Down in the Valley (Vic Daniel Series)

by David Pierce

  And Bobby would likely tell all, immediately, even if he had sworn to a clean-cut FBI agent (me) that his lips would remain for ever sealed. He was human, and suddenly involved in important and mysterious events, and D. Devlin was not only the head of his marvelous rifle club but probably his idol, too. In fact, if I was really clever, and I know I've unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, over-reached myself in this area before, but say for once I was really clever, then not only could I ensure that Bobby spilled the beans to Dev but that they would be the wrong beans. Sometimes I don't think it's fully appreciated that we investigators need a blazing intelligence as well as a robust physique.

  So I told the kid I'd be driving by his building at exactly seven thirty and would buzz his apartment three short ones. Then he would come down and we'd go for a drive, fifteen minutes should do it. Would his parents let him out on a school night?

  'Are you kidding?' he said. 'Anyway, they're not even home.'

  'Was that your sister I spoke with?'

  'That was one of them.'

  'Please, not a word to her or to anyone else until you get clearance from us.' I hung up, more than satisfied with my low-keyed but intense performance.

  I needed to borrow a car, my own being obviously unsuitable for the task in hand, so I tracked down John D. without too much trouble, he was in the first place I checked, the bar. He was sipping a fruit juice and charming the bulging pants off a tableful of lady bowlers, all of whom had 'The Overpass, Vallejo, CA' on the backs of their blue and silver bowling shirts and their names in flowing script over their front pockets. The girls were feeling no pain; it seemed they were celebrating their first-ever victory over their hated rivals from Darlene's Hair Salon. They let John D. out of their clutches but with screams of protest.

  'It's all right for some,' I said as soon as we got to the comparative quiet of the long bar. '"John D., don't leave us!" "Do you think I need a heavier ball, John D.?"' I shook my head in disgust.

  He grinned. 'It's a living. Buy you a drink?'

  'A Coke,' I said to Phil the barman. 'Hold the maraschino. By the way, John D., don't happen to know a Mr Lowenstein, do you? Comes here with his family? Tall chap? Gray hair? One might call him an educator?'

  He grinned again.

  'Sounds like you got together. What's that word for a matchmaker? In Yiddish?'

  'Hello, Dolly,' I said. 'Yes, we did get together, and that is for your cauliflower ears only, which is why I need to borrow your car for an hour or so.' He drove a nice ordinary one-year-old Ford sedan. He dug out the keys and tossed them over.

  'Thanks, pal.'

  He waved it off. 'Get that stuff I sent?'

  'I got it.'

  'Who done it?'

  'I could know tomorrow,' I told him. He leaned towards me, looking at my head in the dim light.

  'Burn?'

  'Like crazy.' Actually, it was coming along, I forgot about it most of the time.

  'How does one burn one's head one wonders,' he said. There was a burst of ribald laughter from the Overpass ladies. 'Singeing off those split ends again?'

  I told him the main points, he hadn't heard about any of it. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do. I told him I'd keep him in mind if I ever needed anyone's head creased with a heavy, round object that had finger holes in it. The girls squealed again and it was all very pleasant but it wasn't getting a lot done so I made my adieus and took off in John D.'s clunker, heading for home and my Junior G-Man disguise kit.

  Laugh, fools, laugh, but it did come in handy once in a while. It wasn't a kit per se, just an old potato-chip carton on the floor in the clothes cupboard that contained a collection of odds and ends, bits and pieces, hats, glasses, some TV makeup, the kind you put on with a sponge, a couple of ratty wigs, a twist of crepe hair, glue, some stale cigars, some GI aftershave, an assortment of lodge pins.

  Back home, with still no sign of Feeb, thank God, I got it out and started making myself look like what I thought Bobby thought an FBI agent would look like. I applied a nice tan, a straight leading-man mustache, a pair of square-framed, slightly tinted glasses, gray fedora to cover the hair and burnt forehead, gray suit to cover me, white shirt and boring tie, small knot. Sensible shoes. Wallet with suitable enclosures. Holster with suitable enclosure. As a final touch I added an unnecessary Band-Aid to one cheek. Perfect, as long as the lights were dim and so was he. Not that it really mattered if he saw through my handiwork, all he'd think was I was an FBI type who was bad at disguises.

  Bobby didn't live that far away, which made sense, as the school was fairly near to me and, as a student, fairly near to him. Still, I was a few minutes late when I pulled up in front of his high-rise on Lemon Farm Drive, right on the border of Studio City and Sherman Oaks. I gave his buzzer the agreed-on three shorts; a few minutes later he came out of the front door and looked around. I was back in the car by then, slouching in the seat to try and look shorter; good luck. I gave him a wave, he slipped in beside me and we took off.

  I was looking for a poorly lit stretch of road where I could park, and found one around the corner on Celito. I switched off, turned to him, and gave him my best FBI seriously impersonal gaze. He gave me a seriously frightened one back.

  Bobby was endeavoring to cultivate a mustache. He was wearing a new pair of jeans, clean sneakers, and a Michael Jackson 'Victory Tour' T-shirt. On one wrist he had an expensive-looking black chronometer with a hinged cap on it to protect the dial.

  'Robert, I appreciate this,' I told him sincerely. I took his hand and shook it firmly, then showed him some phony FBI ID in the name I'd given him, Richard Morse. He peered at it in the gloom; I wanted him to get a good look at it so I lit it up for him briefly with a small penlight I had clipped in my breast pocket. When I put my wallet away I made sure the gun in my hip holster showed.

  'What's up, Mr Morse?' he asked nervously. 'I don't have too long, Mom and Dad are just up the street at a friend's. Is there anything wrong?'

  'There's a lot wrong, I'm afraid, Robert, at your school, so we've been called in. What was the name of that boy who got stabbed a while back?'

  'Stabbed? Oh. That was Carlos. He plays baseball. He's back at school already.'

  'Do you know why he was cut?'

  'Well,' said Bobby, 'not really.'

  'Suppose you had to make a guess, Robert?'

  'A girl?'

  'Guess again, Robert.'

  'Gee, I dunno,' he said. 'Drugs?'

  'Drugs,' I said with impersonal loathing. 'How do you feel about drugs, Robert?'

  'I don't know any,' he said. 'I mean I don't know much about them. I don't know anything about them.'

  'You must know something, Robert,' I said gently. 'Everyone knows something.' I took an empty pipe out of my pocket and sucked at it noisily. 'Sure wish they'd let us smoke on the job, but there you go.'

  'Yeah,' he said.

  'Drugs are in the paper every day, Robert. They're all around us. In good homes and bad, good schools and bad. They're all around St Stephen's, aren't they, Robert?'

  'I guess so,' he admitted.

  'Robert, in a minute I'm going to ask you to do a difficult thing. But first let me ask you this, do you love your sisters?'

  'Course.'

  'Your parents, the United States of America?'

  He nodded vigorously.

  'And a girl, is there some lucky girl you care for?'

  He squirmed a bit.

  'Yes, well,' I said understandingly, 'I was young once too, believe it or not.' We both laughed falsely. The aftershave I'd put on was getting to me so I opened the window a couple of inches.

  'Robert, you're secretary of the rifle club, are you not?'

  'Yes, sir!' A passing car lit up his face; he'd be a good-looking boy when he got rid of that fungus.

  'Yes, sir,' I repeated slowly, as if the words had great significance. 'Yes, sir. Robert, can I treat you as a man, not a child, a man who will make the right choices when
difficult choices have to be made?'

  'Yes, sir!' he said again.

  I looked into the empty bowl of the pipe as if I was trying to make my mind up about something. What I was trying to make my mind up about was how much longer I should go on shooting the shit before putting it to him. Should I let him have five low-keyed but hair-raising minutes on drug addiction and addicts I have known? The wasted speed-freaks listening to static on their ghetto-blasters and finding detailed instructions therein. The all-bone meth-heads on the floors of cold-water crash pads. And some of the runaway kids . . . ah, the hell with it. He already knew, anyway, everyone knew, everyone'd seen the pictures and read the book. Who cared, though, but thee and me? That was another story.

  It did take a little more priming but finally Robert rolled over and delivered like the good, patriotic, gun-loving American boy he was, which is why I looked up the cadet corps and rifle club members in the first place as they are more likely to have these occasionally helpful qualities than those in the Drug of the Month Club or the St Stephen's Chapter of the Hell's Angels. And what he delivered was the names of some half a dozen of the school's bad boys, including the one who did the cutting, which was an open secret to all concerned except the authorities. He gave me the smokers and the dealers, the truants and the car stealers, the ones he knew with juvenile records, the ones the worst stories were told about, the one he knew who kept a .22 in his locker.

  I thanked him deeply and sincerely.

  I could have approached the whole problem differently, I suppose, I could have run the whole male population of the school through the police computer's juvenile files except there were too many of the little bastards and also juvenile files aren't the easiest to get into as they are supposed to be secret and a lot more would have been required than one friendly call to the long-suffering Larry and I don't like to call on my brother too often for help as it makes him feel superior.

  During the short drive back to Bobby's I told him that unfortunately it wasn't our policy to issue letters of commendation to civilians, so his good deed for the day might never be known to anyone but us. Tough, but there it was. And he obviously couldn't go around telling everybody about our undercover work and means of operation or they wouldn't be undercover any more, would they. Of course not.

  When we were drawing up in front of his place I asked him what he thought of Mr Devlin. He thought he was terrific. You should see him shoot. I hoped I never had the pleasure. I told Bobby I felt bad going behind Mr Devlin's back this way; on the face of it it would seem that he would have been the likely person to approach for inside information but we had a hard and fast rule never to involve local law-enforcement personnel unless absolutely necessary as they had to go on working in their communities afterwards and any connection between them and such as us might well undercut the trust and loyalty they and their communities had mutually built up. Sometimes I don't know where I get it all from, but, as I perhaps mentioned, I do read a lot.

  I did tell him however he might just pay our respects to Mr Devlin, whose good work we of course knew about, but to leave it at that. He said he would. We shook hands man to man, then he got out and headed for home and kid sisters and Mom and Dad and bedtime stories, secure in the knowledge that out there in the steamy, predatory jungle called the Big City determined and decent men like me were watching over him and his.

  Dev would pump him dry, of course, Dev the ex-army military man, especially about the details I had gone to such trouble to get right. The ID card had the photo in the upper left corner and it had been correctly signed over the raised Department of Justice seal. Both card and badge numbers were on it. The ID was always displayed using the left hand to keep the strong, or gun hand, free. With me being a lefty, it should have been the other way round, but who's to notice? Guns were these days worn in hip holsters, never shoulder. Car, nondescript. Manner, polite. No alcohol on breath. Stars and Stripes flying atop the mast at all times.

  OK so far, I thought on my way back to the Valley Bowl. Dev wouldn't know what the hell was going on. He'd tell Art and that would make two of them who didn't have a clue. And Art would have to pass the word on to his supplier, ripples in a cesspool, who knew what might get stirred up?

  I switched cars at the Valley Bowl, gave John D. his keys back and bought him a thank-you drink, then drove home. When I parked in the driveway, I could see through the front window that Feeb was in, watching television. My conscience had been gnawing at me about you know what, so I told her all about it.

  'Shoot, I already knew,' she said, keeping one eye on the screen. 'I figured you kept it to yourself so's I wouldn't worry.'

  'You're a living doll,' I said. 'Look, I've just put in considerable time and energy into trying to make sure it won't happen again, but there's always an outside chance, I have to tell you.'

  'Listen, life is tough, then you die,' she said. 'I should worry. Lillian coming Sunday?'

  I told her she was and let her get back to the TV. She was watching a roller derby on Channel 56. I went upstairs, took my pills, sprayed myself, got into an old bathrobe a girl had once made for me from a couple of heavy towels, and watched the local news.

  After a few minutes I switched over to the roller derby too, where the violence was only make-believe. There were times I wished everything was.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Bright and early, as they say, although it was really fuzzy and not that early, the following morning, I took the roll of film to Wade's garage out on Domingo, near the turn-off for the Burbank Airport. Actually it was his brother and sister-in-law's garage but Wade had requisitioned it to set up a film lab. He did pretty good, the kid, he'd paid off all the equipment inside of nine months or so, mostly doing sub-contracting work for other developing services. I told him to make up a proof sheet of the twenty-four shots on the roll, then to choose a half a dozen of the best and print up two 3 x 5s of each of them.

  'Well, I wonder,' he said, stroking his goatee dreamily. He was lying in a Mexican hammock which he had strung up beside the garage. A dog of some kind was zonked out in the patch of shade beneath him. A cat of some kind was sharing the hammock with Wade.

  'I'll have to think about it,' he said. 'A man's got to think about things if he's going to get ahead.'

  'A man's got to work if he's going to get ahead,' I said.

  'An hour,' he said finally. 'Big job like that, be a good hour.'

  I spent the time having three poached eggs, bacon, side of rye toast and coffee in a greasy spoon around the corner, and reading a morning paper someone had kindly left. There was an article on the front page about a raid on a rock house in East LA the night before. One man killed, one wounded. The police had to use explosives to blow the front door open and some sort of armored bulldozer to break in the back and it still took them ten minutes to get in. I'd had a vague idea of more or less trying the same thing myself but after reading the article forgot about it.

  I picked up the prints and proofs, paid Wade, and headed for the office. One nice thing about the kid, he never commented on the subject matter of the films he handled but he'd go on for ever about the technical side of it if you let him. Being a considerate sort of bloke myself, once in a while I did let him, about once every five years.

  The office was hot and still smelled of new paint. After calling up the messenger service to request one of their slaves I typed up a beauty of a bill for Mr Seburn, as padded as a teenager's bra, put it and copies of all the photos in a well-sealed envelope, then handed it over to the boy when he came.

  All right. That took care of that, it seemed. There was nothing to be done for the nonce about Barbara Herbert, twenty-four, single. There was nothing to be done until that evening about Dev Devlin and St Stephen's. And there was nothing to be done about Sara for a couple of days, at least. Another check-up at John D.'s wasn't due for a while. I had a similar contract with a huge used-car lot out on Victory but they weren't due a visit for another couple of weeks either. I
t was too early for the mail. I could always bring the records up to date or learn a new program but I could also go shooting instead. I decided to go shooting, it was more sociable.

  For a couple of years I'd forked out two hundred dollars per to belong to a gun club in the hills just the other side of South Pasadena and I used to go out there and practice once in a while. Then I met a guy who had a small orchard up north near Magic Mountain. He was getting pressured to sell his place to a developer but God had told him not to, so he wouldn't. When the pressure had escalated from the typical nuisance level like dumping a truckload of garbage on his herb garden to running over two of his short-haired samoyeds, or whatever they were, he came to see me. It wasn't hard to find out who was behind it, as there was a big sign with the guy's name on it at the front of the property next door. So I found out where he lived and ran over one of his kids' bicycles and peace reigned thereafter and I had free shooting. The man who talked to God was a friend of Benny's – who wasn't? Benny . . . did I not remember Benny, the last time we talked, saying something about going to see a man to buy some money? By God, I did remember, it was when he phoned up to say he'd driven by Art's to see what was left of it, if anything. Well. I gave the lad a call. I could always find a use for some money, depending on how cheap it was.

  'Money, Benny, money,' I said, getting him at the third attempt after two misconnections. 'You were going to buy some money, what was that all about?'

  'This guy had some money,' Benny said around a yawn. 'I heard. Twenties. Absolutely beautiful. Do you know it's the middle of the night?'