Down in the Valley (Vic Daniel Series)

by David Pierce

  Anyway, finally some Samaritan saw me passed out on the floor and screamed loudly enough to get me some attention. I woke up in the intensive-care ward not feeling well at all. The men on both sides of me were handcuffed to their cots; both had been shot in the stomach during separate robbery attempts. And, although I know this part of it wasn't County Hospital's fault, maybe, the second day there we had an earthquake and bottles and IVs were crashing all over the place. Luckily I was high as a kite on painkillers.

  One funny thing happened while I was at County, or it seemed funny at the time. Most of the patients in the ward were on restricted intakes for one reason or another which meant they (and I) got only a thimbleful of water to drink every four hours for the first couple of days. We all took it pretty well except one nerd across from me who'd had a perforated ulcer and he bitched and moaned and complained non-stop that he was dying of thirst. However, he couldn't move to do anything about it, he had a tube coming out of his ass, another one out of his dick, one up his nose, the IV going into his arm and a fifth tube sticking out of a hole in his chest.

  Well. We woke up one night to find the silly bugger sitting on his bed sipping hot chicken soup. 'Ahhh, is that good,' he was going. He'd somehow shut off a couple of his tubes and taken the other two and the IV stand with him and shuffled his way to the coffee, soup and cocoa dispenser on the floor above. What that horrible, salty, instant muck did to his stomach must have been murder because he had a relapse the following day and a very angry nurse wheeled him out back down to the operating room. Served the stupid fucker right, was the general consensus. So much for County. But it did the job, and free, and there's not many places you can say that about today.

  Well. They got me over the hills to Kaiser on Hollywood Boulevard without hitting anything and an hour later I was tucked into bed, mildly but not unpleasantly doped up. I'd had some more jelly and new bandages put on in emergency and been told that I'd live. The other good news was I had only first-degree burns that would heal in time without even leaving a blemish on my smooth, baby-like skin. The bad news was that it would be a day or two before I could get out of there and start blowing up places myself.

  The night passed, as nights eventually do.

  Sunday morning.

  Sunday morning in Kaiser.

  Six thirty of a Sunday morning in Kaiser. An old hag masquerading as a nurse's aide said I had to get ready for breakfast. I said I didn't want any breakfast, I wanted to go back to sleep. She said it was Sunday. I said I knew that. She wanted to know if I wanted a visit from a minister, priest or rabbi of my chosen faith. I said I might consider a lama but I really wanted to go back to sleep. I also wanted a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door because it didn't take the Queen of the Gypsies to foretell a lot of nosy visitors in my near future.

  The first one came at 10.01, one minute after official visiting hours began. It was my brother. His name is Anthony, called Tony. He came in and gazed sadly down at me. I gazed sadly up at him. A lot of people think we look alike, maybe we do. His wife Gaye never thought so. We get along pretty good, considering what he owed me. He was wearing shorts, sneakers and a sweat-top and was carrying a paper bag.

  'Brought your lunch?'

  'No, brought our breakfasts.' He took out two large containers of coffee and gave one to me. I could smell the booze in it even before I wrestled the top off.

  'You allowed to drink this?'

  'Sure,' I said. 'They told me my lungs were like a newborn babe's, no damage whatsoever due to my cleverness in not breathing at the wrong time.'

  'With that thing on your head, you look like Turhan Bey, was that his name?' my brother said. 'How's the rest of you?'

  'No problem,' I said. We both blew on our drinks. 'How'd you find me so fast?'

  He took a sip and shuddered. 'Routine detective work,' he said airily. 'Friend of mine, you know Lew Marks? He saw your name on the case sheet and called me. I called the paras. So what happened, stand too close to the barbecue again?' He was referring to a time when we were kids when my new birthday shirt caught on fire because he pushed me accidentally on purpose into the barbecue where Pop was cooking supper.

  I told him what happened. He whistled.

  'Are you lucky, Vic. Any idea who did it?' He sat on the other bed in the room, an empty one by the window. Folded up against the wall next to it was a portable screen, next to that was an IV stand.

  'You better believe it,' I said. 'I don't have so many enemies I don't know who they all are. I'll tell you about it sometime.'

  'Well, ex-cuuuse me!' He pretended to be deeply offended; I knew and he knew I knew he could get all the details that were going from the investigating officer who was no doubt out in the hall waiting his turn to badger the poor invalid.

  'How's Mom?' I asked him after a while.

  'Same. I haven't told her anything yet.'

  'Well, don't,' I said, sipping away, feeling the warm brandy slide down a grateful throat, take the turn and head for home. 'You mind keeping her for another week?'

  He waved it away. 'Sure, easy.' Mom wasn't well. I would look after her for three weeks, which is why the extra bedroom where I was living and also why I was living in the Valley of Death at all, then Tony and Gaye took her for their turn. It worked out OK for her, not so well sometimes for me or Gaye, whom she didn't like, and I was with her there, but all of us involved had come to realize the hard way that the other choices were even worse. The change-over was supposed to have happened that afternoon, now I had a week to get myself together. The week would be added on to my next stint, Gaye would see to that.

  'I gotta go,' my brother said, getting off the bed with a groan. 'I'm playing soccer with the kids.'

  'Do you good,' I said. 'Tell them Uncle Cinders says hello.'

  'Anything else I can do, anytime, you let me know, kid.' I liked the 'kid'. I was two years older than him.

  'Funny that you should mention that,' I said. He groaned again. 'There is a little something. I need a guy checked out, it won't take you a minute, one call.'

  'Can't it wait? I gotta go.'

  'No.' I passed him the phone. He sighed heavily and began dialing.

  'It would help if I had the name.' I gave it to him, and a license-plate number, which he relayed to whoever he was talking to down at Central.

  'How's Betsy?' he asked while we waited.

  'Fine,' I said. 'How's yours?' His didn't have a name like mine.

  'Fine,' he said. We waited. Then he passed me the phone. I listened, thanked the man and hung up. In the old days it would have taken a week.

  'Who was that?' I asked my brother.

  'Morrie,' he said. 'You don't know him. He's weird. He smokes a corncob like Popeye's.'

  'That's weird, all right.'

  'Well, see you.' My brother chucked his empty container in the wastebin and made for the door. 'Don't do anything too stupid, OK?'

  'You know me, Tony.'

  'Yeah. Call you tomorrow.' He left. I finished my breakfast and chucked my container after his, missing by a mile. Maybe I should have seen that minister, priest or rabbi of my chosen faith after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  'Messy, messy!' said my next visitor from the open door. 'If it isn't the Shriek of Araby!'

  'Go away,' I said.

  He didn't. He came all the way in, closed the door carefully, tiptoed over, retrieved the container, deposited it where it belonged, then beamed cheerily down at me. 'And how arc we feeling this morning, h'um?'

  'Fine until recently,' I said. He giggled and bounced up and down on his little piggies. I don't know what the height minimum is for cops these days but from the size of him it couldn't be much, suddenly my life was being overrun by trolls. This one was attired in the Johnny Carson look – powder-blue jacket too tight at the waist and too large in the shoulders, tan slacks, narrow tie, tiepin.

  Wow.

  'Lieutenant Maynard Conyers, West Valley,' he said. 'ID on request.'

  'Forget it,
' I said. 'One look at your picture and I'd have a relapse. Besides, you must be a cop because if you weren't and you said you were, who would believe you?'

  'Woke up cross, did we?' he said. He looked around the room for a minute, then walked out and came right back in with a straight chair. He put it beside my bed, sat on it, then took out from his jacket pocket a large, new-looking notebook bound in yellow leatherette. 'Thinking caps on,' he said. 'Work time.' He didn't fool me at all although he probably met lots he did. Protective coloration I do believe it's called, he was as trustworthy as a Siamese fighting fish before supper, and about the same size.

  'Mr Daniel. I've read your medical report. I read the case sheet and talked to the two patrolmen who answered the first call. I talked on the phone to the fire marshal. I saw what was left of your office and it's a mess. I talked to a Mrs Morales, a Mr and Mrs Nu and a Robbie Brunner, some in person, some only by phone so far.'

  'Who's Robbie Brunner?' I asked him, just so he'd think I was listening. I did want to ask him how my Bowman & Larens safe was but I didn't want him to get the idea there was anything interesting in it.

  'A passer-by,' said the lieutenant. 'A helpful passer-by who pulled you away from the fire. My conversations have led me to the suspicion that there exists in this cruel world some party or parties unknown or maybe known who don't like you very much.'

  'Good work, Lieutenant,' I said. 'Smart thinking.'

  'Thank you,' he said. 'Any idea who?'

  It so happened that I'd been doing some thinking that morning mainly because from six thirty to ten o'clock on a Sunday morning lying in a hospital bed there's not a lot else to do frankly except to feel sorry for yourself. I didn't even have any grapes to peel. What I thought was first of all I couldn't be sure the fire had been intended to hurt my person as against my office as I'd been out of sight at the time in the bathroom so it might have been meant only as a warning. It was also possible of course that the maniac who did it was parked across the street waiting for me to open up, but I seldom did on weekends. I also didn't know if a brick and bottle would go through a window and a closed venetian blind; if not, the perpetrator, as the fuzz love to put it, would be obliged to wait until the blind was up which it only was when I was in the office.

  Why you may ask did not said perpetrator chuck his brick in through the back window? Because there was a grill over the back window is why. Even from the front there wasn't a lot of risk though, there was only a narrow sidewalk between the car park and my frontage, you could throw anything you wanted without getting out of the car, and the exit from the parking area was only some ten feet from my door and running down back of the building was a handy alley.

  So I'd cogitated about all that. I also cogitated about Mr Lowenstein and his beloved human zoo and what might happen to it if all the shit hit all the fans. I also cogitated about a seven-letter word spelt REVENGE and tried not to cogitate too much about Timmy.

  Thus it was that I said to Lieutenant Conyers, 'Yes, I do have an idea who doesn't like me.'

  'I'd love to hear about it,' the lieutenant said, 'if you can spare the time.'

  I told him about the attempted robbery at the Oasis way out Ventura Boulevard some weeks ago, about Martha, the hippy and his amigo. Hell, I even told him about the ex-garden furniture salesman with his big thirst. I told him I thought I'd caught a glimpse of the Anglo in front of my office in a green Chevy just before it happened. I told him before he asked that the kid could have found me easily enough as my name had been in the local paper after the foiled holdup. They'd actually used the word 'hero', I informed him diffidently.

  'Really?' he said. 'Well! Wait till I tell the wife.'

  I'd given a full description, I went on to inform him, of the dynamic duo to the cops at the time and it would be on file somewhere. I told him a considerable amount of believable crap, in fact I might have believed it myself if I hadn't known I was making it all up. Then the strain of it all must have gotten to me because I came over all funny, fluttered my eyes and rang for the nurse.

  'Heart-breaking,' the midget muttered. Whether he was referring to my Camille imitation or the Oasis yarn I will never know.

  The nurse came in surprisingly quickly, I didn't even have time to think up the reason I'd rung for her. Luckily I didn't need it for as soon as she saw the suffering etched on my wan face she started right in.

  'Have you been bothering Mr Daniel, Officer? We cannot have that.'

  'Bothering him? I've been giving him the third degree, I just put the rubber hose away before you came in,' the halfpint said. 'Got any electrodes I can borrow?'

  I moaned weakly and closed my weary eyes. The lieutenant got up, put his notebook away and picked up the chair.

  'What year Chevy?' he asked me.

  'It was a 63,' I said. 'Large dent in the door on the driver's side. Bumper sticker that said "Police Are Human Too – Bribe One Today".'

  'I'll maybe come by tomorrow when the miracles of modern medicine have had a chance to work,' he said to me. 'Ta ta, Florence,' he said to the nurse. He left with the chair. Cops. Maybe they are human – that's the trouble with them.

  The nurse asked me why I had rung. I said I wanted a roast beef on onion roll easy on the mustard and four Mogadons. She said she could let me have two aspirins and padded out to get them. She came back with them in a few minutes. I told her I was hurting and didn't want to be a big baby but I would appreciate something stronger, she said no more drugs until the doctor had seen me again which would be on his two o'clock rounds.

  She left; I phoned Benny. It was time to get off the pot.

  Benny was my buddy. We played chess over at his place about once a week; I'd learnt that highly irritating game in a Louisiana guest home for bad men. I had plenty of time – three years is a lot of days and about twice as many nights. My roommate Herbie, a thoroughly nice chap who used to rent his sister for short periods of time to his friends, taught me, it only took me about a year to learn the moves, then another year to give him a game lasting longer than five minutes. I was getting on to it, though, I could give Benny a pretty good game now as long as he spotted me a piece or two. So I called him; it was near on eleven thirty by then, the perfect time to get him as he never went to bed before four or five.

  Somewhere earlier I mentioned I was occasionally a two-man agency; Benny was the occasional. Once upon a Hollywood dream I'd almost married his Aunt Jessica. When we split up, by some malevolent prank of Fate I wound up with custody of him. Benny was one of the earth's most successful hustlers and I don't say that lightly as I've met more than a few in my time, heard about a lot more and read about a lot more than that. He had so much nerve he made Sergeant York look like a sissy. He hustled his mother playing casino and his sisters playing fish, he hustled loco, drunk-inflamed Mexicans in all-Mexican bars in East LA playing eight-ball. He hustled airlines (lost luggage), car rentals (false ID and a speedy drive to Tijuana), camera stores and carpeterías. When they'd finished bringing in the sheaves up in Humboldt County he dealt superior grass to a select clientele. He owned four and a half houses in Anaheim, one of which he had rented for the past six months to Narcs who were using it for surveillance of an apartment block across the street where they suspected drugs were being sold. He liked to ski but most of the time his fabulously expensive ski equipment was hidden away as he'd reported it stolen and was waiting for the insurance on it to come through. There is a ruse adopted by some big-city dwellers to foil muggers – they carry two wallets, a fancy one with a little money in it to hand over if necessary and another one stowed away with the real wad in it. Benny had two safes in his apartment, working on the same principle.

  I told him my sad, sad story.

  He laughed.

  I told him what I wanted and when I wanted it.

  He laughed.

  I told him why I wanted it, then hung up while I was still a hit. Then I made a wee call of a real-estate nature. Then I made another call of a real-estate nature, one
to my landlord, something I'd been putting off because I didn't exactly have the kind of news a landlord is dying to get on a Sunday morning.

  The landlord was watching the Raiders–Chargers game, I could hear it in the background.

  'Guess who,' I said.

  'My main man!' he said. 'Hang on til I turn the sound down.' I hung on. 'How's the burnt-out case?'

  'Considerably peeved,' I said. 'How'd you hear about it?'

  'Fire marshal, closely followed by a Señor Gregor Amoyan,' he said.

  'Is that his first name, I never knew.'

  'Lotsa things you don't know, my man,' the landlord said with great cheer. 'Pause for a toke.' He took a toke and held it in for about a quarter of an hour. I was glad he was stoned, he was a good landlord at the worst of times but a wonderfully tolerant one when smashed. His name was Elroy and he was twenty-two. Both of his parents and a couple of uncles had been killed by a drunk crossing the central divider on the 405 just after Christmas and he, king o' the drop-outs, prince of pot-heads, planetary commander of the space cadets, had inherited not only the development that included what was left of my office but two more like it, all in the neighborhood, plus a warehouse or two plus the odd house. He drove a De Lorean, carried a huge wad of singles which he handed out during the day to the needy (mainly the thirsty needy) and spent maybe a total of $3.50 a year on his wardrobe of T-shirts and flip-flops. In other words he was rich enough to ignore the mundane preoccupations of us mere mortals but then again he always had. But that didn't include business, that he took care of, twice a week he went to night classes at UCLA to learn accounting and tax laws and the like.