“Yeah, so what?”
“It didn’t work when Dagmar and Missy used it on Restaurant Row either.”
“Mario, we gonna screw around all day?” Hans whined. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Okay,” Mario Villalobos said. “Lemme just make one stop. I wanna take this to a bank and have them run it through in a normal transaction and see if it’s an ordinary legit card.”
And while both Hans and The Bad Czech moaned about Mario Villalobos, and detectives in general, they stopped at a downtown bank on their way to the Pasadena Freeway.
The bank officer returned with the credit card and said to Mario Villalobos, “Sergeant, there’s no information on this card. That’s the problem.”
“Whadda you mean, no information? Is it a forged card?”
“No, it’s a proper card,” the man said. “But the magnetic stripe doesn’t contain any information.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s been erased. I don’t know how. I’ve heard that a magnet can do it.”
“A magnet can wipe out the information on the magnetic stripe? Like the magnetometer at an airport terminal?”
“No, I’ve carried mine lots of times in airports. A strong magnet can do it, that’s all I know. Why don’t you use our phone and talk to someone who knows more about it?”
The Bad Czech and Hans both turned their persecuted faces to Mario Villalobos when he returned after thirty minutes.
“If we had Ludwig, we’da sent him looking,” Hans said.
“A strong magnetic field can erase the information on these cards,” Mario Villalobos said. “That’s why it didn’t work for Missy and Dagmar!”
“So, what’s that mean?” The Bad Czech asked.
“Mean? Nothing, yet.”
“It’s amazing the irrelevant things that make detectives so happy,” Hans said.
The K-9 cop looked unhappily out the car window at the downtown pedestrians dodging and careening into one another. An army of blinded worker-ants sweating in the smog.
Mario Villalobos wisely decided to buy Hans and The Bad Czech something to eat before going to Caltech, so they wouldn’t be quite so difficult. The Bad Czech insisted on Chicken McNuggets, so they stopped at McDonald’s and he ate four orders of them, and had two chocolate shakes and three bags of fries. So that he could cope with the afternoon.
They went straight to Lupe Luna’s office and found her working away on a typewriter, looking even better than Mario Villalobos remembered her from last night. He thought that if he were a real Mexican, he might have beautiful hair and teeth and skin like Lupe Luna.
“Hi,” she said brightly when the detective walked in with The Bad Czech and Hans. “Thanks for dinner last night. It was great.”
The Bad Czech and Hans gave each other a look that said, Is this why we’re here? To give old Mario a crack at a foxy secretary?
And then Mario Villalobos almost panicked when he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to include one detail when he briefed the cops as to the nature of their “work” as restaurant employees. He’d never told them what kind of employees they supposedly were.
He never got the chance. When he introduced them to Lupe Luna as “Czech” and “Hans,” Lupe Luna said, “Which is the waiter and which is the busboy?”
In that Hans thought quicker, he said, “I’m the waiter.”
And when The Bad Czech caught on, his demented gray eyes started to bulge and pulsate. Mario Villalobos prayed that he wouldn’t scream something like, “I GOTTA PLAY LIKE I’M A FUCKIN BUSBOY?”
But Lupe Luna said, “Let’s get started. It’ll take you a while to look at all the pictures.”
Mario Villalobos offered a placating glance at the monster cop, who was glaring murderously at Hans because the K-9 cop started giggling. He was the waiter and The Bad Czech was the busboy!
They reminded Mario Villalobos of typical witnesses looking through police department mug books. At the start, witnesses have some interest and diligence. Very quickly diligence wanes and confusion reigns. Then they give the photos a perfunctory glance and realize that they must see the person in the flesh if they’re even to have a chance.
At four o’clock that afternoon, Mario Villalobos said, “Enough. There’s no point looking at them again.”
“I just have six maybes,” Hans sighed.
“I jist have four maybes,” The Bad Czech sighed.
“Lemme go talk to Lupe for a minute,” Mario Villalobos said. The Bad Czech rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, stretching the fabric on his doubleknit pants with a pair of thighs the size of Hans’ waist.
When the detective returned he was grinning. “Lupe’s taking us to their bar. We’re gonna get some drinks, compliments of her boss.”
“Aw right!” The Bad Czech said.
“A couple drinks helps me recognize people,” Hans said.
“Let’s not take advantage,” Mario Villalobos warned. “Her boss is gonna get our bill.”
As it turned out, the afternoon’s bar tab wasn’t as high as it once was when Lupe Luna’s boss hosted a cocktail party for thirty in the Caltech dining room. But it was close.
The Caltech Athenaeum was one of the older buildings. It was built in 1929, just before the crash, during the golden age of California architecture. An age of tile roofs, Moorish arches, Corinthian columns and vaulted gold-leaf ceilings. Lupe Luna took them on a tour of the building, past an elegant dining room into an enormous sitting room.
The Bad Czech said, “Primo! You could play basketball in here!”
Hans walked on the Oriental carpet and said, “That rug’s big enough for a hundred ayatollahs to roll around on!”
“What a fireplace!” The Bad Czech said. “It’s big enough to roast Ludwig in.”
“Look at the patina on that walnut paneling,” the detective said. “They don’t make things like this anymore.”
“I never saw a busboy so big,” Lupe Luna said suspiciously to Mario Villalobos.
The detective hushed her and whispered, “He’s sensitive about it. He used to be a waiter and got demoted for dropping dishes.”
She looked as though she didn’t believe that either. They passed back through the lobby to the Hayman Lounge. It was a restful cocktail lounge with upholstered chairs and a bartender in black tie.
“This is where donors and trustees drink,” Lupe Luna explained. “The students and faculty prefer it downstairs.”
“Let’s go downstairs,” Mario Villalobos said.
The downstairs Athenaeum bar was in a basement lined with sturdy, unpretentious wooden tables and chairs. The floor was thinly carpeted and the basement walls were painted concrete. But the bar, even without the upstairs luxury, had a pub quality which Hans and The Bad Czech were comfortable with.
Mario Villalobos liked it here because it was obviously the kind of “neighborhood” saloon in which people talked. And as all detectives knew, talk was finally what solved crimes, “scientific” detection serving only as public relations sop. He just hoped he could pay attention to business, what with Lupe Luna distracting him.
The students had decorated the walls of the bar with allusions to current events. A chalkboard posed a question: “Should 40,000 Falkland penguins be guaranteed political asylum?”
Another offered an answer: “Only if they wear ‘Save the Whale’ stickers epoxied to their flippers.”
The dress of scientists, be they student or professor, seemed to range from careless to grungy. There was a slim, attractive woman tending bar and she was just opening for the evening. The Bad Czech took one look at her and made himself right at home on the first stool by the door.
“Bourbon on the rocks. Double,” The Bad Czech said, wondering how long was considered polite in high-powered science institutes before you made a move on lady bartenders.
“Scotch on the rocks. Double,” Hans leered, not caring what was considered polite.
And Mario Villalobos thought, s
o much for worrying about other people’s bar tabs.
Lupe Luna gave him a shrug and said, “We believe in supporting our local police, as they say.”
“Okay,” Mario Villalobos said. “A very dry vodka martini on the rocks. Double.” And when he added, “Hold the vermouth. Hold the olive,” the woman behind the bar displayed a knowing bartender’s smile and gave him a very healthy shot of vodka over ice.
The Bad Czech said to Hans, “This might turn out to be pretty good duty after all.” And then he saw the dish full of Goldfish bar tidbits, and a huge plastic bag full of popcorn on a table.
“You give away free Goldfish and popcorn?” The Bad Czech asked the bartender.
“All you want,” she said.
“This here ain’t like Leery’s, eh, Mario?” The Bad Czech said. “You get somethin free!”
Lupe Luna, who was sitting at one of the wooden tables with the detective, said, “Where’s Leery’s?”
“That’s the, uh, owner of the restaurant where they work.”
“He calls you by your first name? Are you so intimate with all your witnesses?”
“I believe in being an approachable cop.”
“Uh huh.”
“Speaking of intimate, when’re we going out again?”
“Have you told me the whole truth about this … jewel theft you’re working on?”
“Would I lie?” Mario Villalobos asked, swallowing the double vodka.
“That,” she said, pointing to The Bad Czech, “is a busboy?”
“Do you think I could have just one more drink on your boss’s tab? We’d buy our own if this wasn’t a private club.”
“I’ll get it,” she said, and he knew that the lie might not fly.
“Tell her a vodka martini …”
“Very, very dry,” Lupe Luna nodded.
“She knows I’m full of crap, and still she buys us drinks. I think I’m in love!” Mario Villalobos mouthed the words to The Bad Czech, who just shrugged.
When Lupe Luna returned she brought him a double vodka and a whiskey sour for herself.
“I’m gonna get you drunk and take advantage of you,” she warned him playfully.
“You are?” Mario Villalobos cried. “Along with free drinks?”
“Yeah. Then I’m gonna find out what you’re really investigating. I’m getting excited. I love a mystery.” She looked at him over the rim of her whiskey sour with mischief in her eyes.
“I hate a mystery,” Mario Villalobos said. “It drives me bonkers. But I’m getting excited too. I love overbites.”
Meanwhile, The Bad Czech and Hans were no longer cranky at all about their detective assignment, and the bar started to get crowded. They were both working on their second double and The Bad Czech was threatening to break the pub record for eating Goldfish, previously held by the chairman of the division of chemistry.
In fact, The Bad Czech began giving a lecture to two “postdocs,” young women who were postdoctoral research fellows, one doing work in physics, the other in chemistry, after having received their doctoral degrees. The Bad Czech’s lecture to the two young women was on how to eat Goldfish.
“Some people eat a Goldfish by chewin off the tail first,” The Bad Czech said. He took the little fish-shaped cracker and held it in fingers as big as 50-milliliter test tubes. “It’s real interestin sittin at a bar and seein how people eat Goldfish,” The Bad Czech said. “There’s these tail biters. Some bite the tail edgewise and some do it flat. Then there’s these types that put the little fish between their teeth and kind a split it down the middle. Then a course, there’s people that jist gobble them up and all the crumbs jist floop outa their mouths. I ain’t much interested in meetin people like that. I see you two’re tail biters. I like tail biters. I wish I could buy ya a drink, but we’re jist guests here.”
“That was a very enlightening talk on Goldfish,” Hans said, and his whiny voice and smart-aleck tone made The Bad Czech mad.
Then the skinny K-9 cop whispered to his postdoc, “Your girl friend’s looking at the big dummy like he’s a booger on her finger. The girl’s got taste.”
Both postdocs wore Levi jeans. One wore a red T-shirt and moccasins. The Bad Czech liked her big chest, and he also eyed the other one, who wore a baggy work shirt and deck shoes. In general, they dressed not unlike off-duty male cops.
“Who’re you guests of?” the postdoc in the T-shirt asked.
“That woman over there with the guy in the suit,” The Bad Czech said. “Luna’s her name.”
“What do you do?” the other postdoc asked Hans, who was slinking closer along the bar as was his custom.
“I’m a waiter,” Hans said. “He’s a …”
“We’re both waiters!” The Bad Czech said, glaring at Hans. “We work in a real nice joint over on Restaurant Row. Ever eat over there?”
“Can’t afford it,” the postdoc in the T-shirt said. “Starving young scientists trying to make our place in the world. Next year we’ll get real grown-up jobs doing science and maybe we can eat in a restaurant.”
Just then a clutch of noisy graduate students came banging down the stairs and into the bar. They wore cutoffs and jeans and grubbies of all kinds. They didn’t look any smarter than college kids the cops had occasionally jailed when they drove drunk through Rampart Division on their way to USC or UCLA. The difference was that all these were smart or they couldn’t be here. One kid with a beard full of lint said to another, “Physics is like fucking. Mathematics is like masturbation.”
The Bad Czech didn’t get it, but at least it had to do with sex. The two unglamorous postdocs were starting to look better. “Another double,” he said to the bartender, who was now having to move fast to keep up with the noisy crowd of drinkers.
The postdoc with the baggy shirt, who was getting more appealing to Hans, said to the other, “Have you heard the one about the theoretical physicist who drowned in a lake he theorized had an average depth of six inches?”
Both young women laughed like hell, and The Bad Czech, who didn’t get that one either, said, “Maybe if ya bite the Goldfish vertical it means you’re Caucasian, and sideways you’re Oriental.”
“Whadda you do?” Hans asked the postdoc in the baggy shirt. He was leaning on his elbow now and sidling ever closer, as The Bad Czech had seen him do many times before. He was the sneaky type that bellied along a bar, much as a police dog bellies close to the ground before attacking.
“Right now, colloidal interface chemistry,” she said.
“Wow! That sounds erotic to me!” Hans cried.
“I wish that little pervert’d get back to his side a the bar,” The Bad Czech whispered to his postdoc. “Tell ya the truth, he ain’t even a waiter. He’s my busboy.”
Just then a man entered the barroom. He was older than the graduate students and postdocs. He was obviously a member of the faculty. The Bad Czech signaled to Hans to turn around on his stool and take a look. The man was neither fiftyish nor tall enough to be the one they saw outside of Dagmar Duffy’s apartment house. He was a visiting research fellow, it turned out, and had just spiced up his lecture in bio-inorganic chemistry with a theory as to how vampires came to be.
One of the students who was drinking beer and twirling a Frisbee on his finger said to the professor, “Could you tell my friends here your theory on vampires?”
Which caused The Bad Czech to stop ogling the postdoc and come up off the bar and turn around and pay attention. They were talking about vampires! And he was one!
“It’s quite credible, really,” the professor said with a British public school accent. “It deals with the disease of porphyria, which is a genetic disease, so it could be regional, say around Transylvania, and …”
The professor was interrupted by one of the most enormous men he’d seen lately, with eyebrows like fingers of fur, who was sitting at the bar looking tense. “How do ya spell that disease?” the huge man asked.
“Uh, that’s p-o-r-p-h-y-r-i-a,” the p
rofessor said. “And to continue, my theory is that it’s the making of too much porphyrin, which with iron in it makes blood red, that gave them their problem. Drinking blood slows porphyrin production, so they would attack cows and drink their blood.”
The Bad Czech suddenly relaxed. “Drinkin cows’ blood ain’t got nothin to do with me!” he said to the postdoc, who looked puzzled.
“Now it happens that garlic can block an enzyme that gets rid of porphyrin,” the professor continued, “so that plays right into the legend of garlic warding off vampires.”
“Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s cow,” Hans giggled to his postdoc, who was ignoring him completely.
“As it happens, quinine also blocks the enzyme,” the professor continued, “so …”
“That means ya can’t give a vampire a gin and tonic!” The Bad Czech said, and for the first time his postdoc paid attention to him. He was right!
“Next time I accept a blind date I’ll give him a gin and tonic test,” she said, examining The Bad Czech, who with his black hair, furry eyebrows and Slavic features did look something like an archetypal Dracula—a very large one, to be sure.
“I could tell a real vampire story,” The Bad Czech whispered, “if I get to know ya better. I can see ya like vampires.”
Two male students who were going bonzo over the approaching deadline for submitting a doctoral thesis were arguing about whether or not one of their colleagues had jumped or fallen out of a window while loaded on nitrous oxide. Apparently science prodigies also had their stress problems.
The Bad Czech, who was working on his fourth double and charging into all the conversations, said, “He jumped, ya ask me. Everybody’s jumpin these days or slashin their own throats or smokin their thirty-eights. Or killin their kids or …”
“The restaurant business can’t be that bad,” one postdoc said to him.
“So what’s that these guys’re talking about, this reaction dynamics?” Hans demanded boozily from his postdoc, who couldn’t get away from the K-9 cop and had already noticed that he smelled like an animal.
“How molecules bump into each other,” she said.
“Everything ya say sounds erotic to me!” Hans cried. “Write down your phone number, will ya?”
Delta Star Page 22
