Hollywood Hills

by Joseph Wambaugh

  He opened a door from his office that led to a storage room with a large sliding door leading from there to the alley. The cargo van was parked inside the storage room, and there were gallery supplies on shelves and benches. Nigel Wickland entered and turned on a light over one of the benches. He cut the duct tape and unwrapped the largest bundle. He lifted the painting and held it under the light, inspecting it closely. Megan stood in the doorway of the storage room and watched him.

  "Ah, yes," he said. "The Woman by the Water. Isn't she lovely?" He carefully rewrapped the painting and then unwrapped the second one, holding it under the light, and nodded with a smile on his face.

  "Satisfied?" Megan said.

  Nigel said, "I am, indeed."

  He rewrapped Flowers on the Hillside and opened the side door of the van, putting both bundled paintings inside on the floor. Then he closed the door of the van and said, "Now let's complete our business before your turbaned friend comes in here and dispatches me with his dagger."

  They went back to Nigel's desk, where he opened a deep bottom drawer and removed a shipping carton without a lid. He placed it on his desk and said, "Go ahead and count it. I already have."

  Megan picked up a packet of hundred-dollar bills, her heart beating in her ears, and counted. When she got to fifty, she stopped and fanned through the rest of the packet. Then she fanned through each of the other packets without counting. It was too staggering an amount of money. She said, "It looks okay. I trust you, Mr. Wickland."

  Nigel emitted a burst of nervous laughter at that, and even Megan had to giggle. Then she put each packet into her large suitcase among a jumble of underwear, jeans, two books, T-shirts, and tank tops. When she was finished, she closed and locked the suitcase with a small luggage key.

  "Yes, that should get through an airport baggage scanner with no problem," Nigel said. "I'll bet you'll be waiting anxiously for it to come down the carousel when you reach your destination, wherever that is."

  Megan smiled without comment. Then she simply picked up the suitcase, opened the door of his office, and walked across the display room of the gallery to the Wilshire Boulevard door.

  Before she opened it, Nigel called to her, saying, "Have a good life, Valerie. Your ambition has been for me a blessing in disguise."

  She didn't respond but wiggled her fingers at him in a final farewell. When she got outside, the Sikh took her suitcase, and she carried the pet carrier to the taxi for the ride to LAX. Megan Burke was so overjoyed that she decided to increase Arjan's tip to $200.

  And on that ride to the airport, with her hand inside the pet carrier stroking her cat, Megan Burke tried to take with her something positive from her two years away from home. But the addiction that had resulted in her physical, emotional, and moral decline had obliterated all positives. And then she thought, no, there was one gift that Hollywood, California, had given her. It came when she had walked into the animal rescue facility fourteen months ago. Hollywood had given her Cuddles the calico cat.

  Chapter Twenty-five.

  RALEIGH DIBBLE HAD taken the longest shower of his life. He never wanted to leave the hot water. When he did, he went to the bathroom sink and shaved with a new blade and did as good a job as he could in combing his thinning hair. He laid out his best sport shirt and newest chinos. He even brushed the lint from his best blazer and ran a cloth over his old loafers. He'd seen movies of men who were facing momentous events in their lives who took such care, sometimes before putting a gun to their heads and pulling the trigger.

  By 4 P. M., he was across the street from the Wickland Gallery, having first ascertained that the lights were on inside and the gallery was open for business.

  Jonas Claymore was on a meth ride that he hadn't been on in more than a year. He was driving in frenzy from east Hollywood to Beverly Hills through rush-hour traffic. His central nervous system had come unwired and his hands were out of control. He kept touching the instruments in the VW bug. He'd make sure the headlights were not on and the emergency brake was not on and the radio controls were working and the heater switch was off. Every time he finished he'd do it all over again. His hands didn't belong to him anymore. They just kept fiddling and fretting in perpetual motion.

  He knew how much he needed some ox to get himself under control, but there was no time to waste. He fantasized that Megan Burke might be there when he arrived. He would deal with her if he found her there. Oh yes, he would. They were laughing at him, Megan and that gallery guy who had his paintings. She'd stolen them from him. They'd been his to dispose of as he chose, but she'd clowned him. Now they were both laughing at him.

  He had to remind himself to slow down and obey the traffic laws. He couldn't afford to get stopped by the cops again. It was bizarre, but everyone he saw on the streets looked like an undercover cop, and they all seemed to be watching him. But they couldn't stop him from doing what he had to do. Nobody could.

  Jonas only wished he'd had time to talk to Wilbur to see if he could sell him a burner. He'd never had one before, but he was sure he'd handle one okay. Maybe a pistol like all the cops carried on CSI. But he hadn't had time to strap up. All he had was the large carving knife that was riding inside his waistband, the handle of it digging into his sunken belly. It would be enough because he was starting to feel invincible.

  Five minutes before its scheduled closing, Raleigh Dibble crossed Wilshire Boulevard and entered the Wickland Gallery. He didn't see the woman at her desk, so he walked back to Nigel's office just as Nigel was coming out of the little restroom.

  "Surprise," Raleigh said, and sat in the client chair, trying to stay cool.

  Nigel frowned and said, "I didn't hear you come in. What're you doing here? You should know better than to come here again." "Oh, your assistant told you I was here the other day?"

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't you call me to complain about that, Nigel?"

  Nigel sat on the corner of his desk and said, "What good would that have done? I've tried everything in my power to persuade you to be patient until the thieves contact us. What more can I do?"

  "I've forgotten your employee's name," Raleigh said.

  "Ruth is her name. You look tense, Raleigh. Can I get you a cup of coffee? Tea, perhaps?"

  Raleigh said, "Did Ruth tell you what we talked about when I came looking for you yesterday?"

  "Yes, she said you inquired whether a man came here asking to talk to me personally."

  "Did you understand why I asked that?"

  "Of course," Nigel said. "You think that I'm doing business with the man who phoned me and that I'm concealing it from you."

  "Yes, that's right," Raleigh said, thinking, Calm. Stay calm.

  "Well, it's silly, Raleigh," Nigel said. "We may never hear from them at all, and if that's the case, I'm the only one who's out any expenses."

  "There's nothing to worry about, then?" Raleigh said.

  "Nothing," Nigel said. "Leona will never notice what we did, and I will proceed with assisting her to crate and store the replicated pictures when the time comes."

  "I see," Raleigh said. "Then it was just a big swing and a miss, our whole caper?"

  "In your baseball terms? Yes, that's what it was. I'm sorry for you and I'm sorry for me. I spent money on this plan, if you'll remember."

  "Yes, I certainly do remember," Raleigh said. "More money than I knew about."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Raleigh's demeanor changed and he said, "I'm referring to the money you paid your accomplices to screw me after you used me up."

  "The pressure's become too much for you," Nigel said, standing up from his perch on the corner of his desk and walking around to his desk chair.

  "I don't think so," Raleigh said. "I know that you hired two people from the get-go to pull that bogus theft of your van so that you could cut me right out of the picture. After I helped you switch the paintings, I was taken right out of it, as neat as you please."

  "Jesus wept!" Nigel sa
id incredulously, looking at the door to the storage room, which was ajar. "Is that what you really think? That I hired a couple of blokes to pretend to steal my van so that I could cut you out of the arrangement?"

  "That's what I think," Raleigh said.

  "On my word as a gentleman," Nigel said, "my van was stolen by unknown persons. Full stop. End of story."

  "You're no gentleman, you son of a bitch," Raleigh said, smoldering now.

  "Get out, Raleigh," Nigel said. "You're making a fool of yourself."

  Raleigh watched Nigel's face very closely when he said, "And how about the girl in the candy-striped dress?"

  "The what?" Nigel said instantly.

  He was good, Raleigh thought. He didn't flinch. But the tic at the corner of his eye began working overtime. "Valerie, if that's her name."

  Nigel felt truly gob-smacked. How did Raleigh know that Valerie had come here? He said, "Please explain yourself, Raleigh. You're not making sense."

  "You're a conniving bastard, aren't you?" Raleigh said. "Me, I'm just a dumb old ex-con who's a servant for rich people and makes their meals and wipes their asses, just like you said. But now I realize that I was actually pretty content with my lot in life until I met you. Now that I see what you are."

  "This is going nowhere," Nigel said. "Whatever I tell you won't matter. You're simply overwhelmed by paranoid thoughts. Believe me, I wish as much as you do that we'd never met, but if wishes were fishes, as they say."

  "Tell me about the girl in the candy-striped dress," Raleigh said.

  "Tell me about darling, adorable little Valerie. Why did she come to see me? That's the only thing that puzzles me. What was that all about? Was she doing a little work on her own as a private agent? Maybe she wanted to see what other art was in the house so she and her thieving partner could steal more from Leona Brueger? I can't figure out that part of it. Why did she come to the Brueger house? Tell me that much, if you know."

  Nigel Wickland was more exhausted than he'd been when they'd done the switch and watched it all implode with the stealing of the van. He was more exhausted than he'd been anytime in the past several days when he'd worried that the police would come to his gallery to say that they'd caught a man with his van and some blanket-wrapped paintings that he would need to explain. He was drained. Raleigh Dibble had most of it wrong but enough of it right. He had let himself be trapped by a fool.

  Then it came to him. "Ruth," Nigel said. "Ruth mentioned the girl in the candy-striped dress to you, didn't she?"

  "You kept her a secret from me," Raleigh said.

  "Bloody hell," Nigel said. "Yes, I have kept some things from you, but for good reason, trust me."

  "I'm all ears," Raleigh said, "like a cornfield in summer. Enlighten me, Nigel."

  "They truly stole the van," Nigel said. "A man I've never seen and the girl we both know as Valerie. Will you at least believe that much?"

  "Go on," Raleigh said.

  "She's a smart girl, infinitely smarter than her crime partner, whom I've never met. She saw the Brueger name and address on the framer's tag that's stapled to the stretcher bars, and she figured out that something was wrong with my claim that the paintings belong to me. She went to you on her own to try to work it out, and I guess she charmed you into inviting her into the house, where you generously showed her around. And she saw The Woman by the Water and Flowers on the Hillside. All because you showed the goddamn paintings to her, Raleigh. You caused all this. It's all your fault, not mine!"

  "I've never stopped wondering about the generosity of the thieves," Raleigh said. "You, know, the way they gave back your van as a show of good faith?"

  "They're not master criminals, those two," Nigel said. "They're addled drug addicts who got extremely lucky. You saw Valerie. Couldn't you see that she's physically unwell?"

  "And they took your twelve thousand and gave you back the paintings as promised, right along with your van, didn't they?"

  "Good lord!" Nigel said. "No, I haven't paid them anything yet because I haven't heard any more from them since Valerie came here and blackmailed me. All because you invited her into the fucking house."

  "And did she tell you how much more money she wanted not to break it all down for the police or for Mrs. Brueger?"

  "No!" Nigel said. "I've been waiting to hear from them. I decided that your nerves were so frazzled you couldn't take another shock like this, so that's why I wasn't going to tell you until I received their demand. Don't you understand?"

  "You were protecting me. That's kind of you," Raleigh said.

  "I was protecting both of us. Believe me, this has become so convoluted I don't know where I am half the time. I knew that you couldn't possibly deal with more stress. Of that much I was certain."

  "So all we can do is wait to receive the new instructions from Valerie or her partner, is that it, Nigel?"

  "That's about it," Nigel said. "We must wait."

  "That's not about it," Raleigh said. "I have another plan in mind."

  The buzzer sounded in the office, indicating that someone had entered the gallery door on Wilshire Boulevard.

  "Oh, Christ!" Nigel said. "I should've locked up. Will you excuse me for a moment?"

  Nigel got up and left the office, and when he entered the display room, he turned and said, "Raleigh, if you want coffee, it's on the table by the restroom door. Help yourself."

  Jonas Claymore, who was standing in the middle of the display room, heard what Nigel said and realized that the gallery owner was not alone.

  It was hard for Nigel to repress a sneer of disgust when he saw the gangling, disheveled young man in a hooded gray sweatshirt looking at him with a crazed expression. Nigel thought that the Beverly Hills police should do a better job in keeping panhandlers from harassing the business owners along Wilshire Boulevard.

  "I'm afraid we're closed," Nigel said to Jonas. "I'll be locking the door as soon as my last customer leaves."

  Without a word, Jonas scowled, turned, and slouched across the display room to the door with Nigel following after him. When Jonas stepped out onto Wilshire Boulevard, the gallery owner locked the door behind him, pulled a blind over the glass door, and placed a "Closed" sign in the display window.

  Okay, you prissy asshole, Jonas thought. We'll play, but it's my move. He walked around to the alley and saw that the gallery had a large sliding door big enough to accommodate a van. There were two parking spaces in the alley, one of them containing a red BMW roadster. Yeah, that's his, Jonas thought. A fag car.

  He hurried to his VW bug, moved it to the end of the alley, and sat there watching the rear door of the gallery, thinking he'd trade three Franklins for just half an ox at this moment. An elderly woman left the door of the jewelry store behind him to empty a trash container in a Dumpster. Jonas eyed her in his rearview mirror and she looked to him like an undercover cop.

  When Nigel Wickland had finished locking up and turning out the lights, he returned to his office and found himself looking at the muzzle of a gun.

  Raleigh was standing by the door to the storage room, and he said, "Let's you and me have a look in here, Nigel. If the paintings aren't here, we'll take a ride to your condo and look for them there."

  And at last Raleigh Dibble saw something that he had longed to see ever since the entire misadventure had begun. He saw something that he knew too well from his own experience. He saw real fear in the face of Nigel Wickland.

  "What're you playing at?" Nigel said, and Raleigh was pleased to see that the tic at the corner of Nigel's eye had intensified.

  "I'm not playing," Raleigh said. "Not anymore."

  "Please, Raleigh!" Nigel said.

  "You're looking at a desperate, angry man," Raleigh said. "I believe that I'll spend many years in prison if I don't put this thing right, and that's what I'm going to do tonight, one way or the other."

  "You won't use that," Nigel said. "You can't!"

  "I will certainly kill you, Nigel," Raleigh said, "if you don't walk i
nto that storage room right now. And then I might kill myself. Don't test me."

  Nigel didn't just walk, he skated. He seemed to glide along the floor with his hands held in front of him palms up, as though to ward off any bullet that Raleigh might fire. When he stepped into the storage room, he switched on the light.

  "You see," he said, "there's nothing here but store supplies ..." "How about your van," Raleigh said.

  "Go ahead and search," Nigel said. "This is ridiculous." Raleigh said, "Get me a flashlight. It's too dark in here." "On the workbench," Nigel said. "But I'd like you to put the gun away."

  Raleigh saw the toolbox, the one that Nigel had had the day they removed the paintings from their frames and installed the replicas in their places. The small flashlight was in the top tray. Raleigh took it out and said, "Turn around, Nigel, with your hands held high."

  "What're you going to do?" Nigel said, sounding like he might weep. Sounding the way he did on the night that the thieves stole the van.

  "Just be very still," Raleigh said, shining the beam into darkened crannies and inside cabinets and even up to the exposed beams. "Satisfied?" Nigel said. "Can we stop this charade now?" "Not yet," Raleigh said.

  When Nigel heard the door to the van open, he said, "For god's sake, Raleigh!"

  "Do not move a hair," Raleigh said. Then he shined his beam inside the van and saw the familiar blanketed bundles.

  "Raleigh ... ," Nigel said, unable to immediately come up with more than that. "Raleigh, Raleigh ..."

  "Do I need to have you take these out and open them?"

  Nigel turned his face and spoke over his shoulder, saying, "I swear to you that I didn't know anything until the girl Valerie marched in here today with the paintings. I gave her the twelve thousand and she marched out again."

  "And you were going to tell me about it when you got around to it, weren't you?"

  "Can I put my hands down?"

  "No, but you can turn around and face me."

  Nigel turned, hands still held high, and said, "I couldn't tell you! All you've been talking about lately is how much you've regretted what we've done. You wanted to return the paintings to the house. I was afraid you would do it. I wasn't going to tell you about this until I shipped them to Europe and made the deal. Then I was going to surprise you with your share of a million dollars. I swear it's the truth, Raleigh!"