Angels in Heaven (Vic Daniel Series)

by David Pierce

  So what Mel had needed was someone else to go through the whole procedure again, but this time checking that the vendors, in their sales talk, did indeed fraudulently promise the right to build, which, as it turned out, they did, to me, the next sucker in line. It was slightly tricky, as the timing had to be right. The vendors, a smooth husband and wife team—or so they claimed—the David Harrisons, were undoubtedly going to take off for Rio at some time with all the deposit money they could collect. However, we did not want them to do so with either the money I forked over or Mel's client's $14,500. But the Harrisons weren't about to fork over the deed of ownership to me until I'd forked over a lot of money to them. Finally, we worked it out so Mr. Harrison got picked up ten seconds after he'd cleared my (Mel's) check at the Bank of America on Sunset and Fountain, and that was that.

  The David Harrisons were being finally arraigned, which means they were coming up in front of one judge, no jury, where evidence would be put forward for said judge to decide whether to take it further, i.e., put the sneaky creeps on trial for grand theft.

  Which is exactly what happened after I put forward my evidence in my customary courtroom manner, low-keyed but decisive, as did Mel's client and as did Mel, who had all the relevant documents, or rather lack of them, from City Planning. Mrs. Harrison was well-spoken and so seemingly contrite that I almost but not quite hated to do it to her. Mr. Harrison was so much the What Makes Sammy Run, California Mark II, type—open-necked shirt, gold medallions and chains nestling in curly chest hair not even gray yet, blow-dried locks, pebbled moccasins, silver Navaho belt buckle—that I adored doing it to him. It all did take a while; we were down at County over three hours, and my part of the proceedings took a mere six minutes, but what the hell, there were plenty of attractive visuals. Just for starters, there were innumerable bored cops in rumpled suits waiting their turns and going over their lies under their breath, and then there were the antics of the legal professionals as they plea-bargained and car-name-dropped—always fascinating to the discriminating beholder. Their wardrobes alone are a trip.

  When we finally emerged into what passes for sunlight in that part of the world, Mel took me for a late lunch at an Oriental ricery he knew in the nearby Little Tokyo, which was just north of him, more or less. Japanese restaurants always make me slightly nervous. It isn't the raw fish; I'm always afraid they might ask me to take my shoes off on the way in.

  Back at the office I bit-and-pieced away the rest of the afternoon. I billed Mel for my time in court and the traveling time involved, plus mileage. I finished up an estimate for a security system for one of Elroy's apartment units. My computer let me know my pal John D., owner and prop, of the Valley Bowl, was late with his monthly contribution to the Daniel Exchequer, so I wrote him a dignified, polite reminder: "Pay or you die, punk. You have been warned. The Black Hand." I addressed and stamped envelopes for all the above and popped them into the mailbox on the corner. I sat on a wooden bench for ten minutes with Mr. Amoyan, looking at girls. I disassembled, cleaned, oiled, and then assembled again both Police Positives. I tinkered with the printer but still couldn't get it to work, so I asked Mr. Nu to have a look and he got it going in two seconds.

  "You like?" He grinned at me on his way out.

  "I love," I said, marveling at the way a line of dots under another line of dots under another line of dots suddenly became clear dark letters—and with serifs, even. (For those of you lacking my classical background, serifs are those little decorative flourishes at the top and bottom of letters, especially capitals, which make them look classy.) I was still marveling when Evonne drove up, parked right outside, and came in. She was not alone. Following her was Doris Day Jr.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Doris Day Jr. was wearing a simple white short-sleeved dress, cinched at the waist by a wide black belt. Doris Day Jr. was also wearing holeless light-gray pantyhose with a little row of diamond-shaped decorations running up the rear seams, or where the seams would have been if pantyhose had seams. Simple, medium–heeled black pumps. Doris Day Jr.'s hair no longer stood straight up like a lot of candles on a birthday cake; it was arranged in a soft page boy, like Evonne's, who had obviously taken Doris to her own hairdresser. The color of hair was no longer screaming yellow, but blond, like Evonne's. Around Doris Day Jr.'s skinny neck was not a luggage strap or a man's tie or a pajama sash but a single-strand necklace of small pieces of blue glass, the same blue as the barrette in her hair. Doris Day Jr. was wearing just a hint of lipstick—not black, not Day-Glo orange, not lime green, not blue on the top and white on the bottom, but a light frosted pink. As a matching accessory, Doris carried a small dark-gray shoulder bag, not a World War II map case or a tin lunchbox, or an old clarinet case or a cardboard Tide soap flakes box dangling from a length of red wool.

  I rose to my feet.

  "Evonne!" I said. "My precious!" I moved out from behind the desk and gave her an affectionate buss on one cheek. "And who is this with you, your dear little cousin from Terre Haute come to visit the big city?"

  "I warned you," Evonne said. "Be nice."

  "Nice?" I exclaimed. "Who wouldn't be nice when two such visions of loveliness appear out of nowhere?" I turned to Sara. "And what is your name, my dear? Will you be staying in town long?"

  "Oh, shut up, Prof," said Doris Day Jr. "What piece of junk is this?" she said, referring to my new printer. "Your latest toy?"

  "Don't touch that!" I said. "I've just got it working. It was a very costly thank-you present from Mr. Nu, if you must know."

  "What was Mr. Nu thanking you for?" Evonne asked.

  "Oh, nothing much," I said modestly. "Doris Day Jr. here didn't tell you while she was getting her ringlets backcombed at Sassoon's?"

  "I never gossip, man," Doris said, scowling up at her bangs. "You know that."

  "Come on, big shot, give," Evonne said. I gave, as briefly as possible. Evonne went from being worried to being disgusted to being angry.

  When she finally simmered down, I said, "If you're still being seen in public with a violent roughneck like me, we're invited for a thank-you feast next door tonight sometime."

  "Me too?" said the twerp immediately.

  "Of course," I said warmly. "And listen, Doris, I didn't mean to ride you. I think you look terrific and thanks for doing it."

  "Get stuffed, Prof," she had the nerve to say. "I like you better when you're being your real self, a grumpy, miserly old fart."

  "Attagirl, Doris," I said. "I'm glad to see you've only changed externally."

  We made a rough date for later, and the ladies exited, leaving me to get on with my chores. I hoped Willing Boy liked the Doris Day look. I wished Benny would call; I was getting impatient with just putting in the time.

  By four-thirty or so I'd had enough and was clearing up my desk when I did get a call, but it wasn't Benny, it was Mrs. Silvetti, Doris's adoptive Mom. I'd met her and her hubby, Max, a couple of times, once at the Silvetti apartment, east of me off Woodman Avenue, and then at Lubinski, Lubinski & Levi's (Family Jewelers For Over Twenty Years) reopening party. The missus was a pleasant, short lady in her middle forties, I guess, although guessing people's ages isn't the easiest game in Tinsel Town, Cal. It turned out Mrs. Silvetti had called to thank me.

  "I don't know how you did it," she said. "I almost fell through the floor when Sara came in a while ago."

  "Me too," I said. "But it was nothing much. I somehow came up with the idea that Sara was tiring slightly of her number and, given the right encouragement, might drop it. Nothing, really."

  "Max'll just curl up and die," she said. "Max will take one look at her, fall on the floor, kick his little legs in the air, and shout, 'God be praised.'"

  "It might be better," I suggested, "not to make a big thing about it, to underplay it, like I did. Say something casual like, 'You look nice, dear. Done your hair differently?"

  Mrs. Silvetti laughed. "Differently," she said. "Differently!"

  I took the opportunity to ask h
er how she felt about Sara's going down to Mexico with me and my friend Benjamin for a few days on a completely safe, routine investigation.

  "Of what?" she of course wanted to know.

  "Eh, penal conditions," I said, not entirely mendaciously. "I need someone to help with the paperwork, and I naturally thought of Sara, as she's bright and she types and she can spell everything except weird. Naturally she would be properly, indeed, generously recompensed, and needless to say, all her expenses covered."

  "Well, it might be good for the child to get away for a while," Mrs. Silvetti said. "Max and I are always saying our pet needs some excitement in her life."

  If you only knew, I thought. If Max ever found the copies of all Doris's silly reports she once told me she was keeping for possible publication when she became famous, he'd not only fall on the floor and kick his little legs up in the air, he'd have an instant coronary occlusion. Anyway, that took care of one of my problems. Now all that remained were a jailbreak, a country break, and that dear old mother o' mine.

  As it happened, what to do with Mom while I was off capering in southern climes was resolved five minutes after I arrived home that early evening. What I was planning on doing was what I always did when the need arose—ask Tony and Gaye to take her, and then I would keep her whatever extra days were involved when my turn came around again. My niece and nephew didn't mind, they liked their old gran, but my brother and sister-in-law, especially Tony, always made me pay for the favor somehow. I put it down merely to a younger brother's jealously, but I could be mistaken, I suppose.

  Anyway, when I told Mom it looked like I'd be going away for a few days, she said, "That's nice, dear, so am I. Where are you going?"

  "To Mexico," I said. "But down south this time, not where I went with Evonne last year. Where are you going, to Feeb's sister again, the one who lives in that mobile home outside San Diego that you thought was so cute?"

  "Maybe," Mom said with a little smile.

  Maybe? What did that mean? I knew what "maybe" meant when I said it; it meant forget it, not a chance, except when I said I was maybe going out for a drink, in which case it meant I was going out for a drink unless large lumps of sky fell on my head and prevented me. But what did "maybe" mean issuing from the sweet lips of Mummikins?

  "Want to eat Vietnamese with me and the girls tonight?" I asked her then.

  "No, thank you, Vic," she said, bending over suddenly and picking up some lint from the carpet. She did a lot of lint picking, and most of the time I couldn't see any lint. I kept forgetting to ask her doc if it was another symptom of what she had. "I'm cooking Feeb something. I forget what, but I thought I might, so I left the cookbook open to the right page to remind me."

  "That makes sense," I called out from my room where I was donning a clean shirt, a slightly garish but nonetheless striking Hawaiian number featuring many of the same hues Doris's hair had been over the past year.

  The phone rang; I jumped for it, but it was Evonne, not Benny. She just wanted to confirm the time we were to meet. I was watching a pretty good thriller on TV with Mom, sipping a weak brandy and ginger and nibbling from a box of awful cocktail snacks when the phone rang again, and thank God, this time it was Benny the Boy. I asked him to hang on a minute, turned the sound down on the TV, got a pad and felt-tip, told Mom to shush, then picked up the phone again and said, "OK, Benny, shoot."

  He shot.

  Considering he'd only had one working day down there, he'd done wonders, and I told him so more than once. He'd found a safe phone. He'd found a car and truck rental. He had rooms provisionally reserved for us at his hotel. He had verified precisely what documentation was required for an American citizen to cross the border into Mexico. He had cased the airport. He'd cased the jail and the collection of huts across from it. He'd found two American concerns in town, the consulate and something called the U.S. Cultural Association. He'd located an office equipment rental, also a jobbing printer, also a sign maker. He'd been directed to a restaurant that served good French chow. He'd bought maps of everything we'd possibly need. He'd picked up airline schedules and bus schedules. He described the jail and the surrounding terrain. No one had ever heard of anyone escaping from it although plenty had tried. The rumor was that the one gringo prisoner had been smuggling something, but no one was sure what. The guesses ranged from cocaine to guns to young girls.

  I made notes furiously as he talked, and did he ever. When he was finally done, I told him I figured I'd need two working days to get everything together at my end, which would bring us up to Saturday, and that I'd try to book me and Sara on the same flight he'd taken, which would get us into Mérida late that afternoon, so book us into the hotel starting then.

  "Under what names?" he said.

  "Did you need an ID when you checked in?"

  "Nope," he said, " 'cause I paid in cash, in advance."

  "Doris," I said. "Doris . . . Jameson, and me, something neutral like, what the hell, John R. Wood."

  He said, "Consider it done. Love to everyone," and hung up. I said, "All right!" to myself and hung up.

  All right! Now we can move. Hang on, Billy, the A-team is a-comin'.

  . . .

  Plane. Dirigible. Flying carpet. Water wings. Boat. Bus. Car. Dune buggy. Pogo stick. Levitation. Time machine. Skimobile. Rule out the silly ones, but that still left land, sea, or air, which was hardly narrowing down the ways of getting Billy from A to B, wherever B turned out to be.

  Guile. Force. Charm. Bribery. Mechanical means. Tunnel. The Indian rope trick. Others. Billy would have to be removed from prison by one of these, which again was hardly narrowing it down.

  The next two days, in between making such helpful lists as the above two, I did, among other things, the following: Thought a lot. Placed a hefty order with Mrs. Martel, owner of M. Martel, Stationer, one street over from my office, for some curiously headed, good bond stationery. Purchased certain items at a celebrity photo service on Sunset. Phoned Sacramento. Visited my oculist. Moved Mom downstairs to Feeb's spare room. Couldn't get a word out of the ladies on what their plans were for the time I was away. Purchased round-trip airline tickets for Doris and myself—tourist class but still mucho dinero. What ever happened to steerage? Dropped in on Wade, proud owner of Wade's Pictorial Service out near Burbank Airport, where he ran his one-man business out of his brother's garage. Visited a flag and banner retailer at Beverly and Vine. Visited Mr. Nu. Visited my bank. Visited Fred's to put a couple of bets down with Tim. Ate quickly and slept fitfully. Stayed over Friday night at Evonne's. Had buttermilk pancakes with fake maple syrup for breakfast Saturday morn. Downed three (3) Bloody Marys at the airport bar while Doris, attired in new traveling finery, had two Bloody Marys without the Bloody, or is it without the Mary. Strapped myself into a ludicrously tiny seat in a newly painted torture machine. Let Doris hold my hand as we took off. Hang on, Gray Wolf, Running Deer comes like March chinook.

  Whatever that means.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I read an interesting article on the plane in a copy of that day's Herald-Examiner, which I borrowed from the guy in front of me when he was done with it. It was all about freezing.

  I don't mean what Eskimos do when they take their mukluks off outside or what Margaret Dumont used to do with a haughty look; I mean having yourself well chilled after you're dead, and then stuck into a deep freeze for a couple of hundred years in the hope that when they finally defrost you, the medical profession will be able to cure you of what you died from in the first place.

  Obviously, if you died by being run over by a steamroller or crushed by one of those machines that compresses a four-door sedan into a shape roughly the size of a Mexican airline overhead luggage compartment, this scheme holds little promise for you. I had two major misgivings about the whole idea to start with, one being that doctors' fees already being what they were, who could afford them in 200 years? and the other, what if all they could save after the defrosting was my brain, and they put it in
to the body of a five-foot female punk vegetarian?

  Speaking of which—punks, I mean—while I was perusing said article, Doris kept sneaking glances at her new self in the mirror of her equally new compact when she thought I wasn't looking. As if I cared. Once she said to me. "Do you think I have bedroom eyes?"

  "More like bathroom," I said.

  As for the flight itself, what can I tell you? As a veteran, nay, blasé air traveler—five times already, totaling almost twelve hours up there in the wild blue yonder—I am no longer frightened witless by such traditional airline scare tactics as planes with wings that have movable bits that keep flapping up and down (ours) or the old crosswinds-on-landing routine (at Guadalajara, our first stop). I shrug them off now because I learned from an even more well-traveled friend of mine a brilliant technique for dealing with such minor nuisances. For copyright reasons I am unable to reveal precisely what the technique involves, but did you know that on the bottom of every bottle of Carta Blanca beer, there is a sort of serrated hollow section in the middle that one uses to open the next bottle of Carta Blanca beer?

  When we finally deplaned at Guadalajara a mere two horas late, I was relieved, although in no way surprised, to discover that Benny's information on what official documentation was required to get into Mexico proved to be correct. The immigration authorities accepted passports, of course, but also either a voter's registration or a birth certificate, neither of which has one's photo on it, and the first one of which I had and had had for some time, in the name of John R. Wood (no thanks to Benny the Boy for once). Doris, amazingly, had a passport, as she had proudly informed me when I broached the subject of ID a couple of days earlier. God only knows why she went to the trouble of getting one because she'd never used it, and it must have been trouble; as a foundling, she didn't even have a father, let alone any proof of birth. Maybe the idea of merely having a passport excited her in some obscure teenage way; maybe she lay in bed at nights listening to Johnny Rotten on her Walkman and popping uppers and scanning her pristine passport, imagining herself in exotic, faraway punk heavens like Liverpool. Who knows about kids?