by Eve Goldberg
I perked up. “The screening is tonight?”
“That’s what my pal said.”
“What time?”
“How the hell would I know?”
I looked at my watch. “That’s okay. Thanks, Max. I really appreciate your help. I gotta go.”
As soon as we clicked off, I went into overdrive. This was my chance. I’d been wanting to get inside Victor Dargin’s house again. I had no idea if Dargin’s hostile attitude towards me when I questioned him was just his standard operating procedure, or if he was hiding something — something related to my client’s blackmail, or even Panozzo’s murder. Maybe I had just hit a sore spot with him, or maybe he was neck deep in the whole mess.
Anyway, it stood to reason that his house, his private kingdom, might hold some clues. To find out, I needed to get a look around. A real look. It was now or never.
I found Dewey Weber Surfboards in the phone book, dialed, and got Reno on the line.
“Hey, Reno. It’s Ryan. When are you getting off work?”
“Not till late. What’s up?” Reno sounded as laid back as I was amped up.
“I need you for a job. Can you take off right now?”
“No, man. No way. Dewey’s pissed at me already. He said my attendance, and I quote, has not been stellar.”
“What’s he running down there — a sweat shop?”
“Hey, don’t rag on Dewey, man. Surf was up, so I didn’t get in till after two. And we’ve got orders like you wouldn’t believe. I’m a sanding demon, man.”
“Well, I’m coming down to get you anyway. I’ve got to. Can’t you make something up, some emergency to tell Dewey?”
“Like what?”
“Like — I don’t know, man. Just think up something brainy. This is important and there’s twenty-five bucks in it for you. For just a couple hours.”
Silence. I could practically hear Reno thinking. Twenty-five dollars for a few hours of work was way more than he made sanding boards for Dewey Weber.
“Okay, man,” he said. “I’m in.”
“Cool. See you in a few.”
I hung up the phone, took the rickety steps down from my apartment two at a time, jumped into my car, and drove to the office.
At the office, I grabbed the key to the storage closet and unlocked it. I pulled out a crow bar, camera with flash, 10-inch steel strip, latex gloves, walkie-talkie, and two extra batteries. I switched on the walkie-talkie transceivers. Neither one had any juice. I put in new batteries, tried again. They both crackled to life.
Ten minutes later I was back in Venice, pulling to the curb in front of Dewey Weber Surfboards. Dewey’s new shop on Lincoln Blvd. was a big improvement over the old one. This was a real store rather than a glorified shed. His trademark red and black logo was painted on the front of the squat brick building. On either side of the door were huge floor-to-ceiling display windows showcasing eight boards on iron racks.
I went inside. The showroom was lined with more boards on display racks. Dewey was showing a ten-footer with a thin red stripe to a teenage boy and his father.
I caught Dewey’s eye.
“Getting Reno,” I said.
Dewey gave me a funny sideways grin and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. I went through a connecting door into the factory which was a long narrow room with stacks of foam blanks leaning up against the walls. More boards in various stages of completion were stacked here and there. The floor was covered with a layer of fine white polyurethane dust. On one side of the room was a work bench cluttered with resin jars, draw knives, sandpaper, and boxes of fins. On the other side, a partial wall stopped just short of the ceiling. From behind it came the whirring sound of an electric planer. I went behind the half-wall where Reno was sanding a board that lay across two saw horses. He was so concentrated on his work that he didn’t realize I was in the room.
“Hey, man,” I shouted over the buzz of the planer.
Reno looked up and nodded. He turned off the planer and the room instantly got quiet. He brushed white dust off his clothes, face, and arms. I followed him out to the showroom where Dewey was ringing up a sale on the register. Dewey grinned at me again.
“Hasta la vista, papacito,” he said with a wink.
“What was that all about?” I asked Reno as we got into my car. “Dewey’s acting weird.”
“Nothing, man. Don’t sweat it.”
“Don’t sweat what?”
“Well . . . I told him you got a girl pregnant and she hates you now so I gotta take her to TJ for an abortion tonight.”
“Jeez! You really said that?”
Reno nodded. “Best I could come up with on short notice. So, what’s up for tonight?”
I told him as much as he needed to know, which wasn’t much. Reno turned on the radio. Monk’s Criss-Cross was playing on KNOB. Reno tapped his foot for a little while, then gave up. I knew he didn’t go for jazz, but those were the rules: my car, my music. As Criss-Cross segued to a Gerald Wilson number, a ’61 Corvette with whitewalls and white coves pulled alongside us at a stoplight.
“XKE or Vette?” Reno said.
“XKE,” I answered immediately.
Reno whipped around to face me. “You counting the new Stingray? Split rear window, four-wheel independent suspension, retractable headlamps. The Stingray’s awesome, man.”
“Sorry, bro. XKE. Not even close.”
“Okay, Sandra Dee or Natalie Wood?”
The light turned green and the Corvette shot ahead.
Suddenly I was bored. We had been playing this game since junior high. Liz Taylor or Ava Gardner? Platters or Coasters? Rincon or Malibu? Who gave a fuck?
“Reno,” I said, “let’s focus on the job, man. I don’t want anything to go wrong.”
CHAPTER 36
By the time we hit Beverly Hills, the summer heat had eased up. We cruised by Victor Dargin’s house at 6:30 PM. The green Jag and the silver Rolls were both in the carport. At least we weren’t too late. By 8:00 PM, if neither car had moved, I’d know the night was a bust. We parked part way down the block and waited.
At 6:45 PM, the Rolls backed out of the driveway. I slithered way down so that I’d be invisible from the street.
“Coming this way,” reported Reno. “Male and female. Both Caucasian. Male driving.”
I laughed. “You auditioning for Dragnet?”
“Fuck you, man.” Reno poked my ribs.
A moment later, I heard the Rolls pass as it headed south towards Santa Monica Boulevard.
“All clear,” Reno announced. “What now?”
I sat back up in a normal position.
“What’s she wearing?”
“Jewelry, low-cut dress.”
“Him?”
“Suit and tie. Squaresville.”
“Great. They’re probably going to that screening. Best case scenario: they’re gone a couple of hours. Worst case: the maid’s a live-in. Middle ground: the wife gets a headache or spills something on her dress or they’re nutcases who get dressed up to go grocery shopping and they’re back at any time.”
Reno nodded. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We drove up the street and parked near Dargin’s house in a spot where my Falcon was screened from the neighbor’s view by a tall hedge. I gave Reno my extra ignition key and one of the transceivers. I put the other transceiver in my jacket pocket.
“You sure you don’t want me to get you inside?” Reno asked. “Not to rub it in, but you know I was always better at this shit than you.”
“I’m cool. Just keep out of sight.”
“Okay.”
Reno hopped out of the car and, in a flash, disappeared into the hedge. I walked to Dargin’s front door and rang the bell. Nobody answered. No voices, no footsteps. I waited extra long just to be sure.
A whitewashed brick wall extended from the left edge of the house, separating the front from the back yard. I walked alongside the wall, my back to the street. As I walked, I pull
ed the latex gloves out of my jacket pocket and put them on. I quickly scrambled over the wall and dropped onto the plush backyard lawn. Now I was invisible to the street. I unbuttoned my shirt and removed the metal strip from my waist band, relieved not to have ten inches of steel going up the side of my ribs.
I crouched down and turned on the transceiver.
“Reno,” I whispered. “You there?”
“Yeah, man. All good,” he whispered back. His voice came in scratchy but the words were clear enough. “Fourteen minutes.”
I put the transceiver back into my pocket, walked to the French doors, and tried the handle. No surprise that the door was locked. I looked through the glass. A second lock extended from the bottom of the door into a metal plate in the floor. Dargin was security conscious. I would be too if I had all the ritzy stuff he had. Being rich had a million benefits, but the downside was that lots of people with less wanted to get their hands on your stuff. If someone ripped me off, the only pawnable items they’d get was a primo Shure turntable and a couple of Altec speakers.
At the corner of the house was a door with a small inset window. I peered through the window into a laundry room with matching avocado-green washer and dryer. I slid the metal strip between the frame and the door jamb, then lowered it until it came to an abrupt halt against a deadbolt.
My last chance to get in through the back was the double-hung windows. I inserted the notched end of the metal strip into the spot where the top and bottom window frames met. I jiggled the strip around until the notch connected with the lock. Reno was right: he was always better at this than me. During our brief breaking-and-entering career, which had lasted part of one high school summer, this had been his job. My technique was passable but slow. With one hand, I held the frames together. With the other hand, I carefully jostled the metal strip until the lock unlatched. I opened the window and climbed through.
CHAPTER 37
I walked rapidly down the main hallway, head swiveling to ID each room: kitchen, dining room, living room, billiards. The final door off the hallway was closed but not locked. I went in.
Victor Dargin’s office reeked of success: black leather chesterfield with bronze studding, mahogany bookcase filled with bound movie scripts, large mahogany desk. One wall was filled with framed photos. I swept over them quickly: Dargin with Walt Disney. Dargin with Gary Cooper. Dargin with Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Interesting, but I didn’t have time for that now.
I tried opening the desk drawers. They were all locked except the shallow one at the top. Paperclips, stapler, rubber bands, matches. No keys.
I jogged up to the second floor. There were enough bedrooms up here to sleep the Kennedys. Only one room seemed lived-in. The king-sized bed was piled high with satin pillows. On one nightstand was an eye mask, a frosted-glass bottle of skin lotion, and a Cosmopolitan with Audrey Hepburn and Bill Holden on the cover. On the other nightstand was an alarm clock, a telephone, and a pair of reading glasses. I opened the drawer below the alarm clock. Inside was a cigar box filled with loose change and a key ring filled with keys.
I sprinted back down the stairs, unlocked the drawers in Dargin’s desk, and went through each one. In the bottom drawer was a metal lock box with a standard hanging padlock. None of the keys on the key ring fit the lock, so I took a paperclip out of my pocket and broke it in half. I inserted one end of the half-clip into the lock, nudged it around until I felt the right tension. I inserted the other half and wiggled it until the padlock fell open.
Inside the lock box was a bound leather notebook sitting on top of a manila envelope. I opened the notebook and flipped through the pages. It contained a list of names — some I recognized, some I didn’t. Next to each name were notations, letters and numbers. Some kind of code, I figured, which meant exactly nothing to me.
Inside the manila envelope were photographs: 8x10 black & white glossies, as well as a smaller white envelope containing strips of negatives. I shuffled through the photos. All were of Chip Jordan and Steve Sutton. Long shots. Medium shots. Close-ups. By the pool. In the pool. In the bedroom.
I locked up all the drawers, ran upstairs and tossed the key ring back into its cigar box, crawled out the back window, climbed over the whitewashed wall, and walked back to my car.
As I opened the driver’s side door, Reno emerged from the hedge and slid into the passenger seat. I tossed Dargin’s manila envelope and notebook onto the backseat. Then I started the engine and we cruised out of Beverly Hills.
CHAPTER 38
I sat down at my dinette table and I flipped through Dargin’s notebook until I found Jordan, C. Following his name was a string of alphabet soup code. I closed the notebook and set the manila envelope and the notebook side by side on my dinette table. I stared at them for a while.
Then I went out onto the balcony and listened to the waves break on the beach. A police siren wailed in the distance. Victor Dargin had been blackmailing Chip Jordan. And I had an idea as to why.
My board leaned against the wall in the corner of the balcony, draped in a beach towel. I lifted the towel and ran my hand down the deck. The wax was uneven and starting to get gritty. The thought of scraping off the old wax and applying fresh base put me in a good mood. Out with the old, in with the new.
I went back inside, got a box of matches, and went into the bathroom. I placed the manila envelope on the shower floor. The tiles were old and cracked; most of the grout had worn away. A grayish-red mold was filling in for the grout, and nobody, not me, not the landlord, was about to fix it. I lit a match and tossed it onto the envelope. The match sizzled and went out. I touched a second match to the envelope’s edge and held it there until the paper caught. I watched the paper burn. The acrid odor of burning photographic emulsion filled the room.
I watched until all that remained on the cracked shower tiles was a mound of black ash.
CHAPTER 39
“Got a book or something?”
“What for?” Joey asked.
We were standing at the Flynn’s front door, Joey inside, me out. He was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Ready to go.
I looked at Joey differently today. Before the whole gun situation, I figured he was just a kid at loose ends for the summer, doing his best to deal with a mother who drank too much and got herself into some scary trouble. Doing his best to protect her. Just a kid.
But now I wasn’t sure: Was Joey just a kid, or had he gone over the edge?
What I did know was that Oscar Panozzo’s killer was out there somewhere, maybe standing right here in front of me.
“Something to read while I work,” I answered.
“I thought we were going fishing.”
“We are. Later.”
“Okay.”
Joey went inside, returning in a few minutes with a Batman comic book and a paperback. We drove down his quiet tree-lined street, hung a right on Sunset. After a while, I glanced over at Joey who was looking out the window, his thumb idly flicking through the pages of the paperback. Just a kid? My job was to find out the truth. That’s what a PI does, or is supposed to do. But me, Ryan, not the PI, was rooting for Joey to be innocent. Just a kid.
“You like to read?” I asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Because this work thing might take a while.”
“I don’t mind. It’s better than staying home alone all day.”
“Don’t you have other friends besides Nicholas?”
“They’re all at camp or on trips. Where are we going?”
“Malibu.”
“Why there?”
“I’ve got to talk to someone about a case.”
Joey nodded. He read his Batman comic as we drove up Pacific Coast Highway.
Max Fisher answered the door wearing his trademark Bermuda shorts and sandals.
“Hi, Ryan.” He nodded towards Joey. “So, who’s your new partner?”
Joey looked at me, then at Max.
“Flynn,” he said. “Joey Flynn.”
“Ah, a Bond man.” Max grinned. “Did you see Dr. No?”
Joey nodded.
“They’ve got another movie in the works, you know,” Max said. “From Russia with Love.”
“I read the book.”
“Oh, you’re a reader too. What do you have there?”
Joey handed Max his book.
“The Phantom Tollbooth. Never heard of it. What’s it about?”
“A boy named Milo who finds a magical tollbooth and all these strange things start to happen like he finds a dog with an alarm clock built in,” Joey gushed. “It’s a watchdog. Get it?”
Max laughed. “I get it.” He turned to me. “Where’d you find this kid, Ryan? He’s sharp.”
Joey beamed.
Max settled Joey out on the deck with a glass of milk and a piece of chocolate cake. Max and I went into the living room and I handed him Dargin’s notebook.
“What do you make of this, Max?”
Max sat down on the couch and lit his pipe. He cocked his head to the side as he scanned the names and notations on the first page.
“Very interesting,” he muttered. “Where’d you get this?”
“Victor Dargin.”
“He know you have it?”
“I hope not.”
“Then how . . .?”
“Better if we skip the details.” I said. “So what do you make of it? Other than some of the names, it’s alphabet soup to me.”
Max nodded. “Abbreviations. Look here.”
He pressed the notebook open, ran his finger down the left side of a page.
“Obviously, this first column is a list of people” he said. “After each name, these are the initials for organizations, magazines, newspapers, meeting halls. I don’t recognize them all, but enough to know what I’m looking at. Mostly organizations. Now, knowing that, look again. Recognize any?”
I leaned in closer and scanned the page.
“ACLU. American Civil Liberties Union?”
“There you go. The ACLU is still alive and kicking. A lot of these other groups, however, are defunct. CCLESL: Coordinating Committee to Lift the Embargo on the Spanish Loyalists. ACYR: American Committee for Yugoslav Relief. NNC: National Negro Congress. ALB: Abraham Lincoln Brigade. All progressive organizations.”
