A Deadly Shade of Gold (31 page)

"So how long is that supposed to be?" she asked with great skepticism.

I unstrapped my watch and handed it to her. "This is a solid gold case. You can check it anywhere."

"No. I don't want it. Look, I just thought you were trying to make it cute. Okay? Maybe one of the guys has an open couch."

"As a last resort. But maybe if somebody is away. How about your engineer?"

"No. He lives with his folks in Santa Barbara. Let me think."

She sat and pulled at that protruding underlip and scowled into her drink. Then she glowed with inspiration and went off to phone. She came back and wedged herself in again and in a conspiratorial tone said, "Bingo. And we're neighbors yet. The girlfriend I phoned was sore as hell at being waked up at all hours. But she's the one Francine left her key with. And she'll go over and put it in my mailbox she said."

"Who is Francine?"

"Oh, she's away on this thing. What it is, the executives where she works, they take this trip and go to a whole mess of regional offices and have sales meetings. She's gone every year for a month about this time. It's pretty nice, going in a company plane and all, and they ball it up pretty good. She sacks out for days when she gets back believe me. She shouldn't be back for another couple weeks anyway."

When the group decided to hit one more place, we broke away. Junebug had a little grey English Ford. She drove it with slap-dash efficiency. When I came out of the bus station with my bags and put them in the back seat, she said, "You know, Mack, I damn near drove off. I was thinking, this is pretty stupid, not knowing you or anything."

"I wondered if you would drive off."

"What would you have done, baby?"

"Had some naps in the bus station."

"Am I doing something real stupid?"

"I think you're smart enough to have a pretty good idea of whom you can trust."

"Well... I guess that's the way it has to be."

The place was off Beverly Boulevard, not too far from City College. It was one of those depressing little residence courts, small attached bungalows, about thirty of them, in a hollow square, facing a common courtyard. You drove in through an ornamental arch, from which hung a sign saying Buena Villas. There was a weak night light and a dead fountain in the middle of the court. Cars were parked in front of most of the bungalows. The bungalows all had shallow porches, one step up from minuscule yards with low iron fences.

She parked in front of hers. Number 11. While I got my gear out of her car, she went onto her porch and got the key from her mailbox. Then we went diagonally across the court to number 28.

After she put the key into the front door lock, she turned and whispered, "Honey, honest to God, you got to promise me you won't make me regret this. I mean no big phone bills, or messing the place up, or breaking stuff or stealing stuff. I told Honey it was a girl friend I wanted it for. Even so, she dragged her heels,"

"You have no cause for alarm, Junebug."

We went in. She found the lights. Living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath. Quick tour of inspection. No side windows. It would be depressingly dark by daylight. And Francine was a miserable housekeeper. Junebug found beer in the small noisy refrigerator. I agreed to replace anything I used up. We sat on the couch in the living room. She was mildly, apprehensively flirtatious. She expected the pass, and I knew she could react in only three possible ways-rebuff, limited access, or totality-and I had not the slightest curiosity about finding out. Perhaps she wanted a chance to dizzy herself then bravely retreat, for the sake of the engineer. When I sensed she might get a little bolder, I cooled the situation by asking friendly questions about the engineer. Finally we said our polite goodnights, with thanks and reassurances, and she left.

I poked around my new domain. Francine had left dirty sheets on the double bed. I found fresh ones in a narrow cupboard in the bathroom. She had left long blonde hair in all the expected places. I got rid of those, and the ring in the tub, and the hardened fragments of cheese sandwich on the kitchen table. I am a confirmed snoop. I went through the living room desk and found out she was Mrs. Francine Broadmaster. Divorced. Age 27. I found some treasured little packets of love letters from several males. They were semiliterate, and so shockingly clinical they awed me.

I found myself conducting a search for whatever it was she would hide away. Everybody hides things. They think they have dreamed up the most perfect place, but it is always a very ordinary place. Hers was a brown envelope Scotch-taped to the underside of a bureau drawer with the flap paperclipped shut. She had three one-hundred-dollar hills in there, and six fifties, all crisp and new. And she had twenty or so polaroid pictures in there. Evidently she or her boyfriend had a polaroid camera with a timing device. She was featured in them. She was a medium-sized blonde, with more than her share of jaw and breast. The boyfriend was a burly rascal. In the pitiless glare of the flash bulb they looked toward the camera, whenever possible, wearing that dazed blind nervous grin typical of all amateur pornography. I could imagine nothing of a more ghastly sadness than these little souvenirs.

After I had gathered up stray garments and shoved them onto a closet shelf, I did the minimum of unpacking for myself and went to bed.

I had become a city rabbit and found a burrow. In the darkness, stretched out in Mrs.

Broadmaster's play pen, aware of the late mumbles of the city I took a tentative rub at the place that hurt. "Forgive me," her dying eyes said. "Forgive me for being such a bloody mess."

And the black anger came rolling up, turning my fists to stones, bunching the muscles of arm and shoulder. Don't go away Mr. Tomberlin.

At eight in the morning the people of Buena Villas started going to work. The court made for considerable resonance. Apparently standard procedure was to bang every car door at least three times, rev up to 6000 rpm, then squeak the tires and groan out in low low. I could have sworn half of them drove back in and did it all over again. By nine it had quieted down, and I got another hour of sleep before the phone started ringing. I began counting the rings, waiting for it to quit. It was beside the bed. It was a white phone. It had lipstick on the mouthpiece.

After twenty-seven rings I knew who it had to be, so I reached and picked it up. "Boy, you sleep pretty good," Junebug said.

"I wanted to make sure it wasn't for her."

"I was beginning to think you cleaned out the place and took off."

"What would I steal, honey? Dirty underwear? Eddie Fisher records? That beautiful refrigerator?"

"Look, is everything okay? Honey didn't come over to check on who I borrowed it for before she went to work?"

"No callers."

"Baby, you want to get in touch with me, you ask for Miss Proctor. You got something there to write down the number. I'll give you both numbers, my place and here. You got plans for after I get off today?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"What I'll do to keep from waiting so long next time I want to phone you, I let it ring once and hang up and dial you right back. Okay?"

"Fine."

After I got dressed I checked the emergency reserve in my money belt. I had eight hundred there, in fifties. I moved half of it into my wallet. I had a Lauderdale account I could tap at long range, but I still didn't want to have my name on anything. I imagined the car in front of the bungalow belonged to Francine. It was a sand-colored Falcon. It took a ten minute search to turn up the keys. They were in a bowl on the table by the front door, under some old bills and circulars.

It was one of only four cars left in the court. The battery sounded jaded, but it started in time.

After I was out of the neighborhood, I filled the tank and had a soft tire pumped up. I found a breakfast place, and then looked in a phone book and found no listing for Calvin Tomberlin. I reviewed what I knew about him. Loads of money from his mother's real estate investments.

Several residences, including a lodge up near Cobblestone Mountain. A boat big enough to go down the coast with. A persistent buyer of art objects, perhaps. And unlisted phones.

It wasn't a difficult problem. There are dozens of ways. My problem was to find a way which would leave no trace. I did not want anyone remembering the invisible man. Money can buy a lot of fences. Try phoning Howard Hughes sometime. Tomberlin could be on the other side of the world. He would find that wasn't far enough. But I hoped he was nearby. I had a pretty good hidey-hole. He had enough money to be wary of anybody with cute ideas, like selling him back to himself. Almah had called him spooky.

I started phoning the expensive retail establishments. I hit a vein on the third one, Vesters on Wilshire. I got a Mrs. Knight in the credit department and said, "This is Mr. Sweeney of Sweeney and Dawson, Mrs. Knight. We're doing an audit on Mr. Calvin Tomberlin's personal accounts.

Could you please tell me his present credit balance with you?"

"Just a moment, sir."

I waited. If she thought to look in the yellow pages, she would find the accounting firm of Sweeney and Dawson listed therein. If she was bright, she would have suggested she call me back.

"It's just under eight hundred dollars, Mr. Sweeney. I imagine you want the exact figure. Seven hundred and eighty-eight twenty."

"Thank you. Could you give me your billing address on that, please?"

"Yes sir. Care of the trust department, First Pacific National Bank."

I thanked her for her cooperation, not heartily, but with the little touch of ice she might expect from diligent auditors.

I got First Pacific and asked for the trust department, and asked for the person handling the Tomberlin retail accounts. After some delay a very cool and cautious young voice said that she was Miss Myron.

"Miss Myron, I hate to bother you with this sort of a problem. This is Mr. Harmer in the credit department at Vesters. We show a balance in Mr. Calvin Tomberlin's account of seven hundred and eighty-eight twenty. Would it be too much trouble for you to check that for me, please?"

"One moment, Mr. Harmer."

Sooner than I expected, she was back on the line, saying, "That's the figure I have here. These accounts are set up to be paid on the fifth working day of each...."

"Good heavens, Miss Myron! I am certainly not pressing for payment on Mr. Tomberlin's account. We have a confusion on another item. I wanted to make certain you had not yet been billed for it. It was a phone order from Mr. Tomberlin late last month, and we had to special order it. You see, I thought that if you had been billed, your copy of our bill form would show delivery instructions. The sales person who took the order cannot remember which address to send it to. I thought of sending it along to the Cobblestone Mountain lodge... but you understand, we want to give Mr. Tomberlin the best possible service. It just came in and I do so want to send it to the right place. It took longer than we promised."

"He's at the Stone Canyon Drive house, Mr. Harmer."

"Let me see. I believe we have that number. Our records are in horrible shape. We're changing systems here."

"Number forty, Mr. Harmer."

"Thank you so much for helping us."

"No trouble at all."

Her girlish caution had evaporated when the figure I gave her checked with hers. We had become companions then. We shared the same arithmetic. And we were both eager to be of maximum service to Mr. Calvin Tomberlin. He used that handy tool of the very rich, special services from the trust department of a bank. All his bills would go there and they would pay
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them all, neatly and promptly. At the end of the year they would make up a detailed statement, take a percentage of the total as a service charge, send the statement to the tax attorney handling Tomberlin's affairs.

I had to buy a city map to locate Stone Canyon Drive. It angled west off Beverly Glen Boulevard, a winding road like a shelf pasted against the wall of a dry canyon. The houses were very far apart, and so were the numbers. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty. Everybody had a nice round number. I came to 40 after the canyon had gradually turned north. But the house was invisible. A smooth curve of asphalt flowed down around the rocks. Where it entered the main road, a small sign on one side said "40" and the sign on the other side said "Private". There was a rubber cable across the asphalt. I could assume that the weight of a car set off a signal somewhere.

I had to keep going. There was no place to pull off. After I passed a house-or rather a drivewaywith the number 100 on it, I came to a turnaround, and there was no place to go but back. It was three and a half miles back to the boulevard. Ten houses in three and a half miles is reasonable privacy. I went back to Sunset and over to Sepulveda, and wiggled my way around through some semipretentious little areas, trying to work back toward Stone Canyon Drive.

At last I found what I thought was a pretty good view of the ridge that formed the west wall of the canyon. The houses were set along the reverse slope of the ridge. They weren't going to burn in tandem. There was too much bare rock up there. But each house was in a private oasis of green, or I should say near one, or perched over ome. Various architects had hung them up there like strange little toys. Other ridge areas, lower and brushier, were clotted thick with houses.

According to demand, I could imagine that each of those far houses was taking up at least a million dollars worth of barren real estate. In a sane world it would be 501$ an acre, but there it is, status-symbol Iiond, rocks and brush, ridges and gulleys, fires and mud, all the way to Pacific Palisades. The highest houses get to see the pizza signs, and the night sea beyond.

Perhaps the only greater idiocy is visible in Beverly Hills where, on the older roads sit, jowl to jowl, on small plots, huge examples of the worst architectural styles of the past two hundred years, from Uncle Georgian to Casablanca Moorish. When San Andreas gives a good belch, they can start again at 500 an acre.