“What’s the time?” asked Honey.
I checked. “Eleven forty-two, PM.”
“We’re out of time. I need to get in there. Just come in with the others and keep your eyes open. And be ready to leave in a hurry.”
I needed more information than that. I had a lot of questions forming and I wanted Honey to answer them. But I just stood there and she left the restroom. I watched the door swing behind her and then I looked at myself in the mirror. The top button of my coat had popped again. I squeezed it home.
Then I went out of the restroom and into the lobby. The coat-check girl was back. The band had stopped playing. I could hear the traffic cruising along Sunset Boulevard just outside the main doors on my left. I couldn’t see Honey anywhere.
Fifteen minutes to go.
I walked over to the big double doors and stepped back into the club.
7
The club had entered a lull. The crowd looked thinner, and those who were left were quietly enjoying their cigarettes and alcohol. The air was full of smoke that hung almost motionless, a fug indistinct but ever present. It was like looking at the world through dirty dishwater.
The hoods had gone, all of them, their absence creating a not insubstantial amount of free space at the bar, which was itself now unattended while the stage at the far end of the room was occupied by the musical instrumentation of the Hit List but not by the Hit List themselves. One guitar leaned against the rim of the big bass drum. Another guitar lay on the floor. The amps behind them hummed. I listened. Fifty-nine point nine five hertz. Same as the wall socket they were plugged into.
The dance floor was deserted and the birds had flown from gilded cages that hung above it.
I wondered if the other three birds knew that one of their number was an imposter. An imposter that had given them a run for their money up there in the air, it had to be said.
I walked in and the double doors sucked shut behind me and something moved in the fog to my right. I glanced over and saw a man in a white shirt leaning with his elbows on a small round table, his neck craned around to watch me. It was the boyfriend. He had a cigarette in one hand and an expression that could only come from sucking a lemon or, as I glanced around to check, being abandoned by his girl.
Then the expression changed and he smiled. His eyes were only half open and one elbow slid a little on the bar. Any sudden movement and I was going to be picking him up off the floor.
“Drinks are on the house,” he said. He raised his other hand to show me the tumbler he was holding. It was made of cut glass and it was filled with an amber liquid. He gestured with the glass toward the bar. “They told me I could have anything I like and not to worry about the check.” He chuckled to himself. “They said any friend of the family was a friend of theirs too.”
Then he drained his glass and he sat it on the table with a fair amount of force.
“What family?” I said. I looked around. His girlfriend had left with the others because—
Because she was one of the others.
I turned back to the boyfriend. “What’s your girl’s surname?” I wondered if the answer would be Falzarano.
“Nuts to ya,” he said. “I know what to say and what not to say so go boil your head.”
He sniffed and looked away. He lifted his empty glass and took a sip of nothing. He pulled the glass away from his mouth like it was hot and scowled at it like it had just insulted his mother. Free booze courtesy of his girlfriend’s mob pals didn’t seem to be doing much for his demeanor. I couldn’t blame him. Not much of a life being the trophy on her arm. I imagined she took him to lots of funny places and told him to be good and to not talk to strangers.
I pulled my hat down low over my eyes. He saw me do it. Then he pointed a limp wrist in another direction. I looked over and saw there was a door by the side of the bar.
“They’re all in there,” said the man. “All of them. And her. Powdering her nose, right? Right.”
He made a noise that was less like a laugh and more like the sound a man makes when he regrets the hole he has found himself in. “That damned band wasn’t even any good. Grow your hair long and talk like the Queen of England and everybody around here loves you. Philistines.”
“That’s a big word,” I said. The man screwed his eyes tight and then opened them again. He looked at me with a frown, like he hadn’t seen me there before. He was swaying on his chair like a sea captain in a rough sea. Heading straight for the iceberg.
And then the telephone rang. Not the one out in the lobby. The one behind the bar. The guy at the table seemed to wake up a little, but now he was frowning at the ceiling.
I had a feeling I knew who was calling and who they wanted to speak to so I walked over to the bar and then I walked behind it. Some people watched me. Some didn’t.
The telephone was on a shelf near the register. It kept ringing and as it rang I looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar. I could also see the reflection of the guy at the table. He was frowning at his empty glass.
I picked up the telephone.
“Hello, Ada,” I said into the receiver. I kept my eyes on the guy at the table. Then I glanced to my left. The shelves behind the bar were filled with lots of bottles filled with lots of liquids.
“Everything okay, chief?” said Ada.
“This is third conversation we’ve had in one evening,” I said. “I may not remember how things usually go down, but I’m starting to wonder if this is some kind of record.”
My optics fell onto a bottle near the top that looked nice. I reached up and pulled it down. I couldn’t drink it but the guy at the table could. He looked like he could use cheering up.
“A girl gets worried, Raymondo. Especially a girl with money riding on the outcome.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I don’t like difficult any more than you do,” she said, and when she said it there was an edge to the voice in my head. It was still Ada and there was still the creak at the back of her voice and when she spoke I still had the image of an older woman with hair that was too big and lines on her face that were kind. But there was something else there now. It was harder. More metallic. Like she was pressing the phone tight against her jaw and squeezing the mouthpiece with a hand that was too tight.
But Ada wasn’t a person. She was a computer, one the size of an office.
I decided to follow the example of the guy at the table and I did my best to frown into the telephone’s mouthpiece. I had a feeling I succeeded.
“Of course,” I said. “But listen, time is ticking. The auction is due to start in just a few minutes. But I had an interesting conversation with Honey.”
“I’m listening.”
“She’s here for the package too,” I said. “She works for this guy Boxer.”
“Huh,” said Ada. “Well, I did say I was out of date. But listen, you can fill me in after you’ve done the job. It’ll make an excellent epilogue to the paperback edition. In the meantime, who she works for doesn’t matter half a dime to the likes of you and me.”
“Okay,” I said.
There was a pause on the line. Ada was still there. The line was dirty, a side effect of the way we used it, communicating via the coded pulse signal so nobody could listen in, but somewhere buried in the crackle was the ticking of the second hand of a stopwatch. I could imagine the big tapes back in the computer room spinning one way then the other and the lights underneath flashing an angry sequence.
Ada was thinking things over. I wasn’t sure I liked it when she did that.
I sighed. “Is something wrong, Ada?”
“You tell me, Ray.”
“Tell you what, exactly?”
Now it was Ada’s turn to sigh. “You are going to get the job done, right?”
I made a sound that was a good impression of the gears in my Buick slipping on a cold morning.
“That wasn’t the answer I was looking for,” said Ada.
“I’ll get the job d
one,” I said. “That’s what I’m programmed to do, right?”
“Right.”
I hung the telephone up. I stayed where I was behind the bar for a couple of minutes. Midnight approached. The auction. The guy at the table had slumped down and his eyes were closed. The cigarette was still burning between his fingers. Around him people drank and checked their watches and looked forlornly over at the empty stage.
I thought about Honey. I thought about the mysterious something. I thought about the other something in Ada’s voice.
She was worried. And if she was worried then there had to be a good reason. And if there was a good reason then I wasn’t going to waste any time arguing.
I had a job to do and I was running out of time to do it. Whoever it was that Honey worked for, whatever she was going to do with the mysterious something, it was not my business. I told myself that a few times and I also told myself that I didn’t care either.
I turned around. I grabbed the bottle I’d picked from the top shelf. I read the label. I looked up into the mirror. The guy was still asleep.
I walked over to him. He didn’t move. I put the bottle down with a thump and he moved now, his head jerking around at the sound. He looked at the bottle and then he looked at me and then he yelped as the cigarette burned down to his fingers.
“Party for one,” I said. The man shook his burned hand and he looked up at me with a scowl.
Nice guy.
My clock struck midnight.
I left him to it and headed to the auction room.
8
The doorway led to a corridor, which led to another door which led to a corridor. More doors here. The floor was tacky underfoot. At first I thought I was tracking Bob’s blood all the way from the men’s room but then I saw it was just a dirty floor.
There were sounds coming from the door to my right. I stopped where I was and listened closely. This was the room. Then I took off my hat and then put it back on my head. I pulled it down as far as it would go and then I slipped it off the back of my head so I could pull it down some more. Then I lifted the collar of my trench coat and spent a few seconds working on the folds of the fabric so the collar would stick up nicely. It made me feel a little better.
I reached for the doorknob and I turned it and opened the door and passed myself through a crack as small as I could manage. Then I closed the door like nothing had happened.
The room was square. Like the other one I’d found, this one had stacks of chairs along two sides but some of those chairs were unstacked and had been set out in four rows in the middle of the room. On these chairs sat the men from the club. Three dozen total. Most kept their hats on. Some didn’t. Some sat together. Some didn’t. Some sat silently. Some murmured to each other. Some draped their arms over the back of the empty chair next to them and tried to look as easy as possible while they sized up the competition around them.
Only two guys in the room looked around from their chairs as I came in. One of them did nothing but turn back around. The other one gave me a nod that was as small as the first sip of too-hot coffee. Then he turned back around too. It was my friend with the too-small hat.
There were empty chairs, but I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself so I kept at the back and I sank against the wall by the door where the shadows were deep. Hoods seemed to like dark rooms. If anyone else wanted to take a peek all they’d see was a hulk in a hat and coat just like all the other hulks in hats and coats in the room.
No problem.
I looked around the room. There was something in the air. A certain kind of tension. The hoods had agreed not to kill each other for one night and so far that truce was holding. Although whether the truce would remain in place once Bob’s body was found in the toilet I didn’t like to speculate.
But things were coming to a climax. This was what they were all here for.
The auction.
The something in the air was excitement.
I kept on looking around. I’d been wrong about the hoods. They weren’t guarding the approaches while their bosses met in secret. Their bosses weren’t here. The hoods were here for them. It made sense. All the bosses in one room was a bad idea. They wouldn’t meet in a club. They’d meet in a bunker. Under a volcano. On a deserted island in the Indian Ocean. Somewhere a lot safer than West Hollywood. Although not, apparently, with their old pal Boxer.
So the bosses weren’t here. There was also no sign of Honey and there was no sign of the other go-go dancers either. But there was one woman in the room. She was sitting in the second row right in the middle. She sat with a straight back and her knees together and her hands resting on her lap. I could only see the back of her head but that head was covered with blond hair that curled into a cloud around the edges.
The girlfriend.
I felt sorry for the boyfriend. Not that it was any of my business.
In front of all the chairs was a big table and behind the table were three empty chairs. There was nothing on the table but above it hung a lamp from the ceiling. There were other lamps dangling down on short cords but the one above the table was the only one that was on. For a spotlight it wasn’t too bad, and it kept the rest of the room dark, which was how we all liked it.
I checked my clock. It had struck midnight and it was heading toward five minutes past. No sign of Honey. No sign of any auction starting. The murmuring continued. The girl in the second row was as still and as silent as I was.
Then a door opened. Not the one I had come through but a door a few yards away on my left, stacked chairs towering on either side. In walked three men. Two of them were tall and young and had dark hair that was slicked back and they both wore big black sunglasses.
The man in the middle was old enough to be their father. He had hair that was gray and thin on top. It was slicked back with something shiny just like the hair of the two boys. He had a long hooked nose and a chin that stood just as proud of his face. He was shorter than his pals and as wide as the two of them together. He had short arms and legs. He walked slowly. His suit was expensive and it enclosed his impressive girth with enough panache to make me want to send his tailor a bottle of scotch for Christmas.
The old man walked down to the front and then sat in the middle of the mostly empty front row and his two companions sat on either side of him but not before they both stood there waiting for their boss to plant himself first. While he did that they faced the crowd and they pointed their sunglasses around the place like a pair of new arrivals at an airport looking for their names on a card. Once their boss was seated he gave a huff and a nod. This seemed to be all the two boys needed to turn and sit and adjust their jackets. Their sunglasses stayed just where they were.
The arrival of the old man and his boys had an interesting effect on the room. It went quiet and still. It hadn’t been loud before and nobody had been rolling their hips like the go-go dancers, but now any and all movement stopped. Murmurs stopped as breaths were held then slowly let out. Crossed legs that jiggled were stilled. Fingers tapping the backs of chairs halted. Nobody coughed and nobody cleared his throat but I was pretty sure a few Adam’s apples bobbed up and down in a way I would be hard pressed to say wasn’t nervous.
Nervous because of the old man. Maybe you’d go a step further. Say they were scared. And I knew why. It didn’t take much detective work to put a mechanical finger on it. And the way a few of the hoods looked at each other while trying very hard not to move told me something else.
They were surprised. Which figured. The elderly party hadn’t been out in the main club room earlier. In fact, word was he hadn’t stepped out of his castle in the Hollywood Hills in years.
Zeus Falzarano.
This really was a special night. And if I were a hood from a rival syndicate then sure as hell I’d be holding my breath right now too.
Eight after midnight. Nothing was happening.
Nine after midnight. Something happened.
Another door opened. This one wa
s at the back of the room, behind the big table. I checked the mercury-fluid links behind my optics a handful of times to make sure the electronic lenses were seeing what they told me they were seeing.
They were.
A girl came out first. She was holding a box. It was flattish, rectangular, made out of a dark reddish wood, like a jewelry box. It was twelve inches wide and a third that deep.
The girl was Honey and she held the box—the package—out from her body, like it was a reliquary containing the holy bones of the patron saint of criminal enterprise.
Behind her came the other three go-go dancers. Each of them held a gun in a delicate but firm grip. The guns weren’t pointed anywhere in particular but the message their presence was designed to convey was fairly clear. The trio filed through the door then fanned out around the table so they had the room covered.
Honey walked to the front of the table and stopped in front of Falzarano. Then she turned and placed the box onto the table with a respectful delicacy. Then she turned back around and stood to one side so everyone in the room could get a view. She didn’t look at Falzarano but she didn’t look at me either. Her expression was flat and her gaze was on the back wall.
I assumed this was all part of her plan so I stayed where I was and kept as quiet and still as everyone else.
Under the light above the table the wood of the box shone even redder. I adjusted my optics and took some souvenir snaps as I admired the fine grain on the box’s lid. No sooner was I done than the blond woman got up from the second row. A few of the hoods shifted in their seats as they took in the view.
There was an empty chair on either side of her. She turned to the right and moved past the empty chair and then she stopped at the next one along. The lug occupying the pew in question took a moment to get the message, but when he did he jerked to life, standing quickly and holding the flaps of his jacket together as the woman slid past him.
Like everyone else in the room I watched her. When she got around to the front I watched her some more. I took a picture. It was going to come out well, on account of the fact that like her boyfriend she was quite a sweetheart and right then she was smiling a smile bright enough to make a man jump off the O of the Hollywood sign.
Standard Hollywood Depravity--A Ray Electromatic Mystery Page 5
