I decided, an hour later, that was sophomoric. The ghost of Sam Spade must have been sneering down at me.
She opened the door about twenty minutes later, a fairly tall, slim woman with jet-black hair, wearing black slacks and a white cashmere sweater. She could have been sixty or thirty; she had those high cheekbones which keep a face taut.
“Mr. Apoyan?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Your uncle recommended you to me.”
“He told me. But he didn’t tell me your name.”
“I asked him not to.” She came over to sit in my client’s chair. “It’s Bishop, Mrs. Whitney Bishop. Did he tell you that I prefer not to have the police involved?”
“Yes. Was anything else stolen?”
She shook her head.
“That seems strange to me,” I said. “Burglars don’t usually carry out anything big, anything suspicious enough to alert the neighbors.”
“Our neighbors are well screened from view,” she told me, “and I’m sure this was not a burglar.” She paused. “I am almost certain it was my daughter. And that is why I don’t want the police involved.”
“It wasn’t a rug too big for a woman to carry?”
She shook her head. “A three-by-five-foot antique Kerman.”
I winced. “For three thousand dollars—?”
Her smile was dim. “You obviously don’t have your uncle’s knowledge of rugs. I was offered more than I care to mention for it only two months ago. My daughter is—adopted. She has been in trouble before. I have almost given up on her. We had a squabble the day my husband and I went down to visit friends in Rancho Santa Fe. When we came home the rug was gone and so was she.”
I wondered if it was her daughter she wanted back or the rug. I decided that would be a cynical question to ask.
“We have an elaborate alarm system,” she went on, “with a well-hidden turnoff in the house. It couldn’t have been burglars.” She stared bleakly past me. “She knows how much I love that rug. I feel that it was simply a vindictive act on her part. It has been a—troubled relationship.”
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Seventeen.”
“Does she know who her real parents are?”
“No. And neither do we. Why?”
“I thought she might have gone back to them. How about her friends?”
“We’ve talked with all of her friends that we know. There are a number of them we have never met.” A pause. “And I am sure would not want to.”
“Your daughter’s—acceptable friends might know of others,” I suggested.
“Possibly,” she admitted. “I’ll give you a list of those we know well.”
She told me her daughter’s name was Janice and made out a list of her friends while I filled in the contract. She gave me a check, her unlisted phone number, and a picture of her daughter.
When she left, I went to the window and saw her climb into a sleek black Jaguar below. My hunch had been sound; this was the town that attracted the carriage trade.
I went downstairs to thank Vartan and tell him our next lunch would be on me at a restaurant of his choice.
“I look forward to it,” he said. “She’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”
“That she is. Was she ever more than a customer to you?”
“We had a brief but meaningful relationship,” he said coolly, “at a time when she was between husbands. But then she started talking marriage.” He sighed.
“Uncle Vartan,” I asked, “haven’t you ever regretted the fact that you have no children to carry on your name?”
“Never,” he said, and smiled. “You are all I need.”
Two elderly female customers came in then and I went out with my list of names. It was a little after three o’clock; some of the kids should be home from school.
There were five names on the list, two girls and three boys, all students at Beverly Hills High. Only one of the girls was home. She had seen Janice at school on Friday, she told me, but not since. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been at school Monday and Tuesday.
“She’s not in any of my classes,” she explained.
I showed her the list. “Could you tell me if any of these students are in any of her classes?”
“Not for sure. But Howard might be in her art appreciation class. They’re both kind of—you know—”
“Artistic?” I asked.
“I suppose. You know—that weird stuff—”
“Avant-garde, abstract, cubist?”
She shrugged. “I guess, whatever that means. Janice and I were never really close.”
From the one-story stone house of Miss Youknow, I drove to the two-story Colonial home of Howard Retzenbaum.
He was a tall thin youth with horn-rimmed glasses. He was wearing faded jeans and a light gray T-shirt with a darker gray reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Woman’s Head emblazoned on his narrow chest.
Janice, he told me, had been in class on Friday, but not Monday or yesterday. “Has something happened to her?”
“I hope not. Do you know of any friends she has who don’t go to your school?”
Only one, he told me, a boy named Leslie she had introduced him to several weeks ago. He had forgotten his last name. He tapped his forehead. “I remember she told me he works at some Italian restaurant in town. He’s a busboy there.”
“La Famiglia?”
“No, no. That one on Santa Monica Boulevard.”
“La Dolce Vita?”
He nodded. “That’s the place. Would you tell her to phone me if you find her?”
I promised him I would and thanked him. The other two boys were not at home; they had baseball practice after school. I drove to La Dolce Vita.
They serve no luncheon trade. The manager was not in. The assistant manager looked at me suspiciously when I asked if a boy named Leslie worked there.
“Does he have a last name?”
“I’m sure he has. Most people do. But I don’t happen to know it.”
“Are you a police officer?”
I shook my head. “I am a licensed and bonded private investigator. My Uncle Vartan told me that Leslie is an employee here.”
“Would that be Vartan Apoyan?”
“It would be and it is.” I handed him my card.
He read it and smiled. “That’s different. Leslie’s last name is Denton. He’s a student at UCLA and works from seven o’clock until closing.” He gave me Leslie’s phone number and address, and asked, “Is Pierre an Armenian name?”
“Quite often,” I informed him coldly, and left without thanking him.
The address was in Westwood and it was now almost five o’clock. I had no desire to buck the going-home traffic in this city of wheels. I drove to the office to call Leslie.
He answered the phone. I told him I was a friend of Howard Retzenbaum’s and we were worried about Janice. I explained that she hadn’t been in school on Monday or Tuesday and her parents didn’t know where she was.
“Are you also a friend of her parents?” he asked.
“No way!”
She had come to his place Friday afternoon, he told me, when her parents had left for Rancho Santa Fe. She had stayed over the weekend. But when he had come home from school on Tuesday she was gone.
“She didn’t leave a note or anything?”
“No.”
“She didn’t, by chance, bring a three-foot-by-five-foot Kerman rug with her, did she?”
“Hell no! Why?”
“According to a police officer I know in Beverly Hills, her parents think she stole it from the house. Did she come in a car?”
“No. A taxi. What in hell is going on? Are those creepy parents of hers trying to frame her?”
“Not if I can help it. Did she leave your place anytime during the weekend?”
“She did not. If you find her, will you let me know?”
I promised him I would.
I phoned Mrs. Whitney Bishop and asked her if Janice had been in the ho
use Friday when they left for Rancho Santa Fe.
“No. She left several hours before that. My husband didn’t get home from the office until five o’clock.”
“Were there any servants in the house when you left?”
“We have no live-in servants, Mr. Apoyan.”
“In that case,” I said, “I think it’s time for you to call the police and file a missing persons report. Janice was in Westwood from Friday afternoon until some time on Tuesday.”
“Westwood? Was she with that Leslie Denton person?”
“She was. Do you know him?”
“Janice brought him to the house several times. Let me assure you, Mr. Apoyan, that he is a doubtful source of information. You know, of course, that he’s gay.”
That sounded like a non sequitur to me. I didn’t point it out. I thought of telling her to go to hell. But a more reasonable (and mercenary) thought overruled it; rich bigots should pay for their bigotry.
“You want me to continue, then?” I asked.
“I certainly do. Have you considered the possibility that one of Leslie Denton’s friends might have used her key and Janice told him where the turnoff switch is located?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“I thought of that,” I explained, “but if that happened, I doubt if we could prove it. I don’t want to waste your money, Mrs. Bishop.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” she said. “You find my rug!”
Not her daughter; her rug. First things first. “I’ll get right on it,” I assured her.
I was warming some lahmajoons Sarkis’s wife had given me last Sunday when I heard my office door open. I went out.
It was Cheryl, my current love, back from San Francisco, where she had gone to visit her mother.
“Welcome home!” I said. “How did you know I moved?”
“Adele told me. Are those lahmajoons I smell?”
I nodded. She came over to kiss me. She looked around the office, went through the open doorway, and inspected the apartment.
When she came back, she said, “And now we have this. Now we won’t have to worry if your roommates are home, or mine. Do you think I should move in?”
“We’ll see. What’s in the brown bag?”
“Potato salad, a jar of big black olives, and two avocados.”
“Welcome home again. You can make the coffee.”
Over our meal I told her about my day, my lucky opening day in this high-priced town. I mentioned no names, only places.
It sounded like a classic British locked-room mystery, she thought and said. She is an addict of the genre.
“Except for the guy in Westwood,” I pointed out. “Maybe one of his friends stole the rug.”
Westwood was where she shared an apartment with two friends. “Does he have a name?” she asked.
I explained to her that that would be privileged information.
“I was planning to stay the night,” she said, “until now.”
“His name is Leslie Denton.”
“Les Denton?” She shook her head. “Not in a zillion years! He is integrity incarnate.”
“You’re thinking of your idol, Len Deighton,” I said.
“I am not! Les took the same night-school class that I did in restaurant management. We got to be very good friends. He works as a busboy at La Dolce Vita.”
“I know. Were you vertical or horizontal friends?”
“Don’t be vulgar, Petroff. Les is not heterosexual.”
“Aren’t you glad I am?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Let’s have some more wine,” I suggested.
At nine o’clock she went down to her car to get her luggage. When she came back, she asked, “Are you tired?”
“Nope.”
“Neither am I,” she said. “Let’s go to bed.”
I was deep in a dream involving my high school sweetheart when the phone rang in my office. My bedside clock informed me that it was seven o’clock. The voice on the phone informed me that I was a lying bastard.
“Who is speaking, please?” I asked.
“Les Denton. Mr. Randisi at the restaurant gave me your phone number. You told me you were a friend of Howard Retzenbaum’s. Mr. Randisi told me you were a stinking private eye. You’re working for the Bishops, aren’t you?”
“Leslie,” I said calmly, “I have a very good friend of yours who is here in the office right now. She will assure you that I am not a lying bastard and do not stink. I have to be devious at times. It is a requisite of my trade.”
“What’s her name?”
“Cheryl Pushkin. Hold the line. I’ll put her on.”
Cheryl was sitting up in bed. I told her Denton wanted to talk to her.
“Why? Who told him I was here?”
“I did. He wants a character reference.”
“What?”
“Go!” I said. “And don’t hang up when you’re finished. I want to talk with him.”
I was half dressed when she came back to tell me she had calmed him down and he would talk to me now.
I told him it was true that I was working for Mrs. Bishop. I added that getting her rug back was a minor concern to me; finding her daughter was my major concern and should be his, too. I told him I would be grateful for any help he could give me on this chivalrous quest.
“I shouldn’t have gone off half-cocked,” he admitted. “I have some friends who know Janice. I’ll ask around.”
“Thank you.”
Cheryl was in the shower when I hung up. I started the coffee and went down the steps to pick up the Times at my front door.
A few minutes after I came back, she was in her robe, studying the contents of my fridge. “Only two eggs in here,” she said, “and two strips of bacon.”
“There are some frozen waffles in the freezer compartment.”
“You can have those. I’ll have bacon and eggs.” I didn’t argue.
“You were moaning just before the phone rang,” she said. “You were moaning, ‘Norah, Norah.’ Who is Norah?”
“A dog I had when I was a kid. She was killed by a car.”
She turned to stare at me doubtfully, but made no comment. Both her parents are Russian, a suspicious breed. Her father lived in San Diego, her mother in San Francisco, what they had called a trial separation. I suspected it was messing-around time in both cities.
She had decided in the night, she told me, to reside in Westwood for a while. I had the feeling she doubted my fidelity. She had suggested at one time that I could be a younger clone of Uncle Vartan.
She left and I sat. I had promised Mrs. Bishop that I would “get right on it.” Where would I start? The three kids I had not questioned yesterday were now in school. And there was very little likelihood that they would have any useful information on the present whereabouts of Janice Bishop. Leslie Denton was my last best hope.
I took the Times and a cup of coffee out to the office and sat at my desk. Terrible Tony Tuscani, I read in the sports page, had out-pointed Mike (the Hammer) Mulligan in a ten-round windup last night in Las Vegas. The writer thought Tony was a cinch to cop the middleweight crown. In my fifth amateur fight I had kayoed Tony halfway through the third round. Was I in the wrong trade?
And then the thought came to me that an antique Kerman was not the level of stolen merchandise one would take to an ordinary fence. A burglar sophisticated enough to outfox a complicated alarm system should certainly know that. He would need to find a buyer who knew about Oriental rugs.
Uncle Vartan was on the phone when I went down. When he had finished talking I voiced the thought I’d had upstairs.
“It makes sense,” he agreed. “So?”
“I thought, being in the trade, you might know of one.”
“I do,” he said. “Ismet Bey. He has a small shop in Santa Monica. He deals mostly in imitation Orientals and badly worn antiques. I have reason to know he has occasionally bought stolen rugs.”
“Why don’t you
phone him,” I suggested, “and tell him you have a customer who is looking for a three-by-five Kerman?”
His face stiffened. “You are asking me to talk to a Turk?”
I said lamely, “I didn’t know he was a Turk.”
“You know now,” he said stiffly. “If you decide to phone him, use a different last name.”
I looked him up in the phone book and called. A woman answered. I asked for Ismet. She told me he was not in at the moment and might not be in until this afternoon. She identified herself as his wife and asked if she could be of help.
“I certainly hope so,” I said. “My wife and I have been scouring the town for an antique Kerman. We have been unsuccessful so far. Is it possible you have one?”
“We haven’t,” she said. “But I am surprised to learn you haven’t found one. There must be a number of stores that have at least one in stock. The better stores, I mean, of course.”
An honest woman married to a crooked Turk. I said, “Not a three-by-five. We want it for the front hall.”
“That might be more difficult,” she said. “But Mr.—”
“Stein,” I said. “Peter Stein.”
“Mr. Stein,” she continued, “my husband has quite often found hard-to-find rugs. Do you live in Santa Monica?”
“In Beverly Hills.” I gave her my phone number. “If I’m not here, please leave a message on my answering machine.”
“We will. I’ll tell my husband as soon as he gets here. If you should find what you’re looking for in the meantime—”
“I’ll let you know immediately,” I assured her.
I temporarily changed the name on my answering machine from Pierre Apoyan Investigative Service to a simple Peter. Both odars and kinsmen would recognize me by that name.
Back to sitting and waiting. I felt slightly guilty about sitting around when Mrs. Bishop was paying me by the hour. But only slightly. Mrs. Whitney Bishop would never make my favorite-persons list.
Uncle Vartan was born long after the Turkish massacre of his people. But he knew the brutal history of that time as surely as the young Jews know the history of the Holocaust—from the survivors.
I read the rest of the news that interested me in the Times and drank another cup of coffee. I was staring down at the street below around noon when my door opened.
It was Cheryl. She must have been coming up as I was looking down. She had driven in for a sale at I. Magnin, she told me. “And as long as I was in the neighborhood—”
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