King Maybe

by Timothy Hallinan

  “Biehl,” I said. “B-I-E-H—”

  “Officer Biehl, I think you can go now. For the moment anyway.”

  The cop’s eyebrows came together over the bridge of his nose, an expression that subtracted many points from his apparent IQ. “Go? Where?” “I don’t care. To your car, I suppose. Or the commissary. Go someplace comfortable. Get a doughnut.”

  “But this guy . . . I mean, you gotta—”

  “Mr. Bender is a professional with a rich trove of experience,” Granger said, “and he knows when he’s fucked.”

  I said, “Yes, actually, I do.”

  “So, good, good. You can run along, Officer, Officer . . .”

  “Biehl,” I said. “You want me to spell it again?”

  “Not necessary. Interesting spelling, though, isn’t it?”

  Biehl said, “Is it?”

  Granger raised one hand and wiggled the tips of his fingers at the cop. “Bye-bye.”

  “Those must be some donations,” I said. I was sitting on the couch, and Granger was in the Regency chair across the table from me.

  “It takes so little to make them happy,” he said. “Now that everyone hates them for shooting unarmed people on what seems to be a racially selective basis, and now that they’ve been outfitted by the Department of Defense until the friendly old cop on the beat poking, along in his shirtsleeves, looks like one of the emperor’s troops in Star Wars. And then there’s the mind-set that goes with all that firepower.”

  “You’re going to say that thing about the nail, aren’t you?”

  “As the ancient Japanese saying goes,” Granger continued as though I hadn’t spoken, “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

  “Actually, that ancient saying was popularized in 1966,” I said, “by a psychologist named Abraham Maslow. The Japanese saying is ‘The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.’”

  Granger looked at me, waiting for me to shift in my seat. When I did, mostly to move things along, he said, “I can get that cop back up here anytime you cease to interest me.”

  “But you won’t,” I said.

  He sucked in the corners of his mouth.

  “You’ve gone through a lot to set this up,” I said. “Stringing Jake along about his movie—”

  “Not entirely,” he said, and then he waved his words away. “I mean, yes, I used Ultra Violet or whatever it’s called to persuade Jake to get you in here—”

  “To set me up,” I said. “Good old Jake.”

  “But you shouldn’t blame him. He wants it so badly. And actually, I’m not entirely opposed to the idea of the film.”

  “Really. Who wrote the coverage about it being . . . I don’t know, some old hack’s swipe at redemption?”

  “I did.”

  “And who wrote the version you probably showed Jake, about how it could do everything except prevent global warming?”

  “I did.”

  I let my spine touch the back of the couch for the first time. “I had the same reaction, sort of.”

  “Which one?”

  “Both of them.”

  He treated me to the first real smile I’d seen, giving me a glimpse of either a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of cosmetic dentistry or the set of teeth evolution has been working its way up to for millions of years. “Yes,” he said, “Jake is a terrible old ball of rags, but the idea has something behind it, even if it’s only a test of hubris. At first I thought that was why he might have given it to me, thinking that my ego was so big I’d take the dare, but the two times we talked about it, his sincerity was heartbreaking. You know what I mean? He’s not used to being sincere. He’s awful at it. And then, you know, you can’t completely dismiss his sense of what makes a movie. You’ve undoubtedly seen the ones that made him famous.”

  “Not since I was six or seven.”

  He gave me a gaze that in a more demonstrative face might have been described as interested. “Why not?”

  “Well, don’t take this personally, but I think of Hollywood as the beached whale of popular culture.”

  “I’m sure you can sustain the metaphor, but—”

  “Slowly caving in, crushing itself under the weight of its budgets and its compromises.”

  Granger nodded, but he was clearly just waiting to get his revenge for my having interrupted him. “Probably more effective left unsaid. And the other reason you shouldn’t completely blame Jake for roping you in here is because I told him about the upside, for you, of my proposal, and he probably thinks he’s doing you a—”

  “You went through all this to make a proposal?”

  “If there were no upside, it would be a threat, I’ll admit it. But there is an upside, and it’s considerable. That makes it a proposal. You’re here to discuss how you avoid the threat and profit from the upside.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes.

  “Here it is, the elevator pitch. You listening?”

  “Sorry, I always fade out when people begin to talk about the upside. It’s usually so embarrassing.”

  “You can sit up and listen or you can go take a ride with Officer . . . Officer . . .”

  “Biehl.” I opened my eyes. “You have trouble with names, don’t you?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Contempt,” he said. “Now, listen to me, it’s not complicated. I’m going to divorce my wife. She doesn’t know that yet. Before I let her in on my plans, I want to remove some things from the list of community-property items. You’re going to steal them.”

  “From where?”

  “My house, of course.”

  “What are they?”

  “Odds and ends. Some very good jewelry I gave her in various guilty moments. Most importantly, a painting. By Turner.”

  I said, “You’re shitting me.”

  “A good one,” he said, “even relative to other Turners. Probably the best in private hands. It’s a sunrise at sea.”

  “So you set it up for me to rob the house, and I go in with a shopping list of the stuff you want. And you trust me not to take other things?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “You can take anything that appeals to you. I’ll have pulled out the little pieces I actually care about the day before, but there will be plenty left. Treat the place like a supermarket on one of those shows where people race up and down the aisles with a shopping cart.”

  “Taking your stuff.”

  “Of course.” His tone suggested that we were approaching the edge of his attention span. “If you take only her things, it would be a trifle obvious, wouldn’t it? You can take all you can carry. That’s part of the upside.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  I said, reflexively, “Seventy-five.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  I said, “Wait.”

  “This is the mark of the small-time mind,” he said. “Underpricing yourself to begin with and then thinking you can negotiate when the door’s been closed.”

  I can absorb a lot for $75K. “Paid how?”

  “In small bills, used and not sequenced, half up front and half when you give me the things I want you to take. You can sell everything else you grab. Do you have a good fence?”

  “Do I ever.” If I could get hold of him. If, by now, the Slugger hadn’t beaten him into a quart of guava jelly.

  “Good, because some of the things you choose, if your eye is as sharp for other items as it is for cowboy boots, will need to be handled sensitively. I wouldn’t want them being traced back to me.”

  “Me neither, especially since it would have to be through me.”

  “So.” He tapped his nails, which were covered in clear polish, against the marble of the table. He cr
ossed his legs and looked at his boot. “Does Dubya really—”

  “He does.”

  “That stings. Oh, well, it makes sense that he’d know all about cowboy boots. Probably a dab hand with a rope and a heifer, too.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “He’s afraid of horses.”

  He shrugged. The image of Dubya quailing before a horse didn’t engage him. “Aren’t you interested in the details?”

  “Sorry. I get sidetracked. What about the details?”

  “The money,” he said. “Half up front, as I said, which means now.” He reached inside the leather vest and came up with a thick envelope, which he dropped on the table. Then he pulled out another, from the left side of the vest, and leaned forward to get at his hip pocket for a third. He pushed them across the table at me. “One thousand, eight hundred, and seventy-four twenties and two tens. They ran out of twenties. Too thick for one or even two envelopes. From dozens of sources, none of them directly linked to me.”

  “What if I’d started at a hundred thousand?”

  “I would have been wrong,” he said. “But you have no idea how rarely I’m wrong. Anyway, you’ll get another fifty from the stuff you take, if you’re creative about it. Maybe more. And afterward, of course, the other half.”

  “When do I go?” I said.

  “Thursday night.”

  “Tomorrow night? Not enough time. I haven’t even seen the house.”

  He shrugged. “That’s when it is.” He leaned forward and shoved the envelopes a little closer to me. “Thursday I’m taking the little woman up to San Francisco for the opening night of some opera or other. It’s the only night for months that the house will be empty, just you and thirty-four thousand square feet of expensive things. You can go in any time after seven and steal to your heart’s content until midnight. Our plane back will land at LAX a little after midnight, unless it takes off late or early.”

  I said, “Early?”

  “Private plane. I’ll call if we’re going to be early. I’m making it easy for you. You’ll have a floor plan with all the interesting places marked. I’m going to give you the code to the gate so you can drive right in. And you’ll have the number to punch up to turn off the alarm when you go in and then out again. And all the other alarm info.”

  “What kind of an alarm?”

  “An absolute mother,” he said. “I’m going to tell you all about it. The one thing you’re going to need to think about is the alarm.”

  16

  Zillow

  “I know what I told you before,” I said to Anime. “And it’s still important, but this is urgent.”

  “More urgent than your daughter?” She was speaking more loudly than I would have liked, but the restaurant was jammed with people in the grip of a late-night jones for Mexican food. This was the second time in a few months we’d eaten in the very same booth.

  “They’re both urgent,” I said. I looked around, but no one seemed to be eavesdropping. “That’s why I want to hire both of you. So you can double up.” I picked up my beer. “And how can you guys be out at this hour? It’s a school night.” It was almost eleven.

  “Oh, please,” Lilli said, with a level of exaggerated patience I would have thought it would take decades to acquire. She grabbed another handful of tortilla chips.

  “I’m sleeping at Lilli’s,” Anime said, indicating Lilli with both hands to help me follow along. She brought the hands back to herself. “Lilli’s sleeping at my house.”

  “We’re both staying in the storage unit,” Lilli said with her mouth full. “Monty is off somewhere, so we have the vending machines all to ourselves.”

  Their nominal commander, who called himself Monty Carlo, had bought an entire storage facility and combined two of the garage-size units into a surprisingly plush headquarters from which to mount computer raids. The kitchen, in addition to a small stove and sink, had a great many vending machines.

  “Paradise,” I said. “How long will that work?”

  “Well, my parents are in Hong Kong,” Anime said, “and my brother, who’s supposed to be taking care of me, doesn’t.” She reached for the chips, and Lilli slapped her hand.

  “And my mom would miss her vodka before she’d miss me,” Lilli said.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I said.

  Lilli gave me a level gaze. The silence stretched out until I filled it.

  “If you’re staying at the storage facility, how’d you get here?”

  “I drove Monty’s car,” Lilli said. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said if you have to ask, don’t bother. Anime’s shirt didn’t say anything; it depicted the black silhouette, on red, of a girl reading a book. A thick arrow rose up out of the book and into the air, then down through the silhouette’s head and straight into her heart.

  “You’re not old enough to drive—” I said, but then someone bumped my elbow, hard enough to make me slop beer onto the front of my pants.

  “Food in a minute,” said the waitress, without slowing as she passed.

  “She’s mad at you,” Lilli said approvingly.

  Anime was messing with her phone. “Here,” she said. “Before we get to the new project, whatever it is.” She slid the phone across the table to me. On it was a picture of the Spirit of Discontent, age fifteen or so: small, suspicious eyes, face turned just slightly away from the camera as though preparing to dodge, mouth pursed as if about to spit.

  Lilli said, “Isn’t she wretched?”

  “Patricia Anne Gribbin, a.k.a. Patty,” Anime said.

  “And also Leatherface,” Lilli said.

  I said, “That’s unkind.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Lilli said, giving me arched Lucille Ball eyebrows. “That’s what someone called her on Facebook. Her skin is pretty rough.”

  “Where’d you get this?” I said as the waitress, who had flirted with me the first time I ate here with Anime and Lilli, began to put plates in front of the girls. Anime had a burrito big enough to get its own driver’s license, soaked in red chili sauce. Lilli, who’d said she needed to lose six pounds and who’d monopolized the basket of tortilla chips since we sat down, had a large green salad. I had nothing so far. Without a glance at me, the waitress wheeled and headed back to the kitchen.

  “You blew it,” Anime said. “Before, I mean. She’s hot, Maria is.”

  “I’ve got a girlfriend,” I said. “I think.”

  “Oho,” Lilli said.

  I asked, “Where’d you get the picture?”

  “High-school yearbook,” Anime said. “It was online. What’s with this girlfriend?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I said. “You know men can’t talk about feelings.”

  “Actually,” Anime said, “Lilli and I don’t know all that much about men.”

  “By choice,” Lilli said immediately. “It’s like trichinosis. I know it’s out there, and I’m glad someone understands it, but it doesn’t have to be me.”

  “We’re not that bad. Not all of us, I mean.”

  “No,” Lilli said. “In the spirit of fairness, some girls are pretty beastly, too.”

  I said, “You’ve both, um, done something with your hair.”

  And they had. They’d cut it off on one side only, blunt and straight as a shingle, exactly at the center of the ear. Left ear for Lilli, right for Anime. “Kind of halfway to Kim Jong Un,” I said.

  “Eeeeww,” Anime said. “He’s got sidewalls. We’ve got bobs, like in the twenties. Well, half bobs.”

  “So, I mean, it’s what? It’s supposed to make you a pair?”

  “We are a pair,” Lilli said.

  “Then why cut it on different sides?”

  Anime said, with something like pity, “You tell us.”

  I looked at them for a moment or two, working on it. Anime crossed her eyes. I said
, “Mirror image.”

  Lilli reached across the table to high-five me, and Anime took advantage of it to grab the basket of chips. “Look,” Anime said, tilting the empty basket toward me. “I’m in love with a glutton.”

  “So get more,” Lilli said. She started turning over her lettuce with her fork as though she hoped a croissant were hidden under it.

  “The game that this Patricia seems to be pulling on Rina,” I said. “It’s about . . . you know, social circles—which circles you’re in, which circles you’re not in. As I remember, it was pretty cruel.”

  “It’s a bastard,” Lilli said, digging deeper.

  “You girls do something like this with your hair, isn’t that sort of asking for it?”

  “We don’t care,” Anime said. “And we’re pretty femme, both of us. There’s some, like, plaid-shirt girls who are the lightning rods. They get all the attention.”

  Maria put down a plateful of carne asada, an inch out of reach. I leaned toward it, and just as I closed my fingers on it, she said, “Hot plate.” Then she took the empty chips basket and left.

  “Patricia,” Anime said as I blew on my fingers. “You know if she uses Line? Is she on Tumblr? Ello? Instagram? YouTube? Vine? Yik Yak?”

  “Surely you jest,” I said. “I just found out about Facebook.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” Anime was carefully unwrapping and examining her burrito, like someone looking for a missing diamond. “The personal stuff on her Facebook page is for friends only, but that’s easy to get around.”

  “Whatever you can find,” I said.

  Maria materialized and dropped a new basket of chips directly in front of Lilli, who pushed her salad aside.

  Anime raised a hand, fingers spread wide, and began to tick them off, an item at a time. “So far we’ve got her full name, her address, her birth parents’ names, her stepfather’s name—Mom and Dad seem to have split, and Mom remarried—that picture we showed you, her grade-point average in elementary, the fact that she’s allergic to peanuts, her birthday, her top-ten movies of last year—”

  “Yeah?” I said. “What was her number-one movie?”

  “That weepie about teenage cancer patients.”