Romeo's Hammer

by James Scott Bell

  Pascal said the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. He was talking about faith in God there, but he might just as well have been talking about love.

  Ira challenged me to a game of chess, and that seemed like just the ticket. Ira got the white pieces and chose to open with his Queen’s pawn. I came at him with the Cambridge Springs Defense, a favorite of Dr. Emanuel Lasker. He’s something of a hero of mine. A doctorate in mathematics and a writer of philosophical speculations, he also happened to be chess champion of the world for twenty-seven years.

  His most effective move, they say, was to blow a plume of cigar smoke at an opponent who was deep in thought.

  My kind of guy.

  The game with Ira lasted two-and-a-half hours and went to thirty-four moves. When I got his King and Rook in a vicious Knight fork, he resigned.

  “Bravo,” he said.

  “Still got it,” I said.

  “I shall take it from you next time.”

  “Look forward to it.”

  That night I dreamed of chess. I was playing against the devil. He was smoking a cigar. I said, “If you blow smoke at me I’ll pull your horns off.”

  “Go ahead and try,” the devil said.

  That’s when the dream ended.

  THE NEXT MORNING I drove out to the Valley to meet with Ray Christie. On the way, the news reported that a massive fire had broken out downtown in the early morning hours, taking out a huge apartment tower that was under construction, damaging two other buildings and leaving freeways and roads closed.

  Officials suspected arson.

  The developer of the project vowed to rebuild.

  And I thought about the nut with that published diatribe, the one who claimed to have exploded the development near the Getty.

  I MET RAY Christie at a little café called Aroma in Studio City. He said he’d found it driving around one night when he couldn’t sleep. It’s a coffee place with a hipster veneer. Maybe that helped him feel closer to his daughter.

  He bought me a coffee and we sat outside at a back table.

  I gave him what I had, leaving out the parts where somebody tried to kill me. I figured he was dealing with enough stress. He certainly looked like it. There were bags under his eyes and his hands shook a little.

  “Do you think the police will ever find her?” he said, in a tone that sounded like he meant her corpse.

  Of course that’s a question I couldn’t answer. But it was a desperate father’s plea. “If they and I are both working on it, we’ll be operating on all cylinders.”

  “Don’t they say that if you don’t find somebody in the first forty-eight hours they’re probably dead?”

  “I think that’s only for children.”

  “She’s my child,” he said.

  That got to me.

  I said, “How many times did you talk to your daughter before you came out here?”

  “Only twice. On the phone.”

  “Was there anything that she said that might lead you to believe she was hiding anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “A person. Somebody she might’ve been involved with, or afraid of. Afraid to talk to you about it?”

  He thought about it a moment and shook his head. “No, she was only upbeat. Like she had found some new thing to get involved in. She was always getting involved in things when she was little. She’d go crazy about something for a while, then drop it for something else. It was all in for her. She never did anything halfway.”

  “Does the name Lindsay mean anything to you?”

  He thought about it, looking down at the table. “Yes, it does. Lindsay. A friend of Brooklyn’s. When she first came out here she told me she was going to stay with her.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Yeah, yeah … DeSalvo. That was it. I remembered it because of the Boston Strangler.”

  “Albert DeSalvo,” I said.

  “Yeah. I remember thinking that’s a real unfortunate name to have.”

  “Did she give you an address, a phone number?”

  He shook his head and took a sip of coffee. He had to hold the coffee cup with both hands.

  “Maybe you ought to check with a doctor,” I said.

  “It’s just lack of sleep,” he said. “They say some of your best ideas can come when you tired.”

  “Your body needs rest, Mr. Christie.”

  “Do you have somebody close to you, Mr. Romeo? A daughter or a wife or girlfriend?”

  “Right now it’s a friend. He’s a rabbi.”

  “I’m not a religious man, but sometimes I wish I was.”

  “I think that’s the same for a lot of people.”

  AFTER THE MEETING with Ray Christie I drove Spinoza to Bat’s Ink Eclectic on Melrose. The front door led to a set of stairs. At the foot of the stairs was a print of a tattooed lady from old carnival days. A dialogue bubble over her head said, “You must be 18 years of age or older to go upstairs, Cutie Pie.”

  I figured I qualified on both counts and went up.

  The wood-and-glass doors opened into a nicely appointed reception area. This was clearly no kiosk at the waterfront with an old salt named Dusty ready to mark your forearm with Mom. This was high-class presented to upscale customers.

  A young woman with black hair, black leotard, and a set of sleeves down to her wrists and halfway onto the back of her hands, looked up from a desk and greeted me with a smile.

  “Welcome to Bat’s,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. I was hoping I could talk to the proprietor. Would that be Bat?”

  She nodded. “He’s with someone right now. Would you like to wait?”

  “I would.”

  “What were you interested in getting? Or would you like to see some ideas?”

  “I’ll dream some up.”

  “That’s cool. Can I see your arm?”

  I showed her.

  “That’s Latin, isn’t it?” she said.

  “It’s nice to know someone still recognizes the language,” I said.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It either means truth conquers all things, or make mine pastrami on rye.”

  She frowned, then laughed. “That’s funny. Or not.”

  “Not?”

  “Wee don’t like to think about bad translations on somebody’s skin, you know?”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Like when Britney got that Chinese symbol on her hip.”

  “Britney?”

  “Spears.”

  “I remember her.”

  “It was supposed to be Chinese for mysterious. But it actually meant strange. Then she got Hebrew script for God, but it was misspelled.”

  “Bummer,” I said.

  “And David Beckham had his wife’s name inked on his arm in Sanskrit. And misspelled her name.”

  “Sanskrit’s a tricky language.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said. Then she paused, her eyes doing a quick scan of the canvas that was my body.

  “You with anybody?” she said.

  “Nope, came alone.”

  “I mean, with. Like in your personal life.”

  “Are you putting a move on me?” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “That’s what the move is for.”

  She smiled.

  “I’m flattered,” I said.

  “You should be. I’m very picky.”

  “But in the interest of full disclosure, I am with someone.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “It might be.”

  “Then you’re still on the market!”

  My mouth was dry.

  “See,” she said, “way I think about it, you don’t close off all your options just because you’ve got one over here that might work out.” She put her arm out to the side and opened her hand, like she was one half of
a scale. “What you do”—she put her other hand out now and made a juggling motion––“is play around, try things, you know?”

  “Boy, you make it tough.”

  “Then surrender.”

  “I feel like The Alamo.”

  “The what?”

  “The little mission where a small group of Americans were confronted by thousands of Mexican troops.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “It happened a long time ago. They were asked to surrender, and refused.”

  “What happened?”

  “They all died.”

  “There you go!” she said. “You don’t want to die, to you?”

  I laughed. It felt good to laugh. “You’re going to go a long way in this world. I must regretfully refuse. But I want to thank you for asking.”

  “I tried,” she said. “Why don’t you have a seat and think about it?”

  “Always good to think,” I said, and quickly sought a chair.

  TEN MINUTES LATER a woman came into the reception room with a smile. With her was a short, bald man with tat sleeves of crowded complexity. The man consulted with the flirtatious receptionist and the woman plopped her purse on the desk.

  Then the man turned to me and stuck out his hand. “I’m Bat.”

  “Phil.”

  “I got the colors if you got the time.”

  We shook hands.

  “What’s on your arm?” he asked.

  I showed him.

  “What’s that? Some kind of name?”

  “It’s a Latin.”

  “Right on,” he said. “How ’bout something above and below?”

  “I’m not here to get inked,” I said.

  “No? Then what are you here for?”

  “To date me,” the receptionist said.

  Bat looked at her and back at me. “Watch out for her.”

  “Maybe we can talk in your studio,” I said.

  He took me there. It was large room with a hardwood floor and two ornate tattoo chairs in the middle. With a couple of décor changes it could have been an old-school barber shop.

  “You sure you’re not in the market?” Bat said. “Because you are a fresh canvas that is just crying out for art.”

  “I’m trying to track down someone,” I said. “I think you might know who it is.”

  “Track down? That doesn’t sound good.”

  “I work for a lawyer.”

  “That never sounds good,” he said.

  “You have a point,” I said. “But it’s important. It involves a valuable piece of property I’m trying to recover for the owner. I believe this fellow I’m looking for may be a crucial link—or maybe I should say, a crucial ink—in this chain.”

  Bat smiled. “I like you, Phil. But what have I got to do with it?”

  “The guy I’m looking for has a sort of gladiator tat, covers his chest here, shoulder, then goes down his arm. Black ink, looks like chain mail.”

  “Yeah, that’s my work all right. I know exactly who you’re talking about.”

  “Great.”

  He said nothing.

  “Let’s start with his name,” I said.

  “No can do,” Bat said. “You know, all that’s confidential.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” I said.

  “Just the way I do business.”

  “Your business is making money, right?”

  “And customer loyalty.”

  I nodded. “And this guy is someone you feel loyalty to?”

  At that he didn’t say anything, either. But he frowned a little.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Well ...”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It’s just that this guy’s an …” He paused for a second, then finished with a common urban vernacular for an undesirable.

  “Then maybe loyalty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I said. “Loyalty is owed where loyalty is earned.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Would a little financial incentive help?” I said.

  “I’ve looked a lot of people in the face,” Bat said. “In my line that’s what you do. You get so you can tell things.”

  I nodded. “You can observe a lot just by watching, as Yogi Berra would say.”

  “Hey, you know about Yogi Berra?”

  “My grandfather was a Yankee fan,” I said.

  “Cool! Mine, too.”

  “Serendipity,” I said.

  He got thoughtful again. “So yeah, faces. I’m gonna ask you something straight up, and you answer me straight up, okay?”

  “You got a deal.”

  “If I give you this name, you gonna do harm to this guy?”

  “That is not my intent or purpose,” I said. “All I want is to retrieve a valuable item from him.”

  “What if he doesn’t give it to you?”

  “I will let the law handle that,” I said. What I meant was that I’d crack some ribs and loosen some teeth, and if Spartacus wanted to sue me, I’d let him. But I didn’t explain any further.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Bat said. “So what were you thinking this info is worth?”

  “How about a C note?”

  “Two is what I was thinking,” he said.

  “You going to dicker with me? For a simple lookup?”

  He put his hands out. “Business.”

  The strongest negotiating position you can have is the ability to walk away. The second strongest is to make the other guy think you’re going to walk away. The third strongest is the ability to read what kind of guy the other guy is.

  I said, “See you,” and turned to go.

  “Whoa,” Bat said. “Okay, one-fifty.”

  I turned.

  “So I can take my wife out to a nice dinner,” he said.

  Fishing for the bills I said, “I’m all for good marriages.”

  Bat took the money and went to a back office for a couple of minutes. I looked at the art work on the walls. He came back and gave me a slip of paper. It had a name, Rocky Boada, and an address in Reseda.

  FROM BAT’S PALACE of fine art I walked to a café with some outside tables. I sat at one that gave me a view of squat palm trees, store awnings, and pink and blue and red buildings shoulder to shoulder. And one billboard advertising the annual let-Meryl-Streep-win-another-Oscar movie.

  A waitress dressed like a beat poet from 1959 came unsmilingly to my table and handed me a menu and asked what I’d like to drink.

  “I think I’ll go wild and order a beer,” I said.

  Unsmilingly, she said, “What kind of beer would you like?”

  “Alcoholic,” I said.

  “I mean, we have a Scottish ale with a roasted pumpkin spice note, an Oktoberfest with Bavarian Hops, an IPA with citrus zest flavors—”

  “Schlitz,” I said. “Do you have Schlitz?”

  “I don’t think so. What is that?”

  “Never mind,” I said. “How about you choose one for me? Bring me one with the most zest and the least pumpkin.”

  She looked at me, yes, without a smile and tried to process the request. “Okay. I think.”

  “And some kind of cheeseburger.”

  “Do you prefer cheddar, Swiss, feta, goat—?”

  “Wait a second,” I said. I closed my eyes and touched the menu randomly with my index finger. I looked at the result.

  “I’ll have the Parisian fromage bleu. I guess.”

  “And how would you like that cooked?”

  “With a touch of sunset pink in the middle.”

  She looked at me. She didn’t smile.

  “You’re joking with me,” she said.

  “Medium would be fine,” I said.

  Then I used my phone to do a little research on Lindsay DeSalvo.

  Got her Facebook and Twitter accounts, and a reference on IMDB, the movie database.

  IMDB had some pictures of her. Her best photo showed a pretty face with auburn hair and eyes with a hint of animal-at-play in
them. Like a pre-Tom Cruise Nicole Kidman.

  According to the credits she’d been in a few movies, none of which I’d heard of. They looked like indie slasher types. She had one TV credit as “Waitress” on Two and a Half Men.

  But at the top there was a project called Dead Man’s Hand that was listed as being in pre-production. I clicked to the listing page and saw this squib: An alien from space lands in the Dakota Territory in 1875, tracking the time-traveling killer of his brother.

  I took a look at the cast and didn’t see any names I was familiar with.

  Except one.

  The actor set to play Wild Bill Hickok was none other than Jon-Scott Morrow.

  Listed two places under him, billed as “Sally,” was Lindsay DeSalvo.

  Connecting wires started snapping in the back of my neck, looking for a full charge.

  CHOMPING MY PARISIAN fromage bleu burger and sipping an ale that was affable without being chummy, I used Google Earth to scope out the neighborhood where Rocky “Spartacus” Boada lived. Reseda was one of the booming L.A. suburbs sixty years ago, when aerospace was taking off and returning GIs were having kids right and left. It’s dropped in status since the space race wheezed to a close and businesses were chased out because California’s spend-like-a-drunk and tax-like-a-king ways worked their inevitable economic consequences.

  After my fine dining, I drove there.

  And cruised by the address.

  It was a single-family home, gray with white trim. Probably built in 1960. Two-car garage. And on the side of the garage a wall-unit air conditioner sticking its butt out the window.

  I made a U-turn at the corner and came back the other way. I paused just past the garage and could hear the air conditioner humming.

  On a cool day in the Valley.

  There was also a security camera directed at the side of the garage.

  One could surmise that there was some growing going on in that garage. Hippie lettuce. And much more than the six plants the new California laws allowed for. The air conditioner was to keep things cool because of the heat generated by grow lights.

  It was a good working theory.

  One other item of note. The silver BMW in the driveway, looking very much like the one used by the would-be shooter at the Cove.

  I PARKED A few houses down and across the street.

  Joey Feint used to say, “Ninety percent of surveillance is waiting. Five percent is coffee. The other five percent is knowing where to pee.”