by Howard Fast
“I prefer the spray.”
“Right. The dust is pretty ugly, but the spray isn’t the best thing in the world either. It can wilt the petals and it’s not good for the fragrance.”
“Neither are the bugs.”
“Right. But now they got this new product. It’s a poison, which is why I raised the question of ecology. You don’t spray it on, you don’t dust it on. You work it into the ground around the roots, the plant takes it up, and no bugs. My brother-in-law used it, and he says it works like a dream.”
“Let’s try it.”
“Right. The box says it’s harmless to the soil. Of course, I’ll keep it away from the avocado tree, but that’s the other side of the pool. I’d better show it to you. It’s right here in my truck.”
He led me over to his pickup truck, parked behind the garage, and from under a lawn mower and a pile of tools he extracted a green box. “Here it is. That’s a good house that puts it out.”
Reading the information on the box, I was half listening to him as he said, “And the soil’s sweet enough. Don’t worry about that, Mr. Brody. Sour soil is one thing you don’t have to worry about any place I work. I test it and I know what it needs. I’ve been here fifteen years, you never worried about sour soil before.”
I put the box back in the truck. “What were you saying, Soto?”
“I was saying, I worked here fifteen years, you never worried about sour soil before.”
“What makes you think I’m worried about it now?”
“You must be. Otherwise you don’t buy two bags of lime.”
“What bags of lime?” I demanded. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“All right—don’t get excited, Mr. Brody. I’ll take them back myself if you want me to. But you got two bags of lime in the potting shed.”
“Two bags of lime?”
“That’s right.”
I took several deep breaths, and then I whispered, “Show me, Soto. Just show me.”
He led the way into the potting shed, switched on the light and pointed. He was right. There, under the potting table, lay the two bags, marked very plainly:
FINE GARDEN LIME
AGROGROWERS, INC.
50 POUNDS
I bent down and pulled out one of the bags. It was sewn across the top. I bent down to peer at it closely, and I realized that the machine stitches had been removed and that the bags had been resewn by hand. I hefted the bag.
“That doesn’t feel like fifty pounds.”
Soto hefted it. “More like thirty or thirty-five. That’s a good company. I didn’t think they’d give you short weight.”
“Leave it right there, Soto,” I said. “Don’t go away. I’m going to shave and think. Wait in the garden for me.”
He nodded, and I went into the house, stripped, shaved and showered. I put on slacks, sport shirt and sandals, and then I went into the study and retrieved two sixty-cent Flamencos from where they had been dumped. I stopped in the living room to stuff the bills from the safe into my pocket, and then I went out to the garden and presented Soto with the two cigars.
“It corrupts me to smoke sixty-cent cigars,” Soto said. “It breeds dissatisfaction and unhappiness with the tencent cigar. Still, a little corruption now and then—”
“I am bribing you,” I said flatly. “Soto, how would you like to earn five hundred dollars? One day’s work.”
“Short of murder, I accept.”
“Today. That means dropping the rest of your houses for today. You’ll find some excuse.”
“What do you want me to do, Mr. Brody?”
“Do you know Big Sur?”
“I worked there three summers when I was a kid.”
“Good,” I said. “Now there’s a road off the main highway called Coyote Lane.”
“You mean Coyote Drive, Mr. Brody. I know the road. It’s a dead-end dirt road that leads up to the old Hunting and Fishing Club. When I worked at Big Sur, my cousin, Deta, was chief gardener there. They used to have an orange grove and a pecan grove, but I hear that’s gone now.”
“Right on. Now listen carefully, Soto. I am going to ask you to do something that will probably be very simple and matter-of-fact. On the other hand, it could be dangerous, but that’s unlikely. Still I have to say it to you. I have to give you a chance to refuse me.” “What do you want me to do, Mr. Brody?”
“All right. First of all, if you do what I ask, I want no questions. I want you never to speak of it again—to me or to anyone else.”
“I guess that depends on what you want me to do.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed. “Here it is. I want you to take the two bags of lime from my potting shed and put them in your pickup truck. Then I want you to drive your truck directly from here to Big Sur and up to the Hunting and Fishing Club. The road goes up to the parking lot and around the house to the rear. I haven’t been behind the house, but I suspect there are greenhouses there.”
“That’s right, Mr. Brody, three of them. At least they were there when I was a kid.”
“Good. Then I want you to put the two bags of lime in one of the greenhouses, any one of them. Just drop the two bags on the floor and leave them there. Then drive down to Big Sur and telephone me. That’s all. Then drive home.”
“Just that?”
“Just that.”
“OK, Mr. Brody, but I got to ask you some questions.”
“Go ahead.”
“Suppose I am stopped?”
“Then you got lost. You were heading for some other place and you turned into Coyote Drive. You’re obviously a gardener.”
“What about the lime? If I am stopped, should I go back and try a second time?”
“No, that would be risky. If you are stopped, turn around and drive out. Then, as soon as you are out of sight of the house, drop the two bags off on the roadside, but back off the road about five feet. Where they can be seen, but where they’re not too obvious.”
He thought about it for a moment. “No one ever stops a gardener. I could walk into Fort Knox if they had a garden there.”
I gave him ten fifties. “Do you have money for gas?”
“About ten dollars.”
“That won’t be enough, and fifties are hard to change on the road.” I pressed six fives into his hand.
“You don’t have to do that, Mr. Brody.”
“You don’t have to do what you’re doing, Soto. Take off now. You should be there by four o’clock.”
“Closer to five, Mr. Brody. That pickup of mine doesn’t move like your Cadillac.”
“Call me.”
I went back into the house and watched from behind the curtains as Soto backed his truck out and turned north toward Sunset Boulevard. The black Buick was parked half a block away, and it stayed there as Soto drove past. No one sees a gardener.
2
I stowed Evelyn’s jewels and the securities in a planter in the potting shed—obviously the safest place in the house; and then I called cleaning services. I finally found one open on Saturday, and they agreed to send me three women for heavy housecleaning, providing I paid time and a half. I said it would be a pleasure.
Then I called Evelyn in Acapulco, and she was surprisingly low-key on the whole thing. “Do you really want a divorce, Al?” she asked me.
“I’m afraid I do, Evelyn.”
“Is there someone else?”
“No,” I said. “No one else.”
“Dotty’s down here. She said she saw you and Millie Cooper at Chasin’s.”
“I hate to eat alone.”
“I told her skinny, dark girls were not your type. Anyway, Millie Cooper’s a dreary drink of water. What are you going to do?”
“I’ll find an apartment. You can have the house. By the way, we had a robbery and it messed up the place. I’m having it cleaned up, but you may find your drawers a mess, with everything in the wrong place.”
“Did they take the jewels?”
“No, they got
the safe open, but then they must have been frightened away.”
“Al?”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps after this we could be friends.”
“That would be nice. Have a good time there. Don’t worry about the house. You’ll never know anything happened.”
“Al, if you get an apartment, I’ll be happy to do the decor for you. Those decorators will fleece the skin off your back, and you know you have no taste in that direction. I’ll do it in a very simple modern style, you know, clean walls, abstracts, bright rugs—but with a sharp masculine feeling.”
“We’ll talk about it,” I replied.
“I’ll be doing the house over anyway, you know.”
“We’ll talk about it, Evelyn.”
I went out into the garden, dropped into a chair and stared at the swimming pool. During the past twenty-four hours I had experienced a little anger, a little hatred, a little love. Now it was all gone. I would have to tell Evelyn that I did not want her to decorate an apartment for me. Why did telling her pose such a problem? It did not add up to much of a future—Al Brody, forty-seven years old, overweight, and with no better expectations than being rubbed out by a gang of high-class hoodlums, or failing that, existing in an apartment with abstracts and bright rugs.
The cleaning women arrived. I gave them a tour of the chaos, told them what had to be done and left them to their labors. Then I chose a shady corner of the garden, opened a book called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and tried to immerse myself in the agony of the American Indian. I must have dozed off. I was awakened by one of the cleaning women.
“Mr. Brody, there’s a telephone call for you.”
I went into the house, picked up the telephone and heard Millie’s voice.
“Al, don’t hang up—please.”
“I don’t hang up on people, Millie. You know that.”
“Have dinner with me tonight.”
I was silent.
“Al—are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Please, Al, only tonight. I can’t leave it the way we left it yesterday.”
“Why not?” I just can’t.
I did some calculations, and then I said, “It will have to be very late.”
“How late?”
“Ten o’clock?”
“Fine. That’s not too late, Al.”
“I’ll pick you up at your place.”
“Thank you, Al.”
The cleaning was coming along nicely, and the house was beginning to look like a human abode again. I left the women at work and drove over to Dave’s place on Melrose, where I had a hot corned beef sandwich and a bottle of beer. The black Buick followed me and waited down the street while I ate. Dave presumed on an acquaintance of twenty years, sat down at the table across from me and said how sorry he was about the divorce.
“Like death and taxes,” I said.
“Still, you hate to see it.”
I went back to my car, and just for the hell of it I drove up Laurel Canyon to Mulholland Drive, across to Coldwater and then down to Beverly Hills. The black Buick stayed with me. I realized that something would have to be done about that.
Back at the house, the cleaning women were finishing up the work. I put the pictures back on the walls as best I could, and then I paid the women and gave each of them an extra five dollars.
“Go out the front way,” I told them. I wanted the Buick to see them emerge empty-handed.
I went back to my book. My eyes read, but my mind remembered nothing, and I gave it up and resorted to the dubious pleasures of daytime television. A half hour of that was enough. The phone rang. It was Larry Gorden, wondering whether I would make a fifth for poker that evening. The phone rang again ten minutes later, and I almost broke my neck running for it. It was Rosie Krantz, who wanted to know whether it was true that Hal Simmons, one of my clients, had gone off to France with the starlet Billie Brent. I had no information on that score, and when she began to chatter, I told her that I was just leaving the house.
It was almost five o’clock now. I sat at my desk in the study—the recent presence of a corpse totally forgotten—and stared at the telephone.
Then it rang.
“Mr. Brody?” It was Soto.
“Yes, Soto—go ahead.”
“A lead pipe cinch, Mr. Brody. Nobody sees a gardener. There are three greenhouses. I drove in and put the two bags of lime in the one on the left as you approach. Then I drove out. There were two men talking in front of the house, but they paid no attention to me. I’m in Big Sur now, and I’ll be taking off for L.A. if there’s nothing else.”
“Nothing else. Soto?”
“Yes, Mr. Brody?”
“Soto—thank you. I don’t know what else to say. Just thank you.”
“Nothing to it, Mr. Brody. A piece of cake.”
I put down the phone and held out my two hands in front of me. They were shaking, but that would go away. I thumbed through the telephone book and found the number I wanted, praying that this section of the government still functioned late on a Saturday afternoon. I dialed the number, and a voice said:
“Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Agent Clark speaking.”
“Can you put this call on tape?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Never mind my name. I have important information for you. Will you tape it?”
I heard something click. “You’re on tape. Go ahead.”
“Good. Now listen carefully. There’s a Freezone gas station on highway number one at Big Sur. Exactly a mile and a half north of the gas station, a road turns off to the right. The road is called Coyote Drive. The road runs three miles or so to the Big Sur Hunting and Fishing Club. This club is the base of the largest gang of international drug dealers on the West Coast. Behind the club are three greenhouses. In the greenhouse on the left, as you approach, you will find two bags marked Fine Garden Lime.’ These bags contain seventy pounds of pure, uncut heroin, with a street value of something over forty million dollars and a bulk value of eleven million dollars. If you act immediately, you can get the heroin and at least one of the top men in the mob. If you do so, you can break the back of the heroin trade on the coast. I must tell you that this is a gun club and the men in it are well armed. It is built like a fortress, and it will pay you to get into the place quickly and expeditiously. The heroin is less of a problem. They are so certain of their security that the heroin is unguarded, and it can be picked up without even the knowledge of the men in the house. But you must make your move today, tonight.”
“How do you know all this?” he demanded.
“Rest assured that I know it. The next move is up to you.”
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute now! Don’t hang up!”
“It will take you at least four more minutes of conversation to trace this call, and I have no desire to have it traced. It’s in your hands now.”
I put down the telephone and held out my hands. They were shaking, worse than before, but that too would go away. It was done. In a matter of hours—say twenty-four hours—I would be either dead or alive, but no longer in my present purgatory, which partook of both conditions. There still remained the black Buick.
I called the Beverly Hills Police Headquarters and asked for Sergeant Rafferty.
“Rafferty here,” he said.
“Sergeant, this is Al Brody.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Brody?”
“There’s a black Buick across the street, down the block, driver in it. It’s been parked here and there on the street, on and off since yesterday. It looks damn suspicious.”
“We’ll take care of it, Mr. Brody.”
Then I sat by a front window and waited. It took no more than five minutes for two patrol cars to enter the block, one from each end. They boxed in the Buick, and a moment later the driver was out of the car and splaylegged against it. The cops removed a gun from his clothes, put handcuffs on him and bundled him into one of the patrol cars.
It all took about three minutes, and then the patrol cars drove away, leaving the Buick in the fading sunlight of North Canon Drive. Only in Beverly Hills.
3
Driving to pick up Millie, at a few minutes before ten o’clock, I turned on my car radio and, after the weather and sports, listened to the following:
“We have just received a flash about the largest drug haul in the history of California. Heroin, to the value of eleven million dollars uncut, and with a street market value of over forty million dollars, has been recovered by Federal agents, who tonight closed in on the swank Big Sur Hunting and Fishing Club, allegedly the headquarters of an international ring of dope smugglers. Details will follow.”
By the time I reached the parking lot at Millie’s house, a few more bits had come over the air. A man tentatively identified as Brigadier General Holbert Martin, U.S. Army, retired, and allegedly one of the key factors in the drug ring, had been shot to death by Federal agents while resisting arrest. Two other men at the lodge had been injured, and one Federal agent was in critical condition. But no mention of Senator Ronald Bellman.
I buzzed Millie’s apartment, and when I stepped out of the elevator, the door was open and she was standing there, waiting for me. I had never seen her look lovelier. She was wearing a long, full pleated skirt of bright orange, a long-sleeved knit top, such as ballet dancers wear, flat-heeled black sandals and a single string of pearls that lay high and close, like a collar. Her rich, thick black hair was drawn back, held against her neck with a gold clasp. She had the kind of high-nosed, wide-lipped features that are different from every angle and in every light, the familiar always tinged with strangeness. Her beauty was elusive. Her mouth was too wide, her cheekbones too prominent, her nose too strong; but the whole of it made for me the most striking and unforgettable woman I had ever known.
Now she greeted me gravely but calmly. “Shall we have a drink here, Al?”
“It’s late. I made reservations at an Italian place, just off Hollywood on Cahuenga. They have good steaks, if you’re hungry.”
