!"
"Sorry, go on."
"Anyway, she left that place. Didn't leave no forwarding address."
"So, the trail's gone dry, huh?"
Dottie beamed. "Not exactly, boss. I got this friend down at Motor Vehicles. I called her. I had her trace her car from the info you gave me."
"And?"
"It's been getting tickets for improper parking, all written in the past few days and all on Cahuenga Boulevard near Franklin. It's not been moved in several days. If it isn't moved by tomorrow, they got it scheduled for a towing."
"What's the address?"
"On the tickets? I didn't get that. I didn't know they had addresses on them."
"I'm glad there's something you didn't know. I was starting to feel expendable. Call your friend back and find out."
"Sure, boss." She looked crestfallen.
Cleary shook his head at her reaction. "You did good, kid. With your talents, Dworski, why would you ever wanna be an actress? You have a future in this business."
"Being an actress pays better. There's one more thing, jack."
"What's that?"
"According to the desk clerk at that hotel on Sunset, somebody else has been looking for Eva Miles."
Johnny Betts gawked at the posh living room of Rita Marlo's house. "Get a load of this place. One day I'm gonna have a place like this. I could really dig this."
The friend of Cleary's—the expert on electronic surveillance—was busy attaching one of the small listening devices to the interior of a lamp. He was a short man, very fat, who puffed a lot and sweated buckets. He smelled, too.
"Come on over here. Give me a hand."
"I don't know nothing about those things." Johnny ambled over to the wall of glass that looked out toward the street. "This place has real class."
"Christ, kid. Get away from the window."
Johnny laughed. "Man, we're so far away from the road, ain't nobody gonna see us."
The man hadn't given Johnny his name. It wasn't an oversight. After Johnny had introduced himself, he had asked for the guy's name. "You don't need to know that," the man had said.
"If you don't hold this friggin' lamp for me, we'll never get out for this place. Come on, pal. It's the last one."
Johnny turned from the window. Just as he did, D'Rosa's Lincoln pulled into the driveway. Johnny didn't see it as he jitterbugged to the table where Cleary's friend was struggling with the giant lamp and the small bug.
"Hold it up. I'll attach this thing inside."
"Man, you—" Johnny had started to say stink. He thought better of it. In spite of the guy's piggish appearance, he didn't look like the type to take an insult li
ghtly. "You sweat a lot."
"It's this heat. I did some work down in Cuba last year. It was even worse down there." He slipped the bug inside the lamp just as they heard a car door slam outside. The two men exchanged stunned looks.
"Damn," the man said. "Cleary told me the place was gonna be clear."
Johnny released the lamp and stayed low as he rushed to the window. "It's D'Rosa. We gotta make tracks."
"Too late," the audio expert said. "Let's hide in there."
He was pointing to a coat closet in the entry hall.
Johnny helped him gather up his tools, wondering all the while how long he was going to be cooped up in a small closet with the guy's B.O. They made it inside just as the front door opened.
"Hang with me kid. I'm gonna get us outta here," the man whispered.
Johnny was trying to hold his breath. He knew it was going to be bad, but he hadn't known it was going to become so bad so quickly. He almost gagged.
"Whadaya gonna do?" Johnny whispered.
"Shhhhhh!"
They heard footsteps just outside the door. Johnny felt the man tense. As soon as the footsteps were beyond the door, Cleary's friend swung it open. Nicky The Rose heard the latch click and started to turn, but he didn't even make it halfway. With a quickness that stunned even Johnny, the audio man had a hand on the gangster's neck. It wasn't much more than a pinch. D'Rosa slumped to the floor.
"Haul ass, Betts. He won't be out too long."
"What did you do to the creep?"
The guy was shoving Johnny out of the front door. "Just scram. Don't wait for me."
Johnny ran, staying a little ahead of the huffing and puffing sweatball. "What did you do to the guy?" Johnny asked again as they dashed down the circular driveway.
"It's... a... trade... a trade... secret. " The man's words were spoken between breaths.
Somehow, the man reached Betts's car just a few seconds after Johnny. He fell inside. "Step on it!"
The dark Mercury laid rubber as it sped away down Carolwood Drive.
"Just how do you know Cleary?" Johnny asked.
"If you plan to stay in this business, kiddo, you best learn the first rule of the game."
Johnny turned an offended eye toward the fat man. Beads of perspiration were rolling off his porky face. The stench overcame even the air rushing in through the open windows.
"What does that mean?"
The man pulled a dingy handkerchief from his hip pocket and started to mop away the sweat. "Don't ask questions."
"Goddamn, pal, you were the one telling me about the first rule of the game."
"That's it, asshole. Don't ask questions."
The lavender-and-white '55 Fairlane was parked twenty yards south of the entrance to the Franklin Arms. Cleary made a circle around it. The parking tickets were piling up beneath the windshield wiper. Dottie's contact had been right. The car hadn't been moved in several days. The Franklin Arms, a garden apartment, was the only residential structure within walking distance of the vehicle titled to Eva Miles.
Cleary, trying to look disinterested to someone who might be watching, moved down the street to the entrance of the apartment house. He stepped inside just as two young thugs exited the manager's office. They wore the uniform of the day: black engineer boots, dark leather jackets, and jeans. The heels of the boots clicked loudly on the tile floor as the young men swaggered by Cleary. Camels hung from their lips, and their hair was heavily oiled and swept back from their faces into something the kids called a Duck's Ass. They looked like imitations of Johnny Betts, Cleary thought.
They gave Cleary the once-over, and he returned the gesture, bracing himself for any kind of trouble they might have in mind. But they eased on by him, the taller of the two glancing back over his shoulder at Cleary, who pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Once they were out the door, he turned his attention to the mailboxes, arranged in a double row on the wall of the hallway. His eyes ran down the name tags, many of them yellow with age. Eva Miles's name wasn't one of them. Only one had no name tag—the box for Apartment 104. He tried it and found it locked.
The hallway was empty and quiet. Cleary gave it a few more seconds, then pulled out a small pocket-knife and quickly jimmied the mailbox open. It contained two letters, both addressed to Eva Miles.
"My lucky day," he mumbled, jamming the letters back into the box.
The rear door of the hallway opened into the courtyard. A double layer of apartments circled it. At one time, the Franklin Arms had been elegant. Things had changed. The gardens needed attention. Many of the exotic plants were dead or dying. Weeds were choking out the flowers. The small pool in the center of the courtyard needed painting. The furniture on the pool deck was ragged, much of it rusted and broken.
Apartment 104 was on the ground level at the end away from the street. Cleary tried to peer into a window, but sheers blocked his view. He went to the screen door, its screen ripped and torn down near the ground by a small animal, Cleary suspected. He opened the screen and knocked on a green door. He heard nothing but the sound of birds in the garden. He rapped again, this time much harder. Still no response.
He heard voices from somewhere in the complex, but there was no one in the garden. The pocketknife appeared in his hand again. This time he slipped the blade between the door and the facing and jiggled it, his eyes darting about the gardens. The lock yielded, and the door swung open.
Hot air rushed out to greet him. Sweat popped out on his face. Private eyes had no special license to break and enter. That kind of trouble was the last thing he needed.
"Anybody home?" he shouted.
From the back of the apartment, he heard the hissing sound of a shower, which explained why no one answered the door. He eased into the apartment and was frozen by the scene that greeted him. The living room was full of cardboard boxes, every one of which had been ripped open and their contents scattered about the room. The furniture had been sliced open. Lamps were overturned, their felt bottoms ripped away. Somebody wanted to find something very badly. From the looks of the devastation, it hadn't been the owner of the property.
Cleary moved into what turned out to be the kitchen. Drawers rested at every conceivable angle on the floor. Cutlery and silverware clinked beneath his feet as he picked his way through the clutter.
"Jesus," he muttered.
Even the contents of the refrigerator had been ransacked and were stacked in a messy, seeping heap at its base. The odor of milk, quickly souring, threatened to turn Cleary's stomach. The shower continued to spray, louder now since Cleary was closer to it. He moved toward the noise.
"Hey, you in there?"
Along with the shower spray, he could hear water dripping. The door was partially closed. Cleary drew a hefty .45 automatic from its nesting place beneath his arm and used it to ease the door open.
A pink shower curtain, ripped from its rod, covered the bathtub. Water flowed out over the tub's edge, pink water unless Cleary's eyes were playing tricks on him. He scanned the soaked room. The water flowed onto the floor and was swirling down a small gap between the pipes beneath the sink. If the unit had been on the second floor, somebody would have been complaining already. On the wall of the shower, away from the spray, he saw the ominous splatters—dark red turning to stale brown... blood not quite fresh.
Cleary took a deep breath and put a cautious foot down into the pooling, pink water. It invaded his wing tips as he tiptoed toward the bathroom. Another deep breath, then he ripped the shower curtain away from the tub.
"Mother of God!" Cleary stumbled out of the bathroom, trying not to foul the scene with the contents of his stomach.
FIVE
Nothing quite matched the intensity of a homicide scene. Apartment 104 of the Franklin Arms was wall-to-wall with cops, most of them members of the Special Investigations Division. Several forensic technicians, also technically cops, went about the business of gathering evidence and dusting anything for prints that looked promising. Uniformed offi
cers floated around, just in case they were needed, acting as if it was just another boring crime. The atmosphere inside had become all the more stuffy just from the feverish activity and the body heat.
Cleary stood at a kitchen counter, staring down at the mementos of Eva Miles's life. He was trying to put it all together from the bits and pieces that were in front of him. Congressman McNeil hadn't given him any details about the young woman's mother, about where she had lived for most of her life. Cleary hadn't thought much about it at the time. He figured she had been a southern California girl. The trash of her life told him otherwise. He had just finished going through a scrapbook. It revealed a lot about the young woman. She had grown up in Modesto, California, a small city just south of Frisco, where she had been a cheerleader. There were pictures of a man and woman, the latter presumably her mother since she was in many of the shots. He wondered who the man was. There were no photos of Tom McNeil. It also contained a playbill from a high school production called The Music Man. Eva Miles had played the female lead. Had that been the beginning of a dream that led her to a violent death in a dingy apartment?
He closed the scrapbook and picked up a photo that showed two blond teenagers. One was Eva. The other might have been her sister. They looked that much alike. Both wore long dresses, white ankle socks with black patent leather shoes, and harlequin glasses—All-American girls, these two. Then, his eyes settled on the diary, one of those kind with a strap sporting a little lock.
Before he had a chance to do more than pick it up, the boisterous voice of Hank Villanova boomed behind him. Quickly he pocketed the diary and pretended to stare at the photos. The floor of the kitchen vibrated as the massive bulk of the homicide detective approached him for behind. The monstrous cop tossed an eight-by-ten glossy into the pile of evidence. Cleary picked it up and compared it to the smaller photo. Both displayed Eva Miles, but the two images were a world apart. In the big glossy, Eva was dressed in a rich evening gown designed to display her ample chest. She was climbing out of a car with a man Cleary recognized. It was Lou Kaplan.
Private Eye 2 - Blue Movie Page 4