by David Pierce
'Oh,' I said. 'That James R. Bolden.' I'd never heard of the guy.
There was a brief argument on the other end of the line, then, 'Mr Daniel? Guess who.'
I guessed. 'What's going on, Sara?'
'Good question,' the little twerp said. Then, picking her words with unaccustomed care, she said, 'Eh, you know that official assignment I was on tonight?'
'This better be good.'
'It is, it is. I asked my friend Petey to help. Because of the seriousness of the assignment, he borrowed his father's car without permission.'
I was beginning to get the picture, or part of it.
'It wasn't a new 'Vette, by any chance?'
'The same,' she said. 'After you-know-who split, or rather departed, I had a feeling, you know?'
Did I not. I was getting a feeling too, in the toe of my kicking foot. But it turned out I underestimated her for the first time and no doubt the last.
'So we decided to stick around. And sure enough he came back.'
'He must have had a feeling, too,' I said. 'So what happened?'
'Acting on your instructions, we hit him.'
'You hit him.'
'Petey was marvelous. He pulled out as if he wasn't looking and ran into him. Guess what the cops found in his car?'
I guessed a gun.
'Right on, Dad. He had a license for it, though.'
'I hope they didn't find anything in your car,' I said. 'Like a million uppers.'
'Nah,' she said. 'You taught me always to be clean on a stake-out.'
'I did?'
'Mr Bolden wants a word. Here.'
'I'll bet he does.' Back on came the fire-breathing James R. Bolden, but I got in before he did.
'Mr Bolden, on behalf of an agency whose name I can't mention on the phone but it has three letters in it, I want to officially thank and commend your son Peter and Miss Silvetti. If it hadn't been for their prompt and decisive action one of our most valued agents might have been in great danger.' Yeah – me.
There was a pause while someone else was being taken aback for a change, then he said,
'Listen, I don't think it's right for you to use kids, whatever you were doing. They could have gotten hurt.' At least he'd gotten off the subject of his over-priced, plastic status-symbol.
I told him we very rarely used youngsters as few of them had the courage and intelligence shown by his boy and Sara, that took him aback even further. If his kid was the complete juvenile delinquent I figured he was, as (a) he'd used his old man's new car without permission and (b) he hung around with Sara, probably no one had had a good word to say about him since he got one gold star on his attendance record in grade six.
I buttered the father up a little more by informing him that of course we would be responsible for all repairs and that an official letter of thanks, even if couched ambiguously for security reasons, would be sent to his fine boy soonest. Note – visit Mrs Martel soonest re FBI-headed notepaper. Damn, another unclaimable expense.
'Well!' said the suddenly proud Mr Bolden. 'In that case . . . '
I thanked him for his cooperation and asked if I might have a final word with Miss Silvetti. He put her on.
'You is but a brainless clod,' I told her. 'You could have gotten wasted.'
'Look who's talking,' she said. 'I suppose you'll want a full report from me in the morning as per usual?'
'Get lost,' I said, and hung up. If there's one thing I've learned on the weary path of life it is that you can do nothing with a smart-ass.
So. I was on my way out again when the phone rang again. This time it was John D.
'Guess who didn't show up for work tonight?'
'I'm doing a lot of guessing all of a sudden,' I said. 'But, OK, Big Sal?'
'Nope.'
'Barbara Herbert, single, age twenty-four, from Van Nuys?'
'You got it. Was that your doing?'
I admitted modestly it was.
'How come, Brains?'
'Professional know-how,' I said. 'Tricks of the trade. Good undercover work.'
'I bet you guessed,' he said.
'I did not,' I said, hurt. 'It was length of employment, John. Martha's been with you, what, over three years, she likes it there. And what's her name, Maria something . . .'
'Cintron.'
'Right, she's only been there a couple of weeks, it's too obvious if she starts right off tapping the till, also it isn't that easy, she's got to have access to her own score sheets. No, I always liked Barbara. After a couple of months she knows her way around, she's more or less trusted and she knows your suppliers. So I put the word out to see what would happen.'
'I still think you guessed,' he said. 'It was only a one-in-three shot.'
'I'm too hurt to continue this conversation,' I said. 'Also I have more important things to do.'
'Me too,' he said. 'Guess who's filling in for her tonight, renting smelly shoes to drunk trouser suits?'
'Serves you right,' I said bitterly, and hung up.
Third time lucky; I made it out without any more interruptions and a scant twenty-five minutes later I was gazing fondly at a stack of money on Benny's cocktail table. Someone had done a beautiful job on those twenties, damned if I could find anything wrong with them and I had a good hard look. They were all in groups of ten held together by a band of brown sticky paper, just like you get them from the bank.
'How do you make new bills look old?' I asked my host, who was reclining opposite me in a huge lounging chair.
'Gee, I dunno,' he said. 'Carry them around in your wallet for a month? Walk on them? Put them under your arm? Wet them and dry them again in the oven? All of the above and a few more I'll think of in a minute.'
'We can but try,' I said. 'God, they're gorgeous, aren't they?'
So we dampened a few hundred dollars' worth and then put them in a low oven, then I tucked another hundred bucks' worth in each shoe.
'That'll limp them up if anything will,' said Benny.
Then I rolled up a further twenty bills into a wad and kept it clutched in my hand the rest of the evening while we played chess, shifting the outside bill to the inside whenever I remembered. As for the chess, I almost had him the second game but he forked my knight and bishop with his bloody knight when I got distracted by his getting up and noisily making himself another couple of banana daiquiris in his Goddamned blender. I was making progress, though, there was no doubt about that.
During the third game he picked his moment carefully and just before a key move of mine he casually inquired how Mae was. Truly, stranger than fiction is the compulsive need of some men to win at all costs, even in a harmless, uncompetitive, friendly game between old pals. Well, two can play at that; just before one of his moves I tossed the small, glassine envelope I'd found hidden away at Dev's on to the board.
'What's that?' he asked without looking up.
'That's what I want to know.'
He opened it up, looked at it, then rubbed a bit on his gums.
'Smack. Very good, too. What they call Persian, not that dirty Mexican stuff.'
'What do you do with it?'
'Smoke it, when it's that good. Anything else you want to know?'
'Yeah, as a matter of fact. How about the address of a good, reliable rock house?'
He gave me an address down on West 56th.
'Anything else?'
'Yeah, while I think about it.' I wrote him a check for what he'd laid out for the funny money.
'Anything else?'
'Yeah. Can I use your phone?'
'Sure. I'm still going to beat you, you know, your queen's file is hopeless.'
'What else is new?' I dialed Sam the handyman's number, had a word with him, then one with his eldest son, Charles.
'You got it,' said Charles.
I took my leave of Benny's nondescript West Hollywood apartment around midnight more or less sober, as the following day, Saturday, promised to be a lively one. The bills in the oven had dried out nicely and loo
ked passable, pun not only intended but worked hard for; the others would do in a pinch. Benny, polite as always, escorted me not only to the door but one flight down to the ground floor, past the pool and to my car.
'Take care, Unk,' he said.
'What else, Benny.'
I drove home without stopping in at either Dave's or the Two-Two-Two, both of which were on my direct route. Empires have been won by men with less strength of character than I often show.
As requested, Sam's eldest came by my place Saturday morning not too early, it was almost eleven. I'd just finished stuffing two thousand dollars, about a quarter of it fake, the rest of it Dev's money, into an envelope when I buzzed him up. He shuffled in lugubriously, took one look around, widened his eyes, then shook his head slowly and sadly like he was looking at what was left of the cotton crop in the south forty acres after the weevils had struck.
'It won't do,' he said. 'It jus' won't do.'
'What won't do, Charles? Want some coffee?'
'This pad, bro. It's like some old woman's place.'
'It is an old woman's place,' I said. 'I call her Mother.'
'Oh,' he said. There was a long pause. 'She heah?'
'No, she heah tomorrow, now do you want some coffee or not?'
He thought it over for about thirty seconds, then, 'Maybe.'
'Is that maybe yes or maybe no, Charles?'
'Dat's maybe later,' he said. I couldn't believe any son of Sam would be that thick so he had to be putting Whitey on. I didn't mind, I was having almost as good a time as he was.
'So what you want me to do for a hundred dollahs, bro?'
'Buy some coke.'
He peered at me suspiciously, then looked up at the ceiling. At what, I don't know.
'Dat's it?'
I nodded.
'From who?'
I told him who.
'Why?'
'Because I can't.'
'Why not?'
'Charles, what do I look like?'
He ambled over unnecessarily and looked closely at me.
'Mostly white.'
'Anything else?'
'Large.'
'If I came knocking at your door, would you sell me two grand's worth of coke?'
'No way,' he said. He shook his head a few times, then a few more times, then a few more times.
'Why not?'
'I don't have two grand's worth of coke.'
'If you did have it.'
'No way.'
'Why not?'
'Cause you could be de Man.'
'Ah ha,' I said.
'Well, why din' you say so 'stead of all this rigmarole?' he said. 'Where's de bread?'
I tossed him the envelope, it had the address of the rock house Benny had given me scribbled on it.
'Two grand in dere?'
I nodded. I didn't bother telling him part of it had been made in someone's basement, I've got a sense of humor too. Too bad I had to include so much real money but two grand in slightly used twenty-dollar bills would make anyone suspicious, let alone a coke dealer.
Charles took the money out and ripple-counted it as expertly as a Kurdish rug-seller.
'You wants all coke?'
I nodded.
'Then I gets a hundred from you?'
'And a good toot,' I said.
He brightened just perceptibly, stuffed the envelope in the hip pocket of his yellow flares, then, putting his feet down with exaggerated care, started towards the door. Halfway there he stopped and turned back.
'If dey asks, should I tell them who I is buying it for?' He gave me a look of earnest inquiry.
I sighed. 'Charles,' I said, 'I will admit you're the funniest thing since the invention of the whoopie cushion if you will just go and get the d-o-p-e, please.'
'Oh,' he said. 'De dope. Cool, bro, cool. Sure, boss. I'se done gone already.' He managed a couple more steps toward the door.
'Charles,' I said, 'if you turn around again for any reason whatsoever I'm going to kill you.'
'No need for violence, my man,' he said in a posh, upper-class English accent. Then he had the nerve to add, 'Enfin, la violence, c'est le signe toujours d'un clown, un pédéraste ou un colonial.'
With that brilliant parting thrust, whatever it meant, he left.
Big deal. Now he could steal cars in French.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I watched from the window as Charles wheeled his old red Caddie into a U-turn and took off. Bonne chance, mon ami. Then my brother called to see if I was still planning to pick up Mom the next day.
I said, 'Sure.'
He asked me how I was.
I said, 'Cool, bro, cool.'
I made another pot of coffee and was spreading some soft cream cheese on a couple of slices of raisin bread when the phone rang again. This time it was the VP.
'A fine mess you got me into now,' he said.
'Keep your cool, bro,' I said. 'Things are looking up.'
'Really?' He sounded incredulous. 'I had a phone call a few minutes ago from Devlin, he tells me some lockers were broken into during the night.'
'Tsk, tsk,' I said. 'Kids today.'
'Kids today, that's all you got to say to the man who is employing you, remember?'
'So what is Dev doing about it?'
'He's doing nothing until I get back to him is what he's doing.'
'Well, my suggestion to you, esteemed employer, is to tell him to go on doing nothing. We do not want the mess cleaned up, we do not want the police in, but we do want a half a dozen kids not to know what the hell is going on when they come in Monday morning.'
'Oh, do we?'the VP said.
'Dev didn't have any other news by any chance, did he?'
'Yes he did, by any chance. He mentioned he'd lost his keys and had to break into his own apartment.'
'Why didn't he get a locksmith?'
'He didn't say.'
'I like it,' I said. 'And you are going to like it too, Mr Lowenstein.'
'I hope,' he said grimly. 'Let me ask you this, friend. Do you think the day will ever come when you will live up to your contract and let me know what in God's name is going on around here?'
'Yes, I do,' I said. 'And that happy day will not be long a-coming.'
'It had better not be,' he said. There was some noise in the background. 'I've got to go, my daughter needs the phone for something vitally important that can't wait a second, it's life or death, the future of the entire civilized world seems to be at stake.'
'Wow,' I said.
'Yes, if she can't borrow her friend Susan's sweater tonight not only will she die but we'll all be sucked with her into some dreadful black hole to instantly perish.'
'Oh, Daddy,' I heard his daughter say in the background.
'Goodbye, then,' I said, and hung up. Poor old Daddy.
So I ate my lonely breakfast and waited for that goofball Charles to come back, not without a certain amount of apprehension. I suppose I could have told him that part of the cash was do-it-yourself but then he wouldn't have even considered making the buy because then he could wind up dead. And I didn't want Benny involved, it had to be a stranger on a one-off so they wouldn't know who to go looking for when they found out they'd been ripped off – as they would surely do, and soon. If the rock house was one of Whitey's it figured that they'd go looking, heavily armed, for the Third World. If it was a Third World house, vice versa. Actually, a nice, violent little war between the two factions was what I was hoping for. But I was a little worried, in that league anything could happen and usually did, and if anything happened to Charles I might as well leave Earth for good – and yesterday, if possible, because Sam and the rest of his family would be extremely angry at me.
By the time it was twelve thirty I was more than a little worried, I was a lot worried, and by the time it was twelve forty-five I was worried sick. But then I heard someone screech to a halt outside the house; I looked down and it was the great comic himself, stuffing the last of a Big Mac in his fac
e, he'd only stopped for lunch on the way.
So I buzzed him up and in he came and after a bit more dialogue out of a zombie movie he took off again with his hundred and another fifty worth of coke up his nostrils, leaving me with two grand, less fifty, worth of cocaine in small, white, gram-size envelopes on the table in front of me. I hadn't given Charles four hefty lines only because I'm a good tipper, I also wanted to make sure it was what it was supposed to be, and it was that, all right, judging from Charles' reaction when he got the first rush.
'Hot damn!' he said, giving himself a couple of high fives. 'Dat's boss! Urn hum! Ace, man!' And so on. I figured he could spend his time more usefully learning English instead of French.
One o'clock. It was time to call Art. The only trouble was I didn't have his home number, nor did the telephone book. It did list a business number for him, which I tried just to see what would happen, I'd never telephoned a void before. What happened was a recorded voice telling me that the number has been temporarily disconnected. You're telling me.
So then I called the Pacific Telephone Company Security Office and gave them my brother's code number, which allowed me to obtain any two unlisted numbers at one time. Art's was all I wanted.
He was out, his wife told me, but he was due home in a few minutes. Would I leave my number?
No, I'd call back, thanks.
Would I say who was calling?
An old pal.
While I waited for him to get back from wherever he was – maybe plotting new plots with Dev somewhere – I went into the kitchen to wrap him up a dainty present as a token of my affection. I borrowed an empty candy box from Mom's comprehensive collection of empty candy boxes, also a length of darling blue and silver ribbon. I filled the box with a few old newspapers to give it some weight, then thoughtfully added a paperback on chess for beginners, a book I'd long ago mastered, the perfect gift for someone who, if things went the way they were supposed to, would soon have a lot of spare time, as in seven to ten years.
I tied the box up neatly with the ribbon. I added a birthday greetings card with his name and address handwritten on it. I added a 'Fragile' sticker just for sheer devilment. Then I tried Art again; this time he was in.
'Hello, Art!' I said cordially. 'It's me.'
'Me who?'
'Me who blew your hamburger stand into the twilight zone.'
