And then, just to make the moment more special, another dog, big enough to take the other three like aspirin, shouldered its way into the hall with a growl so low it rattled the crystals in the chandelier. The other three backed off to a safe distance, but kept their eyes on me.
There was a little creaking sound, and the chain-and I-dropped about three inches. I reflexively looked up and was rewarded by a nice eyeful of plaster dust. Then something snapped, and I dropped another three or four inches, and it was raining small pieces of ceiling. The dogs started barking in anticipation, and why not? Dinner was about to be delivered via airmail.
An idea flashed through my mind, more like an image, really, and not a particularly persuasive one. The stained glass in the door. My feet, breaking it cleanly. My body, following my feet to land uninjured and intact, on the front porch. The dogs pouring through the broken-no, no, stow that, deal with it when it’s necessary.
And what was the alternative, anyway?
I swung my legs back and forth, and, with much creaking, the chandelier and I began to travel in an arc, a huge jangling pendulum. A sound like boick heralded another drop-maybe a foot this time, but I was getting a pretty good swing going. I focused my eyes directly on the stained glass, visualized a clean passage through it, and, with the adrenaline-heightened vision of those about to die, I saw:
The thick chicken wire … running through the glass.
I had exactly enough time to think noooooooooooo before the chain pulled free from the ceiling and I was plummeting downward, way too fast, with the chandelier’s long icicles floating away from it below me like the world’s biggest, most glittery spider, and then it hit the marble with a noise so loud it could’ve been heard over the Big Bang, and an explosion of crystals, crystal fragments, and crystal dust billowed out in all directions, and the terrified dogs scattered to the cardinal points of the compass as I landed on top of it all.
No time to hurt, no time to bleed. I got up, snatched my bag, grabbed the painting, opened the door, and pushed the SUB ZERO carton outside. I slammed the door shut just as the first dog hit it with all his weight, and I hauled off and kicked the door back, creating an entirely new level of canine insanity inside.
With trembling hands, I loaded my bag and the painting into the carton, tilted back the dolly, and wheeled the whole thing seventy-three shuddering feet and nine inches to the curb. It took me a couple of tries to get the rear doors of the van open, but when I did, I just upended the dolly into the back-the carton wasn’t supposed to be heavy any more, anyway-and slammed the door. Then I went around to the front, got in, and leaned forward until my forehead was resting on the steering wheel.
Just as I was getting my breathing under control, something cold touched the back of my neck, and a man’s voice said, “Well, look who’s here.”
3
Hacker
The face in the rear-view mirror possessed more distinctive characteristics than you’d normally find in a whole room full of faces. The eyes, black as a curse, were so close to each other they nearly touched, barely bisected by the tiniest nose ever to adorn an adult male face. I’d seen bigger noses on a pizza. The guy had no eyebrows and a mouth that looked like it was assembled in the dark: no upper lip to speak of, and a lower that plumped out like a throw pillow, above a chin as sharp as an elbow.
It wasn’t a nice face, but that was misleading. The man who owned it wasn’t just not nice: he was a venal, calculating, corrupt son of a bitch.
I said, “Hello, Hacker.”
“Is the painting in the box?” Hacker asked.
“What painting? I just delivered a refrigerator. I’m exploring the dignity of honest labor.”
The gun pushed its way between a couple of vertebrae. “Okay,” I said. “What do you think, I forgot it?”
“Sounded like a bunch of werewolves in there. And you got little cuts all over you, you know that? If I pull this gun back a couple inches, you going to be stupid?”
“I’ve already been stupid,” I said. “I try to keep it to once a day.”
“Good. Well, I can’t tell you what a thrill this is. Catching Junior Bender in the act.”
“For someone with your record, it must be.”
“I should read you your rights,” Hacker said.
“If you could.”
“You ain’t taking this seriously, bro.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“What’s to think about. I got you.”
I checked the side mirrors again. Sure enough, something was missing. “Okay, you got me,” I said. “But why?”
“Whaddya mean, why? I’m a cop, you’re a crook.”
“With no record at all. And where’s your black-and-white?”
Hacker’s eyes flicked away from mine in the mirror. “Somebody’s prolly driving it.”
“And your partner?”
“Charlie? He’s got the day off.” He lifted the barrel of the automatic to his face and scratched his chin with the sight. I could hear the scrape of metal over whiskers. “In fact, we both got the day off.”
“Maybe I should have taken the day off, too.”
“Little late for that,” Hacker said.
Hope, the slut, springs eternal. “No partner. No black-and-white. So this isn’t a bust.”
“Oh, no,” Hacker said, settling happily back on the seat. “This is much worse than a bust.”
With Hacker contributing some backseat driving, I navigated down the curving hillside streets to Ventura Boulevard, a largely charmless four-lane throughway that was orphaned several decades back by the Hollywood Freeway, which parallels it, but has since developed a seedy appeal all its own as the main drag of the southern end of the San Fernando Valley. By now it was a little after four, which meant that we were bumper-to-bumper with all the people who make rush hour start early by trying to get home before rush hour. The air conditioning in the van, which I had rented for the day, couldn’t have cooled a coat closet, so we had the windows open and got a chance to breathe in all the exhaust two or three hundred expensive cars can put out. It’s interesting, I guess; with all the work automakers put into making deluxe cars different from the instant wrecks they sell the proletariat, no one seems to have looked into making the expensive exhaust smell better. I said something to that effect to Hacker, and got a grunt by return mail.
“So why don’t you tell me what we’re doing?”
“We’re going north on Ventura,” Hacker said.
“How’d you know I was going to be there?”
“Circles in circles.”
“I don’t mean to sound paranoid,” I said, “but this feels just the teensiest bit like a setup.”
“Change lanes,” Hacker said.
“Lyle. Who set me up?”
“Like I said, change lanes. You’re going to make a left in a mile or two. And don’t call me Lyle.”
“Plenty of time.”
“You can’t drive for shit. You’re making me nervous.”
“You’re nervous? There I was, committing a perfectly normal burglary, if you don’t count the dogs and the amyl nitrate, and suddenly I’m being kidnapped at gunpoint by a rogue cop. Where are we, Argentina?”
Hacker said, “Amyl nitrate?”
“Poppers,” I said. “Surely you’ve heard of poppers.”
“You were doing poppers up there?”
“Me and the dogs,” I said. “Best way to get close to a dog.”
“Crooks are different from people,” Hacker said.
“You should know.”
“Hey,” Hacker said. “I’m no crook.”
“Ah, Lyle,” I said. “The line is a fine one, easier to step over than a crack in the sidewalk, and then suddenly there you are, in a brave new world and no map home.”
Hacker said, “You read too much.”
“Is it possible to read too much?”
“Just drive.”
“Who set me up? Where are we going?”
H
acker’s suit was an alarming budget plaid made up of colors that shouldn’t have been in the same room, much less on the same piece of cloth. When he leaned forward, the suit flexed menacingly. “What you should be thinking about is where we’re not going. We’re not going to the station. We’re not going somewhere where you’ll get your prints rolled, and smile for the birdie, and spend the night on a concrete floor with a bunch of guys who smell like puke. We’re not going someplace where there’s a bunch of guys who want to practice their kidney punches.”
“That’s all very reassuring.”
“Hope to shit,” he said. “You gonna change lanes any time in this lifetime?”
“But, I mean, there’s a certain amount of coercion here, you know?”
But Hacker had his head craned around. “You’re almost clear,” he said. “Just muscle your way left.”
I did, to the accompaniment of a great many horns.
“See fourteen five-eighty-six?” he asked. “The black glass building just past the Starbucks. Turn into the driveway.”
“Aha,” I said.
“Aha what?”
“Aha, I know who sent you.”
4
Wattles,Inc
“You met Mr. Wattles?” Hacker said.
“Not till now. Though, of course, his reputation precedes him.”
The fat, red-faced little man glanced up at me, saw nothing to hold his attention, and went back to considering the screen of the laptop in front of him. After a long moment, he rasped, “Sit.” Then he hit a couple of keys as though he had a grudge against them.
I sat on something amazingly uncomfortable that someone had disguised as a couch. Hacker stood with his beefy arms crossed, leaning against the door to the outside world, which he’d shut behind us as we came in. On the other side of the door was a reception room with a battered desk in its center. Seated behind the desk to greet us when we came in had been a life-size blow-up doll, the red “o” of her mouth unpleasantly reminiscent of the circle of drywall in front of Huston’s wall safe. She’d had orange hair and inflated fingers like puffy little sausages. There had been something familiar about her, although I number relatively few blow-up dolls among my circle of acquaintances.
The building was your basic 1980s medium-high rise, tall enough to give you a view but not so tall it’d go over sideways in a six-point quake. The windows faced south, toward the hills that divided the Valley from Los Angeles proper, and the address was only a block or so away from the 405 Freeway.
Wattles, Inc. was saving a fortune on office furniture. The desk Wattles sat behind was gray, battered institutional steel that someone had scraped deeply several times as though it were a Mercedes Benz parked on the wrong street. The so-called couch to which Hacker pointed me had probably seen a decade’s worth of faithful service in a Motel 6 before someone hauled it to the curb because it was too big for the dumpster. I could practically stretch out a leg and tap the desk with my toe. You could have carpeted the room with a carhop’s uniform.
And yet, behind Wattles some very fine dark cherry bookshelves stretched from floor to ceiling, and filling them was a whole wall’s worth of California legal statutes, nicely bound and running all the way up to the last quarter of the previous year. The set that belonged to my very expensive lawyer ended with 2005. So I would have known Wattles was doing well here, even if I hadn’t seen the wrought-iron gates with the big canyon house behind them.
“Nice and quiet in here,” I said to Hacker.
“Keep it like that,” Wattles said, abusing a few more keys. “Or go wait outside, with Dora.”
“Dora.”
“The receptionist.”
“Does she get meal breaks?”
“Shut up.”
I shut up. After a couple of minutes, one of the phones that shared Wattles’s desk with the laptop lit up. It didn’t do anything as vulgar as ring; it just blinked a couple of times. Wattles picked it up and put it to his ear.
Then he said, “No.” He listened some more. Then he said, “Fuck you,” and hung up. He had a voice that was created to say, “Fuck you,” the kind of voice Tom Waits probably has when he’s just woken up and he’s got the flu. He went back to the computer.
I counted silently to fifty.
“Well,” I said, standing up, “this has been very interesting.”
“Sit,” Wattles said again.
“There’s a painting in my van-”
“Not no more,” Wattles said. “Long gone.” This time he looked up at me. His eyes were so deepset they looked like raisins someone had pushed into raw dough. “You’re way past fucked,” he said. “You know whose house that was?”
“Somebody named Hus-.”
“You know Rabbits Stennet? You just robbed Rabbits Stennet’s house.” As my stomach dipped all the way to my feet, Wattles pushed his chair back from the desk, leaned back, slapped the side of his gut, and let out a one-syllable bark that I supposed was a laugh.
I nodded. “ ‘Past fucked’ is accurate.”
“It’s worse,” Wattles said. “What you took is part of little Mrs. Stennet’s prenup. It’s her favorite thing in the world.”
“Her pre-”
“I don’t know how much you know Rabbits, but probably not much, right?”
“Right. And not eager to-”
“Well, old Rabbits didn’t used to be exactly a family values kind of guy. Four wives, probably put ’em together and they didn’t last six months. Took over running the hookers for the West Valley mainly so he’d always know where to find them. Used to take them four and five at a time, dress ’em up like Tinker Bell or Snow White. You know, like cartoons? Had a whole basement full of Disney costumes. It was, like, a life style choice. So when he married Bunny …” He broke off, looking up at Hacker. “Isn’t that cute? Rabbits and Bunny.”
“Cuter than hamsters,” Hacker said.
“Yeah, cute.” The phone nearest to Wattles flickered again, but he gave it the finger. “So when he married Bunny and she wanted a prenup, old Rabbits dug in. He figured she’d be gone before breakfast got cold, and he’d be back to the cartoons, and anyway there was no way he was going to open the door for a bunch of divorce lawyers to come through and sniff around in his finances. But on the other hand, Bunny-you seen Bunny?”
“Not in person, but I’ve always had a thing for women named-”
“Bunny’s hot as Palm Springs. You been to Palm Springs?”
“Why ask? You’re not going to let me fin-”
“Hot,” Wattles said. He shook his hand as though flicking hot water from his fingers. “Bunny’s hot. So Rabbits, he looks at Bunny and says, no prenup, no fuckin’ way, but whaddya want? Something you can take if things don’t work out. In your name, all nice and legal, you keep the paper. And she said she wanted a couple of paintings by some European guy, and you just took the best one.”
“That was the best-”
“You know, you talk too much. Me, I like what Sam Goldwyn said. You know what Sam Goldwyn said?”
“He said, Don’t say-”
“He said to a bunch of yes-men, ‘Don’t say yes until I finish talking.’ I like that.”
“It’s hard to know when you’re finished. Sometimes you stop for-”
“I gotta breathe. Tell you what, when I’m finished I’ll say ‘your turn.’ Okay?”
I didn’t reply. Wattles pushed down the lid of the laptop and glared at me. “Okay?”
“You didn’t say ‘your turn’.”
I got an index finger pointed at the bridge of my nose, and Wattles got another pint of blood to the head, if the color of his face was any indication. “Don’t dick around with me. I’m the only thing between you and them dogs. Rabbits gives guys to the dogs sometimes, you know? Don’t answer. So you took the better half of Bunny’s prenup, and she’s going to be pissed. And when Bunny gets pissed, Rabbits loses it. Even after two years, he loses it. I don’t know what she does, but she’s gotta do it good. He’s not
ordering Cinderella or the Wicked Queen to get delivered any more, not even once, and he still gets all chesty when somebody even looks at her wrong. Oh, and you don’t know the best part.”
I waited, and Wattles said, “Your turn.”
“What’s the best-”
“Where the video footage from that surveillance camera is stored,” he said.
5
On the other hand
I looked over at Wattles, who had reopened the screen on his laptop and was glaring at it like it had stuck its tongue out at him. “Did Janice know about the cameras? Did she know-”
“Nah,” Wattles said. He lifted an edge of the computer and dropped it again, as if that would improve whatever was on the display. “She didn’t know nothing. She wouldn’t of played if she had. She thinks hummingbirds nest in your butt.”
“She hides her feelings well.”
“Why do you think she chose you?” He gave me the glare I was coming to recognize as his normal expression. “There’s a lot of guys. I tell her I need the smartest, and she says, ‘Gotta be Junior.’ I’m telling you, you’re halfway home. Buy some flowers, get a haircut, you’re there.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“What?” He was back to the computer, and he didn’t sound very interested.
“Why did you want smart? If you’re going to hose somebody, why do you need him to be smart? Seems to me you’d want the dumbest-”
“You’ll find out,” Wattles said. His head came up, and the movement set the two lower chins wobbling. “What’re you doing, Lyle? Waiting for the fuckin’ film to develop?”
“He’s what?” I asked, thumbing at Hacker. “Your pet policeman?”
Hacker flexed his suit at me. “I got two words for you. Three strikes.”
“I don’t have any strikes.” In California, the three-strike law means geological time for a third felony conviction.
“You have any idea how many open burglaries I’ve got?” Hacker said. “How’d you like to be the way I close two of them? And this one on top of it? Can you count that high?”
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