by Mel Gilden
'So you say.'
Robinson leaned toward Puffy a little and said quietly, 'Cliffy doesn't have a chance to yell "raid" very often.'
Cliffy impaled him with a glance and said, 'If you're done with the expose, maybe you could round these geeks up and move 'em out. We'll be at it all night as it is.'
One of the gumshoes, Spade, I think it was, said, 'The lady has a point. What's your beef?'
Cliffy said, 'You're in for questioning.'
'On what grounds?' Spade said.
'You'll hear about grounds till they're coming out of your ears,' Cliffy said. Robinson leaned over and whispered something to him. Cliffy almost bit off his own lip, but he said, 'Look, the city's in big trouble. The mayor isn't pulling any punches when it comes to saving it. We think you nice people know what's going on. We appreciate your cooperation.' It really hurt him to say that. He was happier calling out, 'All right. Move 'em out.' He pointed meaningfully toward the door.
Puffy watched us, angry as if Cliffy'd taken away her liquor licence. I waved at her, but she only nodded in return. She liked policemen fine, I guess, but only to say hello to.
They packed us into a big black and white bus that had little amenities like bars on the windows and convenient places where you could attach handcuffs. A strong smell of disinfectant was very loud and emphatic about cleanliness. The police didn't cuff us, but they didn't take down the bars either. The engine grumbled to life and took us across town.
At night, Los Angeles looked no less sedate or more trashy than any other big city. North of us, the Hollywood Hills glowed with an unholy red light that washed the city with blood. Smoke, lit from below, rose and knotted and changed like a devil creature looking for a properly hideous form. Occasionally, sparks jumped through the smoke, trying to get away. They got away and died almost in the same instant.
It was cold in the bus, and the fact we could spend the night inside a police station didn't make us feel any warmer. Lights played against windows and were reflected back at angles so bizarre, they seemed to have come from nowhere. A few of the riders leaned toward seatmates and shared secrets in a tone not much different from the labouring of the bus's engine. Behind me, a woman laughed occasionally, but for the most part there was nothing to listen to except traffic noise and sometimes the anguished cry of a faraway siren. It was a big city, and this night there was nothing in it for me but policemen.
I was sitting next to the guy with the pipe and the piercing eyes. His friend was right behind him, next to the guy in the rumpled trenchcoat. The guy took his pipe from his mouth and said, 'You know more about this than you are telling.' He had a nice English accent, but you could listen to that voice for a long time without knowing the thoughts behind it.
I said, 'That would be easy. I haven't told anybody anything yet.' It would be a long bus ride. There was plenty of time for conversation.
'Ah, but you have,' he said. 'You are not of this Earth, but you are presently living in Malibu.'
I allowed my eyebrows to lift the brim of my hat slightly. I said, 'It just so happens, I am of this Earth. As a matter of fact, I am of this Bay City. Early in life I had a run in with toxic waste and nose drops. As for where I live now, there's no way for you to know.'
'But it's elementary, sir. There is a grain of sand on the collar of your coat. I have been studying it for the previous ten minutes, while you have been busy watching the city as it passed. It is a grain of a size and kind that is to be found only on the beach at Malibu. Your shoes are well scuffed on the sides, as if you often walked through sand, not the shoes of a mere visitor. The conclusion, while not absolutely certain, was distinctly probable.'
'Amazing,' the guy's friend whispered as if the guy with the pipe had picked three winning Lotto numbers in a row.
'As for your origin,' the man said, 'it is as plain as the nose on your face.' He wanted to smile, but his lips were too tight.
I said, 'You should have been here last week when I hadn't heard that gag.'
He shrugged and put his pipe into his mouth. We were passing a Mexican restaurant, with a crowd in front waiting to get in. They were wearing clothes I'd seen advertised just that week in the paper, so they had probably paid too much for them. I moved my head, and could now see a reflection of the guy next to me. His eyes were half closed, but I didn't think he was sleeping. He would never sleep while there was something going on that he could observe and analyse.
I said, 'How do you figure it?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Those two with the stage show. Where are they now, for instance?'
'I have no idea,' he said around the stem of his pipe.
'Imagine that,' I said. 'A guy like you without an idea.'
He liked that enough to smile, but not enough to open his eyes any wider.
I settled back in the hard seat and attempted to prove to myself that the guy with the pipe didn't have the only brain on the bus: I didn't know how Pele and Lono got the tiki into the pineapple, but chances were good that hadn't been their toughest problem. Once they decided to have a meeting, they had to decide what to say to the multitudes. Can't assemble multitudes and then not tell them anything.
But they couldn't tell the multitudes everything. Pele and Lono wanted their hideout kept secret. They wanted the fact that they were aliens kept secret. They wanted the real use of that slaberingeo spine kept secret. They had a lot of secrets, yet they needed help. I'd been walking a tightrope just like it since I first met the surfers. A tickle in the wrong direction, and you're on exhibit at Pasadena Tech—if you're lucky.
Somebody had told the police about the big meeting because that somebody wanted to discourage all the high-priced talent from looking for the right blowfish spine necklace. That somebody was probably the same somebody who currently had possession of it. Why they wanted it, I still don't know. Except as a novelty, it wouldn't be of any use to anybody but Pele and Lono. How this certain somebody got it was an interesting question too, but not so important.
If that was the case, knowing who tipped off the police would probably solve my problem. I wouldn't have to find Pele and Lono. Once I had the necklace, I wouldn't have to do more than peep, and they'd come after me. And in a big hurry.
A lot of people knew about the meeting. Just for the record, Pele and Lono knew. Puffy knew. Some of her staff certainly knew. The detectives who'd been invited knew. Unless Puffy, or one of her people, or one of the detectives had the necklace, nobody who knew had a motive. Of course, the answer was that somebody else knew. Which put me right back where I'd started. Maybe I didn't have a brain after all. Or maybe I just needed to find Pele and Lono.
Downtown was deserted when the bus rolled through it.
There was a lot of glitter and swank up near the Music Centre, and an occasional bum moved quickly on the bone-white sidewalk, but mostly we had the streets to ourselves. The bus circled the old Hall of Justice, a square, cement building with ornamental gargoyles at each corner of the narrow ledge, below the windows of each floor. Some lights were on in rooms where cleaning people were mopping up that day's heartache. Either that, or policemen were sorting out more of it. I'd be in one of those lit rooms soon. The bus came to a driveway and dived into a garage under the building.
The garage was a great closed space tightly packed with official vehicles and the warm stink of ancient oil and exhaust fumes. Cliffy and his coppers took shifts riding us up in a big freight elevator that somehow managed to have scuff marks on the ceiling as well as the walls and floor.
We were taken along wide marble halls to a big room that was pleasantly warm. It was panelled in nice old wood that newer public buildings only dream about. Over the years, people with itchy fingers and not much to do had carved names, dates, phone numbers and obscene suggestions as high as a tall human could reach. Light beat down from a line of white globes onto rows of metal folding chairs with scabs of paint still on them. There were no shadows anywhere. My friend with the dramatic black
clothing slouched in a corner with his arms folded.
The hard guys sank into chairs, pulled out crushed packs of cigarettes, and smoked slowly, letting the smoke go up into their nostrils. From the glum looks on their faces, they got no pleasure from it. Real men didn't, I guess. The three in evening clothes sat in a corner and yakked as if they were at the producer's house and each was about to get the big part. The dog curled up under the woman's chair and went to sleep.
We were left alone for a while. Sure, no hurry once the cattle were in the pen. Then a uniformed policeman took away the guy with the pipe. His friend wanted to go too, but the policeman made it clear that Detective Cliffy would be talking to one person at a time.
The night dragged by like a sledge full of anvils through glue. There didn't seem to be any pattern to who came next. No one who was taken away came back. The thing the tweedy lady was knitting grew longer. Cigarette smoke was just something to look through while it dissolved your lungs. It wasn't long before everybody looked up when the cop came into the room, hoping to be the next victim. I went to sleep.
I awoke thinking at first that no time had passed, but I had a crick in my neck and was alone in the room except for the dramatic guy. He was staring in my direction but I didn't have to be there. He was just staring.
'It just doesn't add up,' he said.
'What doesn't?'
He was startled. Evidently, he'd been talking to himself. Louder now, he said. 'They want us to find their necklace, but they won't tell us anything about it or even who they are.' He laughed, but it was a poor, weak thing. 'And I'd like to know how they put the tiki into the pineapple, and how they come and go.'
'I'll bet you would.'
'You needn't use that sarcastic tone. When you've clouded one man's mind, you've clouded them all. Something new would be of great benefit to my sanity.'
I nodded, encouraging him.
'And it's not always easy knowing what evil lurks in the hearts of men.'
'It's never pleasant going through other people's garbage.'
While he was agreeing with me, the cop came back and took him away. I sat by myself, but I wasn't good company, I had too many questions and not enough answers. Besides, I'm always grumpy after four in the morning.
After a while, tentative light came through the big, pebbled glass windows on one side of the room. At first it just filled the room with a sort of general glow, but after a while it made a definite white patch on the floor that crawled toward the opposite wall so slowly you couldn't be sure it was moving until you forgot about it, then looked back later.
The cop came back and said, 'You.' I pointed at myself and looked around, surprised. He waited at the door, not amused. He'd been there all night, too. He took me to the end of the marble hallway, then down a flight of wide stairs. Only echoes were at home.
He took me to an office one floor down. It was a big old room, but not as nice as the one above. In the rising sunlight, the green paint on the walls—as much a part of civil service as the post office—looked nearly new. The room smelled as if too many worried people had sweated in it. There were three desks in the room, far apart and lonely on the worn green linoleum. Behind one of the end ones, Cliffy sat with his head in his hands. Robinson was at the middle desk, fiddling with a small tape recorder. He had a lot of tapes in a stack to one side.
'Here's the last of 'em, sir,' the policeman said.
'Thanks,' Cliffy said without looking up.
I sat down in a wooden arm chair across from Cliffy, and waited for the policeman's footsteps to get to the door and fade along the hallway.
Cliffy looked up suddenly, and pursed his lips. He'd put on twenty years since I'd seen him last. 'I don't like you,' he said. That didn't seem to call for an answer, so I waited. 'I don't like you or anything about you. I don't like this job, or the night just past, or a couple of clever geeks who come and go in puffs of smoke.'
'I get it,' I said. 'You're an unhappy guy.'
'Yeah. I'm unhappy. That's why I save the best for last.' He took a deep breath, nodded at Robinson, who started his tape machine, scratched the side of his head, and said to me. 'Go ahead. Be brilliant.'
'What do you want to know?'
'How do I stop those hills from fizzing and popping?'
I shook my head. 'I guess I'm just tired.'
'Yeah,' Cliffy said. He opened his hands to me and said, 'Look, do you have a line on those two who called the meeting?'
'I don't know where they are, if that's what you mean.'
He ticked off items on his hand: 'First, you're there on the beach with the hat. Second, you're there when the truck of gimcracks gets stolen. Third, you show up when we find it. Fourth, you're one step ahead of us when that Backson broad has her apartment rattled. Fifth, somebody thinks you're enough of a detective to be on the guest list of the most exclusive party of the year. Do you see a pattern emerging here?'
'I might. If I was looking for patterns.'
He put his head in his hands again and spoke to the desk. 'We'll let it slide. Now, is there anything at all you'd care to tell us? Any little thing at all?'
'I don't know how there could be,' I said. 'I'm just one guy. You have an entire force behind you, not to mention computer links to every law enforcement outfit in the world.'
He looked up and pondered me, but I almost didn't know him. All the nastiness was gone from his face. He was just a very tired guy trying to do his job. Maybe that's all he'd ever been. He said, 'In the world, yeah.' He shook his head. 'There's too much magic in this case. I ought to interrogate some of those wand jockies up at the Magic Palace.'
'Tomorrow,' I said.
'It's tomorrow already,' he said, and rubbed his face as if his hand were a washcloth. He looked at his watch and smiled emptily. 'I gotta be at work in two hours.' He shook his head and said, 'Turn off your Judas, Robinson. Let's go home.'
'Can I ask you one question first?'
He was facing me with nothing behind his eyes. I didn't want to push him but I needed to ask. I owed myself that.
'Sure,' he said. 'We never close.'
'Just this: Who told you about the meeting?'
Cliffy's face didn't change. He didn't turn his head, but he said. 'What do you think, Robinson? Is it any of his goddam business?'
For answer, Robinson popped open his tape machine and carefully removed the tape.
Cliffy said, 'Robinson says it's none of your goddam business, but I'll tell you anyway because it won't do you a damn bit of good no matter what your game is. The tip was anonymous. Came into the switchboard about a quarter after seven. I didn't even hear the voice.'
After that, Cliffy had a police car drive me through Los Angeles' morning traffic, said by those who didn't live in Los Angeles to be the worst traffic in the world. I wouldn't know. I'm afraid I nodded off a couple of times.
Kilroy's was shut up tight when I arrived and my Belvedere was the only car in the lot. All the hubcaps were still there. I got into the car and delicately drove it back to Malibu.
Chapter 27
Magic Words
MALIBU was far away, farther than T'toom. I almost fell asleep more than once, and another time the guy on my tail awakened me with his horn when the light changed to green. At last I turned into the garage and stopped, not quite hitting the back wall. I turned off the engine and listened to the traffic behind me swishing by. People who had not been up all night were awake and doing. I sat, feeling as if my bones were wax and sagging badly. But I didn't want to sleep in the car. I'd already slept too long sitting up.
The house was quiet, and I didn't disturb it. I got into Will and Bingo's bedroom. They were sleeping straight as a couple of logs, just touching heads. They were snoring. Will the alto, and Bingo the bass. I took off my trenchcoat and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. I collapsed onto my nest of dirty clothes. The snoring didn't bother me.
It was afternoon when I awoke with an idea. I'd slept too long or not long enough,
because my brain felt as if it were fall of warm soapy water—heavy, slippery and not much good for thinking. The idea floated in the soapy water like a shiny new sailboat. I stumbled through the empty house to the kitchen where Bill sat, swinging his legs. He was exactly the companion I was looking for. He didn't want anything from me.
On the beach, the surfers were working their surfbots pretty hard, but they managed to avoid the hat—which by this time had white stains dripping down its sides. A couple of kids were playing near it, just outside the sawhorse barrier, while some adult sat on a wooden backrest reading a magazine. The hat had been there so long, it had become just another piece of junk on the beach.
Captain Hook sat on the brick wall fronting the tiny brick patio, looking out to sea while he opened his fist time and time again and released butterflies into the air.
Later, after three eggs, half a package of bacon, and enough coffee to refloat the Titanic, I got a phone number from Bill and called it. While I waited for someone to answer, I became aware that I was wearing last night's clothes. It was like being buried up to my neck in manure.
'Magic Palace,' said a cheery female voice at the other end of the line.
Trying to speak with the rolling tones of my friend in the black slouch hat, I said, 'Yes. I'd like to make a reservation for this evening.'
'Fine. I'll just need your membership number.'
'Membership number?'
'Yes, sir. This is a private club. Only members and their guests are allowed in.'
'Fine. Fine. How does one become a member?'
'You need to be a magician, and to be recommended by someone who is already a member.'
'That's all?'
'Well, there's the dress code. Gentlemen must wear coats and ties. No blue jeans are allowed.'
'The dress code. I see. Thank you very much.'
I hung up and went outside, where I sat on the wall next to Captain Hook. He'd stopped doing butterflies and was doing pigeons—tiny pigeons no bigger than hummingbirds. They strutted on the public walkway, pecking at specks in the blacktop.