“You’re cute without pants.”
“That’s what everybody says.”
She said, “Ouch. So how do you like it?”
I shrugged. “Pretty much the way you did it.”
“I meant the coffee.” She pulled the blankets up to her chin, shy by daylight, looking for her clothes. “Oh, right,” she said. “I should have remembered. You take it black. Men always like it when women remember how they take their coffee.”
“Men,” I said. “We’re so easy.”
“Nothing’s changed,” Marge said. Her face was rigid with the effort it took not to let it cave in. “It’s some bones in the desert, somebody’s poor baby. But it’s not Doris. We knew yesterday what kind of guy he was.”
“I think you should go to the station.”
“I know what you think. Want a drink?”
“What time is it?”
“Little after one.”
“Early for me, but thanks.”
“Sit tight,” she said, getting up. She’d been on the couch and I’d taken the chair. “It was early for me, too, until a minute ago.” She padded into the tiny kitchen and opened a cupboard to reveal a large water glass and six or seven bottles of Old Igor’s. There was a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
“If anyone does, it’ll be you.” She pulled down a fresh bottle and waved it at me. “Sure about this?”
“Thanks anyway.” I opened the door and Ronnie blew at me across the rim of an open cup of coffee. Just the smell made me feel better.
“You’re a queen,” I said. “Want to join Marge in a glass of vodka?”
“Sure, if there’s room. Hi, Marge.”
“Sweetie,” Marge said, opening another cupboard and pulling out a second glass. “Heavy or light?”
“Same as you,” Ronnie said, coming in and looking around the room. “Gee. No Christmas junk.”
I swallowed hot coffee and said, “Decor. Down here, it’s referred to as decor.”
“It’s junk,” Marge said, pouring. “But Ed, old Ed really loved Christmas.” She picked up the glasses and toted them into the living room. “Biggest day of the year for Ed was December 26. All the Christmas stuff went to half off, and he shopped all day long.” As she handed a glass to Ronnie, she tipped the other to her mouth and knocked back a couple of good slugs. “If I got rid of it all now, it’d be like crumpling up Ed’s memory and tossing it away.”
“It’s cheerful junk,” Ronnie said, and then drank. She sat at the far end of the couch. “You know, we forget about the Christmas spirit most of the year, and seeing all that stuff reminds us—”
“You’re a sweet little thing,” Marge said, “but not much of a liar. Here’s to a better tomorrow.”
“No kidding,” Ronnie said, and the two of them drank.
“What’s your problem?” Marge asked her.
“Same old thing.” She lifted her chin in my direction. “Men.”
“Ahhh, men.” Marge brought down an open palm, batting the topic to the floor. “I used to think that when I got older, I’d stop letting them upset me. But here I am, I’m older, and all I’ve learned is how few tricks they know. It’s like having a dog. When you finally get through to it, you teach it to roll over and sit up, and you think smart dog, and then it’s ten years old and it’s still sitting up and rolling over, and you’re thinking, Why the hell can’t it learn Spanish? The big difference is that as you get older, you stop being pissed off about it and get bored instead.”
“Speaking of men,” I said.
She drank, and when she lowered the glass, her mouth was tight. “I don’t want to talk to the cops.”
“You’re not listening,” I said. “Pivensey’s killed one. They found the—”
“Who?” Marge asked.
“Pivensey. Lorne—”
“That wasn’t his name. You never said that name.”
I tried to remember our last conversation. “I don’t think I said any name. I just showed you his picture.”
“Lemme see it again.”
I was already fishing the folded printouts from my hip pocket. I glanced at them before I handed them to her. Sure enough, Paulie DiGaudio had cropped out the name and arrest number.
“That’s the little pecker,” she said. “No matter what he calls himself.”
“Pivensey,” I said. “Lorne Henry Pivensey.”
“Lemuel Huff,” she said. “No middle name, but I suppose Lemuel’s more name than anybody needs.”
“Can I see?” Ronnie held out a hand, and Marge passed her the pictures.
“There wasn’t any a/k/a info on his sheet,” I said.
“I don’t give a shit,” Marge said and glanced at Ronnie. “Sorry, honey, ’scuse the Française.” She came back to me. “He was Lemuel Huff to Doris, Lem for short, if you can believe that. Sounds like the guy you call to move the outhouse.”
“Spelled like it sounds? H-U-F-F? Or H-O-U-G-H?”
“Who knows?”
“Marge, they’re not going to leave me alone on this.”
“He’s got something,” Ronnie said. She was studying the pictures.
“Who’s not going to leave you alone?” Marge asked.
“The cops.” I turned to Ronnie. “What do you mean, he’s got something?”
Still looking down at Pivensey’s picture, Ronnie stuck out her lower lip and shook her head. “In his face. There’s something kind of sad and lost. I can see what some women would see in him.”
“What could they possibly see?” This was Marge. “A wood shop project? Like a broken chair?”
“Your daughter,” Ronnie said. “Was there any reason she’d be vulnerable to men who get, I don’t know, damaged or something?”
“Oh, honey,” Marge said, and suddenly tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Would she ever.”
“Well,” Ronnie said. “This is the guy who could bring that out.”
“Oh, balls,” Marge said, getting up so fast she almost knocked over the coffee table. She bolted into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her.
“What is it?” Ronnie asked.
“Cops found the bones of a woman who was probably killed by the guy who lived in that house. With Marge’s daughter. That guy, the one you can see something in.”
“Oh, no,” Ronnie said. “Are they sure?”
Through the closed door, I heard Marge blow her nose, a sound like the honk of a waterfowl. “Yeah,” I said. “And there are probably three or four more.”
“I’m so embarrassed. Talking about my pishy little problems.” She raised the glass and put an inch of vodka away. “Maybe I should just stay here and get drunk with her.”
“In the name of charity.”
“Well, sure. What are you going to do?”
“Marge was supposed to have pulled together a list of people who Doris might have talked to. If she’s done it, I suppose I’ll go find them. And think about poor sad Mr. Huff.”
“Kind of job is that?” Louie demanded around his cigar. “For a man of my skills, I mean.”
“Then get somebody else to do it. Somebody who looks like a straight, who can use, say, twenty-five bucks an hour.”
Louie tilted his head back and blew a cumulus cloud of stink that filled his car, which today was a 1995 Cadillac the color of an angry eggplant. We were parked on Sunshine Terrace in Sherman Oaks, just south of Ventura. After he’d emptied his lungs and taken a moment to appreciate the results, watching the smoke curlicue against the inside of the windshield like a Japanese painting of the ocean, he said, “Say thirty. Including travel time?”
“Sure.” I pushed the button to lower my window, but the ignition was off, so I cracked the door. “It’s a two, three-hour drive each way.”
“I know who.” Louie nodded in self-approval. “The girl your chick shook off. She looks like a librarian. Put her in glasses and one of those long skirts, she’s Jane Plain.”
“Fine. Think she can get up
there and back without getting lost?”
“You want to be funny,” Louie said, “hire a writer.” He drew on the cigar.
“If you say she can do it, fine.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out five of the hundreds I’d stolen from Vinnie DiGaudio. “She can take this up front and keep track of her hours.”
“And she’s looking for.…”
“Property transactions in Los Angeles and San Bernardino County. Anything that was bought by Lorne Henry Pivensey or Lemuel Huff.” I gave him the alternative spellings. “And after that, parking and traffic citations in the same names.”
“You don’t think the cops’ll do this?”
“They might or might not. But I don’t think they’ll do it for Huff. They don’t know he used the name.”
Louie nodded. “How far back?”
“Five years. Six, make it six.”
“This is gonna take days.”
“Good, she can get rich. Anyway it’s all on computers now.” I reached back into my pocket and handed him the other seven hundred. “Tell you what. She can slip one or two of these to the underpaid civil servants who’ll be helping her. That’ll speed things up. If she needs more, you can front it out of your ridiculously large share of the five thousand Vinnie gave me.”
Louie tilted the cigar up at an optimistic angle and grinned around it. “Finally counted, huh?”
“You have no conscience.”
“You’re so wrong. I haven’t slept a wink. What do you think you’re going to get out of this?”
“The guy must have a place to go to ground. If he’s really a serial, he might own a place where he plays with the victims before he puts them away. The woman the cops found was in Twentynine Palms, which is San Bernardino County. There’s lots of nice, empty land up there. In fact, now that I think about it, she should start with San Berdoo and save LA for later.”
“Makes sense, I suppose.”
“Thanks for the enthusiasm.”
Louie opened his own door and dropped the cigar on the street. It hissed in the trickle of water running along the curb. “What else you need? I figure you got about six hundred left on my meter.”
“I talked to Irwin Dressler last night.”
Louie’s mouth dropped open. “You’re shitting me.”
“I was escorted there at gunpoint.”
He nodded in grudging appreciation. “Irwin Dressler, huh? How’d he look?”
“Old and dangerous.”
“What’d he need, a fourth at bridge?”
“He wanted to know about Vinnie DiGaudio.” I gave him a summary of the chat.
“Junior,” Louie said, “this ain’t good.”
“I’d worked that out for myself, actually. But why do you say it?”
“ ’Cause there’s gotta be some sort of connection between Irwin and Vinnie, and Irwin, he wants to clean things up, cut the strings.”
“And I’d be one of the strings,” I said.
“Irwin is living a happy old age, all tucked away in Brentwood like that, wearing those ugly pants. He wants to stay invisible. That’s what they used to call him, you know that? The invisible man.”
“You made that up.”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “Irwin’s never had a glove laid on him, you know? Stole like a billion dollars, set up hits, run the fuckin’ state like his personal piggy bank, and nobody’s ever made him. What a guy.”
“What do you think I should do?”
Louie shifted his tuchis around so he was facing me. “Me? You’re asking me?”
“Why not?”
“No reason. I’m just flattered. Nobody ever asked me what to do about Irwin Dressler before. It’s like you just found out you got cancer and you say to me, ‘Louie, what should I do?’ and all of a sudden I feel like a doctor. Here’s what you should do. Whatever he told you to do, plus a little more in the same direction. Listening around the words he said, sounds to me like he doesn’t want it to be Vinnie.”
“Pretty much what I thought.”
“So,” he said, fishing for another cigar. “No conflict of interest, huh? Paulie doesn’t want it to be Vinnie, Irwin doesn’t want it to be Vinnie. So, no problem.”
I opened the door. “Unless it’s Vinnie,” I said.
“Yeah,” Louie said, going to work on the cigar tip. “Then you’re fucked.”
“I need four names and addresses to go with some license plates,” I said into the phone.
“And I need your friend and her daughter in here, now.” The cooling-off period hadn’t cooled Paulie DiGaudio off any.
“I can’t give them to you. They don’t want to talk to you.”
“You’re not listening. Those people come in here, or you do.”
“Charged with what? Refusing to make an introduction? Losing my phone book?”
“How about obstruction of justice?”
“Sounds good. You want me to come in and give myself up? I’m sure you can find somebody else to work on Vinnie’s problem. But I’ll tell you that you’d better find somebody good, because he looks ripe for it.”
Paulie put something crunchy in his mouth and chewed on it, and I held the phone away from my ear. “I could look like gold,” he finally said. He was trying for wistful. “You bring these people in and we find Pivensey, I could look like gold.”
“Make a deal with you. I’ll do whatever I can to talk the mom into coming in—”
“You mean the kid’s still missing?”
“That’s what I mean. And all mom knows is that her daughter was living with him at that address in Hollywood. She’s been gone nine days.”
“And they left together,” he said. So the cops had talked to the All-Seeing Eye across the street, too.
“Looks like it.”
“What was her name?”
“The mother or the daughter?”
“Either.”
“Neither,” I said. “And be careful with your tenses. Far as we know, she’s alive and eating three squares a day.”
Paulie said, “And they’re gonna put George W. Bush on Mount Rushmore.”
“The license plates, remember?” With my free hand I unfolded the list of numbers Ronnie had copied off the junkers parked in Vinnie’s driveway.
“What for?” DiGaudio said. He sounded like his feelings were hurt. “I mean, why do I want to do this for you?”
“I think one or more of the folks who own those cars might be Vinnie’s alibi.”
While I talked with DiGaudio I’d been sitting on the fender of my car, where it had been parked behind Louie’s, up on Sunshine Terrace. Sunshine Terrace is rich in eucalyptus trees, and the November clouds had parted enough to allow a drizzle of diluted afternoon sunlight to turn the leaves five or six shades of green and tan, while a light breeze kicked up mysteriously and jittered them around in a picturesque fashion. The people who live south of the Boulevard can afford breezes.
Marge’s list of people to talk to about the missing Doris was handwritten in purple ink on a notepad that had MARGE’S JOTTINGS printed across the top and was undoubtedly purchased for more lighthearted jottings. She had a child’s big, careful handwriting, the vowels round and fat, with little circles hovering like halos over each lowercase I. She’d drawn precise five-pointed stars beside the names of the folks she thought Doris was most likely to have confided in.
The closest one with a star was an Amber Schlumberg in Burbank. The closest of my Glocks was also in Burbank. I pulled out a quarter and flipped it. When I took my hand away, I was looking at a bird, and for a disorienting minute, I had no idea whether that meant heads or tails. Then I couldn’t remember whether the Glock had been heads and Amber had been tails, or vice versa.
I figured, the hell with it. Get the gun.
A little burglar boy has no better friends than his storage units. Scattered among them, my three contained guns, ammo, about twenty thousand in small bills, the ne plus ultra in illegal lock-picking technology, some hot jewelry being allowed
to cool gradually, and two alternative realities in the form of forged documents: drivers license, Social Security cards, birth certificates, all bearing the names of males who would have been my age if they hadn’t died in infancy. One of them even had a passport. They weren’t as good as the set at the Wedgwood, but they’d do for short-time use.
Like all storage facilities, the one in Burbank smelled like people used it primarily to store dust. Within a minute of keying the three keyable locks and spinning the combination dial on the fourth, I’d sneezed twice and I had a nice, cold, slightly oily automatic jammed into the front of my pants and a couple thousand in twenties in my pockets. I grabbed two extra clips to give my pants that desirable cholo sag and relocked everything, then headed for Lankershim and followed it past the time-honored Warner Brothers lot, haunted even now by the shades of Bogey and Cagney and Bette Davis, Paul Muni and the Bowery Boys. Other studios were classier or more elegant or made flossier musicals, but Warner was the toughest and the grittiest. Crooks with taste like Warner Brothers best.
Amber Schlumberg lived in a little fifties stucco box crouched behind an ancient pepper tree that had killed the lawn, just burned it right down to the dark brown Valley dirt. A red tricycle, just like one I once bought for Rina, rusted in a far corner, looking like it hadn’t been moved in a year or more. At some none-too-recent point, someone had started to put up shingles, trying to make the place look like a charming rural cottage. The shingles covered the front third of the house but gave out about four feet from the eaves. It looked like an eye-patch. Around and below the shingles, which had turned a dark woody brown with exposure, the stucco was the yuck-yellow of Dijon mustard.
The front door was yanked open before I could knock, and a woman, dimly visible through the dirty mesh of a screen, demanded, “What now?”
I said, “Always a good question.” The air coming from inside the house smelled stale.
The woman’s face came closer to the screen, a relatively nice face marred by an extremely unpleasant expression. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a friend of Doris Enderby’s.”
“Yeah?” Something guarded came into her face, and she reached up and wiggled something around inside the door. I heard the hook slip through the little eye that holds it in place. “How come I don’t know you?”
Little Elvises Page 15
