As She Rides By (Vic Daniel Series)

by David Pierce

  Back outside I snuck. I peeled back the corner of the fence and wormed my way through—only snagging myself once—this time armed with hoof, trowel, and one well-chewed tennis ball.

  About five yards in, I squatted down, dug a hole, dirtied up the hoof, laid it in the hole, filled the hole up again, then imbedded King's ball halfway into the loose dirt on top. I took the umpteenth look around—still all quiet but for the traffic passing out the street.

  Then it was back out through the fence and back inside, where I stashed the trowel, closed the safe, then called my dog, once, softly. He came bounding toward me, more than ready for his first night game. He followed me eagerly through the hole in the fence. I then pretended to throw his ball, and whispered, "King! Fetch!"

  He fetched. It took him all of five seconds to sniff it out and dig it up, then he brought it back to me proudly and dropped it at my feet. What a good boy. I then hunkered my way over to the hole and dug up the hoof, with some help from the dog. As I was hefting it in one hand, I was suddenly hit by a blinding spotlight. A voice through a bullhorn told me in no uncertain terms to hold it right there, mac, I was under arrest. I held it right there. King started barking excitedly. I told him to hold it right there, too.

  A minute later a voice not coming through a bullhorn said, "OK, come on out, but slow." I climbed out slowly, keeping hold of King's collar, then straightened up slowly, the spotlight shifting to cover me.

  "Good evening, officer," I said. "My name is Victor Daniel and I can explain everything."

  "Patrolman O'Connor," the cop said. "And I've heard that before. Turn around, please." I turned around. He gave both my pockets and the small of my back a brief pat while King wagged his tail interestedly. Then he called to his buddy in the patrol car, "OK, shut 'er off, Don." Don cut the light; the cop who had frisked me holstered his weapon a touch reluctantly, I thought. "What 'cha got there?" he then inquired.

  "I dunno," I said. "A bit of old bone my dog dug up."

  "Oh yeah?" he said. "So what were you doing in there, anyway, besides trespassing?"

  "It's like this, sir," I said. "My office is right here, right next door. I stopped by on my way home to pick up a few papers I'd forgotten, then the dog wanted out, so I took him out back here and darned if I didn't see someone had cut a hole in this brand-new cyclone fence. Must have been one of the winos who used to hang out here, I figured, who got cheesed off he couldn't use the lot anymore. Anyway, King was through the hole before I could stop him; darned if he wasn't looking for that old tennis ball of his."

  "Oh yeah?" the cop said, rapidly becoming bored with the whole affair, I was glad to see.

  "Then he started digging away," I said, "and he wouldn't come when I called, so I had to climb in, tearing my new sweater, by the way, and go chasing that damn mutt. Jeez, my girl will kill me when she sees this sleeve."

  The cop looked at me, then at King, then said, "Mind if I have a quick look inside?"

  "Why, not at all, officer," I said. I held the door open for him, then shooed King in, then went in myself. The cop took a rapid look at the tiny kitchenette, poked his head in the equally small bathroom, then strolled into the office section and gave it a speedy once-over. What was there to see, after all? It was just an office. By the time he'd turned back to me, I had discreetly deposited the hoof in the kitchen sink.

  "What kind of work did you say you did, Mr. Daniel?" he then asked me idly.

  I looked shame-faced. "Don't hold it against me," I said, "but I'm a private investigator." The cop guffawed loudly. "Listen, officer, whatever you do, please don't tell ol' Lou, your desk sarge up at the station, that you caught me chasing my dog on private property, he'll have a heart attack laughing."

  The cop laughed again, then said, "You know Lou? Wouldn't think of it, pal." Then he said, "Tell you what. You got a bit of wire, what you do is rig that fence shut best you can, and we'll forget about it."

  I thanked him profusely, and ushered him out. Then I dug up a bit of wire, and refastened the fence as best I could. Then I laughed, if somewhat ruefully. The bad news was it was too late to go back to Evonne's gentle caresses. The good news was I now had not only a witness to King's discovery, but a cop witness, beggora.

  I collected hoof and dog, and went home. And, alone on my hermit's cot—except for one canine—I tossed and turned restlessly for a full moment before falling asleep.

  PIECES AND BITS.

  Bits and pieces.

  Tattered fragments unconnected to the great puzzle.

  Broken shards strewn hither and yon on the outskirts of a once-great city.

  These, amigos míos, are what my life consists of, much like Injun Joe's wardrobe. Yes, I know I've said that before, but it doesn't make it any the less true. And many of the bits are dull and many of the pieces boring or trivial or both. I usually don't bother narrating the dull bits, because they're dull, but just for once, to give you some idea how I pass the time when I'm not hobnobbing with rock stars or being shot at—and, mercifully, both of those occur rarely—here are a few examples:

  Wednesday morning: After dropping off the hoof at school, I stood in a door watching nothing happen. Wednesday afternoon, 2:00–5:30: I sat in a car watching nothing happen. Most of Thursday: Twenty-one people did not recognize the young girl in the overexposed photo I was showing them. Rest of Thursday: I delivered four summonses to four different people without once having to be sneaky, devious, or even clever; all I had to do was ring the bell and hand 'em over. All these chores were for Mel the Swell, by the way. Penultimate examples: Friday morning I spent two hours filling in and getting notarized and sending off the account of a traffic accident I'd not only witnessed recently but had been foolish enough to say so to the innocent party involved, a pretty young thing, as it happened, who'd reminded me ever so slightly of June Allyson.

  Ultimate example, and the dullest of them all: Friday noon, bought new pair of reading glasses because the pair I had just totally vanished somehow. How do things do that? How can they be there on your head one minute and be instantaneously transported into another dimension the next?

  Saturday afternoon, things started livening up a trifle. I was in the office applying a few artistic touches to the bill for services rendered I was drawing up for Mel when Jerry, of Tom 'n' Jerry, called to say they were off to Tex's studio to cut a couple of demos and did I want to come along? I said, sure, man, it would give me a chance to look around and also to bring them up-to-date.

  The boys pulled up about a half an hour later in their rented Fairlane, and gave me a toot on the horn. I collected the folder that contained all the accounts and contracts and such-like that Tex had loaned me, then collected the dog, then off we went to Norwalk. To get to Norwalk from me what you do is pick up the Hollywood Freeway just south of me, take it through Hollywood until it becomes the Santa Ana, and follow that southeastward through May wood, Commerce, and Bell Gardens, and there you are. If you had a car full of screaming, overweight kids or were just plain mentally impaired, you could continue on to Knotts Berry Farm, or, even worse, Disneyland.

  Tom, who was driving, wheeled us smartly off the freeway at Bloomfield, turned along Alondra Boulevard, and then immediately turned into, and then parked in, a short, no-name, dead-end alley right in front of the studio, according to the large sign over the front door that said "Western Music, Inc."

  On the drive, I'd given the boys the details of my encounter with Dick and Annie Distler which, in sum, was that I thought they both were terrific and they both had nothing but praises to sing about Tex's business ethics. In other words, all was kosher so far, as I'd said in the message I'd left for them a few days ago. They did not seem inordinately pleased with the news. I wondered briefly if they really wanted to go through all the hassles of getting together again, what with all the work and uncertainty involved—would I? Merely to be on top of it all again, to have money rolling in, stretch limos at my beck and call, wall-to-wall gorgeous groupies cluttering up my pe
nthouse, and Johnny Carson holding on the other line? Music lovers, I'll leave that one to you.

  While the boys unpacked their three guitars from the trunk, King lubricated the side of a nearby garbage can, and I stretched. Then Tom produced a key to the studio, opened up, and in we filed. He turned off the alarm system first, then switched some lights on. As everyone these days knows what a recording studio looks like, I will describe Jonesy's but briefly: Inside the front door was a small, carpeted receptionist's area with an unoccupied metal desk and a couple of occasional chairs. Through an archway beside the desk there was a much larger rec room, or rumpus room, or turning on room, call it what you will, complete with pinball machine, pool table, a space invader game, a Coke dispenser, and assorted other conveniences thoughtfully provided by the management in a hopeful attempt to so divert visiting bands and their pals and their gals and their roadies that they might actually refrain from tearing the place apart for once.

  A heavy, soundproof door with a light above it led into the control room, of which the mighty thirty-six-track board, it being itself about the size of a pool table, occupied about half the available floor space. The rest was taken up by large reel-to-reel machines that did the actual recording, plus a couple of leather settees for the kibbitzers. On the far side of the board, soundproof glass, giving a view into the actual recording studio itself. Another huge, counterweighted and padded door gave access into this inner sanctum, into which Jerry promptly went, while Tom began activating the board.

  "Nice of old Jonesy to give you guys the run of the place," I said.

  "Umm," Tom said. "We're like two kids in a sweetshop, we are. I myself figure he's a frustrated muso, he's always hanging around. You'll see, he'll be by later just to see what us geniuses are up to. Oh no he won't, I tell a lie, Saturdays he and his missus always pop in about noon, then he takes her for a picnic in the country."

  "Like, exactly what are you genuises up to, man?"

  "We are laying down one last guitar track, man," he said. "Then, man, like, we is laying down some vocals."

  "Sounds cool to me, baby," I said. "Can I help?"

  "Do you know harmony?"

  "Maybe," I said. "Hum me the first few bars just in case."

  He shook his head dolefully and went over to switch the reel-to-reel on.

  "What I could do," I said, "is have a look around."

  "Now there's an idea," Tom said. He tossed me his key ring. "The little key is for the secretary's bottom drawer. In there are the keys to everything else."

  "Ta ta for now," I said. As I was withdrawing, Tom was saying into the small microphone that stuck up from the middle of the board something about him wanting a level, please, mate. I didn't even bother hanging around to find out what the heck he was going to do with a level, of all things—maybe check and see if one of the records was warped.

  I collected the keys, and King, and had a good look around all that there was to look around. One of the two doors in the rec room that wasn't padded and soundproof led to a bathroom; I looked around that. The other led down a short corridor to the shipping room, and I looked around that. As far as I could tell, it looked exactly like a shipping room—there were shelves of singles, albums, tapes, and compact discs all piled up neatly and labeled, there were large rolls of brown wrapping paper and a lot of sticky tape and stacks of stick-on labels for parcels and one small desk with an "In" and "Out" tray and a covered-up typewriter and a stamp machine and a spike and, among other office staples, a thick, leather-bound ledger, into which I peeked.

  Inside, as one might well have expected, was a daily record of what orders were received, how, at what time, and from whom, with a note of which orders had been prepaid, and the sums involved, and the means of payment. Facing these entries was a record of when the orders were filled, how delivery was made and the costs thereof, total amount due from each account, when the account was due, and so on and so on. I must say it all seemed boringly normal to me. Not that I expected anything else, but if you divide my hourly rate into $2,000 you come up with a certain number of hours and in good conscience I had to put those hours in doing something, after all.

  I looked around for something else to look at. I looked at a small worktable in the corner. It had a vise clamped to it and tools neatly affixed to a sheet of pegboard above it, and a couple of oil tins under it. I looked at a coatrack beside it, and took note of one pr. heavy gloves, one imitation leather jacket, one (cracked) crash helmet, and one dirty scarf. The clues were mounting up fast. Stepping over a small portable metal ramp, I unlocked, and then slid open the back door, then poked my head out. A sign beside the aluminum door read, "Continual Deliveries—Do Not Block Or You Will Be Towed Away. City Bylaw 1227." So I locked up again, told King that the alarm system seemed satisfactory to me, and that was it. Aside from replacing the keys, which I did, and putting the folder with all Tex's papers on the secretary's desk, which I did, along with a short note saying, "For Tex, from V. D. Thanks Ever So," what else was there to do? I could only think of one other remote possibility, so, as the phone on the secretary's desk hummed back at me when I picked it up to check, I called my brother Tony's place of work, which was in the basement of the LAPD Records building in downtown LA, not that far from Mel's, actually. It was not, however, my kid brother Anthony with whom I wished to parlez-vous. It rarely was, alas. Or maybe not alas, quien sabe.

  Who I did wish to speak to was Tony's boss Sneezy, who worked a computer terminal across the room from him. Sneezy always reminded me of that archfoe of Bugs Bunny, the little guy with the red hair and red mustache who was invariably boiling with rage. Sneezy had an incurable malady, which was lucky as far as I was concerned, because it kept him broke. In case some of you cannot divine from such slim evidence what his malady was—because, true, he might well be an inveterate follower of the sport of kings, for example, which would certainly keep one broke—Sneezy's malady came wrapped in silks, furs, and gossamer, which left after their passing lingering traces of expensive fragrances, often had French names, and sometimes had limbs so breathtakingly long and shapely they could reduce the strongest man to jelly. Even Samson. Even Samson after he couldn't see anymore, I forget just why. I think it had something to do with the Gaza strip, which was the first time he saw Delilah with no veils on.

  Sneezy kept marrying them, too; he'd been wed at least as often as Mickey Rooney. Come to think of it, he was about the same size . . . remind me to write a slim monograph some time on the number of times shrimps get married compared with steady, loyal, devoted guys over, say, at random, six foot six. Anyway, the switchboard put me through to him, and he growled, "Records," at me.

  "Hi, Sneezy!" I said brightly. "It's me again. Riddle me this—what is green, about two and a half by six inches in size, and has a picture of Ulysses S. Grant on it?"

  "You riddle me this, Daniel," he said. "What's the same size but it's got a picture of Benjamin Franklin flying a kite on it?"

  "One hundred bucks U.S.," I said. "That's a bit steep, isn't it, pal? You don't even know what I want yet."

  "As for part one," he said, "so ask someone else, then. As for part two, I do know what you want, it's what you always want."

  "OK, OK," I said. "You got it." What the hell—it wasn't as if it was my money I was spending. "The name's L. R. Jones. Possible AKAs, Tex and Jonesy."

  "The initials," he said, "standing for what?"

  "Hang on," I opened up the folder and on one of the contracts found out. "L for Leonard, R for Richard," I told him. I gave him Tex's home and business addresses.

  "Hang on," he said. A minute later he said, "The national's out, I'll get back to you, where are you?" I told him what number I was at, and hung up.

  I twiddled my thumbs. Then I poked my head into the control room to see what was goin' down in there. Tom immediately told me to shush up, then told his partner, who was standing in front of a floor mike, earphones on, in one of the recording cubicles, to take it again and watch his pitch,
please. Jerry made a well-known, one-fingered gesture in our direction. Tom rewound the master, then sat at the board again, then pointed one finger at Jerry. Guitar music began. Quite pretty, too, if you like that sort of thing. Then Jerry began singing something about being in Mozambique after the war and finding this teahouse on the shore that had a picture of a faded movie queen torn from the pages of some ancient magazine on the wall.

  When I tiptoed out he was warbling something about a parrot. Boy, I thought, could those powder puffs use a lyric with a little balls to it. A few minutes later Sneezy phoned back.

  "Zilch," he said, "on your client statewise."

  "I am unsurprised," I said.

  "Zilch," he said, "on your client countrywise."

  "And, no doubt zilch on my client Interpolwise, which probably isn't worth the trouble," I said. "Thanks anyway, Sneezy. Your money is in the mail."

  "Don't make me laugh, Daniel," he said. "I laughed already once today."

  "No! Well, I do declare! I bet it was when you heard your dream girl, Miss Zsa Zsa Gabor, got arrested for socking some poor defenseless six-foot traffic cop."

  "No," he said. "As a matter of fact, it wasn't. It had nothing to do with Miss Gabor. My second wife just got divorced from her third husband after four weeks of married bliss."

  "I fail to see anything remotely amusing in that," I said. "Tragic, I'd call it."

  "Easy to see you never been married, Daniel, " he said. "Oh yeah. Talking about wives and other unnatural disasters, your client's got one. And guess what she's got?"