by David Pierce
'So what was he doing to Mr Lubinski, who was terrific, you were right.'
What the hell, it couldn't hurt, so I told her about it. Her drawn-on eyebrows went way up.
'What are you going to do to the big shit?'
'I can't do much to the big shit,' I said, 'but I'm hoping to persuade his boss, who makes the big shit look like Joan of Arc, to take his business somewhere else.'
'How?' She came around to my side of the desk and looked at my scribbled notes. I didn't dissuade her as I hoped she might for once forget the measly expense money I owed her if I kept her preoccupied.
'There are two things I want,' I told her. 'Mr Lubinski out of it and no one mad at either him or me. There are three things the big shit's boss wants, because I know the type, to make money, to get respect and to get his own way. So, I am going to write him a very polite, respectful letter suggesting a way that he can make more money by not using Mr Lubinski.'
'I'll help,' she said eagerly. 'I'm a writer, a lot better writer than you are, you've probably never written a poem in your life.'
'I have too,' I said. 'I wrote one on a valentine card once, I remember it to this day. "Roses are red, they have a nice smell. I wish I could say, your feet do as well." Anyway, you've probably never written a letter to a Mafia capo in your life. But, OK, scoot your chair over here but don't bug me.'
She dragged her chair around to my side and then for some reason hit me on the arm a couple of times.
'Grow up, will you,' I said.
'Look who's talking,' she said.
First, I addressed the envelope to Mr Garden.
'How'd you get his address?' she asked.
'Phone book.'
'How do you know he'll be there?'
'He owns the company,' I said. 'So I figure he drops in from time to time to count the petty cash.'
'Who's the Near East Trading Company?'
'It doesn't exist,' I said, rolling a sheet of paper into the machine.
'Why?'
'Use your head,' I said, 'for something else than growing cooties. The last thing I want is for those madmen to know I'm involved. But it should look and sound like it's coming from a legitimate company.'
'Why that name?'
'Sort of a joke,' I said. 'Sort of an attention-grabber.'
'Why PO Box 44767, Fresno, CA?' she then asked. It was of course the address Benny had given me.
'It's a cut-out,' I said.
'What's a cut-out?'
'Like a dead end. It was set up by a friend of mine. A letter goes there, it goes inside another envelope, then it goes somewhere else. Can I get on with it?'
'Be my guest,' she said. 'Mean typewriter you got there.'
Dear Mr Garden (we, but mostly me, wrote):
Do you sincerely want to be richer?
I represent a syndicate that has recently become aware of your interest in the prevailing price of gold. May I say at this time that our organization, the Near East Trading Company, has no connection with anyone who might be operating under a similar name, such as the Far East Trading Company.
May I respectfully draw your attention to the following:
(a) Mr Lubinski, of Lubinski, Lubinski and Levi, Family Jewelers for over Twenty Years, being unable to withstand recent business pressures, has decided to sell out and, with his charming wife, fulfill a long-standing dream by emigrating to Israel. They are actually on the first leg of their trip as I write this; their (well-insured) premises vacated, their valuable stock removed for safekeeping to a bank.
(b) These business pressures referred to were of course applied by one of your employees, Mr Luigi Bellini, aka Little Lou, who has had a good deal of previous experience in this line. (Details on request, courtesy LAPD Record Department and the FBI.)
(c) We have in our possession both the testimony of two independent witnesses plus a written deposition from Mr Lubinski placing Mr Bellini in the store, as well as several candid snaps of him conversing with Mr Lubinski, one of which I am pleased to enclose.
(d) We have a recording of the entire conversation between Mr Lubinski and Mr Bellini made during Mr Bellini's second visit to the store, the highly illicit nature of which you can well imagine. (Copy on request.)
Here Sara interrupted me by saying, 'I didn't know you were bugging him too.'
'I wasn't,' I said, 'but if we got his prints and his picture we obviously could have. Onwards.'
(e) Both of us would, I am sure, prefer not to involve Mr Bellini and, by implication, yourself, in any way, with the law.
(f) We have an alternative buyer for your merchandise, Mr Lubinski now being unavailable.
(g) This buyer will pay $25 an ounce more than the price agreed on by Mr Lubinski and will take unlimited quantities.
(h) I suggest, therefore, with respect, it would be to both our advantages if you dealt directly with us in this matter. With our joint experience I have no doubt we could come up with a delivery and payment system that would protect and satisfy us both.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur M. Schindler (Pres)
Then I borrowed Sara's new pen and signed it with a flourish.
'What was all that about well-insured premises and the bank?' she asked me.
'Obvious, chérie,' I said. 'You're dealing with people who not only don't mind violence, but adore it. I'm just trying my humble best to prevent them chucking bombs around or driving cement trucks through the Lubinski front window.'
'So what'll happen when he comes back in a couple of weeks and opens up again?'
'So his wife couldn't stand Israel,' I said patiently. 'Who could plan on that?'
'Me,' she said.
I tucked the letter and one of the prints in the envelope and rummaged around for a stamp.
'Know something?' she said, wandering over to look at my meager collection of reading material.
'Yeah,' I said. 'You got a hole in your stocking.'
'They're tights,' she said, 'and it's on purpose, where've you been? I was gonna say, it might work.'
'Like me,' I said. 'I might work if you got out of here and let me. Where did I put those Goddamned stamps? I just bought them.'
'You need a secretary,' she said.
'Oh no I don't,' I said.
They're probably right under your nose,' she said, wandering back my way. 'Men are so helpless sometimes.' I didn't even bother to answer that old slander. 'And what is this for?' She snatched up an envelope from the desk where I'd been piling up the contents of my stationery drawer because I knew I had some stamps in there somewhere.
The Far East Trading Company,' she read. 'Is that you too?'
'No, my dear,' I said, snatching the envelope back, 'that is mayhap for some rainy day when I want to start a small war.'
'Between who and who?'
Try Italy and China,' I said. 'Now beat it. On second thought, don't beat it. You don't have a pal who's got a camper, do you?' I finally found the stamps in my shirt pocket and stuck one on.
She thought for a minute, then said no.
'Goin' somewhere?' She found a small stack of business cards and was riffling through them. 'Verrrrry interesting!' she exclaimed, holding up one. 'V. Daniel, Inspector Building Codes and Violations, Venice, California. You do get around.'
'Mind your own business,' I said. 'Give me those.' I swept everything off the desk and back into the drawer, which I locked. 'Yes, I am going somewhere. I am going north. Want to come?'
'How far north, Iceland?'
'Not quite that far, little one.'
'For how long?'
'A couple of days.'
'Just us?' She had the nerve to leer at me.
'No way,' I said. 'With a Nicaraguan guy I know. And maybe Benny.'
She took out some purple lipstick and began smearing it in the general area of her mouth.
'Do I get paid?' she asked.
'Sure.'
'Danger money?'
'Where do you get all that rubbish?' I said. 'T
here is no such thing as danger money.'
'God you're cheap,' she said. 'You never even paid me for my last job, let alone the expenses I forked out. That's two fifty-one, buster, and I could have got killed, you told me so yourself, even you were worried otherwise what were you doing lurking around?'
'Having an important business appointment in the neighborhood can hardly be called lurking around,' I said huffily. 'Anyway, it's your choice. You can get paid by the hour or by the job like the illiterate menial a complete stranger took you for not so long ago, or you can get paid by the month like real professionals and executives and leaders of industry.'
'Give,' she said, holding out the ungloved of her two hands, a grubby affair that had five rings on one finger and none on any of the others. I dug, I gave, willingly, is not the laborer worthy of her hire, even this laborer?
'OK,' she said, 'now we can start talkin' about next week.' She examined with squinted eyes the perfectly good five-dollar bill I'd just given her, among others. 'I bet it's got something to do with that guy whose phone we bugged, am I right? Can we talk?'
I admitted she was, for once, not wrong.
'You better ask my mom though. I dunno if she'd let me go otherwise. She should be at home unless she's gone shopping.'
So I called Mrs Silvetti, Sara's (adoptive) Mom. We'd talked on the phone a few times before and I'd met her once when Sara brought her by the office to show her I was real. It seemed that her parents had trouble believing that anyone remotely sane would pay their daughter real money to work for him. Of course neither Sara nor I bothered to tell Mom the precise nature of the occasional tasks she performed for me.
I told Mrs Silvetti I wanted to borrow her daughter for a few days as I had a rather boring but complicated insurance claim to look into and as it involved a teenage girl who'd been hurt in an automobile accident I thought having a young girl of my own along might help. It sounded weak even to me but Mrs Silvetti said it was fine with her if it was all right with her husband and it would be all right with her husband as they both thought I was a good influence on their girl. Little did they know.
Then I put things away, locked up, dropped the letter in the corner box, waved to Mrs Morales,' then we drove out Victory past the film studios to a used-car lot I dealt with as it had everything from the latest models to panel trucks to old clunkers to classics to dump trucks, you name it. They had a row of campers out back; the guy in the office said they were all open, have a look, and if I wanted to try any of them, come back for the keys.
'Know anything about campers?' I asked Sara, who had stopped to sneer at a gorgeous old Plymouth, a 48, in light and dark brown, original chrome, it made your mouth water to just look at it.
'No,' she said. 'Jesus, they sure made piles of shit in those days. You know anything about them?'
'Enough,' I said. 'Pop used to have one but I can only remember us ever taking one trip in it, then the shocks or something went and he sold it.'
There was one camper in the line I thought might do. It was a Volks conversion but with an extra bit built over the driver's seat where kids could sleep, leaving their folks the two bunks at the back.
'Where's the john?' she wanted to know.
'Already?' I said. 'There.' I pointed through the sliding door to the great outdoors.
'Gross,' she said.
I showed her where the gas ring had been cunningly hidden, likewise the small sink, and how the table folded up, then looked in the cupboards in case some fool had left some staples behind or at least the odd pot and pan. They hadn't. Then I showed her how the cute gingham curtains slid back and forth.
'Sick-making,' she said. 'Is this trip really necessary?'
I borrowed the keys from the front office, started it up and took it for a spin around the yard; the valves didn't sound quite right but otherwise it seemed OK. I told the guy who was minding the store I'd take it for a few days starting Monday, gave him a deposit, took one last yearning glance at the Plymouth, then drove Sara back to her place.
'See ya,' she said, scrambling out. 'Don't think it hasn't been, cause it hasn't.'
'Sure hasn't,' I agreed. 'Oh. One more thing, I almost forgot, on the trip, guess what. You get to call me Daddy.'
I drove sedately off, as befitting a new father.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It was late Sunday morning. I had things to do – lists to make, people to call, plans to lay, stuff to buy – so I made the calls, to Mom, Sara, Ricky, Benny and Evonne, then let my wayward darling talk me into letting her take me to the beach. There was a boat broker I vaguely wanted to talk to who usually hung around the pier at Manhattan Beach, but he wasn't there so we did what there is to do in January at the beach – not much.
We strolled out to the end of the pier and watched people not catching fish. We strolled along the boardwalk, although in Manhattan Beach it is a cement walk, eating rubbish and talking same, at least from my end. Held hands. I bought her a copper bent-wire brooch that said 'Evonne' that we watched being bent before our very eyes. She bought me a T-shirt that said 'Italians Do It Better'. Saw a bartender I used to know, Morrie, from the Coach and Horses, years ago, who had since gone straight, if you call selling to tourists over-priced shell ashtrays with little plastic palm trees glued on them, going straight. Evonne stopped to pop her eyeballs at some bodybuilders who were working out in a fenced playpen near the tennis courts.
'Wow!' she said.
I, for once, wisely said nothing.
And so the day passed, and the evening, which we spent together, and the night, which we also spent together. When I left her place in the morning, Monday morning, I was wearing my new T-shirt but it didn't do a lot for me except tell it like it was.
Back home, I made myself a mug of coffee, wrote up some detailed notes for Benny, then began rounding up the equipment, provisions and clothes I thought I might need during the next few days, starting with the most important things first: 1 hand gun, Police Positive, .38 cal., taped grip; 1 box cartridges for same; 2. pairs of cheap handcuffs, with keys; 1 pacifier/cosh/blunt instrument (roughly, a tube of soft leather sewed up at both ends and filled with ball bearings); 1 sheath knife; 1 Swiss Army knife; 2. flares; camera and flash; 5-battery flashlight; 1 mustache; 1 pair shades. Then came things like boots and rainwear, sleeping bags, binoculars, an old army poncho. Then came the apparatus from Phil at J & M's Home Security, then some assorted kitchenware. Then I popped out to Ralph's for bottled gas for the camper stove, some food and some 80-proof snakebite remedy, brandy-flavored, not forgetting a couple of six-packs of beer. I got back just in time to let in the troops, who arrived right on noon, as we'd arranged Sunday by phone. First came Benny, in his Dodge Colt, then Ricky in the Wagoneer right behind him. Sara we'd pick up on the way.
My pal Benny looked inoffensive, as usual, with his baby face and blue eyes. He'd dressed for the part he was to play in tan chinos, matching jacket, LA Dodgers baseball cap and a pair of square, steel-rimmed glasses. He was toting a YMCA holdall containing his extra clothes. Ricky was wearing his official working uniform.
'Any trouble this morning?' I asked him as soon as we all got upstairs.
'Nada,' he said. 'I had this friend of ours, Mrs Gonzales, drive me out to work cause I'd left the car out there and as soon as Tommy took off so did I and here I am. By the way, I'm Ricky,' he said to Benny.
'Benny,' said Benny. They shook hands. I gave Benny the notes I'd written up for him and he looked through them while Ricky ran down for me the equipment he'd brought along – 1 Colt Cobra with holster, ammo, flash, plus the survival belt he always wore in the woods. Then he handed me a check for a sizable amount of money. I didn't want to take it but he said I'd better, it came from Ellena's emergency fund and she wouldn't take no for an answer, you know her. I said I did and I would keep it in case we couldn't finance the operation some other way.
Then we had a general discussion of tactics, then some more coffee, then I herded them out, all of us well laden
, locked up, then we went down and loaded up the Jeep. I went back in for a moment to have a quick word with Feeb, my landlady downstairs. I told her if anyone asked, I'd be away for a couple of days fishing with some friends.
'You and whose army?' she said. 'According to your mother, all you know about fish is you don't like them unless they're pickled in sour cream.'
I gave her a friendly pat on the top of her blue rinse, then we took off. At the used-car lot we transferred all my gear to the camper, I settled up with the man in the front office, then I led the parade to Sara's. She was ready, which was a mild surprise, in fact she was sitting outside her apartment building on the steps, a bulging, bright orange knapsack beside her. I do not know what she was dressed for, a costume party perhaps at Alice Cooper's, but she certainly wasn't wearing what a normal girl would put on for a few days' camping holiday with her father, even a temporary father. Red gauchos, what looked like argyle golf socks, high-heeled half boots with pointed toes, the kind I believe the Limeys call winklepickers, lime-green turtleneck ten sizes too large and a man's tweed vest. Blue sunglasses with only one lens left. Red sun visor. Black lipstick. White gloves with all the fingers cut off. A veritable cover girl for the Saturday Evening Punk.
Benny got out of the camper to open the sliding door for her, a gesture of politeness I admit didn't occur to me.
I said, 'Benny, Sara.'
He said, 'Charmed.'
She said, 'Likewise, I'm sure.'
They both climbed in, Benny beside me and what's-her-name in the back, then I signalled Ricky, who was parked right in front of us, with a toot on the horn, and off we went with Ricky in the lead as he knew the way, he'd actually been to Carmen Springs once, or close enough, anyway, he'd told me.
We filled up with gas before hitting the freeway, then headed north up the San Fernando Valley, the old familiar route that led to Wonderland Park, Parson's Crossing, and, more or less, Mohave, Modesto and ultimately, if you went far enough, Sacramento.
As soon as Sara was settle she rapped me on one shoulder, the one that was still sore thanks to Lefty Donovan, and said, 'OK, Grumps, what's goin' on?'