I don't know how long I sat there like that. I certainly didn't keep my eyes on the stairwell door very long. My hands slipped off the wheel and into my lap, and I fell asleep. My dreams were murky, incomprehensible, like babyhead talk. I didn't wake up until the sun was out again, but it wasn't the sun that woke me up. It was the voice of the kangaroo, unmistakable, and jarringly close to my window.
I started to reach for the gun in my pocket when I realized he wasn't talking to me.
"Get in the car," he was saying. I poked my head up enough to see he was saying it to Barry Phoneblum and a couple of strong-arm louts from central casting. The kangaroo unlocked the passenger seat in the car in front of mine, and the babyhead clambered in. The louts got in the back, and one of them pulled out a gun and checked its load. I put my hand on Barry's gun in my pocket and laid low.
"I told you he wouldn't come here," said Barry.
The kangaroo went around and got in behind the wheel. His window was up, and when he said something, I didn't catch it.
"He's probably got better things to do," Barry went on.
I wished like hell I did.
The kangaroo started the car, and they drove away. It was obvious they were looking for me. I cursed myself for falling asleep in Joey's front yard, then offered up a quick improvisational prayer to the patron saint of dumb luck and trembling junkies. I was stupid for coming here at all. When I'd waltzed in on Phoneblum, I'd had the double insurance of his concern for his various "loved ones" and his peculiar sense of class and sportsmanship. With the kangaroo I had neither. I was lucky to still be alive.
When I was sure the coast was clear, I straightened up and took a quick inventory. Both legs were asleep from being wedged under the dashboard, there was a taste like puke in my mouth, and when I unclenched my hand from around the gun in my pocket, it started shaking again. Otherwise, I was intact. I drove down the hill and found a pay phone and called Surface, collect.
It was time to stop fucking around.
CHAPTER 6
THE OLD APE DIDN'T SOUND TOO ENTHUSIASTIC ON THE telephone. But when I arrived at the Office, he was waiting in front of the building, and he fell into step with me as I went up the stairs to the lobby.
"Thanks for showing, Walter," I said.
"Don't mention it," he grunted.
We went in. The Office always seems caught off guard at people walking in on their own steam. They don't have a reception area so much as they have a sort of ramp for tossing people out of the building from, and a long, clear lane for picking up speed before they get to the ramp. As for going in, they expect to have to drag you struggling through the back entrance, or unconscious on the floor of an Office van. You walk in the door, and every head turns. It was no different now.
We strolled up to what passed for a reception desk, though the guy sitting at it surely hadn't received anything more elaborate than a delivery pizza for the boys upstairs.
"I want to talk to Inquisitor Kornfeld," I said.
The guy surprised me by tapping the name into his console.
"Not available," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Inquisitor Morgenlander."
We came up against the same dead end.
I got a funny feeling. Those had been the two factions when I checked out, and Kornfeld seemed a shoo-in to run things in the Office his way for a while to come. It wasn't that they weren't in the building that bothered me—it was that the guy needed to consult his computer for the names.
"Inquisitor Teleprompter," I said.
His hands came off the keyboard. "I'll see if she's here," he said, and for the first time looked me and the ape over carefully. I smiled for him, and after a minute he picked up the intercom and hit a couple of buttons.
"Ms. Teleprompter," he said. "There's a guy here at the door says he wants to talk to you." He listened, then turned back to me. "What's your name?"
I told him, and he said it to hen.
"Stay right here," he said, a little wide-eyed. I guess he was surprised.
Surface and I were just stepping back from the desk to cool our heels when a cloud of Office hoods came stiff-shouldered and scowling, and bunched around us like an elastic waistband.
"Mr. Metcalf?'"said one of them.
"Metcalf and Surface," I said. "We're traveling together." The ape didn't look exactly grateful, but he didn't contradict me. The inquisitors took us each by the arms and steered us to the elevator. I didn't think we could all get on, and was about to suggest that Surface and I catch the next one, but they insisted, and we managed it. The fat ones sucked in their gut, and up we went.
When the elevator stopped, on the third floor, they walked us to one of the executive offices. I was impressed, but I knew better than to think it was a good sign Catherine had moved upstairs. The game upstairs was no cleaner than the game on the streets, last I knew. Our escorts punched in a code at the door and pushed us inside, and a couple of them followed while the rest camped in the hall.
It was one of the nice offices, with a big picture window facing the bay, and a lot of pretty photographs and memorabilia pinned to the walls. Catherine was behind a desk as big as they come, looking six years older and not a day worse. The same hair was pulled back to expose the same throat, and I got lost there for a minute before I noticed her eyes were hard.
"Clean them up," she said.
The boys worked us over. They located the gun on me and a little notebook on Surface, and they handed them to Catherine along with both our cards. She tossed the stuff in a drawer and told the muscle to wait outside.
"Sit down," she said. We did.
"You were supposed to get out of town, Metcalf," she said. "You know the way it works."
I went up against her eyes, but it was a dead end. She didn't budge. She didn't even blink, or if she did, she timed the blinks to go with mine. The effect was impressive.
"I'm two days old, Catherine," I said. "Give me a break."
"Don't call me Catherine," she said. "By letting you and your monkey into my office, I already gave you one break too many." Her voice was like a dentist's drill.
Our eyes met again. I was looking at the woman I'd climbed into bed with two nights ago, but I had to remind myself she hadn't spent six years in bed waiting for me to return from the bathroom. The deeper I buried those memories, the better.
"Okay," I said. "I get it. You're on the inside now. Congratulations, and I'm sorry. Where's Kornfeld?"
She didn't flinch at the question. There was still that much between us. "Long gone," she said. "He pushed it too far, and now he's spending time in the freezer." She made it sound like she'd done the job herself, and maybe she had. "If you've got business with Kornfeld, don't wait underwater."
"I've got a punch in the stomach that belongs to him," I said. "It'll keep. Who stepped into his shoes—or am I looking at her?"
"That might be accurate," she said.
I looked over at Surface. He shot me his sourest look.
"Then you're the one I want to talk to," I said. "Nothing to do with before."
"You have five minutes of my time."
"I'm sure you'll lose track of the time," I said. "It gets good at the end."
"I've got a short attention span," she said.
"It's pretty simple. There's some murders nobody ever bothered to solve right, and a guy in the freezer who doesn't belong there."
"If you say the name Stanhunt, you have three minutes."
"How about six minutes for two Stanhunts?"
"Get on with it."
"I'll talk fast and in a high-pitched voice, and you can record it and slow it down later. I solved the Stanhunt case. Both of them."
Surface groaned like he was on her side.
"It's a beauty," I said. "A carefully balanced mechanism that faltered and collapsed in on itself. And it begins and ends with Danny Phoneblum."
"You were obsessed with Phoneblum," said Catherine. "I looked into it. It was hopeless. You can't shoehorn him in
to the case."
"I was obsessed with the truth," I said. "Phoneblum is the case. Phoneblum and Celeste. The first time I met her, I could see she was trying to shake a past that wouldn't shake. It took a while, but I figured it out. She was Phoneblum's moll, for I don't know how long, but for a while. He loved her, and she might have loved him back. She gave him a son. Testafer was the doctor who handled the delivery."
"You're straining my credulity already," said Catherine.
"Give me a minute. The boy's name was Barry. Phoneblum was looking for an heir, and he wanted Celeste to stick around and bring the kid up. But he was abusive, a wifeslapper, and Celeste ran away to stay with the doctor. I confirmed as much with Testafer yesterday afternoon."
She made a face.
"She took the baby with her, and she didn't leave Phoneblum a forwarding address. Dr. Testafer was grooming a new boy named Maynard Stanhunt for his practice, and when Stanhunt and Celeste met, the sparks flew. Testafer advised Celeste against it in private, but he didn't bother to let his golden boy know he was romancing the estranged girlfriend of an angry gangster;"
"This is pretty tired stuff, Metcalf."
"Get ready," I said. "This is where the Office comes in. When Phoneblum locates his wayward madonna and child, he's pretty steamed. He wants her back but she says no, and he gets ready to put boyfriend Maynard out of the picture. Only the fat man suddenly gets an idea. He runs a business where he defrosts karma-defunct bodies, courtesy of your old pal Kornfeld, to populate a little slavebox bordello. And he needs doctors to tend to the frostbite. So he takes the kid back and blackmails Stanhunt and Testafer into running his medical facility."
I took a deep breath and went on. "Phoneblum has a junkie girl working for him running drugs. He buys her the house on Cranberry Street and converts her to a nanny for the kid."
"Pansy Greenleaf," said Surface.
"Right. So Phoneblum's got his heir, he's got his doctors, and he's got Celeste back under his screws. Which by this time in their relationship is probably all he requires."
Both Catherine and Surface were suddenly quiet and still. I had them going. I had myself going, for that matter, and now all I had to do was bring it off. I hoped I wouldn't disappoint all three of us.
"Only problem," I continued, "is Celeste has a habit of bailing out. She packs her bags and leaves the doctor, which makes Stanhunt and Phoneblum both pretty antsy. She's what balances the equation between them. They put their heads together and start hiring detectives to keep tabs on her, to try and keep their little triangle intact."
"You and me," said Surface.
"You and me," I said. "Only Celeste doesn't turn out to be the leg of the triangle that gets permanently missing. When Stanhunt turns up dead in the hotel room, the balance is thrown in the other direction. Phoneblum no longer has a reason to keep away from Celeste. She knows it, and gets nervous, and mistakes everybody who looks at her funny for one of Phoneblum's goons—me included. When she figures out I'm an independent operator, she tries to hire me for protection, and I nibble, but I don't bite. It's too bad too. The night she died, I ran into Testafer and the kangaroo creeping around town together on Phoneblum's orders, looking for Celeste."
"Celeste Stanhunt was killed by a stranger she picked up in a sex club," said Catherine. "He raped her and killed her. She'd been asking for it and it finally happened."
"Phoneblum found her that night and paid her back for leaving him," I said. "There was nothing in his way once he lost the doctor. He'd been holding his rage in reserve, because of the beauty of their arrangement. And with Kornfeld and the Office in his pocket, he didn't have to fear punishment. I can't prove it, but that's the way it went."
"This case is starting to come back to me," said Catherine. "The junkie girl had a brother. He came up from L.A. and killed Stanhunt in the hotel. He's still guilty. The rest of this material is irrelevant."
"Orton Angwine couldn't have less to do with the case if he'd never come to town," I said. "The stuff in that hotel room bugged me until yesterday morning. I didn't spend six years thinking about it, but I might have and still not come up with the answer."
I pointed at Surface. "It was something you said in your kitchen yesterday that did it. All the clues were in place, but I needed a little push to make the conceptual leap."
"Jesus Christ, Metcalf," said Surface. "You sure do like to talk."
I didn't tell him I was sweating out my addiction. I had too much pride. But if I'd stopped talking, I probably would have passed out.
"The two of you had my head spinning with theories," I said. I looked at Catherine. "You had Stanhunt having the affair in the hotel, and you"—I looked at Surface—"you had Celeste doing the same thing." I laughed. "You were both half right."
"Let's hear it," said Catherine. She wanted to rush me.
My five minutes must have been over by now, but I knew I had all the time in the world.
"I'll get there. But first I have to backtrack. There was a progression in the way Stanhunt and Phoneblum hired their private inquisitors, and it's important. I came first, and I dealt with Stanhunt, and all he wanted me to do was lean on Celeste and suggest she go home. But hiring gumshoes wasn't Stanhunt's strength, and when I didn't pan out, he turned the job over to Phoneblum. The fat man hired Walter here." I gestured at Surface. "When the report came back that Celeste was getting some on the side, Phoneblum offered Surface good money to find the new boyfriend and put him in the ground. But Walter said no. And he left the job without ever having met Stanhunt. Isn't that right?"
Surface grunted confirmation.
"Phoneblum was having trouble on another front. His son and protégé had gone babyhead, run away to Telegraph Avenue to sip whiskey and talk gibberish. Phoneblum still had hopes of reclaiming his flesh-and-blood heir—he was investing in a babyhead quarters for the backyard at Cranberry Street—but he was also looking around for another candidate. He found one in a young kangaroo named Joey Castle. Joey was an all-too-willing pupil."
"I'll buy that," said Surface. He must have been thinking of his ribs.
"So picture this," I said. "After Surface and me, Phoneblum is sour on the idea of outside help. He's got a new kangaroo gunman with an itchy trigger finger. Phoneblum gives him the assignment of tailing Celeste, the same way he hired Walter—without the kangaroo ever meeting Maynard Stanhunt. And the orders were the same: Take the new boyfriend out of the picture."
I paused for effect, and they both shot arrows at me with their eyes.
"Maynard Stanhunt was a pretty heavy Forgettol addict—at least by the standards of six years ago. The first time I tried to call him at home, he didn't know who I was. I'd warned Angwine of the danger of tangling with people with huge gaps in their day-to-day memory, but I hadn't really thought through the implications myself. Maynard and Celeste were both having affairs in the Bayview Motel, in the same room, in fact. With each other."
I turned to Surface. "Walter, you saw Stanhunt, only you didn't know it. He was the guy you spotted at the motel. Sure, Celeste had left him, but there was slippage in her resolve, as there so often is. She agreed to meet him for quiet afternoons in the motel—but his morning self, the one that hired the detectives, didn't know about the arrangement."
Surface just gaped.
"Yesterday you told me it was illegal now in L.A. to know what you did for a living, and that was when it clicked for me. Stanhunt was an early prototype of that. The part of him that wasn't getting any action with Celeste was murderously jealous of whoever she was seeing in the Bayview Motel, and he told Phoneblum to have his boys blow the guy away. The kangaroo didn't know what Stanhunt looked like any more than you did, Walter. He just did as he was told and killed the boyfriend. Stanhunt hired his own hit."
I stopped talking and gave them some time to sort it out. Catherine's face went through a brief series of expressions, most of them skeptical, but in the end she was too smart to pretend it didn't have the satisfying weight of something i
nevitable and true. I watched her get to that point, and then I watched her remind herself that she had my card in her drawer, and that nothing necessarily had to get out of this room if she didn't want it to. She hardened quickly—I guess she'd had a lot of practice in the intervening years. She was more changed than Barry, or Surface, or Testafer, or anyone else I'd dealt with since coming back. She went with the desk and the office with the big window now.
"It's an interesting story," she said. "What are you hoping it'll get you?"
"I want to see Angwine defrosted," I said. "I'll make your job hell with this if he isn't."
She just smiled.
"Humor me, Teleprompter," I said. "Let me think I'm a threat. It's no skin off your nose. The guy's harmless—and innocent."
She punched something into her desktop monitor. I guessed it was Angwine's file, but it could have been anything, really. Maybe just a stall for time. She squinted at it for a minute, and I remembered how she wouldn't let me see her in glasses the first time we met.
"I'll see what I can do," she said.
I thought about it. I'd come a long way on Angwine's fourteen hundred dollars. "That's not good enough," I said. "I need more."
She looked me dead in the eye. This time it was me who didn't blink.
"Okay," she said. "Tomorrow. You've got my word."
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me," she said. "Thank your lucky fucking stars. Take your stuff and get out of here." She opened her drawer and gave Surface his card and his pad back, and then she gave me my card and put my gun out on top of her desk I reached for it, but her hand was still over it, and she looked at me and I looked at her and I think possibly I saw the faintest hint of a smile cross her face. The moment passed, and she let me pick up the gun and put it back in the pocket of my coat.
She leaned on the button of her intercom and spoke to the muscle waiting outside her office. "Get them out of here," she said. "Put them on the street."
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