by David Pierce
'Thanks ever so, Gramps,' she said. 'See you in the morning then and try not to have a hangover, you're miserable enough anyway.' She hung up on me, the obnoxious twerp. Was she lucky she'd run into someone as tolerant and easygoing as me, no one else in their right or even wrong mind would put up with her.
However. I picked up Evonne and off we went to the party. I wasn't expecting much, teachers being what they are, but was I wrong. When we got there the joint was already jumping and it was still jumping when we left just before two and for all I know it continues to jump to this day. Someone emptied a family-size box of Duz in the Jacuzzi with the usual spectacular results. Two middle-aged lady teachers who were stripped down to their stretch marks started a dart game in the garage using a spear gun instead of darts. When we finally reluctantly did leave, the third re-run of Deep Throat was showing on the TV in the master bedroom. I drove extra carefully, partly to show Evonne by example what good driving was, in the one in a million chance that some of it might rub off on her, but also because, I must admit, I'd had a few. Evonne snuggled up beside me, smelling deliciously of all those wondrous things gorgeous women smell of – shampoo and perfume and nailpolish and tobacco and lipstick and bourbon and skin.
When we got to her place and I'd walked her to the back door, she asked me casually if I wanted to come in for a minute. I examined my motives carefully before I said yes, please.
And came the morn, if I may wax poetic one time only. And came the morn and came a very happy boy whistling his way homeward, whistling his way up the steps of his apartment, whistling in the shower, attempting to whistle while drinking his morning java, etc.
I made it to the office right on time and was just opening up when I saw Sara get off the bus across the street. Then I stopped whistling. She crossed the street against the lights, made a rude gesture at a motorist who had to brake sharply to avoid her, stopped on the sidewalk to gaze up at great length at the cloudy sky in what she obviously hoped was a forlornly poetic manner but was really only obvious, then she deigned to enter my office, the door to which I had been patiently holding open for her for some considerable time.
'Nice outfit,' I told her, heading briskly for the chair on my side of the desk before she got to it. 'I've always liked the look of calico on the slimmer figure.'
'Fuck off,' she said. She dug a sheaf of papers out of her reticule, or whatever foolishness it was. 'Here. Read and inwardly digest, Pops.'
'You need a new ribbon,' I said. 'Make that a new typewriter.' Then I read:
CONFIDENTIAL
16 Jan.
Report.
From: Agent S.S.
To: V.D. (Ha ha)
(From notes taken in the field)
As per instructions
Arrived at stake-out
11311 Williams Boulevard, Sherman Oaks,
San Fernando Valley, California, USA, North America, Western Hemisphere, Earth, Milky Way, Universe
at five pee em Friday 16 Jan. 1985,
Accompanied by Jerry G. (address on request) in his 68 Ford dragster.
For disguise purposes we both had large Cokes.
I paid: Expenses: $1.40
Checked the time from the car radio.
Tested receiver, got only static.
Jerry G., who is almost cute in an icky surfer way
Tested his Walkman. Together we looked like your typical teenagers
Of today, each listening intently to his own deafening interior music.
Sipped Cokes. Man in shorts across street began watering his lawn.
Dog from next door snuck through hedge. Man pretended to ignore dog.
Dog pretended to ignore man. Man suddenly turned and tried to spray
Dog who jumped just out of reach. End of animal act.
A housewife or two drove up and into driveways and began unloading
Suburban survival kits – booze, charcoal an' sour cream dips.
5.42. Suspect arrives in Toyota hatchback, smokin' rubber.
Hops out, opens garage (not locked) runs car in. Heads for his front
Door.
I switch on receiver . . . AND HEAR HIM GO IN!!
AND HEAR HIM GO STRAIGHT TO PHONE. AND HEAR THIS:
(Written down by me AS IT HAPPENED)
(Faint sounds of someone pushing push-button phone)
Dell there, please? (Pause)
Dell? It's me. Your stupid fucking asshole brother there too?
(From now on, pauses indicated by '. . .')
. . . Oh, no? Well have I got news for him, that wasn't just some
Fucking tramp wetback he creamed, he was only the fucking brother-
In-law of the fucking guy I work with, Ricky, how does that grab ya?. . .
Because he told me, that's how I know, he's been hiding him out
In the Goddamned woods for years . . . because he was nuts, that's why,
Not completely nuts, but nuts enough . . . you're telling me
Oh, another little thing you might like to tell your baby brother,
Ricky hired a detective to look around . . . some huge, fat jerk, I
Met him, a nothing . . . yeah, I think so too, don't go near the place,
Why take any chances, leave it, fuck it for a couple of weeks
If we keep cool, not a chance . . . I can always find out from my good
Buddy Rick, can't I, exactly when he gets tired of paying off that
Big jerkoff who's not getting nowhere and tells him to fuck off. . .
OK . . . OK . . . Yeah. You better believe it.
Phone call terminated at 5.46.
Waited a few moments in case he phoned anyone else.
Negative.
Stake-out concluded at 5.51.
Stop for gas at Arco:
I paid: Expenses: $4.00
Then gave Jerry the brush-off.
Phoned you from home, line busy.
Phoned again and reported.
Mom says hello.
I says goodbye.
You owe me forty cents (see 'Expenses')
PAY UP OR ELSE
S.S.
Total expenses: $5.40
From. . . $5.00
You owe me .40
'Here,' I said. I tossed a quarter, a dime and a nickel on the desk.
'What about my wages, you quote big jerkoff unquote?'
'What about my receiver, you money-grubber?'
She dug it out of her carry-all and handed it over.
'I figure you owe me plenty because first of all it could have been dangerous and second of all it wasn't exactly legal.'
'Oh, come on.' I said wearily. 'If I did give you a lot of money you'd only spend it on hash brownies or a Madonna wig. Here.' I dug out ten bucks with pretended reluctance. 'And sign here.' I took out a pad of receipt forms from the left-hand top drawer, making sure she didn't see the .38 that was also in there, and had her sign on the dotted line.
'What a cheapskate,' she said. 'It's unbelievable, really.'
'You're lucky to get anything,' I said. 'Most apprentices work the first five years for nothing. Now if you're done complaining, let me tell you about your next little caper.'
I told her. I showed her how to work the camera that took pictures at right angles. I assured her that I had been there and there was plenty of natural light. I suggested that her cover might be that of a student who was doing a series on local businessmen for a school assignment for a journalism course. I suggested she buy a large notebook to scribble in. I suggested she snap pictures like crazy all over the place, like they always seem to do, and be more or less finishing up when the Italian came. 'Be studentlike,' I told her, 'despite your appearance.'
'How do you know what students are like today, Pops?' she said, ruffling her bizarre haircut with one gloved hand. 'Living in the eighteenth century like you do.' Maybe she did have a point. I had been wrong about teachers.
'Be nice to Mr Lubinski,' I said. 'You'll like him. Maybe you could be the daughter he neve
r had.'
'Ha ha,' she said. 'What's he like?'
'Hysterical,' I said, 'as you will see if you ever get off your bony butt.'
'What's the Italian like?' she said, not moving.
'Trouble, a lot of trouble,' I said. 'So be careful, if anything goes wrong, you split. If you think you can't handle it when the time comes, you split. Got it?'
'Whoooo,' she said, moving at last. 'Who's getting soft in his old age?'
'Are you kidding?' I laughed. 'I've got a fortune invested in that camera, that's all.'
'That's more like the Pops I know,' she said. She grinned at me for some reason and left, leaving the door open behind her in a childish attempt to irritate me. What a hope.
A short while after she left I began to get a bit restless. It was too early for the mail and I had nothing really that had to be done so I thought I'd take myself for a healthy walk. My left thigh was still tight, maybe some exercise would help. You know you're getting old when there's always at least one part of your body that hurts. I gingerly unpeeled the tape from my nose first; it didn't look too bad but it didn't look too good, either, in fact it had never looked that good after the first time I broke it, or rather, someone broke it for me.
By mere chance, some few minutes later I found myself almost directly across the street from Lubinski, Lubinski and Levi, in Mrs Martel's stationery shop, to be precise. After exchanging pleasantries with her, I popped into the post office next door to buy some stamps I didn't need, then I looked at the posters of people who were wanted for post office fraud, from where I could see through the window to the jeweler's across the way. I couldn't see any movement inside. Then I had a tiny, expensive glass of fresh orange juice at a health-food bar a couple of stores up the line.
Just on ten o'clock I saw what had to be our man. He got out of a passing Buick, waved nonchalantly to the driver, who took off, took one look around, then went up to Lubinski's and pressed the doorbell. Mr Lubinski let him in and closed the door behind him. I had decided to try and move closer, perhaps to amble casually past the store for a quick peek, but I'd no sooner hit the street when Mr Lubinski let Sara out. I ducked back into the health-food rip-off bar before she spotted me, I didn't want her to get any silly ideas that I was worried about her or couldn't trust her to do a simple job on her own. She said something with great animation to Mr Lubinski and then, instead of getting the hell out of there, posed him with painstaking care in front of his window and pretended to take his bloody picture. One hundred percent nerd.
By walking briskly, I managed to make it back to the office before she got there. In fact when she came hurrying in I'd dug out a piece of junk mail from the wastepaper basket, something that was offering me a chance to buy a lot of magazines I didn't want, and I was studying it with deep concentration.
'I got it!' she said. 'I got him cold!'
'Uh-huh,' I said. 'I wonder whether Mommy would rather have two years of Good Housekeeping or one year of Sports Illustrated.'
'I got it, sucker!' Sara said, ruffling my carefully arranged hair.
'Don't do that,' I said.
'I got the mother's prints too, looky here.' She took a small jewelry box out of her bag, with great care, holding it by the end. I put down, with a sigh, the literature I was pretending to peruse.
'How did you get that?'
'I can give no details at this time,' she said snootily, bouncing around the room. 'It will all be in my report, as usual. And that camera is a gas, man, would I like one of those.'
'Give,' I said. She dug it out and handed it over.
'Well?' she said then.
'Well what?'
'Aren't you gonna say, well done me old mate, or something like that?'
'Yes, I am, just this once,' I said, looking her right in her skinny puss. 'Well done me old mate.' And I gave her hair or coif or whatever it was a ruffle of its own.
'Don't overdo it,' she said, but she looked pleased all the same. 'When do you need the report by?'
I didn't really need another of her free-verse reports ever but I told her I had to have it by that afternoon at the latest. The rest of the case might depend on it.
'You got it, Pops,' she said, and off she went at a trot, presumably to start burning up her cheap typewriter.
What the hell. Maybe I was getting soft in my old age. Soft in the head.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There are one or two advantages in working for the Los Angeles Police Department, as my brother Tony found out. The pension plan is generous and old ladies and small children up to the age of six look up to you, except in brown or black barrios where children stop looking up to you as soon as their eyes open. There are also several disadvantages, as Tony's wife Gaye found out, little niggles like all policemen are hated until they're needed, their high divorce rate, their even higher rate of alcoholism and of course the good chance of getting highly injured as they go about their normal day's work.
One of the lesser-known advantages, if that's the right word, is that you are issued a personal code number and with that as identification you can call a certain department of Pacific Bell and they will give you without a hassle otherwise classified information – two unlisted numbers at a time or perhaps a list of a suspect's (or wife's) phone calls for any given period.
I had a call I wanted traced – the one Tommy DeMarco made to Dell on Friday afternoon, and if it was a long-distance one, even one of those short long-distance ones that they bill you an extra twelve cents for, there would be a record of it.
So I phoned the appropriate department, gave Tony's code, which I had memorized one time when he carelessly left it lying around in the top drawer of the desk in his den, stated my modest needs to the lady on the other end of the line, looked out the window for a minute, then was told that at 5.43 on 16 January one DeMarco, Thomas, L., had phoned one Tim's Tavern, in Carmen Springs, California.
'Where in hell's that?' I asked the lady.
'I don't know but it's twenty-six cents a minute away,' she said. 'Hang on, I'll ask my supervisor, according to her she knows everything.'
I hung on. I looked out the window again. It needed a clean but there was no more Timmy coming by a couple of times a week to do it for me. What did come by were two high-school kids on their way to Taco-Burger. When they saw the sign on my door, they laughed and waggled their fingers suggestively at me. Probably doper friends of Sara. Finally the lady came back.
'We think it's this side of Mojave somewhere,' she said.
Thank you very much,' I said, 'that helps,' although it didn't really. I already knew approximately where Carmen Springs had to be, somewhere not too far away from the northern boundary of the forestry land. Ricky had official 1:1000 surveyors' maps, of course, I'd seen them, or one of them, on his desk, but I didn't want to talk to him over the phone if he was at work, and if he was at home he wouldn't have the maps. That made sense, I thought. I tried looking it up in the atlas I had on the shelf which I'd bought from a second-hand bookstore one time but either Carmen Springs was too small or it hadn't been invented yet when my fifteen-year-old atlas was printed, like most of California. Garages had maps. Mrs Martel had maps and she was on my visiting list for the day, but that wasn't til later so I left it for the while.
First stop though was Wade. I slung the camera round my neck, slipped the jewelry box carefully into a clean envelope, got the receiver from the safe, hit the road and was soon chugging through bustling, downtown Burbank toward Wade's place of business.
He was not in his hammock or the garage or the kitchen. His sister-in-law Cissy told me he was still in bed with Suze.
'Go get 'em up,' she said. She was trickling some pellets into a cage of white mice. I didn't ask who the mice were for, if not for Maria the tarantula, who?
When I walked into Wade's bedroom he took one look at me, then hid under the covers, taking with him the breakfast joint he was smoking.
'Go away,' he said, his voice muffled. 'Far, far away. Send
him away, Suze. He's trouble. Get rid of him. Scare him. Show him your tattoo.'
Wade's girfriend, a short black girl with bow legs and the biggest grin this side of heaven where dwells Louis Armstrong, blazed her smile at me and giggled. After a minute, when Wade came up for air, I gave him back his camera and talked him into printing up right away a proof sheet of the one roll Sarah had shot by the simple manoeuvre of offering him double his normal stiff price.
'Any of a man, large, young, Italian, gold chain, white sports coat, Panama, give me three by fives too, OK?'
'I guess so,' said Wade, slowly getting out of bed. 'Up, you,' he said to Suze. 'When Wade's up, no one sleeps.'
While he was working, I put down three poached eggs and a stack of white toast with honey at that greasy spoon around the corner from him where the coffee was easily as bad as Mae's and weaker, too. What's the matter with you, America? You can make excellent hotdogs, delicious buttermilk pancakes and great ribs, what's so hard about coffee? Remind me to write a slim monograph about coffee sometime.
It was a strange collection of snaps I got back from Wade about half an hour later, some were of nothing, some were of parts of heads, one was of the twerp herself, taken at arm's length, in which she was grinning idiotically, but there were two of our Italian friend, one in particular a beauty as it showed him with Mr Lubinski. Score one for Sara.
I made the appropriate expressions of deep gratitude, kissed Suze on her warm, chocolate cheek, found the east-bound freeway, took one of the Glendale exits, parked in an official parking lot, and walked over to J & M Home Security Co. I made appropriate expressions of gratitude as I gave Phil back the receiver, then I gave him my shopping list for the day. He looked at it, nodding several times.
'You rentin' or buying?'
'Renting what I can rent, buying what I have to buy.'
I wound up buying another micro-transmitter, which Phil referred to as a transponder, larger than the one that looked like a dried pea, with a range of a couple of miles, in a waterproof rubber sheath. I rented the Geiger counter-like receiving set that went with it. It differed from a Geiger counter in that it didn't give off a series of clicks but one steady note that increased in pitch and intensity the nearer it was to the transmitter. It also gave a visual reading on a scale calibrated in hundreds of yards. I rented a pair of walkie-talkies, too, just in case. Phil threw in for nothing a second large receiving set that he had stripped of its innards so only the black outer box remained, complete with leather carrying strap. Money changed hands, from mine to his, then I picked up the freeway again and headed downtown to the new stone-clad edifice that housed the LAPD Central record department, amongst other things. Such as Tony, when he was working.
